Blogging the democratic revolution
I know that the third round of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia are coming up, so I checked out Arab News, which has a lot of material up, but I came upon this article noting that legislation had been passed in Kuwait allowing women to both vote and participate in municipal elections. KUWAIT CITY, 20 April 2005 ???????? In a first step toward granting women full political rights, Kuwaiti lawmakers agreed yesterday to allow women to vote and run in local council elections, but the measure requires more legislative action before it would become law. The measure was taken on…
How bad is it for Venezuela? Is it really a colony of Cuba? This essay by Gustavo Coronel should settle the question definitively. Read it here.
Remembering my post from yesterday on Armenian and Azeri opposition groups, I come across this article on RFE/RL describing the Azeri opposition movement. Prague, 19 April 2005 (RFE/RL) — Several opposition leaders and former government officials announced on 12 April the creation of a new election bloc to run for seats in Azerbaijan’s Milli Meclis, or national parliament. The alliance is known as Yeni Siyaset (New Politics). It includes Namazov, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s Public Forum nongovernmental organization, and a onetime aide of late President Heidar Aliyev. Other members are Lale Sovket, the former chairwoman of Azerbaijan’s Liberal Party and…
Yesterday I posted that Georgian President Saakashvili will predict where the next revolution will be on April 22 during the next GUUAM summit. Check out what this article has to say. TBILISI. April 19 (Interfax) – Georgia’s parliament plans to adopt an address that will be sent to the people of Belarus this week. “The parliament of Georgia is confident that the fraternal people of Belarus will be able to overcome all resistance which is being put up by internal and external retrograde forces, and this wonderful European country will not be isolated,” reads the draft document. Chairman of the…
Finally: Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati announced he has succeeded in forming a new government, after a month and a half of political wrangling by pro-Syrian and opposition politicians. Lebanon’s fledgling Prime Minister Najib Mikati made the eagerly-waited announcement that he had put together a new government at the presidential palace. The government, with those named today, he insisted, will be a short-term administration, destined to supervise parliamentary elections, quickly, and within the constitutional time frame, “God willing,” as he put it. Mr. Mikati denied that there had been a tug-of-war between Lebanon’s opposition movement and pro-Syrian politicians, in choosing…
Blogger Tim Russo, who did democracy work in Armenia, tells us not to hold our breath on a united opposition front there. Armenian opposition parties might be the most splintered opposition in the entire former Soviet Union. Almost daily, some guy decides that the other guy running the party doesn’t deserve to run the party, and runs off to start his own party. “Opposition” alliances last about as long as Italian governments. There’s been so many parties, blocs, “unions,” and “fronts,” they’re running out of names for them. The same can also be said for Azerbaijan’s opposition, who had attempted…
Nathan points to an article saying that Georgian President Saakashvili will unveil the next country to undergo a “velvet revolution” at the next GUUAM meeting. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has said that a new velvet revolution will follow the regime changes in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, Rosbalt news agency reports. ???????We have defeated our enemies in these two countries, but there is one more country on our list,??????? he announced at a meeting with the Georgian Prosecutor General????????s Office staff. The president promised to reveal the name of the country at the five-nation GUUAM summit in Chisinau on April 22 that…
I was just sent a link to a photo gallery of all the rulers of “Not Free” countries as ranked by Freedom House. Perhaps this is an obvious common denominator, but they are all ugly people.
More than usual, anyway. The UN Commission on Human Rights just passed a resolution condemning Belarus for abuses. Following the adoption on 14 April of a resolution by the UN Human Rights Commission alleging human rights abuses by Belarusian officials, Syarhey Aleynik, Belarus’s permanent representative to the UN, criticized the document as “another attempt to create a distorted picture of the country’s situation in order to justify the intention of its co-sponsors to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state,” Belapan and Interfax-Belarus reported. Aleynik said that the resolution has passed under “unprecedented pressure from the United States,”…
Probably one of the least noticed news items of the day is the results of municipal elections in the Basque separatist region of Spain. BILBAO, Spain, April 18 (Reuters) – Spain’s ruling Socialists declared Basque premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe’s plan for virtual independence from Madrid dead on Monday after he suffered a setback in regional polls. Ibarretxe, who had tried to turn Sunday’s poll into a plebiscite on his controversial plan, emerged weakened. The big winners were the Socialists and a little-known party backed by radical nationalists unable to vote for Batasuna, banned as the political wing of guerrilla group…
Stefania sent me this link to a plea for help from the Iranian student movement. They run a website that publishes information and they have run out of funds for it, so they are seeking donations. Under “more” I’m posting the letter in full, so click that in order to view it.
When thousands of Venezuelans came forward last year to exercise their legally guaranteed democratic right to sign a petition to recall their president, precious few realized the kind of use dictator Hugo Chavez could and did make of that signature list afterward. It was published on the Internet – the names, addresses and social-security-number equivalent of all those who signed. It was used to blacklist signers, deny people work, target dissidents. Thousands of people were affected, not just in those who were not hired for jobs, but for those who were denied services, lost rights, got harassed and were brutalized.…
Just when you thought the Venezuelan Revolution was on its last legs, I discover this promising new blog in English called Notiven by Javier Caceres. It’s an occasionally updated blog that’s full of thoughtful analysis and commentary on the news. Javier’s got a new item up about Hugo Chavez’s likely plans to align and control the FARC narcoterrorist jungle guerrilla movement of Colombia. Well worth reading here.
Ecuador, arguably the most beautiful country in South America, has probably the stupidest government. Only dollarization has kept the government from making a complete hash of things, and high oil prices and a willingness to drill have enabled the Andean state to post a 5.4% rise in GDP in 2004. But dollarization by itself is not enough. The place desperately needs rule of law, and they aren’t even close. This country’s crisis is centered around the Supreme Court, which was stacked with President Lucio Gutierrez’s 31 political cronies a few months back. This stacking didn’t going down well in the…
Venezuela’s opposition is melting away. Agencia EFE gives a good description of how 200,000 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 amid vast opportunities, and given the choice between freedom here and fighting a thug at home, most people prefer to melt into the milieu. But it doesn’t do much for Venezuela. The regime knows this and is using it as…
Venezuela does not have a conventional revolutionary set-up. It’s a revolution within a revolution, where, six years ago, “reformer” Hugo Chavez was elected to power as an outsider who would make a difference, and who instead ran his country’s affairs like an old-line caudillo party boss, his cronies lining their pockets, but with the added detail of retrograde Castroite communism as his substitute for reform. Of course he is hated. Essayist Gustavo Coronel takes a serious, scholarly look at Chavez’s decaying revolution and the prospects for a more authentic one replacing it. Read it here.
At Bloggledygook I have a post on an accusation by a deputy of the Ukrainian opposition that Viktor Yushchenko had a hand in the sales of X-55 missiles to China and Iran.
Here’s a news editorial pointing out that the roots of Mexico’s revolution right now is not in the existence of the Marxist PRD but in the lack of leadership of President Vicente Fox’s PAN party. That’s what fuelling Mexico’s growing protests. Maybe Vicente Fox should wise up before the next Hugo Chavez mini-me steps in to take over. Read it here.
Spain’s Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos expressed from Washington “the military ships and planes sold to Venezuela ought to be considered as humanitarian aid”. Whilst in Capitol Hill he was scolded by both Republicans and Democrats with respect to the shady relationship that Spain maintains of late with the Cuban dictator and his Venezuelan toyboy. What’s more, John Kerry declined to a pre-arranged meeting with him. However Zapatero’s representative did have the time to keep at defending the indefensible and went as far as to suggest that Bush may be ready to meet with Zapatero. Well I for one doubt…
Pro-Syrian businessman Najib Mikati was appointed prime minister after the resignation (how many is that?) of Omar Karami. At Spirit of America, Mike Totten has a short but pointed interview with student opposition leader Nabil Abou-Charraf. Charraf contends that the latest Karami resignation is a ploy by the government to scuttle the upcoming elections. He says that to the opposition the elections are everything, the government, nothing. For his part, Mikati is being described as a moderate. But he is a moderate only in comparison to his rival Abdel-Rahim Mrab. He said: “We must take advantage of this unity and…
Asif Ali Zardari was taken to his home by police immediately upon landing in Pakistan. Reposrts are alternatively saying that he has been detained or merely deposited at his home: Hundreds of PPP activists clashed with security forces at the Lahore airport in an attempt to meet their leader. The airport was sealed off after the government issued a red alert on Friday night saying there was a terrorist threat. Outside the airport police prevented any public movement and took into custody a number of PPP leaders including Makhdum Amin Fahim, who tried to gather there to welcome Zardari. PPP…
I’ve been reading a lot about the maneuvering in Asia between China, India, Australia, and India. Of course, in the midst of all this, it doesn’t help U.S. policy that China has been portrayed as a capitalist boomland with the slight burden of a communist regime. Up until now, most people and even legislators have been growing too friendly with the China’s expansion. In case anyone forgot, let me refer you to the previous sentence: China has a communist regime. At large, China is becoming a major power player on the world stage, and because of it, many issues ranging…
Gateway Pundit has a report on the arrest of 20,000 members of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) who were anticipating the return to the country of PPP leader (and husband of former PM Benazir Bhutto) Asif Ali Zardari: Police continued cracking down on Pakistan People????????s Party (PPP) activists on Thursday and arrested thousands of them from all over the country while Pakistan Railways (PR) cancelled and barred group reservations in trains bound for Lahore till April 16. The PPP claimed the government had arrested about 20,000 party leaders and activists countrywide in a bid to stop them from welcoming Asif…
This just in from Mexico: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist populist mayor of Mexico City, unequivocally denies he is another Hugo Chavez. I don’t think he’s telling the truth, he is running for president after all, but how interesting it is, in his quest for votes, that he feels a need to deny any association with Hugo Chavez. Obviously, word has gotten around in Mexico. This corresponds to another story, seen yesterday about views that Chile’s OAS candidate has received the ‘kiss of death‘ by getting Hugo Chavez’s endorsement. Clearly some kind of critical mass is building in this…
He just doesn’t get it, does he? Just picture what the people in that room were thinking. Just when you thought the revolution had gone dead in Venezuela, this thug reminds you there is still reason for one out there. He never lets you down. Miguel has a photo of Hugo Chavez pontificating away at this, and notes his Parisian-tailored custom suit. Don’t miss this picture here. UPDATE: And Alek Boyd has an actual video of the grotesque spectacle here. (Scroll down on the page, and look for the item bylined ‘By Hugo Chavez.’ Indeed.)