The Sri Lankan government’s victory at the Western Provincial Council election held on April 25, 2009 can only have added to its confidence that it is proceeding on the popular path with regard to the war in the north. At these elections the ruling alliance secured 65 percent of the popular vote, which is a huge margin of victory. But what of the international response?
Proponents of “responsibility to protect” or “R2P” have been linking their concept in recent weeks to the waning civil war in Sri Lanka. Are they right to do so? Talk of R2P may well distract from what should be a clear and unified demand to both sides: Cease fire.
South Africa’s general election which was held on April 22 has yielded the proverbial ‘win-win’ situation for all the participants except the tiny parties, who failed to impress voters and whose futures now hang in the balance. Although this outcome-and the peaceful and well-organised poll-augur well for democracy in the former apartheid state, many still believe that the country’s fifteen year-old democracy may be in peril.
When Asian leaders attending a summit meeeting – including the prime ministers of China and Japan – had to be whisked out of a besieged luxury Pattaya hotel by helicopter on 11 April, it was official: Thailand is in deep political trouble.
The controversial imprisonment by Iranian authorities of Roxana Saveri, an American citizen, has occurred just as there was an expectation of a thaw in Iranian-US relations. In March, president Obama used the occasion of the Iranian New Year to send a promising message to Tehran. Although, he did not impress every faction of the Iranian political elite, his commitment to a “new approach” was seen as a potential breakthrough for Iranian-US relations.
The Sri Lankan government is losing the ideological battle while it is winning the military battle. This has tremendous implications for policymaking. Even if the government completely vanquishes the LTTE, the government could be pressured into an unfair and unsustainable political settlement due to the deeply entrenched ethnic analysis.
It is likely in the coming days that the Tamil Tigers lose their last piece of territory. However, without a political agreement to address the grievances of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, Sri Lanka will continue to be beset by a different, and perhaps more intractable, type of conflict.
Of all the visible symbols of China’s rise to global prominence, perhaps the most compelling was the Opening of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. But what did the Games reveal about the nature and character of the “new” China, and-equally importantly-what did they seek to conceal from view?
South Africa’s transition to democracy still captures the world’s admiration. The vitality of the democratic movement is still seen in a vibrant print and radio culture and in discussion forums, workshops and educational programmes organized by a range of civil society organizations. But now, at the time of the fourth democratic elections in April 2009, its future is threatened by powerful anti-democratic forces, and it risks succumbing to the populist authoritarianism that has captured so much of post-colonial Africa.
The global financial crisis has so far failed to yield a second Bretton Woods agreement, as some had hoped, but recent calls for a new global reserve currency are beginning to excite the minds of politicians, financiers and scholars alike. Taking inspiration from the ‘bancor’ currency proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944, the governor of the People’s Bank of China suggested last month that the global monetary system would benefit from revamping the role of the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights (SDRs) to create a uniform global reserve currency.
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