Blogging the democratic revolution
The period after a democratic revolution is generally the most volatile, so there isn????????t time to lose. Yushchenko needs to step up, whip his party into line, and take control of his job for the betterment of the country. He may also have a tough decision ahead of him with the upcoming parliamentary election. Will he keep or drop Yulia? At this point, the latter may be the sad but needed necessity. I wrote that back in July, but seriously, who thought that it would actually happen? The scandal started a couple of days ago, when Chief of Staff Zinchenko…
Unofficial counts are giving Mubarak a vote count perhaps as high as 80%, with liberal opposition candidate Ayman Nour only up to 12%. This is, perhaps, pretty realistic given the circumstances, and for more on that you should read my previous post. I went into great detail on how fraud and irregularities can be committed by the government, and because of all of these things, the opposition is now claiming massive fraud in the elections. CAIRO (AFX) – Indignant opposition candidates and independent monitors claimed that incumbent Hosni Mubarak’s camp had massively violated electoral law during Egypt’s first contested presidential…
Egyptians voted on Wednesday in the country’s first ever multi-candidate presidential elections. They no longer had to choose between yes or no for Mubarak, but between ten different candidates. Despite this, however, the day was marked with intense voter apathy. Egyptians are casting their ballots in the country’s first ever presidential election. And no-one in Egypt doubts who will win. The incumbent – Hosni Mubarak – who’s been in power for 24 years and is running for another six-year term, faces no real competition from the nine other candidates, most whom are virtually unknown. The better known ones, such as…
Yikes, I almost forgot about this. Don’t miss this week’s carnival of revolutions! 100% democracy goodness.
The ongoing election fraud scandal surrounding President Arroyo is coming to an official close, as the opposition was not able to garner the 1/3 vote necessary to bring an impeachment trial to the Senate. The Philippine Legislature ended the impeachment process against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Tuesday, finally dismissing all three complaints against her. While her adversaries reiterated that they were committed to fighting on – and staged the largest street demonstrations since the crisis began – the Legislature’s move is likely to ensure Arroyo’s hold on power after more than three months of political turmoil. After marathon debates…
Going after the families of dissidents still in the country is a common tactic of dictatorships, so this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Registan reports on testimony implicating the regime in what it does best. Pressure on dissenters and their associates or families has long been a common factor in Turkmenistan according to Farid Tukhbatulin. He heads the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, another Turkmen rights group. ???????If the authorities cannot get those who are abroad then their families and relatives who live in the country are harassed,??????? said Tukhbatulin, speaking from Vienna. He added that his brother had…
Marianna, the blogosphere’s resident election observer, has posted her latest report.
Sandmonkey has an update on the Egyptian elections taking place very soon. In sum, the NGOs want to monitor the election, the electoral commission said no, the courts said yes, the commission said “screw you,” and for some reason a delegation from the House of Representatives doesn’t mind. It goes back to the judicial rebellion a couple of months ago, when somewhere around 4000 judges all demanded that they be given complete oversight of the election process, not limited to just the polls as the government has tried to do. Most of the fraud will occur behind the scenes, after…
The biggest argument I’ve made with regards to the political crisis in Nepal has been that the king’s taking of absolute power will drive the political parties and civil society into the arms of the Maoists, mostly because they are in opposition to the king. It isn’t that the pro-democracy parties agree with the Maoist philosophy, but that they are acting out of the necessity of survival. And now, the Maoists have declared a ceasefire and the parties have entered into talks with them on how to unseat the government. KATHMANDU, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) — Seven Nepali political parties have…
RFE/RL has an interesting story on the rise of social unrest in China. Scarcely a month goes by without news coming from rural China of often-violent protests by locals over corruption, land-grabs, taxation, or environmental issues. The authorities are struggling to stem this rising tide of challenges to abuses that are probably inherent in any one-party dictatorship. It discusses in-depth a lot of the themes I went over in a post I wrote recently. With protests growing in the double-digit percentages a year, their sizes increasing, and the violence escalating, this is something that needs to be watched very carefully…
Alright guys, I had some sporadic internet access that allowed me to do a few posts, but the past two days it has been down completely. I’m in Boston, unpacked, got my new laptop, and best of all the internet is up and running at amazing speed. Posting regularly returns tomorrow!!
Transitions Online offers a nice three page article on the second wave of transition in the post-Soviet space, and its relation to happiness; or rather, it’s negative counterpart. Go ahead and read the whole thing. A few things I’d like to add, though, is how post-Soviet development in each of the occupied countries has contributed to the political tremors that have been shaking the region. For example, we see nations like Serbia and Ukraine that retained their authoritarianism all throughout the ’90s, ushering in new revolution. Throughout all the corruption, cheap sell-offs of state assets, censorship, and oppression, people have…
I hadn’t noticed this since I was moving, but The Belmont Club linked to my essay, “It all comes down to federalism,” and discussed it with a great deal of historical context. Here’s an excerpt with the conclusion: Each behind his Mason-Dixon Line. Of course it can hardly stop there. With a Shi’ite state in southern Iraq and an independent Kurdistan, fueled by vast oil reserves, the wrecker ball may keep on rolling. Syria and Turkey, with their large Kurdish minorities would soon have to reckon with the new Kurdish state. Iran may try to dominate southern Iraq, but a…
I’m in quite a bit of a mood for Russia at the moment after finishing Kremlin Rising. The book went into detail about Putin’s life and how he has consolidated power to the Kremlin since being elected, but it both started and ended with the massacre at Beslan School No 1. The authors themselves were WaPo correspondents and in Beslan during the hostage crisis, and they go into great detail about the actions of both the Chechen terrorists and the outright corruption of the Russian security forces, of which the latter is quite extensive and relatively untold since it isn’t…
The constitutional changes I wrote about two weeks ago just got their rubber-stamp pass in the Zimbabwe parliament. Did you see that coming? I sure didn’t! JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 30 — Zimbabwe’s parliament voted Tuesday to give President Robert Mugabe new constitutional powers to seize farmland and to restrict travel by government opponents in a country whose government is already regarded as among the most repressive in Africa. The parliament, flush with new members from Mugabe’s ruling party after a March legislative election that was denounced by many international observers as rigged, cast 103 votes for the constitutional changes, enough for…
Today marked the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Solidarity trade union, which broke the grip of Soviet communism over the freedom-loving nation of Poland. It isn’t a national holiday, or even one that many people were alive to remember, but people took to the streets in celebration to remember the birth of freedom in their country. It might not have been a public holiday – but it was a national day of celebration in Poland. Gdansk, the home of the Solidarity movement, was particularly festive. Thousands of people crammed into Solidarity Square beside the main gate of the…
In the interest of continuing the elevation of debate, I think it’s about time to once again tackle the issue of swim suits in Saudi Arabia. You will want to read the first post if you haven’t, which deals with what exactly these swim suits look like, and then the second post, which deals with the discussion that erupted because of it. Stefania dropped an image off that explains everything perfectly. Just click here. That’s right, folks, another reaffirmation that Publius is not a blog to be showing your kids before bed time.
Hey all, Here’s an update. I’m moving to Boston right now, heading off to the airport at this moment. I won’t have access to a computer for a few days, probably into Thursday or maybe even Friday. But don’t worry — this place will be kept going smooth, smart, and sexy in the meantime because of Publius’ other contributors that you know and love. So stick around. On the plane I’ll be reading Kremlin Rising which is about Putin’s consolidation of power and the backtracking of democracy in Russia from his election to the Beslan massacre. It looks very good…
Hey everyone, I’ll be moving up to Boston on Monday to start going to school again, so there will no longer be any posts on the weekends. What this means is less burn out and better quality posting during the week. So what I’ll do, every weekend, is put a post on the top linking out to a bunch of articles and blog posts that I believe are good reading. It should keep you busy! And if you have an interesting link, be sure to drop it in the comments section for me to add. The only exception to the…
Every reason about why Iraqis are divided over the constitution, from Islamic law to oil distribution to Saddam’s tighty whities, has been beaten like a dead camel in the desert. And almost all of these controversial issues have been worked out, getting down to nit-picky arguments about words like a and the. Important words, no doubt, but ones that could be and were eventually resolved through necessary negotiation. The only issue that can’t seem to be resolved is that of federalism, probably the single most divisive and important issue regarding how Iraq will be ruled in the years to come.…
Presidents Kocharian of Armenia and Aliyev of Azerbaijan, two countries tangled in constant conflict, are due to meet face to face at a CIS meeting today and will likely discuss relations between the two countries. In particular, the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Secretary Rice made sure to call them both up and put her word in, urging a solution to be found soon. Question: What did Secretary Rice discuss during her phone calls to Presidents Aliyev and Kocharian? Answer: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke briefly this morning with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and President Robert Kocharian of Armenia.…
This piece was beautifully written by D.J. McGuire at the China e-Lobby, which is “dedicated to exposing the abuses of human rights, threats to American security, and attacks on general decency committed by Communist China, and to influencing American policy to ensure these egregious acts do not go unopposed.” Make sure to check him out. Fifty-six years ago today, a plane carrying the leadership of the Republic of East Turkestan was on its way to Beijing for talks with Mao Zedong. In circumstances that can at best be called suspicious, the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. Upon hearing the…
Daniel Berczik remember’s that yesterday was Ukraine independence day, which doesn’t bode well for we who didn’t remember at all. So to make up for it, in an ever-increasing desire to raise the level of discourse here at Publius, here is Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s hot daughter dressed down in black leather during the festivities. Let me introduce you to Yevgenia Tymoshenko, aged 25, someone who obviously has her mother’s genes.
According to a Chinese government report, income disparity and government corruption will cause instability throughout the entire country by 2010 if action isn’t taken. This would certainly coincide with anecdotal evidence of increasing large protests, in both size and frequency. China’s rapidly widening income gap has reached dangerous levels, risking social instability by 2010 if the present trend continues, a government report warns. “China’s growing income gap is likely to trigger social instability after 2010 if the government finds no effective solutions to end the disparity,” the Ministry of Labour and Social Security warned in the China Daily. Su Hainan,…
I was afraid this might happen. By suspending parliament and taking absolute power, Nepal’s monarch has effectively isolated and turned civil society against him. Now, it seems that the seven main political parties from parliament, which represent some 95% of the population, will be staging joint protests with the Maoist rebels against the king. Not good. KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepal’s royalist government urged opposition parties on Wednesday to call off proposed talks with Maoist rebels, saying they were playing into the hands of the guerrillas to sow fresh divisions in the troubled kingdom. The warning came a day after the…