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hardynwa · 1 year

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FG, Atiku, Obi trade words over Tinubu’s victory

The Federal Government and the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; and the Labour Party, LP, Mr Peter Obi, were once again at one another’s jugular over the outcome of the 2023 presidential poll, yesterday. The Federal Government through the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, fired the first salvo when it urged Atiku, Obi and other candidates to drop their petitions at the tribunal because they deserved to lose the election won the All Progressives Congress, APC’s, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Countering, the LP declared that the APC-led Federal Government “murdered sleep” by allegedly rigging the 2023 general elections. Also, the PDP insisted that Atiku won the presidential balloting and alleged that the Federal Government was plotting to blackmail the President Election Petition Tribunal to rule in favour of Tinubu You deserve to lose 2023 elections, FG tells opposition The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, advised the opposition to stop their endless complaints over the 2023 presidential election which they lost woefully, saying they know very well that they deserve to lose the election because of their overconfidence and complacency. In a statement issued in Abuja, the Minister said Mr. President’s analysis on the reasons for the opposition’s loss in the 2023 elections was incontrovertible. He said the President deserves nothing but accolades for delivering undoubtedly the best election in Nigeria’s history, adding that the tempestuous but predictable reaction to the President’s comments by the opposition had shown them for what they are: shameless sore losers. “President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured. The President would rather lose his state and many of his party’s strongholds than tamper with the fidelity of the election, and that is why he provided a level playing field for all parties,’’ Mohammed said. He said the opposition’s overconfidence going into the election stemmed in part from the blitzkrieg of social media propaganda as well as faulty and procured opinion polls, which were apparently meant to hoodwink their foreign backers and a section of the international media into uncritically reporting that they were coasting home to victory, when they were indeed heading into the ravine of defeat. The Minister said the presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, won the presidential election fair and square, clinching the majority of the votes cast and surpassing the constitutionally-stipulated 25% of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. “Going by the results, none of the opposition parties met any of the conditions stipulated for winning the presidential election. They didn’t even come close, in spite of their pre-election grandstanding. ‘’They (opposition) keep leaning on some international observers to justify their fraudulent claim that the election was rigged. They conveniently forgot what Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the revered US diplomat who co-led the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) International Election Observation Mission to Nigeria said: that the APC candidate undoubtedly won the polls. ‘’They also forgot that the African Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria said the atmosphere was generally calm and peaceful in 95% of the polling units visited,’’ he said, adding that it is on the strength of these reports that many nations, including the US and the UK, wasted no time in congratulating the victorious APC Presidential Candidate. Alhaji Mohammed slammed the opposition for continuously seeking to mislead the world by clutching at the weak straw that results were not immediately uploaded onto the IReV Portal, as if the portal has any role to play in the collation of results. ‘’The opposition’s insinuation that the failure to immediately upload the result of the presidential election onto IReV affected the credibility of the election is a fraud. It is an act of blackmail and deceit by desperate individuals. ‘’The opposition Labour Party, in particular, will go down in the history books as the first-ever distant third-place finisher in a presidential election anywhere to have bold-facedly claimed victory,’’ he said. FG, APC murdered sleep by rigging 2023 polls — LP Countering, Acting National Publicity Secretary of the LP, Obiora Ifoh, came down hard on Alhaji Lai Mohammed over his attempt to echo President Buhari’s thoughts on the outcome of the 2023 general elections.It equally accused the Minister of “wasting scarce public funds junketing around the United States and the United Kingdom ‘’ in futile attempt to whitewash the disasterous 8 year rule of the outgoing Buhari administration. Ifoh said: “We just want the Minister to know that by rigging the 2023 general election, himself, his party, All Progressives Congress and the leader of the party, President Buhari have murdered sleep and they do not deserve peace. The LP Spokesman explained that it was appalling that the Minister chose to progress in the error laden prognosis of his employer, President Buhari about the outcome of the 2023 general elections. He said: “A few days after President Buhari made that heavily flawed and erroneous remarks on the outcome of the 2023 presidential election claiming that opposition parties lost the presidential election due to their “overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves”, it is heart-wrenching to hear the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, still progressing with that warped, illogical and incongruous concept. “We would rather not join issues with a man who is famous for constantly prescribing doses of expired and ineffectual propaganda to Nigerians. “ His ill-fated and hugely failed trip to the United Kingdom and United States where he attempted to redeem the grossly battered democratic credentials of this present administration; spending millions of tax payers money to defend an indefensible action is yet another tragedy of President Buhari’s 8 years leadership. “It is only the blind that will continue to insist that the 2023 presidential election which was massively rigged was free, fair and credible. “As we have said earlier, the opposition political parties allegedly lost the election because the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC jettisoned the electoral act, having not uploaded the result from the polling unit in real time as promised and in so doing, created room for riggers to have a field day. “The election witnessed the unprecedented magnitude of violence, ballot snuffing, snatching and manipulations of result from the collation centres using thugs, security agencies, which included police, army amongst others. “All these issues and a lot more were captured, well documented and have been taken to the appeal tribunal and the matters are ongoing. Mr. Lai Mohammed need not preempt the tribunal as his actions are contemptuous and could be used against him.” Atiku won 2023 Presidential polls, PDP insists On its part, the PDP has insisted that its Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, won the February 25, 2023 Presidential election based on the actual votes cast at the Polling Units across the country. The party described claims by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, that the opposition lost the election, as subjudice and part of a series of attempts by the APC-led Federal Executive to bully and blackmail the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. This was contained in a statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Debo Ologunagba, in Abuja, yesterday. Ologunagba said: “Nigerians are invited to note that Lai Mohammed’s comment is coming after President Buhari made a similar subjudice comment in his widely condemned attempt to justify the rigging of the Presidential election, which case is pending before the Tribunal. “It is indeed appalling that Lai Mohammed could attempt to defend the outcome of a fraudulently conducted election which has been adjudged as the worst in the history of elections in Nigeria and which has attracted nationwide and international outrage against the Buhari administration. “By stating that President Buhari deserved “accolades” for conducting a globally condemned Presidential election and describing well-meaning Nigerians as “shameless sore losers”, Lai Mohammed has further confirmed the complicity of the Buhari administration, in which he serves as mouthpiece, in one of the most reprehensible election swindles in the history of democracy. “ The party however said it was not surprised that Lai Mohammed will continue in the trajectory of the Buhari-led APC administration which is notorious for lying, deceit and falsehood. This, the PDP said, was because Nigerians are aware that by the authentic results obtained from the Polling Units, Atiku Abubakar and not the APC candidate met all the conditions stipulated for the winning of the Presidential election. According to the party, this situation explained why “the compromised Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) refused to transmit directly and announce results as obtained from the Polling Units as required by law.” The opposition party stated further that ot was for the umpteenth time cautioning the APC and the Buhari-led Federal Executive against its furtive attempts to bully the judiciary in the handling of the Presidential election petitions pending before the Tribunal. “The facts of the rigging of the February 25, 2023 Presidential election are well known to Nigerians and the PDP will not relent until it reclaims its mandate at the Tribunal.” Ologunagba added. VANGUARD Read the full article

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wapcodehubsite · 2 years

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EU Reacts To Report Calling For Sack Of Nigeria’s Electoral Body, INEC Chairman, Yakubu

According to a letter trending on social media, the EU, was said to have noted that the Saturday’s election were marred by numerous cases of electoral malpractice The European Union, EU, in Nigeria has dismissed a report that the EU in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) are calling for the sack of the Chairman of the Independent…

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#EU #NAIJA NEWS

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nationwidenews · 2 years

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NDI/IRI Observer Missions rate ongoing Nigeria general election low

The ongoing general election in Nigeria has been rated very low by the International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) Joint Election Observation Mission (IEOM). While presenting preliminary statement on the Presidential and National Assembly elections in Nigeria on Monday in Abuja, the leader, Dr Joyce Banda, former President of Malawi, congratulated the people…

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ogpnews-online · 2 years

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zvaigzdelasas · 3 years

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NED is starting to ramp up its funding in mongolia, tripling within 4 years 👁

#first one is funding from 2016-2018 second is 2020

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stillellensibley · 4 years

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Looking at the history of emptiness in modern art I am often reminded of Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. Zeno imagined a race, in which Achilles would generously grant the tortoise a head start of say 100 metres, and each would move at a steady, unchanging speed. His conclusion was that Achilles would never be able to catch up with the tortoise, because every time he came close, the tortoise would have had time to move a little further, so that the distance between them would endlessly decrease to a few yards, a few metres, one metre, 0.1 metre, 0.01 metre, etc. In the same way, every time the audience of modern and contemporary art is led to believe that the avant-garde reduction of the artwork to a minimal, barely perceptible form can go no further, along comes another artist who creates another even more minimal, even less perceptible, artwork.

Thus, it seemed that the history of modern art had reached its zero point when Marcel Duchamp presented a glass pharmacy phial filled with Paris air to an American collector in 1919, or when Kazimir Malevich painted his White on White composition in 1918, and two years later filled a room with, as one person noted, empty canvases ‘devoid of colour, form and texture’ on the occasion of his first solo exhibition in Moscow. Yet in a 1968 article, critics Lucy Lippard and John Chandler could only observe that ‘the artist… has continued to make something of “nought” 50 years after Malevich’s White on White seemed to have defined nought for once and for all. We still do not know how much less ‘nothing’ can be.’ Thirty-five years later, Gabriel Orozco’s sole contribution to the Aperto exhibition at the 1993 Venice Biennale consisted of an empty shoe box, eight years before Martin Creed notoriously won the Turner Prize partly for his installation Work No. 227: The lights going on and off at regular intervals. Nearly ten noughty years down the line, and shortly after a museum survey entitled Voids: a Retrospective presented visitors with nine perfectly empty rooms, we are still none the wiser about ‘how much less “nothing” can be’.

Year after year, decade after decade, however, one thing doesn’t seem to change: if we haven’t walked through, on, or past the artwork without noticing it, our reactions to this kind of barely perceptible, almost nothing, practice will predictably range from puzzlement and laughter to anger and indignation. Even before Malevich’s 1920 exhibition, a French cartoonist had imagined in 1912 that the empty canvas would be the next avant-garde prank visited on its baffled public. In the caption, the artist presenting his blank canvas explains in a pun on the then-current Futurist movement: ‘It’s the most futurist picture of all – so far it is only signed, and I’ll never paint it.’ As the emptiness and reduction of blank canvases, of white or black monochromes and of Duchampian readymades were extended to silent concerts and empty galleries in the second half of the twentieth century, the question remained: are all these forms of emptiness so many variations on the same provocative joke?

The first documented entirely empty exhibition, Yves Klein’s The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State Into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility – better known as The Void – at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris in 1958, certainly had all the trappings of an elaborate PR stunt. Not only did Klein empty the exhibition space and paint the remaining walls and cases white, he also posted two Republican Guards in full uniform at the entrance of the gallery, served blue cocktails especially ordered from the famous brasserie La Coupole and had even planned to light up the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde with his brand of International Klein Blue. While the last event was cancelled at the last minute, an estimated 3,000 visitors did show up on the night of the opening, filling the streets around the gallery as they waited to enter the exhibition space through blue curtains, one small group at a time. The crowd was finally dispersed by the police called in by disgruntled visitors who had felt swindled after paying their entrance fee to be shown an empty gallery. In some ways, the succès à scandale of The Void has obscured Klein’s very idiosyncratic brand of showmanship and mysticism. His interest in the immaterial was genuine, inspired by his exploration of monochrome painting and his belief, influenced by Rosicrucianism, that humans must strive to liberate themselves from flesh and matter.

If some artists since Klein have embraced such spiritual readings of the void, a more general preoccupation with the invisible seems to account for many empty exhibitions in the past 50 years or so. Maria Eichhorn, a German artist whose early work includes white texts written on white walls, speaks for many artists when she explains: “There is such a fixation in our Western culture on the visible, which explains why we think that… a room is empty… because there is nothing visible. But I’ve never thought that an empty room is empty.” In the late 1960s Robert Barry had already pointed to the imperceptible forces that literally surround us by introducing radio waves as well as magnetic currents into the gallery space. American artist Maria Nordman has tried to focus viewers’ attention on the light falling through an empty gallery’s windows at different moments of the day and of the year. More prosaically, other artists have invited visitors simply to contemplate the architecture of the gallery. Arriving in 1993 at the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, originally a house designed by Mies van der Rohe, British artist Bethan Huws felt she could not add anything to the beauty of the modernist building. Instead, she distributed a poem to visitors and let them admire the gallery for itself.

In the 1970s American artist Michael Asher pioneered strategies through which to reveal the architectural structure of the gallery. At the Clare Copley Gallery in 1975, for example, he simply removed the wall separating the empty exhibition space from the art dealer’s office. By opening up this space, the artist was not only inviting visitors to consider its architectural features: he also reminded them of the Business transactions taking place behind the walls of commercial galleries. After Asher, other artists have explored the invisible networks of art business and institutional presentations that frame the art we view. Maria Eichhorn used the budget allocated to her show at the Kunsthalle Bern to tackle the institution’s debts and fund much-needed refurbishments of the building (Money at the Kunsthalle Bern 2001), while in their 2005 Supershow – More than a Show, the collective Superflex used theirs to give each visitor two Swiss Francs instead of asking them to pay an entrance fee to see empty spaces adorned only by texts stating the physical properties of each room (surface, wall colour, maximum number of visitors, etc). Museum surveillance is alluded to in Roman Ondák’s 2006 More Silent than Ever, which warns visitors that hidden listening devices are installed in the room.

Presented with invisible elements such as Ondák’s listening devices or Barry’s magnetic fields, we are left wondering whether to believe the artists’ claims since, after all, there is no adequate way to confirm them. We come to realise that our relation to the work is predicated on knowledge, presuppositions and some form of trust in the authority of artists and art institutions. British artist Ceal Floyer traces her interest in minimal displays back to her experience as a gallery invigilator while she was an art student. ‘I watched a lot of art being seen. And a lot of art being not seen,’ she remembers. ‘That was a training in itself. I discovered that presumption is a medium in its own right.’ As with Creed’s The lights going on and off , Floyer’s plastic buckets and black rubbish bags casually sitting in the gallery certainly reveal to us our prejudices and expectations as to what art is or should be. Gabriel Orozco says he actively seeks to disappoint his viewers. Is my irritation at being presented with an empty shoe box or lights going and off ultimately good for me?

The veiled hostility directed by the artist at the viewer situates such attitudes in the context of more radical declarations against art and its institutions. When presenting her empty exhibition at the Lorence-Monk Gallery in New York in 1990, American artist Laurie Parsons went so far as to refuse to include her name on the invitation to the opening and to remove all reference to the show from her CV. Four years later, she ceased to produce works altogether, thus following a line of artists before her who deliberately decided, as part of their practice, to give up, or take a break from, the profession. From this perspective, the empty gallery is less an artwork than a gesture – of provocation, dissent and critique. As Brian O’Doherty has shown in his well-known study of the modern “white cube” gallery, such a gesture ‘depends for its effect on the context of ideas it changes and joins’. For the gesture to succeed, its timing, place and audience have to be just right. Sometimes it can be understood only retrospectively, as it becomes historicised.

It would be unfair, however, to reduce all explorations of emptiness, nothingness and the invisible to the rhetoric of the gesture. To return to Orozco’s Empty Shoe Box: when it was first shown in 1993, it certainly poked fun at the Venice Biennale’s frenzy of publicity and consumption, but it also served as a memorable image of the container or vessel that is a leitmotif in the artist’s work. ‘I am interested in the idea of making myself – as an artist and an individual – above all a receptacle,’ stated Orozco. Playing with contrasts between empty and full, his work as a whole exemplifies a sensitivity to reciprocal spatial relations. In a notebook, he compares discarded pieces of chewing gum on a pavement with the stones placed on a board in the Asian strategy game of Go. Like Empty Shoe Box, the Go stones and the spat-out blobs of gum occupy and cut out space, demarcating a territory according to very specific patterns of chance and intention.

Many artists have similarly been interested in the space between objects. Both the Belgian Joëlle Tuerlinckx and the Brazilian Fernanda Gomes often present arrangements of small, discrete everyday objects scattered around otherwise vacant gallery spaces. Tuerlinckx describes the exhibition space as ‘a kind of parcel, a packet of air’ that she is invited to open and explore through her work; Gomes says she never comes to the gallery with a pre-defined plan. In these installations, the empty gallery becomes a blank page to be inscribed (as in Tuerlinckx’s spatial drawings), or the pregnant void that surrounds objects in paintings such as Giorgio Morandi’s (in Gomes’s three-dimensional still-lifes).

Painting is also a surprising reference for the performances staged by Marie Cool/Fabio Balducci, during which Cool stands in an empty room as she enacts a series of repetitive, extremely precise gestures using flimsy everyday materials such as paper, tape, or thread. The French- Italian duo has claimed that the image of a figure hovering in an undefined yet meaningful space was inspired by early Renaissance religious painting such as Simone Martini’s Annunciations. The empty gallery as a stage for action has also been effectively used by Martin Creed, when he asked runners to sprint down the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, one by one at regular intervals, in 2008, or by British-German artist Tino Sehgal, who in 2010 choreographed two continuous scenarios, involving three actors, in the spiral rotunda at the New York Guggenheim Museum.

Placed in vast expanses of void, both bodies and objects appear more vulnerable. On the one hand, such installations provide an alternative to the spectacular displays encouraged by increasingly large-scale museum and gallery spaces. By celebrating the commonplace, the barely noticed, as well as frailty and precariousness, artists thus seem to be actively resisting the pressure to create ever-bigger, glossier, more awe-inspiring works. On the other hand, however, such minimal mises en scène can create new forms of spectacle – as when Maurizio Cattelan places his miniature self-portrait, a resin figurine hanging from a clothing rack, in a corner of the empty gallery in order to emphasise his apparent failure to take on the revolutionary role of 1970s artists such as Joseph Beuys (to make the point, the Cattelan mini-me is clad in Beuys’s signature felt suit).

While such formal devices are often little more than simple gimmicks, works that effectively stage their own weakness and vulnerability can raise questions about the institutional and social conditions that guarantee their existence as art. In Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, a naked emperor is persuaded by his tailors that his fine clothes are visible only to intelligent people; his subjects, afraid like him to admit that they cannot see them, applaud his outfit until a small child in the crowd finally blurts out the truth – ‘But he’s got nothing on!’ Though above all a cautionary tale against the deceptive powers of flattery, vanity and sycophantism, the story also provides an image of the willing suspension of disbelief required by most forms of art. After all, the artist’s deception, like the cheating tailors’, could never work without our participation. In his 2002 work Lament of the Images, Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar mobilises this kind of community of believers by presenting us with two dark, apparently empty rooms. In the first, we come across three small backlit text panels relating real stories about invisible or impossible images, such as the fact that the United States Defence Department purchased the rights to all available satellite images of Afghanistan during the 2001 air strikes so that the global media could not publish them. The second room houses a single, brightly lit, empty screen. Blinded by its light, we are reminded of our own blind spots – our complicity in the invisibility of certain images and in the existence of many an emperor’s new clothes.

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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I am not a nobody! I am craftsman, damn it!

That desperate cry of Pedro Quisbert Mamani’s father, the factory worker murdered by government repression during the Senkata massacre, summarizes Bolivia’s process of change that is not understood yet by the coup mongers. If Evo Morales and the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) did anything at all, even beyond nationalizing the country’s natural resources or convening a Constituent Assembly, was giving dignity back to the wretched of the earth, the nobodies, the popular classes in a Bolivia turned into a Pluri-National State.

In the meantime, as former vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera said, racial hatred prevails in the traditional middle class’ political language. Hatred of the Indian. It has been confirmed that Evo Morales always represented the realization of dreams and the collective imagination of the social majorities. This is why the hatred focused against him is the same as hating a whole nation. What’s more, hatred has united this middle class and that is why they allow public forces to commit murders and justify a mad government in which a misogynistic man and female batterer is heading a witch hunt against MAS members.

On the contrary, popular movements are fragmented by default. But their power relies on that weakness. So, people’s insurrection against the coup d’etat, the same as in 2003 in El Alto, is made of a series of regional micro-leaderships that cannot be controlled by Evo Morales himself, and certainly not by the putschist Government.

Regional mobilizations are first of all demanding self-proclaimed president Jeanine Añez to resign; identifying the masterminds and perpetrators of the coup d’état and subsequent massacres in Sacaba or Senkata; and reestablishing democracy and the rule of law in Bolivia.

Among all of their demands, knowing who are the coup d’état masterminds is perhaps the most important aspect to understand what has happened in Bolivia.

It’s not Jeanine Añez for sure. She is a disposable puppet just as Michel Temer was in Brazil. Carlos Mesa either. He never had any leadership role during the days following the October 20 presidential elections and he can’t even claim to own the 36 percent of his votes because he knows he just gained the anti-Evo vote by default not conviction, and this does not mean that they endorse his project. And regardless of his media repercussion, the main actor of this coup is not Luis Fernando Macho Camacho either, who played exactly the role of a bull charging and becoming the center of attention so that others could move in unnoticed. Not even Vladimir Yuri Calderon or Williams Kaliman, commanders-in-chief of the Police and Armed Forces, respectively, who triggered the civic, political, police and military coup, can claim the major responsibility.

The coup d’état has been flawlessly staged and the above mentioned opposition leaders, police and military officers, think that they were in fact responsible for forcing Evo Morales to seek asylum. But the truth is that responsibilities go beyond Bolivia and points directly at the United States.

It’s commonly known that Yuri Calderon served as Military Attaché at Bolivia’s embassy in Washington until December 2018, while Kaliman did the same between 2013 and 2016. It’s also well known in political groups the relationship between Oscar Ortiz’s Nueva Democracia Foundation, the ATLAS Foundation, the Republican Party’s International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

However, the main coordinator of the coup is named Jorge Quiroga. Tuto Quiroga was vice-president of Dictator Hugo Banzer and Bolivia’s President between 2001 and 2002. Since then, his ties to the different US State Department agencies have been on the rise, as well as to the Organization of American States (OAS). In fact, he was in charge of the election observation mission that backed the fraud committed by Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras.

Right now the main State Department instructions in Bolivia are issued by Tuto Quiroga. He is not only the coup’s main architect but he has also been responsible for Añez’s self-proclamation. Jurist Luis Vasquez Villamor, former deputy by Podemos (Quiroga’s party) found a 2001 court ruling (based on the 1967 Constitution, void since the 2009 Constitution was passed) that allowed for the cover and legal justification to the coup d’état.

Tuto Quiroga’s major mission now is to work on the return of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to Bolivia. The two of them were expelled under the Morales Administration so as to dissolve the dual power that was going on in the country. The agencies return would allow coup plotters to control the Executive with them but division in the police and especially the Army could begin now as long as they keep on repressing the population. The situation is not easy within the process of change either. Even though part of the territory and two-thirds of the Pluri-National Legislative Assembly are under MAS control, polarization has turned into hatred while the government’s repression is in fact even aimed at deputies and senators.

If the counter-revolution has been successful, at least so far, it is due to an excess of democracy, understand this one as the equalization and distribution of wealth, as appointed by Garcia Linera, the answer can only be the radicalization of democratic stances. A radicalization that entails not only rebelling against dictatorship but also Evo Morales’ return to pacify the country.

The Evo factor is decisive in this equation. If he does not return and cohesion in the popular movement is lost, the pacification factor today could become a destabilization factor tomorrow.

It’s the time now to take care of Evo but also to guarantee his return to Bolivia, supported by the international community. The future of the Bolivian process of change depends on it.

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saxafimedianetwork · 4 years

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IRI: Somaliland’s 2005 Parliamentary Election Assessment Report

@IRIglobal #recognizes & applauds the efforts by the government, @SomalilandNEC, #politicalparties, & the people of #Somaliland in making these #elections a success. In Sept 2005 #parliamentary election the people of SL were able to cast their ballots in a peaceful manner & without significant intimidation.

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#2005 Parliamentary Election #Election Observation Mission’s (EOM)#International Republican Institute (IRI)#Parliamentary elections #Somaliland #Somaliland Elections

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xf-2 · 4 years

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習近平主席の外交ブレーンに狂い

　中国の外交総括役の楊潔篪国務委員（外交担当＝共産党外事工作委員会主任）は8月7日に発表した文書でこう言い切った。

「米国の一部反中勢力が米中関係を不可逆的に破壊するため、米中の交流を阻み、米国民を誤った方向に導いている」

　習近平国家主席の外交ブレーン、楊氏が米国内に燃え上がる反中気運を本心からそう思っていたとしたら、完全な間違いだ。

　確かに当初は人権問題には史上最も疎いドナルド・トランプ大統領にとっては、中国攻撃は再選狙いの一環でしかなかった。

　ところが「香港国家安全維持法」制定を契機に、人権問題には敏感な米議会では、反中スタンスに火がついてしまった。

　以前から米議会には超党派で反中マグマはあった。

　米中貿易摩擦、中国の米知的財産盗取、スパイ活動、南シナ海・東シナ海での準軍事威嚇活動、ウイグル族抑圧――。

　その反中マグマに火をつけたのが「香港国家安全維持法」制定だった。

米議会は反中で一致、媚中派ゼロ

　米議会はトランプ大統領よりも先へ先へと動いた。

　中国が「香港国家安全維持法」制定の動きを察知するや、パット・トゥーミ―上院議員（共和、ペンシルベニア州州選出）が5月21日、「香港自治法案」（Hong Kong Automy Act)を上程。米上院は6月25日、同法案を可決、成立させた。

　米下院は、中国共産党全代人常務委員会が6月30日、「香港国家安全維持法」を制定した直後、「香港セーフハーバー法案」（Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act）＊1を可決成立。

　上院でも、マルコ・ルビオ（共和、フロリダ州選出）、ボブ・メネンデス（民主、ニュージャージー州選出）が同日、同法案を上程、直ちに可決、成立させた。

＊1＝同法案は、民主化運動などで当局から逮捕される恐れのある香港市民を米国が特別難民として受け入れることを明記している。

「香港国家安全維持法」制定、つまり「一国二制度」の事実上の終焉とみた米議会は、「次は中台統一」と見た。

　上院では、ジョシュ・ハウレイ議員（共和、ミズーリ州選出）が6月29日、「台湾防衛法案」（Taiwan Defense Act）を提出した。

　下院ではマイク・ガラファー議員（共和、ウィスコンシン州選出）が同趣旨の法案を提出した。

　この法案は、米政府が1979年に制定した「台湾関係法」に明記された中国からの軍事的脅威に直面する台湾に対する米国の軍事的責務を再確認するよう求めたものだった。

　これまでにも米議会が出してた法案だ。いわば議員たちの抗議表明であり、中国も批判するがある程度黙認してきた法案だ。

下院外交委員会の重鎮ヨホ議員

　ところが、反中法案ラッシュが続く中で7月29日、これまで中国の対香港政策を厳しく批判してきたテッド・ヨホ下院議員（共和、フロリダ州選出）が従来の枠から外れた超強硬法案を下院に提出した。

「中国の台湾侵攻に対抗して米国は軍隊を出動させる権限を大統領に付与すべきだ」とする法案を出したのだ。

　その名称は「台湾侵略未然防止法案」（Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act）。

　ヨホ議員は下院外交委員会東アジア太平洋小委員会の委員長格。

　これまでにも香港における中国政府の民主化運動抑圧を激しく批判してきたが、反共保守強硬派ではない。獣医出身の当選4期のベテラン議員だ。

　同法案は次のような点を盛り込んでいる。

一、米大統領が台湾を軍事攻撃から守ることを保障するために米軍隊を出動できる権限を与える。

一、中国が台湾に軍事力を行使、澎湖諸島、金門島、連江を含む台湾領土に侵攻、台湾軍兵士はじめ台湾人に軍事的脅迫をした場合には、米大統領に軍事力を行使する権限を与える。

一、中国に対し、台湾に軍事力を行使しないことを要求する。

一、米国、台湾、そして（中国に対して）意見を共有している安全保障上のパートナーとの安保対話および軍事合同演習のメカニズムを構築する。

一、台湾に対し、（中国との）不釣り合いな武器弾薬の拡充、予備役改革、米国とのサイバー防衛協力強化などに国力をさらにつぎ込むよう助言する。

一、米通商代表部は台湾との二国間貿易協定交渉を開始させる。

一、米大統領、あるいは国務長官は訪台、首脳会談あるいは外相会談を行う。

一、台湾総統が訪米し、米議会で演説ことを歓迎する。

（https://yoho.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/yoho-introduces-taiwan-invasion-prevention-act）

　法案提出に先立ち、ヨホ議員は、6月29日、フォックス・ビジネスとのインタビューでこう述べている。

「米国はこれまで台湾に対して十分な支援をしてこなかった。その理由は、米国の対中、対台湾政策に存在する戦略的な両義性、あいまいさのためだった」

「習近平国家主席は、万難を排して台湾を中国に組み入れると公言している。中国は台湾人がどう考えているかすら聞こうとしない」

（https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1602543348282/gop-rep-yoho-im-introducing-legislation-to-authorize-force-if-china-invades-taiwan）

数年前ならこうした台湾防衛のための米軍出動論は、「ミミズのたわごと」ぐらいにしか受け止められていた。

　同法案は、下院外交、軍事、歳入各委員会に送られており、どの委員会が審議するかは、下院議長の判断で決められる。

　可決・成立は別として、「台湾有事」に米軍が出動するか否かが本格的に論じられるのは初めてだ。

　米軍が台湾有事で出動することになれば、まず在沖縄米海兵隊が投入される可能性大だ。「台湾有事」に日本がいやおうなしに巻き込まれることになる。

　いずれにせよ、「ヨホ法案」は、米議会が香港情勢をいかに真剣に受け止められているかを示す動きだ。

アザー厚生長官訪台の意味するもの

　米議会の動きに触発されたか（？）トランプ政権も台湾に急接近し出した。

　アレックス・アザー厚生長官が急遽、台湾を訪問し、蔡英文総統と会談した。

　同長官はジョージ・W・ブッシュ第43代大統領（子）の下で厚生行政に携わって以降、公衆衛生一筋のエキスパートだが、大統領継承順位でも第11位の重要閣僚の一人だ。

　同長官は米台国交断交以降、米政府が派遣した最高位の現職政府高官。大統領継承順位11位だ。

　今回の訪台はただ単に新型コロナウイルス対策で台湾当局と意見交換するだけが目的ではない。

　青天白日満地紅旗を前に行われた蔡総統との会談の模様はテレビで全世界に流れた。

　トランプ大統領が重きを置く「絵になる外交」を地でいったことは言うまでもない。

　だが、今のような状況が続けば、その延長線上にヨホ議員が提起している大統領や国務長官の訪台の可能性すら見え隠れし始めた。

制裁は対象議員たちにとって「勲章」

　楊国務委員の認識不足は、冒頭で触れた発言だけではない。

　同氏がおそらく習近平主席に助言した8月10日の対米制裁措置に盛り込まれた対象者たちの選出についても言える。

　ルビオ上院議員ら上下両議員6人とNGO団体の理事長5人の計11人。

　制裁の具体的な内容は明らかになっていないが、おそらくこれらの人物や団体がこれまで中国に対しての発言や活動が極めて反中国的だという理由からだろう。

　米国人の香港問題に対する動向に詳しい米主要シンクタンクの研究員B氏は筆者にこう語る。

「推察するに、これの人物が反中国の法案や決議案を出したり、香港問題で中国を激しく非難している『反中強硬派』だというのが制裁の理由だろう」

「だが、これは天に唾するだけで、習近平主席を取り巻く外交専門家たちの国際情勢掌握のお粗末さを露呈するようなものだ」

「ルビオ氏とテッド・クルーズ上院議員（共和、テキサス州選出）は2016年の大統領予備選に立候補し、今や押しも押されもせぬ上院でも有力議員。2024年には大統領選に再出馬する可能性も出ている」

「また制裁対象になっているトム・コットン（共和党、アーカンソー州選出）、トゥ―ミー両議員はともにハーバード大卒の議会知性派。感情的な反中議員ではない」

「特にコットン議員はアフガニスタン、イラク戦争に参戦した退役陸軍大佐。地元では絶大な人気を誇っている」

「ハウレイ議員はスタンフォード卒、イエール法科大学院で法務博士号を取得した州司法長官だ」

「2019年10月には香港を視察、『香港は今や警察国家だ』と言い切っている」

「さらにこれらの上下両院議員たちは中国国内には没収されるような財産など全くない」

「この制裁措置は、米国が8月7日に香港の自治を侵害したとして制裁に指定した林鄭月娥・香港行政長官ら11人を香港の自治を侵害したとの理由で制裁を科した報復措置だというが、米側には実害はない」

「中国側の制裁対象者たちは、多かれ少なかれ、子弟を米国留学させたり、米国内に財産を所有しているはず。実害は甚大だろう」

「北京勤務の長かった元米外交官の一人はさらにこう述べている。『クルーズ議員らにとっては、中国からの制裁措置は“勲章”（Badge of Pride）のようなもの』」

「『再選を前にした議員は、選挙民に歓迎されることは間違いなし。もっともどの議員も選挙は強いし、関係ないかもしれないが・・・』。中国は人選をまちがいたのではないのか」

ノーベル平和賞受賞団体を制裁対象に

　それだけではない。

　中国が制裁を科したNGO5団体の中には共和党系の反中強硬派組織もある。

　だが、その中にはノーベル平和賞を受賞したことのある国際機関、「ヒューマン・ライト・ウォッチ」（Humaqn Right Watch＝HRW)・ルーズベルト大統領の夫人のエレノア・ルーズベルト氏が創設した「フリーダム・ハウス」（Freedom House）ような権威のある人権擁護団体も含まれている。

　その他、ロナルド・レーガン政権時代に創設された「全米民主主義基金」（National Endoment for Democracy＝NDI）や有力現職議員、議員経験者が評議員になっている「共和党国際研究所」（International Republican Institute=IRI）の理事長や会長が制裁対象になっている。

　裏を返せば、こうした自由と民主主義を推進してきた国際的な人権擁護団体が、習近平主席が強引に推し進める「香港の完全中国化」に反対していることを天下に曝しているわけだ。

香港・台湾・尖閣が同時多発的「最前線」に

　中国新疆ウイグル自治区での人権侵害、香港の自治侵害に抗議する米国の官民挙げての抗議は半端ではない。

　当初は選挙戦略の一環で始めたトランプ大統領の反中スタンスは、こうした米国��の反中気運に煽られて、強化せざるを得なくなっている。

　ポンペオ国務長官は、8月10日、香港での民主派取締り強化についてこう言わざるを得なくなっている。

「中国共産党が香港を党支配下の都市として扱う限り、米国も香港を同様に扱う。中国当局がこうした行為を改めるとは楽観視してはいない」

　トランプ政権が先に廃止を発表している香港に対する経済面などの優遇措置は当面復活させないことを再確認したことを意味している。

　ジョー・バイデン民主党大統領候補が副大統領候補に指名したカマラ・ハリス上院議員（カリフォルニア州選出）は、公民権、人権擁護をライフワークにしてきた。

　それだけに、これから3か月間繰り広げられるバーチャル・キャンペーンでは中国の香港政策を取り上げる構えのは必至と見られている。

　トランプ陣営、バイデン陣営はどちらがどれだけ反中スタンスを示せるかを争うことになりそうだ。

米主要メディアのベテラン記者C氏はそれをこう表現している。

「ご両人にマイク・ペンス副大統領とハリス上院議員も加わり、どちらがどれだけ中国を批判できるか、反中スタンスを取れるか、競うことになる」

「まさに寓話に出てくる、どちらの腹が大きいかを競うカエルの話に似てきた」

「もっとも寓話では最後には腹が破裂してしまうが、米大統領選ではどちらも破裂はしないだろうが・・・」

　著書『中国返還後の香港――「小さな冷戦」と一国二制度の展開』でサントリー学芸賞を受賞した倉田徹・立教大学教授は「国家安全維持法」めぐる「米中新冷戦」についてこう論じている。

「（香港の「国家安全維持法」をめぐって）米中対立が地政学の色彩を帯びてくると、日本にとっても完全に他人事ではなくなる」

「香港・台湾の次は言うまでもなく、尖閣諸島や（東シナ海という）海洋が新たな前線となるからである」

（https://janet.jiji.com/apps/contents/searchstory/20200624/620）

　米主要シンクタンクからは「中国の尖閣諸島での動きに日米統合機動展開部隊を新設すべきだ」と主張する報告書も出ている。

（参照：https://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/61561）

　尖閣諸島は今や香港・台湾の次ではなくなりつつある。「香港・台湾・尖閣」は同時多発的に米中対決の「最前線」になりつつある。

　11月3日には大統領選と同時に上下両院選挙が行われる。現職議員も再選するには反中の旗を降ろすわけにはいかない。

　米議会の動きは要注意だ。

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