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| Mission |
We tell
the world about the world
Our mission is to further the promotion of liberal democracy and the safeguarding
of the environment by the actions of accountable governments. To advance this
cause we report, without fear or favour, the affairs of nations that are in
transition, their politics, economics, business, finance and human rights -
and we tell it how it is, consistently, calmly, and objectively.
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| Countries: Poland |
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Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 - 12:47 PM |
New government sworn in
Following a resounding victory in October parliamentary elections, Poland's new Prime Minister Donald Tusk was formally sworn in by President Lech Kaczynski on November 16, before he and his coalition government's ministers took office in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Warsaw.
"So help me God," said Tusk, leader of Poland's election-winning liberal party, as he pledged to serve the country, using a formula, which although optional, is traditionally used in government ceremonies in deeply-Catholic Poland. His 18 ministers were then sworn in one by one.
Tusk said his ministers were "well prepared and decent," adding "state power should serve the people, not dominate them." His government intended to focus on "health, wages and home security," Tusk added.
Tusk's Civic Platform (PO) Party beat the conservative Law and Justice Party in a snap election on October 21 and ended the unprecedented political double act of deposed Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski with his identical twin, who of course remains the president, Lech Kaczynski.
The PO victory also ended the rule of Kaczynski's fractious three-party coalition, which had struggled through two years of in-fighting, scandal and criticism.
A new coalition forms
Tusk takes over with a new coalition, forced on him due to the fact that Civic Platform missed its goal of obtaining a parliamentary majority, winning 209 of the total 460 seats. He forms his government with members of the moderate Polish Peasants' Party, which won 31 seats in parliament, and has made its leader, Waldemar Pawlak, his deputy prime minister.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who formally stepped down as prime minister on November 5, has become the leader of the opposition.
Tusk chooses top party ally as interior minister
Poland's prime minister-designate, as Tusk then was, on October 25 nominated a senior ally in his pro-business Civic Platform party as the country's new interior minister, a vital post in Poland, and started holding talks with other potential members of his government. Donald Tusk said he had chosen his right-hand man in the party, Secretary-General Grzegorz Schetyna, to run the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for police and security issues. He said Schetyna would accept.
Tusk tapped Jacek Rostowski, 56, a British-born graduate of the London School of Economics, for finance minister. Rostowski is an advocate of fast euro adoption, and was an adviser in Poland's transition to a market economy in the early 1990s.
Tusk also met with Radek Sikorski, a former defence minister, whom he said was to be the new foreign minister. Sikorski previously served as defence minister under outgoing Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, but resigned amid differences with the government. He then ran in the election for Tusk's party. The new foreign minister also has deep ties to Britain, where he was stranded as an anti-communist dissident after military rule was imposed in Poland by the Communist regime in 1981.
Tusk also planned to meet with Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, who served for a few months as prime minister for Kaczynski's conservative and nationalist Law and Justice party in 2005 and 2006. However, Tusk said that he did not expect Marcinkiewicz to enter his government because he is now under contract with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Mending ties with the EU
Under Tusk, Poland is expected to push through a wave of pro-business economic policies — including more privatization, deregulation and speedy adoption of the euro — moves that could make the largest of the EU's eastern members a model of economic discipline in the region.
"This is a reformist government — and it's a new beginning for Poland," said Lars Christensen, senior analyst at the Danske Bank in Copenhagen.
Tusk has pledged to end the regular tussles with the rest of the European Union, and with neighbouring Germany in particular, which marked Law and Justice's rule.
He also promised to ease tensions in relations with Russia, which have been at their lowest ebb since Poland broke free from the Communist bloc in 1989.
The urbane, amiable Tusk is a dyed-in-the-wool champion of European integration -- and his premiership will be in stark contrast to that of Kaczynski after the fights the brothers picked with EU leaders.
Profile of a liberal
Tusk has also been a confirmed economic liberal since his youth, and has regularly said that Poland needs less state interference and more entrepreneurs.
Besides being an anti-regime activist during communist rule, when he studied Poland's pre-war history, Tusk was a hands-on apprentice in economics, becoming one of the country's few independent businessmen by setting up a small painting firm.
After 1989, when communist rule came to an end in Poland, Tusk and a group of friends in his Baltic Sea hometown of Gdansk founded a political party, the Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD), to campaign for a sweeping privatization of the state-run economy.
In elections in 1991, KLD won 37 seats in Poland's 460-seat lower house, but lost them all two years later, and Tusk opted to merge his party with the larger Freedom Union (UW).
After leading a breakaway in 2001, Tusk formed PO and the rest is history.
Thatcherism to the fore
In line with his economic thinking, Tusk is an avowed admirer of the late US President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
He has also been a faithful supporter of Lech Walesa, the former Gdansk shipyard electrician who led the communist-era opposition trade union Solidarity and was elected president in 1990. Walesa also backed the PO in the campaign that led to Tusk's victory.
Tusk is proud of his cultural background. He is a Kashubian -- a Slav minority from the Gdansk region -- and has been at the forefront of a cultural revival, which has reversed years of decline.
He only discovered his roots as an adult, prompting him to learn the language and later write the first textbook for would-be Kashubian-speakers.
The economy recovers
The economy is growing at 7% and unemployment is falling rapidly, although some analysts say this is partially caused by the estimated one million Poles who have left the country in recent years, many to the UK. At the same time Poland is now the largest beneficiary of structural funds from the European Union.
It's hard for a government to lose an election if the economy is doing as well as it is. While the bashing of the EU went against the Kaczynski twins. Former Premier Kaczynski only agreed to the new EU treaty outline at the summit in June after winning concessions on voting rights. Unlike their former Eurosceptic prime minister, Poles are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the country's EU membership.
Poland is a country polarized between supporters and opponents of Kaczynski, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw. The 58-year-old out-going prime minister believes the state is broken and he is the first politician to try to mend it. He has done this by giving extra power to anti-corruption agencies while purging former communists. Kaczynski has also promoted an assertive foreign policy and traditional Catholic values. His supporters said they voted for "the Law and Justice party as it was telling the truth and doing something". But Kaczynski's policies and style are not to the taste of many better-off and well-educated city dwellers, which prefer Tusk and his far more modern party and policies.
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| Countries: Hungary |
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Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 - 12:32 PM |
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At the brink
Hungary is in a ghastly hole. It began to run a huge public deficit, nearly 10%of GDP. The ex-communists who ran the show kept making promises that they could not keep.
The government is nearing the end of its period of severe fiscal austerity, but the structural reforms will continue and a budget deficit of less than 3% of gross domestic product is within reach in the coming years, Prime Minister Gyurcsany said on November 15.
"The period of austerity measures seen in the past 1.5 years is over but this doesn't mean that the reforms are done. Now a period of improvement and construction is to come," Gyurcsany said at a conference organized by domestic think tank GKI.
The ongoing painful reforms of Hungary's healthcare, education, and public sectors are not only aimed at bringing the budget back to a sustainable course but also at putting an end to stop-go fiscal cycles, and at convincing Hungarians that no more can be spent on social services than is received in the budget.
"In a small and open economy such as Hungary's, we need to aim to have a budget that has not a 3% deficit but which is totally balanced (with no deficit)," Gyurcsany said.
Hungary recorded the biggest budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic products in the European Union last year, at 9.2%. The austerity measures carried out this year and last year amounted to 7.5% of GDP, one of the biggest spending cuts ever by a European country, Gyurcsany said. "A stable, less than 3% (of GDP) budget deficit could come during the current (political) period," Gyurcsany said meaning the current Socialist party-led government cycle.
Concerns from analysts and investors that Hungary will fail to meet its budget deficit reduction goals in the coming years, including 2010, are "unfounded," Gyurcsany said. The bill on new budget planning rules submitted to parliament will serve as an institutional guarantee for reaching those targets, he added.
As a result of the fiscal spending cuts, Hungary's GDP growth has slowed sharply and analysts fear that the country is facing stagflation. "The question is, then, where economic growth will come from? We need to reject all ideas that suggest that growth should come from boosting domestic consumption and boosting domestic investment demand," Gyurcsany said.
"This was one of the gravest mistakes in the past years and there's no road back to that," he added.
Gyurcsany's Socialist party and the leading opposition party, the center right Fidesz party's views strongly differ regarding that, Gyurcsany added. With the budget lowering its financing need, the private sector will gain room to invest and develop, the premier said. Furthermore, development programs drafted by the government will add to that, he added.
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| Countries: Greece |
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Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 - 12:30 PM |
Greece and Turkey open gas pipeline
Greece and Turkey are edgy neighbours, who have, nevertheless, been getting on better of late.
As a symbol of good intentions as well as for more mundane reasons, they opened a $300 million pipeline on November 18, creating an energy corridor that connects the rich natural gas fields in the Caspian Sea region to Europe, bypassing Russia and the volatile Middle East. The 300-kilometre pipeline brings natural gas from Azerbaijan to Greece and will be extended to Italy and the rest of Western Europe.
The 178-mile pipeline solidifies improved ties between Greece and Turkey, linking the long-time Aegean rivals through a project that will give Caspian gas its first direct Western outlet and help ease Russia's energy dominance as oil and gas prices soar. The two leaders have sought to use an often-cited good personal bond to improve relations between their two countries, which have been strained over decades of territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea - and centuries of shared history within the Ottoman Empire, and later. Karamanlis also shares a personal bond with Erdogan after serving as a witness at his daughter's marriage in 2004.
"This project will bring significant benefits both for Greece and Turkey," said Kostas Karamanlis, the Greek prime minister, who inaugurated the project with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It shows "we can live in harmony and both gain from it," Mr. Karamanlis said, shaking hands with Mr. Erdogan in a symbolic meeting on a bridge over the Evros River, which divides the countries.
The pipeline, which will use natural gas pumped into Turkey from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan, will initially carry 250 million cubic meters of gas a year to Komotini, in north-eastern Greece, from Karacabey, in western Turkey. Its capacity is expected to triple by 2012, when Poseidon, a 132-mile undersea Greece-Italy pipeline begins operation, forming the Southern Europe Gas Ring project.
"The project is extremely significant - and fundamentally political," said Julian Lee, a senior analyst with the Center for Global Energy Studies, a London-based research group. "It offers diversified supplies of energy to Europe without going through Russia - an objective encouraged by the United States."
Signaling Washington's support, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman attended the inauguration ceremony near the Greek-Turkish border. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan also attended.
Russia, the world's biggest gas and oil producer, accounts for more than 25 percent of EU gas imports, and Western officials have been scrambling for years to forge a viable energy strategy that could ease Russia's hold on European energy supplies.
Greece and Turkey, meanwhile, have been trying to promote themselves as emerging energy hubs and regional power brokers with a string of energy deals. "This pipeline will boost prosperity in the region," Mr. Erdogan said. "The Silk Route will also become an energy route linking East and West through Turkey."
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| Countries: Czech Republic |
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Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 - 12:29 PM |
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German-Russian energy moves alarm the Czech PM
The Czech Republic is concerned by close energy ties between Germany and Russia because they may threaten Czech energy security, PM Topolanek said on November 20. Topolanek, a right-wing prime minister who took office last year, said the country was developing diplomatic activity and practical plans to diversify oil and gas supplies. "We have big concerns, and I talk about it very openly so I can say it here, from the kind of new big friendship between Berlin and Moscow," he told a business conference.
The Czech Republic takes about 80 percent of its gas and most of its crude oil from Russia, and Topolanek's centre-right cabinet has made energy security one of its priorities.
Relations between the pro-U.S. government and Russia have been strained since the Czechs began to contemplate a US request to build part of a U.S. missile defence shield in the country, earlier this year. The Czech Republic is hostile to the whole idea, which it sees as directed against the Russians, not rogue regimes the other side of Eurasia. Geography would appear to bear them out.
But Toplanek and President Vaclav Klaus are out-and-out Atlanticists and both markedly reserved about Russia, whom they well remember as oppressors of their country before 1989.
Russia and Germany are planning a 1,200 km (745.6 miles) pipeline under the Baltic Sea, called Nord Stream, that will take 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year directly from Russia to Germany.
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom wants to diversify export routes away from intermediate countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while Germany wants to feed its expected rise in demand for gas.
"It means in the horizon of about 15 years a total bypassing in terms of oil and gas, a change from a transit country to a target country with all the associated risks," Topolanek said.
"This is not only a question of Nord Stream, but also of oil. There is a significant reduction of the Druzhba pipeline in the strategic plans of the Russian Federation, in the end the operation may be stopped altogether," he said. The Druzhba takes crude oil via two branches from Russia to Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany.
But Russia plans to build a new oil link to a terminal on the Baltic coast, which would bypass the central European transit and target countries.Topolanek said the Russian plans would lead to significant investments in diversification, but gave no details.The Czechs already take oil via the IKL pipeline from Germany and gas from Norway.
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| Countries: Vietnam |
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Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 01:28 PM |
Identifying
the problems
The Communist Party will remain the
dominant political force in 2005-2006,
but its long-term hold on power will be
under threat if it fails to tackle the
endemic corruption within its ranks. In
an effort to shore up public confidence,
the party chief, Nong Duc Manh, has championed
a tough anti-corruption stance over the
past few years. He has been closely supported
by the Prime Minister, Phan Van Khai,
who has been displaying greater mettle
in dealing with corrupted officials. Khai
recently announced plan to establish an
anti-corruption agency. Although this
development is welcome, there remains
some scepticism over whether its investigations
will be extensive and fully impartial.
The National Assembly (the legislature)
is also becoming more assertive, ensuring
that government ministers will be increasingly
held to account for their performances.
The leadership is also concerned about
long-term threats to national unity as
outbreaks of unrest among ethnic minority
groups in the Central Highlands appear
likely to continue. The government has
made some effort to boost the quality
of life of these groups.
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