Observer & Busness 5 May 2012 - Oman Daily Observer

AN employee of Tokyo Electric Power Company at Kawasaki Thermal Power Plant in Kawasaki. — Reuters
End of nuclear power
By Aaron Sheldrick
JAPAN shuts down its last working
nuclear power reactor this week just
over a year after a tsunami hit the nation
and if it survives the summer without
major electricity shortages, producers fear
the plants will stay offline for good.
The shutdown leaves Japan without
nuclear power for the first time since 1970
and has put electricity producers on the
defensive. Public opposition to nuclear
power could become more deeply entrenched
if non-nuclear generation proves
enough to meet Japan’s needs in the peakdemand
summer months.
“Can it be the end of nuclear power?
It could be,” said Andrew DeWit, a professor
at Rikkyo University in Tokyo who
studies energy policy. “That’s one reason
why people are fighting it to the death.”
Japan managed to get through the summer
last year without any blackouts by
imposing curbs on use in the immediate
aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.
Factories operated at night and during
weekends to avoid putting too much stress
on the country’s power grids. A similar
success this year would weaken the argument
of proponents of nuclear power.
“They don’t have the polls on their
side,” said DeWit. “Once they go through
the summer without reactors, how will
they fire them up? They know that, so they
will try their best but I don’t see how.”
Japan has 54 nuclear power reactors,
PIVOTAL MOMENT
Putin returns to
the Kremlin seat
By Stuart Williams
VLADIMIR Putin on
Monday takes office
for a third term as
Russia’s president at a pivotal
moment in its post-Soviet
history, with his supporters
expecting landmark reform
but the opposition fearing
stagnation.
Putin is to be sworn in at
a ceremony in the Kremlin
that will see him return to the
post he held from 2000-2008
but, ruling a Russia changed
by the outburst of protests
against the authorities.
Dmitry Medvedev, the
outgoing president now
mocked as a mere Kremlin
seat warmer for the last four
years, is expected to take on
Putin’s current job of prime
minister in a job swap that
angered the protesters.
Putin presided over a new
era of stability in Russia in
his first two Kremlin terms
after taking over amid the
chaos that marked the rule of
the mercurial Boris Yeltsin.
But society is now changing
at a speed unseen since the
Soviet collapse: a burgeoning
middle class increasingly
critical of the Kremlin and
including the four at Tokyo Electric’s
Daiichi plant in Fukushima that were
damaged in the earthquake and tsunami,
culminating in three meltdowns and radiation
leaks for the worst civilian nuclear
disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
One by one the country’s nuclear plants
have been shut for scheduled maintenance
and prevented from restarting because of
public concern about their safety.
The last one running, the No 3 Tomari
reactor of Hokkaido Electric Power Co in
northern Japan, is scheduled to shut down
early tomorrow. Anti-nuclear activists
will celebrate over the week.
The last time Japan went without nuclear
power was in May 1970, when the
country’s only two reactors operating at
that time were shut for maintenance, the
Federation of Electric Power Companies
of Japan says.
Nuclear power provided almost 30 per
cent of the electricity to keep the $5 trillion
economy going before the March 11,
2011 disaster that killed almost 16,000
people and left more than 3,000 missing.
A year on, the level of public concern
about the safety of the industry is such that
the government is still struggling to come
up with a energy policy, a delay having
a profound impact on the economy and
underlining just how costly it will be to
contemplate a nuclear-power-free future.
Having boomed in recent decades on
the exports prowess of big brands like
Sony, Toyota and Canon, the economy
the Internet providing a new
channel for criticism away
from turgid state media.
Protests in Moscow against
Putin’s domination of Russia
and fraud-tainted December
parliamentary elections at
their peak drew over 100,000
people in Moscow and threw
down an unprecedented challenge
to the authorities.
The protests were inspired
by a new set of Internet-savvy
figures such as the campaigner
Alexei Navalny.
In his last address to parliament
in April before he
steps down as prime minister,
Putin admitted that the election
period had been “tense”
but said he expected unity
from all political forces.
The sting has slipped for
the moment from the tail of
the opposition protests, with
their honeymoon period over
and their leaders trying to
bridge differences between a
motley crowd of leftists, nationalists
and liberals.
While Putin won a crushing
63.6 per cent in the March
4 presidential elections, the
opposition said his rating was
boosted by dirty tricks by the
authorities. They claim discontent
is still seething.
“Even people loyal to
the regime understand that
the main problems of Russia
— the fall in the population,
corruption, destruction
of state institutes and oil export
dependency — will not
be solved after May 7,” liberal
opposition leader Boris
Nemtsov wrote on his blog
for Moscow Echo radio.
A critical test for the opposition
will come on Sunday
when they have vowed to
hold a ‘million protest.’
12
ANALYSIS/OPINION
OMAN DAILY Observer
suffered its first trade deficit in more than
three decades in 2011 as power producers
spent billions of dollars on oil-and-gas
imports to fuel extra generation capacity.
At the time of the Fukushima crisis,
then prime minister Naoto Kan called on
Japan to wean itself off of nuclear power.
Up to that point, Japan had been planning
to lift the share of nuclear generation
to over 50 per cent by 2030 from about
30 per cent. The government of current
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has softened
Kan’s call. Noda says Japan can not
afford to be nuclear free, although he still
holds that as an ideal.
But the government has no clear timetable
for getting nuclear power back up
and running as it tries to navigate the
public opposition — rare in Japan — and
the demands of business that wants a stable
supply of power. Cabinet ministers
last month rushed to try to win over the
public to allow the restart of two nuclear
power reactors at Kansai Electric Power
Co’s Ohi plant in western Japan, in what
experts said was a recognition of the implications
of a nuclear-free summer.
The public remained unconvinced. A
poll by Kyodo news agency last weekend
showed about 60 per cent of the public opposed
to restarting the two reactors.
Most mayors and governors whose
communities host nuclear plants want
safety assurances beyond governmentimposed
stress tests before agreeing to
restarts, a poll showed in March.
SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012
Besieged media
seeks protection
By Mirwais Harooni
AFGHANISTAN’S
media representatives
are appealing to the
government to protect the
rights of journalists who are
facing a growing number of
violent threats in what they
see as an undeclared campaign
against media freedom.
War and an atmosphere of
impunity make Afghanistan
one of the most dangerous
places in the world to be a
journalist. The Taliban often
regard reporters as their
enemies and many officials
are suspicious of the press.
Despite media freedom
being protected by the
constitution, the relatively
large, often Westernbacked
press corps can face
intimidation, abduction or
even death for reporting on
issues such as corruption and
other government failings.
“Day by day, it is getting
worse. No one is here to
support reporters,” Sediq
Zalique, head of investigative
reporting at national daily 8
am, said yesterday.
Zalique said he had
received several threatening
phone calls from unidentified
men in what he believes was
a response to his articles
revealing corruption and
drug-running by officials.
Many Afghans view
the government as deeply
corrupt. Some media hold
back from publishing stories
they know will attract the
government’s ire.
Reporters at Afghan news
agency Pajhwok are resorting
to self-censorship to avoid the
fate of colleagues who have
been beaten and detained.
Three have been killed over
the last decade, its editor-inchief
Danish Karokhil said,
adding that the government
had to act to protect the
media.
Some government officials
acknowledge that authorities
are not doing enough.
“The Afghan government
simply needs to do more to
protect media freedoms,”
Deputy Minister of
Information and Culture Deen
Mohammad Mubarez Rashidi
told an awards ceremony
last Thursday honouring
slain radio journalist Sadim
Khan Bhadurzoy, who was
kidnapped and beheaded in
eastern Paktika province in
February.
New York-based watchdog
Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ) said last
month in its annual report
that while Afghanistan has
experienced a slowdown in
targeted killings, it had made
no progress in prosecuting the
killers of journalists.
Afghanistan ranks seventh
on the CPJ’s “Impunity
Index”, a listing of countries
where journalists are killed
regularly and governments
fail to solve the crimes.
No one has been arrested
in connection with the murder
of Bhadurzoy. The Taliban
denied involvement, though
the Taliban have targeted
journalists in their southern
and eastern strongholds in
the past.
Increased insecurity in the
face of intensifying violence
as most Western combat
troops prepare to leave by
2014 has also led to greater
impunity surrounding threats
against reporters, said Abdul
Mujeeb Khalvatgar, executive
director of the Afghan media
development group Nai.
Khalvatgar even suggested
the government could be
cracking down on the press in
order to send a signal to the
Taliban, that it was serious
about reconciliation talks
and was willing to restrict
the meddlesome media to
prove it.
“The government is
reaching out to the Taliban as
peace talks continue. Press
freedom is sacrificed along
the way,” he said.
Nai, which tracks media
infringements, says there
were 77 recorded cases of
brutality and threats against
Afghanistan’s fledgling
media between May 2011
and May 2012.
But President Hamid
Karzai defended the state of
Afghan media last Thursday,
telling reporters: “Freedom
of the press is one of the
Afghan government’s major
achievements. We will firmly
support it and respect it”.
MITT Romney greets his supporters during a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. — Reuters
Campaign gets personal
By Stephen Collinson
PRESIDENT Barack Obama wants
to tell America a few things about
his rival Mitt Romney: he is rich
and indifferent, bad for women, and
might wobble at a fateful moment as
commander-in-chief.
Obama’s reelection campaign has unleashed
a daily, negative, character-based
slashing of his November foe, ahead of
the president’s official campaign kick-off
rallies in the crucial battlegrounds of Virginia
and Ohio today.
In the latest volley, Obama’s camp produced
a memo accusing Romney of pursuing
an “extreme” agenda towards women,
seeking to lock in the Republican challenger’s
liabilities with the key electoral
demographic. This followed an ad branding
Romney’s attitude towards the middle
class as “just what you would expect from
a guy who had a Swiss account.”
Obama weighed in during his victory
lap marking the anniversary of the killing
of Osama bin Laden, questioning whether
Romney would have made the gutsy call
to launch a high-risk Navy SEAL raid.
An ad featuring an admiring ex-president
Bill Clinton made a similar point.
Hope and change, circa 2008, this is not.
Obama supporters point out the president
is not alone in going negative: the
Romney campaign flexed a true mean
streak in the Republican primary.
Hard-charging Romney campaign operatives
and outside groups flush with corporate
cash are meanwhile readying the
next anti-Obama barrage. But Obama’s
tactics reflect a need to amplify Romney’s
weaknesses to disqualify him as a potential
president at a time when a stuttering
economy is clouding his own prospects.
“Romney is coming off a bruising
nomination battle that raised some doubts
about his character and wants to reintroduce
himself to the American people,”
said Professor John Geer, a negative campaigns
expert at Vanderbilt University.
“The Obama campaign is not going to
allow him to do that without continuing
the choir of criticism. They want to raise
some doubts about his character and make
him look extreme on issues.”
Obama’s attacks also seek to frustrate
any bid by Romney to trek to the political
centre where American presidential elections
are often won.
“What the president is doing in terms
of campaign tactics, and his strong criticism
of Mr Romney, is not unusual for
an incumbent,” said Peter Brown, assistant
director of the Quinnipiac University
polling institute.
“Elections in which there is an incumbent
are referendums, and given the president’s
relative lukewarm job approval ratings...
his team has obviously chosen to
try to demonise the opposition.”
Obama’s assaults partly focus on Romney’s
history as a millionaire venture capitalist
who Democrats say sent American
jobs offshore and turfed people at ailing
companies out of work.
Romney says his corporate past makes
him the ideal man to turn around the
economy, which is giving off conflicting
signs of recovery and slowdown in a slow
trudge out of the deepest slump since the
1930s Great Depression.
That is where the Swiss bank account
comes in, as Obama hints that he, and not
his wealthy foe, best understands middle
class economic angst.
Good times
By Sophie Makris
A
FEW years ago, in what seems now like another
world, Dina was getting job interviews, Gerassimos
was preparing for retirement and Maria had no idea
she would be defending workers’ rights.
But on May 2, 2010, Greece’s good times came to an abrupt
end as the government turned to the International Monetary
Fund and the European Union for 110 billion euros ($145 billion)
to save it from bankruptcy. The price ordinary Greeks
have had to pay for this and a second bailout has been high,
with the effects felt across the population.
Tomorrow, the two parties that have dominated Greek politics
since the end of the military junta in 1974 are expected to
get their comeuppance when voters go the polls.
One such voter is 28-year-old Dina Karamani, who has
just moved into her own place after years of sharing digs with
students while at university, or back with mum and dad in the
Piraeus port area of Athens.
She spent a long time looking for the first roof over her
head before finding a two-room flat within her budget of 250
euros ($329) per month. If things get really tight, she says,
she could always get a lodger. “I live in fear of losing it,”
Dina said. She has managed to put a bit of money aside since
she started doing translation work at home, which earns her
around 500 euros ($650) per month, enabling her to live while
she completes her thesis on medieval history.
But she’d like to do something different.
“I have been looking for months but haven’t found a job. I
haven’t even had any interviews. Back in 2006, I worked for
an hour and I got a lot of replies to my applications,” she says.
She spends time presenting on an amateur radio station that
“gives a different perspective on Greek current affairs”, one
of her few ways to forget her worries.
Maria Chira, meanwhile, considers herself lucky to be unaffected.
She still has her job of 14 years at oil firm Hellenic
Petroleum and her monthly salary of 1,200 euros ($1,577)
plus bonuses. But she needn’t look far to see that not everyone
is as fortunate as herself: her husband’s firm has seen
revenues slump 30-40 per cent, while her mother has lost out
in 7,000 euros ($9,200) in pension payments.
Self goal
By Anya Tsukanova
UKRAINE failed to anticipate the angry Western reaction
to its treatment of jailed ex-prime minister Yulia
Tymoshenko and the dispute risks ruining its hosting
of the Euro 2012 football, observers said.
The Euro 2012 tournament co-hosted with Poland was set
to be a glorious showcase for the country: but President Viktor
Yanukovych appears to have scored a massive own goal by
allowing it to be overshadowed by Tymoshenko case. Austria
has announced it will boycott all matches hosted by Ukraine,
a move that reportedly could be matched by Germany.
All European Union commissioners will also be absent,
while at least seven EU heads of state are shunning a summit
to be hosted by Yanukovych in Yalta this month.
“Ukraine has ended up in an impasse which is going to
be difficult to get out of,” said Olga Shumylo-Tapiola of the
Carnegie Europe Centre in Brussels.
“The logic of those in power in Ukraine is hard to understand
from the point of view of common sense,” she added.
Tymoshenko, who was jailed for seven years on charges
of abuse of power in October, upped the stakes in her standoff
with the authorities last month by going on hunger strike and
claiming she had been beaten by prison guards.
With an efficient PR machine fronted by the opposition
leader’s telegenic, London School of Economics-educated
daughter Yevgeniya, the Western reaction led by Germany has
been tough. And it clearly caught the government off guard.
The most obvious solution for Ukraine to prevent its Euro
turning into a fiasco is to take up an offer from Germany or
Russia to allow her to travel abroad for the medical treatment
that her supporters say she urgently needs.
But Yanukovych has so far shown no sign of wanting to
make concessions, saying he cannot interfere in the legal
process. He would also hardly appear willing to allow a rival
to claim the role of a persecuted opponent in exile abroad.
Ukraine had a unique chance to promote itself, with games
to be played in the capital Kiev, the attractive western city of
Lviv, Yanukovych’s home city of Donetsk, and in Kharkiv.
“No-one expected that Germany would kick up such a
fuss,” a Ukrainian source close to the presidency said.
The fallout
By Lachlan Carmichael
THE diplomatic row over Chinese dissident Chen
Guangcheng could hurt Sino-US efforts to co-operate
on key economic issues, but both sides want to contain
the fallout, experts said.
The dispute has sent a cloud over the annual Strategic and
Economic Dialogue that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were conducting on
Thursday and yesterday with Chinese leaders in Beijing.
In her opening remarks, Clinton did not mention Chen by
name, but told her Chinese hosts, including President Hu Jintao,
that they cannot deny the “aspirations” of their citizens
“for dignity and the rule of law.”
In his own opening remarks, Hu called for the US and
China to respect each other’s concerns and warned that any
worsening of relations posed “grave” risks for the world.
Last Thursday, Chen phoned in to a hearing organised by a
US congressional commission on human rights in China, appealing
directly to Clinton for help to reach the US.
It was not clear whether the dispute has had an immediate
impact on the wide-ranging talks or whether it could hurt
the longer-term relationship between the world’s two largest
economies. “It’s impossible to predict going forward,” State
Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters
when asked if the dispute would affect the other areas of US-
China relations.
“But I think that... this relationship is strong enough...
where we’re going to co-operate in areas where we share
common views, but we’re also going to continue to talk about
tough issues.”
US officials said they always raise alleged rights abuses
when they meet with their Chinese counterparts, but Beijing
is particularly furious with Washington over its handling of
Chen’s case. The United States said it was in talks with Chen
about his future, after he expressed fears for his safety and
pleaded to be taken abroad.
Bonnie Glaser, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said she doubts the United States will
give China an apology for what it considers a human rights
and humanitarian issue.
But she said that China’s decision to send Defence Minister
Liang Guanglie to the United States this week to meet
Pentagon chief Leon Panetta was a “good sign” that it wants
to limit the row’s impact on broader ties.