Politics this week

Jun 11th 2009
From The Economist print edition

AP

The European elections saw a record low turnout of 43%. The centre-left did badly in most countries. The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) will remain the biggest group in the European Parliament. Far-right and Eurosceptic parties did well in Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary and several other countries. See article

After the centre-right’s victory the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, who is backed by the EPP, formally put himself forward for another five-year term. He is expected to be confirmed in the job by national governments next month.

Despite (or because of) the Labour Party’s dismal performance in the European and local elections, Gordon Brown faced down critics who want him to quit as Britain’s prime minister. Mr Brown may now survive until the next general election, due before June 2010. Several ministers resigned ahead of a planned government reshuffle. See article

Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, visited Italy for the first time since he took power in 1969. As the former colonial power, Italy last year paid reparations to Libya for its past misdeeds.

Now in your backyard

The first non-American detainee at Guantánamo Bay was brought to the mainland to face trial. Ahmed Ghailani pleaded not guilty in a federal court in Manhattan to charges in connection with the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Creigh Deeds won Virginia’s Democratic primary for governor, easily beating Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

An 88-year-old man with an anti-Semitic past opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, killing a security guard.

Democrats infuriated Republicans by setting July 13th as the date for hearings on Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. The Republicans wanted to wait until the autumn.

Staking a claim

Reuters

Two dozen police and at least nine Indians were killed in violent clashes in Peru’s northern jungle. For the past two months, Indians have blocked roads and oil pipelines in protest at decrees aimed at facilitating oil exploration and development in the jungle, which they say threaten their control over their traditional lands. Congress later suspended two of the decrees. The protest leader sought asylum in Nicaragua.

Brazil’s Senate approved a law granting legal title to informal private landholdings in the Amazon region. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would veto clauses applying the measure to companies and absentee landlords.

Canada’s left-wing New Democrats easily won a provincial election in Nova Scotia, their first victory in the Atlantic provinces.

At least 44 children died in a fire at a day-care centre in the city of Hermosillo, in northern Mexico. The blaze started in a warehouse next to the nursery, which had only one working exit and no windows.

Two soldiers and 18 drug gangsters were killed in a shoot-out in the Mexican resort of Acapulco.

Taliban terror

A suicide-bomb attack on the main international hotel in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), killed at least 18 people, including two foreign United Nations workers. Pakistani officials blamed the Taliban, and speculated that the bombing was in reprisal for the army’s continuing offensive against Taliban fighters in NWFP’s Swat Valley.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Yusuf Gilani, called an emergency meeting in Karachi, the most populous city, after at least 30 people were killed in political violence sparked by rivalry between the city’s dominant party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and a breakaway faction.

The Sri Lankan government turned away a ship from Britain bringing aid for Tamil civilians displaced by fighting in the north, apparently suspecting the Tamil exiles who sent it of sympathies with the defeated rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. See article

The UN Security Council prepared to vote on a resolution that imposes tougher sanctions on North Korea after its recent testing of a nuclear device and several missiles. Earlier, a court in Pyongyang sentenced two American journalists to 12 years’ hard labour for entering the country illegally.

The tiny Pacific country of Palau accepted 17 former prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay detention centre. The 17 are Uighurs, Muslims from the Chinese region of Xinjiang. China had demanded their repatriation and other countries were reluctant to accept them for fear of China’s anger.

Not forgotten

AP

Royal Dutch Shell agreed to pay $15.5m in compensation to the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta to end a long-running court case brought against the oil giant by nine plaintiffs, including relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a slain environmental campaigner. They accused Shell of complicity in Mr Saro-Wiwa’s execution by the Nigerian government in 1995. Shell denies any wrongdoing; it described the money as a “humanitarian gesture”. See article

The March 14th alliance, a Western-backed coalition, retained its parliamentary majority in a tightly contested election in Lebanon. The opposition, including the Islamist militia Hizbullah, won a greater share of the popular vote but accepted its defeat. See article

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that they had found more unexplained traces of uranium in Syria, which still denies having a secret nuclear programme. Iran’s uranium production has expanded, making it harder for inspectors to audit.

Iranians prepared to go to the polls in a presidential election on June 12th. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces a strong challenge from his main rival, the reformist Mir Hosein Mousavi.

After some confusion, it was confirmed that Africa’s longest-serving leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, had died. He became president in 1967 and subsequently won several polls. His opponents argued that this had more to do with election-rigging than personal popularity.

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