16 - 22 October 2017-min

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4 16 - 22 October, 2017 World Zimbabwean vice president loses out in Cabinet reshuffle Z imbabwean President Robert Mugabe has sworn in new ministers, a day after a Cabinet reshuffle in which he stripped the justice ministry from a vice president accused of harboring presidential ambitions. The eight new ministers who took office on 10th October include Happyton Bonyongwe, the former intelligence chief who is now justice minister. He replaced Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was once viewed a front-runner to succeed 93-yearold Mugabe but has been harshly criticized recently by the president and his wife for allegedly leading a faction angling for power. Mnangagwa, a close ally of Mugabe since the 1970s war for independence from white minority rule, became vice president in 2014. He had held the justice portfolio since 2013. Mugabe also appointed new finance and information ministers in this week’s reshuffle. Credit : Associated Press (AP) I www.NewDelhiTimes.com Photo Credit : AP Photo S omaliland’s National Electoral Commission has released the total number of registered Voters with Identification Cards to vote in the upcoming November election. The data which was released at a news conference on 10th October put the total number of registered and eligible voters in Somaliland at 704,089. Speaking to VOA Somali, NEC spokesman, Sa’id Ali Muse said the commission has completed the distribution and the cleaning up of voter registration identification cards and released the list to Somaland’s three political parties and the minister of interior. “Now, 704,089 took their voter registration cards and 169,242 who earlier registered to vote were not able to show up to take the voter registration cards because of the recent drought that hit the region, which created population movement,” said Muse. This election has suffered several delays, Somaliland’s presidential election was scheduled at one stage to happen last March, but drought, coupled with political disagreement among the political parties, caused that date to be rescheduled. Muse said all preparations have been made and political parties will began their campaigns soon. “We have made all preparations for the election to take place on time. From our side as the Electoral Commission, nothing remains,” he said, On November 13, voters will cast their ballots at 1,642 NEW DELHI TIMES Iran warns of tough response if Trump scuttles nuclear deal ran warned of a tough response if President Donald Trump presses ahead with his threats to scuttle the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told lawmakers during a closed session of parliament that Iran “will never renegotiate” the deal brokered with the U.S. and five other world powers, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. The nuclear agreement required Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying Iran will offer a “tougher response” if the U.S. breaks the agreement. Trump is expected to decline this week to certify Iran’s compliance and refer the matter to Congress. He also is expected to target Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard with new sanctions. On 10th October, the State Department offered $12 million for information leading to the location, arrest or conviction of two senior leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting that Trump’s speech will make clear “which is the rebellious government, and which is the side that violates international rules.” If the U.S. backs out of the nuclear deal, “it won’t be Somaliland Elections on Track for November our failure at all, but a failure for the other side,” Rouhani said, according to state TV. He added that any effort to target the Revolutionary Guard would be a “double mistake.” Trump, who has called the nuclear agreement the “worst deal ever,” must recertify the measure by Oct. 15 because of unilateral conditions set by Congress. British Prime Minister Theresa May meanwhile urged the United States to extend the nuclear deal, saying it is “vitally important for regional security.” May’s office said she and Trump spoke on 10th October and both sides agreed their teams would remain in contact ahead of Trump’s decision on the pact. The British government said on 11th October that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had called Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to underscore British support for the deal. Johnson said the agreement “was the culmination of 13 years of painstaking diplomacy and has increased security, both in the region and in the UK. It is these security implications that we continue to encourage the U.S. to consider.” The Foreign Office said Johnson also spoke to Zarif and will meet Ali Akhbar Salehi, Iran’s vice president and head of its nuclear polling stations in 21 constituencies across Somaliland. Candidates from the only three political parties vying for the election are, Muse Bihi of the incumbent Peace, Unity and Development party (Kulmiye), Faisal Ali Waraabe of the For Justice and Development party (UCID) and Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi “Irro” of the Wadani party. A breakaway, semi-desert territory on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991, but is not recognized by the international community, leaving it in a legal limbo. Unlike, Southern Somalia, it has been enjoying a relative peace in which it has set up its own government institutions, written its own laws and constitution, and held credible elections. Since April 2003, two presidential elections, a parliamentary election and two local government elections have been held in Somaliland. In those elections, international observers praised Somaliland for bringing more democracy with less money and no international recognition. Last week, a high-level delegation of international partners visited Hargeisa to encourage all stake-holders to work together towards peaceful, inclusive and transparent elections. Credit : Voice of America (VOA) agency, in London on 11th October. China, France, Russia, Germany, Britain and the European Union all ratified the deal. On 10th October, Salehi warned Washington against undermining the 2015 deal, saying international nonproliferation efforts as well as Washington’s international standing would suffer as a result. Speaking at an international conference on enhancing nuclear safety in Rome, Salehi said that Washington’s recent “delusionary negative postures do not augur well” for keeping the deal intact. He said Iran didn’t want to see the deal unravel but Finance Minister Dijsselbloem to leave Dutch J politics eroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the 19-country eurozone, is leaving Dutch politics after 12 years as a lawmaker and nearly five as the Netherlands’ finance minister. Dijsselbloem said in a letter published on 11th October on his Labor Party’s website that he will leave Parliament later this month, but will complete his mandate, which ends in January, as chairman of the eurogroup. Dijsselbloem says he no longer has “the firepower” to remain in Parliament as part of the Labor Party’s opposition bloc for the coming four years. Dijsselbloem says in his letter that Labor, “paid the price” at the election for tough austerity measures he pushed through to help the Dutch economy recover from the financial crisis. The party slumped from 38 to nine seats in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament. Credit : Associated Press (AP) that “much more is at stake for the entire international community than the national interests of Iran.” The U.S. administration has faced two 90-day certification deadlines to state whether Iran is meeting the conditions needed to continue enjoying sanctions relief under the deal and has both times backed away from a showdown. But Trump more recently has said he does not expect to certify Iran’s compliance with the October deadline looming. Credit : Associated Press (AP) Photo Credit : AP Photo
16 - 22 October, 2017 5 C World Report: China catching up to US in foreign aid flow hina is close to matching the United States as a source of official grants and loans to developing countries, but much of Beijing’s financing serves its own economic interests and yields scant benefits for recipients, a multinational group of researchers reported on 11th October. The research by AidData, a lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, is the most extensive effort yet to measure official financing by China, which releases few details of its aid flows. That has spurred concern about Beijing’s intentions as it tries to expand its global influence to match China’s status as the world’s second-largest economy. China gave or lent $354.4 billion in the 15 years ending in 2014 in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, compared with $394.6 billion for the United States, according to AidData. It released a database of Chinese financing, assembled from thousands of sources of information, and a study on its impact by scholars from Harvard University, Germany’s Heidelberg University and William & Mary. “At the very top level, you could say the U.S. and China are now spending rivals when it comes to their financial transfers to other countries,” said AidData’s executive director, Bradley C. Parks. China’s secretiveness about its spending has fueled complaints its aid might prop up corrupt regimes or undercut environmental and human rights standards Western donors are trying to enforce. Attention to Chinese financing has increased as Beijing promotes its “Belt and Road Initiative,” a multibillion-dollar initiative to expand China’s trade links with Asia, Africa and the Middle East by building ports, roads and other facilities. About 23 percent of Chinese spending met the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s definition of aid, or “official development assistance,” which requires at least 25 percent of a transfer to be a grant. By contrast, 93 percent of U.S. spending qualifies as aid. The bulk of Beijing’s financing appears to be export credits and other measures aimed at promoting Chinese exports or other goals, which produced little measurable growth in recipient economies, according to Parks. He said such “official finance” doesn’t count as development assistance but is part of the OECD’s broader definition of aid. “The lion’s share of the portfolio is really not delivering, at least on average, any significant economic growth benefits for its partner countries,” said Parks. That leaves Beijing room to have a positive impact by shifting spending to development assistance, he said. “There still is a lot of scope for them to learn and adapt,” said Parks. The portion of Chinese financing that qualifies as aid “substantially improves economic growth,” according to the report. It said results were comparable to the impact of U.S.- and other Western-financed projects. Photo Credit : AP Photo “I thought that was a pretty important finding and an encouraging one,” said Parks. The 5-year-old project used a computerized system to look for information from more than 15,000 sources including news reports, Chinese government offices, ministries of other countries and academic reports. Its data cover 4,304 projects in 138 countries and territories. China doesn’t participate in global aid reporting systems. It released some figures in 2011 and 2014 but gave few details and none about individual countries. AidData released its first report in 2013 focusing on Chinese financing to Africa. Parks said its data have been used by other scholars to launch more than 100 research projects. “AidData is the most comprehensive source of information on China’s lending for development projects,” said David Dollar, an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington and former World Bank country director in Beijing, in an email. “The data show that China’s lending is indiscriminate with respect to governance. Some big borrowers have poor rule of law, such as Venezuela, Angola and Pakistan,” Dollar wrote. “The overall pattern of lending indicates that it is demand-driven by which countries want to borrow rather than by a Chinese master plan.” Parks said the data show more Chinese finance goes to countries that vote with Beijing at the United Nations. He said that “might not look good,” but a similar analysis of U.S. and other Western donors shows they act the same way. “In a sense, Beijing has taken a page out of the playbook of traditional Western donors,” said Parks. “That doesn’t comport with the ‘rogue donor’ narrative that China is somehow inferior or different.” Parks said the project didn’t try to measure whether Chinese aid undercuts environmental or other standards by giving an alternative to more stringent conditions on Western aid. But a separate study published this year by researcher Diego Hernandez of Heidelberg found the World Bank attached “significantly fewer conditions” to loans if recipients also had aid available from China. “New donors might be perceived as an attractive financial option to which the World Bank reacts by offering credits less restrictively in order to remain competitive,” wrote Hernandez. Credit : Associated Press (AP) NEW DELHI TIMES M Thai military leader promises elections in late 2018 ore than three years after seizing power in a coup, the head of Thailand’s military government on 10th October promised elections in November next year. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters that his government will give the exact election day in mid-2018. “Around June 2018, we will announce an election date,” he said. “And around November, we will hold the elections.” Thailand’s military seized power in 2014 and has postponed several deadlines for elections, citing national security concerns and the need to pass new election laws. The junta has said it needs to reform Thailand’s political system to root out money politics, but the reforms are widely seen as an attempt to prevent a comeback by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s political machine. Thaksin, a populist with strong support in the countryside, was ousted by the military in an earlier 2006 coup but his allies won subsequent elections. His younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was prime minister when the military ousted the government in 2014, and recently fled Thailand to avoid a prison sentence for alleged negligence in overseeing a rice subsidy program. Prayuth said the junta will consider lifting a ban on political activities but not until after late October, when Thailand holds an elaborate five-day funeral for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died nearly a year ago. He warned political parties against campaigning and said any breaches could result in the ban on political activities being prolonged. “This month of October is a period of mourning for us so please let everything be well-ordered and peaceful for now,” Prayuth said. Credit : Associated Press (AP) www.NewDelhiTimes.com
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