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Naomi Klein: 'Big green groups are more damaging than climate deniers'
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Naomi Klein: 'Big green groups are more damaging than climate deniers'
Environment movement is in 'deep denial' over the right ways to tackle climate change, says Canadian author
Jason Mark for Earth Island Journal, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Canadian author Naomi Klein is so well known for her blade-sharp commentary that it's easy to forget that she is, above all, a first-rate reporter. I got a glimpse into her priorities as I was working on this interview. Klein told me she was worried that some of the things she had said would make it hard for her to land an interview with a president of the one of the Big Green groups (read below and you'll see why). She was more interested in nabbing the story than being the story; her reporting trumped any opinion-making.
Such focus is a hallmark of Klein's career. She doesn't do much of the chattering class's news cycle blathering. She works steadily, carefully, quietly. It can be surprising to remember that Klein's immense global influence rests on a relatively small body of work; she has published three books, one of which is an anthology of magazine pieces.
Klein's first book, No Logo, investigated how brand names manipulate public desires while exploiting the people who make their products. The book came out just weeks after the WTO protests in Seattle and became an international bestseller. Her next major book, The Shock Doctrine, argued that free-marketeers often use crises – natural or manufactured – to ram through deregulatory policies. With her newest, yet-to-be named book, Klein turns her attention to climate change. Scheduled for release in 2014, the book will also be made into a film by her husband and creative partner, Avi Lewis.
Klein's books and articles have sought to articulate a counternarrative to the march of corporate globalization and government austerity. She believes climate change provides a new chance for creating such a counternarrative. "The book I am writing is arguing that our responses to climate change can rebuild the public sphere, can strengthen our communities, can have work with dignity."
First, though, she has to finish the reporting. As she told me, speaking about the grassroots response to climate chaos: "Right now it's under the radar, but I'm following it quite closely."
During your career you've written about the power of brand names, populist movements around the world, and free market fundamentalism. Why now a book and film on climate change?
You know, The Shock Doctrine, my last book, ends with climate change. It ends with a vision of a dystopic future where you have weak infrastructure colliding with heavy weather, as we saw with Hurricane Katrina. And rather than working to prevent future disasters by having lower emissions, you have all these attempts to take advantage of that crisis. At the time, it seemed to me that climate change was potentially going to be the biggest disaster-capitalism free-for-all that we've seen yet. So it was quite a logical progression for me to go from writing about disaster-capitalism in The Shock Doctrine to writing about climate change. As I was writing The Shock Doctrine, I was covering the Iraq War and profiteering from the war, and I started to see these patterns repeat in the aftermath of natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami and then Hurricane Katrina. There are chapters in that book on both of those events. Then I came to the idea that climate change could be a kind of a "people's shock," an answer to the shock doctrine – not just another opportunity by the disaster capitalists to feed off of misery, but an opportunity for progressive forces to deepen democracy and really improve livelihoods around the world. Then I came across the idea of "climate debt" when I was doing a piece on reparations for Harper's magazine. I had a meeting with Bolivia's climate negotiator in Geneva – her name is Angélica Navarro – and she put the case to me that climate change could be an opportunity for a global Green Marshall Plan with the North paying climate debts in the form of huge green development project.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy you wrote about the potential of a "people's shock." Do you see that it's happening, a global grassroots response to some of the extreme weather we're experiencing?
I see a people's shock happening broadly, where on lots of different fronts you have constituencies coming forward who have been fighting, for instance, for sustainable agriculture for many, many years, and now realize that it's also a climate solution. You have a lot of reframing of issues – and not in an opportunistic way, just another layer of understanding. Here in Canada, the people who oppose the tar sands most forcefully are Indigenous people living downstream from the tar sands. They are not opposing it because of climate change – they are opposing it because it poisons their bodies. But the fact that it's also ruining the planet adds another layer of urgency. And it's that layering of climate change on top of other issues that holds a huge amount of potential.
In terms of Hurricane Sandy, I really do see some hopeful, grassroots responses, particularly in the Rockaways, where people were very organized right from the beginning, where Occupy Sandy was very strong, where new networks emerged. The first phase is just recovery, and now as you have a corporate-driven reconstruction process descending, those organized communities are in a position to respond, to go to the meetings, to take on the real estate developers, to talk about another vision of public housing that is way better than what's there right now. So yeah, it's definitely happening. Right now it's under the radar, but I'm following it quite closely.
In a piece you wrote for The Nation in November 2011 you suggested that when it comes to climate change, there's a dual denialism at work – conservatives deny the science while some liberals deny the political implications of the science. Why do you think that some environmentalists are resistant to grappling with climate change's implications for the market and for economics?
Well, I think there is a very a deep denialism in the environmental movement among the Big Green groups. And to be very honest with you, I think it's been more damaging than the right-wing denialism in terms of how much ground we've lost. Because it has steered us in directions that have yielded very poor results. I think if we look at the track record of Kyoto, of the UN Clean Development Mechanism, the European Union's emissions trading scheme – we now have close to a decade that we can measure these schemes against, and it's disastrous. Not only are emissions up, but you have no end of scams to point to, which gives fodder to the right. The right took on cap-and-trade by saying it's going to bankrupt us, it's handouts to corporations, and, by the way, it's not going to work. And they were right on all counts. Not in the bankrupting part, but they were right that this was a massive corporate giveaway, and they were right that it wasn't going to bring us anywhere near what scientists were saying we needed to do lower emissions. So I think it's a really important question why the green groups have been so unwilling to follow science to its logical conclusions. I think the scientists Kevin Anderson and his colleague Alice Bows at the Tyndall Centre have been the most courageous on this because they don't just take on the green groups, they take on their fellow scientists for the way in which neoliberal economic orthodoxy has infiltrated the scientific establishment. It's really scary reading. Because they have been saying, for at least for a decade, that getting to the emissions reduction levels that we need to get to in the developed world is not compatible with economic growth.
What we know is that the environmental movement had a series of dazzling victories in the late 60s and in the 70s where the whole legal framework for responding to pollution and to protecting wildlife came into law. It was just victory after victory after victory. And these were what came to be called "command-and-control" pieces of legislation. It was "don't do that." That substance is banned or tightly regulated. It was a top-down regulatory approach. And then it came to screeching halt when Regan was elected. And he essentially waged war on the environmental movement very openly. We started to see some of the language that is common among those deniers – to equate environmentalism with Communism and so on. As the Cold War dwindled, environmentalism became the next target, the next Communism. Now, the movement at that stage could have responded in one of the two ways. It could have fought back and defended the values it stood for at that point, and tried to resist the steamroller that was neoliberalism in its early days. Or it could have adapted itself to this new reality, and changed itself to fit the rise of corporatist government. And it did the latter. Very consciously if you read what [Environmental Defense Fund president] Fred Krupp was saying at the time.
It was go along or get along.
Exactly. We now understand it's about corporate partnerships. It's not, "sue the bastards;" it's, "work through corporate partnerships with the bastards." There is no enemy anymore.
More than that, it's casting corporations as the solution, as the willing participants and part of this solution. That's the model that has lasted to this day.
I go back to something even like the fight over NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Big Green groups, with very few exceptions, lined up in favor of NAFTA, despite the fact that their memberships were revolting, and sold the deal very aggressively to the public. That's the model that has been globalized through the World Trade Organization, and that is responsible in many ways for the levels of soaring emissions. We've globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It's now successfully spreading across the world, and it's killing us.
It's not that the green groups were spectators to this – they were partners in this. They were willing participants in this. It's not every green group. It's not Greenpeace, it's not Friends of the Earth, it's not, for the most part, the Sierra Club. It's not 350.org, because it didn't even exist yet. But I think it goes back to the elite roots of the movement, and the fact that when a lot of these conservation groups began there was kind of a noblesse oblige approach to conservation. It was about elites getting together and hiking and deciding to save nature. And then the elites changed. So if the environmental movement was going to decide to fight, they would have had to give up their elite status. And weren't willing to give up their elite status. I think that's a huge part of the reason why emissions are where they are.
At least in American culture, there is always this desire for the win-win scenario. But if we really want to get to, say, an 80 percent reduction in CO2 emissions, some people are going to lose. And I guess what you are saying is that it's hard for the environmental leadership to look some of their partners in the eye and say, "You're going to lose."
Exactly. To pick on power. Their so-called win-win strategy has lost. That was the idea behind cap-and-trade. And it was a disastrously losing strategy. The green groups are not nearly as clever as they believe themselves to be. They got played on a spectacular scale. Many of their partners had one foot in US CAP [Climate Action Partnership] and the other in the US Chamber of Commerce. They were hedging their bets. And when it looked like they could get away with no legislation, they dumped US CAP completely.
The phrase win-win is interesting, because there are a lot of losers in the win-win strategy. A lot of people are sacrificed in the name of win-win. And in the US, we just keep it to the cap-and-trade fight and I know everyone is tired of fighting that fight. I do think there is a lot of evidence that we have not learned the key lessons of that failure.
And what do you think the key lessons are?
Well one of them is willingness to sacrifice – in the name of getting a win-win with big polluters who are part of that coalition – the communities that were living on the fenceline. Communities, in Richmond, California for instance, who would have been like, "We fight climate change and our kids won't get as much asthma." That win-win was broken because you get a deal that says, "OK you guys can keep polluting but you're going to have to buy some offsets on the other side of the planet." And the local win is gone, is sacrificed.
I'm in favor of win-win, you know. The book I am writing is arguing that our responses to climate change can rebuild the public sphere, can strengthen our communities, can have work with dignity. We can address the financial crisis and the ecological crisis at the same. I believe that. But I think it's by building coalitions with people, not with corporations, that you are going to get those wins. And what I see is really a willingness to sacrifice the basic principles of solidarity, whether it is to that fenceline community in Richmond, California or whether it's with that Indigenous community in Brazil that, you know, is forced off their territory because their forest has just become a carbon sink or an offset and they no longer have access to the forest that allowed them to live sustainably because it's policed. Because a conservation group has decided to trade it. So these sacrifices are made – there are a lot of losers in this model and there aren't any wins I can see.
You were talking about the Clean Development Mechanism as a sort of disaster capitalism. Isn't geoengineering the ultimate disaster capitalism?
I certainly think it's the ultimate expression of a desire to avoid doing the hard work of reducing emissions, and I think that's the appeal of it. I think we will see this trajectory the more and more climate change becomes impossible to deny. A lot of people will skip right to geoengineering. The appeal of geoengineering is that it doesn't threaten our worldview. It leaves us in a dominant position. It says that there is an escape hatch. So all the stories that got us to this point, that flatter ourselves for our power, will just be scaled up.
[There is a]willingness to sacrifice large numbers of people in the way we respond to climate change – we are already showing a brutality in the face of climate change that I find really chilling. I don't think we have the language to even describe [geoengineering], because we are with full knowledge deciding to allow cultures to die, to allow peoples to disappear. We have the ability to stop and we're choosing not to. So I think the profound immorality and violence of that decision is not reflected in the language that we have. You see that we have these climate conventions where the African delegates are using words like "genocide," and the European and North American delegates get very upset and defensive about this. The truth is that the UN definition of genocide is that it is the deliberate act to disappear and displace people. What the delegates representing the North are saying is that we are not doing this because we want you to disappear; we are doing this because we don't care essentially. We don't care if you disappear if we continue business-as-usual. That's a side effect of collateral damage. Well, to the people that are actually facing the disappearance it doesn't make a difference whether there is malice to it because it still could be prevented. And we're choosing not to prevent it. I feel one of the crises that we're facing is a crisis of language. We are not speaking about this with the language of urgency or mortality that the issue deserves.
You've said that progressives' narratives are insufficient. What would be an alternative narrative to turn this situation around?
Well, I think the narrative that got us into this – that's part of the reason why you have climate change denialism being such as powerful force in North America and in Australia – is really tied to the frontier mentality. It's really tied to the idea of there always being more. We live on lands that were supposedly innocent, "discovered" lands where nature was so abundant. You could not imagine depletion ever. These are foundational myths.
And so I've taken a huge amount of hope from the emergence of the Idle No More movement, because of what I see as a tremendous generosity of spirit from Indigenous leadership right now to educate us in another narrative. I just did a panel with Idle No More and I was the only non-Native speaker at this event, and the other Native speakers were all saying we want to play this leadership role. It's actually taken a long time to get to that point. There's been so much abuse heaped upon these communities, and so much rightful anger at the people who stole their lands. This is the first time that I've seen this openness, open willingness that we have something to bring, we want to lead, we want to model another way which relates to the land. So that's where I am getting a lot of hope right now.
The impacts of Idle No More are really not understood. My husband is making a documentary that goes with this book, and he's directing it right now in Montana, and we've been doing a lot of filming on the northern Cheyenne reservation because there's a huge, huge coal deposit that they've been debating for a lot of years – whether or not to dig out this coal. And it was really looking like they were going to dig it up. It goes against their prophecies, and it's just very painful. Now there's just this new generation of young people on that reserve who are determined to leave that coal in the ground, and are training themselves to do solar and wind, and they all talk about Idle No More. I think there's something very powerful going on. In Canada it's a very big deal. It's very big deal in all of North America, because of the huge amount of untapped energy, fossil fuel energy, that is on Indigenous land. That goes for Arctic oil. It certainly goes for the tar sands. It goes for where they want to lay those pipelines. It goes for where the natural gas is. It goes for where the major coal deposits are in the US. I think in Canada we take Indigenous rights more seriously than in the US. I hope that will change.
It's interesting because even as some of the Big Green groups have gotten enamored of the ideas of ecosystem services and natural capital, there's this counter-narrative coming from the Global South and Indigenous communities. It's almost like a dialectic.
That's the counternarrative, and those are the alternative worldviews that are emerging at this moment. The other thing that is happening … I don't know what to call it. It's maybe a reformation movement, a grassroots rebellion. There's something going on in the [environmental] movement in the US and Canada, and I think certainly in the UK. What I call the "astronaut's eye worldview" – which has governed the Big Green environmental movement for so long – and by that I mean just looking down at Earth from above. I think it's sort of time to let go of the icon of the globe, because it places us above it and I think it has allowed us to see nature in this really abstracted way and sort of move pieces, like pieces on a chessboard, and really loose touch with the Earth. You know, it's like the planet instead of the Earth.
And I think where that really came to a head was over fracking. The head offices of the Sierra Club and the NRDC and the EDF all decided this was a "bridge fuel." We've done the math and we're going to come out in favor of this thing. And then they faced big pushbacks from their membership, most of all at the Sierra Club. And they all had to modify their position somewhat. It was the grassroots going, "Wait a minute, what kind of environmentalism is it that isn't concerned about water, that isn't concerned about industrialization of rural landscapes – what has environmentalism become?" And so we see this grassroots, place-based resistance in the movements against the Keystone XL pipeline and the Northern Gateway pipeline, the huge anti-fracking movement. And they are the ones winning victories, right?
I think the Big Green groups are becoming deeply irrelevant. Some get a lot of money from corporations and rich donors and foundations, but their whole model is in crisis.
I hate to end a downer like that.
I'm not sure that is a downer.
It might not be.
I should say I'm representing my own views. I see some big changes as well. I think the Sierra Club has gone through its own reformation. They are on the frontline of these struggles now. I think a lot of these groups are having to listen to their members. And some of them will just refuse to change because they're just too entrenched in the partnership model, they've got too many conflicts of interest at this stage. Those are the groups that are really going to suffer. And I think it's OK. I think at this point, there's a big push in Europe where 100 civil society groups are calling on the EU not to try to fix their failed carbon-trading system, but to actually drop it and start really talking about cutting emissions at home instead of doing this shell game. I think that's the moment we're in right now. We don't have any more time to waste with these very clever, not working shell games.
• Jason Mark is editor of Earth Island Journal
Source: The Guardian UK
No commentsGender equality stats 'don’t tell the full story'
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Gender equality stats 'don’t tell the full story'
The Philippines is considered as the most gender equal nation in Asia, but is it really so? Some rights activists and experts dispute the findings of international organizations and observers.
“In terms of our neighbors here in Southeast Asia or even in the world, when it comes to women in leadership positions, the Philippines is doing very well”, Senator Grace Poe said recently. The 45-year-old became the 6th female politician in the Philippines' 24- member Senate earlier this year.
International surveys back up the Senator's views. For the past two years, the World Economic Forum has named the Philippines the most gender equal nation in Asia as well as one of only two developing economies to make its top ten equality list. Its findings are in part based on statistics that show Filipino women hold the majority of jobs in the legislative, top official and managerial occupational category. The World Bank reported similar findings in 2010.
Not surprising
This data does not surprise some observes who say gender equality dates back hundreds of years into Filipino history.
“In pre-colonial times, women could inherit property and played very powerful roles in society”, says Carolyn Sobritchea, who lectures in anthropology at the University of the Philippines. But with the introduction of Catholicism in the 16th century, women were forced to accept Western patriarchal norms. “Everything changed when Spain colonized us,” she told DW.
However, Sobritchea explains that during the United States' occupation of the Philippines in the early 20th century, women were allowed to receive higher education and regained some of the ground lost during the Spanish rule. But it wasn't until independence in 1946 that Filipino women regained their traditional roles as equals within the household. And that, Sobritchea says, is why many female leaders today were born into their careers.
“We find that many or most of our female political leaders come from political families like former presidents Corazon Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo," she said, adding that "they inherited the family name from their fathers.”
Incomplete story
Sobritchea does not dispute the findings of the World Economic Forum or other international observers, but has difficulty agreeing that her nation is as gender equal as these surveys might lead readers to believe. She says the indicators these organizations use only tell half the story.
“Some very serious women's issues that should figure into gender equality standards are not there,” Sobritchea mentioned.
The Philippines government's recent statistics paint a bleaker picture. They say one in ten Filipino women have had a forced sexual encounter and 37 percent of women who were once married have experienced domestic violence. Furthermore, a 2013 US State Department report criticized the Philippines for not doing enough to stop the human trafficking of women. And some local NGOs say that poor women in rural parts of the country have no choice but to take informal jobs without any legal protection.
“They don't have maternity leave or the ability to do collective bargaining with management,” Elizabeth Angsioco, head of the advocacy group, the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines, told DW. "I don't think the international reports are able to capture the real situation of women in the country."
And it's just not the international community who gets it wrong, Angsioco claims. She points out that because most of the nation's female politicians come from the privileged class, they cannot relate to the needs of poor women from countryside communities known as barangays.
“We've tried to develop community leaders in the barangays. We have to have more women who understand women's' issues in politics,” she said.
Optimism
Some young Filipino women do see opportunities to get into leadership positions, but these don't come easy: “I don't come from a well known family, so it will be hard for me,” 20-year old Jeaniine Grace Torres, a development studies student at Miriam College in Manila, told DW. “In the Philippines, a family's name matters.”
Torres says she and some of her classmates are skeptical of their nation's "alleged" gender equality. They agree that much work needs to be done, but it's a challenge she hopes to take on someday firsthand.
“I want to be a good example that women can make it, that women can serve, that women can do something for the betterment of the country, and that women can make a difference.”
Date 11.09.2013
Author Jason Strother, Seoul
Editor Shamil Shams
Source: Deutsche Welle
Italy's racism is embedded
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Italy's racism is embedded
The shocking abuse of minister Cécile Kyenge stems from the country's failure to face up to its past
Maaza Mengiste
Last week in Rome three mannequins doused in fake blood were discovered in front of a municipal building ahead of a visit from Italy's first black minister, Cécile Kyenge. Flyers scattered around the area declared: "Immigration is the genocide of peoples. Kyenge resign!" This is only the latest in a succession of shocking attacks and threats since Kyenge took office in April. She's been compared to an orangutan by a former government minister; likened to a prostitute by a deputy mayor; and had bananas thrown at her while making a speech.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Her appointment has not only shed light on the country's problems with racial tolerance, it has begun to strip away at the Italian stereotype: Italians are friendly and kind, love to laugh, and enjoy the good life. They are, after all, more Mediterranean than European, a bit disorganised, but more likely to welcome you with open arms than insult or threaten you. It is a concept that goes by the term Italiani brava gente: "Italians are decent people". It was this idea that drew me to Italy as the subject for my new book. It ran counter to the experiences of my grandfather and his generation, who fought against the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia and endured a five-year Italian occupation. That contradiction took me to Rome, where I lived for an extended time, and where I researched Italy's colonial-era archives.
The Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and his party ruled from 1922–1943, during which time Italy moved to expand its empire beyond Libya, Eritrea and Somalia. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. Its people faced a devastating combination of aerial warfare and ground assault. They were subjected to mustard gas, concentration camps, and massacres. These were tactics Italy had developed in Libya in what would be a brutal 30-year struggle, one that Italy euphemistically labelled a "pacification campaign".
Italy routinely censored accounts of the war in Ethiopia; reports stressed instead Italy's civilising mission. Language was carefully crafted to bolster Italians' confidence not only in their right to take another people's land, but in the benevolence in that act. Italy emphasised the construction of infrastructure without revealing that these roads, bridges and telephone lines were built to improve mobility and communication between military forces and came at the expense of human lives.
While Italy's efforts to shroud the bloody side of imperial ambition don't make it any different from other colonising countries, most striking is the near-absence of this history from textbooks and national dialogue. It was not until 1996 – 60 years after the fact – that the Italian ministry of defence admitted its use of mustard gas.
If Germany had its Nuremberg trials and South Africa its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then what is missing in Italy is the kind of postwar accountability that forces harsh truths to light and begins the difficult journey towards reconciliation. What these moments of acknowledgement have shown us is this: addressing painful facts cements collective memory, establishes a collective ethos, and helps develop a vocabulary for repentance. It brings together those who once held the power to hurt and those who have the power to forgive.
It is through language that a nation transforms itself, and creates national identity. Italy's task since unification in 1861 has been to forge a unifying set of traits from strikingly different and often contentious groups of people. There is a popular quote attributed to the statesman Massimo d'Azeglio that says: "We've made Italy. Now we have to make Italians." Any kind of collective character has come from deliberate and careful construction. It is one that has historically included white skin. It is this that's challenged by Kyenge's presence.
Italy, whether it wants to or not, is undergoing transformation. First- and second-generation and native Italians are creating some of that momentum: striving to change discriminatory laws; and fighting for greater awareness not only of Italy's past, but its future potential. There is hope, but there is far to go.
I am reminded of a dinner in Rome with friends and colleagues. The celebratory night was soured by a comment shouted out that involved my skin colour and food and a vulgar sexual innuendo. The friends beside me were aghast. When I looked around, an elderly man winked at me. I started to protest and he threw up his hands and laughed. Then he went back to his conversation, and pretended I didn't exist.
If one hadn't heard what he'd just said, he would have looked like a good-humoured man misunderstood, unduly put upon. He would have been the typical easygoing Italian, another member of la brava gente. The attacks on Kyenge have been much more virulent; it has been hard to see the jovial Italian behind the vehemence. But the myth persists in the absence of harsher sanctions against those politicians and groups who are responsible. A national reckoning must involve all Italians.
On hearing of the latest abuse directed at Kyenge, I contacted an Italian friend of Somali descent and asked what she thought. "This is my country," she said. "We're working to improve it. Now more than ever, Italy needs people like me."
Source: The Guardian UK
Nigeria's governing party in crisis
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Nigeria's governing party in crisis
Nigeria’s governing PDP party appears to be disintegrating. Several leading officials have left and founded a new party. They are opposed to President Jonathan running for re-election in 2015.
Since seven functionaries of the governing People's Democratic Party (PDP) stormed out of a party convention at the end of August and set up their own party, politics in Nigeria have been in disarray.
The PDP has been in power continuously since the end of the military dictatorship in 1998. Now it appears to be falling apart and the influence of President Goodluck Jonathan is dwindling. The reason is the upcoming presidential elections in the oil-rich West African nation, due in 2015, for which major players are moving into position.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}The seven rebels are, with one exception, governors of federal states in the predominantly Muslim north. Together they represent just over 20 percent of the Nigerian electorate and are, therefore, an important electoral factor for President Jonathan.
The rebels accuse the president of not sticking to the rules. Under an unwritten law, top political positions alternate every other legislature period between the mainly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south. Jonathan comes from the south. He became president in 2010 after the unexpected death of President Umar Yar'Adua, a northerner. One year later an election confirmed Jonathan in office. That means he is coming to the end of his second term, say his opponents.
But the president seems to have every intention of running again in 2015. The rebel governors want to bring pressure to bear on him to respect the traditional way of doing things, says political scientist and analyst Garba Umar Kari from the University of Abuja in the Nigerian capital.
Serious threat to Jonathan
Up to now, with more than 60 percent, Jonathan's PDP had a comfortable majority in the Nigerian Governors' Forum. Now it has the backing of less than half of the 36 governors. This is not the first time there has been a power struggle within the PDP. But never before has one wing come out so strongly against the head of state and Jonathan's hold on power could now be seriously at risk.
"The people behind the so-called new PDP are experienced politicians, several of them are much more experienced than Jonathan and his camp," Kari told DW. The rebel governors are also very powerful because they have financial resources and a large support base in their respective states, he added. "If voters follow the rebels, they could easily defeat Jonathan," Kari predicts.
A Nigerian professor, Dr Abdul Raufu Mustapha, who lectures on African politics at Oxford University, warns that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other governors and members of parliament support the anti-Jonathan course, he says, but they have not yet gone public, fearing they would come under pressure from Jonathan.
Critical candidates not wanted
What provoked the split within the PDP? Mustapha says Jonathan and his party chairman Bamanga Tukur had attempted to influence internal elections and remove unwanted candidates. "70 candidates had registered for 17 positions. Just a few minutes before the election, fifteen of them were not allowed to take part – all those who belonged to a different faction within the party. The new PDP says it was undemocratic to shut out candidates shortly before an election and deprive them of the opportunity to present their positions," Mustapha told DW. The rebels took the case to court. The judges called on both sides to remain calm until the verdict is announced. However on Saturday (8.9.2013) the police, apparently acting on the orders of the president, closed down several offices of the new PDP.
The rebellion against Jonathan has nothing to do with a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, say both Kari and Mustapha. It is more a conflict of interests between Jonathan and his opponents within the party. There is considerable dissatisfaction with Jonathan's leadership style. As Kari sees it, "He has not yet been able to tackle a single one of Nigeria's fundamental social, political and economic problems. In fact, things have got worse." According to Kari, Jonathan had neither reacted appropriately to attacks in the north by Islamist terror group Boko Haram which left hundreds dead nor had he taken action to combat poverty and illiteracy in the country.
Strong opposition
In addition to the new PDP, a strengthened opposition bloc could add to Jonathan's woes. In February this year four opposition parties joined together to form an alliance, the All Progressive Congress (APC). If they were now to link up with the new PDP, that "would be the end of Jonathan's amibitions, as the opposition already controls 11 of Nigeria's 36 states," Kari said. Jonathan has not yet made an official statement on whether he plans to run for a further term in office. However, observers say he is bringing his followers, most prominently party chairman Tukur, into position. This is seen as a clear indication that he does intend to make a renewed bid for the presidency.
For the time being, reconciliation does not seem a likely prospect. However, much can happen between now and the elections in 2015.
Date 10.09.2013
Author Sarah Steffen / sh
Editor Isaac Mugabi
Source: Deutsche Welle
Syria intervention: is there a new constitutional convention?
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- Created on Monday, 02 September 2013 00:00
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Syria intervention: is there a new constitutional convention?
Does PM's decision to seek approval of MPs for military action signal a shift in power from government to parliament?
Joshua Rozenberg
Barack Obama's claim that he is "president of the word's oldest constitutional democracy" was either a deliberate insult to an ally that had just let him down or breathtaking ignorance on the part of a former president of the Harvard Law Review. Leaving aside the question of how long some of its citizens had to wait for their democratic rights, the United States did not even acquire a draft constitution until 1787. A century earlier, England's modern constitution had come into effect after the revolution of 1688 – although some would argue that the English had an ancient Gothic constitution even before the Norman conquest of 1066.
Explaining the UK's largely unwritten constitution in his recent book The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction, Prof Martin Loughlin says that if the subject of his book did not exist, it would rank as the shortest of OUP's popular Very Short Introductions.
In another new book –The British Constitution: Continuity and Change, published by Hart as a festschrift for Vernon Bogdanor – Prof David Feldman devotes a chapter to what are called constitutional conventions. Explaining how these norms manage conflicts and tensions between political institutions, he notes in passing that constitutional conventions are vital to the election of the US president: the electoral college established by the US constitution bears no relationship to modern political realities.
Little more than a month ago, I reported here that an affirmative vote of both houses of parliament was not required for the government to use armed force overseas. There was, however, a constitutional convention that deployment decisions would be debated in parliament.
That analysis was based on a report by the House of Lords constitution committee. Presciently, the committee said it was "inconceivable that the prime minister would either refuse to allow a Commons debate and vote on a deployment decision or would refuse to follow the view of the Commons as expressed by a vote".
I reflected that view in my piece here last Wednesday, saying it would "be very difficult for any government to take military action if parliament had voted against it".
At that time, I thought it was unlikely that ministers would put a motion to parliament that they had any prospect of losing. I imagined that there would be some sort of anodyne "take note" motion that nobody could oppose. But that was not how it turned out. So where does this leave the UK's constitutional convention on the use of armed force? There must still be a parliamentary debate before any military deployment unless circumstances make this impossible. But one can argue that the convention also now requires a vote on a substantive motion and that an adverse vote would make military action impossible, at least until circumstances changed.
If this analysis proves to be correct, it represents a profound shift of power from the government to parliament. In evidence to the Lords constitution committee, the government made it clear that some ministers, at least, did not want to give parliament the power to approve or block military action. Those ministers seem to have shot themselves in the foot.
It's one thing for a new constitutional convention to emerge in the United Kingdom. But what's really extraordinary is that it seems to have spread to the United States. Under the US constitution, the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. We know that this gives the president authority to launch military action without prior approval from Congress since this is what he was planning to do last week.
As Obama said in his Rose Garden speech on Saturday, "I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets." Note the personal pronoun.
But he then went on to promise that he would "seek authorisation for the use of force from the American people's representatives in Congress". Attempting to explain this apparent contradiction, the president said: "While I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorisation, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course and our actions will be even more effective."
Obama no longer seems very sure of his ability to launch military action without Congressional approval. Is prior approval now a convention of the US constitution too? The US secretary of state says it is not. But the president's speech will certainly be cited as a precedent by those who may be opposed to future military deployments. And it would surely be as difficult for Obama to defy Congress as it was for David Cameron to defy parliament.
Even more extraordinary, the convention may even be spreading to France. As the Guardian reports, the French president is required by law merely to inform his parliament no later than three days after he has launched military action. Now, François Hollande is facing growing calls from opposition politicians for a prior parliamentary vote.
We know that Obama's decision to seek Congressional support has been greeted with dismay in Israel. Political and military leaders in Jerusalem are reported to be horrified at the thought that Obama would now need to ask Congress before taking military action against Iran – and that Congress might oppose it.
I'm not so sure. If the threat to western interests becomes imminent, one would hope that Congress would understand the strategic imperatives. The legal basis for military action – collective self-defence – would be rock-solid, unlike the UK's flaky "humanitarian intervention" arguments reported by me last Wednesday and confirmed, almost word-for-word, by the attorney general a day later.
And a future US military campaign might never get as far as Congress if it depended on urgency or surprise. Unusually, the action proposed against Syria requires neither. And since the wisdom of launching strikes against the Assad regime at this stage is clearly open to doubt, there is every reason for subjecting it to the political process.
But that does not mean that leaders of democratic states will always require prior approval for future military action. If presidents and prime ministers are sure they are acting in the best interests of those who elected them, they will still be free to act. What emerged over the weekend is, after all, just a convention.
Source: The Guardian UK