MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Romney embarking on new political balancing act WASHINGTON: Mitt Romney will need independent voters in November, but he isn’t abandoning his “severely conservative” record. The likely Republican presidential nominee has embarked on an aggressive campaign against President Barack Obama that straddles two sometimes-conflicting political ideologies. On some days, the former Massachusetts governor is a social conservative and social moderate, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and promoter of political compromise. With the primaries over, it’s an evolving balancing act that, so far, is leaning decidedly right. Romney spoke out Friday against China’s “one-child policy,” in an apparent nod to social conservatives. But later in the same Fox News interview, he defended his decision to hire an openly gay staffer who just quit under
pressure from social conservatives. Romney said he hires people “not based upon their ethnicity, or their sexual preference or their gender but upon their capability.” He said the exaide, Richard Grenell, who was to become foreign policy spokesman, was a “capable individual” and that many senior campaign advisers had urged him not to leave. But Grenell’s departure pleased some on the religious right. The matter offered a look inside a Romney campaign that would like to broaden his appeal to the political center, while harnessing the antiObama intensity from his party’s right. It’s a tricky move, but Romney is trying to prove he won’t turn his back on his party’s most passionate voters. He’s devoting significant attention to skeptical conservatives who have supported his Republican rivals until
recently. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum gave up his bid last month, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made his departure official this past week. “ We’re moving quickly,” said Romney senior aide Peter Flaherty, who is leading the campaign’s conservative outreach. “We are going to work very hard to continue to work with conservatives, to work with the base, to keep them energized.” Romney on Friday met with Santorum, who has indicated he will endorse Romney. Since Santorum quit, Romney’s campaign has been recruiting former Santorum staffers and courting his key allies and donors. Romney has hired Santorum’s former campaign manager to broaden coalitions with conservative groups. At the same time, the Romney campaign is paying lots of attention to the
conservative media. He and his wife met this past week with right-leaning bloggers, reporters and columnists for an off-the -record discussion on Capitol Hill. He has granted interviews recently to conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard, the blog “Hot Air,” National Review and Human Events magazine. Romney last month told the website Breitbart TV that the media was involved in a “vast left-wing conspiracy to work together to put out their message and to attack me.” Romney will deliver a commencement address next week at Liberty University, the evangelical institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Va. He will be the first Mormon to speak at a Liberty graduation. All that attention could alienate independents and more moderate voters often credited with deciding
close elections. For now, the Romney campaign seems more focused on uniting a party that just experienced a bitter primary. His aides highlight the need to rev up conservative activists, who will drive turnout on Election Day and handle the lion’s share of the lessglamorous tasks needed to run a national campaign. They note that Democrats have a ready-made army of volunteers, relying on college students, labor union members and others. Romney has struggled for much of his primary campaign to excite most conservative voters. Aiming at that group, he described himself as a “severely conservative” Republican governor while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in February. Some conservative leaders said they’re still not excited about Romney. — AP
Heavy losses for Greek pro-austerity parties Neo-Nazis gain seats
MEXICO CITY: Colleagues, relatives and friends of murdered journalists place candles and pictures on an altar erected at the Independence Angel monument in Mexico City during a vigil to protest against violence towards the press. On Thursday Mexican security forces found the dismembered bodies of missing news photographers Guillermo Luna Varela and Gabriel Huge and two other people in bags dumped in a canal in the eastern state of Veracruz. — AFP
Fear spreads as Mexican journalists mourned BOCA DEL RIO: Grieving, frightened journalists remembered three slain colleagues on Friday as young and energetic members of a press corps working under terrifying conditions in a state torn by a war between Mexico’s two most powerful drug cartels. Traffic dwindled from the streets and shopping areas emptied hours after the discover y Thursday afternoon of Guillermo Luna Varela, Gabriel Huge, Esteban Rodriguez and Irasema Becerra, who had been slain, dismembered and stuffed into black plastic bags dumped into a waste canal. It was a sense of dread familiar to Veracruz, where a cartel battle for control of one of Mexico’s largest ports has spawned horrors such as the slaughter of 35 people dumped on a main highway in rush-hour traffic in September. The state is a common route for drugs and migrants coming from the south on the way up to the United States. Much of the area around its main port city on the Gulf of Mexico was controlled until last year by the Zetas, a brutal paramilitarystyle cartel founded by defectors from the Mexican army special forces and known for its gruesome butchery of opponents. Last year, the Zetas’ territor y in Veracruz came under assault from the New Generation, a cartel based in the western state of Jalisco and allied with the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which is led by kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Drug cartels battling for control of smuggling routes often use threats, bribes or both to demand the support of local officials, prison directors and other influential people in the cities they are fighting over. Journalists have not been spared. “ We’re living in madness,” a Veracruz newspaper editor told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety. He said Zetas had wanted him to publish news about
the killings of Sinaloa soldiers, and the New Generation had pressured him to suppress such reports. “The Zetas talk to you and tell you not to publish something, and the New Generation talks to you and say, ‘If this isn’t published, I’ll mess you up.’ So what are we supposed to do?” He said criminal gangs even had de facto press representatives, who e-mailed complete stories for media to publish. A local television reporter said his cameramen had once been warned off covering a story by the cartels - by a fellow journalist who worked for a gang. He also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear. At least seven current and former reporters and photographers have been slain in Veracruz over the last 18 months, forcing their surviving colleagues to work under precautions reminiscent of those in a war zone. Journalists let colleagues and family know by phone when they are leaving for work and coming home. They call ahead before covering a story to see if the area is safe. Once they go, they move in groups of four or five and scan areas from the vehicle before getting out, remaining in constant contact with their newsroom. Few talk anymore with strangers, a new reticence in an area once known for its tropical warmth and welcoming attitude to tourists and other visitors. Press freedom groups said all three slain photographers found Thursday had temporarily fled the state after receiving threats last year. Huge, a new father who was in his 30s, and Luna, his 22-year-old nephew, were “part of a new generation of young photographers who permeate the media in Veracruz,” wrote Sandra Segura, a columnist for the newspaper Notiver, where both men had worked. Both had covered the police beat. “They were all spouses, children, siblings, parents, like Gabriel, the father of a 2-yearold girl. — AP
KOSOVO: A Kosovo Serb girl casts her mother’s ballot paper at a polling station during the Serb elections in Gracanica, Kosovo yesterday. Serbia, a landlocked nation of 7.1 million people in southeast Europe, is holding presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections yesterday. — AP
ATHENS: Greece’s two main parties suffered big losses in elections yesterday, exit polls showed, rocking the eurozone state’s austerity plans after a strong showing by protest groups including the neo-Nazis. Anti-austerity parties could have won up to 58 percent of the vote between them, the exit polls showed. The conservative New Democracy led by Antonis Samaras was the largest party with 17-20 percent of the vote, insufficient to give it an absolute majority and down from 33.5 percent at the last election in 2009, the exit polls showed. Socialist Pasok saw its score slump to 1417 percent from 43.9 percent. The party even looked set to be leapfrogged into second place by the leftist Syriza, which scored 15.5-18.5 percent, up from 4.6 percent three years ago. “The ruling parties have been struck by an earthquake. It has crushed Pasok and sent a strong tremor through New Democracy,” shadow foreign minister Panos Panagiotopoulos said on television channel Mega. Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was also set to enter parliament for the first time since the end of the military junta in 1974, with six to eight percent, making it the sixth-biggest party in the 300-seat chamber with some 25 lawmakers, it said. “A new nationalist movement dawns,” Golden Dawn said on its website. “Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have dynamically joined the national cause for a great, free Greece.” The fourth-biggest party was set to be Indepenent Greeks with 10-12 percent, a new right-wing party set up by New Democracy dissident Panos Kammenos, followed by the communist KKE on 7.5-9.5 percent. The Democratic Left, a Europhile new leftist party, notched up 4.5-6.5 percent. In total nine parties were set to enter parliament compared with just five after the last election. Both Pasok and ND have said they want the “troika” of the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank to cut Greece more slack in their two bailout deals worth worth 240 billion euros ($314.0 billion). But with voters angry at the austerity cuts demanded in response, many of the smaller parties, including possible kingmaker Syriza, want to tear up the agreements. The communist KKE party want to leave the eurozone and the neo-Nazis say they want to stop servicing Greece’s debts, an aim shared by Kammenos who wants to turn to Russia to prop up the country. The result therefore will make it tough for Samaras, once he is officially tasked to do so by the president, to form a government able to keep its austerity promises and implement
more cuts demanded by the country’s creditors. His other options include a repeat of the current uneasy Pasok-ND alliance or fresh elections. The final results are not expected much before before 2000 GMT, and experts have warned they could differ considerably from the exit polls.
from its commitments, the country would “bear the consequences.” “Membership of the European Union is voluntary,” he said in Cologne. As a result, it is Greece’s vote rather than France’s presidential election, also decided yesterday, which “weighs heavier” on investors’ minds, said Valerie Plagnol, Credit Suisse director of
THESSALONIKI: A woman prepares to cast her vote yesterday for the general elections at a polling station in the northen port city of Thessaloniki. Greece readies for elections with voters angry about austerity cuts and uncertainty over whether a new government can be formed with a strong enough mandate to push through yet more reforms demanded by its international creditors. — AFP “After two years of barbarism, democracy is coming home,” Syriza head Alexis Tsipras said earlier yesterday. “The people will send a loud and clear message to all of Europe.” Greece’s creditors, not least paymasterin-chief Germany, the main proponent of austerity before growth-despite growing criticism across Europe-have little appetite to loosen the bailout terms, let alone consider a third rescue. With Athens having committed to finding in June another 11.5 billion euros in savings through 2014, any ambition to renegotiate terms “suggests a degree of liberty they do not have,” Swiss bank UBS said in a research note. In ominous comments widely quoted by Greek newspapers on Saturday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that if Greece’s new government deviated
research. Holger Schmieding, economist at Germany’s Berenberg Bank, said that with a “high” chance that no stable government willing to implement more reforms can be formed, there was a 40-percent risk of a Greek eurozone exit this year. With Portugal and Ireland also getting aid and Italy and Spain on shaky ground too, last year there were worries of some sort of break-up of the eurozone. These fears have subsided in recent months but have not completely disappeared. Greece has already written off a third of its debts and is in its fifth year of recession. One in five workers is unemployed, its banks are in a precarious position and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent. — AFP
Teenager held in parents’ killings signs autographs WEST PALM BEACH: A teenager accused of bludgeoning his parents with a hammer before hosting a party at their home signs jailhouse autographs exclaiming “It’s hammer time,” calls himself “hammer boy,” and says he has seen and talked to the devil, a fellow inmate told police. The inmate, Justin Toney, described 18-year-old Tyler Hadley’s jailhouse fame in interviews outlined in investigative files released by prosecutors. Hadley has pleaded not guilty in the bludgeonings last July of Blake and Mar y-Jo Hadley. Toney told investigators that Hadley is known as “Hambo” and “Bamm-Bamm” by other inmates and that he has given autographs, including some on news articles about his case. Every time a new inmate is admitted, Toney said in the Feb.
21 interview, Hadley makes an introduction. “What’s up man?” Toney quoted Hadley as saying. “You know who I am? I’m the hammer boy.” The inmate says Hadley has given differing accounts of why he allegedly committed the crimes. First, he said, Hadley blamed it on medication he was on. Later, though, he said Hadley explained it was because he wanted to have a par ty and knew his parents wouldn’t let him. “All this to have a par ty?” Detective Kristin Meyer of the Por t St. Lucie Police asked. “ That’s what he said,” Toney replied. Toney said Hadley told him he’d been contemplating the killings for about three weeks and had considered using a garden tool instead. “He said he seen the devil,” Toney said. “He said he talked to
the devil and the devil talked to him.” Still, there are glimpses of a different Hadley in the files. Toney said Hadley would sometimes bring him a ramen noodle cup, and often expressed remorse for his alleged crimes. In a log of a jailhouse visit with his older brother, Ryan, Hadley tells his brother he loves him and tells him to tell others he says hello and loves them too. Kelly Reynolds, who was interviewed by police but whose relationship to Hadley wasn’t made clear, said he was an altar boy. Hadley ’s public defender, Mark Harllee, did not return a call Friday seeking comment. Hadley told a friend interviewed by police, Daniel Roberts, that his father had punched him in the face several times and had shown signs of injuries at times, according to the files. But Toney
said Hadley told him he’d never been beaten or molested, and Ryan Hadley called his parents “awesome” and his brother a “pathological liar.” Police have said about 60 people gathered for a party at Hadley’s house after his parents were killed, playing beer pong, smoking cigars and drinking. Friends described Hadley as being in a good mood and hospitable. Toney said Hadley claimed to have spent $2,000 on drugs and alcohol for the party, describing it as “so much fun.” He said Hadley knew he had “shocked the world” and realized something about his parents as he allegedly attacked them with a hammer. “I said, ‘Did they try to stop you?’” Toney asked about the attack. “And he was like, ‘No, that’s how I knew that they really loved me.’” — AP