29-03-2018

INTERNATIONAL
THURSdAy, MARCH 29, 2018
7
Wickremesinghe: stripped of several responsibilities as a power struggle worsens. Photo: Internet
Sri Lanka president cuts PM’s
duties in power struggle
Ghana lifeguards
train
before holidays
A young woman hangs
limp in the arms of men
bringing her from the
ocean to the sand as part
of their lifeguard training
in Accra, the capital of
Ghana.
While restaurants and
hotels are bracing for the
wave of Easter weekend
tourists coming to the
white sandy beaches along
the Atlantic ocean, about
50 volunteers participated
in the Ghana National
Aquatic Rescue Unit
(GNARU) training.
Set up in 2016, the unit
prepares for responding to
drownings and heart
attacks.
Without official statistics,
it's difficult to know
how many people die each
year from drowning in
Ghana.
But the waters of the
Gulf of Guinea are strong,
the currents deadly-and
many people don't know
how to swim.
A former lifeguard in
Britain, Felix Uzor decided
to create GNARU after
witnessing the fatal
drowning of a three-yearold
girl on Labadi beach,
one of the most popular
beaches in Accra.
"The country doesn't
provide a state rescue system,"
Uzor explains. "Most
swimming areas... record
high levels of drowning,
especially during holidays."
Today the unit is mostly
comprised of employees
from Ghana's national disaster
management organisation,
soldiers from the
navy and firefighters.
"Although there is no
salary for this job, I'm
motivated," said Danso
Oteng Prince, a volunteer
whose day job is with the
navy.
"Because if I can swim
and others can't, then it's
good to help save lives."
Sri Lankan President Maithripala
Sirisena Wednesday reduced the
responsibilities of Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe as a power
struggle worsened within their
uneasy coalition.
Sirisena took away the central
bank, the policy-making National
Operations Room and several other
institutions from the control of Wickremesinghe,
who had held them
since coming to power in January
2015.
The changes were published in a
government gazette notice issued
Wednesday which transferred the
responsibilities to Finance Minister
Mangala Samaraweera.
There was no official explanation
for why the Central Bank of Sri Lanka
had been taken away from the
prime minister's control. In 2015 a
central bank governor appointed by
Wickremesinghe, Arjuna Mahendran,
was accused of insider trading.
Sirisena appointed a special
inquiry which cleared Wickremesinghe
of any wrongdoing. But
Mahendran was held responsible for
passing sensitive information to his
bond-dealer son-in-law Arjun Aloysius
to make $75 million in undue
profits.
Sirisena joined hands with Wickremesinghe's
United National Party
(UNP) to oust strongman president
Mahinda Rajapakse in January 2015
after a decade in power.
But since then their alliance has
fractured, with Sirisena clashing with
free-market champion Wickremesinghe
over economic policy.
Relations worsened further after
their coalition did badly in local government
elections last month.
The president blamed the premier
for their electoral setbacks.
Earlier this year, Sirisena publicly
lambasted Wickremesinghe and his
UNP, saying they had mismanaged
the economy. Sirisena said the current
government was also more corrupt
than the former regime they toppled
together. A section within Sirisena's
party supports a no-confidence
move against Wickremesinghe slated
for April 4. However, the UNP is the
largest single party in the 225-member
assembly and commands a comfortable
majority with the help of
allies.
The premier could be brought
down only if Sirisena can unite his
own fractured Sri Lanka Freedom
Party and engineer defections from
Wickremesinghe's UNP.
Tensions between the coalition
partners have also escalated over
Sirisena's attempts to extend his
presidential term by one more year
till 2021, a move that was rejected by
the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The UNP has suggested that it may
go it alone at the next general election
in 2020.
Presidential powers to sack the
government and call early elections
were removed through a constitutional
amendment introduced in the
early days of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe
coalition.
Pakistan’s first transgender
news anchor makes headlines
A Pakistani TV channel has put the country's
first transgender news anchor on the air, a
watershed cultural moment for the marginalised
community in the deeply conservative
country.
Marvia Malik, a former model who
appeared on the Lahore-based private
broadcaster Kohenoor for the first time last
Friday, told AFP she has received "unprecedented
love and support" since landing the
job.
"My family never accepted or owned me,"
she said, adding that the rift drove her to
seek a better future in Lahore, Pakistan's cultural
capital.
"Here I received unprecedented love and
support from everyone that I never got from
my own family," she said, adding that the
positive response only escalated once she
went on air for the daily broadcast.
Transgenders-also known in Pakistan as
"khawajasiras", an umbrella term denoting a
third sex that includes transsexuals, transvestites
and eunuchs-have long fought for
their rights in the patriarchal Islamic country.
In 2009 Pakistan became one of the first
countries in the world to legally recognise a
third sex. Last year the first transgender
passport was issued, while several have also
run in elections.
But they live daily as pariahs, often
reduced to begging and prostitution, subjected
to extortion and discrimination or targeted
for violence.
Malik, who declined to confirm her age to
AFP but is reportedly around 21, said she
hoped to use her platform to urge people to
treat one another as human beings first,
without discrimination.
A journalism graduate from Punjab University,
she said she hopes eventually to
enter politics herself or form a non-governmental
organisation aimed at promoting
gender rights.
If she becomes "financially sound", she
added, she may even seek to establish her
own TV channel.
Many transgenders in Pakistan earn their
living as dancers at weddings or parties and,
sometimes, in more clandestine ways.
Her employers at Kohenoor admitted that
Malik had stunned them while interviewing
for the job by turning a question around on
them.
"She asked, 'Would you want to see me a
beggar, a sex worker or dancing at the cultural
festivals, or give me a respectable job in
your channel?'" news director Bilal Ashraf
told AFP.
"Her question stunned us really, and we
had no reply."
It forced them to "devise a policy to welcome,
accept and own everyone in our channel
without any discrimination," he said,
adding: "We don't bother with where our
channel will stand in the ratings by doing
this."
A Pakistani TV channel has put the country's first transgender news anchor
Marvia Malik on the air, a watershed cultural moment for the marginalised
community in the deeply conservative country.
Photo: Internet
Egypt votes
for third day
with eyes on
turnout
Egyptians were voting on
Wednesday in the third day
of a presidential election
guaranteed to give a second
term to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,
leaving turnout as the only
contest.
Voters trickled into polling
stations as authorities
encouraged them to show up
in high numbers.
The country's election
authority warned it would
implement a law fining people
who do not vote 500
pounds (about $30), saying
that not voting "serves the
interests of people who hate
the country," state television
reported.
Sisi won his first term in
2014, a year after the former
army chief ousted his
Islamist predecessor
Mohamed Morsi following
mass protests against him.
He won that election with
96.9 percent of the vote,
against a left-wing candidate.
This time, his serious
rivals withdrew citing
restrictions, were sidelined
or arrested. His sole rival is
the little-known Moussa
Mostafa Moussa, himself a
Sisi supporter.
Prime Minister Sherif
Ismail urged voters to participate,
saying on Tuesday it
"is a national duty for all citizens."
State television showed
voters at different polling
stations and played patriotic
music.
Some 60 million people in
Egypt, the most populated
Arab country, were registered
to vote on March 26,
27, and 28. Official results
are expected on April 2.
In the 2014 election,
turnout reached 37 percent
after the polling, initially
planned for two days, was
extended by a day.
Opposition urged boycott
-
The election authority
denied polling would be
extended for a fourth day in
this election.
Opposition groups had
called for a boycott of the
election which they labelled
a facade. There were no
presidential debates and
Sisi himself did not appear
in any official campaign
events, although he spoke at
a number of ceremonies.
Russia holds first funerals for
victims of shopping mall blaze
Russia on Wednesday held a national day of
mourning and buried the first victims of a
fire that ravaged
a busy shopping centre and killed 64 people,
most of them children.
Flags were lowered and entertainment
events cancelled three days after Sunday's
devastating blaze in the western Siberian city
of Kemerovo. On Tuesday thousands of people
had gathered in Moscow and other cities
to mourn the victims and vent their anger at
the authorities after children were trapped in
a locked cinema as the inferno spread
through the mall. The youngest victim was a
two-year-old boy, while at least 19 of the 64
people who perished were under 10, said a
list published by regional authorities. In total
41 children died in the fire.
A criminal investigation has been opened
and five people have been detained over the
incident. President Vladimir Putin-who was
this month re-elected for a fourth term-on
Wednesday asked ministers to observe a
minute's silence and called for safety checks
at similar shopping centres.
"We need to look at leisure and shopping
centres of this kind and this should not be
done just on the spur of the moment-it is
absolutely evident that safety must be
ensured," Putin said.
He visited Kemerovo on Tuesday after a
huge outpouring of public grief and criticism
and upbraided officials at a televised meeting.
Russian prosecutors have already
ordered checks into fire safety at all shopping
centres with leisure facilities.
Putin did not call for legislative changes,
saying current laws should be sufficient to
ensure public safety. But many observers
said the Kremlin's reaction was insufficient
and belated. "The authorities were late in
announcing mourning," political analyst
Abbas Gallyamov told Vedomosti business
daily.
"Possibly they didn't want to spoil the positive
mood after the elections and there was
hope that the tragedy would not turn out to
be so large-scale."
Officials have said that multiple safety
rules were violated, the fire alarm system
was not working and staff did not follow correct
emergency procedures. Witnesses
reported that one cinema had been locked
from the outside. Regional authorities have
come in for particular criticism, since the veteran
regional governor Aman Tuleyev-who
lost a young relative in the fire-has not visited
the scene nor met angry residents.
On Tuesday, Kemerovo residents packed
the main square in a rare protest, some holding
placards and shouted slogans calling for
the sacking of Tuleyev and Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
refused to comment Wednesday on the
regional authorities' actions, saying that
"Putin has said that it is hardly appropriate
to issue hasty judgements".
While Putin was at the scene in Kemerovo,
he did not come onto the square to meet the
protesters, but talked to a group of locals separately.
Teacher tried to save others -
In the Kemerovo region, relatives held the
first funerals for victims as regional emergencies
minister Alexander Mamontov said
27 bodies have been identified.
Several hundred people attended the
funeral of 57-year-old Nadezhda Agarkova
and her two grandchildren Konstantin, 8,
and Maria, 10, who died in one of the mall's
cinemas.
"These are our children, our pupils," the
children's teacher Svetlana Sazheva told
NTV television outside the church, saying
the children who died were "top students
and well brought up."
Dozens of pupils of Tatiana Darsaliya, an
English teacher who died, attended a memorial
service in a city cathedral, RIA Novosti
reported. She had saved her daughter from
the burning cinema but died after going back
in to save others, pupils said.
Television broadcasts carried a black ribbon
on the screen or a message "Kemerovowe
mourn."
Russia on Wednesday held a national day of mourning and buried the first
victims of a fire that ravaged a busy shopping centre and killed 64 people,
most of them children.
Photo: Internet
Poland buys US Patriot antimissile
system for $4.8 bn
Poland signed on Wednesday a $4.75
billion (3.8-billion-euro) contract to
purchase a US-made Patriot anti-missile
system, a move that is likely to irk
Russia as East-West tensions rise.
The weapons deal is the largest-ever
by NATO-member Poland. The first
deliveries are expected in 2022 with the
system due to become operational a
year later.
The Patriot is a mobile air-defence
system made by US defence firm
Raytheon with elements from aerospace
firms Lockheed Martin and
Northrup Grumman. It is designed to
intercept tactical ballistic missiles, lowflying
cruise missiles and aircraft.
Moscow has complained about the
prospect of the deployment of Patriot
systems in Poland and Romania, which
it says violates a 1987 arms treaty and
could be tailored to shoot missiles at
Russia.
Tensions with Moscow have been
high since the Ukraine crisis and Kremlin's
annexation of Crimea in 2014 and
the current diplomatic spat over the
nerve agent attack on a former Russian
spy in Britain has done nothing to calm
matters.
NATO ally Romania approved the
purchase of a Patriot system worth
nearly four billion dollars last November.
Warsaw insists the system's
deployment as part of its mediumrange
"Wisla" programme is purely
defensive in nature.
"We are signing today a contract to
deliver a modern system that has
proven itself in numerous countries
and thanks to which we are joining an
elite group of states which have an efficient
weapon that guarantees security,"
Polish Defence Minister Mariusz
Blaszczak told reporters at the signing
ceremony at a radar production facility
in the Polish capital Warsaw. In February,
Poland's neighbour and NATO ally
Lithuania accused Russia of permanently
deploying nuclear-capable
Iskander ballistic missiles to its Kaliningrad
exclave on the Baltic that also
shares border with Poland.
Poland's President Andrzej Duda
dubbed the missile deal "historic" and
told reporters at the signing ceremony
in Warsaw that US President Donald
Trump said Poland could expect "good
terms" during his visit to Poland in July
of last year.
Last week Poland signed a 10-year
offset deal ahead of the final agreement
on the Patriot system under which US
investment in Poland will help compensate
for the cost of the big-ticket
purchase.
Offset deals with Raytheon and Lockheed
Martin Global are worth a respective
53 million and 172 million euros.
US Ambassador to Poland Paul W.
Jones on Wednesday called the Patriot
deal a "milestone for Poland and
NATO", adding that the NATO ally was
"joining 15 countries" equipped with
Patriot anti-missile systems that are
"the foundation of US missile defence
and compatible with NATO". Jones
added that "in April we'll begin negotiations
on phase two, and in phase two,
Poland will get the most modern 360-
degree radar, but also more missiles
and batteries."
The first phase of the deployment
under the contract signed Wednesday
provides for the delivery of two batteries
with the IBCS system.
These include four AN / MPQ-65
radars, four ECS engagement control
stations, six EOC engagement operation
centres and sixteen M903 launch
systems as well as 208PAC-3MSE missiles
and 12 IBCS radio lines. US Vice
President Mike Pence in July raised the
possibility of deploying Patriots in
nearby Estonia.
Baltic NATO members bordering
Russia hope the alliance will agree on
additional air defence capabilities for
the region during a Brussels summit in
July.
Last year, NATO deployed four
multinational battalions to Poland and
the Baltic states as tripwires against
possible Russian adventurism, while
the US military sent a Patriot battery to
Lithuania for drills.
UK billboards call
for 'People's Vote'
on Brexit deal
Anti-Brexit group Best for Britain on
Wednesday unveiled a nationwide billboard
campaign as part of a bid to force
another public vote on leaving the
European Union.The campaign will
also include posters, social media and
other digital advertisements aimed at
both Leave and Remain voters.
Billboards will this week appear at
London hubs Leicester Square, Westfield
Stratford and Canary Wharf as
well as in Birmingham, Manchester
and Liverpool. The campaign comes as
Britain begins a one-year countdown
from Thursday to its scheduled departure
date from the bloc.
Advertisements calling for a "People's
Vote" on the final Brexit deal will also
appear in the Evening Standard and
The Guardian newspapers. "The campaign
is aimed at involving the public
into the campaign calling for a public
vote on the Brexit deal," Best for Britain
said in a statement.