8 Gulf Daily News Wednesday, 5th October 2011
Making a mockery
of democracy...
By Herbert Grimes
eet the new boss, as The Who sang in
M
Won’t Get Fooled Again, “Same as the
old boss.”
Because as Russians have just discovered, the new Vladimir Putin, former president and at present serving four years as
the token Prime Minister, turns out to be...
the old Putin.
Putin, looking tautly rejuvenated with
eerily unbaggy eyes, has announced that
he will be swapping jobs in elections next
March with President Medvedev, the puppet who has been keeping his seat warm
for the past four years.
It would, Putin told the congress of his
United Russia party with as much humility
as a bare-chested horseman and tigertracker can muster, “a great honour” to
take his old job back.
When Putin is elected president again
(only the most innocent would think of
saying “if”: even though the Kremlin will
rustle up candidates to run against him for
the sake of democratic decency, it will effectively be a one-horse race in the finest
traditions of the sort of Soviet politics that
perestroika and glasnost was supposed to
have swept away), he could keep a grip on
the post until 2024, when he will be 70.
Nothing could more clearly signal the
failure of democracy and the triumph
of Kremlinology in post-Soviet Russia.
Putinism is the new Stalinism.
By explaining that the two men had
sealed the deal many years ago – as if
that might allay concerns as to its propriety – Putin only underlined his cynicism,
contempt for democracy and an appetite for shamelessness that makes Silvio
Berlusconi look coy.
His matter-of-fact disclosure that this
decision had been made “several years
back” confirmed to anyone who might
still doubt it that the past four years in
Moscow have been little more than a carefully orchestrated pantomime designed to
hoodwink the world and make a mockery
of the so-called reset in relations between
Washington and Moscow.
With Putin’s popularity still dizzily high,
with Russia’s national media cowed into
obedience, with the country’s energyreliant economy stabilised, with its international prestige slowly restored, and given
the disenchantment with Boris Yeltsin’s
brand of Western-style democracy in the
1990s which was marked by corruption,
lawlessness and economic collapse, few
Russians seem to mind Putin’s monopolisation of power. His supporters see him as a
saviour, a hero who has rescued his country
from chaos.
It has been left to a handful of prominent
critics to remind the world that Russia’s
new self-confidence on the world stage has
been won at the expense of free speech,
democracy and human rights; men such as
former president Mikhail Gorbachev, and
jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky
whose oil company Yukos was broken up
and sold off after he challenged Putin’s
authority.
Gorbachev has warned, despairingly,
that Russia is returning to the era of
Brezhnev, an era of economic and political
stagnation.
Putin is evidently alert to the threat of
economic stagnation. One reason he decided to show his hand early was to end
uncertainty over who would be president
come next March.
Such uncertainty has been deterring
investors from putting money into Russia.
But what also worries them are the conditions for foreigners doing business there.
Putin may find that, unlike Russian voters, foreign investors may need greater assurances that they won’t get fooled again.
School bus madness –
Sir,
S
omeone please look into the
following matter and help those
of us who can’t raise our voices in
public.
I am a parent who attended the
last general meeting at the Indian
School to decide on the school
timing change and the new transport contractor.
Authorities highlighted that the
contractor was not complying with
the terms since they were using
the same buses for both campuses
– Isa Town and Sitra.
Now after the change in the contract, the outcome seems worse.
The transport schedule seems to
be in a mess forcing children to
spend long hours
waiting
for their
buses.
Many buses
Letter
to Sitra Campus
arrive late to
pick up children and reach
n Some lights under Sitra causeway don’t work
the school too late.
fact. Recently a leading business magazine
It seems the buses come back from Isa
published an article on Mother Teresa and
Town Campus after dropping students there
Lady Gaga being excellent examples for busiand then go to Sitra Campus. The same thing
nesses and communities.
is repeated in the afternoon but in the reFirst, for someone to compare Lady Gaga
verse manner, which is causing students of Isa and Mother Teresa and pass a judgement is
Town Campus to reach home late.
stupid. No one can be compared with Mother
I wonder how the management is allowing
Teresa! Lady Gaga is on another whole field,
the new contractor to breach the contract
but they all stand for the same thing – equalfrom the start. It has to immediately find a
ity! She fights for equality in society, wants to
solution to relieve the children from this sufinspire us to make a better world – us being
fering during these hot summer days.
teenagers and the future.
A parent
Everyone has his or her views, Lady Gaga
Indian School Bahrain taught me not to impose mine on others,
l Editor’S note: The Indian School didn’t rewhich is what you are doing even after being
spond to this letter.
“inspired” by Mother Teresa.
I’m sure she must be upset with your comments. I’m sure you must have never heard
was shocked to read recently about Lady
her music. Being a professor, you seem to feel
Gaga not being a “real hero”. Being a profesyour views are above others’. Which is what
sor, I was shocked to read such unfair comLady Gaga tells us not to do! She says never
ments. I wish to enlighten you on a very ironic to make one’s beliefs or talent more impor-
Star
Twin inspirations
I
TODAY is Wednesday, October 5, the
278th day of 2011. There are 87 days left
in the year. Highlights in history on this
date:
1795 – An artillery commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte blasts rebels marching in the streets against the National
Convention in Paris, saving the republic.
He is soon appointed commander of the
army of the interior.
1796 – Spain declares war on Britain.
1821 – Greeks take Tripolitza in the Morea (Peloponnese) and massacre Turkish
population.
1897 – The army crushes the rebel
forces of messianic leader Antonio Conselheiro and razes the communist-style
settlement of Canudos in the northeastern outback of Brazil.
1908 – Ferdinand I declares Bulgaria’s
independence from the Ottoman Empire and assumes title of Czar of Bulgaria.
1914 – Two crewmen of a German reconnaissance aircraft become the first
to be killed in an air battle when their
plane is shot down by a French aircraft
over France.
1931 – Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon complete the first non-stop flight
across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in US
state of Washington 41 hours after takeoff from Japan.
1954 – Britain, the US, Italy and Yugoslavia agree that the Free Territory of Trieste should be divided into Italian and
Yugoslav zones.
1970 – Egypt’s only political party
names Anwar Sadat to succeed late
president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1978 – Plans are announced for US
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to go to
South Africa to try to promote transition
to black rule in Namibia.
1983 – Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s
Solidarity labour movement, is named
winner of Nobel Peace Prize.
1987 – South Africa’s President P W
Botha says his government plans to permit some multi-racial neighbourhoods.
1988 – Chileans in a plebiscite turn
down a proposal to extend General Augusto Pinochet’s rule until 1997.
1989 – The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel
Peace Prize.
1993 – China breaks moratorium on nuclear testing.
1994 – Forty-eight bodies are found
in two locations in Switzerland after a
cult’s mass suicide-murder.
1996 – Bosnia’s three-member presidency gets off to a rocky start as the
Serb member refuses to attend the inauguration.
1997 – Sixteen schoolchildren and their
bus driver are killed in Algeria when
their vehicle is sprayed by gunfire at a
false road block.
1998 – A committee of the US Congress
votes to recommend an impeachment
inquiry of President Bill Clinton’s actions
in the Lewinsky case. It is the third im-
Beauty of Sitra
S
itra causeway’s beauty will be
diminishing at night if a regular
check-up on the lights is not carried out.
Some under the bridge don’t
glow due to which the beauty of
the causeway is reduced.
I hope authorities will look into
it. Does anyone know of an e-mail
address or website, where such
findings can be reported?
B G Dhar
tant than others’. We are all beautiful in our
own way.
For you, Mother Teresa must have been an
inspiration. For me, it’s Lady Gaga, but that
doesn’t mean everybody else is bad!
Lady Gaga performs in that way because
that’s how we understand and love it! She
skims through the layers of society and sings
right through to people that care. People like
you will never take time to understand her
peachment inquiry in US history.
1999 – Two packed commuter trains
collide near London’s Paddington Station during the morning rush hour, killing 31 people and injuring 244.
2000 – The Israeli army says it has
agreed to a ceasefire with Palestinian security authorities, the fourth since
violence erupted in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip a week earlier.
2001 - A 63-year-old Florida man dies of
the inhaled form of anthrax, the first of
a series of anthrax cases in Florida, New
York, New Jersey and Washington.
2002 - South Korea’s National Assembly
votes to approve Kim Suk Soo as the
new Premier. Though largely ceremonial, he can succeed the president if he
or she dies or becomes incapacitated.
2004 - Major-General Alu Allkhanov
is sworn in as Chechnya’s President,
nearly five months after his predecessor’s assassination, in a heavily guarded
ceremony seen as another step in the
Kremlin’s strategy to undermine rebels
in the war-ravaged region.
2005 - Powerful warlords, a former Taliban commander and women’s rights activists are among the front-runners after
ballot counting ends in Afghanistan’s
landmark parliamentary elections.
2006 - European Union ministers endorse a plan to make permanent joint
patrols that pick up migrants on the
high seas, moving to end internal divisions over dealing with a surge of illegal
immigration from Africa.
2007 - Syria vows not to forcibly expel
any of the 1.5 million Iraqis who have
fled there, despite new rules aimed at
stemming the flow of people across the
border.
2008 - Germany becomes the latest
country to move to allay fears about the
financial meltdown, enhancing a rescue
plan for Hypo Real Estate AG and guaranteeing private bank accounts as European governments scramble on their
own to save failing banks.
2009 - New leader of the Pakistani
Taliban Hakimullah Mehsud meets reporters for the first time since winning
control of the militant group, quashing
speculation he had been slain in a succession struggle after the killing of his
predecessor in a US drone attack.
2010 - Ex-trader French Jerome Kerviel
is convicted on all counts in history’s biggest rogue trading scandal, sentenced
to three years in prison and ordered to
pay his former employer damages of 4.9
billion euros ($6.7bn) – a sum so staggering it drew gasps in the courtroom.
THE greatest dangers to liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but
without understanding – Justice
Louis D Brandeis (1856-1941).