Quebec’s elections

I must apologize to the readers of this blog for the quietness imposed in the past months. It is certainly not because we had nothing to say, but rather the opposite. Camarada Justin is probably going to be away for a while and I was myself running in provincial elections under the banner of Quebec solidaire, the left-wing party of Quebec.

The experience was amazing. Even though I had no team to work with, solidarity and help could be found everywhere I looked. Newspaper interviews and invitations were flooding in. Considering the young age of our party, we weren’t invited to the chief debate but we imposed ourselves on the net, which was a incredible success.

The results of the elections ended as follow:

Liberals (right wing): 42%

PQ (right wing): 35%

ADQ (right-right wing): 16%

QS: (left wing party): 4%

PV (right wing pro-environment): 2%

The Election night was also filled with emotion as Quebec solidaire elected its first depute, Amir Khadir in Mercier’s County. The ADQ lost a bit more than half of their seats which couldn’t be handled by their chief, who stepped down immediately. The results weren’t even completely out. When we look at national assembly’s website, it appears that he would have also stepped down of his position of depute, to which he had just been re-elected. Immature decision which was covered up as something he had been thinking about for a long time.

This experience has thought me a lot about how to deal with medias and gave me my first experience with a lot of situations that we don’t come accross every days. I have realized that it is impossible to read an article in the newspaper and think that it is exactly what someone said, even if it is between quotes. Of all the interviews I have given, all of the articles that came out had quotes I had never said, implying things I had never said or let anyone conclude either.

Regarding Amir Khadir, he was sworn in yesterday and it was an historical event, no less. He is the first left-wing party depute to enter the assembly and even if he had to swore to the Queen, and THEN to Quebec’s citizens, he made himself clear that Quebec needed to get rid of that archaic monarchy that didn’t mean anything to us other than the conquest. I have wandered the net a bit for comments and it was hilarious to see a right-wing blog, jump on the fact that he took the defense of a refuge, who has been hiding in a church for over 1000 days, because the government isn’t helping.

He requested that Quebec’s government looks into this situation within its legislative powers, while the right-wing blog reports that Mr Khadir has done a mistake during his ceremony, asking for something only Canada could intervene in…may I remind them that he said -within Quebec’s legislative powers-?!

If there’s only one thing to conclude of this whole experience, it is to always, always seek deeper understanding than what is presented to you. The truth can’t be found anywhere, within a single document and in a simple form.

- Sabbi

The ANC party of South Africa, broken and freed

South Africa like most countries of the continent has a story tarnished with apartheid and racial exploitation. Since the forced resignation of the ex-minister and leader of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki, the alliance party saw division take place among their ranks in an imposing manner. Furthermore, the Minister of Defense, Mosiuoa Lekota, left the party with many supporters and soon declared officially the creation of a new party.

Discouraged by the left-turn of the ANC, which includes Unions and the Communist Party of South Africa, the dissidents are preparing a meeting on November 2^nd to establish the basis of the new party which should be inaugurated in December. Therefore, they are making more and more public meetings throughout the country in order to gain support within the population.

The environment wasn’t at its best while they were proceeding on October 25^th to a militant meeting where 300 supporters of the ANC attempted to stop it. Police force had to get involved but nobody was arrested or hurt during the event. During the same meeting, Lekota declared that his supporters wouldn’t get intimidated by the loyalist threats of the party in power in South Africa. “We will not be intimidated”, he said in front of 2000 people in the Northern Cape Province. “I will not give up my principles.”. Another meeting in Limpopo province was cancelled due to the disruption of the Youth League of the ANC, that the police force didn’t manage to control, or so said the public tv station SAFM.

The dissidents have good hope of getting at least 20% of the poll during the 2009 election while specialists affirm it’s an objective of total unrealism, especially without the explicit support of Mbeki. Many are even waiting on the words of Nelson Mandela before taking their decision, him who was the president of the ANC and South Africa until 1999.

The ANC, ruling ever since the first multiracial elections in 1994, participated actively to the end of apartheid in 1991. Born in 1912, the alliance always fought for equality between sexes and races principles, removal of poverty, betterment of the healing system, access to healthcare for all without discrimination, etc…

During the last 14 years, the government sadly didn’t manage to better in a significant manner the situation within the ghettos and even throughout the country. Mbeki felicitated himself for the accomplishment of his government while the development of a row of 60 kilometres between the cities of Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, will only end in a huge concentration of 8 millions citizens within the next few years which will join the two cities into one, without solving any problems. Furthermore, the M1 highway neighbouring the row is called the “line” by the residents: the separation between the overpopulated ghetto of Alexandra and the luxurious houses of Sandton, the richest neighbourhood of Johannesburg. The promises of Mbeki haven’t created the equality sought but opened the door to projects such as the mega-mall of Soweto of 196 850.39 square feet, the Maponya Mall, which opening was celebrated recently.

Adding to this, Mbeki was reproached repeatedly his decisions since 1999. He adopted a denial policy regarding HIV which has been destroying his country for decades. He even retarded purposively the approbation of Nevirapine, a well-known medication which reduces the virus transmission’s chances from mother-to-child of 50%. His inaction made his government responsible of genocide while (as per Achmat) since 1999, 1,5 millions people between 0-49 years old died from the HIV and 2 millions people were newly affected. Njongunkulu Ndungane, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, described the government policies of « serious crime against humanity, as bad as the apartheid. ».

The unemployment rate is still a major concern in the country. Within the population of colour, it goes up to 40% while it stands at only 4% within the white population.

The forced resignation of Mbeki was perceived as undemocratic while in fact, on September 23^rd, a motion was presented to the congress, asking for the resignation of Mbeki which passed 299 to 10. The resignation of Mbeki was then followed by the resignations of 11 members of the congress along with the vice-president. At the same time, Mbeki was taking back again his legal offensive on Zuma.

Mbeki tried to get rid of his opponent, Jacob Zuma, by accusing him of corruption and frauds which the inquiry proved completely false. If Mbeki wanted Zuma out of sight, it’s indeed because he was a menace to his position. However, it is important to note that Mbeki hasn’t brought his support to the dissident group yet, even though they are claiming him as their main reason to leave the ANC.

While reading the various articles on the Internet, it’s easy to think that the new president of the ANC is against the creation of a new party while in fact, many are more than happy about the break up which will allow the majority party to push further projects that were held back by the right-wing dissidents of the party. The majority aspect of the ANC will however be hit, for the first time in South Africa’s history.

Montreal Riot

Finally something is taking over the news and replaces the over-advertised Pekin, a riot took place in Montreal during the night of August 11th 2008. However, the population isn’t quite opposed to what happened, surprisingly.

August 10th 2008, young adults are playing dice in a park and a policeman decided to arrest one of them for no apparent reason. The young man of 22 years old asked why he was being arrested and the policeman didn’t reply and threw him to the ground and proceeded to arrest him. Seeing this, his younger brother went toward them and asked why he was arresting his brother. The policeman apparently turned around and shot him.

In reacting to this, the youth of North Montreal gathered in an unstructured manner and started to protest yet young people from other areas of Montreal jumped in and started what soon became a riot. Many cars got set on fire, they broked into stores and stole items, etc…

The population of the area seems to understand what happened and while some are scared, most are requesting that the police and the leaders of the riot sit and discuss ways to calm things down and make it so the police stops beating down the young immigrants and people who have no reason to be arrested.

Of course, we also have the extremist right-wing party (ADQ) that goes and claims like idiots that it’s street gangs and that it’s nothing unusual. -Everyone- even the media, said that it wasn’t related to street gangs.

On tv, all we hear about is how the police didn’t react quick enough to the riot. There were policemen screaming to rush in and they were being held back. There’s also an urge to solve the issue regarding -why- was the young Freddy killed.

It’s not the first time we hear about the police beating down people, arresting them for nothing or adopting behaviors that aren’t to protect the population. However, this time, they managed to kill someone and even worse for them, the young person wasn’t known to be a trouble-maker, was rather calm and shy, he had a project for his life and it was far from criminality. This is not something the population of Montreal, even more on a national level, will see forgotten.

Sadly, I personally don’t expect any apologize from the police corps, to the family of the young man they killed. They will probably pull the solidarity card and throw all the blame on something the teenager did, instead of assuming they did a mistake that took away the life of an innocent and promising citizen.

- Sabbi