Download The Tragedy of Political Science Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy Paperback PDF
Download the PDF Here :http://bit.ly/1zh7dQD.
By: Gianluigi Buffon
Read the rest here:
Download The Tragedy of Political Science Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy Paperback PDF - Video
Does democracy in Malaysia really depend on Anwar Ibrahim?
If it does, Malaysias 30 million people are in trouble. Anwar is back in jail: at least five years imprisonment, and another five years ban from political activity after that. He says he doesnt care: Whether its five years or ten it doesnt matter to me anymore. They can give me twenty years. I dont give a damn.
But of course he cares. By the time hes free to resume his role as opposition leader, hell be at least 77. The Peoples Alliance, the three-party opposition coalition that he created, cant afford to wait 10 years for him to be free. The real question is whether they can stay together without him as leader.
Malaysia is formally a democracy, but the same coalition of parties, the National Front, has won every election since 1957. In the 2008 and 2013 elections, however, Anwars coalition began to cut seriously into the National Front vote. Indeed, in 2013 the Peoples Alliance actually got a majority of the votes cast, although the ruling coalition still won more seats in parliament.
But on Monday the Federal Court ruled that Anwar was guilty on a charge of sodomy (which is illegal in this Muslim-majority country) and sent him to jail. He had previously been acquitted of the charge, and many people in Malaysia suspect that the prosecutor appealed the case to move it up into the superior courts, which are more open to political influence than the lower courts.
In other words, theyre getting him out of the way.
The first time Anwar was charged with sodomy was in 1998, less than a month after he was fired as deputy prime minister. He had risen to the countrys second highest political post with startling speed thanks to the support of long-ruling Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, but then he fell out with Mahathir (according to his own account) because of the latters lavish use of public funds to bail out the failing businesses of his children and cronies.
In any case, it was certainly in the ruling partys interest to silence him. No need to kill him, though; jail would keep him just as quiet. Many Malaysians believed from the start that the sodomy charge was politically motivated.
Anwar was convicted (on extremely contradictory evidence), and sentenced to nine years in prison. But he was released in only five years, after the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in 2004. He immediately began trying to unite the opposition parties and create a coalition capable of challenging the National Front government that he had once served.
The Peoples Alliance was successful enough in the 2008 election to frighten the government, and by the strangest coincidence a second charge of sodomy was brought against Anwar only a couple of months later. Once again the evidence was flimsy and contradictory, and on this occasion the man who claimed to have been seduced had actually met with Prime Minister Najib Razak (of the National Front) two days before he laid the charges.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of having a grand plan to scuttle democracy based on the postponement of the general elections announced by the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, last Saturday.
Obasanjo said this on Saturday at his Hilltop presidential residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State, in an interview with newsmen.
The ex-President said he broke his promise not to talk till after the elections because the elections were postponed.
Obasanjo, who just returned from a trip to New Delhi, Rabat, Nairobi, Munich and London, said the incumbent president might become another Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Cote dlvoire, who kept on shifting election dates until he believed the odds were in his favour.
Gbagbo lost the presidential election in 2010, refused to handover to the winner and was finally disgraced out of office in April 2011, after he had plunged the country into chaos.
Obasanjo noted that Jega must have been boxed to a corner by the powers that be before making the announcement postponing the polls, stating that insecurity in the North-East of the country could not be enough reason for such postponement.
He said Jonathan, as Commander -in-Chief of the Armed Forces, must provide adequate security for the citizens.
He said, I was away because I had a number of assignments abroad which took me to Morocco, Munich, Nairobi, London and New Delhi. Exactly a week today, when we were in Munich for what they called Munich security conferences annual event; and all the people, who are in security community normally, you found them there.
For this year, the Vice- President of America was there, the Secretary of State, John Kerry, was there, the Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany was there, President of Ukraine was there and many others.
I was there with Koffie Annan; our side was to talk about peace and security in Africa. I was to handle the African perspective while Koffie Annan was to look at it from the global perspective.
Read the original here:
Jonathan has grand plan to scuttle democracy Obasanjo
Glenn Greenwald: "A real subversion, not only of privacy, but of democracy itself"
This is a clip from Reason TV #39;s recent video, "Glenn Greenwald #39;s Plan to Poke, Prod, and Piss Off the Powerful." To watch the complete interview, click here:...
By: ReasonTV
View post:
Glenn Greenwald: "A real subversion, not only of privacy, but of democracy itself" - Video
Own The Change: Building Economic Democracy One Worker Co-op at a Time
A short documentary in partnership with Toolbox for Education and Social Action. Watch as we go through concrete steps for building economic alternatives by ...
By: GRITtv
Read this article:
Own The Change: Building Economic Democracy One Worker Co-op at a Time - Video