A4 Tuesday, March 13, 2018 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion A6
The World BusinessMirror
www.businessmirror.com.ph
Cuba’s likely next president pledges more responsive govt
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ANTA CLARA, Cuba—Cuba last Sunday took the final political step before a promised transition from the founders of the Communist state to a younger generation of officials.
People queue to vote in front of an image of Cuba’s Argentine-born revolutionary hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara at a voting center during elections for national and provincial representatives for the National Assembly in Santa Clara, Cuba, on March 11. AP/Ramon Espinosa
Along with millions of Cubans, 57-year-old Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel voted to ratify a government-approved list of members of the National Assembly, which convenes on April 19. Diaz-Canel, who is expected to assume Raul Castro’s seat as president that day, said the country’s next government would be more responsive to its people. He told reporters in the central city of Santa Clara that “the people will participate in the decisions that the government takes.” “The people can also recall someone who doesn’t fulfill their responsibilities,” Diaz-Canel said. “There has to be a focus on ties to, links with the people, to listen to the people, deeply investigate the problems that exist and inspire debates about those problems.” Diaz-Canel also lamented the downturn in relations with the
United States under President Donald J. Trump, saying “the reestablishment of relations has been deteriorating, thanks to an administration that has offended Cuba.” In a bit of political theater that may prove to be a shift in style from Castro’s, Diaz-Canel waited in line to vote alongside other citizens. Most officials are swept to the front of lines to vote in front of local and international media. “We’re almost in the future that we’ve been talking about—a transition,” said Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, the 87-year-old second vice president who fought along with Castro to overthrow strongman Fulgencio Batista in 1959. “We’ve been in transition since January 1, 1959. Now, the change is generational.” Despite the change in tone, few Cubans last Sunday expected Diaz-
Canel to bring about immediate or dramatic reform. The vice president has long been seen as Castro’s hand-picked successor, and he has consistently emphasized maintaining continuity in Cuba’s single-party political system and centrally planned economy. Despite a series of reforms instated by Castro at the beginning of his decade in power, the Cuban government maintains its monopoly on most forms of economic activity and the Cuban economy remains mostly stagnant and unproductive. Young Cubans, in particular, are widely disenchanted by a lack of economic opportunity and the state’s tight control of virtually all aspects of life on the island. Tens of thousands of Cubans have left the island over the last decade, draining highly qualified professional from key institutions like Cuba’s prized medical and educational systems. “I think the change will be for the good, because it seems to me that some of the measures that have been taken in the past have become obsolete,” said Daniela Aguero, a 26-year-old doctor. “Now there will be changes to improve our economy and our policies.” AP
Seoul envoy praises China’s Japan finance minister under fire as Abe school scandal deepens role in fostering new nuke talks
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EIJING—South Korea’s national security director on Monday praised the role of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration in nudging North Korea toward denuclearization talks, following word of a possible summit between President Donald J. Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un. Chung Eui-yong briefed top foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi on the recent inter-Korean talks and was to meet with Xi later in the day. “Our President, Moon Jae-in, and the [South Korean] government believe that various advances toward achieving the goal of peace and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula were made with active support and contribution from President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government,” Chung told Yang. Yang said China insists on all parties “sticking to solving the issue through dialogue and consultation.” “As long as all parties insist on solving the issue politically and maintain this direction, we can undoubtedly lead the situation on the Korean Peninsula to move forward in the direction in which the global community hopes for,” Yang said. Chung announced last week that Trump had said that he would meet Kim by May “to achieve permanent denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. Chung said Kim told the South Koreans during talks in Pyongyang that he’s “committed to denuclearization” and pledged that “North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests.” Suh Hoon, chief of South Korea’s spy agency, was also visiting Japan to brief officials there on the progress in talks. North Korea’s foreign trade, more than 90 percent of which passes through China, has taken a major hit since Beijing agreed to increasingly harsh UN Security Council resolutions aimed at pressuring Pyongyang into ceasing its nuclear and missile tests and rejoining denuclearization talks. China’s trade crackdown shows how it remains indispensable both in persuading Pyongyang to agree to talks and in fostering and safeguarding a longer-term solution, Renmin University foreign affairs expert Cheng Xiaohe wrote in the ruling Communist Party newspaper Global Times on Monday. “China’s faithful implementation helped make the Security Council’s resolution effective,” Cheng wrote, citing a 52-percent decline in trade with South Korea in January against the year before that required “significant sacrifice” on China’s part. While China supports maintaining sanctions for the time being, it is prepared to restore its trading relationship with the North in the event of a breakthrough in order to “create a favorable external environment for North Korea’s sustainable economic development,” Cheng wrote. By way of geography, its growing influence and established interest on the Korean Peninsula, China “was bound to play an important role in promoting denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, in particular, and shaping the geopolitical order in Northeast Asia, in general,” Cheng wrote. The editorial followed remarks by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week that the offer of summit talks was at least a partial result of Beijing’s call for a “dual suspension” of North Korean nuclear activities in return for a postponement of US-South Korean war games. Trump has spoken with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since last Thursday’s announcement, and said Xi “appreciates that the US is working to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with the ominous alternative.” Trump also said China “continues to be helpful!” Trump has repeatedly urged China to do more to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear program. AP
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apanese Finance Minister Taro Aso is coming under pressure to resign as a scandal over alleged favors to a school with connections to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe deepened. Hiroshi Moriyama, a lawmaker in Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said on Monday he received a report from the Finance Ministry admitting that documents on the sale of public land to the school were altered. The yen strengthened and stocks gave up some of their gains on concern that the scandal could derail Abe’s economic stimulus program. The Finance Ministry will concede its involvement in the alteration of 14 papers, removing the names of multiple politicians, including some with Cabinet experience, the Yomiuri newspaper reported earlier, without saying where it got the information. Opposition lawmakers said that Aso, who is also Abe’s deputy, must
take responsibility. The name of Abe’s wife, Akie, was among those deleted from documents, Kyodo News reported without saying where it got the information. The prime minister told parliament in February last year that he’d resign if any link emerges between himself or Akie and the land deal. Calls to the premier’s private office weren’t answered. The scandal, which has dogged Abe for more than a year, probably won’t hurt his ruling LDP’s grip on power after a resounding general election win last autumn, but it could hamper his bid to become Japan’s longest-serving leader. It’s blown up again at a bad time for the prime minister, who is battling to get exclusions from steel and aluminum tariffs as President Donald J. Trump bemoans the United States’s trade deficit with its ally. He also has to contend with Japan’s increasingly isolated stance on North Korea af-
ter Trump agreed to meet with Kim Jong Un. Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs in Tokyo, said Aso will probably resign over the issue, and that the scandal will make it harder for Abe to win a third term as leader of the ruling LDP this autumn. “If Aso resigns, the Abe Cabinet itself will be in danger, together with much of the momentum for its policy agenda,” Okumura said. “Aso is a political whale” and “his resignation would be much more damaging than that of the relatively junior Cabinet ministers that we have seen.” The nation’s tax chief stepped down last Friday amid questions over his involvement in the deal, a resignation that came on the same day as an official at a regional finance ministry bureau in charge of the sale was found dead, in a suspected suicide. The scandal is dominating newspa-
per front pages and TV news programs, and the approval rating of Abe’s Cabinet dropped to 48 percent in a poll published by the conservative Yomiuri newspaper late last Sunday—6-percentage points down on the previous survey last month. About 70 percent of respondents to a separate Fuji News Network survey said Aso should step down. Questions have been raised about whether Abe’s wife’s connection to the school meant its operator was able to buy government land cheaply. Abe has repeatedly denied any involvement on his part, or that of his wife Akie, in the sale of land to Moritomo Gakuen, an educational foundation that subsequently filed for bankruptcy. The foundation ran a kindergarten in Osaka known for espousing elements of the prewar nationalist curriculum, as well as for its explicit backing of Abe, and had planned to use the land for an elementary school. Bloomberg News
Putin’s Russia: From basket case to resurgent superpower
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OSCOW—Vladimir Putin and his Russia look more invincible today than at any other time in his 18 years in power. Since Putin last faced an election in 2012, Russians have invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, blanket-bombed Syria, been accused of meddling in the US presidential election and claimed to have a scary new nuclear arsenal. “No one listened to us. You listen to us now,” he said earlier this month, boasting about those weapons. Putin will overwhelmingly win reelection as president on March 18, again. So why bother holding a vote at all? He disdains democracy as messy and dangerous—yet he craves the legitimacy conferred by an election. He needs tangible evidence that Russians need him and his great-power vision more than they worry about the freedoms he has muffled, the endemic corruption he has failed to eradicate, the sanctions he invited by his actions in Crimea and Ukraine. “Any autocrat wants love,” said analyst Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center, and Putin gets that love “from high support in elections.” Expected to win as much as 80 percent of the vote, Putin will further cement his authority over Russia, a czar-like figure with a democratic veneer. During his 14 years as president and four years as prime minister of the world’s largest country, Putin has transformed Russia’s global image, consolidated power over its politics and economy and imprisoned opponents. He has offered asylum to Edward Snowden, quieted extremism in long-
restive Chechnya, hosted phenomenally expensive Olympic Games and won the right to stage this year’s World Cup. Now 65-years-old, he’s not planning to leave anytime soon. For 19-year-old art history student Maria Pogodina, “Putin is all of my conscious life, and so it’s clear I have a lot to say thank you for.” Yet, Pogodina worries about some of his policies as she prepares to vote and hopes to see a gradual transformation. “I am not talking about revolution, no way,” the teenager said, summing up the stance of many Russians of all ages. “I hope and believe it won’t happen and that we can avoid civil conflict.” The election will confirm Putin’s argument that to improve life in Russia, the country needs continuity more than it needs drastic change, independent media, political opposition, environmental activism or rights for homosexuals and other minorities. Russia will remain disproportionately dependent on oil prices, and its 144 million people will stay poorer than they should be—and many will remain convinced that the world is out to get them. Putin’s most important mission in the next six years will be working out a plan for what happens when his next term expires in 2024: Will he anoint a friendly successor or invent a scheme that allows him to keep holding the reins? Today’s all-powerful Putin bears little resemblance to the man who took his tentative first steps as president on the eve of the new millennium. Catapulted to power on Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resignation as president, Putin walked into his new office December 31,
Former President Boris Yeltsin (left) smiles as he holds a door before leaving his study, as then-Russian Acting President and Premier Vladimir Putin listens in Kremlin, Russia, on December 31, 1999. Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
1999, in a suit that seemed too big for his shoulders. His low-level KGB background made him seem shifty, and many Russians regarded him as little more than a puppet of the oligarchs then pulling the Kremlin’s strings. Russia was still emerging from a tumultuous post-Soviet hangover. Contract killings dominated headlines, its army couldn’t afford socks for its soldiers, and its budget was still dependent on foreign loans. Eighteen years later, Putin’s friends run the economy and Russia’s military is resurgent. An entire generation has never known a Russia without Vladimir Vladimirovich
Putin in charge. And an increasing number of other leaders—President Donald J. Trump among them—are emulating his nationalist, besieged fortress mentality. The once-feisty Russian media has fallen silent. Kremlin propaganda now has a global audience, via far-reaching networks RT and Sputnik. Yet, while Putin looks invulnerable on the surface, he has reason to worry. The Kremlin is lashing out at opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s recent investigations of corruption, fearing they could spur public uproar. And the battle for succession threatens to cause damaging splits within Putin’s inner circle. AP