The German Green Party, one of the largest in Europe, has elected Cem Ozdemir, 42, an ethnic Turk as one of its leaders. Mr. Ozdemir is the son of Turkish gastarbeiter, guest workers. He hails from Baden-Württemberg, one of Germany’s wealthiest states. The number of Turks in Germany is estimated at 2.6 million though only a fraction are German citizens. From the New York Times:

he Green Party, one of Germany’s main political parties, has elected the son of Turkish immigrants to its top political post, the first time any party here has chosen a leader with an ethnic Turkish background.

The election of Cem Ozdemir, 42, on Saturday represents a major turning point not only for the opposition Greens, but also for the country as a whole. He was born in southern Germany of parents who came from Turkey to work as gastarbeiter, or guest workers, during the 1960s.

Even though more than 2.6 million Turks live in Germany, accounting for 3 percent of the population, few have managed to make it to the higher ranks of many professions, including politics and the civil service.

But with a conservative party’s choice of Angela Merkel to run as chancellor in 2005 — a successful gambit — and now an ethnic Turk at the helm of an influential party, it appears that German society is slowly breaking with the past, when women were inconspicuous and immigrants’ voices were seldom heard.

Mr. Ozdemir, a social scientist who went to college in Reutlingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, was elected as a Greens legislator to the lower house of the Bundestag, the German Parliament, in 1994. It was the first time anyone with a Turkish background had won such a mandate. He moved to the European Parliament in 2004 after he was forced to give up his parliamentary seat for using his publicly paid airline miles for private use.

With his comeback to domestic politics over the weekend, Mr. Ozdemir, who is married, has one child and speaks German with a slight southwestern accent, joins a handful of ethnic Turks in the Greens, the Social Democrats and the new populist Left Party who want to make the parties more representative of the ethnic composition of the German population.

“I want a society where everyone has an equal chance, regardless of where they come from,” Mr. Ozdemir said in his acceptance speech at the Greens’ congress in the central city of Erfurt. He won 79.2 percent of the votes and joined Claudia Roth as the co-leader of the Greens.

It is estimated that 660,000 Turks have taken up German citizenship since 1972, giving them a significant voice. According to the main political parties, more than half a million Turks were eligible to vote in the 2005 election; 75 percent voted for the Social Democrats, 9.2 percent for the Greens and less than 5 percent for the Christian Democrats.

With new leaders in place, the Green Party is now turning its attention to federal elections next September. Some analysts are asking whether the Greens, along with the pro-business Free Democrats, might win enough votes to become junior partners for Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc.

Such an idea was treated with ridicule until recently. But in February, the Christian Democrats chose to share power with the Greens in Hamburg. So far, the coalition, the first of its kind on the state level, has been working effectively, serving as a litmus test for other states.

Traditionally, the Greens have been allies of the Social Democrats. The party was the junior partner in the coalition led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, from 1998 to 2005.

That coalition was defeated by Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc, which was forced to band together with the Social Democrats because neither of the big parties was strong enough to establish a coalition with its preferred smaller partners.

Return to Main

The Canandian news programme The Hour on the CBC has compiled a list five items that President Bush should accomplish before leaving office. Frankly, I am just thankful that he is leaving office.

Return to Main

The race for Missouri’s 11 Electoral College votes remains undecided with Senator McCain currently leading Senator Obama by some 5,000 votes. At stake is more than just icing on the cake for Obama, we are all anxiously awaiting whether Missouri’s bellwether status remains intact. Missouri has picked the winner in every election since 1960. From Politico:

Nearly two weeks after Election Day, Americans know who their next president will be. But voters in Missouri still aren’t quite sure which candidate their state preferred.

With John McCain leading Barack Obama there by fewer than 5,000 votes with thousands of provisional ballots yet to be counted, election-watchers have been reluctant to toss the battleground into either candidate’s column, and it will still be days before the outcome is finally resolved.

Hanging in the balance along with Missouri’s 11 electoral votes is the state’s reputation as a national bellwether — Missourians have voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1904, except for 1956.

“It looks like we’re going to have about 6,300 [provisional ballots] that are going to be reviewed statewide,” said Laura Egerdal, a spokeswoman for the Missouri secretary of state, adding that about 2,000 of those ballots will come from heavily Democratic St. Louis County.

But though those ballots provide a glimmer of hope for the Obama campaign, even Democrats concede that it would be an astonishing turn of events for their candidate to overtake McCain.

“It’s possible, but unlikely,” said Jack Cardetti, communications director for the Missouri Democratic Party. “We’re obviously watching to make sure that every eligible voter that wanted to cast a vote was able to.”

Tina Hervey, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party, was more blunt in her assessment of Obama’s chances of pulling out a win thanks to provisional ballots.

“He’d have to win them all,” Hervey said. “It looks like the victory for Sen. McCain will be roughly similar to two or three thousand individual votes.”

(more…)

I was most relieved to learn that a President Obama won’t be inundating the American public with prolific speeches as candidate Obama seem to do during the primaries. Reading and rereading the transcript a number of times, there is little to take umbrage at though the jeerists-in-chiefs over at the far-right and PUMA blogs (the two seem to be one in thought and spirit these days) will I am sure find something to criticize whipping themselves in greater hysteria as if Shi’ites on a pilgrimage of destruction. While perhaps not the most enlightening or informative of interviews, I was most reassured by his comments on energy, on assisting Detroit, on Guantanamo, and his views on Lincoln and FDR.

On energy, the President-Elect’s comments that energy independence is more important than ever though perhaps “a little harder politically” I think speaks strongly that an Obama Administration will have the political courage and foresight to perhaps thinking in terms of a national industrial policy and will move the ball on energy. Though the President-Elect wouldn’t comment in-depth on upcoming appointments to his Cabinet, I thought that his invoking of Lincoln’s team of rivals while coy (Lincoln was a wise man) most reassuring in that he does hope to move the country beyond the fierce partisanship of the past 16 years. But in the end Obama’s comment on the need to “recreate a bond of trust between the presidency and the public that . . . has been lost” is perhaps the most poignant chord struck.

The video is viewable at 60 Minutes. Here’s the transcript:

Steve Kroft: So here we are.

President-elect Barack Obama: Here we are.

Kroft: How’s your life changed in the last ten days?

Mr. Obama: Well, I tell you what, there seem to be more people hovering around me. That’s for sure. And, on the other hand, I’m sleeping in my own bed over the last ten days, which is quite a treat. Michelle always wakes up earlier than I do. So listen to her roaming around and having the girls come in and, you know, jump in your bed. It’s a great feeling. Yeah.

Kroft: Has this been easier than the campaign trail?

Mr. Obama: Well, it’s different. I think that during the campaign it is just a constant frenetic, forward momentum. Here, I’m stationary. But the issues come to you. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of problems, a lot of big challenges.

Kroft: Have there been moments when you’ve said, ‘What did I get myself into?’

Mr. Obama: Surprisingly enough, I feel right now that I’m doing what I should be doing. That gives me a certain sense of calm. I will say that the challenges that we’re confronting are enormous. And they’re multiple. And so there are times during the course of a given a day where you think, ‘Where do I start?’

Kroft: What have you been concentrating on this week?

Mr. Obama: Couple of things. Number one, I think it’s important to get a national security team in place because transition periods are potentially times of vulnerability to a terrorist attack. We wanna make sure that there is as seamless a transition on national security as possible. Obviously the economy. Talking to top economic advisors about how we’re gonna create jobs, how we get the economy back on track and what do we do in terms of some long-term issues like energy and health care. And how do we sequence those things in a way that we can actually get things through Congress?

(more…)

Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA) is a preventive detention law. The ISA was enacted in 1960 but it has its roots in the 1950s when the country, then under British colonial rule, was fighting a Communist insurgency. Almost six decades on and the Communist threat is long gone but the law remains.

Opponents say many of the act’s original checks and balances have been eroded over the years and the ISA is now being used to stifle political dissent.

But the government says the law is a necessary tool in the pursuit of social stability in multi-ethnic Malaysia. Over the years, the law has been used to stifle dissent and harass politicians, journalists and now bloggers.

The Internal Security Act

– It states that any police officer, without a warrant, may arrest and detain anyone he/she has “reason to believe” has acted or likely to act in “any manner prejudicial to the security of Malaysia.”

– The act also allows for restrictions on freedom of assembly, association, and expression, freedom of movement, residence and employment.

– The authorities may initially detain a suspect for 60 days in solitary confinement

– During this period the authorities may deny the suspect access to lawyers or relatives.

– On approval of the Home Affairs Minister, suspects can be detained for up to two years without trial.

– The ISA can be applied on the assumption of the possibility of future crime.

– Schools and educational establishments can be closed if they are used as meeting places for unlawful organizations of for reasons deemed detrimental to the interests of Malaysia or the public.

– Ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was initially arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA).

Think about that, you can be arrested on the assumption of the possibility of some future crime. Who can predict the future? Apparently, authorities in Malaysia can.

Al Jazeera’s Veronica Pedrosa reports from Kuala Lumpur on the latest detentions above while Aloke Devichand reports on those fighting to have the ISA abolished once and for all.

Return to Main

The first phase of voting in elections are taking place in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir region. Polling will run for the next six weeks in this heavily militarised area. The polls will begin on November 17, followed by polls on November 23, November 30, December 7, December 17 and December 24. The results would be announced on December 28, 2008. The fact that a state with population smaller than Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan will require seven phases to complete it’s polling cycle underlines the complexity of conducting a free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Not only will the election process require security forces in large numbers, many of the officials conducting these elections will also be imported from other Urdu speaking states. In addition, many politicians in Kashmir have called for a boycott of the election. The risk involved in conducting the elections in the November-December time frame was acknowledged by the Election Commissioner.

But observers see the vote as a calculated gamble for the Indian government, which they say risks losing credibility if there is a low voter turnout. Needless to say successful free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir will go a long way in establishing India’s credentials as a genuine democracy and bringing the troubled region a quiet peace and long-sought stability.

Al Jazeera’s Matt McClure reports.

Return to Main