Opinion: Thailand is bargaining away its future

The conviction of caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and nine of her cabinet members on charges of abuse of power is the latest development in a political crisis in Thailand that has dragged on since November 2013.

Although the Constitutional Court's decision may lie within the framework of the law, many regard the ruling as biased. According to the judges, Yingluck and part of her government violated the constitution in 2011 by unlawfully transferring the National Security Council chief. This meant that both Yingluck and member of her Cabinet had to step down. But the fact is that many Thais simply don't follow the arguments of the court.

The trial and the ensuing verdict cannot detract from the fact that Yingluck Shinawatra was Thailand's elected prime minister. And nobody doubts that her Pheu Thai party will win the upcoming elections - as it has done repeatedly since 2001.

No political advantage

But the opposition, led by Suthep Thaugsuban, has refused to accept this and tried to sideline his political rival. But neither massive street protests nor the disruption of the February 2 general election - which was later nullified by the Constitutional Court - were initially able to force Yingluck to step down. Yingluck remained in office and adopted a strategy of de-escalation. She had the ministries evacuated that had been occupied by the opposition and called on the police to exercise restraint.

The Constitutional Court's ruling won't provide any of the quarreling parties with a political advantage. On the one hand, part of Yingluck's administration will remain in office with the task of carrying on with the duties of a caretaker government. The opposition, on the other hand, will keep on staging mass protests. The intransigence on both sides alongside their unwillingness to compromise will cause great harm to the country and its people.

A strong impact

Thailand is the second largest economy in Southeast Asia after Singapore. However, the International Monetary Fund has already slashed the country's GDP growth forecast for 2014 from 5 to 2.5 percent. Key investments in infrastructure projects have been put on the back burner as foreign financiers hesitate to invest money in the politically instable country. The tourism sector, which accounts for 7 percent of the country's GDP, has been particularly affected by the crisis as many governments have issued travel warnings, leading to a significant slowdown in international tourism visits to Thailand.

But perhaps even more dramatic is the way Thailand has lost political significance in the region. The country is one of the founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization aimed at enhancing the economic, security and socio-cultural cooperation between its member states.

The next stage of ASEAN cooperation has been set for December 2015 and important negotiations as to who will be leading the implementation process are already underway. Due to the ongoing political crisis, however, Thailand will only be represented in these negotiations by low-ranking politicians with no voting rights. As a result, Thailand will likely be excluded from important positions for several years.

Thailand is an economically strong and politically important country. Compared to most of its Southeast Asian neighbors, it has made great strides in terms of establishing democracy and rule of law. This is why it is most regrettable that Thai elites are simply bargaining away the country's future.

One dead, 23 injured in Thai quake: official

BANGKOK: An elderly woman died and 23 other people were injured after a strong earthquake shook northern Thailand, an official said Tuesday, as aftershocks continued to rattle the mountainous region popular with tourists.

The 83-year-old woman died when a wall in her house collapsed after the 6.0-magnitude struck quake on Monday afternoon, according to an official at the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department in Bangkok. 'Twenty-three people were also injured in separate incidents caused by the quake,' the official told AFP, without giving further details.

The quake, which struck at a shallow depth of just 7.4 kilometres (4.5 miles), had its epicentre in the remote Phan district of Chiang Rai province, geologists said, and was felt hundreds of miles to the south in Bangkok and even in Myanmar´s commercial capital Yangon.

'Since last evening (Monday) there were six large aftershocks with a magnitude between 5.0 to 5.9 and the last was this morning,' Burin Wechbunthung, of the Meteorological Department told, adding there were a dozen smaller tremors.Residents on Monday said they had seen cracked building facades, broken shop windows and damage to roads, while power was cut for several hours in Phan.The area is a remote mountain retreat near the border with Myanmar and Laos and popular with foreign visitors.

The quake was felt in the tourist hub city of Chiang Mai 160 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of Chiang Rai and as far away as Bangkok, 800 kilometres to the south, where tall buildings shook for several seconds.Major earthquakes are rare in Thailand, although tremors often strike the north of the country.

Brazil’s social anger risks fouling World Cup

Brazil, one month from launch of its football extravaganza, wants the world to see keen youngsters inaugurating Sao Paolo’s Corinthians Stadium (which workers are rushing to finish). But instead, the world news shows Brazilian violence, regularly.

Ordinary people are rebelling because hosting the World Cup has inflamed prices and the money spent on the event means money not spent on social considerations.

Millions of tourists will start arriving soon. They’ll see heavily armed security forces. But that sight itself feeds the anger of many less affluent Brazilians.

Opinion polling has shown that 52 percent of the population are happy World Cup’s coming. That is down from 79 percent last November — a 27 percent dive.

UEFA President Michel Platini said: 'The Brazilians really must be told that they’re here to show what’s best about their country, their passion for football, and if they can wait one month before their social explosions it would be good for all of Brazil and for Planet Football.'

The riots started heating up a year ago, as people saw things get more expensive and their purchasing power suffer. The announcement of what the thing was going to cost sparked ignition.

Eleven billion euros, where the national average salary equals around 640 euros and the lowest legally is around 240 per month. The minimum estimate for a family’s basic needs is 1,000 euros.

Inflation, 3.6 percent a few years ago, heated up to 6.5 percent last year. As a high end consumer index, take the iPhone; you’ll pay nearly 900 euros for it in Brazil — not quite double the US price. And Brazilians have to pay some 50 percent more for a car or household appliance than in most other industrialised countries.

Food products — rice, vegetables, chicken — are up 20 to almost 100 percent. Rents have more than doubled.

This is the world’s seventh-largest economy, yet six percent of its people live in shanty towns. This parallel world of the poor, occupied against any regulations, house nearly half the population in big cities, missing infrastructure, rife with drugs and crime.

In the absence of adequate public services, notably for health, education and transport, in urban and rural Brazil, the spending on football feels to many like a social programme to exclude them.

Boko Haram threatens to sell abducted schoolgirls after group admits to the kidnappings

The leader of Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has threatened to sell the hundreds of school girls it kidnapped three weeks ago.

In a video message Abubakar Shekau admitted Boko Haram had abducted the girls from a boarding school in Chibok.

Around 230 pupils aged between 16 to 18 are missing.

Shekau said he was instructed by God to take the young women and that they should be married and not in school.

Boko Haram means 'Western education is sinful.'

Meanwhile, the families of the kidnapped are furious with the reaction to the abductions by the government of Goodluck Jonathan.

Martha Yarama Ndirpaya is the mother of a missing girl:

'The government told lies, about finding 121 girls, while after some time we discovered that it was a pure lie. They are not doing anything up till now.'

Relations between the families and the government are fraught. An activist was detained and later released seemingly on the orders of First Lady Patience Jonathan.

Jonathan allegedly accused the families of fabricating the kidnappings.

Pakistani gives street kids the gift of education

It's a chilly morning in Islamabad, and Muhammad Ayub's pupils are dutifully reciting their first lesson of the day. The class is taking place, as always, in a city park just around the corner from Islamabad's well-known Kohsar Market. Ayub has been running this school for poor children for nearly two decades. It's become his vocation.

'Everyone who is already educated must help educate illiterate people in their homes, in their towns, in their cities and other places where they are,' Ayub says. 'If they teach one word every day, then [you will] see, little by little, how we can overcome the education gap in our country.'

Those who can afford it send their children to elite private schools with fees running to thousands of Pakistani rupees per month. The rest have to rely on under-financed government schools to educate their children.

Without Ayub's street school these kids would never get access to education at all.

Humble beginnings

Ayub isn't a trained teacher. After his parents died, he had to care for his siblings and educate and feed them. He came to Islamabad looking for a job and worked as a laborer, 'anything to help feed my family and afford the expenses of my own education.'

During the months it took him to find a stable job, he became aware of the poverty around him.

'I used to see so many children in the streets, picking rags or just selling the few possessions they had found or made. I asked these children why they didn't go to school, and they told me that their parents couldn't afford to send them to schools.'

That's when Ayub started offering free lessons. It was the beginning of a journey, he says.

First he had to contend with hostility from many of the wealthy residents in the surrounding areas in the beginning. They didn't want to see street children gathering in the local park.

'Some people called me a spy, some called me a foreign agent, some thought I was a Christian,' Ayub recalls. 'But when I started teaching the children, everyone went quiet.'

He began with three pupils, three notebooks and three pencils.

Filling a gap

Almost 20 years later, the school is a permanent fixture in the community. Two-hundred and forty pupils are enrolled, most of whose parents work in the bungalows of wealthy people in the neighboring areas.

The school has earned Ayub respect in the neighborhood, and though he still doesn't get any proper funding, donations of books or stationary come from passersby who see him teaching in the park. And many former pupils return to help Master Ayub and share their knowledge.

Farhat Abbas is one of them.

'I used to work in the forest, cutting wood which I would then sell in the market,' he explains. 'Master Ayub took me in because my parents didn't have the financial resources to educate me.'

Ayub's teaching opened new doors for Abbas, who is now at university. Other former pupils have gone on to work in office jobs in the capital, a far cry from their beginnings.

Ayub's motivation for working as a volunteer teacher remains the same now as it was when he started. He says he feels that education in Pakistan is inherently unfair.

'The elites and the rich children have the highest standards and access to the best schools and colleges,' he says. 'For the poor student it is hard for them even to buy books or paper. This division between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' has destroyed the education system in Pakistan and made opportunities unequal.

Pact for supplying 100,000 laptops to students inked

ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister's Youth Programme on Monday signed contract with Higher Education Commission (HEC) for supply and commissioning of 100,000 laptops to be distributed under PMYP.
The contract was signed at HEC secretariat and Anwar Amjad, director general information technology, HEC, and Zhang Le, international projects manager Haier Electrical Appliances Corp Ltd, signed the contract while Advisor to PMYP chairperson MNA Leila Khan also present on the occasion. Haier has won the contract through a competitive process conducted by HEC in which major manufacturers of laptops participated.
The programme aims at distribution of laptops among young and bright students studying in public sector higher education institutions across the country. The HEC is the executing agency responsible for developing criteria, mechanism, modalities and a roadmap for procurement and distribution of laptops under this programme. During 2013-14, 100,000 laptops will be distributed among students as per defined criteria.
Speaking on the occasion, the chief guest Leila Khan shared the vision of PML-N government for development of youth. She appreciated HEC for effectively managing the selection process for the laptop programme. She emphasised that it has been ensured that entire procedure of the laptop programme is transparent and that laptops will be distributed purely on merit.
Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, chairperson HEC, thanked the government for showing confidence in HEC for execution of the laptop programme. He appreciated the idea of the Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif for not only providing laptops to students but also bounding procuring agency to assemble laptops in Pakistan. He said that right from the start Transparency International has been involved so that nobody has any doubt on fairness of the whole process.
It may be mentioned here that Transparency International Pakistan has congratulated the prime minister for procurement of 100,000 laptops fully in accordance with PPRA rules. The whole process has been completed by HEC in a record time of 20 days.
Earlier, in his welcome address, Dr Mansoor Akbar Kundi, executive director HEC, said that the youth programme launched by the government is talent-centric, which is a source of inspiration for the young population of this country.

Most Effective Weapon of US starts leaving Pakistan?

WASHINGTON – Can you believe that U.S. most effective weapon against the war of terrorism C.I.A. has started leaving Pakistan, revealed by The Daily Beast in a report.

According to the report, the CIA is now leaving its front-line Afghan counter-terrorist forces in south and east Afghanistan leaving a security vacuum that U.S. commanders fear the Taliban and Al-Qaeda will fill and leaving the Pakistan border open to possible deluge of fighters and weapons.

“The CIA has started to end the contracts of some of those militias who were working for them,” said Aimal Faizi, spokesman for outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a longtime critic of the CIA’s Afghan operatives. “Some of them were in very important locations, so we deployed our troops there.”

U.S. and Afghan military commanders tell The Daily Beast that Afghan forces are stretched too thin to replace many of those departing CIA paramilitaries. Thousands more CIA-trained operatives are about to get the boot ahead of what already promises to be a bloody summer fighting season. That could mean spectacular attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets just as the White House is weighing its long-term commitment to Afghanistan. And it could give the now-small al Qaeda movement inside the country more freedom to grow and eventually hatch new plots more than a decade after the invasion meant to wipe out the perpetrators of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Senior U.S. officials said the slow dismantling of the CIA’s forces has also alarmed U.S. lawmakers, who had assumed those forces would remain in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban after U.S. troops withdrew.

But CIA officials told lawmakers this past week that with U.S. troops slowly closing bases across the country, the intelligence agency’s footprint also has to shrink. The CIA doesn’t want to face another high-risk situation like Benghazi, Libya, where militants attacked both the U.S. diplomatic outpost and the CIA base.

The Obama administration had wanted to leave up to 10,000 U.S. troops in the country after the December 2014 withdrawal deadline. But the current Afghan president has refused to sign a long-term security agreement, and the Afghan presidential election seems headed for a runoff, meaning it could be months before a new Afghan president takes charge.

So U.S. forces here are rapidly closing outposts, preparing to withdraw to six “enduring” bases that could remain if a security deal goes through before early fall. While the CIA is not affected by the security agreement, it relies on the U.S. military for protection and logistical support—especially at its far-flung bases in south and east Afghanistan. Just months ago, the talk in administration circles was that these paramilitaries would be significantly expanded in the near future. Now, it appears, the opposite is taking place. (The CIA declined to comment for this story.)

The elite Afghan teams have built a fearsome reputation for their U.S. special operations-like targeting of terrorist suspects, guided by a handful of CIA paramilitary officers on most missions.

Karzai’s spokesman Faizi said the Afghan government had no advance notice of the firings, but later tried to recruit the Shkin forces into the ranks of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, in hopes of keeping them from selling their skills to the Taliban or someone else.

“We tried to hire those militia for the same pay as the CIA,” he said. “But only a 100 or so said yes.”

Two U.S. officials said the CIA-trained paramilitaries at the Kunar base have been told of their imminent firing, and some have already reached out to the Taliban, possibly to reach a peace deal for when they no longer have Americans to pay or protect them.