democracy

Tunisia's presidential election: "comical"

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:47:33 +0200

In the run up to Sunday's presidential election, the Tunisian minister of justice and foreign affairs told FRANCE 24 that democracy in the country is working. One of our Observers in Tunisia, who lives under police surveillance, reacts to what he says is a joke.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has been re-elected president of Tunisia three times already since his first victory on November 7, 1987. While Tunisia enjoys a growth rate of 5%, efficient infrastructure, a healthy education system, and one of the best reputations for women's rights in the region, it seems that somewhere along the lines, freedom of speech got left behind.

A guest on FRANCE 24's Debate programme, Justice and Human Rights Minister Béchir Tekkari, said that the electoral system remained "fair, transparent and multi-party". However, Tunisia's ruling party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), keeps the country under a tight grip, regularly disposing of certain opposition members and censoring unfavourable media.

This year the country can celebrate a slight improvement in its international reputation. Reporters Without Borders ranked Ben Ali's Tunisia in 154^th place on their press freedom index, up 21 from last year when they came in last - 175^th.

Check up on skiving MPs

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:25:32 +0200

How often does your MP attend parliament? And when attending, does he or she actually do anything? A French website has been designed to answer precisely those questions, and spare constituents the hassle of having to frisk government records.

Nosdéputés.fr, or "Our ministers", has been recording the attendance, spoken contributions, and committee work of each member of the National Assembly for the past 12 months. Loaded with information, the website opened to the public on Monday (14 September)and soon became victim of its own success. The site's servers were so overloaded just a few hours after it went online that the website struggled to work at speed.

Statistics for ruling UMP party member Patrick Ollier reveal him to be one of the parliament’s most active attendants.

Henri Cuq on the other hand, also a UMP member, has evidently been skiving in the past year.

No newspapers, no democracy?

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:34:52 +0100

Photo: "Hyperscholar".

The editorial that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on Monday morning is certainly not going to please the global blogosphere. The author raises concerns over the potential death of newspapers, flooded by increasing numbers of online publications which, ironically, only comment on material produced by others. We ask our Observers specialised in new media to comment on the critique.

According to Bloomberg journalist Albert R. Hunt, people should be as concerned about the fall of newspapers as they are the fall of the banks. He says that society without a tough media is not democracy. He even mentions the French government's proposition to subsidise newspapers and the dangers it might bring. He cites a Harvard researcher who estimates that "about 85 percent of the news people get is initially generated by newspapers" and that most scandals are revealed by professional hacks who have the time and the means to investigate.

Are online publications, blogs and news sites only capable of regurgitating information produced by the old-school reporters? We'll be publishing reactions from our specialists in the field as they come in. So check back to this page more than once.

Elections in Belarus – not much transparency, but plenty of biscuits, vodka and champagne

Ségolène Team Observers — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:02:01 +0200

A billboard denouncing the political censorship of the opposition in Belarus. Posted on Flickr by "Kshysieq's".

Known as Europe's last dictatorship, Lukashenko's Belarus was promised better relations with the West if they could demonstrate fair elections on Sunday. They didn't, and YouTubers say they've got the proof.

In return for freer and fairer elections, the EU and the US promised Belarus economic benefits and an ease on sanctions including lifted travel restrictions for the country's leaders. The test came on Sunday, when parliamentary elections were held in the former Soviet republic. But when the results came in, the incentive seemed to have made very little difference. Not one single opposition member managed to secure a place in parliament, with all 110 seats going to loyalists of current president Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and considered "Europe's last dictator" by the United States.

Anti-dictatorship protests soon followed in the capital of Minsk, and several videos showing alleged electoral fraud sprung up on YouTube. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) condemned the election as "undemocratic", which they largely blamed on a lack of transparency. Our Observer says it may also have had something to do with the sumptuous tidbits and vast quantities of alcohol on offer at the polling stations, somewhat detracting from the voting itself.

‘2008, looking forward to the Olympic Games and, even more so, a democratic China’

Julien — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:49:47 +0100

A pair of political activists from Shenzhen (south China) are using the Olympic Games to protest against the authorities despite a crackdown on free speech in the run up to the event. Li Tie and Zou Tao publish newsletters and organise protests, and have even prepared for their seemingly inevitable capture by the police. On Chinese New Year's Eve (6 Feb.) they organised a peaceful protest in Shenzhen City. The pair displayed banners reading ‘2008, looking forward to the Olympic Games and, even more so, a democratic China'.

'The Lives of Us’ – or how one story of snooping is the same as others

Julien — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:41:37 +0100

Material from Team Observers.

In a country where the media is completely state-owned, this young Cuban blogger is extremely brave. In this post, she talks about the release of the Academy Award-winning German film, ‘The Lives of Others'. Set in Communist East Germany in the mid-1980s, the film tells the story of a Stasi agent assigned to monitor an East-German playwright suspected of subversive intellectual pursuits. The film details the alarming efficiency of the East German snooping machinery, including bugs planted in apartments and around-the-clock monitoring of a suspect's private life.

But for Yoani, the film is not so much about ‘the lives of others' as it is the lives of people she knows - as well as her own - in Castro's Cuba.

Post your questions to Yoani Sánchez.