TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #7
Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe—elections big and small….A 500-year flood….Gas attack….Iran runs riot….Indian women win abortion rights….and Plantu, as ever.
[ UPDATES (below) with coup d’état in Burkina Faso, the second in eight months ]
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
In step with our pledge to cover every national election this year, we begin with Brazil (3.3 million square miles, 212 million population) this coming Sunday, and Sao Tome & Principe (386 square miles…219,000 population) last Sunday.
Going to the polls
Brazil…will he or won’t he?
Hanging like a sword of Damocles over this hard-fought contest between two deeply flawed contestants is the fear that the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro might indeed make good on his casually tossed threat of not leaving office even if he is beaten at the polls by his arch foe Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known simply as Lula).
Of course, there is much more at stake in this contest between really the two extremes—right and left—in this, South America's largest and most populous nation. The Washington Post's Gabriela Sá Pessoa and Anthony Faiola couched it simply as "a referendum on Brazil's young democracy." Indeed. Because as early as last June, taking only one of his playbook's leaves out of that of his role-model Donald Trump, Bolsonaro told his followers, "There is a new type of thief, the ones who want to steal our liberty. If necessary, we will go to war."
Lula by contrast shot back that he will recognize the outcome of the election at any cost, adding, "The United States is worried, they want to recognize the result on the very first day." Easy for him to say. Lula has a 52% to 34% lead in most polls in the first round, which would remove the need for a second round on October 30 if neither crosses the 50% threshold. Still, some 20 million voters suggest they could switch their preference at the last minute. Clearly Bolsonaro is counting on that.
Neither, of course, is a paragon at any rate. Bolsonaro, while elected the first time around in a fair and democratic election, since assuming power has suggested a return to some of Brazil's darkest past. It was just 37 years ago that the nation shook off a military dictatorship. Yet Bolsonaro has demonstrated every evidence of just such autocratic rule, to the point in the final days of the campaign of suggesting that Brazil’s electronic voting machines could “manipulate election results without leaving a trace.” Sound familiar? In fact, Bolsonaro has taken on and assimilated many of the same themes as Donald Trump in his second, failed run for the presidency. Bolsonaro has gone even further, enlisting the nation’s military in support of his efforts to hold onto office at any cost. He’s further suggested that if he doesn’t care for the result, he might just simply not leave office.
Lula, in contrast, is the epitome of a Latin American leftist, up-from-the-gutter kleptocracy. His years of socialist rule were punctuated with a coda of criminal prosecutions for corruption and bribery of some 300 individuals including Lula himself, landing many of them including Lula in prion for years. Cleared eventually, the judge accused of skewing the case against him, Lula quickly resumed his role of Brazil’s vocal and activist left—painting himself variously with the colors of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
The stakes could not be higher for the Amazon, for public health and for Brazil’s entire democratic system it has guarded so jealously for three decades. Since taking office four years ago, Bolsonaro has accelerated the deforestation of vast acreage of the Amazonian jungle, often known as the world’s lungs. Stripping conservation enforcement measures and encouraging all but unchecked logging, Bolsonaro’s efforts have cost the world 8.4 million acres of prime forest—an area larger than the entire nation of Belgium and a 52% higher deforestation rate than the previous three years under Lula’s stewardship.
At the same time, Bolsonaro dismissed the coronavirus epidemic that has killed some 686,000 Brazilians. And under his regime some 33 million Brazilians have become seriously “food insecure,” while 58% of Brazil’s 212 million people live with some level of food insecurity. None of these problems is on Bolsonaro’s to-do list for a second term.
Indeed, it would seem that this election is playing out in almost direct contrast to similar contests we’ve seen this year in Andelman Unleashed from Sweden to Kenya, Italy to Angola where a potent right wing has either managed to vault anew into power or hang on against all odds. Latin America, however, has long been different. And Lula da Silva seems poised to return Brazil to the continent’s mainstream left. On Sunday, we’ll be watching the outcome.
São Tomé & Principe
In a rare event in Africa (compare Kenya and Angola as chronicled on Andelman Unleashed), the twin-island archipelago of São Tomé and Principe, a nation in the Gulf of Guinea some 150 miles off the northwest coast of Gabon, 36,549 voters cast their ballot for the opposition Independent Democratic Action (ADI) party under the leadership of former Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada over incumbent Prime Minister Jorge Born Jesus and his Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Principe/Social Democratic (MLSTP/PSD) party which garnered 25,531 votes. Trovoada said he will form a new government with 30 seats (an absolute majority) in the new parliament.
Effectively, it was another right-wing party that has claimed victory over a moderate leftist incumbent—the two having battled for leadership of this country for its entire history since the independence it won from Portugal in 1975. Much of this week’s vote hinged on growing evidence of corruption on the part of the now outgoing prime minister who arrived in office four years ago pledging to rid the nation of a corrupt past. For much of its history since independence, São Tomé and Principe had been in the grip of a Marxist one-party regime until multi-party rule was instituted in 1991. There followed several coup attempts—in 2003 and 2009—after which the parliamentary system was able to demonstrate a degree of stability with control alternating between ADI and MLSTP. Now it's the chance of the political right to see what it can do to bring stability to the country.
The United States was quick to congratulate the victor. "The Santomean people have had the opportunity to have their votes counted and their voices heard in building their own future," said State Department spokesman Ned Price. "We expect that the incoming government will continue to build on São Tomé and Príncipe’s democratic traditions and give diverse perspectives a chance to help develop a safe, prosperous, and healthy future for all Santomeans."
Since as Africanews observes the "two major parties have been vying for the leadership of the country since its independence" and with relative tranquility for more than a decade, São Tomé and Príncipe are "considered a model of parliamentary democracy in Africa." Stay tuned.
How Others See America
500-year flood
Played equally large atop The Times of London front page are a new poll showing “Labour surges 33 points ahead of Tories,” the Queen “died of old age at 3:20 pm,” and “Hurricane Ian: hunt for survivors after ‘500-year flood event.’” This would put the last such event somewhere around the 1522, the very same time the English army attacked Brittany and Calais, burning and looting, while at the same time Suleiman I launched his siege to drive the Knights of the Order of St. John from Rhodes.
How Others See the World
China’s watching over Americans in Russia
People’s Daily, the national daily of the Chinese Communist Party, is pointing out with a flourish that the American embassy in Moscow has “urged American nationals residing in Russia to depart the country immediately, citing what it claimed to be the possibility that Russia could conscript dual nationals for military service.” The paper continued, "Russia may refuse to acknowledge dual nationals' U.S. citizenship, deny their access to U.S. consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia, and conscript dual nationals for military service….U.S. citizens should not travel to Russia and those residing or traveling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain.”
Gas on attack
What was being read across Europe as a Russian sabotage attack on the underwater Nordstream pipelines that supply much of the continent with natural gas from Russia, is being seen in some quarters also as a particularly virulent challenge to the entire world’s ecosystem.
The French daily Le Monde, which calls the leaks “a climatic bomb,” warns that “between 300 and 500 million cubic meters of methane have been released, that is between 200,000 to 300,000 tons of methane, the equivalent of 167 million to 25 million tons of CO2 or half an entire year’s production of that polluting gas for the entire nation of Denmark.”
At the same time, what many in Europe were seeing as a direct attack on the continent suggests to EU politicians who talked with London’s Guardian that these blasts “could herald a new phase of hybrid war.” While there has been no direct move toward reviving French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of a European Defense Force, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said his country would be stepping up its military operations to safeguard this vulnerable infrastructure.
Iran runs riot
Iran’s riots have electrified the world, and Saudi Arabia-based Arab News reports that one of the victims is Fazeh Hashemi, daughter of former Iranian president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—arrested allegedly for “inciting riots.”
The riots had been triggered by the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, charged with not wearing her hijab head covering properly in public. Our weekly cartoon at the bottom showcases Plantu’s view of what this all means.
Terror unrelenting in Sahel
Earlier this year, the French military pulled out of Mali, their last major encampment in the Sahel, giving all but free rein to a host of terrorist groups, many expelled from the Middle East and seeking new locations to put down roots. Now France 24 reports Burkina Faso has become the latest target. The bodies of 11 Burkina Faso soldiers were recovered from an attack by a jihadist band, 20 more soldiers were wounded as well as eight civilians, and 50 were missing following the ambush of a 150-vehicle convoy taking supplies to a besieged town in the nation’s far north.
Dozens of trucks were destroyed in the raid by jihadists said to be linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The attack took place on the main N1 national highway linking the capital of Ouagadougou with the town of Bobo-Dioulasso. As it happens, the civilian government of President Roch Kaboré was overthrown last January by a military coup, but the junta has made little headway in stemming jihadist activities in the country.
Late Friday, in a coup d’état—the second in eight months—Captain Ibrahim Traoré ousted his colleague Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba and seized power. Traoré, described by Le Monde as “little known to the population,” commanded an artillery regiment. Le Monde points out that “40% of the [nation’s'] territory has escaped control of the state.” And the jihadists continue to expand, all but unchecked.
India’s women win abortion rights
Germany’s Deutsche Welle reports that India’s top court has “removed restrictions on women who seek to terminate pregnancies.” The court ruled that “the decision to have or not to have an abortion is borne out of complicated life circumstances, which only the woman can choose on her own terms without external interference or influence," adding that women have the right to "reproductive autonomy.” Until this ruling, even women victims of spousal rape were not considered eligible for an abortion in India.
And then there's Plantu….
A view of Iran today from the extraordinary French cartoonist who has graced the front pages of Le Monde for decades. Indeed, his first cartoon, on the Vietnam War, was published there 50 years ago next month—October 1972. His latest, expressing more effectively than even the most vivid commentary, appeared this week. This is Plantu’s view of Iran today.