Rached Ghannouchi, leader of main Islamist party in Tunisia, says former elite is trying to ‘escape the ballot box’ The gains of the revolution in Tunisia could be lost if the election is further postponed or disintegrates amid politically inspired violence, according to the leader of the country’s largest party. Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of al-Nahda, the main Islamist party, warned that the deferral of polling day – from 24 July to 23 October – may not be the last postponement, and the staging of an election at the start of the academic year and at a time of student protest and workers’ strikes could present an opportunity to foment chaos. He described the postponement as an attempt by parties who had cohabited former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s dictatorship to regain their posts. Ghannouchi, who returned to Tunisia in January after more than 20 years in exile, said: “They [the former elite] are trying to escape the ballot box. Those whose weight is low do not want to stand on the scales.” As it is, al-Nahda and the leading liberal faction, the Progressive Democratic Party, have made compromises to keep the electoral process on track in the hope that the democratic transition was more important that the result. Al-Nahda agreed reluctantly to the deferral of the election, after all other parties accepted it, but they are not confident the reasons stated are genuine. “There is now talk of organising presidential elections, or amendments to the constitution and organising a referendum, or turning this Council for the Achievement of the Aims of the Revolution into a parliament, which would promulgate rules,” Ghannouchi said. “Actually it is doing this already, before the election of the constituent assembly, which shows that this assembly for some people is an undesirable thing.” In an interview with the Guardian, Ghannouchi said he was proud that the uprising in Tunisia had lit the flame that ended the long Arab night, but warned that for this reason the election in Tunisia was being keenly watched in Egypt. It is due to hold its own parliamentary elections in September, but has yet to decide voting rules or electoral boundaries. There are no dependable opinion polls on what will happen to the 80 political parties in Tunisia. Ghannouchi said the dominant representative of old political elite was the Ettajid party, the former Tunisian socialist party for whom his party was enemy No 1: “They have no confidence in their ability to compete with al-Nahda. Hence they seek one postponement after another,” he said. “Placing the date of the election at the start of the academic year could be a cause for postponing them again, because we have seen great instability and unrest with the student and worker movement.” Ghannouchi believed that the revolution was irreversible: “The Tunisian people have liberated themselves and will never accept a new dictator, under any name, Islamic or any other. “But there is a fear of chaos if the transition period is long and the country loses time.” Tourism has halved and unemployment doubled since the uprising. Life for most Tunisians was harder now, but, he said their smiles were wider. “They feel confident and on a psychological level we can already see this boost,” he said. “There are fewer road accidents, lower rates of divorce, and fewer people going to psychiatric clinics. Tunisians feel more hopeful of the future and there is more social solidarity and cohesion.” But the Islamist leader was bitter about the transitional government’s pusillanimous attempts to deal with the legacy of dictatorship. Transparency International put Ben Ali’s personal wealth at $5bn (£3bn) and his family’s at $12bn, which together is the size of the government’s budget. Ghannouchi said the interim government was putting more effort into seeking crippling foreign loans than it was in recovering its own stolen assets from banks abroad. This week the ousted president and his wife were sentenced to 35 years in prison and fined $66m after a trial in absentia for embezzlement and misuse of public funds. Ben Ali and wife Leila Trabelsi fled to Saudi Arabia, which has refused to extradite them. But the former dictator has yet to be tried on criminal charges of murder and treason. Ghannouchi, who returned to a hero’s welcome after his years in exile in London, heads the most liberal Islamic party in the region. He said he was confident of his party’s ability to function in a pluralist multiparty democracy. “When the electoral law was being discussed, the demand that half of each party list had to include women candidates was expected to cause us Islamists embarrassment,” he said. “It did the opposite, because we were able to mobilise more women into our movement in rural areas than any other party could do.” Tunisia Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali Arab and Middle East unrest Africa Islam David Hearst guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Staffers are departing the good ship Gingrich because he’s just too different for them, the candidate says. “Philosophically, I am very different from normal politicians, and normal consultants found that very hard to deal with,” he told reporters in Atlanta yesterday, Reuters reports. Gingrich, who lost 16 campaign staff earlier…
Continue reading …Ballooning entitlements threaten to push the national debt bigger than the entire US economy by 2021, and twice that size within 25 years, according to a pessimistic Congressional Budget Office report. “The health care programs are the main drivers of that growth,” wrote the CBO. But with Democrats refusing to…
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Poor economic news from US, China, UK and eurozone push shares down sharply, while $8 is wiped off oil price World stock markets suffered another bout of heavy losses on Thursday, driven down by fears over the eurozone debt crisis and fresh evidence that global economic growth is faltering. A flood of poor economic news from the US, China, the UK and the eurozone helped to push shares down sharply, and send the euro to record lows. The oil price also slumped, wiping more than $8 off the cost of a barrel of Brent crude at one point, as extra supplies were released in an effort to prevent the world economy stagnating. In London the FTSE 100 shed more than 100 points in afternoon trading to 5666, a fall of more than 1.7%. Wall Street also saw early losses, with the Dow Jones losing 1.8% when trading began to 11,889 points. Across Europe, equity markets were also in retreat as European leaders met in Brussels to discuss creating a new rescue package for Greece. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, set the early direction with his warning on Wednesday night that the US economy would grow more slowly than expected in 2011 , and again next year. Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, raised the stakes by warning that risk signals for financial stability across the eurozone were flashing “red”. “Everyone is running away from any sort of risk today,” explained David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index. “The big cloud is Greece, but every day something else comes along [to knock confidence].” Reports from America that talks to raise the US debt ceiling had collapsed also alarmed traders. The euro lost nearly two cents against the dollar, touching a low of $1.4133. The pound also took a pummelling in the foreign exchange markets, falling by more than one cent against the dollar to $1.594. Economists said that the minutes of the Bank of England’s last meeting, released on Wednesday, had shown that Threadneedle Street was taking a more dovish approach to monetary policy. UK interest rates may now not rise until 2012. The weak state of the UK economy was highlighted by the CBI’s monthly snapshot of the retail sector. For the first time since June 2010, more retailers said that business was deteriorating than those who said it was improving . “After a year of growth, high street sales volumes fizzled out in June,” said Judith McKenna, chair of the CBI’s distributive trades panel. “Consumers are really feeling the pinch as disposable incomes continue to be squeezed by rising prices and weak earnings growth.” In America, the number of new jobless claims rose by 9,000 to 429,000, confounding expectations of a weekly fall to 415,000. China reported that its manufacturing output has barely grown so far in June, an indication that economic growth may have slowed significantly in recent weeks. This was followed by data from the eurozone, where manufacturing and services output slowing sharply to a 20-month low in June. “Tighter fiscal policy is increasingly kicking in across the region, the ECB has started raising interest rates and sovereign debt tensions have intensified, centred on Greece’s woes,” said Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight. The oil price fell after the International Energy Agency announced that it would release 60m barrels of oil on to the market, at a rate of 2m barrels per day. The move was criticised by members of the Opec cartel, who called the move unjustifiable. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude fell as low as $105.72, down more than $8, while US crude dropped to $90 a barrel. Global economy Economics Stock markets Oil Commodities United States FTSE Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A Utah man spent 16 hours holding a woman hostage in a motel room on the weekend—and made 15 new friends. Jason Valdez, 36, kept his Facebook page updated throughout the armed standoff with police, reports the New York Daily News . Some friends offered encouragement—and even advice on…
Continue reading …Call it the iBoobTube. Apple is poised to enter the television set business, perhaps as early as this fall, offering screens bundled together with iTunes and Apple TV all in one, a former Apple exec tells Daily Tech . Apple’s previous attempts at getting into television, most notably the Apple TV…
Continue reading …Country legend Glen Campbell has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and plans to say farewell to his fans with a final tour this fall. The 75-year-old singer and his wife Kim decided to go public with the diagnosis because they want fans who attend the concerts to be aware of…
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About 100 women attacked in villages near Fizi in Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Médecins sans Frontières At least 60 women were raped and dozens of other people beaten by suspected rebels during a two-day attack on a pair of villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month, according to an aid agency and local officials. The mass rape occurred in Abala and Nyakiele, near the town of Fizi in South Kivu province, during 10-12 June , Médecins sans Frontières said on Thursday. MSF sent a team to the area this week after hearing reports of sexual violence in the villages, which are in a relatively remote area with no mobile phone coverage. “We have seen at this point over 100
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Church ceremonies for same-sex couples unlikely to be given go-ahead owing to traditionalists’ opposition to homosexuality The Church of England has said it would allow civil partnerships in its buildings but only if the General Synod agreed to the move, an unlikely prospect given the staunch opposition of traditionalists to homosexuality. In response to the government’s Equality Office consultation on the subject, the church said the “present objective” was to ensure that amendments to existing legislation continued to provide “unfettered freedom for each religious tradition to resolve these matters in accordance with its own convictions and its own internal procedures of governance”. Some religious groups welcomed last year’s House of Lords decision to lift the ban on religious premises holding civil partnership ceremonies. The amendment to the equality bill, tabled as a free vote by Lord Alli, received overwhelming backing, including from several bishops. But William Fittall, general secretary of the Archbishops’ Council and member of the synod, which would decide whether to allow civil partnerships in churches, wrote: “For most Christian denominations, as well as other faith groups, the issues involved are set to remain sensitive and, to varying degrees, contested.” There would need to be an “opting-in mechanism”, as proposed by the government. He added: “In the case of the Church of England, that would mean that its churches would not be able to become approved premises for the registration of civil partnerships until and unless the General Synod had first decided as a matter of policy that that should be possible.” The church, indeed much of the Anglican communion, has wrestled with the issue of same-sex blessings for decades, leading to factions, splits and power struggles. Senior figures are unenthusiastic, to say the least, about same-sex weddings in Anglican churches. Dr John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show: “I live in a liberal democracy and I want equality for everybody. I cannot say the Quakers shouldn’t do it. “Nor do I want somebody to tell me the Church of England must do it or the Roman Catholic Church must do it because actually that is not what equality is about.” Earlier this year the Most Rev Peter Smith, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Southwark, attacked the government, saying it was neither “necessary nor desirable” to allow gays and lesbians to have civil partnership ceremonies in religious premises and accused ministers of “considering a fundamental change to the status of marriage”. In spite of assurances from Theresa May, the home secretary, that the rule changes would not be mandatory, Smith said the change was something “never envisaged by the Equality Act or any other legislation passed by parliament”. He added: “Marriage does not belong to the state any more than it belongs to the church … It is a lifelong commitment of a man and a woman to each other, publicly entered into, for their mutual wellbeing and for the procreation and upbringing of children.” In 2008, the Rev Martin Dudley , conducted a same-sex blessing for two gay clergy at a church in the City of London, triggering an outcry from evangelicals and an investigation by the bishop of London. Civil partnerships Anglicanism Gay rights Religion Christianity Marriage Riazat Butt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Metropolitan police officer sacked for Facebook and text abuse of colleagues
June 23, 2011 No Comment
Officer called one colleague a a ‘grass’ on Facebook and sent offensive texts to female colleague he dated previously A policeman has been dismissed without notice for posting offensive messages about a fellow officer on Facebook and harassing a female colleague. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said the 35-year-old Metropolitan y74police constable, who was based in Islington, north London, posted comments on Facebook on Friday referring to another officer as a “grass” and a “liar” and using deeply offensive language. The IPCC said the officer had also been involved in a brief, casual relationship with a colleague which ended acrimoniously in April last year. It said: “He sent the woman a series of abusive text messages and subjected her to verbal abuse and threats. “On one occasion, when both officers were off duty, a member of the public was so concerned about the male officer’s behaviour that he followed them off a bus and intervened when he saw the male officer smashing up a bin in the street. The male officer then verbally threatened the member of the public.” Both cases were investigated by the Metropolitan police’s professional standards directorate under the management of the IPCC. A report was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, which decided there should be no criminal proceedings. The case went before a Metropolitan police gross misconduct hearing which concluded the officer was guilty of “discreditable conduct and failing to meet police conduct standards of respect and courtesy”. IPCC commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne said: “When I read what shocking things this police officer had written on Facebook about his colleague and the appalling way he had behaved, I felt completely dismayed. “He worked in a job that demanded trust and respect and yet acted in a way that resembled a nasty schoolyard bully. I am pleased that the Met’s misconduct panel clearly shared our view that this sort of person does not belong in the police service.” Metropolitan police Facebook London guardian.co.uk
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