Word: parliament
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...history was really written by the journalists in the field and a lot of it contained the talking points that various powerful institutions wanted to get out there at the time - you know, that Boris Yeltsin was standing up for democracy when he called the tanks in on Parliament. But a couple decades later you have a body of literature in each of these geographic locations whether its Latin America, Russia, Poland, China, where a second draft of history is emerging, and I'm citing these texts, many of which are academic texts. So all I'm doing with...
...Dutch parliament now has the power to force a popular vote by turning against the national cabinet’s decision, just like it did some years ago with the constitutional vote. The legislative body should learn from its past slip, bypassing needless popular consults and fast-tracking approval. Because, considering all implications, the outcome is paradoxically more democratic without popular consultation...
Rwanda also scores well on some perennial African problems. It is one of the safest countries on the continent. It boasts the highest percentage of women in parliament anywhere in the world - 49%. Its rate of HIV infection is at 3% - tiny compared to the figure in other small sub-Saharan African development stars, such as Botswana and Namibia - and all its 35,000 aids sufferers are on antiretroviral drugs. It is investing heavily in education. The government is also tackling overpopulation, which - in that it describes a situation of too many people on not enough land - was an underlying...
...remains to be seen when parliament meets again in October if consensus is possible. Most Lebanese have had enough of instability and war, and a large majority wants a consensus candidate to be chosen for president - perhaps the governor of the central bank, or the head of the army. But the horse-trading in parliament is being done by politicians who are to a certain extent immune from accountability: sectarian leaders practically guaranteed their position by a system in which voters keep voting along sectarian lines...
There are signs that progress toward a choice for President is slowly coming along. At least one government minister today suggested that the political dialogue in parliament might be restarted by removing from the table the contentious issue of Hizballah's weapons - that is, its existence as an armed force separate from the Lebanese government military. But tabling that issue will only postpone having to deal with the 800-lb. missile-toting gorilla in the room. If the cold war in the Middle East gets hot again, Hizballah and its rockets could well be back on the battlefield - which...