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Politics this week
Nov 2nd 2006
From The Economist print edition
Americas political parties rallied their core supporters as the electorate prepared to vote in the midterm
elections on November 7th. George Bush hit the trail to rail against gay marriage and terrorists in
Iraq. He also chastised Senator John Kerry, who is not up for election, for his gaffe that the uneducated
get “stuck in Iraq”. With polls forecasting that the Republicans will lose the House of Representatives, but
predicting the outcome in the Senate with less certainty, Democrats continued with their mantra that the
Iraq war has made America unsafe. See article
Authorities said arson was the cause of a forest fire near Palm Springs, California, that burned more
than 40,000 acres. Five firefighters were killed and dozens of properties destroyed.
On the frontline
Iraqs unrelenting violence included two particularly vicious bomb explosions in
Sadr City, a Shia district of Baghdad. One killed at least 15 people, including
four children, at a wedding; the other at least 30 people, mainly labourers
looking for work.
Israel launched a “major operation” in the northern Gaza Strip, reoccupying
the town of Beit Hanoun with tanks and helicopter gunships. See article
Meanwhile, talks continued about prisoner exchanges to retrieve the Israeli
soldier held captive in Gaza and the two held captive in Lebanon. Egyptian
officials negotiated with a Hamas delegation in Cairo; and Hizbullahs leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, said the UN was negotiating between Israeli and Hizbullah officials.
Tony Blair sent a senior foreign-policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Syria to find out whether
President Bashar Assad could be tempted into playing a more pro-Western role. America meanwhile
warned Syria to cease attempts to destabilise the government of Lebanon. See article
Around 70 people were killed by floods in Ethiopias eastern Ogaden region after a river burst its banks.
In August, flooding killed an estimated 900 people in the country.
A Nigerian passenger aircraft crashed after take-off from the capital Abuja, killing 96 people. It was the
countrys third civilian air disaster in a year. See article
Congos presidential run-off election on October 29th passed off relatively peacefully. Early indications
show a surprisingly close contest between the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila, and his challenger,
Jean-Pierre Bemba. See article
No temporary solution
Violent clashes erupted across Bangladesh as an interim government, to oversee elections due in
January, took office. The opposition feared that the outgoing government led by Khaleda Zia, the prime
minister, might try to rig the elections through a biased interim administration. See article
Just three weeks after testing a nuclear device, North Korea announced that it would rejoin multilateral
talks on ending its nuclear-weapons programme. The breakthrough came after secretly arranged talks
with America and China in Beijing. See article
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Protests took place in Pakistan after the army attacked a madrassa in the tribal area of Bajaur and killed
at least 80 people it said were training as terrorists. Locals said many of the dead were children and that
pilotless American drones had begun the attack. See article
Two days of talks in Geneva between Sri Lankas government and Tamil Tiger rebels ended with no
progress towards fixing their battle-scarred “ceasefire”.
Mitteleuropa
A summit in Berlin between Germany and Poland did little to resolve bilateral tensions over gas
pipelines and German property claims dating from the aftermath of the second world war. The personal
relationship between Germanys Angela Merkel and Polands Jaroslaw Kaczynski was at least cordial,
however.
One year after the riots in Frances troubled suburbs, another spate of vehicle burnings, especially of
buses, took place. In Marseille, a female bus passenger was left badly burnt and fighting for her life. See
article
More than 70 Muslim workers at Paris airport were stripped of their security clearance. Some were
reported to have visited terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. See article
Serbian voters approved a new constitution that declares Kosovo to be an
integral part of Serbia. A fresh election will probably be held in December, but
Kosovo is still likely to win independence next year. See article
Catalonia held its first regional election since being granted more autonomy by
the Spanish government under a new statute. The conservative nationalist CiU
party won most seats, but it will take weeks before a new coalition government
is formed in Barcelona.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the head of Britains government economic service and a
former chief economist at the World Bank, published a report on the economics
of climate change. It concludes that if greenhouse-gas emissions continue on
their current path, the cost could range between 5-20% of global output over the next 100-200 years.
See article
Lucky Lula
Brazils left-of-centre president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won a second term
by a landslide. He gained 61% of the vote in a run-off ballot, against 39% for
Geraldo Alckmin, his centre-right opponent. Lula said he would seek to raise
economic growth and cut the gap between rich and poor. See article
In a victory for Bolivias socialist president, Evo Morales, ten foreign energy
companies signed new contracts that grant majority ownership to the state and
will quadruple government tax revenues from energy. Mr Morales also
postponed previous plans to nationalise Bolivias mines. See article
Thousands of federal police retook the centre of the southern Mexican city of
Oaxaca, which had been occupied by protesters for five months. Congress called on the states governor
to step down. See article
At least 16 policemen were killed in a homemade mortar attack by FARC guerrillas on a rural police
station in north-west Colombia.
After 47 rounds of voting in which Guatemala regularly beat Venezuela but failed to secure a twothirds
majority, both countries withdrew and agreed to support Panama to represent Latin America in a
rotating seat at the UN Security Council.