This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from around the world. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Ecuador
Fernando Villavicencio, a Presidential candidate for the upcoming August 20 race, was [tragically assassinated yesterday](Fernando Villavicencio). He wasn’t really a front runner or anything, though he was pretty outspoken about crime and narcotics trafficking. For now President Lasso is blaming it on organized crime (certainly plausible) and has declared a state of emergency for the country for 60 days. He’s previously declared a state of emergency in two of Ecuador's provinces so this will now temporarily extend the suspension of civil liberties to the entire country. For now the election will continue as normal.
Niger
Last week ECOWAS threatened an intervention if the Nigerien military wouldn’t back down after their coup. Senegal, Benin and Ivory Coast were all willing to intervene but much depended on Nigeria, which holds the largest military in ECOWAS, over 20 times the size of Niger’s. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was indeed one of the most prominent advocates for intervening, however (thanks to @random_ranger for bringing it up) Nigeria recently held a vote on the intervention and Tinubu’s own party handily overruled him and voted against intervention. The Sunday deadline has now passed without incident and for now a West African war seems to be off. Niger remains heavily sanctioned, with overseas assets frozen, and much of their electricity cut off from Nigeria.
Spain
Recapping from last week, the Spanish election ended with a perfect stalemate between two coalitions: the center right PP and far right Vox vs the left PSOE and the farther left Sumar. The coalitions are both competing for tie breaker parties: the EH Bildu, the Basque Nationalist Party, the Republican Left of Catalonia and Junts (the Catalan independence party), but the nationalist Vox is disliked by these, especially the historically secessionist parties, putting PP at a big disadvantage. PSOE leader and current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has taken advantage of this and has been trying to court a deal with the Catalans and Basques without offering them too much in the way of concessions. Currently PSOE and Sumar have been offering to update the regional financing system, or to allow them to speak their regional languages in parliament, but what Junts in particular wants is for their fugitive leader Puigdemont to be allowed to return to the country with legal immunity for the last Catalan independence referendum - a nonstarter for both sides, at least for now.
Vox, surprisingly, has responded in reasonable fashion by now offering their full support to a conservative coalition even if their own members aren’t included in the new government. This has got the right wing coalition…at least one more vote, but at least opens up long shot negotiations to get a separatist party to abstain from voting. With both sides competing for the basque and Catalan parties, they are certainly going to leverage their position to demand as much as is possible.
Pakistan
Imran Khan has officially been jailed for three years and banned from politics for five years. This was followed by huge protests with over a thousand people arrested. President Arif Alvi has now disbanded the National Assembly and an interim government (not yet formed) will take charge till elections. Speaking of which, elections are supposed to happen in three months but a government spokesperson has said it may be more like four months as they do a census recount and redraw electoral boundaries. Two controversial bills enhancing the power of the military and the intelligence services have also been passed in the now defunct National Assembly and await Alvi’s signature:
Proposed amendments to the century-old Official Secrets Act will broadly empower the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) to arrest citizens over "suspected breach of official secrets". In addition, a new bill recommends a three-year jail term for anyone who discloses the identity of an intelligence official.
Thailand
If you’ve followed the coverage in previous weeks, you’ll know the general outline that two anti-military, anti-monarchy parties won big in the last election. They tried to form a coalitional government but the military objected strongly to the more radical party, Move Forward, and rejected its leader Pita from the Prime Ministership. His party has now been ejected entirely from the coalition and the less radical party, Pheu Thai, seems to have shelved its most serious criticisms of the monarchy-military axis and has been making forward strides forming a government, with the Bhumjaithai Party and the much smaller Chart Thai Pattana Party joining their coalition. They’re now thirteen seats away from a majority but their remaining options are rough. They can either work with the pro-monarchy Democrats, or violate their pledge not to coalition with the military and ally with Palang Pracharath Party or the United Thai Nation, the ruling pro-military parties that led the last coup in 2014. Both options would incur pretty serious backlash from their more committed members.
Italy
Italy’s rocky road to chart an economic course continues. They’ve been pushing a series of reforms, including raising taxi licenses by 20% and formally ending Covid restrictions; now they’re back on taxes. Banks have been pulling record profits, up 64% from the previous year, and the Italian government has now proposed a 40% tax on “ the difference between the interest they pay customers on deposits and the interest they earn on loans.” This is in the same vein as a measure Spain has pushed last year and the funds would be redistributed downwards (funny hearing Matteo Silvini talk about promoting “social equality”) to make up for some of the effects of European Central Bank interest rates. Stocks responded in decisive fashion by falling across the board. Italy already seems to be backing down.
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Notes -
I know a guy who was active in the Finns Party (ie. the local right-wing nationalists) and then moved, out of all places, to Ecuador, married a local woman, started a business and evidently integrated to the local society, to the degree that he now posts (in Finnish) his opinions about Ecuadorian politics to Facebook. He apparently was a Villavicencio supporter and convinced that Correa/the left was behind the assassination.
Anyway, latest Finnish update discusses the Finnish presidential race and also the H5N1 avian flu spreading in Finnish fur farms and the reignited proposals to ban fur farming to deal with it.
Do you know what his argument was?
How exactly does the Presidential system work in Finland? I get that they're supposed to run foreign policy but are they genuinely independent of the party coalition / president or still subordinate?
Also:
They're genuinely independent. The current president, for instance, avoided taking Finland to NATO until last year's events basically flipped the whole society's position on it overnight, even though his (former, he has to resign from parties by law upon presidency) had been gunning for it for years as their main foreign policy goal.
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Villavicencio apparently organizing a new investigation against Correa, and his anti-mafia campaign also being implicitly an anti-left one, since the mafia and correistas are connected, or something like that.
I just noticed, from his FB status, that another Finnish nationalist type that I'm familiar with (not, like, know personally, but has enjoyed a bit of a meme status in some of my friend circles for his musical career) has apparently moved to Argentina and is now a citizen of that country and is planning to vote for some obscure candidate for that country's presidential election, and is also convinced that Correa is behind Villevicencio's murder.
Any chance it's Javier Milei? He seems to be the go to for slightly zany nationalist types
No, Milei wouldn't of course be obscure in Argentinian context.
Gotcha, i thought you meant obscure in the international context.
Apparently his candidate was this guy, who represents a party whose ideology Wikipedia describes as "far-left to far-right".
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