Senegal’s fear of outspoken women
▻https://africasacountry.com/2019/04/senegals-fear-of-outspoken-women
One would think only a few weeks after very heated presidential elections, which saw President Macky Sall re-elected, Senegalese would be spending
When a small piece of my code predicted the fate of US Presidential Elections.
▻https://hackernoon.com/when-a-small-piece-of-my-code-predicted-the-fate-of-us-presidential-elec
I completed my Master’s degree back in 2015 with an emphasis on Opinion Mining (Sentiment Analysis, if you haven’t heard of it, sit tight, it’s going to be interesting). I started working as a web developer and had lost touch in the area of Data Mining (my project thesis). Then one fine Saturday evening, I was relaxing on my couch and was watching over the 2016 US Presidential Election campaign buzz (the final election was yet to be held) going around over the internet. I wasn’t much into world politics by then, but the topic itself intrigued me.I sat for a while and thought, there is so much data over the internet about the campaigns and pre-election stuff that I can make use of, and then dive deeper into the same to figure out what exactly is happening in the larger picture. So my path (...)
#artificial-intelligence #trump #machine-learning #sentiment-analysis #data-mining
U.S. Cancels Journalist’s Award Over Her Criticism of Trump – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/07/u-s-cancels-journalists-award-over-her-criticism-of-trump-internation
Jessikka Aro was to receive a “#Women_of_Courage” prize. Then officials read her Twitter feed.
Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia’s propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a “regrettable error,” but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro’s social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.
Why Americans Need to Act Like the Majority We Already Are
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-americans-need-to-act-like-the-majority-we-already-are
This article was first published in “Bye-Bye 45: A Guide to Bringing Him Down.” Read more about the action guide here.
Ever since the 2016 presidential elections, we’ve been
Avakov: Ukraine’s wall along Russian border nearly half complete
Ukraine has built almost half of its 2,300-kilometer wall on the border with Russia, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Nov. 24 during his visit to the border checkpoint in Kharkiv Oblast.
“The project has been extended until 2021,” Avakov said. “The budget plan for the 2019 allocates Hr 400 million ($14.4 million) for it. But the head of the Border Guard Service hopes to receive additional funds.”
The Kharkiv section of the Ukrainian-Russian wall has been almost completed with only 20 kilometers left, according to Avakov. The works will continue on the border sections in Sumy and Luhansk oblasts. It includes fortifications with a barbed wire fence, two-meter deep anti-tank trenches, 17-meter-high watchtowers, 40 border checkpoints as well as equipment with motion sensors, border security closed-circuit television (CCTV) and alarm systems.
Overall, 47 percent of the 2,300-kilometer wall has been built, the minister said.
In addition, starting from January, Ukraine has launched the biometric control system for Russian passport holders at all border-crossing checkpoints.
Former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is running for president in the upcoming March presidential elections, joined Avakov on the trip to the border in Kharkiv Oblast on Nov. 24.
The ambitious project known as the European Wall was announced by then-Prime Minister Yatsenyuk in 2014 in the wake of the Russian military intervention in the Donbas. Ukraine lost control over parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and 400 kilometers that border with Russia. The wall was designed to protect Ukraine from further attacks on its territory as well as to stop illegal flow of weapons from Russia.
In the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014, Kremlin incited mass anti-government demonstrations in eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimean peninsula. In Donetsk and Luhansk, protesters “declared independence” from Ukraine which escalated into an armed conflict between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed forces. In April 2014, pro-Russian protesters took over the Kharkiv administration and “declared independence from Ukraine” but the Ukrainian government managed to retain control over the region.
The construction of the wall, however, halted due to lack of funding and a corruption scandal.
In 2015-2017, the Border Guard Serviced received Hr 800 mln ($28.8 million) — less than a quarter of the total cost of the project estimated at over Hr 4 billion ($147.6 million).
In November 2017, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested eight people on embezzlement charges. NABU detectives found that the officials of the Border Guard Service in cahoots with local contractors had siphoned off Hr 16.68 million ($600,800) from the Project Wall funds.
La Russie a terminé sa barrière de séparation entre la #Crimée et l’Ukraine
La Russie vient d’annoncer avoir terminé d’ériger une barrière en Crimée. Un geste qui ne va pas vraiment dans le sens d’un apaisement entre Moscou et Kiev. Cette barrière sépare désormais physiquement l’Ukraine de sa péninsule annexée il y a près de cinq ans.
What’s Driving the Conflict in Cameroon?
Violence Is Escalating in Its Anglophone Regions.
In recent months, political violence in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon has escalated dramatically. So far, at least 400 civilians and 160 state security officers have been killed in the conflict between the government and an armed separatist movement that, just two short years ago, started as a peaceful strike of lawyers and teachers. How did such upheaval come to a country that has prided itself for decades as a bulwark of stability in a region of violent conflict? And why has it escalated so quickly?
THE ROOTS OF THE VIOLENCE
The Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon have a special historical legacy that sets them apart from the country’s other eight regions: between 1922 and 1960, they were ruled as a British trust or protectorate while the rest of the territory was administered by France. This is why today, 3 million residents of the Northwest and Southwest regions—roughly 20 percent of the Cameroonian population—speak primarily English, not French. These two regions also use their own legal and educational systems, inherited from the British, and have a unique cultural identity.
Many analysts argue that the current conflict stems from the intractable historical animosity between Cameroon’s Anglophones and Francophones. Yet if that is the case, it is strange that the violence is only occurring now. Why not in 1972, when Ahmadou Ahidjo, the first president of Cameroon, ended the federation between the Anglophone and Francophone regions, forcing the Anglophones to submit to a unitary state? Or in 1992, when current President Paul Biya held Cameroon’s first multi-party elections, and narrowly won a heavily rigged contest by four percentage points against Anglophone candidate John Fru Ndi? Furthermore, if differences in identity are the primary driver of the conflict, it is quite surprising that Cameroon—one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa—has largely avoided ethnic conflict.
Most Anglophones themselves say that they would be happy to put their national identity above their linguistic one if they weren’t systematically neglected and repressed by Cameroon’s central government. According to a survey from the Afrobarometer, an independent polling and research network, when asked whether they identify more as Cameroonians or more with their ethnic group, the vast majority of respondents in the Northwest and Southwest regions said they identified with these categories equally. Less than five percent said they identified more with their ethnic group. Nonetheless, members of this population have long felt themselves to be treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Anglophones who go to the capital city of Yaoundé to collect government documents, for example, often report being ridiculed or turned away by public officials because they cannot speak French. Separatists argue that this mistreatment and discrimination by Yaoundé, and Francophone Cameroonians more broadly, is grounds for secession.
Yet regional neglect and mistreatment are not enough to explain the current wave of violence. If they were the root cause, then we should also be seeing separatist movements in Cameroon’s North and Far North regions, where state violence has become endemic in the fight against Boko Haram over the past four years. Moreover, in the North and Far North regions, the poverty rate is higher (more than 50 percent in each, compared to 15 percent in the Southwest and 25 percent in the Northwest) and state investment in public goods such schools, health clinics, and roads is lower than anywhere else in the country.
To be sure, the Anglophones’ unique linguistic and cultural identity has played a role in the rebellion. But in order to understand why the escalating violence is taking place where and when it is, we must consider not only the Anglophone regions’ exceptional political isolation and relative economic autonomy from the rest of Cameroon, but also the increasing impatience of Africans living under non-democratic regimes.
WHY THE ANGLOPHONE REGIONS?
Biya, who last month won his seventh term in office, has been in power since 1982, making him one of the longest ruling leaders in the world. In fact, Cameroon has only had two presidents since gaining independence in 1960. Because the country’s median age is 18, this means that the majority of Cameroonians have only ever known one president. Yet the decline of Africa’s strongmen over the past two decades—most recently Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso, Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, and even Jacob Zuma in South Africa—has made Biya’s continued rule increasingly untenable. Democracy may have begun to lose its appeal in many parts of the world, but it remains important to most sub-Saharan Africans. Many Cameroonians with an education and a smart phone consider their president’s extended rule increasingly illegitimate. The political tide currently washing away the strongmen of Africa has made this moment an exceptional one for mobilizing people against the regime.
In spite of these democratic headwinds, Biya has managed to maintain his legitimacy in some quarters through his cooptation of Francophone elites and control of information by means of the (largely Francophone) state-owned media. He has masterfully brought Francophone leaders into government, offering them lucrative ministerial posts and control over various government revenue streams. Importantly, he has not been excessively repressive—at least not before the current outbreak of violence—and has gone out of his way to uphold the façade of democratic legitimacy through holding regular elections, allowing a relatively unfettered (although weak) independent media, and having a general laissez-faire attitude toward governing.
The state media and elites within the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement are stalwart defenders of the president, operating whole-heartedly on the fictitious assumption that the regime is democratic. Many Cameroonians, especially those isolated from independent media, opposition parties, or information from outside of the country, earnestly believe this narrative. Another survey by the Afrobarometer conducted in 2015 before the outbreak of violence, showed that the presidency is the second most trusted institution of the state, after the army. It also showed that only ten percent of Cameroonian respondents believe that their country is not a democracy.
In contrast, the Anglophone regions’ relative distance from both Biya’s networks of patronage and influence and the Francophone state media puts them in a unique position to see the autocratic nature of the regime and rebel against it. Although 75.4 percent of Francophone Cameroonian respondents said they trust Biya “somewhat” or “a lot,” in the Afrobarometer poll, only 45.5 percent of Anglophones felt the same way. Part of the reason for this is easier access to criticism of the Biya government. In electoral autocracies, opposition parties are often the only institutions that consistently voice the view that the regime is not truly democratic. The strongest opposition party in Cameroon—the Social Democratic Front (SDF)—is headquartered in the Northwest region, thus further exposing Anglophones to narratives of state repression. Other parts of Cameroon do not have occasion to become as familiar with opposition party politics. In the most recent 2013 elections for the National Assembly, for example, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement ran completely unopposed in 13 of the country’s 83 electoral districts.
In comparison to other parts of the country, such as the north, Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are also more economically autonomous from Yaoundé. They have a robust cross-border trade with Nigeria, successful plantations in the Southwest, and fertile farming land. They are not overly-reliant on the export of primary resources, such as oil or timber, which funnels through state-owned corporations. And they are not as poor as, for example, the northern regions, which face chronic food insecurity. The Anglophones thus have not only the will, but also the resources to rebel.
THE SUCCESSION QUESTION
Unfortunately, an end to the crisis is nowhere in sight. Last month, Biya won his seventh term as president with 71.3 percent of the vote. The already unfair election was marked by exceedingly low participation in the Anglophone regions—just five percent in the Northwest—due to security fears. Meanwhile, Biya has responded to the separatists with an iron fist. He refuses to negotiate with them, instead sending in his elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (trained by the United States and led by a retired Israeli officer), which has now been accused of burning villages and attacking civilians in the Northwest and Southwest. But as long as the violence does not spill over into the Francophone regions, the crisis will likely not affect the president’s legitimacy in the rest of the country. Moreover, Biya remains staunchly supported by the West—especially France, but also the United States, which relies strongly on Cameroon in the fight against Boko Haram. The separatists, meanwhile, remain fractured, weak, and guilty of their own atrocities against civilians. Apart from attacking security forces, they have been kidnapping and torturing teachers and students who refuse to participate in a school strike.
It is extremely unlikely that Biya will make the concessions necessary for attacks from separatists to stop, and the fluid nature of the insurgency will make it difficult for state security forces to end the violence. The scorched earth tactics on both sides only work to further alienate the population, many of whom have fled to Nigeria. It seems likely that a resolution to the crisis can only happen once the questions of when Biya will step down and who will replace him are fully answered. Right now, there is only unsubstantiated speculation. Many assume he will appoint a successor before the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2025. But if there are any surprises in the meantime similar to the military move against Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the popular uprising against Compaoré in Burkina Faso, a transition may come sooner than expected. A post-Biya political opening might provide a way for Cameroon’ s Anglophones to claim their long-awaited autonomy.
▻https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/cameroon/2018-11-08/whats-driving-conflict-cameroon?cid=soc-tw
#Cameroun #conflit #Cameroun_anglophone #violence #différent_territorial #autonomie
One building, several facades: political showcasing in contemporary Turkey.
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/mrag-p-z-k/one-building-several-facades-political-showcasing-in-contemporary-tur
The state of emergency was lifted shortly after the presidential elections, and a new system secured a permanent state of exception, whereby Erdoğan, as president, has consolidated and expanded his administrative powers. Denouncing those who opposed the demolition of AKM and the Gezi protesters as “terrorists” was a reminder of his power and commitment to smash any dissent.
The struggle over the AKM reveals one permanent aspect of political contention in contemporary Turkey, formed traditionally through leader-embodied ideologies. Meanwhile, solidarity networks and grass-roots initiatives promise today more ways to communicate and interact than ever. These may one day inspire our thinking and acting beyond the usual paradigms.
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The Rise and Fall of the Latin American Left | The Nation
▻https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ebb-and-flow-of-latin-americas-pink-tide
Conservatives now control Latin America’s leading economies, but the region’s leftists can still look to Uruguay for direction.
By Omar G. Encarnación, May 9, 2018
Last December’s election of Sebastián Piñera, of the National Renewal party, to the Chilean presidency was doubly significant for Latin American politics. Coming on the heels of the rise of right-wing governments in Argentina in 2015 and Brazil in 2016, Piñera’s victory signaled an unmistakable right-wing turn for the region. For the first time since the 1980s, when much of South America was governed by military dictatorship, the continent’s three leading economies are in the hands of right-wing leaders.
Piñera’s election also dealt a blow to the resurrection of the Latin American left in the post–Cold War era. In the mid-2000s, at the peak of the so-called Pink Tide (a phrase meant to suggest the surge of leftist, noncommunist governments), Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia, or three-quarters of South America’s population (some 350 million people), were under left-wing rule. By the time the Pink Tide reached the mini-state of Mexico City, in 2006, and Nicaragua, a year later (culminating in the election of Daniel Ortega as president there), it was a region-wide phenomenon.
It’s no mystery why the Pink Tide ran out of steam; even before the Chilean election, Mexican political scientist Jorge Castañeda had already declared it dead in The New York Times. Left-wing fatigue is an obvious factor. It has been two decades since the late Hugo Chávez launched the Pink Tide by toppling the political establishment in the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election. His Bolivarian revolution lives on in the hands of his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, but few Latin American governments regard Venezuela’s ravaged economy and diminished democratic institutions as an inspiring model. In Brazil, the Workers’ Party, or PT, was in power for 14 years, from 2002 through 2016, first under its founder, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, between 2003 and 2011, and then under his successor and protégée, Dilma Rousseff, from 2011 to 2016. The husband-and-wife team of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of the Peronist Party governed Argentina from 2003 to 2015. Socialist Michelle Bachelet had two nonconsecutive terms in office in Chile, from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018.
Economic turmoil and discontent is another culprit. As fate would have it, the Pink Tide coincided with one of the biggest economic expansions in Latin American history. Its engine was one of the largest commodities booms in modern times. Once the boom ended, in 2012—largely a consequence of a slowdown in China’s economy—economic growth in Latin America screeched to a halt. According to the International Monetary Fund, since 2012 every major Latin American economy has underperformed relative to the previous 10 years, with some economies, including that of Brazil, the region’s powerhouse, experiencing their worst recession in decades. The downturn reined in public spending and sent the masses into the streets, making it very difficult for governments to hang on to power.
Meanwhile, as the commodity boom filled states’ coffers, leftist politicians became enmeshed in the same sorts of corrupt practices as their conservative predecessors. In April, Lula began serving a 12-year prison sentence for having accepted bribes in exchange for government contracts while in office. His prosecution, which in principle guarantees that he will not be a candidate in this year’s presidential race, was the high point of Operation Car Wash, the biggest anti-corruption dragnet in Brazilian history. Just after leaving office, in 2015, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was indicted for fraud for conspiring with her former public-works secretary, José López, to steal millions of federal dollars intended for roadwork in Argentina. The “nuns and guns” scandal riveted the country, with the arrest of a gun-toting López as he hurled bags stuffed with millions of dollars over the walls of a Catholic convent in a suburb of Buenos Aires. In Chile, Bachelet left office under a cloud of suspicion. Her family, and by extension Bachelet herself, is accused of illegal real-estate transactions that netted millions of dollars.
All this said, largely overlooked in obituaries of the Pink Tide is the right-wing backlash that it provoked. This backlash aimed to reverse the shift in power brought on by the Pink Tide—a shift away from the power brokers that have historically controlled Latin America, such as the military, the Catholic Church, and the oligarchy, and toward those sectors of society that have been marginalized: women, the poor, sexual minorities, and indigenous peoples. Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016 perfectly exemplifies the retaliation organized by the country’s traditional elites. Engineered by members of the Brazilian Congress, a body that is only 11 percent female and has deep ties to industrial barons, rural oligarchs, and powerful evangelical pastors, the impeachment process was nothing short of a patriarchal coup.
In a 2017 interview, Rousseff made note of the “very misogynist element in the coup against me.… They accused me of being overly tough and harsh, while a man would have been considered firm, strong. Or they would say I was too emotional and fragile, when a man would have been considered sensitive.” In support of her case, Rousseff pointed out that previous Brazilian presidents committed the same “crime” she was accused of (fudging the national budget to hide deficits at reelection time), without any political consequence. As if to underscore the misogyny, Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, came into office with an all-male cabinet.
In assessing the impact of the Pink Tide, there is a tendency to bemoan its failure to generate an alternative to neoliberalism. After all, the Pink Tide rose out of the discontent generated by the economic policies championed by the United States and international financial institutions during the 1990s, such as privatizations of state enterprises, austerity measures, and ending economic protectionism. Yet capitalism never retreated in most of Latin America, and US economic influence remains for the most part unabated. The only significant dent on the neoliberal international order made by the Pink Tide came in 2005, when a massive wave of political protests derailed the George W. Bush administration’s plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. If enacted, this new trade pact would have extended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all countries in the Americas save for Cuba, or 34 nations in total.
But one shouldn’t look at the legacy of the Pink Tide only through the lens of what might have been with respect to replacing neoliberalism and defeating US imperialism. For one thing, a good share of the Pink Tide was never anti-neoliberal or anti-imperialist. Left-wing rule in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile (what Castañeda called the “good left”) had more in common with the social-democratic governments of Western Europe, with its blend of free-market economics and commitment to the welfare state, than with Cuba’s Communist regime.
Indeed, only in the radical fringe of the Pink Tide, especially the triumvirate of Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador (the “bad left,” according to Castañeda), was the main thrust of governance anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist. Taking Cuba as a model, these self-termed revolutionaries nationalized large sectors of the economy, reinvigorated the role of the state in redistributing wealth, promoted social services to the poor, and created interstate institutions, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, to promote inter-American collaboration and to challenge US hegemony.
Second, the focus on neoliberalism and US imperialism obscures the Pink Tide’s biggest accomplishments. To be sure, the picture is far from being uniformly pretty, especially when it comes to democracy. The strong strand of populism that runs through the Pink Tide accounts for why some of its leaders have been so willing to break democratic norms. Claiming to be looking after the little guy, the likes of Chávez and Maduro have circumvented term limits and curtailed the independence of the courts and the press. But there is little doubt that the Pink Tide made Latin America more inclusive, equitable, and democratic, by, among other things, ushering in an unprecedented era of social progressivism.
Because of the Pink Tide, women in power are no longer a novelty in Latin American politics; in 2014, female presidents ruled in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Their policies leave little doubt about the transformative nature of their leadership. In 2010, Fernández boldly took on the Argentine Catholic Church (then headed by present-day Pope Francis) to enact Latin America’s first ever same-sex marriage law; this was five years before same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the United States. A gender-identity law, one of the world’s most liberal, followed. It allows individuals to change their sex assigned at birth without permission from either a doctor or a judge. Yet another law banned the use of “conversion therapy” to cure same-sex attraction. Argentina’s gay-rights advances were quickly emulated by neighboring Uruguay and Brazil, kick-starting a “gay-rights revolution” in Latin America.
Rousseff, who famously referred to herself with the gender-specific title of a presidenta, instead of the gender-neutral “president,” did much to advance the status of women in Brazilian society. She appointed women to the three most powerful cabinet positions, including chief of staff, and named the first female head of Petrobras, Brazil’s largest business corporation; during her tenure in office, a woman became chief justice of the Federal Supreme Court. Brutally tortured by the military during the 1970s, as a university student, Rousseff put human rights at the center of Brazilian politics by enacting a law that created Brazil’s first ever truth commission to investigate the abuses by the military between 1964 and 1985. She also signed laws that opened the Brazilian Army to women and that set into motion the corruption campaign that is currently roiling the Brazilian political class. These laws earned Rousseff the enmity of the military and conservatives.
Bachelet, the last woman standing, made news when she entered office, in 2006, by naming the same number of men and women to her cabinet. After being term-limited, she became the first head of the newly established UN Women (formally known as the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), before returning to Chile to win a second term at the presidency in 2014. During her second term, she created the Ministry of Gender Equality to address gender disparities and discrimination, and passed a law that legalized abortion in cases of rape, when there is a threat to the life of the mother, or when the fetus has a terminal condition. Less known is Bachelet’s advocacy for the environment. She weaned Chile off its dependence on hydrocarbons by building a vast network of solar- and wind-powered grids that made electricity cheaper and cleaner. She also created a vast system of national parks to protect much of the country’s forestland and coastline from development.
Latin America’s socioeconomic transformation under the Pink Tide is no less impressive. Just before the economic downturn of 2012, Latin America came tantalizingly close to becoming a middle-class region. According to the World Bank, from 2002 to 2012, the middle class in Latin America grew every year by at least 1 percent to reach 35 percent of the population by 2013. This means that during that time frame, some 10 million Latin Americans joined the middle class every year. A consequence of this dramatic expansion of the middle class is a significant shrinking of the poor. Between 2000 and 2014, the percentage of Latin Americans living in poverty (under $4 per day) shrank from 45 to 25 percent.
Economic growth alone does not explain this extraordinary expansion of the Latin American middle class and the massive reduction in poverty: Deliberate efforts by the government to redistribute wealth were also a key factor. Among these, none has garnered more praise than those implemented by the Lula administration, especially Bolsa Família, or Family Purse. The program channeled direct cash payments to poor families, as long as they agreed to keep their children in school and to attend regular health checkups. By 2013, the program had reached some 12 million households (50 million people), helping cut extreme poverty in Brazil from 9.7 to 4.3 percent of the population.
Last but not least are the political achievements of the Pink Tide. It made Latin America the epicenter of left-wing politics in the Global South; it also did much to normalize democratic politics in the region. With its revolutionary movements crushed by military dictatorship, it is not surprising that the Latin American left was left for dead after the end of the Cold War. But since embracing democracy, the left in Latin America has moderated its tactics and beliefs while remaining committed to the idea that deliberate state action powered by the popular will is critical to correcting injustice and alleviating human suffering. Its achievements are a welcome antidote to the cynicism about democratic politics afflicting the American left.
How the epoch-making legacy of the Pink Tide will fare in the hands of incoming right-wing governments is an open question. Some of the early signs are not encouraging. The Temer administration in Brazil has shown a decidedly retro-macho attitude, as suggested by its abolishment of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, and Human Rights (its functions were collapsed into the Ministry of Justice) and its close ties to a politically powerful evangelical movement with a penchant for homophobia. In Argentina, President Mauricio Macri has launched a “Trumpian” assault on undocumented immigrants from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, blaming them for bringing crime and drugs into the country. Some political observers expect that Piñera will abridge or overturn Chile’s new abortion law.
But there is reason for optimism. Temer and Macri have been slow to dismantle anti-poverty programs, realizing that doing so would be political suicide. This is hardly surprising, given the success of those programs. Right-wing governments have even seen fit to create anti-poverty programs of their own, such as Mexico’s Prospera. Moreover, unlike with prior ascents by the right in Latin America, the left is not being vanished to the political wilderness. Left-wing parties remain a formidable force in the legislatures of most major Latin American countries. This year alone, voters in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia will have presidential elections, raising the prospect that a new Pink Tide might be rising. Should this new tide come in, the Latin American left would do well to reform its act and show what it has learned from its mistakes.
Latin American leftists need not look far to find a model to emulate: Uruguay. It exemplifies the best of the Pink Tide without its excesses. Frente Amplio, or Broad Front, a coalition of left-wing parties in power since 2005, has put the country at the vanguard of social change by legalizing abortion, same-sex marriage, and, most famously, recreational marijuana. For these reasons alone, in 2013 The Economist chose “liberal and fun-loving” Uruguay for its first ever “country of the year” award.
Less known accomplishments include being one of only two countries in Latin America that enjoy the status of “high income” (alongside Chile), reducing poverty from around 40 percent to less than 12 percent from 2005 to 2014, and steering clear of corruption scandals. According to Transparency International, Uruguay is the least corrupt country in Latin America, and ranks among the world’s 25 least corrupt nations. The country also scored a near perfect 100 in Freedom House’s 2018 ranking of civil and political freedoms, virtually tied with Canada, and far ahead of the United States and neighboring Argentina and Brazil. The payoff for this much virtue is hard to ignore. Among Latin American nations, no other country shows more satisfaction with its democracy.
Omar G. EncarnaciónOmar G. Encarnación is a professor of political studies at Bard College and author of Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution.
Erdoğan’s Persistent Popularity - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
▻http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/76588?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWXpnek9EZ3lNekZtTW1WaSIsInQiOiJ2WEhtWTFPTEp
On the eve of early parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears poised to claim yet another victory, with enduring popularity even beyond Turkey’s borders. What is more surprising is that Erdoğan managed to sustain his appeal in the face of Turkey’s growing authoritarianism and rapidly deteriorating human rights record.
A recent survey sheds some empirical light on the various dynamics that underlie Erdoğan’s regional popularity, with notable implications for the relationship between religion and politics.1 The survey data show Erdoğan’s popularity is particularly strong among some segments of the population. Respondents who ideologically self-identified as Islamist, favored a prominent role for religious leaders in politics, and considered religion to be important in their lives trusted Erdoğan the most as an authority on religious matters. By contrast, respondents with a college education or who had a monthly income over $1,000 were less likely to trust Erdoğan.
Millions of indigenous people may lose voting rights: Alliance - National - The Jakarta Post
▻http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/03/16/millions-of-indigenous-people-may-lose-voting-rights-alliance.html
round three million indigenous people in areas across Indonesia may not be able to participate in the 2018 regional elections and 2019 legislative and presidential elections because they do not have e-ID cards, an alliance said on Thursday.
Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (#AMAN) secretary general Rukka Sombolinggi said around one million out of the three million indigenous people lived in conservation areas, which did not belong to any village or other administrative area.
...
Therefore, everyone in the country must have an e-ID card. “This is not only about voting. This is giving them right to be registered as an Indonesia citizen so their children can go to school, have a birth certificate and have the chance of a better life,” Rukka said.
Egypt Analysis : How Sisi has been sidelining his opponents
| MadaMasr
▻https://madamirror.appspot.com/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/02/10/feature/politics/analysis-how-sisi-has-been-sidelining-his-opponents
“Angry” was the way many described President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s improvised speech during the inauguration ceremony of the Zohr natural gas field on January 31.
The president declared that the only way Egypt’s national security could be compromised was over his “dead body” and the “dead body of the military.”
But who exactly the president is angry at is not clear. Sisi did not specify whether he was addressing opposition leaders — many of whom have called for a boycott of the upcoming presidential elections — or individuals within state institutions who have antagonized him as of late.
The speech follows a series of high-level shuffles within the security apparatus, with Sisi unexpectedly dismissing Armed Forces’ Chief of Staff Mahmoud Hegazy in October of last year. According to a family friend, Hegazy had been under house arrest until December 16, when he appeared at a small event held to honor him — which the president attended — and where the dismissed official was permitted limited movement under strict surveillance.
In January of this year, Sisi also dismissed Khaled Fawzy, the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (GIS). Fawzy’s movement has also been restricted, according to a source close to his family. He was removed from his post after calls were allegedly leaked in which a man who appears to be affiliated with Military Intelligence speaks to media talk show hosts and celebrities and instructs them to appear understanding of US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The man is also heard condemning Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for political stances that Cairo is not pleased with, especially with the rapprochement between Kuwait and Qatar and the fear of a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood. The leaks have yet to be independently verified.
According to a Foreign Ministry source and to a European diplomat who has recently visited both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the leaked calls have made officials from both countries unhappy, and compelled the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to release a statement of apology to Kuwait and take unannounced measures to placate Saudi Arabia.
Short-termism led the Democratic Party to let unions die, and now they’ve lost their base / Boing Boing
▻https://boingboing.net/2018/01/27/solidarity-forever.html
For decades, Democrats in power and in opposition have traded away labor laws and rules that protected unions in order to gain short-term advantages in political horse-trades, and now, with union membership down from 26 to 10.7% since the Reagan years, districts that formed Democrats’ “blue wall” have been poverty-struck and have flipped for Trump.
A new NBER study quantifies the effect that union membership has on Democratic support, comparing counties that cross state lines, with one half in a ’right-to-work’ state and the other in a state that protects unions, finding that the difference that unionization makes in Democratic support would have been enough to deliver the presidency to Democrats in 2016.
As New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz points out, Republicans know this, even if Democrats don’t (his aphorism: “The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not”).
This could have been a golden age for American liberalism. The Democratic Party — and the progressive forces within it — have so much going for them. The GOP’s economic vision has never been less popular with ordinary Americans, or more irrelevant to their material needs. The U.S. electorate is becoming less white, less racist, and less conservative with each passing year. Social conservatism has never had less appeal for American voters than it does today. The garish spectacle of the Trump-era Republican Party is turning the American suburbs — once a core part of the GOP coalition — purple and blue.
If the Democratic Party wasn’t bleeding support from white working-class voters in its old labor strongholds, it would dominate our national politics. Understandably, Democratic partisans often blame their powerlessness on such voters — and the regressive racial views that led them out of Team Blue’s tent. But as unions have declined across the Midwest, Democrats haven’t just been losing white, working-class voters to revanchist Republicans — they’ve also been losing them to quiet evenings at home. The NBER study cited by McElwee found that right-to-work laws reduce voter turnout in presidential elections by 2 to 3 percent.
From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Political Effects of Right to Work Laws [James Feigenbaum, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Vanessa Williamson/National Bureau of Economic Research] ▻https://jamesfeigenbaum.github.io/research/pdf/fhw_rtw_jan2018.pdf
Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die [Eric Levitz/New York Magazine] ▻http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge-price-for-letting-unions-die.html
The Lame Duck President
▻http://africasacountry.com/2018/01/the-lame-duck-president
South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma, is a lame duck. On December 18 2017, Cyril Ramaphosa, Zuma’s deputy, was elected president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), placing him on a trajectory toward the state presidency. Zuma, clearly unable to threaten this eventuality, has lost support, as erstwhile allies jockey for position around his successor. Seizing the…
Egypte, dernier épisode de la pantalonnade de l’élection présidentielle de mars en Egypte. Le pouvoir ayant éliminé tous les candidats sérieux n’arrive même pas à trouver un candidat « présentable ». La dernière tentative, celle d’avoir un candidat du parti Wafd (un parti qui soutient officiellement Sissi) s’est heurté à l’opposition des militants de ce parti.
Wafd Party rejects party leader’s nomination for presidency | MadaMasr
▻https://www-madamasr-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/01/27/news/u/wafd-party-rejects-party-leaders-nomination-for-presidency/amp
Egypt’s Wafd Party announced on Saturday its official refusal of party head Al-Sayed al-Badawy’s nomination in the upcoming presidential election, which could see Badawy become the only contender to current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Badawy had begun processing the necessary paperwork for his medical examination, which is a requisite part of the candidacy process, a party member told Mada Masr on Friday.
As party leaders met on Saturday, a number of Wafd Party youth staged a demonstration at the group’s headquarters in Cairo, carrying banners saying “President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is the Wafd’s candidate” and “the Wafd Party leads public opinion and is not led.”
The party’s deputy, Hussein Mansour, collected signatures from members in the party’s higher committee in a petition rejecting Badawy’s nomination, saying the state has various options at hand to deal with the lack of candidates in the race, including the postponement of elections altogether, adding that most members refuse the involvement the Wafd Party in these matters.
Without official party endorsement, Badawy cannot be fielded as the party’s candidate in the presidential elections. However, “Badawy is a prominent political personality, and it is possible that he decides to run independently if he likes,” Wafd Party member and MP Suleiman Wahdan told Mada Masr.
Before the party’s committee issued its decision, Wafd Party assistant head of parliamentary matters, Yasser Koura, told Mada Masr that the party has no issue with collecting the 20 endorsements from MPs required for nomination. “Some of our parliamentarians have endorsed Sisi, but these endorsement forms can be withdrawn if the endorsing MP goes to the National Elections Authority and asks for a new endorsement form for another candidate,” he explained.
Prior to Badawy’s sudden decision to run in the upcoming presidential elections, the Wafd Party’s official stance had been to support President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s bid for a second term. Most of the Wafd Party’s members of Parliament have already endorsed Sisi.
Koura, who was touted to be Badawy’s presidential campaign chief, added that “withdrawing Sisi’s endorsements and replacing them with Badawy’s is not wrong because the Wafd Party did not have a nominee before.”
A parliamentary source, who requested to remain anonymous, previously told Mada Masr that Badawy was pushed for nomination so Sisi does not run for a second term through a referendum. “The president’s image abroad must be considered above all else, so that elections in the form of a referendum are not used against the Egyptian government,” he said.
Egypt Sami Anan’s whereabouts unknown: Son | MadaMasr
▻https://www-madamasr-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/01/24/news/u/sami-anans-whereabouts-unknown-son/amp/?platform=hootsuite
The whereabouts of former Chief of Staff Sami Anan, who was arrested and brought before the military prosecution after announcing his presidential bid, remain unknown, his son Samir Anan told Mada Masr on Wednesday.
After attending a six-hour interrogation with Anan on Tuesday, his lawyer from the Dina Hussein Law Firm was told that he would be released and sent home. However, Anan’s family has been unable to reach him since, according to Samir.
The former chief of staff was arrested from his car and brought before the military prosecution early on Tuesday, right before the Armed Forces’ statement on Anan’s “violations and crimes” was broadcast, Mostafa al-Shal, the head of his personal office, previously told Mada Masr.
Samir’s comments follow Tuesday evening media reports that the National Elections Authority (NEA) removed Anan’s name from the national electoral register due to his contested military status, citing an NEA statement, rendering the former chief of staff ineligible to participate in the 2018 electoral process as a candidate or as a voter. The NEA spokesperson confirmed in statements to the media that Anan’s name had been removed from the register, adding that copes of the statement in question were not available to the press.
In its televised statement broadcast on Tuesday afternoon, the Armed Forces accused the presidential candidate of announcing his bid for office without first acquiring a permit from the military, aiming to incite a rift between the Armed Forces and the public, as well as forging his end of service documents. A few hours after the statement was aired, Anan’s official campaign Facebook page announced that the campaign was suspended until further notice.
The Cairo Court of Urgent Matters ruled on Tuesday in favor of lawsuit filed by lawyer Samir Sabry requesting the release of documents proving that Anan is enlisted as a military reserve officer, according to the privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper.
Anan formally announced his intent to run for presidency via an online video on Friday night, released on the heels of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s announcement that he intends to seek a second term in office. In the video, Anan demanded that civilian and military state institutions refrain from showing an “unconstitutional bias toward a president who might leave his chair in a few months.”
Ousted President Mohamed Morsi forcibly retired Anan from his position as chief of staff of the Armed Forces in August 2012, using the same decree which saw Sisi replace former Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi.
Presidential candidates have until 2 pm on January 29 to submit the necessary paperwork to be officially recognized as candidates by the NEA. To be eligible to run in the 2018 presidential election, Egypt’s Constitution and presidential elections law stipulate that candidates must collect endorsements from at least 20 members of Parliament, or from 25,000 eligible voters from 15 different governorates, with a minimum of 1,000 endorsements from each governorate.
Tags: 2018 presidential electionsArmed Forces statements
Why Wait? Wikipedia and Google Accidentally Declare Putin the Winner of March 2018 Presidential Elections · Global Voices
▻https://globalvoices.org/2018/01/16/why-wait-wikipedia-and-google-accidentally-declare-putin-the-winner-of
Comme au bon vieux temps finalement !
Russia’s presidential elections are two months away, and while there are multiple contenders, the expectation is that Vladimir Putin will secure a fourth term handily.
On January 15, in what looked like an effort to save time or skip the nail-biting drama of counting votes on election night, Google declared Putin the winner of the March 2018 election.
:-)
tweet du 14/01/2018
Someone call Senator Pushkov. Using Google, the Americans have interfered in our elections, putting forth a candidate that will be favorable for them.
Wikipedia is known for its crowd-sourcing model, through which volunteer users can make substantive contributions after completing a vetting process. While they can vary from language to language, all Wikipedia sites have standard procedures in place to prevent inaccuracies like this one. But it appears that these procedures were not followed for the Russian version of the page. Whether the error was intended as a joke, or as a political move, is unknown.
The error was corrected within 20 minutes, but this was more than enough time to spawn some humorous reactions, such as this tongue-in-cheek reference: [suis le tweet du commentaire ci-dessus]
20 minutes de délai avant correction, c’est quand même pas trop mal vu la réalité des « procédures » de vérification ; la publication étant toujours automatique et immédiate, ce qu’ignore (ou feint d’ignorer) GV.
Le WSJ ? Postulerais-je ou ne postulerais-je pas ?
▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/le-wsj-postulerais-je-ou-ne-postulerais-je-pas
Le WSJ ? Postulerais-je ou ne postulerais-je pas ?
08 janvier 2018 – Ce n’est qu’un petit potin, après tout mais il est vrai qu’ici ou là, dans la presse-antiSystème, on en fait des gorges chaudes. J’ignore qui est tombé dessus le premier parmi les malfaisants de l’antiSystème ; à ma connaissance, et sous toute réserve par conséquent, le premier à avoir écrit à ce propos c’est Bryan MacDonald sur le réseau officiel FakeNews & Co, je veux dire RT qui est l’objet de toutes les adorations secrètes de notre-Macron. Il s’agit d’une annonce très sérieuse et détaillée du Wall Street Journal (WSJ pour les amis), sur le site du Dow Jones, concernant les offres d’emploi. Le WSJ cherche un chef de bureau pour le journal à Moscou, et il détaille le profil de la personne recherchée.
Je ne vais pas trop m’attarder sur (...)
Dow Jones Jobs - Bureau Chief, Moscow in MOSCOW, Russia
▻https://dowjones.jobs/moscow-rus/bureau-chief-moscow/7DE7FB839209478099E99D9A3A9BE3BD/job
Bureau Chief, Moscow
The Wall Street Journal is seeking an experienced and enterprising journalist to serve as Moscow bureau chief and spearhead ambitious coverage of Russia — its economy, politics, foreign and security policies and people.
The Russian story is more important than it has been in decades, with the country playing a much more assertive role on the world stage under President Vladimir Putin, a course that has increasingly put Moscow at odds with the U.S. and much of the West.
We are looking for someone who can lead wide-ranging reportage — delving deeply into the economic underpinnings of Russian power and Mr. Putin’s own grip on domestic politics, getting inside Russia’s hacking complex and chronicling Moscow’s activities in the Mideast and elsewhere.
A central goal will be explicating Russia’s strategic aims and exploring the country’s fraught relations with the Trump administration amid American officials’ assertions that Moscow used a campaign of hacking and disinformation to try to sway last year’s presidential elections.
Another will be looking at Putin’s role as a champion of so-called illiberal democracy who has become a beacon for right-wing politicians across Europe and even in the U.S. His traditional conservatism of blood and religion resonates amid economic uncertainty.
We are looking for an accomplished candidate who can report and write major stories while also leading a team of other top-notched correspondents to deliver world-beating coverage of this critical story. Strong Russian language skills are a distinct advantage.
Avec de telles missions explicites, c’est pas gagné pour son futur visa de travail…
Behind the #Iran Protests
▻http://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/iran-protests-hasan-rouhani-green-movement
An on-the-ground report from the protests in Iran, where citizens are torn between anger at their leaders and fears of becoming the next Syria.
Article passionnant
It’s hard to overstate the factionalism of Iranian politics. Long a feature of the Islamic Republic, differing factions within the Islamic Republic have often publicly fought and debated one another on policies and directions for the country. During Rouhani’s terms as president, the hard-line elements in the regime have attempted to create obstacles for him and his administration at every turn. Especially since their embarrassing loss in the May presidential elections, hard-liners have attacked Rouhani at every opportunity. For his part, Rouhani has attempted to curtail the economic power of hard-line institutions and has sought to push the Revolutionary Guards out of politics, with little success.
In the middle of this fight, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made a surprise comeback. In November 2017, Ahmadinejad started issuing provocative statements against corruption and began to ask why, if the country’s money belonged to the people, the government was targeting funding for the people’s welfare. Using social media as his main tool of communication, Ahmadinejad issued threats against Iran’s judiciary, challenged Iran’s supreme leader by not backing down when asked to, and revived the populist message of his presidency, attacking the rich and corrupt. On Wednesday, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that “a former leader of the country” had provoked people to protest. Some in Iran are now reporting that Ahmadinejad is being investigated.
France: Unchecked clampdown on protests under guise of fighting terrorism - Amnesty International
▻https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/france-unchecked-clampdown-on-protests-under-guise-of-fighting-terrorism
Between November 2015 and 5 May 2017, authorities used emergency powers to issue 155 decrees prohibiting public assemblies, in addition to banning dozens of protests using ordinary French law. They also imposed 639 measures preventing specific individuals participating in public assemblies. Of these, 574 were targeted at those protesting against proposed labour law reforms. Moreover, according to media reports, authorities imposed dozens of similar measures to prevent people from participating in protests after the second round of the presidential elections on 7 May.
Why We Need To Brace Ourselves For The Populist Wave to Come | Time.com
▻http://time.com/4775441/the-wave-to-come
▻https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/wave-come-forces-nationalism-crisis-west-global-thomas-d
When the storm turns out to be less severe than the warnings, there’s always a sigh of relief—and maybe a bit of over-confidence after the fact. If fans of the European Union felt better after populist Geert Wilders came up short in the Dutch elections in March, they also took heart from the absence of anti-E.U. firebrands among the leading contenders for this fall’s German elections. Then came May 7. The victory of Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential elections signaled that “the season of growth of populism has ended,” Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, said on May 8.
Macron prepares enabling act to slash contracts, labor rights in France - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/23/macr-m23.html
The Macron administration has no mandate whatsoever to carry out the program it is proposing. The labor law was deeply unpopular even without its most controversial provisions; former PS President François Hollande’s economic policy, which Macron helped formulate, had a 4 percent approval rating. Now Macron is advancing such a program after an election that he won largely by default, because he was facing deeply unpopular neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.
Macron, a former investment banker at the Rothschild bank, aims to impose the arrogant diktat of the banks. Under Hollande’s presidency, as workers’ living standards fell, the wealth of top French multi-billionaires like Liliane Bettencourt and Philippe Arnault nearly doubled. With the world economy still mired in crisis, however, and France’s economic position and its weight in world trade continuing to fall, the ruling class is determined to squeeze even more money out of workers and place it in the hands of the super-rich.
The working class is faced with a political struggle against an absolutely ruthless government that is willing to resort to forms of repression unseen in France since the 1940s in order to ram through the diktat of the banks. The new administration is aware that it faces massive popular opposition and is making detailed plans to crush strikes and protests.
Last week, the media revealed that the PS had made plans for a coup d’état after the presidential elections, to be implemented had Marine Le Pen won. Its purpose would not have been to topple Le Pen, however, but to crush anti-fascist protests and suspend normal parliamentary procedure by imposing a PS government on Le Pen.
La classe ouvrière est confrontée à une lutte politique contre un gouvernement absolument impitoyable qui est disposé à recourir à des formes de répression inaperçues en France depuis les années 1940 afin de traverser le diktat des banques. La nouvelle administration est consciente qu’elle fait face à une opposition populaire massive et fait des plans détaillés pour écraser les grèves et les manifestations.
La semaine dernière, les médias ont révélé que le PS avait pris des plans pour un coup d’état après les élections présidentielles, à mettre en place si Marine Le Pen a gagné. Son but n’aurait pas été de renverser Le Pen, cependant, mais d’écraser les manifestations antifascistes et de suspendre la procédure parlementaire normale en imposant un gouvernement PS sur Le Pen.
Kenneth Kaunda and the national question
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/04/kenneth-kaunda-and-the-national-question
As he attains the young age of 93, #Zambia’s first President Kenneth Kaunda (KK to his supporters), has lived to see five of his successors have a go at leading the country. When he lost the 1991 presidential elections to Fredrick Chiluba, he witnessed what must have been a heart wrenching campaign of vandalisms designed…
Facebook admits : governments exploited us to spread propaganda
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/facebook-report-government-propaganda
Facebook has publicly acknowledged that its platform has been exploited by governments seeking to manipulate public opinion in other countries – including during the presidential elections in the US and France – and pledged to clamp down on such “information operations”. In a white paper authored by the company’s security team and published on Thursday, the company detailed well-funded and subtle techniques used by nations and other organizations to spread misleading information and falsehoods (...)
French election special: live reports as Macron and Le Pen are through to final round
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/230417/french-election-special-live-reports-macron-and-le-pen-are-through-final-r
Campaign posters of the 11 candidates in southern #France. © Reuters Maverick centrist Emmanuel Macron has come first and far-right leader Marine Le Pen second in Sunday’s first-round voting in France’s presidential elections, setting up a knockout second round contest between the two on May 7th. While the final results are yet to arrive, conservative candidate François Fillon and radical-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon were given neck and neck positions in third and fourth place respectively, separated by a fractional percentage. Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon is given fifth place with just more than 6% of the vote, a historically low figure for his party. Follow the results, reactions and analyses here live throughout the evening. Reporting by Graham Tearse and Michael (...)
French presidential elections: live reporting
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/230417/french-presidential-elections-live-reporting
France went to the polls on Sunday in the #first_round of the tightest and most unpredictable presidential elections in decades. Of the 11 candidates, only the top-scoring two will emerge on Sunday evening as qualified for the second and final knockout vote in two weeks time. The latest opinion polls gave four clear and politically diverse frontrunners who are so close that any of them could emerge as winners, amid predictions of a high abstention rate. Who, between candidates representing the radical-left, the far-right, the conservatives and a ‘new way’ centrism, will the country’s 47 million-strong electorate opt for? Will it be sea change for French politics and the European Union, or more of the same? Follow the results, reactions and analyses here throughout the evening. Reporting (...)