Blogging the democratic revolution
Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo, whose case we have tracked here was sentenced to six months’ jail by a Venezuelan kangaroo court. They said she misidentified a photo in one of her stories. It’s a characteristic of tyranny to issue draconian sentences for technicalities. But for Venezuela, the free press loses another voice. Government bureaucrats can safely operate outside free scrutiny. This is an outrage. Here is the email I got: Acaban de sentenciar a Patricia Poleo a 6 meses de carcel en el juicio con Jesse Chacon. VIVA LA LIBERTAD DE EXPRESION!!!!!!. UPDATE: Miguel Octavio has an insightful longer essay…
I knew that the parliament had declined new election for June 26 as set by the old parliament, but I didn’t know that they’d set a new date. In any case, it’s not the much further away from the old date. Legislators initially hesitated in accepting his offer to step down, reluctant to allow him a dignified exit. After days of debate, they deepened his disgrace by stripping him of privileges he had gained as the Central Asian nation’s first president under a 2003 law. Yesterday, legislators in the 75-seat parliament voted, 38 to 2, to ”suspend Askar Akayev’s presidential…
I thought I’d round up the media from last week’s visit by Yushchenko to the United States. One Eyed Cat has two photos up from the rally at the Shevchenko monument. Leopolis has more photos from this rally, which took place in Washington, D.C. Aussiegirl points us to another gallery from the rally. This website has a ton of photos from the banquet held there. More here. Here is video of the speech by Yushchenko with Bush in front of Congress. Orange Chronicles has video from the rally, just look on the left side.
Immediately after the falsified elections, the MDC had declared that it would not bother with going into parliament and would not challenge the results in court. The strategy since then seems to have changed since then, with the opposition taking its seats today. Zimbabwe’s leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has taken up its seats in parliament, which puts an end to speculation that the MDC would boycott parliament to protest an election it alleges President Robert Mugabe’s party won fraudulently. The 41 Movement for Democratic Change candidates who won in last month’s election were sworn in as…
Will Franklin is looking at Bhutan’s Freedom House ranking, the king’s policies, and the newly proposed constitution. Here is the entire thing in PDF. He notes: Bhutan’s proposed constitution is ambitious, bordering on too ambitious. The beauty of the American Constitution is its relative simplicity, which has helped it stand the test of time. Bhutan’s is certainly more manageable than the voluminous phone book known as the European Union constitution, but it still might face some minor problems due to its broad nature. For example, preventing “unlawful attacks on honour and reputation” might conflict with the protection of freedom of…
The sad reality of Venezuela’s opposition is its meltdown. Agencia EFE gives a good description of how opponents of the Chavez regime have largely drifted over into Miami, where they are both invisible and increasingly irrelevant to the revolution. Coming to the U.S. is, in a sense, a revolution of its own, because it’s a transformative experience, that of becoming a free person, but given the choice between freedom here and fighting a thug at home, most people prefer to melt into the milieu. It’s kind of sad. The regime knows this and is using it as a safety valve…
In Venezuela during the April 11, 2002 coup attempt, Miguel analyzes the chain of checks and balances that prevented the event from being far bloodier and more violent than it originally began. Those checks and balances – which he broadly reads as ‘decency’ – are now absent in today’s Chavez regime, which has since slid into tyranny. The analysis is critical to understanding how democracies metamorphasize into nondemocracies. Read it here.
In unstable countries, the fuse of revolution is lit from a burning dollar bill. And right now in Venezuela, there’s very dry tinder indeed. Billions of dollars of oil cash is being stolen by the cronies of dictator Hugo Chavez on a scale never seen while poverty there rises. Forty percent of Venezuela’s economy is oil, and all of that from an inefficient state oil company. What does that mean? Money that should be used to reinvest in equipment and maintenance to create jobs and keep the operation going is instead going into corrupt pockets while the pumpjacks, pipelines, refineries,…
This week’s carnival of revolutions is up! Find out what’s gone down.
Remember how thrilled you were when that clown-faced leftwing South American dictator with the leering grin got thrown out of power, in April 2002? And then just as swiftly, like some demented jack-in-the-box popping back out of his sealed box, he popped back into the seat of power? Jorge Arena has an interesting interview with Francisco Toro who was an eyewitness to the April 11 coup event in Venezuela, discussing the sights, moods and voices of the country during those uncertain days. Ruefully enough, it illuminates just how unworthy and incompetent Chavez’s opposition was. No wonder Hugo Chavez made it…
Recently here on Publius Pundit we had a spirited discussion about democratic reform in Egypt, with me warning of the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood using elections as an opening to come to power and create an Islamist state, a Sunni equivalent of what we face in Iran right now. My initial post, Egypt: Democracy Enthusiasts’ Toughest Test?, drew a number of critical comments which you can read there. I responded with another post, Response to Comments – Democracy in Egypt, dealing with the issues raised. One of the points I made was that American democracy supporters had to be…
In view of the utter silence of the anglo phone MSM with respect to recent announcements of chemical warfare agents and other weapons sold by Spain to Venezuela Ä1Å I decided to dig a little and the findings, as usual, are rather grim. It turns out that Venezuela has been spending, since 2000 Ä2Å, substantial amounts of money in the procurement of defence and “Double Use” materials. According to Spain’s Customs and Special Taxes Department of the Treasury ???????247.509 and ???????2.812.827 worth of defence and ‘Double Use’ materials were acquired by the Hugo Chavez administration in that year; in 2001…
As I begin writing this, it is 4:40am, and that makes me feel like starting out with the most ironic item of them day. Lebanon saves Syria from a car bomb. Yes, you heard that right. A truck loaded with 40 kilograms of explosives was seized overnight while on its way toward the Syrian border, outgoing state minister Albert Mansur said yesterday. ???????The truck loaded with explosives was heading to Syria, according to sources of the investigation,??????? Mansur said on LBCI television. Police said security forces had seized a Hyundai truck in the northeastern district of Hermel, a few kilometers…
Always a favorite of mine, Chrenkoff has his 25th installment of good news up!
Several hundred journalists, activists, and colleagues of the late Elmar Huseynov rallied and called for the government to speed up investigations into the murdered editor’s death. BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – About 700 journalists and rights activists rallied in Azerbaijan’s capital Saturday to protest what they call authorities’ failure to fully investigate the death of an opposition magazine editor and bring his killers to justice. … At the protest meeting opposite the city’s National Academy of Sciences, the participants shouted “Freedom” and “Freedom of Speech.” They then went the cemetery where the journalist is buried, and the head of the country’s…
Gary Metz has posted his week in review for everything that has happened in Iran. Templar Pundit quotes one specific post from Regime Change Iran that I find interesting: At least 1,500 anti-government protests, strikes, and clashes took place in Iran during the year that ended on March 20. More than 450 strikes, demonstrations, and gatherings by white- and blue-collar workers, were reported in state-run and opposition media. Some strikes, such as the one by coal miners in Sangroud, lasted for more than 50 days. Non-payment of salaries, insufficient pay, and the privatisation of many sectors of work were the…
Miguel has translated a dazzling article from Spain outlining, in the most precise and concrete terms, why Venezuela can have all the poverty it cares to pay for. It’s chilling and illuminating. Read it here.
It seems that on the way back from Pope John Paul II’s funeral, Karami made the announcement that his new government will be formed by tomorrow and that elections may be delayed by up to six months! Premier-Designate Omar Karami has scheduled the announcement of the new government from the Baabda presidential palace for 11 a.m. Monday, leaving it to parliament to decide whether the spring legislative elections could be held on deadline, An Nahar reported on Sunday. Karami made the revelation in remarks to Lebanese reporters Saturday aboard the jetliner that carried him with President Lahoud back from Pope…
Djibouti — One of the many unfree places left in the world where a “president” can call the opposition cowards while firing tear gas at them for protesting a rigged election. Djibouti’s incumbent leader, Ismail Omar Guelleh, has won presidential elections boycotted by the opposition and in which he was the sole candidate. The high turnout – 78.9% – was the only unpredictable element in the polls. Mr Guelleh, who won 100% of the ballots cast, told France’s Le Figaro newspaper he regretted “having no opponent”. Earlier on Friday, police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters rallying against…
The official Pora website hasn’t been updated in months, so I’ve been really wondering what they’ve been up to since the Orange Revolution. Since then, they’ve created the Red Pora youth organization, which seeks to immitate its Ukrainian civic campaign in Russia. There still isn’t much, but according to this article, Pora has backed Mikhail Kasyanov for president in 2008. A political youth group has said it will support former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov in his bid for the presidency in 2008. The group, called Pora! (High Time), has the same name as the youth group in Ukraine that…
I put up a little contact form at the left side of the site. You can still contact me by email, though. Mainly what I’d like you to use it for is sending me tip-offs to news or blog entries that are relevant. This way I could definitely get to everything in a day. Strangely enough, most of my time goes to looking for the news than it does actually writing about it.
Previous statements have said that they would not contest the election results in court, as it would be futile given that it is controlled by Mugabe. Now, they have decided to do so in the districts where the most flagrant violations occured. Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has reversed its earlier decision not to challenge the results of last week’s parliamentary election in court. The party is now taking cases of what it calls the most blatant irregularities to the Electoral Court. The Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, will challenge one or two results from…
Let the race begin! (Kyodo) _ The Mongolian presidential election campaign officially kicked off Friday with speeches, music and rallies as four candidate began vying for the top spot in one of the world’s youngest democracies. Until May 20, the candidates will fly or drive around the landlocked East Asian nation to speak with some of the 1 million voters, including a rural nomadic population, about poverty alleviation and other key issues. The leading contender is Nambariin Enkhbayar, a former prime minister backed by the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party. His main rival is Mendsaikhani Enkhsaikhan of the Democratic Party. The…
Bizblogger reminds us that with the Pope’s passing, there are still those in China who are not free to worship as they wish. He also notes something unknown certainly to myself and probably many others. An unidentified secret cardinal. While there are 117 known cardinals preparing to select the next pope, the number could actually be 118. When John Paul II created new cardinals in 2003, he said he was keeping one name secret, or “in pectore,” meaning “in the heart.” The name remains secret until the pope announces it or leaves other instructions. This formula has been used when…
I don’t really like making a post to just one article at a time so I’m going to just put everything for Central Asia I’ve read today here. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has suggested that his country may hold presidential elections in 2009. Let’s all take a deep breath so that our laughs can be longer. Nathan notes conflicting accounts of one of Niyazov’s quotes appearing in different stories. Which mean exactly the opposite if ???????succession??????? and ???????continuity??????? are used in their normal senses. I won????????t hold my breath either way because for all we know he could decide tomorrow…