Current World Affairs: September 2020
- Japan: Towering Personalities in Succession RacePoisoned Russian Opposition Leader Recuperating
- Pressure Mounts on Belarus President to Stand Down
- Mali Has Enough of Bungling Politicians
- Czech Breaches ‘One China’ Policy
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Change of Guard in Japan
Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe has announced plans to resign over health problems. Attention has now turned to his possible successors. However, there is yet no clear consensus on the likely candidate (AFP/Agence France Presse, August 28).
Longtime German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who worked with Abe during both of his spells in office, sent him a message which underlined his personality as a source of stability in the very volatile Western Pacific region, and his unique standing among world leaders, saying he was “always a constructive and reliable partner in our common commitment to multilateralism, free trade, peaceful conflict resolution and rules-based order,” adding: for the future, I wish you a swift and complete recovery and personal well-being.” (AP/August 29).
The political heavyweights of this ancient island nation [with the world’s oldest monarchy] are now lined up.
One of the top candidates is the current deputy PM and finance minister Taro Aso, quite old at 79 and gaffe-prone. He is not only an old-timer of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party but was himself from 2008-09. He has been Abe’s deputy since 2012. He was unceremoniously booted from office in 2009, after the party’s historic defeat.
Shigeru Ishiba, the former defence minister, is a popular choice among the general public but is not so well thought of by ruling lawmakers. The 63-old former banker is the scion of a political family and seen as a strong orator with significant parliamentary experience, having been elected at just 29.
Like Abe, Ishiba is a defence hawk who wants to strengthen the country’s ‘Self Defence Forces’ in the restraining pacifist constitution. He has even considered the possibility of reconsidering Japan’s policy of forbidding stationing nuclear weapons on its home soil. He has served in several Cabinet posts.
Yoshihide Suga, 71, a major power player, rose to national prominence as a trusted Abe adviser and was the key proponent of his second bid for the premiership after a disastrous first term.
After Abe’s return to power in 2012, he appointed Suga as chief cabinet secretary, a powerful position in Japan that coordinates the efforts of government ministries and the ruling party. He is also often the face of the government, delivering regular press briefings. He is a rare self-made parliamentarian in a ruling party filled with hereditary politicians and former technocrats. He is the eldest son of a strawberry farmer and moved to Tokyo after high school and worked odd jobs to put himself through night college. He won a lower house seat in 1996.
Fumio Kishida, former foreign minister currently serves as the ruling party’s policy chief and is presumed to be Abe’s preferred successor. However, his soft-spoken, low-key presence and alleged lack of charisma may prove to be a stumbling block.
He was elected from Hiroshima and worked hard to invite US President Barack Obama for a historic visit to the city that was devastated by the dropping of the world’s first war-time atomic bomb under President Truman.
He was also credited with helping to cement the bilateral Japanese-South Korean deal meant to end the long-running dispute over the use of sex slaves [or euphemistic: ‘comfort women’] during the Japanese occupation.
Taro Kono, the Defence Minister was once considered an ambitious and independent, but the 57-year-old has since toned down his rhetoric in recent years as a key member of Abe’s cabinet. He was educated as Georgetown University and travelled extensively as foreign minister, 2017-2018 before taking the defence portfolio. He is seen as close to both Aso and Suga. He has a lively Twitter presence both in Japanese and English.
Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Recovering after Poisoning
German specialist doctors are treating prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for a suspected case of grave poisoning at Berlin’s famous Charite’ hospital (AP/Associated Press, August 28).
Navalny has widely investigated corruption in Russia. He is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic and fell suddenly ill on a flight back from Tomsk, Siberia to Moscow. He had drunk tea at the airport. He was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after an emergency landing. Strangely, the doctors there pronounced that there was no poison in his body!
This was firmly contradicted by the Berlin doctors, who established the presence of a poisonous substance that inhibits vital bodily functions. They established that while Navalny’s “condition remains serious, there is no immediate danger to his life.” However, due to the severity of the poisoning, “it remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects.”
Navalny, 44, is an energizing force for the Russian opposition, conducting investigations that expose corruption and mobilize against Putin’s regime. He attempted to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from doing so. A fraudulent conviction was the retribution for his activism.
It’s the second time that Navalny has possibly been poisoned. He was hospitalized in July after being jailed for calling for street protests.
According to experts, this time around the poisoning was meant to kill. It is also highly suspicious because a number of Kremlin foes have been poisoned or killed during Putin’s 20 years in power (NPR/National Public Radio, August 20).
There was the targeted killing of Kremlin critic and former spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died after drinking tea that was laced with polonium-200 in a London hotel.
Another high profile case was the use of Novichok nerve agent to poison former KGB spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK.
Because of his repeated successes in exposing corruption among high-ranking government officials and state-controlled companies, Navalny had a long list of enemies in high places. Anyone of these ill-wishers could have done the evil deed.
However, Semyon Kochkin, an activist and ally of Navalny insists that it would be “impossible” to poison Navalny without Putin’s approval.
He added that the ongoing unrest and public anger over the hotly disputed presidential election in next-door neighbour Belarus had made Russian leaders very afraid of a similar development in Russia itself.
“If Navalny were to die, it would be a seismic event in Russian politics,” according to NPR’s Lucian Kim. “It would be a huge loss for the Russian opposition. What Navalny has done or accomplished is really energized a new generation of Russians who have only known Putin as their president. And Navalny has shown them how to organize at the grassroots level, how to investigate corruption and how to harness social media also for fundraising purposes.”
It is symptomatic that the loud-mouthed, utterly corrupt and cowardly Donald Trump – at this moment in time still the putative POTUS – has kept silent about this ominous development. He is after all beholden to Russian oligarchs for massive financial infusion into his private commercial undertakings. This is also a prime reason why he wants to be re-elected –to dodge culpability for his infinite number of wrongdoings and criminal acts.
Minsk Matters
Matters are coming to a head in Minsk, the Belarus capital. In the ongoing protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, social media have contributed enormously in organizing and sustaining them. Public mobilization has gone far beyond traditional opposition supporters and social media-aware young people to embrace broad swathes of society united by a burning desire for a change in government (Oxford Analytica, August 28). Lukashenko is in the horns of a dilemma: he can neither placate his once subject people nor brutally suppress them.
Lukashenko has responded by wild accusations and appealing to Russia [which claims supremacy in the neighbourhood] for help. He has also become more aggressive and erratic. He blames the protests on outside interference and has instructed the police to stop the street demonstrations – a monumental and thankless task.
Last Sunday, tens of thousands again took to the streets, facing off against riot police. Shocked by police violence – and probably buoyed by their own successes – protesters have lost their fear. People have also come out to demonstrate in Grodno and Brest, both near the border to Poland, the latter site of the historic treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) among Soviet Russia, Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Protesters chanted “disgrace” and “go away”. Many mocked Lukashenko on his 66th birthday carrying a cockroach puppet and chanting “happy birthday, you rat!” (BBC, August 31).
Putin congratulated Lukashenko and invited him to Moscow [perhaps he goes and doesn’t return – a most convenient and elegant solution!]. He has also formed a ‘police reserve force’ to intervene in Belarus if necessary, although “it won’t be used until the situation gets out of control.”
Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov has now elaborated that Belarus’ security forces and the country’s leadership were keeping the situation under control in what he called “quite an assured manner” (Reuters, August 31).
But not for long. Belarus opposition leader Ms Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya presently in self-imposed exile in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where she fled to escape capture, has been invited to address the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) this coming Friday.
She will speak via video link at the invitation of Estonia, another Baltic state, currently a non-permanent member of the world body’s executive branch. This is a major foreign policy victory for the opposition. It also illustrates a basic fact of international relations that small nations can play a crucial role in times of crises.
Germany has summoned the Belarus ambassador over revocations of accreditations of journalists. BBC has condemned “in the strongest possible terms this stifling of independent journalism.”
Lukashenko’s presidency is thus badly shaken but remains in place as he is not expected to resign voluntarily. Although the mass protests have unified much of the population, there is still no ready mechanism for a peaceful transition if Lukashenko refuses to go peacefully [with only one single option: Russia].
In such shaky circumstances, three future scenarios are possible:
First, the least likely is Lukashenko’s immediate departure and fresh elections.
Second, Lukashenko could impose a still harder line rule akin to a military dictatorship, resulting in thousands of detentions and possible Russian intervention. This would result in international sanctions and isolation for Belarus. This would be extremely unstable and singularly difficult to maintain for any extent of time. The possible turmoil not only in Belarus but also Russia and the immediate neighbourhood cannot be imagined.
Mali: Hope After the Coup
The military coup in Mali raised alarm across West Africa, a region under severe threat for years under Islamist militants of various hues. It can ill afford more instability, yet in Mali itself, it’s largely seen as a harbinger of progress (Bloomberg, August 29).
According to Marc-Andre Boiswert, an independent researcher in civil-military relations in the Sahel [the vast bio-geographic, semi-arid zone of North Africa, to the south of the Sahara, and the Sudanian savanna to the south], the notion of a coercive coup’ has been present in African coups since independence, but there’s been an upsurge since then.
Malians have realized that politicians haven’t been able to solve the country’s problems. They believe that a military-led transition will be stricter, more rigorous, and will put people to work. Above all, such shameless corruption as the government buying socks for its soldiers at a staggering US $ Dollar 63 a pair will not happen!
Some see last month’s weeks of public unrest more as a popular uprising than a coup per se, with the military intervening as the final act – so to say, the culmination to incessant calls to finally do something. A vast majority of Malians wanted a mixed civil-military government to restore order in the transition period. Consequently, the junta also seeks a referendum on constitutional changes to bolster the credibility of the political system.
China Reacts Robustly to Violation of ‘One China’ Policy
China’s second-highest-ranking official on external relations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has warned that Czech Senate Speaker Milos Vystrcil will “pay a heavy price” for violating the ‘One China’ principle by making an official visit to Taiwan, according to the Chinese foreign ministry (Reuters, August 31).
The highest-ranking official in foreign relations is, in fact, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Central Committee, and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Commission. This is in tune with the Chinese doctrine of the supremacy of the party over state institutions. This is, of course, China’s own domestic matter. However, Nepal’s Communists have tried to implement this too, and we have to resist this attempt tooth and nail.
The Nepal Communist Party’s (NCP) hold on the country is that of a Hydra-headed monster with its tentacles reaching far and wide. Its ideological hold is such that it has even managed to thwart the progress of the ‘Nepal Compact/Millennium Challenge Corporation’, although that is indubitable in the national interest, and recognized as such by certain progressive nationalists like Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali.
Vystrcil arrived in the capital Taipei on Sunday. He said his visit would promote business links, and that the Czech Republic would not bow to Beijing’s objections.
The Czechs have a history of being resolute and defiant. Way back in 1968, the Czechoslovak Communist Party and its First Secretary, Alexander Dubcek defied the entire Soviet block by introducing innovative reforms during the famous ‘Prag Spring’ and were rewarded by being invaded by the armies of the Soviet Empire – Russians, East Germans, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian [Peter Calvocoressi: World Politics, 1945-2000; 2010, pp. 309 ff.]
Wang, who is currently on a visit to Germany, admonished: “We will make him pay a heavy price for his short-sighted behaviour and political opportunism.” At the same time, this was also an exercise in damage control in order to deter other countries from attempting such an initiative.
Wang reminded the world that challenging the One China principle was tantamount to “making oneself the enemy of 1.4 billion Chinese people,” and the Chinese government and people will not tolerate such “open provocation” by the Czech Senate speaker and the anti-Chinese forces behind him.
The ‘One China’ doctrine refers to Mainland China and Taiwan both belonging to “one China”, a position that requires all countries it has diplomatic relations with to abide.
China considers Taiwan a breakaway province ineligible for direct state-to-state relations.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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