Even in tight lipped Singapore, they are having a tough time keeping the lid on rising prices. Inflation is at a 26 year high, running at 7.5% annually. Further complicating Singapore’s economy is that the city-state depends on exports which are on a decline as demand in the United States and Europe softens. In a country like Singapore which is as laissez-faire and neo-liberal as one can get, this is leaving the poor without much of a safety net.
Singapore’s annual inflation held at a 26-year high in June, missing expectations for an acceleration and reducing pressure on the central bank to tighten monetary policy at a time when the global economy is slowing.
Annual inflation held at 7.5 per cent in June, reflecting a rise in housing and food costs. Economists in a Reuters poll had forecast inflation to have picked up to 8 per cent, which would have the highest level since February 1982 when inflation hit 9 per cent.
The data comes a day after the Asian Development Bank warned that central banks in emerging East Asia were moving too slowly to combat the threat of oil and food inflation and that timely action by policy makers was needed to maintain healthy growth — otherwise the region risked a damaging upward spiral of wages and prices.
The Maine Senate race has yet to heat up. Incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins is facing Democratic Congressman Tom Allen for the seat. The latest Rasmussen polls show the incumbent Susan Collins with a comfortable seven point lead, 49% to 42%. When “leaners” are included, Collins leads 53% to 43%. Maine is likely one of the safer US Senate seats for the GOP.
This past week, Congressman Allen challenged Senator Collins to a series of town hall style debates with for the month of August. The Collins campaign declined citing scheduling conflicts. The first debate is currently scheduled for October.
Maine is one of two states, the other is Nebraska, that awards its electoral votes by Congressional district. While polls point to a McCain lead in the state overall, it is possible that Obama may win one of Maine’s four electoral votes.
The Obama campaign is now running radio ads in Spanish in at least four states: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida as it looks to sustain Obama’s rather substantial lead among Hispanics.
Here’s the Obama’s radio ad in Spanish. Here’s the transcript in English:
Some people have power and connections.
But most of us have to make our own way through life.
This is true even for the man who could become the next President … Barack Obama.
He grew up without a father - raised by his mother with the support of his grandparents.
Obama never forgot his roots ….
He worked with churches to help families get job training and after-school care for their children.
In the State Senate, he passed a law that helped reduce the welfare roles by over 80% by helping families to secure jobs.
And despite the political pressure, Obama has stood with us for immigration reform and spoke out for our veterans.
It’s time we had a President who understands we all deserve a chance to make our own way.
Last week, the Pew Hispanic Center survey found that among Hispanics Obama led McCain by more than a two to one margin with 66% to McCain’s 23%. It’s a surprising turnaround for Obama who fared poorly among Hispanics during the primaries. More from the Dallas Morning News.
Barack Obama has picked up support from nearly all the Hispanic voters who voted for rival Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, giving him a nearly three-to-one lead over Republican John McCain among Hispanics, a poll released Thursday shows.
The Pew Hispanic Center survey found Obama with 66 percent of the Hispanic vote to McCain’s 23 percent.
The results represent a “sharp reversal” in Obama’s fortunes from the primaries, when he lost the Latino vote to Clinton by nearly two-to-one, prompting speculation that Hispanics were leery of voting for a black candidate, said Susan Minushkin, the center’s deputy director.
Instead, the survey found that three times as many respondents said that being black would help Obama with Latino voters. A majority – 53 percent – said his race would make no difference to Latino voters.
More than 76 percent of Hispanics who said they voted for Clinton now say they’re leaning toward voting for Obama, while just 8 percent said they were leaning toward McCain.
The outcome was hardly in doubt and despite a number of irregularities, Cambodia continues to show progress in acclimating itself to democratic governance. While some voters may not have been able to cast their ballots, the elections are another stepping stone on Cambodia’s long road to recovery. This was the fourth election since and by most accounts they were the freest and fairest to date.
Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) spokesman Khieu Kanharith said the one-time communist, but now firmly free-market CPP, was on course to win 80 of the 123 seats in parliament. Still, the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) called for a rerun of the elections in districts around the capital Phnom Penh, saying perhaps as many 200,000 voters were wrongly struck from the rolls. Election observers said they had confirmed cases of voters having their names removed from the rolls, but said they doubted the problem was as widespread as Sam Rainsy claimed. The election observer team believes that the number of disenfranchised electorate was more in the range of 20,000.
What’s clear is that Cambodia continues to make progress in establishing the norms of a multi-party democracy. In this part of the world, that’s a major feat. Where Cambodia must do more is in achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth. 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. 35% subsist on less than fifty cents a day. Rural poverty in Cambodia is amongst the worst in the world. While Siem Reap and Phnom Penh benefit from a rapidly growing tourist trade, a lack of infrastructure prevents tourists from exploring the bulk of this beautiful and gentle land and from meeting the graceful and charming Khmer people. Bridging the growing gap between rich and poor must now be one of the major tasks for the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The other is to continue to open up the political process. As much as there is to celebrate today, the CPP largely controls the media and the state apparatus.
Prime Minister Hun Sen appeared headed for an expected election victory Sunday after what experts said was the least violent campaign in Cambodia’s recent history.
His overpowering control of the country’s political machinery was buoyed by economic growth and a sense of stability as well as by a surge of patriotism as Cambodia faces off against Thailand for sovereignty over a disputed border temple.
“Although the counting is not yet over, preliminary results show that the CPP is leading, and we expect to win the election,” said Khieu Kanharith, the spokesman for the governing party, the Cambodian People’s Party. Official results will be announced later in the week.
The expected victory for the governing party will extend for five more years the 23-year rule of Hun Sen, who at the age of 57 is already one of Asia’s longest-serving leaders.
King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe Entertain Chavez
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo ran this cartoon this week as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez visited the island of Mallorca to meet with Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero. Chávez also met with King Juan Carlos for the first time since the King told his now famous line ¿Por qué no te callas?
The cartoon has the King and his son Crown Prince Felipe playing the maracas while Chávez sings a popular but raunchy Colombian song, Se va el caiman. In the cartoon, the Crown Prince asks his father if this is required within the Crown’s diplomatic obligations.
For the record, King Juan Carlos gave Hugo Chávez a t-shirt emblazoned with the ¿Por qué no te callas? on it. They are all the rage in Ibero-America. The meeting went off without a hitch. Venezuela agreed to sell Spain 10,000 barrels of oil a day at $100 a barrel with balance bartered as part of some technical assistance. What a King must do for his country.
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party looks primed to win in Cambodia’s elections today. Elections are in Cambodia are lots of things but suspenseful they are not. Hun Sen has been in power in Phnom Penh since returning on the backs of the Vietnamese forces that toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979. While Cambodia still bears the scars of the four year bloody genocidal reign of the Khmer Rouge, there is no doubt that Cambodia is making substantial progress even if development is uneven. While Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is located) have changed unbelievably since my first visit in 1994, the rest of the country remains mired in a deep and grinding poverty.
Cambodian elections are racous noisy affairs and I daresay if nothing else Cambodians are getting quite good at celebrating their still fragile democracy. Cambodia is effectively a one party state and still trying to learn the ins and outs of multi-party democracy. Then, of course, so is the rest of South East Asia.
These elections are taking place against a backdrop of a territorial dispute with Thailand over the Preah Vihear temple complex and that should bolster the governing party. Cambodia is extremely sensitive to its territory. Since the 14th century, Cambodia has lost about half of its territory. Most egregious in the minds of Cambodians is the loss of Cochin, the province now part of Vietnam that encompasses everything south of Saigon including the Mekong Delta.
This past week apart from the coverage of the temple stand-off there has been an uptick in articles on Cambodia. Here are a few pieces in the US media on Cambodia:
Cambodia goes to the polls on July 27 for a national election that is likely to see the Cambodian People’s Party abandon a long-standing coalition government arrangement and take total control of government, but analysts remain upbeat that a single-party government will not deter democracy in the long-term.
“The CPP will definitely win an outright majority,” said Benny Widyono, a former representative of the UN secretary general in Cambodia and author of Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia.
“But the possibilities are there for change. I don’t think Cambodia will go back to a monolithic communist model,” Widyono added.
According to Widyono, the experience of other Asian nations such as Japan and India – both of which were effectively one-party states for decades but now boast viable, vocal opposition parties – should give Cambodian democrats hope, despite the obvious gulf between the ruling CPP and its challengers.
The National Assembly in 2006 pushed through a constitutional amendment replacing Cambodia’s two-thirds majority electoral system with a simple majority system that is expected to give the CPP, which controls 73 of the assembly’s 123 seats, the ability to rule alone.
While a single party state could “narrow democracy” in the short-term, it could in the long-run lead to a stronger opposition, said Koul Panha, executive director of the election monitoring group Comfrel.
“It could lead to a more effective implementation of reforms and respect for democracy,” he told the Post. “There is some risk of narrowing democracy, but I can see the opposition improving as well.”
Others said that single-party rule will in reality weaken the CPP over time, as it grows too complacent with its political dominance, opening the door to a stronger opposition.
“There may be problems of over-confidence on the part of the CPP once it no longer has to look over its shoulder at opponents,” said David Chandler, an author and leading scholar of Cambodian history.
Rising political awareness in the rural areas – historically CPP bastions – could also impact on the ruling party’s control, said Widyono.
