Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, appeared recently on The Daily Show. The clip is available on YouTube.
Bolivia expert Miguel Centellas has some commentary.
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Tag: Politics
![Monks Protest in Myanmar [NOT MY IMAGE]](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1104/1431312254_db358c8a16_m.jpg)
Reuters (“Myanmar junta threatens action against protesters“):
Fears of a repeat of 1988’s bloody crackdown by Myanmar’s ruling generals grew on Tuesday after the junta threatened action against monks at the centre of the biggest anti-government demonstrations in nearly 20 years.
The Burma Campaign UK said its sources in Yangon had reported soldiers being ordered to shave their heads in possible preparation for infiltrating the massed ranks of Buddhist monks marching for an end to 45 years of unbroken military rule.
The London-based activist group said the junta had also ordered 3,000 maroon monastic robes, again with the probable intention of having soldiers masquerade as monks to stir up trouble and create a pretext for a crackdown.
In 1988, the last time the Southeast Asian nation’s people took to the streets in the tens of thousands, agents provocateurs were seen stirring up the crowds, thereby giving the military the excuse to come in and restore order.
AFP (“Myanmar junta warns against more protests“):
Myanmar’s military regime warned its people Tuesday not to join a swelling nationwide protest movement that has escalated into the most potent threat to their hardline rule in nearly 20 years.
Local government officials using loudspeakers rode trucks through central Yangon warning against new anti-junta protests, a day after Buddhist monks led 100,000 people onto the streets of the country’s biggest city.
State media bluntly ordered the monks to stay clear of politics, mirroring government threats of a crackdown carried on state television late Monday.
Analysts said Chinese pressure has helped prevent a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests but China cannot restrain its allies in Yangon indefinitely.
AP (“Narrow Vision Marks Myanmar Generals“):
To much of the world and many of their own citizens, Myanmar’s military rulers are tyrants stubbornly standing in the way of democracy by refusing to hand over power to the political party of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, which won a 1990 general election.
But they claim to be binding a fractious nation together and safeguarding against anarchy that could come from many contending ethnic groups. And they see themselves as paragons of development.
Myanmar’s military rulers are at once both familiar faces and men of mystery.
(Emphasis mine.)
Here’re some recent accounts of the ongoing protests next door in Myanmar.
New York Times (“Monks’ Protest Is Challenging Burmese Junta“):
The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Wall Street Journal (“Burma Rising“):
Burma’s oppressive military junta appears to have a bigger problem on its hands than anyone realized. What started as relatively small-scale, informal protests over gas prices have turned into a large and growing protest by the country’s highly respected Buddhist monks. And now the monks and Burma’s political pro-democracy movement are converging, with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi emerging from house arrest to greet the monks at the gate of her home on Saturday. Reform has proved elusive in the past, but hopefully its time is arriving. The international community needs to show support for the protesters now.
CSM (“Protests swell against Burma’s military regime“):
A protest movement led by Buddhist monks chanting prayers is gathering momentum in Burma (Myanmar), leaving an embattled military regime stranded in a groundswell of popular frustration at economic and political stagnation.
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Ecuador: “Pay us not to drill for oil”
From Foreign Policy’s blog, Passport:
In a unique environmental scheme, Ecuador’s government is asking developed nations to pay $350 million for them NOT to drill for oil in a major field in the heart of the Amazon. The sum represents about half of the estimated revenue that Ecuador would receive from drilling in the Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve that may contain up to a billion barrels of crude. Since Ecuador proposed the scheme last spring, politicians from Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain, and the EU have expressed interest, according to Ecuador’s minister of energy. President Rafael Correa…had this to say:
“Ecuador doesn’t ask for charity […] but does ask that the international community share in the sacrifice and compensates us with at least half of what our country would receive, in recognition of the environmental benefits that would be generated by keeping this oil underground.”
Read the whole post for more information.
A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?
Such questions could be asked of many countries. Belgium’s problem, if such it is, is that they are being asked by the inhabitants themselves. True, in opinion polls most Belgians say they want to keep the show on the road. But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get on—hence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves: when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed.
No wonder. The prime minister designate thinks Belgians have nothing in common except “the king, the football team, some beers”, and he describes their country as an “accident of history”. In truth, it isn’t…
(Emphasis mine.)
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Thai Voters Approve New Constitution
Thailand’s voters have approved an army-drafted constitution, but a hefty “No” vote suggests December’s general election will be messy, with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra still a potent political force.
With 98 percent of votes counted on Monday in Thailand’s first referendum, the Election Commission said about 57 percent of people had accepted the charter, designed to prevent a repeat of Thaksin’s powerful single-party style of government.
However, 41 percent rejected it, sending a signal to the generals who removed the telecoms billionaire in a coup last September that they will struggle to control the make-up of the next administration.
Roughly 25 million of the 45 million electorate cast their ballots, a 56 percent turnout.
Having pressed for a “Yes” vote, the army-appointed post-coup government had been hoping for at least a 60 percent turnout for what will be the 18th charter in 75 years of on-off democracy.
Bangkok Pundit has more details.
The guy selling spears of chilled guava down the street sports a Chelsea football jersey. Everywhere in soccer-mad Bangkok, in fact, people wear garments proclaiming their affiliation with one or another English Premier League team. But one jersey you’re unlikely to spot? That of Manchester City. It’s not because City has struggled, unsuccessfully, for three decades now to emerge from the shadow of its more moneyed crosstown rival, Manchester United. Even Birmingham’s lackluster Aston Villa, after all, maintains a dogged fan base in Thailand’s capital. No, the reason Manchester City is taboo in Bangkok is because its new owner is ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra…
![Anti-Coup Protester in Thailand [not my image]](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1036/946691185_a99aba9a85_m.jpg)
Richard Bernstein’s Letter from Thailand, in yesterday’s IHT, provides an overview of the current political situation in Thailand:
About a week ago, the Thai press reported on a 30-year-old man, apparently not a brilliant one, who, for unexplained reasons, was tormenting an elephant. He hit the animal, according to the newspapers, whereupon the usually placid beast wrapped the man in his trunk, slammed him down, and trampled him to death.
This may be stretching a point, but it seemed to me, visiting Thailand after an absence of a few years, that the elephant-kills-man story is a pretty good metaphor for the delicate state of Thai politics these days, almost a year after an army coup overthrew a democratically elected government that had run afoul of important segments of Thai society.
The ruling coup’s leadership is the elephant in this scheme of things, striving to be a useful beast, indeed making plans to exit the stage as soon as its plans for a constitutional referendum and new elections, all by the end of the year, have been carried out.
But then there are those people angry about military rule and, in some cases, allied to the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that was overthrown last September.
They have been trying, in the name of democracy, to get all Thailand sufficiently riled up to attack the elephant.
So far, however, the elephant has trampled them.
CNN:
How ill is Kim Jong Il? Talk of the reclusive North Korean leader’s health emerged anew this week when he made a rare public appearance Tuesday in a surprise meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Pyongyang. Chinese television footage showed Kim shaking hands with the guest and brandishing a big smile.
That image was the first publicly available video of the secretive Kim since late April when he reviewed a massive military parade from a balcony over Pyongyang’s main plaza, clapping and waving to his troops as they hysterically shouted cheers, appearing deeply moved by a rare glimpse of Kim.
The 65-year-old leader — revered as a near-demigod in the totalitarian nation — looked generally well in the latest footage. But compared with the April clip, he appeared a bit thinner and had less hair. Some South Korean media made similar observations, and engaged in renewed speculation about his health.
(Via.)
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Bolivia, FIFA, and Globalization
Simon Romero had an excellent story in the New York Times yesterday about Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, fighting to defeat the high-altitude soccer ban I mentioned recently. I particularly like the lede (as well as the delightful image, above):
Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, donned a green jersey the other day, watched a llama sacrifice for good luck and flew to a snowy spot nearly four miles above sea level, where he scored the winning goal in a brief match pitting him and his aides against a group of mountain climbers.
It was a textbook lesson in Andean political theater, and the perils a globalized sport can meet when it comes up against a small country’s nationalist passions.
On the surface, Bolivia’s president was simply staging an amusing stunt to fight a ban on international soccer games at altitudes above 2,500 meters, or 8,200 feet.
It’s well known that Mr. Morales will play soccer against virtually anyone, from the foreign press corps to local squads in the hinterlands, to let off steam, and recently broke his nose doing so. But in fact, the ban, enacted last month by soccer bureaucrats in Switzerland, played right to Mr. Morales’ trademark populism, and gave him an opportunity to act as a unifier of his otherwise fractious country.
“Bolivia’s dedication to soccer cuts across the deep dividing lines in the country, which are economic, racial, regional and ideological,” said Jim Shultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. “Fighting the ban is great domestic politics.”
(Emphasis mine.)
A friend of mine who’s studied politics in neighboring Ecuador once told me that he felt the Ecuadorian national football team was the single greatest cohesive force that the nation has working in its favor. The game trumps race, class, politics — everything.
Two related books that I recommend highly: “How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization,” and, in the case of Bolivia and its “market dominant minority,” “World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability.”