31 May - 6 June 2001
Issue No.536
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 May - 6 June 2001 Issue No.536 |
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Raising the stakes
INDONESIA'S long-running leadership crisis entered its final lap this week with parliament pondering whether to call a special session of the country's top legislative body and start impeachment hearings against President Abdurrahman Wahid. The ailing Muslim cleric has been locked in a standoff with parliament for more than six months over two financial scandals that parliamentarians have used as swords to assail the defiant leader's unpopular 19-month rule. Clinging desperately to his post and set to host a meeting of G-15 developing nations on Wednesday, the besieged Wahid upped the ante on Saturday by threatening to declare a state of civil emergency, which would let him dissolve parliament before it dissolves his presidency.All eyes are on the inscrutable Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia's vice-president. Having proffered an elaborate power-sharing deal to save the leadership, Wahid has relied heavily on the threat of violence, both in separatist provinces and by his fanatic supporters, to ward off impeachment. But Megawati is uneasy about a deal that could require a revision of the country's constitution -- a deal also forced on her father Sukarno, the country's first president, which ultimately led to his disgraced isolation.
Out of line
MONTHS after Afghanistan's Taliban stirred up an international outcry by destroying priceless Buddhist statues, the country's radical Islamist leadership again stoked the flames of moral outrage this week by proposing a law forcing all Hindus to wear an identifying yellow patch.
Calling the practice of marking non-Muslims "nothing new" to Islamic tradition, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul-Sallam Za'eff, insisted that the move has been taken at the behest of the country's dwindling population of Hindus, who are sometimes harassed by religious police. But others see in the law reminders of Germany under the Nazis, when Jews were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David as identification.
In the midst of the uproar, the Taliban also rejected a proposal by the United Nations food agency, the World Food Programme (WPF), to survey the capital's needy. The leadership balked at the WFP's insistence on hiring some 700 Afghan women to help conduct its survey, as women are barred from almost all forms of work. The WPF responded by threatening to close most of its bakeries, which provide subsidised food in Kabul.
Afghanistan, ravaged by years of civil war, faces an ongoing drought and a ballooning refugee crisis. International aid programmes are virtually the only source of basic services.
Cooling his heels
ENDING a half-hearted two-year manhunt, Mexican authorities arrested and jailed the fugitive ex-governor of Quintana Roo state, Mario Villanueva, who faces charges of venality and having ties to the notorious Juàrez drug cartel. Arrested in the Caribbean resort town of Cancœn on Thursday, Villanueva is accused by the United States of helping smuggle over 200 tons of cocaine across the border.The arrest is a boost for Mexican President Vicente Fox, who is trying to fulfill promises to root out corruption and prosecute high-profile cases after toppling the seven-decade rule of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in elections last year. Though the US has yet to file a formal extradition request , Fox has indicated he would be willing to send Villanueva north -- a departure from the workings of the PRI, who were loath to develop the kind of cosy relationship Fox has already formed with the Bush administration. Villanueva was arrested with the help of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Making a noise
SPARKING fears of a military uprising and affecting preparations of Georgia's celebration of 10 years of independence, a band of 400 national guardsmen broke away from training exercises last Friday and took over an Interior Ministry base outside the capital, Tbilisi, in a brief but unnerving bout of mutiny. One minister went so far as to call it an attempted coup, but the group's leader, Georgy Krialashvili, insisted that the stunt was the only way to call attention to appalling conditions in the military and was not a grab for power.Joined by disgruntled Interior Ministry troops, the group grew to over 1,000, who demanded better conditions, over 13 months back pay and basic amenities. Krialashvili said service conditions were so poor in the former Soviet country that "soldiers serve practically barefoot" -- an ugly tale for beleaguered Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who is battling a severe economic downturn. Shevardnadze deftly defused the threat, however, in meetings with the mutinous brigade, who finally returned to their barracks on Saturday morning having been promised immunity from prosecution.
Independence celebrations were still shadowed, however, by protesters supporting the country's first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was ousted in 1992 and replaced by Shevardnadze.
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