TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #54
Trump travels the globe … elections, of sorts, from Zimbabwe to Gabon … Prigozhin's legacy as Africa copes … a big Little World Series … cartoonist Milko plots Trump's escape.
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.
How others see America
Suddenly, it’s all about Trump
With a single stroke, now the world is beginning to take notice. The self-taught Brazilian cartoonist Fred Ozanan has captured Donald Trump snagged in the stripes of the American flag during the week he finally had his mug shot taken for the first time—a snapshot that has quite literally made its way around the world. And the first such photo ever taken of an American president.
From Paris to Tel Aviv, Munich and Milan to Hong Kong and Singapore, the same dour figure stared back at billions of viewers across the planet from homepages, then front pages of media around the world—within minutes, at times seconds, of its appearance in America.
"Donald Trump surrenders" … "presents himself to justice"…. "shows up at Atlanta jail for arrest, 'a travesty of justice'" ….. "turns himself in to authorities" … "faces himself in jail" ….
And then there's the most graphic description of all from Spain's El Pais: "Prisoner PO1135809: Trump, booked in Georgia for his attempts to alter the election results. The police describe him as a white, blond male, weighing 97.5 kilos and 192 centimeters tall. The invocation of Trump sets fire to the debate of the Republican candidates for the primaries of 2024."
What else is to be said about America from the world's perspective in this third week of August 2023?
How others see the World
More elections
Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world, Zimbabwe and Gabon are being tabulated.
Zimbabwe
UPDATE: Late Saturday, Emmerson Mnangagwa claimed victory as his opposition claimed widespread fraud and election manipulation. The government-controlled Zimbabwe Electoral Commission reported Mnangagwa won 52.6 percent of the vote compared with 44 percent for his leading opponent, Nelson Chamisa, who promptly vowed to challenge the results.
It's pretty clear by now who won the presidential and parliamentary elections—the same party, Zanu-PF, that’s been running this African autocracy for the past 43 years. Some 16 years ago, a coup d'état removed one dictator, Robert Mugabe, who'd ruled unchallenged. Now another, Emmerson Mnangagwa of the same Zanu party, looks to be president for another five years.
As Zvamaida Murwira reported in Harare newspaper The Herald: "ZANU PF is poised for a landslide Parliamentary election victory after it secured more than 109 legislative seats out of the 171 constituency results that were announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC)’s provincial and constituency command centres across the country. The opposition Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC), led by Mr Nelson Chamisa, is a distant second with 62 seats. There is a total of 209 constituencies…Zanu PF requires just 31 more seats for it to land a two thirds-majority."
That is a frightening prospect for any who were looking for some movement toward a return to any form of democratic government in the nation once known as Rhodesia. It means Mnangagwa will be in a position to rewrite the nation's constitution to remove the two-term limit that was imposed after the ouster of Mugabe.
With a powerful and vocal opposition, that is expected to win a substantial majority in the capital city, Harare, when all votes are in, the prospects of a violent outcome can hardly be excluded. Election observers warned of a "climate of fear." As Lord Oates, co-chair of the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Zimbabwe, wrote in Euronews:
"Faced with triple-digit inflation, a sinking currency, and billions of external debt, Mnangagwa can barely pay teachers or nurses, or provide food to almost half of the population living in rural areas who are at risk of hunger. He has responded to his growing unpopularity by harassing and detaining opposition activists, trade unionists and journalists. The opposition, Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), fears a rerun of the last presidential elections, in 2018, when a widely predicted opposition victory crumbled to dust."
Equally unfortunate is another reality—a desperate debt crisis. On the line are World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans as both bodies have asserted that a free and fair election is a pre-condition even for talks on any financial bailout.
Gabon
As the German news agency Deutsche Welle put it, "The Bongo family has ruled Gabon for [56] years. Saturday's presidential election isn't expected to change that." Some 850,000 voters were eligible to cast their ballots on a single paper ballot under the nation's new electoral system carefully tailored to, what else? Keep a Bongo in power in a nation that has never known a ruler with any different name.
This will be Ali Bongo's third seven-year term as president, taking over on the death of his father Omar Bongo in 2009. Thirteen other candidates were on the ballot. This time, the opposition, divided into six groups, said they'd withdraw in favor of Albert Ondo Ossa, an economist and former education minister, in hopes of unseating Bongo and preventing violence.
"We must have elections without death," Albert Ondo Ossa said. "Gabon and the Gabonese people have paid with their blood. It's now or never, we must manage the country differently. Gabon is not the property of the Bongos."
As the polls closed, however, Ali Bongo announced a nationwide curfew and suspended all internet access "for security reasons." As the BBC reported: "Foreign media have been banned from setting foot in the country to cover Saturday's vote, says the campaign group Reporters Without Borders. No international election monitors from the EU or UN were present either." Foreign news agencies including Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Press have been using locally-based reporters.
And then there's Prigozhin
There's a whole lot at stake with the assassination in Russia of Yevgeny Prigozhin. (Can we really call it anything else, no matter how Vladimir Putin tries to spin it?)
As it happens, some of the biggest and most immediate stakes are in Africa, where Prigozhin's Wagner Group has moved in on a half dozen nations scattered across the Sahel, and where so much is up in the air. One of Prigozhin's last moves seems to have been on Niger—the latest country where a military junta has seized control. The suggestion? Russian mercenaries might be quite welcome indeed to fill the vacuum left by French forces invited to depart. But to whom to extend such an invitation now?
I'll be dealing with all this and more in 10 days in American Purpose, the great magazine created by Francis Fukuyama and Jeffrey Gedmin and edited by Carolyn Stewart. And at 1 pm on August 31, I'll be moderating a panel on zoom for the Africa Center of the Atlantic Council: "Time For Choices in Niger." Stand by for all those links.
Meanwhile, Sylvain Itte, the French ambassador to Niger, has been ordered to pack his bags and was given 48 hours to get outa Dodge. As London's Guardian observed, "The ultimatum was rejected by France’s foreign ministry, which said it did not recognise the junta’s authority." Of course, the junta had said the reason for the expulsion was "the envoy’s refusal to respond to an invitation to meet Niger’s new foreign minister." In Paris, this is how the Quai d'Orsay responded: “The putschists do not have the authority to make this request, the ambassador’s approval coming solely from the legitimate elected Nigerien authorities," most of whom are either under house arrest or have fled.
Ambassador Sylvain Itte presents his credentials to the President, in better times
With disarray at the top of the Wagner group, it's also not clear just how neighboring countries' juntas—most more or less dependent on Wagner forces to bolster their feeble militaries—might react to demands by the community of democratic nations of West Africa to stand down and restore President Mohamed Bazoum to power or face armed intervention. And so, the beat goes on.
Instead, how about China?
Even before Prigozhin took off on his ill-fated final plane ride, word began to leak out that at least some African nations might just be hedging their bets on the Kremlin.
Jevans Nyabiage reported in the Hong Kong daily, South China Morning Post that "Africa sets sights on China as a top destination for military training. Professional military training is helping to strengthen relationships between China and African countries, in turn extending Beijing’s influence. One Chinese military training college includes among its African alumni 10 defence chiefs, eight defence ministers, and several former presidents."
Nyabiage further points out: "President Emmerson Mnangagwa…was one of Zimbabwe’s military chiefs who trained in Nanjing and was part of the core team in his country’s liberation struggle.
"The PLA Command College in Nanjing includes among its African alumni 10 defence chiefs, eight defence ministers, and former presidents Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joao Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania….China is strategically trying to export their military culture and power architecture into Africa. And part of this is to expand their military training to African countries.
And then, there's Curaçao: the winner….
Just a few miles from where The Week That Was is being assembled, a powerful team of Caribbean baseball giants took down one of the reigning teams of the international sport. Chinese Taipei is how officials of the Little League World Series, in its championship weekend at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, have chosen to call the young base runners from Taiwan. But whatever their name, they were unable to hold off the remarkable squad from the Caribbean island nation of Curaçao who came up with a shutout 2-0 victory.
As it happens, the afternoon this Saturday was a replay of the same contest last year that also saw Curaçao outlast Taiwan, that time 1-0. The next day, however, Hawaii rolled over Curacao in the world finals, 13-3. This year, on Sunday, Curaçao will go against the American champions from El Segundo, California, again seeking the world title.
UPDATE: On Sunday, Curaçao rejoiced when a grand slam home run in the fifth inning tied the score 5-5, only to have their dream snatched from them yet again with a solo, walkoff homerun by El Segundo in the bottom of the sixth (and last inning in Little League Baseball).
Finally, there’s Milko….
The Italian cartoonist Milko imagines just one way Donald Trump might escape American justice.
Milko Dalla Battista, who draws simply under his first name, is an Italian cartoonist, born in Turin on 12 April 1963 but has lived in Sanremo, Liguria, for over 15 years. As he likes to describe his debut: "I crept into the editorial staff of a journalism school in Turin. The director was Bruno Geraci, for years at the editorial staff of TG3 Piemonte. Tons of cartoons in [my] first collaborations with satirical inserts respectively of l'Unità and la Repubblica. I thank both editors for their infinite patience and kindness in expressing their opinion on what was sent (I would have been much less kind).
He has various personal exhibitions to his credit in Italy and France as well as collaborations with a dozen periodicals, currently appearing regularly in Libex,m directed by Thierry Vissol, and Buduàr, a magazine of humor and satire run by Dino Aloi and Alessandro Prevosto.
Here’s what Milko looks like:
You are most wise & perceptive….. your thoughts are ever so valued !
I can barely wrap my head around the nightmare of Trump in the last weeks of August, 2023. Why the fascination about a fascist wannabe dictator of America who is no more than a reality television personality who has grifted his way into the American psyche of the Republican Party having the descriptive personality of a malignant narcissist, caring nothing for this country or its people who have been hoodwinked to say the least. To imagine how long he posed in front of a mirror to practice the menacing mugshot that went around the world is disgusting. We have a mighty fight on our hands to defeat this man in the courts or at the ballot box in 15 months and it will take all the power we can muster to salvage our country from this monster. I suppose the fascination was to be expected since never in the history of this troubled nation has our fragility been so damningly exposed. That mugshot is something I never want to see in my lifetime again but will be subjected to it simply to defeat him. The cartoon was magnificent. I can hope it is predictive of his behavior since he does not tolerate “losers” or “suckers” and would not do well incarcerated. Even the discussion of how he might function as president from jail is absurd beyond belief.
It seems to me that Prizgozhin might have anticipated his untimely demise. Appears to be Putin’s way of dealing with those who oppose him. As for the nations of Africa and elsewhere struggling for stability and human rights in their
own parts of the world, China is seizing an opportunity to assert influence if I have parsed your reviews correctly. Our world is struggling in so many places. With so very many people living on the edge, it is heartbreaking 💔 to read. Thank you for keeping us informed. Best regards to you and your cartoonist!