crisis of politics

Pakistan, a nation?

Right from the time of Independence, Pakistan has been troubled. The country’s psyche has been scarred since it emerged from the turmoil and bloodletting of Partition. Further trauma was in store when, in 1971, the eastern wing broke away, calling into question the very basis – ostensibly, religion – on which Pakistan was established. Today, the evolution of a composite Pakistani nationalism is being stringently challenged by a spectrum of sub-nationalisms. Read Himal’s cover (...) read

Politics: In need of revival

The decline of politics and of intellectual discourse is related to the struggle between politics and economics as the arbiter of the moral commons and the role of the developmental state in this fight, writes Rajesh Kasturirangan. ead more read

An Electoral Path-breaker

Two portentous results emerged from the parliamentary election in Sri Lanka. The ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by President Mahinda Rajapakse won a resounding victory, just short of the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional change. And almost 40% of the electorate did not vote. The UPFA’s outstanding win at Thursday’s election may mark the definitive beginning of a new journey for Sri Lanka, away from pluralist democracy, towards an authoritarian state, which (...) read

America’s System Failure

As welcome as it was, the removal of George W. Bush was not enough to cure what ails the US. It goes to the root of our political system. Only real democracy can save this country. Read more read

No logo revisited: Obama in the steps of corporate brands

Ten years after the publication of "No Logo", Klein looks at how Obama created a brand that won him the Presidency. Will his failure to live up to his lofty brand cost him? Text extracted from a 10th anniversary edition of No Logo to be published by Fourth Estate on 21 January. Read more read

Why the Coup in Honduras Won’t—and Shouldn’t—Succeed

> by Robert E. White

Honduras has suffered a coup d’état at the hands of congressional leaders and the commanding officers of the armed forces. Provided that the United States stands firmly with its partners in Latin America, this revolt against the constitutional order will certainly fall apart. To fail to restore President Manuel Zelaya to power in Honduras would risk reviving in Central America that dark era when the rights of free speech and assembly were curtailed and civilians could govern only within (...) read

Africa: Civil Society to AU: Investment Must Address Marginalisation

> By Diletta Varlese, Terna Gyuse and Joyce Mulama

No gathering hosted by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is ever dull, and the Thirteenth Ordinary Session of the African Union, concluding in Sirte, Libya today has not disappointed. A surprise invitation to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is facing down massive popular protest over his disputed re-election as president, briefly threatened to overshadow the meeting, but he did not in the end attend. The other source of drama was the renewed challenge to the International Criminal Court, on (...) read

Zimbabwe ten years on: Results and prospects

> by Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros

After a decade of political polarisation and international stand-off, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’ appearing in the London Review of Books (4 December 2008) and Pambazuka News (3 December 2008). Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions. The debate now extends beyond a small group of specialists in southern Africa and the UK and also (...) read

Dominican Republic - Political clientelism and poverty

> by Edward D. Gonzalez-Acosta

In May 2006, after voting in the congressional elections, my family and I went up to visit some relatives up in the mountains just south of Rio San Juan. There we played dominoes and were preparing a sancocho, when my cousin walked in very proudly telling us that she had just gotten RD$500 for voting for the PLD. I was shocked, to say the least, but my relatives went on to tell me that it was not uncommon for all the parties to give out money and other material benefits for votes or joining (...) read

Lebanon at a tripwire

> Middle East Briefing n°20, Beirut-Brussels, 21 December 2006

Lebanon has badly lost its balance and is at risk of new collapse, moving ever closer to explosive Sunni-Shiite polarisation with a divided, debilitated Christian community in between. The fragile political and sectarian equilibrium established since the end of its bloody civil war in 1990 was never a panacea and came at heavy cost. It depended on Western and Israeli acquiescence in Syria’s tutelage and a domestic system that hindered urgently needed internal reforms, and change was long (...) read

The battle of Oaxaca

> ALAI, Latin America in Movement

http://alainet.org/active/14417& (...)

While the People of Oaxaca prepared to partake in the traditions that are repeated from year to year, spending the day in the cemeteries sharing food, flowers, pains and joys with their deceased, “operation Juárez 2006” unfolded around the Independent University Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO).
Just as in Iraq, the Ramadan is an opportunity to execute military operations that take advantage of the lowered guard of the resistance movement, the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, with its rituals and the general demobilization due to the long break (November 1-5), was the occasion that was chosen for taking control of what the military commanders, after having occupied the main square (Zocalo), have considered to be the center core for activities of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).
The treatment of this conflict, which in previous months had managed, though with many difficulties, to remain within a largely political framework, registered a rapid shift, as of October 28th, towards the military plane. The change was announced after a gloomy day on which groups of irregular forces, presumably linked to the governor Ulises Ruiz, mobilized to create a scene of disordered and uncontrolled violence. The scene was used to justify the presence of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), a body of military police created for internal security, and whose statue is, by the way, unconstitutional. The military intelligence, under direct orders from the commanders of the Center of National Research and Security (CISEN) which form the High Command (or Joint Command), has taken control of Oaxaca after the incidents of violence (that caused the death of American journalist Bradley Will, among others), thereby turning a political dispute into an issue of national security, for which military operations are put in place.
The operation put in practice is defined by the Minister of the Interior as one of “occupation” in which the PFP works together with the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), homologous to the North American FBI. Meanwhile, the Navy and the Army are placed on guard for potential intervention (troops prepared in the military and coastal sectors) and keep watch.
Taking control of the main square was the first step in a strategy apparently thought of as a star which, once having occupied the center, unfurls itself in lines of irradiation towards the peripheries and outside the capital, where evidently exist the roots and deeper origins of a movement that emanates from the peoples of Oaxaca.
Paradoxically, the operation was not intended for the demobilization of the irregular groups responsible for the confusion and deaths on the 29th, but is directed specifically to the places where the APPO maintained a public presence.
The immediate goal consists, then, of dismantling the positions in the main square and in disabling the means of communication that the Oaxacan people would use to communicate among themselves and with the world. But just as in Iraq the delicate operation planned by the Pentagon failed, the taking of the main square in this case only spatially displaced what has never been a just a group of leaders, but an entire people mobilized. The first planning error in this operation is that, being conceived in military terms, it identifies with the enemy as a fixed and delimited being, when its nature is diffused, extended, interwoven and impersonal, because it has a collective and not an individualized personality. The bases of the APPO shifted, creating a sort of strip around the main square that, at one point, inspired an image of the besieger being besieged; but they actually disintegrated into the whole city, recreating their territoriality according to the new circumstances.  read

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy

> Focus on the Global South, October 2005

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ (...)

In the beginning of the 1990s, Samuel Huntigton argued that the "third wave of democratization" would free the world from dictators, and spread the model of Anglo-American democracy worldwide. However, history took another path. Analyzing the recent democratic trends in countries like the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina, this article warns that "capitalism and democratic deepening are no longer compatible."  read