Initial reports today indicate that sections of the Ecuadorean Police are staging street demonstrations, ostensibly for economic demands but in reality trying to subvert the legal order, including through trying to occupy the National Parliament. Additionally, in open revolt against the government, some police officers have taken illegal control over their police stations.
There are also reports that members of the Quito army barracks in the capital city occupied these barracks in open mutiny against the government. In response, President Rafael Correa went to the barracks to talk to the rebels and was attacked by CS gas which exploded near his face. The President is now in the hospital of the Quito Regiment, with minor concussions but well. The armed forces have him under their control in the Quito barracks.
In a clearly orchestrated action of open rebellion, members of the armed forces also took control and closed the Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre airport.
In response to these developments, on live TV through TELESUR at about 18 hrs (GMT) President Rafael Correa said: “It’s a coup d’etat, a conspiracy organised by the opposition.” President Correa hinted that UNASUR was likely to hold an emergency meeting to defend the democratic order that is under threat in Ecuador and also said that police officers supportive of the revolt were trying to get to his hospital room to attack him. He added that he was standing firm in the defence of the democratic order in Ecuador and there was no way he would capitulate, and that he could only lose his life.
The Foreign Affairs minister has called upon people to march to the hospital to protect the life of the President. Mass demonstrations are now taking place in the whole of Ecuador in support of the legitimate and democratically-elected government of President Correa. People are currently congregating around the Quito barracks hospital to protect the President.
President Correa and his government have won every single democratic election since his election in 2006. The government has expanded democracy and implemented policies to redistribute income to the poor, benefiting millions of people hitherto socially excluded. The country has also had a new constitution overwhelmingly approved at a national referendum, which is deemed to be one of the greenest and most progressive constitutions in the world.
Unrest has erupted in Ecuador with troops taking control of the main airport and police protesting in streets as president Rafael Correa accused rivals of seeking a coup and considered dissolving congress.
In confused and chaotic scenes in Quito, scores of soldiers swarmed over the landing strip of the international airport, which was closed to flights, and uniformed police burned tires in protest at a government proposal to cut their bonuses.
A visibly agitated Mr Correa challenged the protesting police: “Gentlemen, if you want to kill the president, here he is. Kill me if you want to. Kill me if you have the courage,” he shouted to supporters from a balcony.
Mr Correa, a close ally of Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez, later said he was attacked by protesters and needed medical treatment.
“They threw tear gas at us. One exploded near my face. It stunned me and my wife for a few seconds, probably minutes,” he told a local radio station from a police hospital in Quito. (more…)
Filed under: China, movies — Andy Newman @ 4:30 pm
With Danny Glover’s Venezuelan funded film of Toussaint L’Ouveture’s Haitian slave rebellion due to gain cinema release next year, it is good to see another Hollywood star following the same path.
Jackie Chan, director of the film, “The Xinhai Revolution” met with the media this week together with actors and actress of the film. The Xinhai Revolution, also known as the 1911 Revolution, overthrew the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and ended more than 2,000 years of feudal rule. The film will be shown in 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary.
Yesterdays protest in Manchester organised by staff and service users by the some of the first victims of spending cuts in Manchester, the Law Centres and Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit.
They face cuts in funding by the Legal Services Commission of up to 70%. The effects will mostly fall upon those who cannot afford alternatives.
Anyone who is active in electoral politics knows that the Lib Dems are utterly cynical in presenting themselves as all things to all people. In particular, the Lib Dems claim to be an anti-racist party, but have a worse record of BME representation than the Tories
While both the Tory and Labour Party had several well placed BME candidates in safe or winnable seats during the general election, the candidates for the Lib Dems top 100 seats were mostly conspicuously white. During the 1990s the Lib Dem councillors in Tower Hamlets continually stoked racism, as the Independent reported at the time:
Liberal Democrat leaflets linking black and Asian people with the area’s housing shortages, said critics, that pushed white voters towards the BNP. (more…)
If the Labour Party is to recapture its moral authority as the leading progressive force in British electoral politics, the “New Generation” needs to understand that the old Labour tribalism will not wash anymore.
Whereas the Labour Party used to position itself as a big tent coalition, including a variety of voices; it is no longer able to occupy that role uncontested. For example, the consistent environment-first policies of the Green Party have a different emphasis from the Labour Party; the instinctive unionism of Labour means that progressive politics in Wales and Scotland are expressed by Plaid and SNP as well as Labour (and in Cornwall, Mebyon Kernow have almost completely eclipsed Labour); significantly, there is still a constituency of Lib Dem voters who were lost to Labour over the perception that Labour was too right wing on civil liberties, and the Iraq war.
One of the factors that led to this fracturing of progressive politics was the Blairite stage management and manipulation of internal life in the Labour Party, which forced many to abandon hope in the party. The culture of the Labour Party needs to change to recapture the spirit of internal debate based upon mutual respect, rather than assuming that the only valid voices are those supporting current policies.
Green MP Caroline Lucas argues that instead of labour seeing itself as a big tent coalition, it needs to get used to itself being the biggest tent in a progressive campsite. She has already chosen her pitch in relation to Ed Miliband:
The Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has launched an attack on the new Labour leader Ed Miliband, suggesting that he is already failing to live up to his reputation for taking a strong position on climate change. (more…)
Elections in Venezuela for the National Assembly took place on Sunday with a turnout of 66.45%, meaning that more than 11 million Venezuelans took part in the democratic process.
This is a positive reflection on how Venezuela ’s state institutions under Chavez have enfranchised people who had been traditionally excluded from the political process. From 1999 - 2009, an additional 6 million Venezuelans were added to the electoral register, with an additional 610,000 more registered before this poll.
Results show that the governing party of President Chavez, the PSUV, won the most votes. It received 5.422.040 votes (48.4%) whilst the united right-wing opposition coalition MUD won 5.320.175 votes (47.4%). (more…)
Ed Miliband and Lutfur Rahman are the “new generation”
by Abjol Miah:
I am giving my wholehearted support to Lutfur Rahman to become the first directly elected executive mayor of Tower Hamlets. This was my position and the position of the Respect Party when Lutfur won the selection contest in the Labour Party by an overwhelming majority. I will support him even more strongly now that he has been entirely unjustly deselected by Labour’s bosses on the National Executive Committee and is standing as an independent.
There are three reasons why Respect originally chose not to stand a candidate against Lutfur but instead to give him our support.
The first is that he has been subject to a terrible witch hunt stretching back at least to Andrew Gilligan’s fictional programme “Britain’s First Islamic Republic” more than six months ago. This is a witch hunt stained by anti-Muslim racism.
Secondly, Lutfur has a track record as leader of Tower Hamlets council which demonstrated that he understands that some of Labour’s policies in the past have been bad for the majority of the residents of Tower Hamlets and needed changing.
Thirdly, Lutfur has set his face firmly against any cuts to services and jobs in Tower Hamlets which the Condem Coalition intends to inflict on us and has declared he will lead a broad coalition of the trade unions and community groups not only to fight but to stop those cuts. (more…)
Initial reports today indicate that sections of the Ecuadorean Police are staging street demonstrations, ostensibly for economic demands but in reality trying to subvert the legal order, including through trying to occupy the National Parliament. Additionally, in open revolt against the government, some police officers have taken illegal control over their police stations.
