TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #66

Netherland’s nightmare (& Europe’s), as well as Argentina, Madagascar, Ecuador …Gaza’s costs…China’s hopes…Abe Lincoln’s Thanksgiving 1863 and Evan Gershkowitz aspirationally.

This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its mission to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world. But first we begin with our premier mission—elections everywhere! Coming to you today, a final weekend, from Paris …..

Elections!

Netherlands’ Nightmare….

May well be Europe’s, too. But Geert Wilders, the most extreme candidate elected so far in Europe who has talked of abolishing all mosques and barring any Islamic immigration, not to mention exiting the European Union, has to assemble a coalition. Still, the center-right Paris daily Le Figaro enthused in its headline: “Netherlands: the far right at the gates of power,” reporter Anne Rovan adding, “At the end of a campaign as short as it was crazy, the far right won the general elections.” Of course for some crazy-good, for many others just plain crazy.

On Wednesday, Wilders and his Freedom (PVV) party shattered all predictions and every poll, surging to capture 37 seats in the 150 member Dutch parliament, more than doubling its current representation (17) and far outdistancing the 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). To capture even a bare majority of 76 seats would mean corralling at least two and perhaps more allies. The most obvious, the VVD, would still put him 15 votes shy, and most others are determinedly pro-EU and anti-NEXIT, not to mention believers in religious freedom and rule of law.

The morning after the nightmare—and continuing through the weekend and likely far beyond—there began the talks, the jockeying, the palavering that moderates across the continent hoped desperately would lead to someone other than Wilders to lead the country.

Should Wilders arrive at his goal—with a lead in the number of seats his party has snagged, he has first dibs at trying to form a government—the fear is that coupled with the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, a critical mass would begin to build that could derail some of Europe’s core plans. The toxic views he has spread at home will only intensify on the broader pan-European stage.

The glass half full scenario: In case Wilders orders a NEXIT vote, enough Dutch have seen the horrors visited on Britain as a consequence of BREXIT that they appear likely right now to reject this wild idea. During the campaign, Wilders had already stepped back from the utterly radical idea of shuttering every Dutch mosque, though in 2019 he had proposed a contest for cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad—with barely a nod to the time in 2005 when Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of Muhammad that sparked demonstrations across the Muslim world.

At the peak of that controversy, my wife and I, visiting Saudi Arabia, were chatting with the wife of the Danish ambassador in one of Riyadh’s top malls when she suddenly broke off and bolted into the nearest boutique. We’d spotted a team of two morality police approaching. “I just didn’t want any more problems,” she confessed sheepishly as she feared her hair was not adequately covered.

Now, we’re talking a lot more than hijabs. For years, Orban alone has sought to throw sand in the gears of any EU-wide initiative that threatened to derail Vladimir Putin’s aims, most recently over Ukraine. And with new rounds of subsidies hanging in the balance, not to mention EU attitudes toward Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, these are delicate times.

Finally, there’s the continent-wide elections June 6 to 9 for the next European Parliament. A clear right-wing wave could cause enormous turmoil in Brussels and a whole new direction for Europe.

When might the Netherlands have a government? Well, the Dutch are a very patient people. The last time, it took a record-breaking 299 days.

Argentina: No waiting needed

As Andelman Unleashed reported on Monday, Argentina has no need to wait. They’ve chosen a right-wing radical pledging to take a chain saw to the nation’s entire underpinnings. Still, the nation is holding its collective breath until December 10 when Javier Milei is actually sworn into office and can move into the Casa Rosada (Pink House) and fire up his chain saw.  Indeed, as El Pais reported, Donald Trump was so excited, he rang up the president-elect and said he was coming down for a visit. No time set (yet) for his arrival.

Ecuador cartoonist Xavier Bonil, member of the Cartooning for Peace collective, has his own original take on Milei’s promised expectations and reality, when the enormity of his tasks sets in.

In the first interview he gave, however, he showed little sign of compromise, telling listeners on Neura Media that he still believed in “shock adjustment and I will put the economy in a fiscal balance,” Milei said. “As I pledged not to raise taxes, this means I will do so by cutting spending," he said, predicting some very difficult months ahead. "The fiscal balance is not under debate. I will sack the minister who spends too much."

Argentina and far beyond are waiting, anxiously.

Madagascar, almost there

Finally, this Indian ocean island nation of 29 million people, 200 miles east of Mozambique, may soon have the results in its presidential election of a week ago. Weeks of political violence led up to the vote with 10 of the 13 candidates calling for a boycott, accusing the most recent president,  Andry Rajoelina, of coopting the entire process leading to what he seemed confident would be his first-round reelection. Since he recently obtained French citizenship, there seemed to be some question whether he’d even be allowed to run for a new term. But he did.

A former DJ, he first came to power after staging a coup in 2009. Now, as the daily L’Express de Madagascar put it on Friday:

“The carrots are almost cooked. All the ballot papers from the 119 Voting Materials Census Sections have arrived at the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Alarobia and their processing is already in the home stretch. 

First results suggest the outcome is in little doubt, especially since the major opposition parties chose to boycott the entire election. As result of the boycott, barely 45% of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots.

Ecuador, in with the youth

In the midst of a fiscal crisis ballooning its national debt to two-thirds of the GDP and the world’s highest crime rate (38 homicides per 100,000 people) as criminal gangs battle for territory and trade routes to the United States in a nation with regular rolling electrical blackouts, Daniel Noboa, the 35-year-old son of five-time unsuccessful presidential candidate and banana millionaire Álvaro Noboa, took the oath of office as the nation’s leader.

His seven-minute inaugural address, itself a stunning break with tradition according to Carolina Mella, Guayaquil correspondent for the daily El Pais, contrasted sharply with the hours-long ceremonies of his predecessors. His election “demonstrated that those who see politics as a reality of extremes and revenge will not have popular support,” said Noboa. “I believe in the strength of youth, and many will find it difficult to pigeonhole me into old political or ideological paradigms.”

How others see the World

There’s still very much Gaza

Some of the hostages are coming home from Gaza, triple that number of imprisoned Palestinians are returning to their families, and Saturday morning, as the Israeli daily Haaretz reported, a further list of 14 hostages to be freed was received from Hamas in exchange for 42 Palestinian prisoners.

Nevertheless, as Cuban artist Wimar suggests so graphically, the whole truce [trève] process is just so precariously balanced on a knife edge.

The Israeli government has already promised a resumption, even intensification of attacks after the truce. As Emmanuel Fabian reported in The Times of Israel:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says that once the “short” temporary truce with the Hamas terror group ends, the military will resume the fighting “with intensity” for at least two more months.

“What you will see in the coming days is first the release of hostages. This respite will be short,” Gallant says to troops of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit.

And as for the future, even after Israel’s complete victory? They will not rest on their laurels, Fabian concludes:

Even after the period of intense fighting ends, [Gallant] says, “there will be many operations in which Shayetet 13 will have something to do, until there is no military threat from the Gaza Strip, and we will have freedom of action to do what we want at any given moment.

Still, it is not too early for some scattered experts to have begun, not unreasonably, to look at the future, and what they are seeing is quite dismaying.  A number of media organizations from Politico to The Washington Post, have taken to calling broad stretches of Gaza “a moonscape.” And the reality is the cost will be billions.  Haaretz reporter David Rosenberg wrote:

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 41,000 housing units have been destroyed and another 222,000 seriously damaged, nearly half of Gaza’s housing stock. Beit Hanoun, once a city of 52,000 people, has barely a single habitable building. About half of all school buildings and hospitals have been damaged….It is enough to look at the pictures of block-after-block rubble and aerial photographs to appreciate the scale of the destruction.

It is far too early to begin estimating the cost and time it will take to rebuild. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, put the damage to Gaza from all the previous wars between Israel and Hamas at $5.7 billion. The destruction from the current conflict dwarfs them all. But the cost of reconstruction is only half of the problem; the other half is how to create a functioning economy, which is something Gaza has not had in years.

Haaretz illustrated this report with an image that is iconic, but far from unique.

And there’s always China…on all fronts

First, Beijing remains eager to stick its oar into any available crisis. So as Hong Kong’s  South China Morning Post, increasingly reflective of Chinese official thinking, reported, “China’s poised to play peacekeeper and advocate in post-war Gaza.” How might they do that? Reporter Zhao Ziwen suggests, “Chinese troops could play a leading role in peacekeeping efforts if UN forces are allowed in the region. China could ‘exploit the cracks in the Western world’ to put pressure on political processes.”

Of course, Zhao continues, although China has 400 troops currently with United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL), a peacekeeping force in Lebanon, it is hardly the motive force there. “UNIFIL’s failure to keep the peace between Israel and Hezbollah showed its ‘incompetence’ in dealing with the issue in accordance with the UN resolution, and could make Israel doubt the UN peacekeeping force’s credibility.”

Closer to home…the Philippines?

En route home after an apparently fruitless encounter with China’s Xi Jinping in San Francisco at the APEC summit, Philippines leader Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos Jr. talked with a few Philippine journalists. As The Manila Times reported:

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the situation in the South China Sea "has become more dire" as China expands its presence in an area where multiple nations have competing territorial claims. China has shown interest in atolls and shoals that are "closer and closer" to the coast of the Philippines, with the nearest atoll about 111 kilometers away, Marcos said. “Unfortunately, I cannot report that the situation is improving,” Marcos said. “The situation has become more dire than it was before.”

Meanwhile, the Philippines may be on the cusp of reviving its membership in the International Criminal Court, suspended under Rodrigo Duterte when he was probed for “crimes allegedly committed by law enforcers carrying out [his] anti-drug campaign.”  Still, the return is not a done deal since, characteristically, Marcos “maintained his stand that ‘outsiders’ should not meddle with the country's own probe of crimes.” For Manila, though, the ICC, could be another weapon for dealing with China’s growing militarism in Manila’s own backyard.

Finally, this week, exceptionally  ….

We are pausing our closing cartoon this week for one blast from the past and one hope for the future….

From the past, there’s that extraordinary proclamation of Thanksgiving issued by President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863, in the depths of America’s most profound and lethal convulsion—the Civil War. It carries thoughts that all of our leaders and the world that still looks to America as a beacon of hope in a landscape as troubled as it has not been in generations, should reflect on and hold dear…..

And for the present…and future...there was a chair, vacant, at the Thanksgiving feast at the home of my son Philip, daughter-in-law Sarah, and grandson Woody, for one journalist who could not be with us or more importantly with his own family and loved ones. Evan Gershkowitz of The Wall Street Journal is fast nearing his 250^th day of captivity in a Russian penal colony, still without trial, still charged with the fantasy crime of treason.

All too many have forgotten this hostage to injustice and tyranny at the hands of one of the world’s reigning tyrants, Vladimir Putin. As we celebrate Evan and plead to give him something to be thankful for, let’s listen for a few moments to himself and some of his colleagues and supporters…Click on this image:

Now it’s simply time to bring Evan home. He should not spend another Thanksgiving or even Christmas or New Years in prison for a crime that is the figment of a fevered dictator’s imagination.

There are, of course, other hostages to this nightmare—Paul Whelan, an unimaginable five years behind bars, and RFE/RL’s, Alsu Kurmsheva, seized only recently but equally without a voice or prospects.