Category: OPINION

By Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) – Donald Trump calls the so-called ‘liberal media’ the “bad guys” and since he was elected President two months ago – in fact even before that with the Brexit vote in June 2016 – the “Liberals” in the West have been chest-beating complaining about misleading social media messages to unfairness of the electoral systems as their preferred candidates or platforms are defeated by grassroots voter revolts.

It is interesting that the ‘liberal’ media has made such a big issue of Trump having lost the popular vote but winning the Presidency, without looking at how the so-called Westminster system of democracy, which many former British colonies have inherited, often reflects such results as it is grounded on an electorate based first-past-the-post system not dissimilar to the U.S. Electoral College system.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama steps down at the age of 55. He will probably live, given his healthy lifestyle, until he’s over 90. So what on earth is he going to do for the next 40 years? Run for King of England? He would probably win, as he is much more popular in Europe than he ever was at home.

Realistically we don’t know and right now probably he doesn’t. But of one thing we can be sure of as he writes his second autobiography in his very special prose he will be critically re-evaluating every decision and policy change he made. This is an honest man if on a few occasions he failed to be. And we, the jury, try to be, if sometimes we fail too.

By The Nation (Thailand)*

BANGKOK (IDN-INPS) – Ban Ki-moon ended (on December 31) his decade as Secretary-General of the United Nations amid praise from many quarters, but this was mere diplomacy. Astute witnesses to his two terms in office know that, given the chance to stop wars, forge peace and foster international fraternity, to make the world safer and more equitable to all, he accomplished precious little.

His primary goal on taking office at the beginning of 2007 was to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. In this too he failed. Ban’s achievements in the area of environmental protection, specifically the Paris Protocol on climate change, allow him a legacy that is mixed at best.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The West African state of the Congo has always been taking one step forward, two steps back. This goes back to the days when Congo became independent from Belgian rule in 1960.

Now we see it again. There were supposed to be elections at the end of last year. But President Joseph Kabila has clung to power. After months of negotiations led by the Catholic bishops a deal has been agreed on December 31. If Kabila is given one more year in office then he will call elections in a year’s time.

By Dr. Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary-General

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Presidents and Prime Ministers of 79 Member States of the African, Caribbean & Pacific (ACP) Group, the ACP Council of Ministers, Senior Officials, Continental and Regional organisations, development partners, civil society and private sector organisations deserve the ACP’s Secretariat’s deep appreciation for having contributed so significantly to the main achievements of the ACP Family in 2016.

By Ramesh Jaura

We don’t want to look back … just recall that we faced numerous obstacles when we re-launched IDN-InDepthNews at the beginning of 2016 under the umbrella of the International Press Syndicate (INPS), formerly Globalom Media, established in March 2009.

As we move forward in 2017, we are very grateful to our colleagues around the world – Phil Harris, Shastri Ramachandran, A.D. McKenzie, Neena Bhadrari, Kalinga Seneviratne, Katsuhiro Asagiri, Jacques Couvas, Fabiola Ortiz, Justus Wanzala, Jeffrey Moyo, Kizito Makoye Shigela, Stella Paul, Lowana Veal, Vesna Peric Zimonjic and Lisa Vives of Global Information Network, to name just a few.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – What you see depends on where you sit. There are the pessimists who see President-elect Donald Trump who said in his tweet about the need to engage in a new arms race. There are the optimists, sitting on the other side of the room, who believe the kind words uttered by President Vladimir Putin and Trump to each other mean that there well could be a new agreement on reducing their nuclear armories. 2017 will be a lot better than 2016.

When I wrote my history of Amnesty International (“Like Water on Stone”, Penguin, 2002) I was struck both by the staff and activists how positive they were, despite dealing with some of the worst horrors in the world.

By Jeya Rani*

CHENNAI (IDN) – Even as you read this whever you are, somewhere in India someone is being killed or raped, humiliated or outraged, just because she or he was born in a lower caste (known as Dalit).

The ‘not so changing’ statistics of National Crime Records Bureau say that a Dalit is assaulted every two hours in India. At least three Dalit women are raped every 24 hours. Two Dalits are killed every 24 hours. Two Dalit houses are burnt down.

There is no dearth of breaking news or good TRP ratings in reporting atrocities against Dalits across India. But, why are these stories not getting the coverage it deserves in the country often touted as the world’s biggest democracy?.

By Dayan Jayatilleka*

COLOMBO (IDN) – It was perhaps the biggest Sri Lanka related news story of the year that is about to end. It should have been picked up by the international media but unsurprisingly it wasn’t. More shocking however is that it made to the local media but the biggest news was not focused on. There has not been, for instance, a single editorial on it or feature spun off from it. 

Let me back up a bit. It was the doyen of foreign correspondents in Sri Lanka, a true Sri Lankan hand of the old school, PK Balachandran of the New Indian Express, who surfaced it, and it was Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror that ran it first in Sri Lanka and it was the best reporter-cum-journalistic commentator on Sri Lankan affairs, DBS Jeyaraj, who gave the story the treatment it deserved.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – An abiding fear for Donald Trump is that the Middle East dictators’ successors in power will be militant Islamists who once elected will stop at nothing. At one time in the presidential campaign he threatened to “nuke” them. Even though the secular-minded President Bashar al-Assad appears to be winning the civil war in Syria the Islamists will sit on his tail.

Violent-inclined Islamists point to the Koran and the Hadith to justify their violence. Indeed, there are sentences in both that are close to their interpretation. Even though they may hype up these passages and ignore other more peaceful ones the truth is that Islam does have a tradition of the hard school. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Muslims today don’t subscribe to it.