Sudan’s first multi-party elections in 24 years have put Omar al-Bashir, the president who won power in a coup 20 years ago, firmly in the seat of power. The semi-autonomous south of the country voted Salva Kiir into power there by a large vote. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of war crimes, of which he says he is innocent.
Poland’s acting President Bronislaw Komorowski told Poles Sunday 11 April that they must be united in their grief, as tens of thousands of people thronged the streets of central Warsaw and marched past the palace that had been home to Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Kaczynski died in a plane crash Saturday, along with 96 others, including his wife, the head of the country’s armed forces and the had of its Navy, the central bank governor and several lawmakers. The group was en route to Smolensk, Russia, for a ceremony to commemorate the massacre of Polish officers by Soviet forces in 1940.
Russian authorities say the pilots were warned several times not to land, that they were flying too low, but they did not heed the warnings. It is not yet clear why, and aviation authorities have begun investigating the accident.
Kacyznski’s twin brother, a former president, flew to Russia to identify his body. The brothers’ 83-year-old mother, who has been hospitalized since March with heart trouble, has not yet been informed of the accident.
Links to other sites: BBC, Moscow Times
The president of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’Adua, has returned home after three months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, but the government has not issued a statement about his health. His arrival and the lack of information are “raising fresh questions over the leadership of Africa’s most populous nation,” reports Al Jazeera. Goodluck Jonathan, the vice-president has held effective power since January.
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Al Jazeera, Guardian
Staff at the Nelson Mandela Foundation recall the day he walked out of prison 20 years ago. The former President of South Africa, Mandela makes a rare public appearance Thursday evening at the country’s parliament as part of celebrations to commemorate his walk out of Verster prison 11 February 1990. He was freed after 27 years of detention, and went on to become president of post-apartheid South Africa.
Links to other sites: Guardian, UK, Nelson Mandela official site
US President Barack Obama’s announcement 21 January that he intends to limit the size of some lucrative activities by American banks was cheered by France, but Asian markets have reacted negatively and the dollar lost gains it made earlier in the week. France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told French media that the US was finally following her country’s lead and regulating markets for greater stability. Asian stock markets fell for a fifth straight day, with fears that China will raise interest rates coupled with concern that US banking curbs will weaken that country’s economic recovery.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Market Watch, NPR, Reuters,
Béglé argued Swiss Post International and Finance were key new revenue streams
Update 23:10 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Claude Béglé , chairman of the board of Swiss Post, the Swiss postal system, has resigned following several weeks of political turbulence. He handed in his resignation to the Swiss Federal Council late Tuesday 19 January, effective immediately. Béglé has been under attack from several quarters for his plans to modernize the postal system, especially its expansion abroad, but most recently the attacks have become more personal.
He became chairman of the board in June 2008.
Béglé’s departure brings to four the number of board members to leave in under two months.
Sebastian Pinera, a right-wing politician and billionaire, whose investments include the largest stake in Lan Airlines, has won a tight race for president in Chile. Former President Eduardo Frei, who ruled from 1994-2000, has conceded defeat. Pinera had more than 51 percent of the vote, with 60 percent of polling stations closed. The country’s current president, Michelle Bachelet,is barred from running for another term.
Nigeria’s Vice-president Goodluck Jonathan has been given presidential powers by the country’s top court, putting him in charge of Africa’s most populous nation. Thousands of Nigerians earlier protested in the streets of the capital, Abuja, at the continued absence of their president. President Yar’Adua has been under treatment in Saudi Arabia since November for a heart condition and had not spoken to the nation until he did a radio interview 12 January, in a feeble voice. He left without turning over his power to Jonathan. Jonathan, who has chaired government meetings, has been unable as deputy to sign legislation, including budget papers. The Times, UK, notes that “The judgment could have serious repercussions in Nigeria, which shook off decades of military rule only in 1999. It is an ethnically diverse country of 150 million people, roughly split between northern Muslims and southern Christians, which has been hit by sporadic outbursts of inter-communal violence.”
The governor of Caqueta province in southern Colombia was killed Tuesday by rebels who kidnapped him Monday at his home, in what the BBC calls the highest-profile kidnapping since 2002. President Alvaro Uribe ascribes the murder to Farc rebels, saying they apparently slit Luis Francisco Cuellar’s throat to keep him from making noise as they fled security forces. The governor had been kidnapped several times.
Links to other sites: BBC, Miami Herald
Update 2 18:55 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev late Friday 4 December issued this joint statement after a week of high-level negotiations in Geneva:
“Recognizing our mutual determination to support strategic stability between the United States of America and the Russian Federation, we express our commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the Start Treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enter into force at the earliest possible date.”
The treaty officially expires Saturday 5 December 2009. The two countries have said in recent weeks that while they were working towards completing a draft for a new treaty by the time the old one ends, it would more likely be the end of 2009 before a draft could be ready. The new statement avoids setting a deadline, but reinforces the commitment of both sides.
A spokesperson for the US Mission in Geneva said that “The US and Russia are continuing to work hard to complete the new Start Treaty and our delegations are making significant progress toward that end, nonetheless, some difficult issues remain.”
Doris Leuthard, Swiss president in 2010
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Doris Leuthard becomes president of Switzerland in 2010. The 46-year-old PDC (Christian Democrat) member was elected comfortably (153 of 187 votes) by parliament for the top job, a one-year post that is rotated among the seven cabinet members, the Swiss Federal Council. She is the only member of the council not to have yet held the post. She was in line for the job, as vice-president in 2009, but nevertheless needed the approval of the Federal Assembly, parliament’s two houses. Leuthard becomes the youngest president since 1934.
Leuthard is the third woman to serve as president of Switzerland: Ruth Dreifuss was the first, in 1999 and Micheline Calmy-Rey the second, in 2007.
Sixty percent of Honduran voters turned out 29 November to elect a new president, and they chose centre-right National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo over the former president Manuel Zelaya. Lobo is expected to play a unifying role, with support from several members of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. Zelaya lost support when he began to move further left and closer to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. Zelaya was forced out of the country into exile for several weeks but returned secretly in September. He has since been living in the Brazilian embassy. Lobo was defeated by Zelaya in elections in 2005. There were some clashes between police and protestors, but they appear to have been limited. Interim President Roberto Micheletti had banned gatherings before the election, to avoid violence.
Links to other sites: BBC, Voice of America
Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is calling on world leaders to develop new tactics with Iran, to engage the country rather than isolating it. Lula da Silva and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Brazil Monday 23 November and Lula, the rare leader to welcome Ahmadinejad, said in a joint press conference at the end that he supports Iran’s efforts to develop a peaceful nuclear energy programme. Lula’s background includes years as a union negotiator.
Hamid Karzai’s inauguration for a second term as president of Afghanistan has come with unusually high security in the capital Kabul, and renewed pleas to step up the fight against corruption, from former US President Bill Clinton and other world leaders. Regular flights in and out of the city have been cancelled, citizens urged to take a holiday and stay home, and heavier than usual patrols are out on the streets to ward off a possible Taliban attack.
Pakistan attack kills 15
Over the border in Peshawar, Pakistan, a suicide bomber killed 15 people and injured scores at a court building not far from the Pearl Continental Hotel where nine people died in June. Al Jazeera links the latest blast to a new military push: “The military launched its offensive nearly three weeks ago, pitting about 30,000 Pakistani troops against an estimated 10 to 12,000 Taliban fighters in South Waziristan.”
Links to other sites: Aljazeera,
US President Barack Obama’s tour of Asia ends in Beijing today, 17 November, on an upbeat note as he and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced together that they have had positive, frank talks and that they should work more closelyto improve international cooperation. Their statements could mark a turning point, at least in terms of dialogue, which has often been negative on both sides, for several years, but Western observers are skeptical that the talks will lead to substantive changes, and the Wall Street Journal points out that this visit was the most tightly controlled of the three most recent US presidential visits. Hu and Obama say they have reached a consensus on many issues, notably the need to avoid protectionism and further global financial crises. Future cooperation will include healthcare research, especially stem cell and pandemics research. Obama invited Hu to visit the US in 2010 and Hu accepted.
US media coverage of the meeting has been muted, although the meeting made European headlines: NPR barely mentions it, the Washington Post‘s front page made it a secondary headline, while Sarah Palin, who ran for vice president in the November 2008 elections, grabs a larger space with the headline “Is there anything we don’t already know about Sarah Palin?”
Links to other sites: AP/Yahoo, BBC, New York Times, Xinhua (joint statement), Wall Street Journal
Swiss Federal Council 2009
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The two houses of the Swiss parliament, together referred to as the United Federal Assembly, is voting today, 16 September, on a new councilor for the ruling seven-member Federal Council, Switzerland’s cabinet. Councilor Pascal Couchpin, who served as president of the country in 2008, is resigning at the end of October 2009 and the vote is for his replacement. Members of the council are elected for four-year terms and the post of president, for one year, rotates among them, with parliamentary approval. Today’s new councilor will have a chance at the presidential position, but not every councilor becomes president, depending mainly on the length of their time in office.
Swiss media have speculated heavily in recent days about who will win the slot, with a large number of potential candidates putting their names forward and no clear front runner. At issue is the balance of power in the cabinet, which since 1959 has shared power among the political parties according to their share of the vote – although this “magic formula” was strained after the 2003 election, when the far right won a significant new percentage.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Relations between Switzerland and Libya remain strained, with Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi repeating a call he made at the G8 summit in Italy in July 2009, for Switzerland to be considered a non-country and its linguistic districts to be shared among its neighbours. The rhetoric itself has ruffled few feathers, given Qadaffi’s widespread reputation for stepping outside the usual boundaries of diplomatic talk, but Libya’s upcoming turn in a role at the United Nations General Assembly, which opens its new session 15 September, gives him a platform.
Swiss Federal Council and chancellor, 2009
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council opened discussions 26 August on government reforms that could include lengthening the term in office for the president of the country and doubling that position with responsibility for foreign affairs. The president currently serves a one-year term: the job rotates among the seven federal councilors who make up the ruling Federal Council (cabinet). The council members are elected by parliament.
US President Barack Obama focused in his weekly national address on what he labeled “misinformation” being spread as a dubious way of fighting his efforts to reform the healthcare system. “Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, cut Medicaid or bring about a government takeover of health care. That’s simply not true. This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance.” (NPR) Former Republican office holders Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin referred to the plan in public attacks on it, with Gingrich saying it could lead to euthanasia and Palin calling it evil. CS Monitor
In an extraordinary side story, National Public Radio‘s Howard Berkes writes about the soberign experience of joining a two-day free clinic in Virginia in July, where for “two-and-a-half days, about 800 doctors, nurses, dentists and optometrists treated 2,700 uninsured and underinsured people, most from Appalachia. No one was asked for an insurance card. There were no co-pays. And there were no bills.”
The last day of campaigning in Iran’s presidential campaigns has closed with both sides for the two main candidates expressing outrage. “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is thought to be in a tight race with his main rival, reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi,” writes the BBC based on its correspondent’s observations of a campaign that he says was “dull” to start with. TV appearances now have crowds fired up, and the final one by President Ahmadinejad, where he accuses his opponents of lies and falsifying documents, is likely to push supporters of his opponent into the streets in protest. Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post, NPR
US President Barack Obama released classified government information on the use of torture as an interrogation technique on al-Qaeda suspects and Tuesday former Vice-President Dick Cheney replied saying that the CIA should release memos showing waterboarding works. BBC Obama told CIA employees that he released legal memos because the contents had already been publicly acknowledged. “Now, I have put an end to the interrogation techniques described in those OLC memos, and I want to be very clear and very blunt. I’ve done so for a simple reason: because I believe that our nation is stronger and more secure when we deploy the full measure of both our power and the power of our values.” The documents include memos from the Justice Department in 2002 and 2005 approving the use of waterboarding which simulates the sensation of drowning. Obama has banned the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques that were legal under George W Bush. Related: Al Jazeera, Obama speech to CIA employees
US President Barack Obama has become the first American sitting president to appear on a late night talk show, on the Jay Leno show Thursday 19 March. Obama used the talk show in order to reach ordinary Americans, according to an MSNBC report. The president spoke of personal issues such as the promise of a white house dog and how “cool” it is to fly in Air Force One, He also used the time to discuss economic reform and to promote financial regulation reform.
Critics accused Obama of being distracted from the serious issues and demeaning his office. Viewers praised his effort to give the people faith in their government in dark financial times. BBC
President Ravalomanana dissolved the government of Madagascar and handed over ruling power to the military under pressure from the army which then put Mayor Andry Rajoelina in the presidential seat. Rajoelina promises to hold elections within the next two years.
“If the military hands over power to the mayor, it is not constitutional,” Jean Ping, the African Union Commission Chairman. Ping says ti will be considered a coup d’etat by the African Union.
Madagascar army troops took over presidential offices in Antananarivo, the capital, at 18:00 local time 16 March, under orders from the country’s opposition leader Andry Rajoelina. President Marc Ravalomanana offered to test support for the government through a referendum, but he was refused. The president was not in the palace at the time of the attack. According to the UK’s Guardian, he is reported to be in another palace on the island. CNN, AllAfrica
The International Herald Tribune reports that, despite its massive problems which include a powerful drug-running trade and the violent deaths of the country’s top general and president, Guinea-Bissau is coloured by a tentative optimism, with the two men who have led it through misery for years both gone. (Ed. note: when the two were killed Geneva-based fellow journalist El Hadji Gorgui Wade Ndoye wrote a moving plea to members of the Foreign Press Association, asking that we not slip into the old trap of writing about Africa only as a continent where dictators and generals are toppled: he edits Continent Premier, an online magazine in French that focuses on African issues)
All Africa reports that in what appears to be a reaction to the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrrest warrant for the president of Sudan, “the government revoked the licences of British-based Oxfam International, the Dutch branch of Medicines sans Frontiers and the American-based agency , the International Rescue Committee. No explanation was provided for the decision.” The groups provide water, medical care, sanitation and education, according to All Africa.
Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has resigned, leaving the speaker of the parliament as acting president, with 30 days to elect a new president. All Africa reports that “fresh turmoil and uncertainty loom” with the president’s resignation coming just days after his prime minister resigned.
