The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress kicked off in Beijing on Sunday, an event expected to confirm Xi Jinping as China’s first leader since Mao Zedong to serve three successive terms. Decisions unveiled at the congress – especially the fate of Prime Minister Li Keqiang – will indicate whether Xi plans to continue centralizing power and the direction of China’s economic policies.

The 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress opening on October 16 was a celebration of the world’s largest political party, which boasts over 96 million members throughout China. However, all eyes are on one man: Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Following the horrors of the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution – and the death of Mao Zedong, who presided over both – the CCP under Deng Xiaoping set a two-term limit for its leaders in 1982. Xi abolished this rule in 2018, paving the way for him to rule indefinitely after his second term ends in 2023.

Drastic security measures

The leader of the world’s second-largest economy has done everything possible to ensure the congress runs smoothly. Beijing has been under special security measures since June. More than a million people have been arrested in the “public security crackdown” that has made the Chinese capital into a fortress. Employees of major companies based in Beijing are not allowed to leave the city for the duration of the congress. Visitors carrying bottles of water have to take a sip in front of police officers to show they are not carrying dangerous liquids.

And Chinese internet censors scrambled to remove any mention of a rare protest in Beijing on October 13 in which a banner displayed from a bridge called for “dictator and traitor Xi Jinping” to leave power.

Xi gathered all the Central Committee members on October 9 for a final rehearsal of the announcements to be made during the congress. The event will thus be a matter of rubber-stamping decisions already taken.

This comes after a rocky period for China. Over the past two years, “we’ve seen the coronavirus pandemic and China’s very costly zero-Covid policy; Sino-American tensions amid trade disputes; and a deepening of ties between Beijing and Moscow at a time when [President] Vladimir Putin has brought condemnation on Russia by invading Ukraine”, said Marc Lanteigne, a specialist in Chinese politics at the Arctic University of Norway.

Xi has concentrated so much power in his hands that it will be hard for him to avoid responsibility if the policies come under fire, Lanteigne said. So at the very most, the congress will strengthen Xi’s hold on the CCP – and at the very least, “it will show that, despite everything, Xi is still enormously powerful”. 

But other than that, it is very hard to predict what will come out of the congress, because the CCP has become so “opaque” under Xi, noted Daniel Leese, a historian and China expert at the University of Freiburg.

Before previous CCP congresses, China specialists used to enjoy predicting who would be in and who would be out. Often, working papers would be leaked indicating someone was on the way up or on the way down as various party factions jostled for power.

This time, there are precious few signs to interpret, and those that remain are hard to decipher.

Leese said one recent trend has been a “decline in the number of pro-Xi propaganda articles” in the official press, adding: “This could mean that Xi has lost his shine – or it could mean he’s become so powerful that he doesn’t need propaganda anymore.”

Culled from France 24

Erick Takor is running for the Ward 1 seat in the City of Cambridge in Canada and as one of the leading candidates he has made public plans to implement the Good Neighbours Initiative if elected.

Takor gave the assurance in a campaign presentation published in Cambridge Times and added that housing remains an immediate concern.

According to him, he knows exactly how to work with the forces of law and order for neighbourhoods to be safe from drugs, opioids, and needles including speeding of cars.

Erick Takor who migrated to Canada from the Republic of Cameroon is an accounting manager and runs a small business.

He has been involved in the formation and leadership of multiple community-based organizations around the GTA for over 15 years. He reportedly served as chairperson of the St. Gabriel Catholic School Council in Cambridge.

Below is what he told the Cambridge Times in Canada on why he is running for the Ward I seat

WHY HAVE YOU DECIDED TO RUN?

I chose to run in this election because I believe the time is right for a change in the city hall. Ward one needs a leader who respects diversity, has energy and commitment to represent our community at the city hall. The demographics of the city have changed within the years and there is a disconnect between the community and the council; we need a councillor who can connect with our growing and diverse population to represent our unique perspectives or values at the decision-making table. I want to represent the voices of my community.

HOW WILL YOU EMBRACE AND CHAMPION DIVERSITY IN THIS ROLE?

We are all born unique, and tapping into our differences makes our community stronger. I believe in an all-inclusive community, a community where everyone belongs. As a councillor, I will champion diversity by encouraging and celebrating diverse cultures. I will create an open and safe environment for all and finally champion the thoughtful use of city resources equitably — champion the City of Cambridge diversity and accessibility and action plan.

WHAT ARE YOUR TOP THREE ISSUES?

The top three issues facing my community are;

• Affordability of housing is an immediate concern. We see interest rate hikes, and inflation and salaries have remained the same year over year.

• And public safety concerns; our neighbourhoods needs to be safe from drugs, opioids and needles. Many residents have talk about speeding of cars, increased traffic, and our streets need bike lanes.

• Improvements of community services for all.

IF ELECTED, WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO ACCOMPLISH IN YOUR FIRST 100 DAYS?

• Knowing the house-learning the role of councillor and building a working relationship with other councillors and mayor.

• Plan and hold at least two information meetings with my constituent, and reviewing the out gone councillors plan of action to relay my constituents reconcilable ideas to the council

• I will also launch the “Good Neighbours Initiative”; I will help people become great neighbours by means of improving connection, implementing quick safety measures, have experts talk about mental health and social resilience, a communications line/site for better ideas,

By Soter Agbaw-Ebai with files from CAMBRIDGE TIMES

President Joe Biden will host his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at the White House on December 1 for the first full-scale state visit of his administration, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

The visit will “underscore the deep and enduring relationship between the United States and France, our oldest ally,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at the White House.

State visits, which feature more pomp and ceremony than the frequent bilateral meetings hosted by US presidents for foreign leaders, have not taken place so far during Biden’s presidency, which Jean-Pierre attributed to Covid pandemic restrictions.

Asked why Macron had been chosen for the honor ahead of other US allies, Jean-Pierre said “we deeply value our relationship with France.”

The link between the two countries is “founded on shared democratic values, economic ties, and defense and security cooperation,” she said.

Relations between Paris and Washington hit a major crisis last year when Australia abruptly announced it was ditching a contract to buy conventional French submarines in favor of a US nuclear-powered submarine deal.

The US-Australia deal was part of the newly launched AUKUS security partnership, also including Britain, which Washington sees as part of its strategy to contain China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The French government, however, was furious, accusing Australia of “lying” and recalling its ambassadors both to Canberra and Washington.

However, tensions have since smoothed over, with Macron emerging as a key European partner for Biden in the response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the unprecedented Western effort to help Ukrainian troops.

A source in the French presidency said the visit, culminating with a state dinner, will “underline the deep and enduring relations,” including on “close cooperation in defense and security areas.”

Biden and Macron met most recently at the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York and have also had “multiple conversations” over the last year and a half, Jean-Pierre said.

Source: AFP

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday criticized fellow leaders who extend term limits to cling to power, saying this was having a “corrosive” effect, and promised free and fair elections when the country elects his successor in February.

Some of Buhari’s African counterparts are among the longest-serving leaders in the world. President Paul Biya of neighboring Cameroon has held onto power for nearly four decades, ranking behind Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang who has ruled the small Central African country for 43 years.

Buhari, 79, who took office after defeating a sitting president in elections in 2015, will make way for a new leader in what would be another peaceful transfer of power, helping cement Nigeria’s democratic credentials in a region prone to coups.

Nigeria ended decades of military rule in 1999.

Speaking at his last United Nations General Assembly, Buhari said Africa’s most populous nation had invested heavily to ensure free and fair elections.

“We believe in the sanctity of constitutional term limits and we have steadfastly adhered to it in Nigeria. We have seen the corrosive impact on values when leaders elsewhere seek to change the rules to stay on in power,” said Buhari.

“As President, I have set the goal that one of the enduring legacies I would like to leave is to entrench a process of free, fair and transparent, and credible elections through which Nigerians elect leaders of their choice.”

Official election campaigning starts next week .

Source: CNN

The United Nations’ massive annual summit returns in person to a world divided by multiple crises starting with Ukraine. Senegalese President and African Union Chairperson Macky Sall, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the assembly on Tuesday.

After two years of pandemic restrictions and video addresses, the UN General Assembly is again asking leaders to come in person if they wish to speak — with a sole exception made for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But the death of Queen Elizabeth II disrupted the summit anew. President Joe Biden of the United States, by tradition the second speaker on the first day, will instead speak on Wednesday.

The first day will feature French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the leaders of the two largest economies of the European Union, which has mobilized to impose tough sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This year, Ukraine will be very high on the agenda. It will be unavoidable,” top EU diplomat Josep Borrell told reporters in New York.

“There are many other problems, we know. But the war in Ukraine has been sending shock waves around the world.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock vowed to support countries hardest hit by the fallout from the war as she headed to the General Assembly on Tuesday.

“The brutality of Russia’s war of aggression and its threat to the peace order in Europe have not blinded us to the fact that its dramatic effects are also clearly being felt in many other regions of the world,” Baerbock said.

But UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been urging leaders not to forget other priorities such as education, the topic of a special summit on Monday.

“Education is in a deep crisis. Instead of being the great enabler, education is fast becoming the great divide,” Guterres told the summit.

He warned that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on learning, with poor students lacking technology at a particular disadvantage, and conflicts further disrupting schools.

In a report earlier this month, the UN Development Programme said Covid has set back humanity’s progress by five years.

With the Ukraine war leading to a global grain crisis, hunger could be another major issue on the agenda. On Tuesday, more than 200 NGOs called for urgent action from leaders gathered for the General Assembly to “end the spiralling global hunger crisis.”

“Around the world, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries,” they said, adding that as many as 19,700 people are estimated to be dying of hunger every day, which translates to one person every four seconds.

Talks between rivals

Other leaders to speak Tuesday include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has staked out ground as a broker between Russia and Ukraine, including through a deal to ship out badly needed grain to the world.

Erdogan is also expected to meet in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, a dramatic rebound in relations after the Turkish leader’s strident criticism of the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians.

In the type of last-minute diplomacy common at previous UN sessions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken convened a first meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia since a flare-up in fighting.

“Strong, sustainable diplomatic engagement is the best path for everyone,” Blinken told them.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was visiting despite a hostile reaction from the United States.

He met Monday with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, who urged Russia to allow a security zone outside the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, whose occupation by Moscow has raised mounting concerns.

Also high on the agenda for the UN week will be Iran, whose hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, is traveling to the General Assembly for the first time and will meet Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a US television interview ahead of his arrival, Raisi said that Iran wanted “guarantees” before returning to a nuclear deal that former president Donald Trump trashed in 2018.

“We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior that we have already seen from them. That is why if there is no guarantee, there is no trust,” he told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program.

Biden supports a return to the 2015 agreement, under which Iran drastically scaled back nuclear work in return for promises of sanctions relief.

But the Biden administration says it is impossible in the US system to promise what a future president would do.

“There is no better offer for Iran,” Colonna said ahead of the meeting with Macron.

“It’s up to them to make a decision,” she said.

Raisi can expect to be dogged by protests during his visit including by exile groups that have called for his arrest over mass executions of opponents a decade after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Source: AFP

Warning that the world is in “great peril”, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged world leaders to tackle conflicts, climate catastrophes, increasing poverty, and inequality, as well as address divisions among major powers.

In speeches and remarks leading up to the start of the leaders’ meeting Tuesday, the top UN official said the planet “is literally on fire” and pointed to the “immense” task of saving it and of dealing with the persisting coronavirus pandemic.

Guterres also referred to “a lack of access to finance for developing countries to recover — a crisis not seen in a generation” that has an adverse impact on education, health, and women’s rights.

His remarks come as leaders are meeting in-person for the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guterres also urged world leaders to address divisions among major powers that have widened since Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine in February, which saw Western countries slapping unprecedented sanctions on Moscow.

The raging conflict in Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the 77th summit of the UN General Assembly, where Guterres will deliver his “state of the world” speech on Tuesday.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it would be “a sober, substantive and solutions-focused report card” for a world “where geopolitical divides are putting all of us at risk.”

“There will be no sugar-coating in his remarks, but he will outline reasons for hope,” Dujarric told reporters Monday.

Sources

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks Tuesday with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran amid hopes for progress on negotiations to unblock the passage of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran starting Tuesday is intended to deepen ties with regional heavyweights as part of Moscow’s challenge to the United States and Europe amid its grinding campaign in Ukraine.

In only his second trip abroad since Russian tanks rolled into its neighbor in February, Putin is scheduled to hold talks with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the pressing issues facing the region, including the conflict in Syria and a U.N.-backed proposal to resume exports of Ukrainian grain to ease the global food crisis.

As the West heaps sanctions on Russia and the costly campaign drags on, Putin is seeking to bolster ties with Tehran, a fellow target of severe U.S. sanctions and a potential military and trade partner. In recent weeks, Russian officials visited an airfield in central Iran at least twice to review Tehran’s weapons-capable drones for possible use in Ukraine, the White House has alleged.

But perhaps most crucially, Tehran offers Putin a chance for a high-stakes meeting with Erdogan, who has sought to help broker talks on a peaceful settlement of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as help negotiations to unblock Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

Source: France 24

Saudi officials indicated Saturday they were keen to move on from the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, one day after US President Joe Biden raised it in his talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Tensions between the two men had been high ahead of their first meeting, especially after Biden’s administration last year released an assessment by the intelligence community that Prince Mohammed “approved” the operation that led to Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.

In remarks Friday night, Biden called Khashoggi’s death “outrageous” and said he had warned Prince Mohammed against further attacks on dissidents, without specifying what actions he might take.

The Al-Arabiya channel quoted a Saudi official saying the pair “addressed the issue of Jamal Khashoggi quickly” and that Prince Mohammed “confirmed that what happened is regrettable and we have taken all legal measures to prevent” a recurrence.

Prince Mohammed also pointed out that “such an incident occurs anywhere in the world”, highlighting “a number of mistakes” made by Washington such as torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Al-Arabiya reported.

In an interview with CNN, Adel al-Jubeir, minister of state for foreign affairs, cast doubt on the intelligence community’s determination that Prince Mohammed ordered the 2018 operation, something Prince Mohammed has denied.

“We know what the intelligence community’s assessment was with regard to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction,” Jubeir shot back in an exchange with Wolf Blitzer shared widely on Saudi social media.

Accusations that the Iraqi dictator had such weapons trigged the 2003 Iraq War. None were found.

‘Double standards’

Jubeir also made clear the kingdom believed the Khashoggi affair had been sufficiently dealt with, even though Khashoggi’s remains have never been found.

A Saudi court in 2020 jailed eight people for between seven and 20 years over the killing. Their names were never released, and Khashoggi’s fiancee branded the ruling a “farce”.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia investigated this crime. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia held those responsible for it accountable, and they are paying the price of the crime they committed as we speak,” Jubeir said.

“We investigated, we punished and we put in place procedures to ensure this doesn’t happen again. This is what countries do in situations like this.”

Despite lingering discord over the Khashoggi affair, the meeting between Prince Mohammed and Biden “went well with a frank exchange of opinions,” Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst, told AFP.

Prince Mohammed “responded to Biden, pointing out US double standards of making a huge noise about Khashoggi (a Saudi) while trying their best to downplay the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh even though she is a US citizen,” Shihabi said, referring to the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead in May while covering an Israeli army raid in the West Bank.

“But beyond that frank exchange the meeting was very cordial and important to put the bad blood created by Biden’s statement behind them,” he said.

White House: Biden will not return from Gulf summit with agreement on oil production increase

Source: AFP

US President Joe Biden said that US commitment to a two-state solution “has not changed”, but that the “ground is not ripe” to restart talks between Israel and Palestine. The American president was speaking during a joint press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Friday.

US President Joe Biden pledged on Friday to keep up efforts to support a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even though the goal of a two-state solution appeared far off.

Speaking alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, Biden said the United States would not give up on the goal of a just settlement to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Even if the ground is not right at this moment to restart negotiations, the United States and my administration will not give up on trying to bring the Palestinians, Israelis and both sides closer together.”

“There must be a political horizon that the Palestinian people can actually see or at least feel. We cannot allow the hopelessness to steal away the future,” Biden said

The comments were likely to disappoint the Palestinians, who are looking to the U.S. to press Israel into restarting peace talks. The last substantive talks collapsed over a decade ago.

The key to peace

Meanwhile, Abbas said “the key to peace” in the region “begins with ending the Israeli occupation of our land.”

He added: “I am willing to extend an open hand to Israeli leaders so that we can bring peace to the region.”

But as Biden said US commitment to a two-state solution “has not changed”, Abbas said there was a narrowing window for a resolution of this nature.

“The opportunity for a two-state solution on the 1967 borders may be available today, and it may not remain for a long time,” Abbas said after meeting with US President.

Abbas said “the key to peace” in the region “begins with ending the Israeli occupation of our land”.

The Palestinian President also asked for US support to holding accountable the killers of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on May 11.

Biden said the US would insist on “full” accountability over the killing of the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera reporter.

Source:  AFP