Laos’ one-party election to include five independent candidates

View Original Source:  http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1635945.php/Laos-one-party-election-to-include-five-independent-candidates

Apr 29, 2011, 9:48 GMT

Vientiane – Laos’ general election to be held this weekend will be a one-party affair, although five independent candidates have been permitted to run, officials said Friday.

The election, set for Saturday, is to be the country’s seventh since opting for a communist system in 1975.

Altogether 190 candidates are contesting 132 seats in the National Assembly, the country’s legislative body.

Among the candidates are 46 women, and five representatives of the private sector who are not members of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, the communist party which is the only political party in Laos.

‘It is up to independents if they want to contest,’ the Information Ministry’s Mounkeo Oraboun said. ‘It’s not up to us to ask independents to join the election,’ he told a press conference.

In the most recent elections in 2006, two independents won assembly seats but both ended up joining the communist party.

‘Laos is still a one-party state,’ said one western diplomat. ‘If you want to change things it’s easier to do so within the system.’

Observers say the National Assembly, which previously did little more than rubber-stamp the party’s decisions, has gained clout over the past five years, during which time it has passed 50 laws and strengthened its role as a supervisory body.

It played a role, for instance, in the forced resignation of former prime minister Bouasone Bouphavanh in December for ‘family problems.’

Bouasone reportedly had a mia noi, or formal mistress, a common enough practice in Laos but a no-no for politburo members and cabinet ministers.

‘The general election is important because the National Assembly has become more important,’ said a diplomat who asked to remain anonymous.

Some 3.3 million Lao are eligible to vote on Saturday, nearly half the population of 6 million.

The results should be published within a week.

PREVIEW: Laos election takes a feminist tack

View Original Source:  http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/features/article_1635735.php/PREVIEW-Laos-election-takes-a-feminist-tack

By Peter Janssen Apr 28, 2011, 10:45 GMT

Vientiane – There is a certain predictability to elections in a one-party state, such as communist Laos.

Some 3.23 million voters in Lao’s People’s Democratic Repulic are to go to the polls Saturday to elect 132 new members of the National Assembly, the country’s legislative body.

There are 190 candidates, 45 of them women, and all from the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, the communist party that has ruled this country since 1975.

The government has made it clear that it wants a larger share of women in the next National Assembly.

‘The government has said it wants 30 per cent of the National Assembly to be women, so you can be pretty sure that 30 per cent of the elected candidates will be women,’ said one western diplomat.

The assembly, previously little more than a rubber stamp for the communist party dictates, has gained clout in the last five years as a supervisory body of the executive, observers said.

It played a role in the forced resignation of former prime minister Bouasone Bouphavanh in December for ‘family problems.’

Bouasone reportedly had a ‘mia noi,’ or mistress, a common enough practice in Laos but a no-no for politburo members and cabinet ministers.

‘The Lao Women’s Union was very upset about it, and they are powerful within the party and the National Assembly,’ said an official, who asked to remain anonymous.

One can also expect a near 100 per cent turnout on Saturday, despite a noticeable lack of enthusiasm among voters.

‘Lao people don’t get too excited about elections because we only have one party,’ said Air Viravong, a hotel employee. ‘I don’t know any of the candidates but I will vote because it is required.’

The National Assembly pays for transport and posters of all candidates, and prohibits them from criticizing one another during the campaign.

An effort has been made by the party to select candidates who do not hold other government jobs, so they will prioritize their legislative and supervisory duties. This year’s candidates also include more young people and representatives from local authorities.

‘The National Assembly is developing a corporate identity, and some sense of their own importance,’ said one western diplomat.

Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong was a former president of the assembly. One of his initiatives was to open a hotline for people’s complaints.

The hotline proved popular, adding spice to Laos’ usually staid media reports, and provided grist to the mill of many complaints raised in the assembly against government policies, especially dealing with land acquisitions by the state for public or private projects.

The assembly provides one of the few venues to air dissent against the government in Laos, where the last reported protest was in 1999, when three student activists unfurled an anti-government banner in public.

They were arrested and slapped with 15-year jail terms.

Observers attribute the recent lack of dissent to economic growth as well as the harsh justice system. Laos’ economy grew 8 per cent last year, offering plenty of job opportunities at least to those living in Vientiane.

The government has also taken a lax stance on internet use, although only 4 per cent of the 6 million population have access, and interferes less with people’s private lives than it has previously.

‘It is a liberal society if you are not a government opponent,’ said one diplomat. ‘But with the social problems emerging now, drug use, landlessness and a growing gap between the rich and the poor, in the long run things might change.’

Free Tibet: Dalai Lama gives up role as political leader

The spiritual leader’s move is intended to prevent a political vacuum after his death and ensure an effective response to Chinese crackdowns.

The Dalai Lama reads a statement from the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile at the Tsuglakhang Temple in the Mcleod Ganj village in Dharamshala, India. His statement came during a ceremony marking the 52nd anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising against Chinese rule. (STRDEL, AFP/Getty Images / March 10, 2011)

Cached:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-india-dalai-lama-20110311,0,1889100.story

By Mark Magnier Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 10, 2011, 3:35 a.m.

Reporting from New Delhi

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, said Thursday that he will pass the reins of political power to the elected prime minister of the self-proclaimed Tibetan government in exile.

The announcement formalizes an approach the Tibetan leader has been edging toward for years, hoping to prevent a political vacuum after his death and ensure an effective response to Chinese crackdowns and Beijing’s increasingly effective use of diplomatic pressure.

But the Dalai Lama, 75, made a point of saying he wasn’t retiring, and his global status and reputation ensure that he will continue to play a major role in Tibetan affairs.

The Dalai Lama’s decision will be presented Monday to the parliament in exile, which convenes in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala.

“As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power,” the Dalai Lama said in a statement Thursday. “Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect.”

Lobsang Tenzin, 71, also known as Samdhong Rinpoche, steps down this month after serving for the past decade as prime minister in exile. His replacement will be elected March 20 from among three candidates: Lobsang Sangey, 42, a Harvard Law fellow; Tenzin Namgyal Tethong, 63, a Tibetan studies fellow at Stanford University; and Tashi Wangdi, 63, a civil servant with the government-in-exile, with Sangey expected to win.

The Dalai Lama’s announcement comes as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the restive Tibetan plateau, which saw a major uprising in March 2008. Recent pro-democracy demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa have further unnerved the Communist Party in Beijing, analysts said.

China responded skeptically to the announcement. “He has often talked about retirement in the past few years,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters Thursday in Beijing. “I think these are his tricks to deceive the international community.”

At issue is whether future Tibetan leaders are chosen by China or Dharamsala, said Rukmani Gupta, a research fellow at New Delhi’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.

Recent attempts by Beijing to influence the succession by controlling the Karmapa Lama and the Panchen Lama, among Tibetan Buddhism’s most senior positions, were unsuccessful.

“Their last two efforts ended in failure,” said Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University. “The Karmapa fled China, and their candidate for Panchen Lama has not been accepted by the Tibetan people.”

Barnett said it may be difficult for outsiders to understand why China gets so worked up about a religious leader, but he noted that control and stamping out any potential threat are fundamental to their psyche.

“There’s deep anxiety for China that they don’t leave a vulnerability for the party that allows a new, charismatic leader to emerge,” he said. “A key Chinese official recently told me that the specter of the Dalai Lama returning is more serious than a vast army.”

Kate Saunders, a London-based spokeswoman with the International Campaign for Tibet, said the Dalai Lama’s decision represents a further move to ensure greater democracy among Tibetans, both in China and in exile. The announcement came on the 52nd anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet amid a Chinese government crackdown in 1959.

Barbara Demick in the Beijing bureau contributed to this report.Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

 

Related:

• What now for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause? The Guardian
• Profile: The Dalai Lama BBC News

China calls for domestic unrest to be defused

Cached:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/21/us-china-unrest-idUSTRE71K0PQ20110221

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING | Mon Feb 21, 2011 7:37am EST

(Reuters) – China must find new ways to defuse unrest, the domestic security chief said, underscoring Beijing’s anxiety about control after police quashed calls for gatherings inspired by uprisings in the Middle East.

A Foreign Ministry official separately blamed the political violence sweeping the Middle East on too-slow growth and stunted efforts at reform.

Zhou Yongkang, the ruling Communist Party’s top law-and-order official, told cadres they had to “adapt to new trends and imperatives in economic and social development”, official newspapers reported on Monday.

“Strive to defuse conflicts and disputes while they are still embryonic,” he told an official meeting on Sunday, the China Police Daily and other papers reported.

Over the weekend, Chinese police and censors showed the Communist Party has little to fear from protesters hoping to emulate the unrest that has unseated Egypt‘s long-time president, Hosni Mubarak, and now threatens Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Police dispersed dozens of people who gathered in central Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday after calls spread on overseas Chinese websites urging “Jasmine Revolution” gatherings. The police and foreign reporters outnumbered aspiring participants and curious passers-by caught up in the crowd.

There were no signs of protests in Beijing on Monday.

“I don’t think this was ever a serious plan. It was more like a performance or a stunt,” said Cui Weiping, a Beijing-based scholar who said she was not allowed outside by authorities on Sunday. “In fact I’d never even had any involvement. They seem to have just confined anyone they could think of.”

“JASMINE” STILL UNSEARCHABLE

The senior Foreign Ministry policy planning official said the Middle Eastern turmoil arose from the failure of countries to grow and adapt quickly enough.

“Three feet of ice doesn’t freeze over in one day, as we say. This has deep social, economic and historical background,” said the official, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition that his name was not cited.

“I think these countries may have not been able to keep up with the times in their social and economic system,” he said. “Some countries have had relatively slow economic development. Their rate of economic growth hasn’t been fast enough.”

That is hardly a worry for China, whose economy expanded by 10.3 percent last year. But a flurry of speeches and statements since last week show leaders are nonetheless worried about longer-term challenges to their rule.

China’s fast economic growth has undercut discontent that could challenge the government. It has also enabled sharply higher funding for domestic security forces, which bristle with surveillance equipment and intimidating hardware.

Yet despite harsh restrictions on independent political activity, China has many local riots, protests and strikes, often sparked by anger over corruption, land disputes and job losses.

The central government fears those tensions could accumulate. Provincial and ministerial level officials have been meeting in Beijing to discuss how to cope with these worries through stronger “social management”, and President Hu Jintao himself told them that they should be worried.

“The problems remain of development that is unbalanced, ill-coordinated and unsustainable,” Hu said in a speech on Saturday. He urged the officials to “strengthen governance to nip social conflicts in the bud”.

The Chinese words for “jasmine” and “jasmine revolution” remained blocked Monday on the searches of China’s Twitter-like website Sina.com, and on Tianya.cn, a popular chatroom.

Chinese state media have been largely silent on the planned protests, although state news agency Xinhua published two short articles that described how police dispersed the small crowds that had gathered in Beijing and Shanghai.

The Communist Party’s zeal in smothering dissent to maintain stability at all costs has created a domestic security system so expensive that it is sapping funds needed elsewhere to maintain the country’s economic health.

Critics say the Communist Party’s reluctance to embrace political reforms will ultimately doom its efforts to create a more “harmonious society”, particularly if it can’t control officials who are the target of discontent.

“The Chinese government is extremely powerful vis-a-vis society,” said Pei Minxin, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California. “But this is a government that is very weak at disciplining or policing its own agents.”

(Additional reporting by Huang Yan and Sui-Lee Wee, Editing by Nick Macfie)

One-party Laos to get more legislators

Monsters and Critics.com

Cached:  http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/africa/news/article_1619113.php/One-party-Laos-to-get-more-legislators

Vientiane, Laos – Communist Laos is to get more legislators in a general election scheduled for April 30 although only one party will be allowed to contest the polls, state media reported Monday.

The 7th National Assembly would see its membership boosted from 115 to 132 seats in the April polls, ‘to provide better representation for socioeconomic development,’ according to a recently issued presidential decree.

Although the number of Lao legislators is set to increase, there will be only 190 candidates contesting the polls, all of them either under the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party or as independents, the state-run Vientiane Times reported.

Laos has been under communist rule since December 1975. In the past six general elections, candidates have only been allowed to run for the Communist Party or as independents.

‘Having more members will increase the knowledge and skills base in the next legislature,’ Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hiem Phommachanh said.

The main task of the assembly will be to ‘oversee implementation of activities set out in the 9th Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party,’ he added.