1. A1 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
CHINA’S NETIZENS THE BO XILAI SCANDAL SUPER PAC’S
PAPAL DECLINE IN SOUTH AMERICA NEW MEDIA IN MALAYSIA
SCOTTISH DEVOLUTION PUTIN’S RUSSIA THE ISLAND PRESIDENT
TheSydneyGlobalistVOLUME VIII ISSUE I AUGUST 2012
SHIFTING
SEATS
TRANSITIONS OF POWER IN
NATIONAL LEADERSHIP

2. A2 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist

3. 1TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
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Board of Advisers
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Human Rights Commission
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Institute for International Policy
Professor the Hon. Gareth Evans AO QC, President
Emeritus, International Crisis Group
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Independent Studies
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Lewis Hamilton
Hitesh Chugh
John Fennel
Raihana Haidary
Tom Neale
James McElroy
Rebecca Dang
Laurence Hendry
Pristine Ong
Jack Luxford
Rafi Alam, Nick Boyce,
Ben Brooks, Natasha Bur-
rows, Stephanie Constand,
Madeleine King, Dennis
Mak, Jahan Navidi, Oswin
Perera, Drew Rooke, Michael
Shiraev, Dominique Spoelder,
Vaishnavi Suryaprakash, Zac
Thompson, Dmitry Titkov,
Trevor Tsui
Lucy Bradshaw, Lasya Chi-
trapu, Hae-Ran Chung, Sarah
Copland, Felix Donovan,
Jeremy Elphick, Alicia Gray,
Robert Lozelle, Colleen Ma,
Timothy Maybury, Nathan
McDonnell, Kristin Romano,
Erica Taylor, Stephanie
Zughbi
THIS last year has been a significant one when it comes
to transitions of power. From the edging democratic
reforms in Burma that have seen Aung San Suu Kyi rise from
the political ashes, to the revolutionary and violent uprisings
throughout the Arab Spring, to the passing of the family
torch from one North Korean dictator to another, and to the
extravagant and expensive democratic competition that is
ensuing in the United States, this year has been a catalyst for
change in the upper echelons of national leadership.
One thing is certain: transitions of power change nations.
The way a country presents itself to the world is shaped
by who leads the helm of government. Their international
reputation, their alignment with other nations and their ability
to maintain internal control and legitimacy, is all banked on
who has the decision-making power to shape their combined
national future. When a change happens, the world watches.
For this edition we have asked our authors to watch as
well – and the ideas expressed within these pages are the
culmination of extensive research and work. Our lead article
for this edition—‘Citizens Divided’by Daniel Zwi—examines
a question critical to the health of American democracy and
the upcoming election: is the free injection of corporate cash
into the U.S. electoral system undermining its representative
character?
Other contributions to this edition critique leadership
transitions on a variety of fronts. Sarah Copland leads
us on a trail through the life of a dictator’s spouse and her
vital influence over her husband. Dmitry Titkov laments the
Russian democratic process (or lack thereof) and the continued
predominance of Vladimir Putin. Both Nicholas Findlater
and Helen Xue trace the scandalous downfall of two national
figureheads, and Fabian Di Lizia and Ina Hoxha narrate the
grand tale of the ailing Catholic Church in South America.
All the while these articles, amongst others, trace
worldwide transformations in leadership. For some nations
the transition is quick and seamless, for others it is violent,
abhorrent. But ultimately we hope that, in this edition, we have
caught a snapshot of significant changes in leadership around
the world that will no doubt have an effect on international
relations for years to come.
The Sydney Globalist, while being a key part of the student
experience at the University of Sydney, is part of something
much bigger. Chapters all across the Global21 network
continue to be at the cutting edge of international affairs by
providing a platform for engaged students to deliberate on the
major issues facing their world. What began at Yale University
in 2005 has become an experience shared by thousands of
students around the world, and as always we are honoured to
play our part.
Yours in global affairs,
Lewis Hamilton
Editor-in-Chief
A WORD FROM THE EDITOR
Front Cover image courtesy of Lason Foounten, United Nations Photo from Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

5. 3TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
TheSydneyGlobalist VOLUME VIII ISSUE I AUGUST 2012
CONTENTS
Mark Fischer from Fotopedia (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
16
Citizens Divided
Daniel Zwi
26 Bringing Serbia Back to Europe
Nikola Popovic
27 A Dangerous Paradise
Virat Nehru
28 The Blind Holy See: Catholicism in
South America
Ina Hoxha & Fabian Di Lizia
30 Disavowing the Mao Model
Helen Xue
31 The Great Firewall of China
Deborah White
32 Iran’s 2009 Green Movement Revisited
Jahan Navidi
34 The People’s Autocracy
Natasha Burrows
SHIFTING SEATS
REGULARS
OPINION
FEATURES
12 How to Rig a Russian Election
Dmitry Titkov
13 Desert Rose or Real Dictator?
Sarah Yvonne Copland
14 Littler Britain
Ben Brooks
15 The Meaning of “Total Rejection”
Nikila Kaushik
18 A Tide in the Affairs of Men
Nicholas Findlater
20 Time for a New Solution?
Lucia Osbourne-Crowley
22 PNG’s Big Men
Lachlan Gell 24 A Turning Point for Burma?
Drew Rooke
36 Roll Over Mugabe
Lydia Cornu
37 New Media Levels the Playing Field
Robert Kennard
38 The Curse of Clientelism
Jack Luxford
39 Effective Advocacy for Migrant Workers
Laura Scott
PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY
5 The Roundtable
6 Interview: Nicolas Michel
Catherine-Josephine Tayeh
7 Documentary Review: The Island President
Patrick Hurley
8 Foreign Correspondent: A Woman’s Right
to Choose
Cathy Huang
9 Two Sides of the Coin
Dominique Spoelder and Felix Donovan
40 The Last Word
Hitesh Chugh

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7. 5TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
Anna Belgiorno-Nettis responds to ‘An Arab Spring in Autumn’, from Volume VII Issue II
of The Sydney Globalist: Energy Politics.
“It began in Tunisia with Mohammad Al Bouazizi, a fruit seller
who set himself ablaze in protest against police brutalities.” –
Aamir Aziz
WHO could have known this fruit seller would have started
the Arab Spring? Although Aziz admits the difficulty
of predicting revolutions, his analysis of the
Spring and the 1979 Iranian Revolution
highlights similarities between the Arab
countries and Iran prior to their revolutions.
These similarities suggest a set of conditions
conducive to revolts such as these. To further
Aziz’s argument, and to address the challenge
of predicting revolutions, I would like to
look at another country that is presently in a
similar, pre-revolutionary state: Uganda.
Uganda’s geographic proximity to the
Middle East and the support shown for the
Arab Revolution by its citizens already
suggest the possibility of a ‘sub-Saharan
Spring’ starting there. African experts, in
exploring the possibility of a new Spring,
have used Uganda to strengthen the concept’s
plausibility. In light of Aziz’s article, how does the current
situation in Uganda compare with pre-revolutionary Iran and
the Middle East?
Aziz identifies three similarities between the Iranian
Revolution and the Arab Spring. First, the uprisings grew from
non-revolutionary political settings. Some Arab Spring nations
had been under 30 years of authoritarian rule, while the Iranian
Revolution replaced a Shah who had ruled for 38 years. Second,
revolutionaries in both cases rejected totalitarianism and sought
to put power back in their own hands. Finally, Aziz stresses the
common fight for justice, seen in the Arab Spring’s fruit seller
and in the student deaths during the 1978 demonstrations that
started the Iranian Revolution.
Stagnant regimes, totalitarianism, and a call for justice: are
these conditions present in Uganda today?
Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, has been in
power for 26 years: stagnant regime. Museveni
installed legislation preventing political parties
from holding rallies and extended the presidential
term limit, allowing him to maintain political
control: totalitarianism. Albeit its flaws, Kony
2012 reminded the world of injustices, such as the
prevalence of child soldiers, that exist in Uganda.
A lesser-known problem is Uganda’s load
shedding. As energy demands outweigh supply,
there are frequent power outages. This affects
public facilities, including hospitals, impacting
on the ability of doctors to save patients: the call
for justice.
Aziz’s analysis gives insight into what causes
revolutionary change. Now, analysts of the Arab
Spring can turn to the future to look at where else
revolutions might occur, such as Uganda.
Anna Belgiorno-Nettis is in her fourth year of a Bachelor of Arts
(Media and Communications).
Gwenael Piaser from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
THE
ROUNDTABLE

8. 6 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
NICOLAS MICHEL
NICOLAS Michel is the former Under-
Secretary General for Legal Affairs
and United Nations Legal Counsel, and
the former head of the Swiss Mission
to the Preparatory Commission for the
International Criminal Court (ICC). He
was also behind the steering wheel of
the ‘End of Impunity’ campaign. Today,
Michel is a professor of international law
at the University of Geneva.
Given his vast experience, Michel is
a man with invaluable insight into the
development of international law. He
admits that it is often easy to overlook the
improvisational nature of the creation of
the first International Criminal Tribunals.
“Thedraftingofthe[Rome]statutewas
extraordinarily fast, by a small number of
people who were working in secret…they
didn’t have at their disposition what the
creators of ad-hoc tribunals have today.
So they had to base their work on the
First Protocol of the Geneva Convention,
on the law of the Hague, and on the
jurisprudence of Nuremburg,” he said.
“The judges at the start were
remarkable....they practically erased the
difference between international armed
conflicts and non-international armed
conflicts. I believe we were very much in
a phase of creating international criminal
law and these people acted with the End
of Impunity in their sights,” Mr Michel
said.
Although these developments
supportedauniversalcriminaljurisdiction,
Michel admits that there were numerous
challenges in working towards creating
the Rome Statute and establishing the
ICC: namely, that negotiators of the
Statute held discordant views.
“For a certain number of countries, the
definition of the elements of the crimes
in the International Criminal Court was
insufficient, in particular for the United
States. They wanted the crimes to be
even more precise and a document on
the elements of those crimes,” he said.
“Finally there was a deal struck for a
court which was more independent but
competent for a limited number of crimes
the most serious crimes.”
Michel believes that the new ICC
prosecutor may dramatically change
the types of cases brought before the
Court. “The new prosecutor is an African
woman [Fatou Bensouda]. It will be
very interesting to see if and how the
prevalence of an African prosecutor
plays a role…I adamantly believe that the
current prosecutor did not focus on Africa
for discriminatory reasons.”
“However, it is certain that Fatou
Bensouda will be sensitive to the issue
because she was the candidate of the
African Union. In one aspect, she needs
to prove her independence and in another
aspect, she herself will be very perceptive
of the need to show that the court has a
competence apart from Africa,” Michel
said.
Michel noted that internal difficulties
arise when nations refer their own citizens
to the ICC. “The risk that a Government
wouldusetheCourtagainsttheOpposition
was clear. But above all, what certain
people in these Governments forgot was
that it can fire back…When the Court
investigates the accusation, it must also
investigate the situation of the country
with regards to other acts committed by
other actors in the country’s territory…
[The principle at large is that] the Court
has allowed countries to denounce their
own state of affairs,” he said.
But the effect of universal criminal
jurisdiction goes beyond punishment; in
fact it goes all the way to peace: “The
relationship between, on one hand, the
future of justice and the End of Impunity
and, the other hand, re-building peace
after conflict, can be harmonious,” Michel
said.
However, Michel noted that, whilst
putting justice in practice can lead to
peace, it can also create difficulty. “For
instance, if you need the commander of
a guerrilla faction at the negotiation table,
if he knows that he’s going to be arrested
after the negotiations, well then he’s not
going to show up,” Michel said.
Peace may trump justice in
negotiations but, as Michel observes, this
logic also affects UN law-making. Under
Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the UN
Security Council has the power to stop the
ICC from examining judicial questions
and situations if they constitute threats to
the peace.
“The Security Council has the power
to suspend cases before the court. It’s
extraordinarily problematic because it
supports the idea that states can side-
step and that a certain number of people
need to be protected from the court’s
jurisdiction, potentially permanently,” he
said.
If anything can be said, it is that this
new culture of international criminal
jurisprudence marks the progressive
recognition that justice delivered from
victors is unacceptable and insufficient.
The changing hands of power at
an exclusively national level are now
accountable to the non-derogable
norms that form the basis of the
ICC’s competency. However, even
if the international regime is gaining
exponential legitimacy, it should ensure,
as its greatest object, that power players
abide by the rules it so resolutely esteems.
Catherine-Josephine Tayeh is in her final
year of a Bachelor of Combined Law,
majoring in economics and political
economy. She is currently on exchange at
the University of Geneva Law School.
International Institute for Sustainable Development
Catherine-Josephine Tayeh speaks with Nicolas Michel about the history and
future of international law and the International Criminal Court.
The Sydney Globalist meets

9. 7TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
The Island President: A documentary review by Patrick Hurley.
MOHAMEDNasheedknowsonlytoowellthat
power isn’t given up easily. While leading a
pro-democracy movement in the Maldives, he was
imprisoned more than 20 times for challenging
the 30-year dictatorial reign of Maumoon Abdul
Gayoom. In spite of the repeated incarcerations,
exile and torture, Nasheed never gave up. In 2008,
he became the Maldives’ first democratically
elected President, holding office until February
2012 when he was forced to resign “at gunpoint”
in a military coup instigated by Gayoom loyalists.
Dramatic as these events were, Jon Shenk’s
new documentary, The Island President focuses
on neither Nasheed’s incredible journey to the
top job, nor his sudden, unconstitutional ousting.
Instead, this film presents Nasheed’s first year in
office as he takes charge of a nation facing a new
kind of threat: the ocean. As one of the world’s
lowest-lying countries, a mere three foot rise in
sea-levels would submerge the 1200 islands of
the Maldives, making them uninhabitable. As
Nasheed puts it: “It won’t be any good to have
democracy, if we don’t have a country.” And so
begins this world leader’s diplomatic campaign
to secure international cooperation on combating
climate change.
In essence, The Island President is a film about
an action man. As the waves that crash on the
stunningly beautiful beaches of his homeland
creep closer every day, Nasheed recognises
that there is no time to waste. The filmmakers
were first compelled to approach the Maldives’
new President when they heard of his prompt
announcement that the Maldives would be the
world’s first carbon-neutral country within
a decade. Gaining unprecedented access to a
head of state, the documentary takes us behind
closed doors as Nasheed does everything within
his power to try to save his sinking country.
The camera crew were given permission to
film during Nasheed’s Cabinet meetings,
including one held completely underwater! It
is ‘creative-small-power’ diplomacy at its best.
Students of international relations are sure
to appreciate this documentary. For those who
regard the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate
Summit as unsatisfactory, Nasheed’s consistent
‘glass half full’ attitude may be somewhat difficult
to relate to. However, The Island President offers
a rare insight into the high-level diplomacy that
occurs in the lead-up to such global negotiations.
In short, it is the West Wing: Maldives-style.
Patrick Hurley completed a Bachelor of Economics
with Honours in Government and International
Relations in 2009.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF
YOUR COUNTRY WAS SINKING?

10. 8 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
SALUD Alarcon, 15 years old with brunette ringlets framing
her grinning face, has written her favorite saying onto the
first page of every fresh notebook she purchased for school:
“No hay mal que dure cien años.” There is no evil that lasts 100
years. There is nothing one can’t endure.
For Salud, whose mundane high school routine in Antigua,
Guatemala presents her few real stressors, this saying reminds
her that she is lucky. She entered the world on a humid evening in
February, barely surviving a fight against her mother’s umbilical
cord, which had wrapped around her, trapping her inside her
mother’s uterus.
A woman’s first labor lasts, on average, eight hours. Salud’s
mother was in labor for over twenty painful hours before
hemorrhaging to death after Salud was finally extracted. The
birth attendant left the house with few things to say. Salud’s
father prepared a low-key funeral. Two years later, he remarried.
Of the 500,000 women’s deaths each year from complications
that arise during childbirth, 99 percent occur in developing
countries,whereawoman’slifetimeriskofdyingfrompregnancy
and related complications is almost 40 times greater than that
of her counterparts in developed countries. A woman’s risk of
dying in childbirth in the United States is one in 3,700 whereas
in Latin America the risk is one in 130. In Guatemala, with its
13 million residents, a population that doubles about every 22
years, promising natural resources and mounting tourism, the
maternal mortality statistics are more than sobering—they are
unacceptable.
With the second most skewed income distribution in the
Western hemisphere, Guatemala is split, geographically and
culturally, between the rural indigenous people of Mayan descent
who carve their villages in the highlands, and the urbanized
Ladino population. As estimated by Hurtado and Saenz de
Tejada, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance in
Guatemala, there are 248 deaths out of every 100,000 live births.
Maternal mortality among indigenous Mayan women in certain
rural areas, however, may be as high as 446 in 100,000. These
statistics make pregnancy in Guatemala more dangerous than
pregnancy in any other Latin American country.
The causes of maternal mortality in Guatemala, the most
common of which are postpartum hemorrhage, puerperal sepsis
(a bacterial infection of the blood), or eclampsia (unmitigated
seizures) are all attributable to abnormally prolonged labor that
is quickly detected by trained obstetricians. But the majority of
rural Guatemalans who speak indigenous languages and practice
centuries-old home remedies will never set foot in a hospital.
Not surprisingly, the health of indigenous Guatemalan mothers
and children is dramatically poorer than that of the Ladino
population. Rural women will only trust their local midwives at
their bedsides.
Traditional midwives attend 80 percent of home and in-
clinic births in Guatemala and virtually 100 percent of births in
rural areas, where drug-less, tool-less home birthing is the only
option. Unfortunately, there are only 20 trained midwives for
every 10,000 Guatemalans. But Western medical training might
not yield lower mortality rates: Several field studies suggest
that many obstetrical routines have cultural rather than medical
determinants. In the mid1990s, an independent researcher hired
by the World Health Organization to survey routine obstetrical
practice around the world concluded that only 10 percent of all
routine obstetrical procedures were scientifically based. The
evidence points to childbirth as a largely cultural or spiritual
event in a woman’s life.
“[Some] rural midwives bring relics to the bedside,” said
Dr. Jean Albright, the director of a global health project at the
University of Michigan designed to expose medical students to
the ethnic, religious, and linguistic barriers to equalizing rural
health care access in the Guatemalan highlands. “Some of the
traditional communities in the highlands don’t have what we
refer to as ‘biomedical beliefs.’ They simply don’t get the point
of hospitals or physicians.”
Albright had to send her first batch of student health workers
back to Ann Arbor so she could spend a year calibrating the
program to better suit these ethnic divides. Understanding
midwifery, traditional or otherwise, precedes any attempts to
build hospitals or wrestle with a corrupt and Ladino-dominated
national health care bureaucracy.
A targeted global health intervention will wisely select the
most instrumental player in the rural childbirth gamble, the
comadrona, the traditional midwife, as the locus of progress.
But do researchers and global health workers force midwives
to speak their jargon of elapsed seconds, bacterial this or that,
pre- or ante-natal precautions, or do they try to make room in
their proposed professional and results-based interventions for
the fact that childbirth is spiritual before it is medical? Jennifer
A WOMAN’S
RIGHT
Cathy Huang from Yale University explores the dangerous path for aspiring
mothers in Guatemala.
JSBarriefromFlickr(CC-SA3.0)
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
TO CHOOSE

11. 9TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
Houston, a practicing midwife in both Antigua, Guatemala
and Catskill, New York, believes in the latter.
“Traditional midwives have knowledge and skills that are
unique and different from the biomedical or ‘technocratic’
model,” she argues. “The unique gifts that traditional midwifery
has to offer, unexposed to biomedicine, is a profound trust and
belief in the sacredness of birth and women’s power.”
Nearly 15 years ago, Houston founded Ixmucane, a birthing
center disguised as a quaint colonial house in the narrow streets
of Antigua. The center hosted several foreign nurses each year
who paid nominal fees to a local comadrona for several months
worth of home cooking and for cot space. Upon arrival, the
foreign nurses would shadow their midwife hosts for several
weeks under a program called Midwives for Midwives. Houston,
whose birthing center was forced to close after the national
government dropped its promised funding, emphasizes the need
to respect the sanctity of childbirth.
Midwives for Midwives still facilitates home stays, and while
visiting nurses must submit reports about tools and educational
methods they believe would best work in fighting prolonged
labor in rural contexts, there is little mention of offering
professional instruction—no “graduation” or approval system
for a midwife’s skills— only culturally adapted suggestions for
preventing life or death situations.
“We’re working to reverse the global trend of devaluing
traditional systems, and to prevent the natural process of birth
from becoming a total medical and technological procedure done
to women,” said Houston resolutely. Her tone, authoritative and
fearless, suits a woman who delivered all of her own children at
home with only herbal medications.
Of the 500,000 women’s deaths each year from
complications that arise during childbirth, 99
percent occur in developing countries.
Pregnant women in developed countries often enter labor
under the much-appreciated spell of an epidural. Whether at the
preventative stage, through the use of contraceptives, family
planning, shopping for an ob-gyn, or during delivery itself, being
able to choose drugs or agree to Caesarean sections, women have
choices. But in countries like Guatamala, where the perspective
insisting that women exist to deliver is still prevalent, birth, as
Houston argues, is done to women.
By allowing rural midwives to host educated, foreign nurses,
and by making room for their ritualistic or “unscientific” birthing
methods, exchange programs like Midwives for Midwives aim
to empower midwives by letting them know that their jobs are
valued. Even if biomedical childbirth with its blood pressure
cuffs and cervix dilation readings remains a foreign concept in
the Guatemalan highlands, midwives learn that their art demands
skills—skills to be shared and developed—and that they
possess a gift rare among women in their rural communities: an
education.
But according to Daniela Adabi, exchange and cultural
accommodation is not enough. Abadi’s missions as a midwife
with Doctors Without Borders have taken her to Cambodia,
Thailand, Nicaragua, and, most recently, back to her home in the
lush valleys surrounding Lake Atitlan in southwest Guatemala.
It’s there that she plans to launch a professional midwife training
center. Abadi, a French-educated Argentinian, speaks slowly
about her experiences with maternal mortality, enunciating
her syllables above the rapid metronome of raindrops on her
corrugated metal roof.
“The responses from the local women have been good. Most
of them accept the idea that things need to be improved,” explains
Abadi, whose proposed project will recruit graduating high
school senior girls and offer them professional obstetric training,
the kind dispensed to home birth attendants in the United States.
Abadi’s model replaces home stays with on-site instruction, and
will collaborate with local universities to provide some sort of
initial certifications for its first graduates.
“This will be a model where you don’t just impose on the
women where to give birth, how to give birth but also [provide]
workshops, classes around nutrition, around child care.” Abadi,
unlike Albright or Houston, is a local. Health workers dream of
places like Lake Atitlan, with its lush climate punctuated by the
occasional intense rains and its hushed Mayan tradition tucked
into all hours of the day, but Abadi knows the local school
systems, some of the local midwives, and has faith that her
proposed model has calibrated itself to fit the culture.
For the few women who complete their high school education
in theAtitlan highlands, there are few skills-based jobs. The only
other alternative in the health professions is assistant nursing,
which tends to be less appealing than marrying young and
rearing children. And while Abadi concedes that “there [will be]
a lot of challenges” to her model, the biggest challenge will be to
have trained midwives recognized by the community they serve
and by the national health system. But by reinforcing technical
education and offering a program that a midwife can say she
graduated from, women can find confidence in their skills and
status. And the introduction of professional midwives could be
empowering in new ways, too.
“[Women] choose the traditional birth attendant because that
is all they know. That’s the tradition. But if you have trained
professionals, women can ask for what they really want and
what they really need … not just feel like they have to say ‘yes’
to anybody.”
Childbirth is spiritual and empowering. But it sometimes
involves no choice for the women involved. Childbirth is, for
many women, a celebration, a milestone. But childbirth can be
deadly.
In Xelaju, Salud Alarcon is studying to become a doctor.
She regularly complains about her homework and often
procrastinates by playing soccer at the gimnasio downtown. Her
urban upbringing affords her the opportunity to study in school
and pursue higher education. It even has her considering an
unlikely path to medicine.
“Maths is so hard,” she mumbled. “But it will be worth it. I
want to make people feel good.”
Over the years, Salud’s voice has developed an undeniably
warm, maternal timbre. Despite harboring the usual teenage
anxieties about boys and fashion, she speaks to her younger step-
siblings and shares her career dreams with a mature inflection.
One day, she will live up to her name and might even, as a
physician, help propagate what it represents. “Salud” in Spanish,
after all, translates to “health.”
For women in the rural highlands, the legitimization of
existing female roles, as midwives and valued homemakers, is
the closest thing to female professional development. Whether
the process will involve ritual exchange or diploma exchange
is unclear. But a woman’s agency rests at the center of every
movement to fight maternal mortality. These movements offer
the promise of education, of cultural understanding, and of
advanced medical methodologies. Above all else, they offer
women the ability to choose health in the face of tradition.
Cathy Huang is a third year undergraduate at Yale University
interested in global reproductive health. Her article in the
upcoming issue of the Yale Globalist concerns clandestine
abortions in Chile.

12. 10 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
TWO SIDES
OF THE COIN
Felix Donovan and Dominique Spoelder debate whether Greece should stay
in the eurozone.
GREECE SHOULDN’T LEAVE THE
EUROZONE
Dominique Spoelder
THE eurozone crisis is significant because if the wrong
decision is made when it comes to Greece, the repercussions
will be felt worldwide. We are sailing into unchartered territory
– and the results, whether Greece exits the eurozone or not, will
be sticky.
But Greece as the sacrificial lamb is not the answer.
The eurozone was established as a marriage between 17
European Union member states that have adopted the euro as
their official currency. A possible divorce was never considered,
let alone one this messy. But the end of the honeymoon period
has opened the floodgates to talk of a possible ‘Grexit’.
The same issues that face the eurozone today would intensify
in the case of a Greek exit. There is no constitutional or treaty-
based mechanism for exit or expulsion, and this demonstrates
the clear idea that the eurozone is designed for entering, not
leaving. The entire case for creating a common currency was to
assure markets that the union was designed to be permanent, and
also to guarantee huge losses to any state that decided to leave
the common market.
An exit would force Greece with the unpopular prospect of
leaving the euro, re-adopting a currency doomed to collapse, and
projected inflation and unemployment rates of over 30 per cent.
Considering Greece’s own issues with coming up with a
government for itself, a reversion back to the drachma would
cause it unprecedented economic and political problems. The
eurozone is responsible for the ‘wellbeing’of its membership for
its own survival. A Greek exit would likely cause huge capital
outflow, with financial institutions and investors unwilling to
engage with an unstable economy.
Unless Portugal and Ireland are able to successfully
restructure their economies to weather the Greek storm, they
are in danger of being the next to leave. If the problem spreads
to the larger economies of Spain and Italy, the existence of
the eurozone itself will be in question. Further, a debt default
initiated by Greece would mean that Germany and the European
Central Bank (ECB) would realise large losses, undermining the
strongest elements of the eurozone as well as devastating the
weakest.
To maintain the euro’s strength, the ECB must persuade
markets that there will be no sacrifices to the eurozone. In doing
so it must also hold onto Greece, not treat it like a lamb to the
slaughter.
Dominique Spoelder is in her final year of a Bachelor of Arts.
GREECE SHOULD LEAVE
THE EUROZONE
Felix Donovan
GREECE’S pain is best measured in human cost. One fifth of
the country is out of work, and those with jobs have seen
wages cut dramatically. The Orthodox Church is feeding 250,000
starving Greek citizens. The country limps under the weight of
its national debt, with investors fleeing its pariah economy, and
budget cuts tearing into the safety net that is now needed most.
The apostles of austerity have leveled the blame for the
current crisis at Greek laziness, irresponsibility and government
largesse. But the Greek crisis is not one of its own making. Since
it signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and entered the eurozone,
Brussels – not Athens - has been the master of Greece’s fate.
And it is the folly and hubris of Brussels that is to blame for
Greece’s shattered economy.
The eurozone was a flawed project from the beginning. It
brought together countries with divergent productivity rates,
budgets and investment incentives under one currency. Greece,
Spain and Italy had to compete with Germany and France on the
global market – without the advantage of currency flexibility
that China among others has demonstrated the utility of. The
less-competitive countries ran up massive debts in order to
subsidise struggling industries or soften the effects of debilitated
manufacturing and tourism sectors.
And when that debt became toxic, when Greece’s economy
began to free-fall, the Eurozone failed it again. It never provided
sufficient bailout funds to generate growth, and imposed
austerity measures on the country that have served to entrench
Greece’s suffering, rather than alleviate it. The high priests
of European finance signed the death warrant for Greece’s
economy. Recognising this, Greece should not bow its knee
to them; it should not continue to eat the poisoned apple that
Brussels offers.
In lieu of the unlikely establishment of a United States
of Europe, with more centralised fiscal control, leaving the
Eurozone is the only option left to Greece. Tourism will
prosper when travelling to Greece doesn’t cost Euros, but
cheap drachmas. Manufacturing will bring revenue when Greek
policy-makers have the same currency flexibility as they did in
the 1980s. Let me be clear: returning to a devalued drachma
and an export-led economy will not be simple or painless. But
for a Greece trapped in a union of economic folly and human
suffering, it is how growth begins, and justice for Greek workers
returns.
Felix Donovan is in his second year of a Bachelor of Arts.
Eadaoin_o_sullivanfromFlickr(CCBY-NC-SA2.0)

14. 12 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
HOW TO RIG
A RUSSIAN ELECTION
Dmitry Titkov laments the lack of fair elections in
Putinist Russia.
NOVY Arbat Street was strangely
silent on the morning of 7 May this
year as Vladimir Putin’s black, armoured
Mercedes sped down it towards the
Kremlin for an historic third inauguration
as President of Russia. Precisely why
Putin chose to have his ‘cosmonauts’ –
as the Russian opposition has nicknamed
the OMON riot police – sweep clean
central Moscow of any public presence
for his procession is not clear, but the
optics were striking. The supposedly
popular President-elect was all alone in
his moment of triumph.
By contrast, even at his controversial
first inauguration in 2001, George W.
Bush braved the emotionally-charged
crowd, some 300,000 strong, to stroll
openly along Pennsylvania Avenue. If
Putin hardly looked like a man who only
two months ago had won 64 per cent
of Russia’s Presidential popular vote –
an impressive 46 per cent ahead of his
closest contender, the Communist Party’s
Gennady Zyuganov – it was because in
truth he had not.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opens
with an oft-quoted observation about
families: “Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way.” Something similar can be
said about elections: instead of ‘happy’,
substitute ‘fair’, and for ‘unhappy’, read
‘fraud-ridden’. The two most recent
Russian elections – the Presidential
election and last December’s legislative
election – make for fascinating study of
fraudulency in all of its dazzling variety.
Essentially, Putin and his party, United
Russia, appear to have adopted an ‘all of
the above’ approach to electoral fraud.
One stolen vote is a tragedy; a
million are a statistic.
Russia’s modern-day citizenry are not
natural protestors. Seventy-odd years of
Soviet repression, and more than a decade
of Putinist ‘stability’, have served to stifle
even the most rebellious of spirits. But the
brazenness of Putin’s United Russia party
in meddling with elections has given new
energy to the pro-democracy opposition.
On 4 February, a crowd of 100,000
turned out in a -20° C chill to call for fair
elections at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow.
The rise of the Internet in general,
and social media sites in particular,
had helped the Russian opposition
disseminate fraud-related discourse at
the time of the elections. Stories of vote-
tampering spread swiftly on Twitter,
ballot-stuffers were shamed on YouTube,
and volunteer election monitors wrote
in outrage on LiveJournal, highlighting
the discrepancies between the numbers
they saw being submitted to the Central
Election Commission and those later
reported in the official election results.
Most notably, a correspondent for the
online news portal, Lenta.Ru went
undercover to infiltrate one of United
Russia’s infamous ‘carousels’, which
involved packs of well-paid ‘professional
voters’ being abused from one polling
station to another to garner support for
Putin’s party at each stop.
AstatisticalanalysissubmittedtoarXiv
– an Internet-based archive for academic
pre-prints – on 3 May by a trio of Russian-
born scientists, shows not only that the
effects of the fraud described above are
detectable in the official election results,
but also that these activities were carried
out on an enormous scale. The study’s
bottom line is that the anomalousness of
the voting data suggests that a staggering
7 million votes were fabricated for Putin’s
return to the Presidency, with another 11
million or so in service of United Russia’s
cause in the earlier legislative election.
Furthermore, once one considers the
various sorts of ‘soft’fraud for which there
is no account in this study – including,
among other things, considerations such
as the restrictions on the registration of
new parties, and United Russia’s power
over the mass media – it is impossible
to imagine what fair elections in Russia
would look like, much less demonstrate a
positive path towards them.
People power in Chernogolovka
As a counterpoint to this pessimistic
outlook, consider the case of
Chernogolovka: a tiny town in the vicinity
of Moscow known mainly as an outpost
of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but
known to me as my birthplace. As Russia
took to the polls to pick a President on
4 March, the citizens of Chernogolovka
were charged with choosing their new
mayor, too. An independent physics
professor, Vladimir Razumov, triumphed
with more than twice the vote share of the
local United Russia candidate. However,
the Central Election Commission voided
his victory on the basis of a supposed
error in the registration of his candidacy.
In a small-scale reenactment of the scenes
at Bolotnaya Square, Chernogolovka’s
town hall was besieged by local babushki,
berating the Commission’s bureaucrats.
But, unlike the opposition protestors
at Bolotnaya Square, the babushki got
their way and Razumov’s victory was
reinstated. Only time will tell whether
such small but sweet successes at the
local level are instructive for the future of
fair elections in Russia.
Dmitry Titkov is in his second year of a
combined Bachelor of Commerce/Bach-
elor of Laws at the University of Sydney.
LawrenceJestertonfromFotopedia(CC-SA3.0)
FirdausOmarfromFlickr(CCBY-NC-SA2.0)

15. 13TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
DESERT ROSE OR
REAL DICTATOR?
THE wife of a dictator has the “dazzling
opportunity of swaying a nation by
persuading, cajoling or nagging at one
man,” wrote Time magazine in a 1928
article, ‘Dictator’s Wives’. Eight decades
on, the question of whether a dictator’s
wife can shape the future of her country
is again being debated. Since protests
erupted in 2011, Syria’s First Lady, Asma
al-Assad, once the darling of the Middle
East, has disappeared from public view.
An online campaign, spearheaded by
wives of ambassadors to the United
Nations, has aimed to persuade her to
speak out against the bloodshed: they
have been met with a deafening silence.
Is Asma a willing bystander or
a liberal going through a moral
crisis yet unable to speak up or
escape?
Is Asma indifferent to the suffering
being inflicted by her husband’s security
forces – or appalled? And if it is the
latter, just how much influence does she
have? As Syria slides into civil war and
the international community watches for
cracks within the regime, understanding
Asma could be crucial to understanding
the Assads and the future of the Syrian
crisis.
Born and raised in London, Asma met
Bashar al-Assad in the early 1990s and
the couple married in 2000 after he was
installed as the President of Syria. Young,
glamorous and well educated, Asma
appeared to represent a new liberal and
modern face of Syria.
This image was carefully cultivated
over the years. Asma travelled around
Syria getting to know people’s concerns
with a self-professed mission to
encourage young Syrians to engage in
“active citizenship”. She was vocal in
condemning abuses, calling Israel’s 2009
offensive on the Gaza Strip “barbaric”
and, “as a mother and a human being”,
called for its end. The Western media
soon dubbed her “a desert rose” and an
“eastern Diana”.
In early 2012, The Times asked
“What does Assad’s wife, an intelligent,
educated woman raised in liberal Britain
and seemingly dedicated to good works,
think of the evils being perpetrated daily
across Syria – nowhere more so than in
her family’s home city of Homs?” In
response, Asma’s office released its first
and only statement, which said: “The
President is the President of Syria, not
a faction of Syrians, and the First Lady
supports him in this role.”
University of Essex lecturer in
authoritarian regimes, Natasha Ezrow,
believes Asma’s apparent lack of
compassion may be borne of fear. “Having
grown up in Britain, she is familiar with
democracy and human rights, so she has
no excuse in terms of her standing by as
these atrocities are committed,” she said.
“Unfortunately, the al-Assad family has
been in power for decades and they are
extremely brutal and ruthless. There is
little she can do – she may even fear for
her own life.”
Indeed, the Assad clan reportedly
didn’t like Asma, not least because of
her Sunni Muslim origins. According to
writer and historian, Gaia Servadio, who
spent time with the Assads before the
uprising, Asma was “constantly under
watch” by the family, adding, “She was
rather frightened. I saw them shouting at
her.”
However, Syria’s bloodshed and
tyranny goes far beyond the confines of
the past 15 months and leaked emails
present an image of a woman with a
cavalier attitude to the crisis. “I am the
real dictator, he has no choice,” she said
about her husband, making light of the
political situation. Meanwhile her prolific
spending on designer goods added to the
growing image of Asma as more Imelda
Marcos than Princess Diana.
While Asma’s Western upbringing has
led to a perception that she should “know
better”. Bashar is seen as a product of the
regime he inherited. Bashar’s father led
a brutal regime characterised by extreme
dependence on the President alongside
a precarious balance of power. While it
was initially hoped Bashar would be a
reformer, there was little surprise when
he reverted to his father’s ways.
According to the Government’s
official narrative, the regime is essentially
blameless: Violence is the result of an
international conspiracy aiming to divide
Syrian society and subdue a leadership
that dared to defy Israel and the West. This
paranoia is not without precedent: Syria
has long confronted a hostile geopolitical
environment and technically remains at
war with Israel.
While conspiracy theories may be
a convenient excuse, the International
Crisis Group has suggested Bashar was
possibly persuaded by his regime’s own
propaganda. If this were the case, it would
be unrealistic to expect Asma to think
differently. Servadio believes Asma’s
liberal ideas were genuine but she was
deeply misinformed and had delusions
about what she could change in Syria.
She suspects Asma’s public appearances
and statements were staged for regime
propaganda.
IsAsma a willing bystander or a liberal
going through a moral crisis yet unable to
speak up or escape? Wherever the truth
may lie, it is clear that Asma is entangled
in the heart of the shadowy inner circle of
the Assad regime.
Sarah Copland is currently completing a
Master of Human Rights.
Ammar Abd Rabbo from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Sarah Copland explores the many sides of Syria’s First Lady, Asma al-Assad.

16. 14 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
LITTLER BRITAIN
DIVORCE saddens the Queen of
Great Britain. Yet in the midst of
her Diamond Jubilee, Scottish First
Minister Alex Salmond launched his
‘Your Scotland, Your Referendum’
consultation. Voting on whether Scotland
should become an independent country
in 2014, Scottish residents may elect to
annul the Anglo-Celtic political marriage
at the heart of the United Kingdom, or
at least devolve it beyond constitutional
recognition. Salmond’s Scottish National
Party (SNP) confidently proposes a return
to 1707: to share the Head of State, as
Elizabeth I of Scotland, but reverse the
parliamentary union.
Laced with references to historic
English oppression, the secessionist case
turns on taxation and fiscal responsibility.
The Scottish Parliament controls some
60 per cent of total public expenditure in
Scotland, but is only empowered to raise
6.4 per cent of the necessary taxes. For
the remainder, it relies on grants from a
UK Parliament, four-fifths predominated
by English MPs. As a minimum,
supporters of independence expect to
secure a compromise, with Basque-style
“maximum devolution”: taxes raised and
spent locally, with a tribute to London
covering defence.
Nor, Salmond argues, does Scotland
enjoy the benefits of its North Sea
oil industry. Data from 2008 to 2009
suggests that, with crude revenue,
Edinburgh provided £1.3 billion ($A2
billion) more to London than was actually
spent in Scotland. It is an arrangement,
he says, constituting “the greatest
act of international larceny since the
Spanish stole the Inca gold”. But oil
alone is an uncertain basis for secession.
The SNP also offer their renewable
energy initiatives – one of the few high
profile responsibilities not reserved
for Westminster – as evidence of their
readiness for full legislative autonomy.
A majority of Scottish voters support
‘devo max’ short of independence. If
David Cameron insists, then, on a single-
question plebiscite, they could return a
resounding ‘no’, and though the SNP won
a majority of seats in the 2011 Scottish
elections, more Scots voted against
them than for. Pinning his legacy to the
referendum’s success, all Salmond can
hope is that unionism’s fatal association
with the UK Conservatives is enough
to galvanise his exceptionally anti-Tory
countrymen, or that the 2015 UK General
Election drives the major parties apart.
But for all the pan-Britannic solidarity
in London, Scottish self-government
is peculiarly English-driven. Much as
the Celtic fringe bemoans its limited
autonomy, English voters resent that
England herself has no dedicated
assembly. The ‘West Lothian Question’ is
a fixture in the British political landscape,
asking whether non-English MPs should
be prevented from voting on exclusively
English Bills: a principle taken for granted
in the devolved parliaments.
English legislation cannot be isolated
in practice, at least while Westminster
remains a national body. The complicated
Barnett Formula for allocating funds from
London means that most English Bills
indirectlyaffectfundingtoScotland,Wales
and Northern Ireland. If further fiscal
responsibility is delegated, the proposal
will become more credible, and more
urgent. But segregating the Commons
could accelerate the then-inevitable slide
towards full independence.
Disaffected English voters also see
Scotland’s comparatively progressive
social policies as irresponsible, populist
economic grandstanding. Edinburgh
receives the third largest pocket money
payout although it is the fourth wealthiest
part of Britain. Against this milieu, the
inflammatory First Minister argues that
Westminster should absorb the debts
of the Royal Bank of Scotland post-
independence, for Westminster had failed
to properly regulate the financial sector.
But advanced democracies are not torn
apart by surliness and indignation.
The emergence of full independence
as a legitimate constitutional prospect
suggests that the British have begun to re-
evaluate their layered identity.
A comprehensive survey by the
Institute for Public Policy Research last
year found that 74 per cent of English
respondents identify as “English”
as much, or more, than they identify
as “British”. 86 per cent of Scottish
respondents said the same of “Scottish”.
Significantly, no Westminster party was
seen as standing up for English interests,
though the militant British National Party
enjoyed almost no support.
Thus, as the state decentralises, sub-state
identities become increasingly relevant,
foundednotontribalnationalistfanaticism
but political pragmatism. A poll by U.S.-
based YouGov found that the “English”
tellingly advocated EU separatism, whilst
the “British” sought to retain the status
quo and ‘make do’. That is, perhaps, the
chief function of ‘Britishness’: to unify
disparate ethnic nationalisms in a single,
civic framework.
The emergence of full
independence as a legitimate
constitutional prospect suggests
that the British have begun
to re-evaluate their layered
identity.
But on the whole, British governance
has outlived its usefulness for the
English core and Celtic periphery alike.
The category is more political conceit
than social or ideological reality; more
vestigial than necessary. In 14 short years,
the Scottish Parliament has embraced
aspirations for social equality, welfarism
and economic management, which
plainly diverge from those of the national
legislature.
It is unlikely that the referendum
will achieve total self-government,
though it could facilitate more ambitious
devolution. Yet negotiations over taxation
will likely prove contentious, fraught with
national implications, and unsatisfactory
– too little, too late. Symbolically and
politically, independence is an attractive
option. But it would leave the diminished
husk of a proud state: the shadow of a
shadow of an imperial superpower.
Ben Brooks is in his second year of a
Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Law degree,
majoring in History and English.
Ben Brooks examines the trend towards
independence in Scotland.
Guillaume Paumier from Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
geishaboy500fromFotopedia(CCBY-NC-SA2.0)

17. 15TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
THE MEANING OF
TOTAL
REJECTION
IN February this year, the African
Charter on Democracy, Elections
and Governance (the Charter) entered
into force, to protect democracy and
constitutional order within African
nations. It enhances and consolidates
previous declarations of the African
Union, enshrining a range of aspirational
democratic ideals, including: non-
discrimination, political pluralism and the
separation of powers. Most importantly,
it deflates soaring allusions to ‘universal
values’ and appeals to ‘democratic
culture’ that often characterise African
Union declarations. The Charter imposes
a definite and binding set of obligations
on State parties.
Perhaps because of the Charter’s
legal force, the inclusion of articles
designed to protect societies from
unconstitutional changes of has been
particularly celebrated. Chapter 8 creates
a framework of sanctions and obligations
in an attempt to address, among other
things, military coups. The recent
uprising in Mali, where a relatively stable
democracy was undermined by a band
of mutinous Government soldiers, tested
the strength of the Charter in addressing
unconstitutional transitions of power.
The Situation in Mali
Until recently, Mali’s Government had
been heralded as a showpiece of African
democracy, despite protracted tensions
created by the separatistTuareg movement
in the north of the country. In March 2012
however, a military uprising spurred
the uneasy situation to descend into a
series of bloody clashes between Tuareg
rebels, armed radical Islamist groups and
Arab militia. Coup leaders cited former
President, Amadou Toumani Toure’s
poor handling of the Tuareg rebellion as
the reason for the coup, and announced
the formation of a “national committee
for the rebuilding of democracy and the
restoration of the state”. Yet, somewhat
ironically, the coup threw Government
forces into disarray, paving the advance
of Tuareg rebels across the Malian Sahara
to declare an independent state.
At first glance, the situation bears
tedious resemblance to the internal
upheavals that have arisen in so many
of Mali’s African neighbours. But
Toure’s leadership stands in contrast to
that of many of his ousted counterparts:
due to Constitutional term limits, he
was not standing for re-election in the
vote scheduled for 29 April. The coup,
then, seems less a carefully orchestrated
power grab than a sudden surge of anger,
stemming from deep dissatisfaction
over the management of the Tuareg
rebellion. Divided public opinion in Mali
about Toure’s leadership and the Tuareg
movement makes it difficult to discern
a united will of the people in the coup’s
aftermath. It is hard to know what a
popular Malian Government would look
like.
Role and Application of the Charter
The Charter contains provisions designed
to reinstate constitutional order in exactly
this kind of situation. It provides for
sanctions against the perpetrators of
coups and excludes affected States from
participating in activities of the African
Union. Moreover, it prohibits the leaders
of military coups from seeking election
once democratic order is restored,
demanding their trial or extradition. These
provisions are enforced by the African
Union’s Peace and Security Council. It
is obligated to intervene and re-establish
order within any country affected by an
unconstitutional change of government.
In practice, however, the codification
of existing norms did not ensure their
faithful or complete implementation.
The African Union suspended Mali’s
participation in all West African decision-
making bodies, imposed economic
sanctions and dispatched the Peace and
Security Council to Bamako to oversee
the restoration of constitutional order.
But the Charter was only partially
implemented and, to date, has failed to
reinstate democratic order in the way
envisaged by its drafters.
Instead, a political compromise was
painfully negotiated, contrary to the spirit
of the Charter in enforcing democratic
norms with legal force. The leader of the
coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, brazenly
rejected the deployment of a stabilisation
force to Mali. The Economic Council of
West African States eventually persuaded
the rebel forces to return the government
to civilian rule, under the oversight of an
interim leader, in exchange for lifting the
sanctions placed on Mali. Worryingly,
however, coup leaders were granted
internationalamnesty to protect them from
prosecution for war crimes, and Captain
Sanogo was recognised as a former
head of state and given accompanying
entitlements to a salary and mansion.
Future Role and Application
Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect the
Charter to solidify vague democratic
norms in a way that immediately and
effectively addressed unconstitutional
changes of government. In spite of
the fact that the African Union did not
strictly enforce the Charter to overcome
Captain Sanogo’s challenge, two hopeful
developments emerged. First, the African
Union acted as a unified entity: no single
state bore the burden of condemning
the coup, limiting the scope of states
to support unconstitutional changes of
government in politically favourable
situations. Moreover, the Charter provided
a concrete foundation for African nations
to unequivocally reject the change of
government as contrary to the values of
the African Union. It affirms the African
Union’s respect for democracy, even if
it cannot displace political imperatives.
In situations where the spirit of popular
uprisings is confused with notions of
the ‘will of the people’, this is a step
towards realising the democratic ideals
underpinning the Charter.
Nikila Kaushik is in her fourth year of a
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws.
Nikila Kaushik considers the role of the African Charter in
opposing Mali’s leadership change.
EmbassyofEquatorialGuineafromFlickr(CCBY-NC-SA2.0)

18. 16 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
CITIZENS DIVIDED
Daniel Zwi explores how a U.S. Supreme Court decision has increased the influence of
money in U.S. politics.
WHILST the United States presents
itself as a beacon of democracy,
it is often condemned for propping up
undemocratic regimes. However, a less
frequently leveled criticism of the U.S.
is that its own democratic process is
strained. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010
decision in Citizens United v Federal
Electoral Commissioner is the latest
example of the decline in the democratic
virtues of U.S. politics. The decision has
so remarkably increased the capacity
of the wealthy to influence election
outcomes, that U.S. politics is in danger
of losing its representative character.
The Effect of Citizens United
The U.S. Presidential election will take
place in November 2012 amidst an
uncommonly partisan political climate.
The Republican Party has been pulled
far to the Right on social issues by its
Conservative base, and the lacklustre
economy has brought unequal income
distribution to the forefront of the national
debate.Withthefinanceindustryperceived
as bearing responsibility for the GFC,
and the top 1 per cent of earners in 2008
receiving 17.7 per cent of gross national
income, the deregulation of campaign
finance is an explosive issue. Citizens
United has been scorned by those who
ask how elected politicians can maintain
any pretence of independence, given their
indebtedness to the corporations that
advertised on their behalf.
The case has led to a marked increase
in independent political expenditure by
corporations and individuals. While a
cap on direct corporate contributions
remains, it was decided in Citizens United
that the First Amendment’s guarantee of
freedom of speech protects the right of
corporations to spend unlimited amounts
on electioneering communications
in parallel to, rather than as part of,
politicians’ election campaigns.
Citizens United is dangerous
because it allows for an extreme
degree of reliance by politicians
on corporations.
A direct result of Citizens United
has been the proliferation of ‘Super
PACs’ (Political Action Committees):
organisations that pool corporate funds
and purchase advertisements in support
of their preferred candidates. Super PACs
allow corporations and individuals to
donate money to a particular candidate’s
campaign without having to pay directly
for advertisements, thereby circumventing
the need to attach their names to those
advertisements. By remaining relatively
anonymous, corporations that spend
money on political advertisements and
other supportive measures short of direct
contributions, can do so with impunity.
Citizens United is dangerous because
it allows for an extreme degree of
reliance by politicians on corporations
that expend capital on their behalf.
Given that the population of America is
roughly 300 million people, effective
communication with the electorate is
difficult and expensive. A politician
elected on the back of advertising funded
by corporations or influential individuals
will be hard-pressed not to give those
benefactors preferential treatment.
Responsible democracy is undermined
because, regardless of the multifarious
identities of a successful candidate’s
voters, the preferences of a candidate’s
largest backers are likely to take priority
while that politician is in office.
The Court’s Reasoning
The decision in Citizens United was based
on the doctrinal premise that Congress
can only limit electoral spending to the
extent necessary to prevent the existence
or appearance of corruption. Surprisingly,
the majority of the Court found that
independent political expenditure, as
opposed to direct corporate contributions
to political parties, does not cause
corruption.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court
restricted their definition of corruption
to quid pro quo occurrences, that is, the

19. 17TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
out that this year’s numbers are 234 per
cent of those in 2008 and 628 per cent that
of 2004.
Nevertheless, proponents of Citizens
United argue that increased political
expenditure through Super PACS is
not detrimental to the U.S. democratic
process. They say that more political
advertising means that the public will
be better informed about policy debates.
Arguably, galvanising interest and
engagement through political advertising
is especially important in a country where
voting is voluntary.
However, this ignores the fact that
the main danger with unlimited corporate
political expenditure manifests once a
politician is in office, and not during the
election campaign. It may or may not be
thecasethatpervasivepoliticaladvertising
increases voter participation. The problem
is that, while newly elected politicians are
expected to act in the interest of those
that elected them, beneficiaries of large
amounts of independent expenditure are
likely to act in the interest of those that
invest in them: the two groups are not
necessarily the same.
The relaxation of political expenditure
laws has benefited Republicans more
than Democrats. As a political party that
rigorously defends low corporate tax
rates and minimalist market regulation,
the Grand Old Party has always been the
preferred political choice for corporate
America. Citizens United significantly
aided the campaigns of Republican
candidates vying for the party’s
Presidential nomination over the last year.
Now that Mitt Romney has been elected
the Republican nominee, corporate funds
hitherto directed against rival Republicans
will be used to attack Barack Obama, who
will thereby bear the brunt of independent
corporate electioneering.
The amount of money funneled
through Super PACs is enormous. Mitt
Romney was the beneficiary of $U.S.17
million worth of advertising by the
main pro-Romney Super PAC, ‘Restore
Our Future’, in the lead up to the Iowa
caucus of 3 January 2012. According to
the New York Times, at that date, almost
60 corporations and wealthy individuals
direct payment of money to politicians in
exchange for political commitments while
in office. The majority of the Court found
that, because independent expenditure
does not reach a candidate directly, it
cannotbeusedtoprocurespecificpromises
from the candidates that it champions.
Yet, the idea that independent corporate
expenditure cannot catalyse corruption
seems implausible. Even adopting
the Court’s conception of quid pro
quo corruption, it is foreseeable that a
corporation can approach a candidate and
offer to pay for favourable advertisements
in exchange for the candidate’s
commitment to further that donor’s
agenda. The fact that the candidate does
not receive the money directly does not
diminish the value of the advertisement
to their campaign. Michael S. Kang,
Associate Professor at Emory University
School of Law, has described the
conclusion that contributions can corrupt,
while independent expenditure cannot, as
“absurd as a matter of political reality”.
The First Amendment’s
guarantee of freedom of
speech protects the right of
corporations to spend unlimited
amounts on electioneering
communications.
The decision certainly seems arbitrary
and incomplete, given that quid pro
quo corruption is only one instance
of corruption. The capacity of certain
groups to use money to gain access to
politicians, even if they do not procure
specific benefits, can also be conceived
as corruption. Indeed, in McConnell v
Federal Electoral Commission, a previous
Supreme Court decision overruled
by Citizens United, the prevention of
improper influence and opportunities
was deemed to be a legitimate ground
on which to limit independent political
expenditure.
Changes to Electoral Finance Laws
since Citizens United
The impact of Citizens United has
been stark. The Center for Responsive
Politics, which tracks national campaign
expenditure, has recorded a dramatic
increase in independent expenditure
since Citizens United. In the 2004 and
2008 electoral years, total spending
was $U.S.14 million and $U.S.37.5
million respectively. During this election
campaign, over $U.S.88 million has
already been spent. Professor Richard L.
Hasen of Loyola Law School has drawn
attention to these substantial increases
from previous electoral periods, pointing
had donated $U.S.100,000 or more to the
Super PAC. William Koch, whose family
represents one of the foremost donors
to Conservative causes, donated $U.S.1
million to ‘Restore Our Future’.
Large contributions to Super PACs
have not been limited to the Romney
camp. In January 2012, casino owner
SheldonAdelson donated $U.S.10 million
to the predominant Newt Gingrich Super
PAC, ‘Winning Our Future’.
Republicans have garnered four times
the amount of independent political
expenditure of Democrats during the
first months of 2012. In lieu of lump
sum payments to Super PACS, electoral
disclosure laws have indicated that
Democrats rely primarily on direct
contributions. Such contributions are
capped at $U.S.2500. Democrats raise far
more than Republicans from this source of
funding, with President Obama amassing
$U.S.140 million in 2011, compared
with the $U.S.57 million raised by Mitt
Romney.
Certainly, there is no reason why
different political parties should receive
comparable amounts, either directly
or indirectly, from the electorate. The
fact that Republicans receive the lion’s
share of corporate expenditure is no
reason for scorn. However, just as direct
contributions to politicians are capped in
a bid to prevent excessive dependence
on wealthy benefactors, so too should
independent expenditure be limited. They
are both equally valuable to candidates
but, whereas the former requires the
politician to appeal to a spread of people,
the latter concentrates a politician’s
attention on the few who are particularly
wealthy.
A Questionable Legacy
The Supreme Court was at best politically
naïve and at worst biased in deciding
that unlimited independent political
expenditure could not result in corruption.
In a nation that places a premium on
preaching the rule of law to the world,
the majority in Citizens United displayed
a flippant attitude towards America’s
own democratic institution. Next time
campaign finance laws are brought before
the Court, it should cap independent
corporate expenditure and eliminate
Super PACS, such that a person’s ability
to have a politician to listen to him or her
is not based solely on how much money
they have to spend.
Daniel Zwi is in his fourth year of
Combined Law, majoring in English.
Mark Fischer from Fotopedia (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
IChazfromFlickr(CC)

20. 18 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
A TIDE IN THE
AFFAIRS OF MEN
BY no measure is scandal unfamiliar
in our political arenas. The beast
traces its lineage to ancient times, and
its strength has not since waned. From
Caesar to Clinton, scandals have emerged
with as much force and determination as
the political settings which have reacted
to contain them.
In February this year, the now-
former German President, Christian
Wulff, resigned following allegations of
misconduct.
The alleged misconduct was relatively
low-range: the primary allegation being
that Wulff relied on personal connections
to obtain a low-interest home loan.
The scandal did not feature sexual
misdemeanours, inflammatory remarks
or policy blunders. Nevertheless, Wulff’s
case provides an interesting lesson about
scandals: that the response to a scandal
is not to remedy the alleged misconduct
itself, so much as to pander to the demands
of that vague, elusive and unquantifiable
yardstick – public perception.
We begin our learning curve in Berlin.
Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with
base bribes?
Julius Caesar [4.3.23]
In December 2011, the German
tabloid Bild published allegations that
Wulff had received a low-interest home
loan with an approximate value of
€500,000 ($A618,324) from the wife of a
wealthy business associate, one Mr Egon
Geerkens. The transaction was alleged
to have taken place in October 2008,
while Wulff was Premier of the state of
Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony).
Other allegations against Wulff
included that he had accepted free
holidays and political favours from
business executives. It also emerged that
Wulff had earlier left an angry voicemail
with Bild, threatening legal action if it ran
the story. When questioned on the matter
of the home loan, Wulff denied that he
had business relations with Mr Geerkens.
Wulff did not mention Mrs Geerkens.
In January 2012, Wulff conceded that
his actions in receiving the loan were
“not right”, but maintained that they
were legal. He apologised to Bild for
the threatening voicemail, arguably to
circumvent claims that he was interfering
with the freedom of the press. Yet Wulff
still refused to step down. By February,
prosecutors from Niedersachsen believed
that they had sufficient evidence to justify
an investigation into Wulff’s conduct.
In response to the prosecutors’ request,
the Federal Parliament removed Wulff’s
presidential immunity in order to formally
facilitate that investigation.
Activists had taken to gathering
outside the presidential residence and
holding shoes in the air as an expression
of their discontent.
Wulff announced his resignation on 17
February. News magazine Der Spiegel’s
headline declared “Germany breathes a
sigh of relief.”
In his announcement, Wulff stated
that he had lost the trust of the German
people, that his effectiveness as President
had been damaged, and that it was no
longer possible for him to fulfil the duties
of the office. He maintained his innocence
regarding the home loan allegations. The
prosecutors’ investigation continues.
Not that I loved Caesar less,
But that I loved Rome more.
Julius Caesar [3.2.22]
Chancellor Angela Merkel responded
swiftly to Wulff’s announcement,
declaring that she accepted Wulff’s
decision “with respect but also with
regret”. In her press statement, Merkel
emphasised Wulff’s dedication to the
interests of Germany and said that he had
represented the country with dignity. She
referred to Wulff’s assertion that he had
never acted illegally and stated that he
had chosen to step down “out of service
to our people”.
Merkel had backed Wulff during
the June 2010 presidential nominations.
They belong to the same political party,
the Christian Democratic Union (CDU),
and are both regarded as moderate
conservatives. As a candidate, Wulff
had the benefit of having previously held
public office. He was seen as experienced
and low-risk. Wulff’s appointment was
interpreted as a political win for Merkel
as well the CDU. As such, the timing of
his departure was less than ideal. The
European debt crisis was already harming
Merkel’s popularity at home, and the
Wulff debacle led to the postponement
of the Chancellor’s visit to Rome to meet
with the then-new Prime Minister, Mario
Monti, to discuss the Italian and Greek
economic rescue plans.
Whilst it is the chancellor who is the
head of government in Germany, the
President is essentially a figurehead. The
purpose of the President’s role, aside from
administrative functions, is ceremonial;
to be the moral compass of the nation.
Ironically,Wulff’s own predecessor, Horst
Köhler, had himself been forced to resign
in May 2010 after making critical remarks
about Germany’s military involvement in
Afghanistan.
He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he
looks
Quite through the deeds of men.
Julius Caesar [1.2.209]
Inunderamonth,theFederalAssembly
Nicholas Findlater draws some lessons from the recent
scandals plaguing Germany’s heads of state.
Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt on Fotopedia (CC by NC-SA 2.0)

21. 19TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
had appointed Wulff’s replacement.
Joachim Gauck received 991 of the 1228
votes cast, and was sworn in as the sixth
President of the unified Germany on 18
March. Significantly, Gauck is also the
first in German presidential history to lack
political affiliation: no President of either
East or West Germany has ever been an
Independent.
Gauck is a 72 year old Protestant
pastor, who was a vocal human rights
activist in former East Germany and
led the opening of Soviet-Stasi archives
after the fall of the regime in 1990. He
is widely characterised as an individual
who speaks his mind and believes that
Germans undervalue their freedom.
With Merkel as Chancellor and Gauck
as President, the unified German political
system now has two former East Germans
at its head. Both the British Guardian and
the German Der Spiegel newspapers
reported that Germany should prepare to
be “put on the psychiatrist’s couch”.
Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the Social
Democratic Party, remarked that Gauck
will help to bridge the gap between
parties, politicians and the people.
Interestingly, Gauck had come close
to defeating Wulff to become President in
2010 following Köhler’s resignation.
He hath left you all… and to
your heirs for ever;
Common pleasures, to walk
abroad
And recreate yourselves.
– Julius Caesar [3.2.252]
Some important observations about
scandals more generally can be drawn
from Wulff’s resignation and Gauck’s
appointment.
Firstly, scandals are opportunities
for the ruling elite to reset the agenda
and reaffirm their original political
values. Wulff was intended to be a fresh
start following Köhler’s inappropriate
remarks about Germany’s participation in
Afghanistan. But, as a fresh start, Wulff
himself came to rot. To replace Wulff
with Gauck (after Gauck came so close to
defeating Wulff in 2010) is like “pressing
the rewind button”. It returns Germany to
where it would have been two years ago.
Roland Nelles, writing for Der
Spiegel, made a similar point. Noting the
relaxed atmosphere of the March ballot,
he said that, “a mature democracy can
take such things [as Wulff’s misconduct]
in its stride.”
Secondly, every scandal is a product
of its time. Where a scandal is symbolic
of a deeper social, political, economic or
institutional crisis, then the response to it
is likely to be firmer.
Perhaps Wulff would have waited for
the Niedersachsen prosecutors to make
a formal investigatory finding against
him before resigning, had Europe not
been in the midst of a severe economic
crisis, in which his receipt of low-interest
home loans and free holidays aggravated
existing public anxieties.
By contrast, we have in Gauck a
President who is not a member of the ‘old
boys’club’(he is politically independent),
has a proven ethical compass (his political
activism in East Germany), and whose CV
lists the pursuit of freedom of information
(the opening-up of Stasi archives) among
his achievements.
Gauck is as much a pragmatic choice
as a symbolic one.
Thirdly, the dramatic value of a
scandal should not be underestimated. Of
course, citizens may in the normal conduct
of their lives engage with their political
settings. They may meet with their
members of Parliament or be politically
active. They may also vote. However, a
scandal captures the imagination of the
public at large. There is something in a
scandal with popular appeal.
It is a drama played out on their
television screens, on the Internet, and in
their newspapers. Its beginning is a little
fuzzy on the facts, and its conclusion
is often drawn out. Nonetheless, its
characters display vices and virtues,
their actions allow for catharsis, and
their stories add colour to politics –
something that remains for many a grey
and featureless landscape.
Wulff has reportedly sought respite in
a monastery after stress-induced health
problems caused him to be hospitalised.
Gauck, meanwhile, enjoys a reported 69
per cent public approval rating.
There is a tide in the affairs of
men
Which, taken at the flood, leads
on to fortune…
We must take the current where it
serves, or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar [4.2.295]
Nicholas Findlater is in his fourth
year of a Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of
International and Global Studies degree,
having majored in Government and
International Relations.
World Economic Forum on Fotopedia (CC-NC)

22. 20 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
TIME FOR A
NEW SOLUTION?
FRANCOIS Hollande’s triumph in the
recent French presidential election
marks an historic shift in the right-wing
political climate that has spread across
Europe since the 2008 Global Financial
Crisis. Since the crash, Europe has
witnessed increasingly extreme right-
wing policies, particularly on economic
issues. A clear example has been the
severe austerity measures implemented
throughout Europe in an attempt to
recover from the crisis.
As the situation worsens across the
continent, however, it seems that this
political direction may be changing.
The defeat of ring-wing French
president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the
election of left-wing social democrat,
Francois Hollande, illustrate that the
French, at least, are looking for a
new solution to the grave economic
difficulties which France now faces.
Hollande’s presidential campaign centred
on policies that have long been unfamiliar
in France, a country that has not elected
a left-wing leader in 17 years. The
campaign’s platforms included tax rates of
up to 75 per cent for top income earners, a
lowering of the retirement age, and, most
importantly, staunch opposition to the
severe austerity measures that have been
proposed and implemented throughout
Europe in response to the debt crisis.
These policies, when viewed in light
of Sarkozy’s increasingly extreme right-
wing economic and social policies, made
for a highly polarised electoral process.
Sarkozy, presumably attempting to win
more of the far-right vote that revealed
itself in Marine Le Pen’s success in
the primary round of voting, promoted
European austerity and incited anti-
immigration sentiment throughout the
later stages of his campaign.
Clearly, then, Hollande’s victory
against Sarkozy will have profound and
widespread implications not only for
France, but also for the political and
economic future of the Eurozone, as
it may mark the beginning of the end
of the right-wing policies that have
dominated the region since 2008.
Notably, however, Sarkozy became
one of 11 European leaders of varying
political persuasions to lose office since
the crisis. This signals that Europeans
are democratically expressing their
dissatisfaction with the economic
solutions governments have presented
to them.
Hollande will commence his term
facedwithanalmostunmanageablescale
of national debt, and unemployment
rates at a high of almost 10 percent.
His actions and strategies in the coming
months will be crucial.
Of great significance is the impact
Hollande’s leadership will have on
France’s relationship with Germany and
its Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Merkel
had a very close political relationship
with Sarkozy, and together the nations
had negotiated an economic ‘rescue
plan’ that may now fall apart without
Hollande’s support. Merkel expressly
favoured Sarkozy in the recent election,
as their economic policies aligned
and she perceived that together they
stood a good chance of resolving their
respective debt crises.
The question remains how the two
countries will approach the crisis in
Europe now that the leaders stand at
odds in their views on an appropriate
economic solution. Hollande has
vowed to fight back against Germany’s
austerity model and to transform the
European response to the debt crisis in
his own image.
In fact, Hollande has stated that his
first act as President will be to convince
Germany to renegotiate the budget
discipline pact to include a significant
clause on growth as a means of
redirecting the region’s strategy on the
debt crisis. Angela Merkel responded
to this by re-emphasizing that the agreed
fiscal pact, which of course includes
measures to stimulate economic growth,
is not negotiable.
The outcome of the debates
surrounding this issue, which will be
sure to occur in coming months, will be
pivotal for the future of the Eurozone.
Whilst Merkel’s strong attachment to
austerity measures requires large cuts
in spending as a means of combating
the debt problem, Hollande promises to
avoid such stringent measures and focus
rather on stimulus spending to encourage
economic growth.
Hollande announced that “austerity
need not be Europe’s fate”. Merkel may
not be able to defend the austerity-based
rescue plan against such strong resistance
from France, and already has shown some
signs of recognising a need to compromise
by announcing that progress may be
achievable through “solid finances plus
growth”. It seems, then, that Hollande’s
election may signal a restructuring of the
European solution, particularly if France’s
anti-austerity sentiment is replicated in
the rest of the continent.
A simultaneous expression of
discontent with the austerity-led approach
to solving the crisis prevailed in the Greek
federal election, which – though it has
not yet decided which party should lead
Greece through the uncertainty of the
coming years – certainly revealed that
Lucia Osborne-Crowley investigates a welcome shift in
leadership that may provide a new perspective on how to
save the eurozone.
JmayraultfromFlickr(CCBY2.0)

23. 21TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
voters had changed their attitude towards
the current approach to the crisis.
By withholding votes from the major
political parties and swinging instead
towards the election’s more extreme
choice of parties (including extreme-
nationalists Golden Dawn and far-left
Syriza, both of which promised an end to
austerity), the public clearly announced
that they would no longer tolerate the
extreme austerity measures that have
dominated Greece’s fiscal policy in the
last two years.
Hollande’s election may signal
a restructuring of the European
solution, particularly if France’s
anti-austerity sentiment is
replicated.
However, the parties that won votes
by rejecting austerity measures must still
form a functional coalition before they
can begin governing and thus introducing
reform, which is another issue that
emphasises the difficulty of solving such
a grave crisis.
Economists have stated, however,
that the public’s shift towards left-wing
solutions in France and increasingly
strong anti-austerity sentiment in Greece
will finally necessitate a welcome
restructuring of Europe’s economic
‘rescue plan’. This comes in the wider
context of growing recognition within
European countries that the austerity
measures that have been championed as
the best way to solve the debt crisis have
had little success, and often negative side
effects.
The focus on austerity was intended
to settle investors’concerns about lending
to countries with such formidable debt
in relation to their prospective economic
output. However, the measures required
to do this in an effective manner were
extreme. Budget cuts have extended to
higher taxes and serious reductions in
social welfare programs and cannot boast
positive outcomes that outweigh the
negative impacts of such extreme budget
cutting.
As the Zone’s economy struggles
more and more under this doctrine, the
public has become increasingly skeptical
of its merit, a growing sentiment that
has culminated in the results of France
and Greece’s federal elections. It seems
that, in light of a second default for
Greece seeming increasingly likely, and
unemployment rates rising to a record
high of 10.9 per cent across Europe, the
stakes have been raised and, thus, the
anti-austerity tide is strengthening.
The question remains, however,
whether there is a better option. Hollande
is proposing to increase spending
immediately in order to adopt a stimulus-
based approach to solving the crisis. His
plans to increase spending also involve
an immediate surge in investment in
infrastructure and small business as a
means of stimulating the economy in
the long term. To counter this proposed
significant increase in spending, Hollande
plans to dramatically increase taxes
imposed on the wealthy.
Outstanding issues and concerns
remain over whether these mechanisms
to keep the deficit under control will
be sufficient when compared with the
proposed increases in spending, and when
compounded with the debt the nation
already faces. Hollande will have to
bear in mind the consequences faced by
Greece and Ireland when their respective
borrowing costs became unmanageable.
France must avoid seeking a similar
bailout, but also clearly must restructure
its economic approach. Hollande’s
proposal could in fact mark an important
change in European policy that could be
the key to solving, or at least alleviating,
the crisis.
It now seems increasingly likely that
Merkel will agree to revise the fiscal pact
to include some of Hollande’s policies.
The two announced that they will release
joint proposals at the European Union
summit this year, which will involve
new growth measures being added to the
agreement. Merkel has shown that she
is willing to concede on issues such as
flexibility regarding the use of European
Union structural aid and investment in
infrastructure, transportation and energy.
If the nations are able to come to
an agreement that comprehensively
includes Hollande’s growth measures, it
could potentially be very successful in
stimulating Europe’s economy. However,
this relies on the German and other
European governments recognising that
any minimal growth measures will likely
not be effective in regards to countries in
the depths of very serious recession such
as Greece, and that a larger restructuring
may be required.
While the exact consequences of
Hollande’s forceful repudiation of
austerity measures and the corresponding
shift in public opinion that put Hollande
in office are still unclear, it is certain that,
as the debt crisis worsens, the Eurozone
desperately needs a new means of solving
it. We can only hope that Hollande’s new
perspective can help the European Union
to collectively devise a workable solution.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley is in her third
year of a Bachelor of International and
Global Studies.
Suzan Black on Fotopedia (CC BY 3.0)

24. 22 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
PNG’S BIG MEN
FOR those familiar with Papua
New Guinea’s dysfunctional and
often tumultuous political culture, the
recent leadership struggle has been as
disappointing as it is unsurprising. For 10
months, the damaging struggle has left the
country with two Prime Ministers, two
Cabinets, two Governors-General, and at
one point – during a failed mutiny attempt
– two Military Commanders. While the
political impasse has fortunately not
escalated into full-scale violence, the
future of the country’s fragile democracy
depends largely on the success of its
nationalelectionsscheduledforJune2012.
The struggle began when former Prime
Minister and 75 year old veteran, Sir
Michael Somare, left PNG in March
last year to receive treatment for a heart
condition. Having remained out of the
country for five months, Parliament
declared Somare’s position vacant in
August, and swore in Peter O’Neill as the
new leader of Government.
Upon Somare’s return to Port
Moresby in December, a Supreme Court
ruling declared O’Neill’s Government to
be illegal and ordered the restoration of
his predecessor. The decision pitched the
Judiciary squarely against the Legislature.
With a large majority in Parliament,
and significant popular support, O’Neill
refused to honour the court’s ruling and
instead passed retrospective legislation
rendering the change of government
legal. On 19 December, Somare sought
to break the ensuing political stalemate
by publicly calling upon the military to
adhere to the court ruling and restore his
Government. The mutiny was a failure.
Since December, the constitutionally
illegitimate O’Neill Government has,
curiously, been recognised by Australia
and the international community as
politically legitimate, despite Somare’s
protest that the upheaval was a “bloodless
coup”. Although Somare has sent out
conflicting indicators regarding his
ambitions to contest this year’s national
election, Mr O’Neill, whose Government
is riding on an election promise to provide
free education, is likely to secure victory.
But if there was initial enthusiasm for
the fresh look of O’Neill’s Government
in a country that usually sees over half
of its Members of Parliament replaced
at elections, such confidence has
subsequently been eroded. O’Neill has
invested MPs with extended emergency
powers aimed at weakening the Judiciary,
and has passed the controversial
Judicial Conduct Act, which allows the
Government to suspend judges. Although
both laws have been stayed in court, in
both March and May this year, O’Neill’s
Government has made two outrageous
attempts to arrest the Chief Justice, Sir
Salamo Injia, for sedition. Despite these
attempts, the Chief Justice remains on
the bench, and the Court’s ruling that the
ousting of Somare was invalid still stands.
InlateApril,anationalstrikeorganized
by the major trade unions was narrowly
averted when the O’Neill Government
guaranteed that elections would proceed
as scheduled at the end of June. The strike
was mobilized in response to a motion
passed by Parliament earlier that month
deferring the five-year elections by six
months. Although critics of the motion
declared it a breach of constitutional
process, MPs have continued to argue for
deferral in light of the volatile law and
order situation existing in parts of the
country.
While the O’Neill Government
has just recently announced a troop
callout to the Southern Highlands, in
the neighbouring Enga province to the
north, reports have surfaced that an MP
is allegedly arming himself in preparation
for the June election.
The planned strike, along with
two peaceful protests in Port Moresby
since March, are evidence of a young,
urban population clearly fed up with the
ruling elite’s reputation for corruption,
intimidation and economic incompetence.
Improved telecommunication
infrastructure and the rising popularity
of social media websites are believed
to have been major contributors to
the organization and strength of the
demonstrations.
“Citizens are becoming more aware.
For the first time, there’s great demand
for good leadership and accountability,”
says Alphonse Gelu, the registrar of
PNG’s Integrity of Political Parties and
Candidates Commission. “There’s an
unprecedented amount of action by civil
society groups and trade unions, taking
stands against Government decisions.”
But despite this more active,
emboldened citizenry, the national
election represents a serious test for the
Pacific Island’s ambitions to stabilize the
current political quagmire. Many islands
and mountain villages remain unreachable
save by air travel, and besides the
persistent threat of campaign instability
and violence, the electoral roll is often left
incomplete, names are doubled or forged,
and bribery before polling is rife.
The upcoming elections also represent
asignificantchallengeforAustralia,which
has traditionally held a significant security
role in the region and is set to provide
assistance for the election. Although the
Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, has urged
that an election take place as quickly as
possible, one local electoral Governor
Powes Parkes provides a grim reminder
that patience, not expediency, must be the
order of the day if PNG’s current political
instability is to be resolved: “Australia
has to realize that people die during
an election year in PNG…we want the
election to be conducted on time so that
our people exercise their rights, [but] we
must make sure that the process is up to it
so that we reduce the possibility of people
dying.”
Lachlan Gell is in his fourth year, studying
a Bachelor of Arts (Hons)/Law.
Lachlan Gell explores the continuing leadership struggle
in Papua New Guinea.
eGuide Travel from Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

25. 23TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
INTERNATIONAL
LAW
IGNITE THE
POSSIBLE
sydney.edu.au/law
“Sydney Law School is a
powerhouse for critical
legal thinking. It attracts
academics of the highest
calibre from the most
reputed universities across
the globe, and fosters
an environment where
academic enquiry and
rigour is actively nurtured
and encouraged. My study
has enabled me to learn
from experts in public
international law, challenged
my thinking and greatly
supported my professional
development.”
Sashika Jayewardene,
Master of Laws (LLM)

26. 24 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist
A TURNING POINT
FOR BURMA?
BURMA is at a critical juncture.
Wedged between India and Thailand,
the country has been shrouded in political
controversy for much of its recent history
and has been largely closed off from the
West.
In 1988 a number of pro-democratic
demonstrations were brutally put down by
the military-junta government. In 1990,
the situation worsened as the government
refused to cede power to the National
League for Democracy (NLD) who had
achieved an overwhelming victory in the
elections of that year.
Even more recently, the ‘Saffron
Revolution’ of 2007 which involved a
series of anti-government protests led by
Burmese Buddhist monks was put down
harshly yet again by the military.
However, since 2008, the government
has gradually been embarking on a series
of democratic reforms. The NLD, and
their leader,Aung San Suu Kyi, have been
allowed a growing presence throughout
the country, censorship of the press and
internet has been relaxed, hundreds of
political prisoners have been released and
the economy is opening up to the world
market.
Drew Rooke reflects on the changes taking place in Burma.
Yet, the motive behind these reforms is
unknown and there is international debate
as to whether they signal the beginning
of genuine change in Burma. Whilst
the reforms are definitely significant,
ethnic conflict still plagues the northern
and western parts of the country, there
are reports of numerous human rights
violations still occurring, and the Burmese
people remain very impoverished.
Whether these reforms continue or
not will determine the path that Burma
goes down in the coming years. It may
transform into a genuine democracy and
an emerging Asian economy, or it may
retreat back to the stage of oppression and
violence that has come to characterise the
country in past years.
Outside the NLD headquarters in
Yangon last year, Aung San Suu Kyi
said to me that, “I have so many hopes
for Burma.” Hopefully, for the sake of
the Burmese people, these hopes for
democracy become a reality.
Drew Rooke is currently completing
a Bachelor of Arts (Media and
Communications). He spent one month in
Burma last December.
A portrait of a monk in Amarapura, central
Burma. In late 2007, a peaceful protest by
Burmese monks was brutally put down by
the military junta government.
24 August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist

27. 25TheSydneyGlobalist | August 2012
Children walk barefoot in the central market of
Dala. Burma is the poorest country in South East
Asia, with 32% of the population living in poverty.
Endemic government corruption and a failure of
the government to support its citizens are major
reasons for this - in the 2011 budget, the Burmese
government allocated only 5.4 percent of funds for
the health and education sectors combined.
A lady selling fried noodles to Burmese military officials
on a train in Hsipaw, northern Burma. The Burmese
military, even with the recent reforms, maintain a very
privileged position in Burma.
A local monk watches the city go by as he rides the
Yangon train line. The Burmese people are hoping for
further democratic reforms and freedoms, but are still
constrained by the oppressive military government.
An open air produce market on 22nd Street in
downtown Yangon. This is one of many in the
country’s largest city. Being largely shut off
from the world for so long has meant that life
in Burma remains very traditional.
August 2012 | TheSydneyGlobalist 25