Suriname Elections: (Poll) Party President Bouters,former dictator and convicted drug fugitive,seems to have upper hand

Desi Bouterse the colorful dictator-turned-president who has ruled Suriname ( a former Dutch colony) on and off since 1980, is looking to consolidate power when the small South American country holds general elections on Monday.

A convicted drug trafficker who has been a coup leader and an international fugitive, Bouterse is seeking to dispense with his alliance with one-time nemesis Ronnie Brunswijk and preside over the first non-coalition democratic government in Suriname's history. 

Bouterse's National Democratic Party (NDP) formed a government after the last elections in 2010 by forging a motley mega-coalition, returning him to power for the second time since his 1980-1987 military government.

But after the coalition fell apart, the NDP decided to go it alone this time, buoyed by strong standings in opinion polls.

The party needs to win at least 26 seats in the 51-member National Assembly to govern alone, and 34 seats to re-elect Bouterse -- the president is chosen by a two-thirds majority of parliament.

The main opposition is the V7, a coalition of six parties that accuses Bouterse of massive corruption and has a broad ethnic base in the racially diverse country whose 500,000 people have roots in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

The third main group, and possible power-broker, is the Alternative Combination alliance led by Brunswijk, a former guerrilla leader who fought a civil war against Bouterse's military government before teaming up with his former foe in 2010.

The party's base are the Maroons, the descendants of fugitive slaves who set up settlements in the Surinamese interior.

The smallest country in South America, Suriname was colonized by the British and Dutch and gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975.

Five years later, a group of sergeants led by Bouterse overthrew prime minister Henck Arron and installed a military government.

Whether in his dictator's fatigues and sunglasses or his sharp president's suit, Bouterse, 69, has loomed large over the country's politics ever since.

His regime put down two counter-coups and rounded up and executed 15 opponents in 1982, an event known as the "December killings."

Bouterse stepped down in 1987, but returned to power in 1990 in a second bloodless coup.

After leaving power a second time, Bouterse was indicted and court-martialed for the December killings, but his coalition passed a controversial amnesty law in 2012 that aborted the trial.

The president and his family have faced a host of other legal woes, adding to the country's reputation for drug running, money laundering and graft.

The Netherlands convicted him in absentia of cocaine smuggling in 1999, but he remained free because Suriname does not extradite its citizens.

Earlier this year, a Dutch court rejected his third bid to have the conviction overturned.

In March, a US court sentenced his son Dino, who had served as his father's top counter-terrorism official, to 16 years in prison on charges of trying to aid and arm Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

Bouterse has shrugged off these scandals and bolstered his popularity with expanded social welfare programs, free university education and lavish spending on infrastructure projects such as bridges, schools and housing.

The V7, formerly known as the New Front, accuses him of corruption and populism, and warns the tab for these projects will hurt when it arrives.

It also blames the NDP for an energy crisis it says was caused by shady deals with US-based aluminum giant Alcoa for the Afobaka hydroelectric dam, which generates most of the mineral-rich, upper-middle-income country's power.

In all, seven parties and four coalitions are vying for the ballots of 350,000 registered voters, who will also elect their district and local representatives.

Polls open at 7:00 am (1000 GMT) and close 12 hours later.

The first, partial results are expected at 10:00 pm, with a projection of the full results early Tuesday.

EU-Digest

Turkey: Upcoming Elections - Dark Clouds Over Turkey

With two weeks to go before a crucial parliamentary election in Turkey, tensions are rising and some critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fear a new crackdown is starting to ensure that his Justice and Development Party wins.

That kind of brute manipulation of the political process would be a serious mistake, further weakening the country’s battered democracy and tainting whatever victory might emerge.

After more than a decade of amassing power as Turkey’s leader, Mr. Erdogan could be on the verge of realizing his dream of changing the Constitution to make the president, rather than the prime minister, the leading political authority. His party, known as A.K.P., would have to win 330 seats in Parliament on June 7 — a three-fifths majority — to take a proposed constitutional change to a referendum.

The party won only 326 seats in the last election in 2011, and on Friday Reuters reported that the most recent poll by the research firm Konda suggests that support for A.K.P. has declined. 

Mr. Erdogan has a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media, but new alarms were set off this week when criminal complaints were filed against editors of the Hurriyet Daily News and its website over a headline Mr. Erdogan had objected to.

Read more: Dark Clouds Over Turkey - NYTimes.com

Suriname: Four International Delegations to Monitor Elections in Suriname on May 25, 2015

Suriname President Desi Bouterse

At least four international organizations confirmed today their presence in the elections in the Republic of Suriname (a former Dutch Colony), set for May 25, in which President Desire Delano Bouterse is favorite to continue his "management" of the political party he leads.

According to the Suriname electoral authorities, the list of observers includes 11 members of the Caribbean Community, 20 from the Union of South American Nations, 24 from the  Organization of American States and five from the European Union.

Read more: Prensa Latina News Agency - Four International Delegations to Monitor Elections in Suriname

Burqa : Women’s rights overlooked in the name of racial “tolerance” .

If there’s a hierarchy in the hallowed halls of our nation’s tertiary institutions whenever a potential clash of ideology arises, it goes something like this: Muslims and then women. In that order.

This is an environment in which even the most passionate of women’s advocates can be rendered mute by a suggestion they are engaging in anti-Islam rhetoric.

An environment in which the very same people who will argue at length about how female pop stars are coerced into wearing skimpy clothing due to the patriarchy will shy away from a frank discussion about the pressures brought to bear on other women to wear a burqa, niqab or hijab.

Analysing the archaic double-standards and obstacles faced by women across the world is all well and good until you risk offending the sensibilities of Muslim men. And let’s face it, it is only ever the men.

When was the last time you heard a Muslim woman seriously claim to be offended that anyone would dare to suggest she should sit where she wants? Or wear what she chooses? Somehow it’s always a man who steps forward to defend a woman’s “right” to be treated as a second-class citizen.

Last October freelance journalist Alison Bevege wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Telegraph in which she detailed how she was not permitted to sit in the front of the room at a public meeting in Sydney organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir.

“Like Mississippi blacks in the 1950s sent to the back of the bus for the colour of their skin, I was segregated due to my gender,” she observed.

Which is pretty much how events unfolded at the University of Western Sydney last Thursday night when men and women were asked to sit apart at an event organized by the Muslim Students’ Association.

Note EU-Digest : With all respect for anyone's religious believes, but Islam really could do with a face-lift the Christian had back in the 1500's when Martin Luther told the Catholic Pope that he was not God's representative on earth, that God lives within us and not above us, and that Women and Men are both equal in God's eyes.

Women’s rights overlooked in the name of racial “tolerance” | Herald Sun

Britain: Explained Cameron and the EU: what does a Brexit mean?

The Conservative Party, led by British Prime Minister David Cameron, beat all expectations to win a parliamentary majority in the UK’s general election on May 7.

It raises the prospect of Britons getting the chance to vote in an in/out referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017.

Cameron will be hoping that this gamble will pacify the Eurosceptic wing of his party and finally see off the threat of Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (Ukip).

Tory infighting over Europe saw the last two Conservative premiers, John Major and Margaret Thatcher, pushed out of office by rebel ministers and backbench MPs.

Cameron says he will only offer the British public the chance to vote on severing all ties with Brussels once he has secured a series of reforms from the 28-member bloc.

Note EU-Digest: Wishful thinking by Mr. Cameron who seems to forget that the only reason he won the election was because he was the best candidate among all the terrible candidates put together. 

Read more: Explained Cameron and the EU: what does a Brexit mean? | euronews, world news

Employment Opportunities in Saudi Arabia - an ally of the US and the EU in the Middle East - by Everton Gayle

The job may also involve amputations for those convicted of lesser offences, the advert said, and no special qualifications are needed.

According to Saudi Arabia’s official press agency, the country beheaded its 85th victim on Sunday. This compares with more than 90 for the whole of last year, according to an Amnesty International report on the death penalty in 2014.

Most were executed for murder but 38 had committed drug offences. Half were from Saudi Arabia and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea, the Philippines and Sudan.

Diplomats have put the increase in the number of executions down to more judges being appointed, allowing for a backlog of appeal cases to be heard.

A downloadable PDF form for the job says the successful applicants would be paid at the lower end of the civil service pay scale.

Read more: Wanted: Saudi Arabia seeks eight executioners as beheadings soar | euronews, world news

Freedom of the Press: ​Americans, Europeans want non-MSM coverage of intl. news poll results show

Getting their international news only from mainstream media is not what the majority of Americans and Europeans want, an opinion poll shows. Some 60 percent desire alternative sources of news coverage.

The only country among the five polled by the British company ICM Research for Sputnik news radio, in which less than half of respondents said they would like to have an alternative source of information on world affairs, was France. Forty-nine percent of the people there said they would be ‘quite interested’ or ‘interested a lot’ in it.
 
Greeks were on the other side of the spectrum, with over 80 percent vying for such a source. The US and UK were level at 57 percent, while Germany ran at 55 percent, Sputnik reported.

The majority of Europeans - UK, French, German and Greek residents among them - distrust mainstream media coverage of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, a recent poll targeting over 4,000 people, reveals.

Greeks appear to have showed the least faith in their domestic media, with a total of 76 percent saying they were ‘fairly’ or ‘totally distrustful’ of mainstream reports on Ukraine. In Germany, the same opinion was shared by 57 percent of respondents.

Britons, on the other hand, have great trust in the mainstream media’s handling of the situation. As many as 55 percent of respondents stated they put a fair amount of trust in the coverage of events in eastern Ukraine by British media. Some 33 percent said it was biased, however.

In France, 47 percent of respondents said they don't trust the Ukraine conflict coverage.

EU-Digest