Comment du Jour

Global Storm Clouds Gather for UN Debate


Recession, Syrian Strife, Sahel Drought and Terrorism Shadow
Proceedings

Comment du Jour

Burma Democracy Leader Visits UN

Nobel Laureate and longtime Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited the United Nations as part of her seventeen day tour of the USA.  Standing next to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, she quipped "I don't recognize the place, but I am very, very glad to be back. "  In her early years Suu Kyi worked at the UN.

The longtime opposition figure, who spent fifteen years under house arrest for opposing Burma's ruling military regime, won a parliamentary seat in free by-elections earlier this year, as leader of the National League for Democracy. She advocates non-violent change in her country which would include the lifting of Western economic sanctions.

While Western sanctions pressured the rulers of Myanmar, aka Burma, the effect has run its course. 

Suu Kyi was in Washington earlier to receive the Congressional Gold Medal awarded in absentia during the Bush Administration in 2008. 

Few may recall that George W. Bush and West European governments especially Britain, France and Germany worked closely together to isolate Myanmar's left-wing military rulers.

First Lady Laura Bush was a particular advocate of Burmese democracy.

Next week  Myanmar's reformist President Thein Sein will address the UN General Assembly.  Observers will be watching carefully to assess just how much the current regime is really willing to reform.

Speaking alongside UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Suu Kyi told correspondents "As I have been saying ad nauseum--it is now time that the Burmese people took responsibility for their democratization of the country."

Looking tired but hopeful she added, "I think peace begins in the hearts of people.  So if we want peace, we've got to remove hatred."

Soft words from a woman who has suffered so very much but who retains a strong but silken political patina.

Comment du Jour

UN Assembly Session Opens Amid Global Strife


The UN General Assembly has opened amid global storm clouds and economic gloom. As Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings and Potentates gather in New York for the 67th annual session, to the backdrop of spreading violence in the Middle East, a looming nuclear weapons program in Iran, a food and humanitarian crisis in much of the developing world, and the undertow of worldwide recession, delegates will be confronted and likely confounded by challenges which have long- simmered but are now at a boiling point.


Surprisingly the new President of the Assembly is Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic who was elected in June after a strong Russian lobbying effort for the year-long post. Though the youngest Assembly President ever at 37, (not to be confused with the Secretary General) British-educated Jeremic has become well-known for his lawyerly Security Council presentations on the issue of the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo.

To think that fewer than twenty years following the breakup of former Yugoslavia and the indictment of many Serb war criminals in international courts of Justice that a Serb, albeit from a different regime, would gain the prestige to lead the Assembly is quite a diplomatic feat. Significantly two of his advisors include former Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov (a once legendary KGB Mid-East expert) and former Spainish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos of the Socialist Party.

“Peace and security is a prerequisite for the stability needed for global economic growth, sustainable development and social progress,” stated Jeremic,  President of the General Assembly.


As for the actual debate, which begins on September 25,  the speakers list includes  Presidents and Prime Ministers from the UN’s 193 member states. U.S. President Barack Obama, France’s Francois Hollande, and also the Presidents of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Lithuania.  The Kings of Morocco and Jordan will also speak on that  first day.

Comment du Jour

Quebec Vote Signals Political Uncertainty for Canada

Back to the Same Old Game, eh?



MONTREAL—Political uncertainty shadows Quebec in the aftermath of a contentious provincial election campaign. Now in the wake of the vote, the specter of separatism has re-emerged in the multi-ethnic Canadian province where the political rhetoric by the French-language focused Parti Quebecois could return economic instability and undermine fragile business confidence.

In a tightly contested three-way race, voters went to the edge but stopped short of giving the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ) a majority. Still the shadow has not passed, as the PQ shall now form a minority government albeit with a plurality of 32 percent of the vote.

Emotions and tragically violence marred the end of the campaign with a shooting, killing a bystander, at the PQ’s victory rally in downtown Montreal.


Now after nine years in power, Quebec’s federalist Liberal party had run out of ideas, steam, and luck. The final straw for longtime Premier Jean Charest was trying to institute lukewarm education reforms where University students would pay an additional $254 a year for their studies (that’s about the cost of a few sweatshirts, not classes at American Universities). Still some 84% of the total University costs are paid by the taxpayers.

Not surprisingly Quebec is the most indebted of all Canadian provinces; yet the PQ wishes to expand the layer cake of public benefits. Already tax payers face a combined 14.9 percent sales/value added tax.


Protests started in the Spring and before long radicals had seized the movement. The Premier called snap elections which in turn served to jumpstart opposition parties to get back into the fray to take on an unpopular, corrupt and clueless government. Charest lost his own seat in the election, though the Liberals still got 31 percent of the vote. A new party Coalition for Quebec’s Future (CAQ), holding some conservative (with a small c) values, gained 27 percent.

The province of Quebec holds a unique legacy and indeed political fault-line. The two founding peoples were the French and later English-speaking settlers. Quebec formed the keystone of New France in North America until the British toppled French rule in 1759 and steadily supplanted control over this part of Canada. To this day car license plates “Je Me Souviens” I remember” post a less than subtle reminder to a romanticized history.

As late as the 1960’s , French Canadians, though the majority, faced discrimination. Such grievances planted the seeds of the early separatist movement. The Parti Quebecois has morphed from a self-styled defender of French cultural and linguistic rights into a political movement when it gained power in 1976 under the charismatic, if controversial leader, Rene Lesveque. The party was best known for its draconian linguistic legislation which has marginalized English and stigmatized anyone who does not view Quebec through blue colored lenses.


Originally the PQ was populist with conservative, nationalist, and social reformers under one tent. Lysiane Gagnon of the La Presse newspaper opined that Premier elect Pauline Marois, “the first PQ leader to anchor the party resolutely to the left, a sharp break with the tradition of building a large coalition of right and center-leaning sovereignists.”

But it’s the PQ political rhetoric, which causes discord. In a blunt interview with Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Pauline Marois said the federal government in Ottawa will have to treat Quebec like a nation, not a province. “We won’t be satisfied with getting more powers, What we want is Quebec sovereignty.” She stressed her party would press for a referendum on the issue of what amounts to independence from Canada.


Yet other eagerly awaited referendums on “sovereignty” from Canada fell flat in 1980 and 1995 when the majority of French-speaking Quebeckers refused to take the final step of secession. Last week a CROP Poll survey showed that merely 28 percent of Quebeckers would vote Yes if a referendum were held. Though a very hot political issue in the 1970’s, the long simmering embers of Quebec separatism seemed settled.

Since the onset of the PQ rule in the late 1970’s large sectors of the Anglo business community left Montreal for Toronto; the legacy remains the empty building of some of Canada’s greatest banks and businesses. Saint James Street/now Rue Saint Jacques, once the Wall Street of Canada, is a near-lifeless canyon of magisterial mostly-closed banks and firms, now either with For Rent signs (in French of course) or being turned into pricy apartments.

In the aftermath of the vote, the Townshippers Association, a Sherbrooke business group reflecting the interests of the English-speaking community, urged Madame Marois to focus on what the majority wants, “economic development, job creation, and debt reduction.”


Yet the resource-rich province, remains part of the G-8 industrial world’s most successful economy, Canada. Quebec holds much of the attributes of a classic “nation”; language, culture, identity and she guards them jealously. Still what is rarely said is that much of this unique and separate status is financially subsidized by Ottawa.

Political perceptions matter as much as reality. Quebec may now have to face the consequences of the PQ’s rhetoric.

Comment du Jour

Year After Irene Floods-- Vermont Strong

 

It’s been a year since Tropical Storm Irene unexpectedly crashed into Vermont, causing unprecedented flooding and damage throughout much of the Green Mountain state. Yet despite Irene’s wrath across much of the Northeast, Vermont’s near singular resilience and steadfastness in the face of the storm remains an enduring lesson. This was a lesson not in what big government can do, but what small townspeople did to help themselves and their neighbors.

Initially Irene’s arrival in landlocked Vermont looked like a bad rain storm with high winds which would soon break up in the mountains. But the unrelenting rain turned small streams, brooks and rivers into crashing torrents which by the end of the day were cutting roads and isolating towns. By late in the day, mountain towns and ski resorts such as Ludlow, Killington, and Waterbury were cut off and social media such as You tube were showing pictures of small brooks being turned into what looked like high-pressure hoses blasting through villages. The scenes appeared surrealistic.

 

The next day we viewed some of the damage in southern Vermont; in the town of Londonderry roads were not flooded but gouged-out by relentless water. Somebody’s front porch complete with flowerpots was caught in a bridge and entangled in state road signs. Nineteenth century buildings were still standing but perched on stilts of their foundations. A stretch of the main road along a picturesque brook near Stratton Ski area was not flooded; it was gone.

Though thankfully few people were killed or injured, the toll on infrastructure was staggering; 500 miles of State road were damaged, 280 bridges were damaged significantly or gone, 200 miles of railroad track was damaged. In total thirteen towns were marooned. Parts of the state were without electric power.

The comeback was amazing. Of the 73,000 customers without electric, more than half were restored in 24 hours by Central Vermont Power and in a few days most of the state was back on line. Town and state road crews started what would be a procession of dump and gravel trucks which would relentlessly start filling and fixing roads and culverts one by one. National Guard helicopters ferried supplies to isolated mountain towns.

Given that Vermont is a small state with a population of only 625,000, there’s not the layer-upon-layer of public employees. Fire departments are volunteer, state and local police are few, and the whole bureaucracy of town workers and public servants are simply not many. Yet local citizens were quick to help and pitch in. A relatively small number of 7,215 families registered for FEMA assistance.

Though verdant valleys and hills mask some of the destruction, there are still the brutal cuts and gashes from nature.

Yet even a year later, according to the New England Cable Network, some displaced victims in places like Jamaica are still waiting for FEMA funds! Ironically the Irene tragedy of 2011 recalled the more devastating Vermont flood of 1927 when the state was submerged by November floods killing 84 people and washing away 1280 bridges.

Back then President Calvin Coolidge, a stoic Vermonter himself, was faced with the tough decision as to whether to follow his philosophy of local responsibility or allow for a larger central government role in reconstruction. Prior to the flood of 1927, individual towns were financially responsible for bridge and road repairs. Following the flood, the state and indeed federal government played a wider role in the recovery.

Nonetheless, the locally based can-do oriented recovery effort in the 2011 flood stands as a testament to a tradition of local grassroots government. Thus despite modern Vermont electing liberal Democrats on the national and state level, the state nonetheless embraces a very decentralized and accessible local government.

There are lighter moments too. The Long Trail Brewery near Killington produces a “Goodnight Irene” ale. The state is briskly selling special-edition license plates, “I am Vermont Strong” to show solidarity and support for affected families.

President Coolidge touring the state in September 1928 made his memorable speech at Bennington Station; “I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people.” Eighty-four years later, Irene tragically refocused his words to the contemporary era.