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The concept of Hybrid Threat must be understood —which both state and non-state actors can use— as a strategy that employs conventional warfare techniques and, additionally, is supported on unconventional warfare and cyber war tactics. Nevertheless, the objective of this battle is not causing direct damage to the people. Like terrorism, the main target is to destabilize and generate a climate of terror. For this very reason, they seek to go unnoticed. One of the scenarios that best respects this privacy and makes location more difficult is cyberspace, so that, it is one of those chosen to carry out this type of attack —Russia stricked Estonia in 2007, collapsing both web pages and banks, as well as the government agencies of the Baltic country itself.

According to the European Union, and continuing with the aforementioned, it is convenient to talk about Hybrid Threat when there is no armed confrontation per se. Therefore, the contestants seek to coordinate in order to attack the systemic vulnerabilities of the Democratic States through various means (political, economic, civil…) thus influencing decision making at the local, regional and institutional levels to achieve their objectives (as we can see in the image below).

Source: MCDC

Hybrid Threats help us to identify the continuum that the international scene is experiencing regarding the arms race and the conflict between state and non-state actors. Its disruptive potential —as well as its accessibility— makes them increasingly used as a way to use force, generate interdependence and employ technology, because the diffusion of power that makes, allows other actors to participate in the game board and have more motivations to change the statu quo. Besides, if the interdependence between actors increases, vulnerabilities will too.

Ultimately, but perhaps more important, thanks to the accessibility that was previously named, technological development can cause new actors to be much more effective, which could increase its soft power and its ability to threaten other States.

Also, globalization has allowed a synergistic integration of new technologies, causing these, to develop even faster, as a result of this, the war has moved away from the purely military by transforming its most basic elements. For this very reason we need to describe Non-Kinetic Warfare, which will generally form more than 70% of Hybrid War, Waqar Kauravi has definite it as an “Orchestrated and strategic build-up of colossus of informational, psychological, diplomatic, economic, social, cyber and legal tools of hegemony and simultaneous/synchronized application of this colossus with intensity, targeting the existing or perceived fault lines in the targeted state or people with the objective of developing paralysis and internal implosion of the inner front to dismantle existing structures of governance and organized defence, and, creating permanent fissures to usher in strategic chaos and enhance the strategic agenda of the offensive and hegemonic power, with a view to facilitate the use of Kinetic Warfare if desired”. Russian intervention in Ukraine distinguished itself by an exceptionally wide employment of these means.

The Ukrainians suffered diplomatic, energy-related and economic pressure, unprecedent informational impact, cyberattacks, and actions by special operations forces, as we can see, the cyber environment is one of the most useful scenarios of the Hybrid Warfare, but it’s not the only. The result was the annexation of Crimea. Another example, in the aftermath of the elections which won Trump, the focus of countering hybrid threats was on strategic communication, disinformation and hampering the election process.

Moreover, according to European Union, the Hybrid activities are becoming a frequent feature of the International environment, the intensity of these activities is increasing with growing concerns over elections being interfered with, disinformation campaigns, malicious cyber activities and perpetrators of hybrid acts trying to radicalise vulnerable members of society as their proxy actors.

The EU and NATO have been heavily involved in preventing Hybrid Threats

The sharing of intelligence analysis and assessment work is a key tool; thus, they have been focused on analysing the tools and levers in disinformation or propaganda. One of the actions these actors have taken has been the creation of an EU Hybrid Fusion Cell which receives and analyses classified and open source information from different stakeholders concerning hybrid threats, besides this, another key point of this strategy is to fight misinformation (fake news or disinformation campaigns) and create a Centre of Excellence for countering hybrid threats.

Apart from this, EU and NATO want to create resilience in places like transport, communications, finance or regional security infrastructures, in order to resist propaganda and information campaigns, attempts to undermine business, societies and economic flows as well as attacks on information technology and cyber-related infrastructure. It Considers strengthening resilience as a preventive and deterrent action to solidify societies and avoid escalation of crises both within and outside the EU.

The defence of the space is one of the most important points. Within the context of the Space Strategy and European Defence Action Plan, the Commission will propose to increase the resilience of space infrastructure against hybrid threats through a possible extension of the Space Surveillance and Tracking scope to cover those menaces.

Continuing with this, the recent global cyberattacks using ransomware —The May 2017 WannaCry ransomware incident presented the first opportunity for the Network to engage in operational information exchange and cooperation by means of dissemination of advice — and other malwares to disable thousands of computer systems have again highlightened the urgent need to step up cyber resilience and security actions within the EU. The objective will be to provide a more effective cross-sector response to these threats, increasing trust in the digital society and economy.

Also, a new sanctions regime was established in 17 May 2017 to improve the cyber diplomacy of the EU Member States, creating a framework to respond to malicious behaviour in cyber space, this tool, has been put in use on several occasions. In addition to, The Commission have adopted some measures to boost cybersecurity especially in the energy sector.

Separate mention deserves 5G technology, which enables hackers to target more devices and launch bigger cyber-attacks due to his faster speed in comparation to 4G. Some experts say that the weak link in 5G´s security is likely to be communication between devices connected to the internet. These machines, known as the Internet of Things (IoT) —where we can find from cars and factory assembly lines to baby monitors— are growing fast (14.2 to 25 billion by 2021).

Fuente: EMF Explained.

The Commission wants to implement the Action Plan on Terrorist Financing to contribute to countering hybrid threats. The perpetrators and their supporters need funds to execute their criminal plans. The Anti-Money Laundering Directive wants to fight these, creating measures to track terrorist financing in the EU and combatting fraud and counterfeiting of non-cash means of payments.

Another measure is to increase resilience of nuclear infrastructures. The EU have made progress in developing key projects to diversify its routes and sources of energy supplies. One example of this, on the Southern Gas Corridor, concrete construction works are ongoing on all major pipeline projects: expansion of the South Caucasus pipeline, Trans-Anatolian and Trans-Adriatic pipelines… This will put the EU in a better scenario to prepare for manage gas sabotages, in case of crisis or a hybrid attack.

The EU, in cooperation with his Member States want to engage private actors in the supply chain to work together towards addressing evolving threats from chemicals that can be used as precursors of a chemical or radiological attack. In October 2018, the Council established an autonomous sanctions regime against the use of chemical weapons. Besides, the Member States decided in April 2019 to support core activities of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, providing 11.6 million euros —between 2019-2022.

Improving critical infrastructure

To improve the Critical Infrastructures —Sectors whose assets, systems and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered vital for a Country, in this case for the United States some of examples could be the financial sector, emergency, energy, etcetera— are a must for The Commission, thus, in cooperation with the States in the EU, has finalised the work on developing vulnerability indicators for the resilience and protection of critical infrastructure against hybrid threats.

So, we can say that the main areas that both actors want to enhance are the strategic communications to avoid the disinformation; cybersecurity and cybernetic defence; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risks and to protect the critical infrastructures.

with his Action Plan on Military Mobility which rest on several pillar, namely: military requirements, with the identification and agreement of this requiring, which reflects the needs of the EU and its Member States, a pilot exercise to identify weak points in the Members transport network for military purposes, a new regulatory law to enhance the security in the transport of dangerous goods, the alignment of rules applicable to military forces with existing EU legislation could increase safety and provide synergies and coherence for the transport of this products without weakening civilian standards.

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In Spain, a high percentage of female migrant workers face precarious situations of informal labor and, often, undergo the consequences of poorly or unregulated domestic work. This situation exacerbates gender inequalities, not only for native female workers who have yet to see a real redistribution of domestic tasks, but also for the female migrant workers, who become increasingly vulnerable because of the lack of efficient migration policies including an integral gender approach.

Migrant women globally: Triple discrimination through gender, nationality and social class

According to recent United Nations data, women represent approximately half of the 200 million people living and working outside their country of birth, i.e. roughly 2% of the world population. The same data highlights that 93% of international migrants leave their places of birth mainly in order to improve their chances of living a decent life. In Europe, more than 52% of migrants are women, and most of them are economic migrants, meaning they come to the North in search of a job.

It is no longer rare for migrant women to leave their countries alone – leaving behind dependent family members, for economic reasons rather than in order to reunite with family members. However, whether migration empowers these women, improves their families’ well-being, and ultimately boosts their native countries’ economic and social development, depends mainly on the policy and institutional responses offered to these workers. Facing triple discrimination, in their gender, nationality and social class, they are among the most vulnerable groups in society.

The term “feminization” of migration

Even though international migration has increased considerably over the past decades, the weight of women’s migration participation would not be so relevant if it were not explained and influenced by gender relationships. As sociologist Denise Paiewonsky underlines:

“Although in some regions there has been a net feminization of migration, what has truly changed over the last few years is the fact that women increasingly migrate independently, looking for a job, rather than for other reasons, such as dependence on their husbands”.

In Spain, as in many other northern countries, the feminization of migration is directly related to increased participation of migrant women in the labor market. This is due to changes in the destination countries and the so-called “care-crisis”:

“Meanwhile, labor demand is still increasing, given an ageing population, the high rate of women’s participation in the labor market and the receding role of the welfare state in the northern countries. Migrant women from the south replace independent northern women in caregiving tasks”.

These female migrant workers end up in the labor niches that are the least appreciated and badly paid. They often suffer – especially in Spain, where household service is generally informal and poorly regulated – from severe isolation, exploitation, and lack of access to the social benefits every worker has a right to by international law.

Global care chains

The concept of care is understood as “a set of tasks and personal provisions that seeks to enhance people’s wellbeing and is therefore related to maintaining life.” Global care chains are “a set of links through which care flows, in which the woman who migrates and provides care in the country of destination becomes the first link in a chain.”

Because domestic and reproductive work happens at home and is excluded from the formal market given its perceived lack of economic value, and because governmental authorities often marginalize caregiving tasks– relegating them to the private sphere, the gray market takes hold. In this context, social inequalities generate the ideal conditions for these poorly paid and socially unappreciated jobs, which are taken on by migrant women from countries with limited labor opportunities. These circumstances create the so-called care chains:

“Care is transferred from one set of households to others, thereby deepening inequalities between families from the North and the South and strengthening the sexist social pact of unequal care and household responsibilities between men and women.”

In other words, household service liberates the northern working lower and middle class woman from caregiving tasks and from the effects of the double day’s labor, but it also strengthens patriarchal structures by blocking the redefinition of family roles: the domestic worker substitutes the woman but the man does not take on an additional share of the caregiving and reproductive tasks.

The Spanish case

Domestic workers are workers, not slaves. Photo: www.cam111.com

According to a recent study, the labor situation of migrant women in Spain is characterized by precarious conditions in terms of type of occupational field, over-qualification, instability, etc. But above all, these precarious conditions are shaped by their nationality.

Even though female migrants in Spain have hugely diverse life stories, almost half of employed migrant women in 2011 held unskilled jobs in hotels, retail or household service; were more likely to hold temporary employment contracts; and faced working hours which were incompatible with other facets of life.

This study, based on the 2011 Spanish Labor Force Survey (LFS), concludes that the origin of the female migrant worker, particularly if she is from Central or South America, constitutes the most relevant variable in determining the labor situation of these workers – more so than age, education level or family burdens. Here, global care chains come into play:

“The demand for employment in certain sectors which is not covered by the local Spanish population creates an occupation niche for foreigners from countries with poor labor expectations. The singular sectorial concentration leaves these women cornered in domestic and caregiving services”.

In fact, as the last UN Women report on Global Care Chains in Spain reported:

“The regulation of household service, the Disability law, equality policies and immigration are key, since they limit the access of female migrants to gender equality[1] and constitute one of the main causes of the current unequal organization of caregiving.”

Gender inequality: A social priority

Although the growth of the female migrant labor force in Spain could be confused with an improved distribution of the burden of domestic tasks among local women, and although employment (albeit precarious) could have an emancipatory effect on female migrant workers, the reality is that women are still the chief caregivers. Ignoring this fact not only denies the social reality of gender inequality in the current labor market in Spain, it also overlooks the social inequalities faced by one of the most vulnerable groups – migrant workers.

Raising awareness about the social importance of caregiving is vital. The fight for an equal redistribution of domestic tasks and the improvement of work-life balance policies, must continue. None of this can be achieved without moving to end migrant discrimination and without proactively encouraging the labor mobility of these women to other labor sectors. This will require the gender dimension to be clearly included in immigration policies.

[1] For instance, migrant women are more vulnerable to labor discrimination, harassment and violence and are not considered possible beneficiaries of the Law on Equality if their situation is considered irregular.

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4 June 1989. On the defining day for European history, Poles vote in their first semi-free elections since World War II, clearing the path for the Eastern Bloc states to abolish communism and join the free world.

12 December 2015. Less than two months after the parliamentary election and barely six months after the presidential one, tens of thousands flood the streets of major Polish cities, soon to be joined by hundreds of their fellow countrymen in capitals around the world. All chanting with one voice: “Freedom, equality, democracy!”

What went wrong?

For Poland, the last 25 years have been a period of political power being hastily grabbed by everyone from left to right, and just as quickly slipping through their fingers. Everyone wanted a piece of the cake – a country on the fast lane to becoming a major player in the regional arena. Having joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004, Poland became a beacon of hope during the global financial crisis as the EU’s only state with a GDP growth. In 2009, former PM Jerzy Buzek was named President of the European Parliament. In 2011, Poland stood proudly at EU’s helm, executing an expertly planned EU Council Presidency. In 2014, once again a lot of trust was placed in Polish hands, with PM Donald Tusk being appointed EU Council President – perhaps not the position of real power within the Union, but referred to as “EU President” nonetheless.

Donald Tusk. Source: Wikipedia.

It’s late 2015. The same Donald Tusk is commonly branded a traitor who ought to face the State Tribunal, according to Secretary of State Adam Lipiński. The EU Presidency and Jerzy Buzek have long been forgotten, thrown inside a sealed sack with all other instances of the Great Nation of Poland bowing to Western powers, embodied by the Union and by Chancellor Merkel in particular. The economic forecast is worrying, to say the least: the country’s credit rating is downgraded- for the first time – by Standard & Poor’s, being joined by Moody’s negative outlook two weeks later. Poland joins ranks with Hungary and becomes an outsider within the EU. The weird kid on the block no one wants to play with. While following this “path to Budapest” – a fact the government is proud of – it left the Western world wondering: How could this have happened? What went wrong?

The underlying reality

So, what went wrong? From the European perspective, the last eight years have been a time of stable, if predictable, rule of the Christian democrat Civic Platform party (PO). But for Poles struggling with everyday life, these “warm tap water” politics, as the mediadubbed it, were an easy to grasp reason for all their suffering. Believing it couldn’t get any worse, they demanded change, even if change meant turning the temperature all the way up and risking getting burned. The PO, while still popular with the wealthier middle class, to many less-fortunate Poles was by then an embodiment of corrupt elites, having indeed been involved in several scandals. Combine that with the growing threat of Muslim extremism, which right-wing politicians throughout the Western world skilfully (and somewhat ironically) forged into the fear of refugees, and the relatively liberal, pro-European Civic Platform was doomed.

Jarosław Kaczyński. Source: Wikipedia.

The PO faced defeat just as painful, as their – likewise stable and predictable – president, Bronisław Komorowski, had suffered defeat to a big-league novice, Andrzej Duda, a few months earlier (albeit for somewhat different reasons, overconfidence being one). Their opponents, the right-wing conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), led with an iron fist by Jarosław Kaczyński (twin to late president Lech), won a landslide victory, securing the majority in both chambers of parliament. Having won control of the legislative and executive branches by popular vote, PiS believed their governing powers should now be virtually unlimited. They claimed to possess the mandate to completely reshape the country, referring to their programme as a “good change” to soften the blow. But their journey towards absolute power, or dash rather, required some bold moves.

Controlling the institutions

It’s important to note that the Law and Justice’s victory, while formidable, did not grant them constitutional majority in the parliament’s lower chamber, the Sejm. Unable to outright change the constitution (a relic of the past, post-communist era, as they claim), they went for the next best thing.

As in most countries, the Constitutional Tribunal serves as a safeguard of democracy, ensuring that any law passed by parliament complies with the highest law, the Constitution. This was seemingly in the way of Kaczynski’s aspirations, as when there’s a functioning constitutional court there can never be unlimited power. Luckily, the new government found their path laid out for them. The previous PO-PSL coalition, far from perfect itself, had overstepped their bounds when electing five new Tribunal justices to replace the ones who were to step down in the following months. As the Tribunal itself was to rule later on, the PO could have lawfully named only three out of those five (as only those three’s terms of office expired during the previous parliamentary term). PiS used PO’s transgressions as an excuse to nominate their own five instead, despite a pending court case to determine the legitimacy of PO’s controversial bill. The night before the court’s ruling PiS had passed their own resolution, invalidating PO’s nomination, and appointed their own replacements. They were then immediately sworn in by President Duda, who had earlier refused to swear in the previous ones and in doing so violated the Constitution.

To further assert their control over the Tribunal, PiS has introduced amendments and laws that on the one hand would let President Duda nominate a new President and Vice-president of the Tribunal,and on the other would reorganize its work, paralysing the court altogether. One safeguard of democracy has therefore been removed, clearing a path for Kaczyński to implement his “good change” without any legal restrictions whatsoever.

While the amendments to the Tribunal were to give PiS more power on top of the institutional chain of command, another new law, often dismissed as less “media friendly”, gave them control closer to the ground. PiS amended the civil service bill, replacing all open competition recruitment procedures for higher posts with direct appointment by the corresponding minister. Some 1600 government officials’ employment contracts were to be automatically terminated within 30 days, unless renewed by their superiors. For some reason, the new law has also removed the requirement for candidates not to be members of a political party in the five years preceding their appointment.

Polish Parliament. Source: imgur.

Paving the media landscape

The Fourth Estate, as the media are often referred to, is the one power that is hardest to control in a democratic system. Naturally, something had to be done about it. It is true that some of Poland’s biggest private broadcasters are foreign-owned and can sometimes be accused of a liberal bias, same as the country’s leading newspaper, founded by oppositionists back in ’89. But when it came to the state-owned media there has never been any ground for accusations. Modern and unbiased, the public broadcasters were a reliable source of information ever since the fall of communism. Their managementused to be chosen, for the most part, by the National Broadcasting Council (a democratically elected body), while maintaining transparent proceduresand taking into account the candidates’ merit and experience. Similar procedures are common in the EU Member States, including – interestingly enough – Hungary.

With two new bills, PiS has managed to take full control of state-owned media, calling them “national media” since. Their management is now appointed directly by the Minister of Treasury, so in practice by Chairman Kaczynski. Until now, any dismissal was restricted to special cases, like conviction of a crime or acting against the company’s interest, and the board members served a fixed term. With the new law, the fixed terms have been removed, and the minister can now dismiss a broadcaster’s director, his deputy or any member of the board, just in case they decided not to follow the Chairman’s orders.

As was expected, immediately after enacting the new law the broadcasters’ directors were replaced. Die-hard PiS politician Jacek Kurski has been named the new, more “independent” Director of the TVP (Polish Television). TVP1, the main channel, is now controlled by a journalist from the nationalist and PiS-supporting TV Republika. TVP Kultura (culture channel) is now headed by a representative of the ultraconservative catholic Fronda. Just to name a few. Following those nominations numerous journalists were sacked and replaced by counterparts from Kaczynski-faithful nationalist media. This “freeing of political influence” and “making the media more objective”, as PiS describes it, prompted the Polish Radio, in their last days before being “freed”, to air every half an hour the Polish national anthem and the Ode to Joy alternately, with listeners all over Poland tuning in just like they had done to Radio Free Europe before 1989.

Controlling the people

Having power over the government and media was clearly not enough, as people still retained their freedoms and fundamental rights. A regime built to last needs to make sure that the people can’t act against it. To do so, the PiS government has introduced a bill, the so-called “surveillance law”, giving authorities powers comparable to those in police states, currently known e.g. in Belarus orPutin’s Russia. With the enactment of the new law, any government agency was permitted to conduct surveillance of any citizen (including journalists), gather any data, spy on Internet activities or check phone bills, all without the court’s consent. These surveillance rights are not limited to investigating citizens suspected of terrorism or any serious crime either, as the government would have us believe, claiming that the reason for these harsh measures is national safety following the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Will this have any implications?

It seems Jarosław Kaczyński does not concern himself with the principles of democracy. PiS dismisses any accusations of undemocratic rule by twisting the very idea of democracy, claiming it’s the rule of the many, without concern for the few. The parliament’s Senior Marshal and government supporter Kornel Morawiecki said openly that the good of the Polish people stands above the law. But the good of the people as defined by whom? By one man, supported by 37.5% out of the 51% of Poles that cared enough to vote? In practice that would mean, at best, 19% of the adult population forcing their views down the throats of the other 81%. The exact opposite of democracy.

Image: Alik Keplicz

It is important to know that Poles have always been a nation driven by hope. The same hope that had kept them going through the harsh years of communism, made them believe in a new, reformed PiS – a modern conservative party, with new faces like PM Beata Szydło and President Duda, promising them nothing short of free cash (PLN 500 for every child to be precise, an unfeasible pledge they’re now trying to erase from existence). For the duration of their campaign, Chairman Kaczynski and his old companions were nowhere to be seen. But when the curtains fell, there we saw once again, the old new Minister of Defence, Antoni Macierewicz – the national conspiracy theorist believing that the Smolensk plane crash (killing 96) was an assassination orchestrated by Putin and Tusk. Zbigniew Ziobro, a highly controversial former Justice Minister, convicted for defamation and accused of abuse of power on more than one occasion, was reinstated in his former post – soon to be merged with that of Public Prosecutor General, giving him direct political supervision of the country’s prosecutors. Then there is Mariusz Kamiński, sentenced to three years in prison for abuse of power, named head of the secret service – an appointment possible only thanks to President Duda’s pardon. Interestingly, not entitled to do so in this case, Duda violated the Constitution, something he has done twice since then (another instance mentioned earlier) – a fact pointed out by the President’s former law professor and PhD supervisor.

Related: Polish presidential aircraft crash in Smolensk, cause and effect

Civil society reacts

All this clear abuse of the people’s trust had to prompt a reaction. The party’s and the president’s ratings dropped. Tens of thousands manifested their concern and anger in the streets of Poland and abroad, under a common banner of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD), a grassroots movement aimed at defending democracy, freedom and the rule of law. A poll taken following the weekend of rallies organized by both sides showed 40% support for KOD, compared to 25% in favour of the regime. With every next bit of democracy and freedom being chipped away, more and more cities have joined the mass protests, reaching forty in late January. While Europe is nearly unanimously concerned with the country sailing away, KOD is struggling to set Poland back on its European course.

No one knows what Chairman Kaczyński has in store for his playground next, but one thing is clear: Poles will not stand by while their freedom is in danger. In forming the Solidarity movement (Solidarność), they showed the path towards democracy to the peoples of the Soviet Bloc. Now, they will light the path back to democracy for their fellow countrymen with the help of KOD – the Committee for the Defence of Democracy. For in the Polish hearts, hope never dies.

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If we take corruption to be one of the main barriers impeding economic development and redistribution of wealth, we may start by asking ourselves how some countries like Norway, Australia or Singapore managed to reduce their levels of corruption so significantly, to the extent that corruption is now a rare occurrence.

First, we should think of the contexts in which corruption is both widespread and systemic, where it is not limited to a particular economic sector, and it is the rule rather the exception. In these states it is very difficult to fight corruption due to it having become the norm. It is assumed that both to be corrupt and to experience corruption is not ‘a big deal’. Corruption in these contexts turns into a ‘problem of collective action’. Everyone experiences corruption, and it may be even more dangerous to expose corrupt activities than to follow the corrupt rules, as those who end up whistleblowing end up ‘taking the rap’, since they are seen as having broken the (corrupt) rules of the game.

There is much evidence supporting the idea that certain countries, which today can be called ‘clean of corruption’, had widespread and systemic corruption in the past. For example, Sweden in the early 19th century, South Korea in the middle of the 20th century, and Botswana right after its independence from the UK (1966). In fact, these societies not only escaped from a ‘vicious circle’ by reducing corruption, but they also fought a type of regime where particularism was the norm. In this sense the Romanian political scientist Mungiu-Pippidi writes that “the failure of anti-corruption policies is partly grounded in the lack of understanding of particularism as a regime of governance and, consequently, in the selection of several implausible regime changers as main actors”. Hence, corruption could not be fought by the government itself and neither by a group of ‘experts’, but instead by a large part of the population creating social cooperation to cope with particular corruption activities and the so called ‘great corruption’. However, how can it be plausible to have a large part of the population struggling for a ‘deep structural change’ or a ‘real transition’ when corruption has become the rule over the exception?

Sweden

The Swedish Parliament. Source: Wikimedia

According to Bo Rothstein, a political scientist, what took place in Sweden was something he called ‘Anticorruption: a Big Bang Theory’, which consists of a relatively sudden adoption of liberal economic reforms, as well as progressive policies for citizen rights. In fact, the implementation of a large number of social and universal policies took place for just over a century (from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century), and as Rothstein points out, “wherever the individual looked at this period, he or she was involved in the major change taking part”. Therefore, one could conclude that individuals during this period thoroughly reconsidered how to act and what to expect not only from the institutions, but also from the rest of society. The top-down way of ruling affected the collective imaginary, therefore corruption became less and less ‘popular’ and accepted.

South Korea

Seoul-Namdaemun-at_night. Source: Wikimedia

South Korea is another story. This Asian country has been identified as one of the recent successful cases of state-led economic development, and since the 1980s it has been praised for its successful transition from an authoritarian “developmental state” to a consolidated democracy by several analysts and international organizations. It is well known that South and North Korea were economically indistinguishable before the country was divided after WWII, and that under Rhee’s government during the First Republic of South Korea (1948-1960) there were huge problems with governance, economic growth and corruption.

Today it is more likely for companies to be won over through bribery in Italy or Honk Kong, than to win over companies working in South Korea. This is due to a combination of a high number of highly-educated people, meritocratic institutional reforms, and strong governmental leadership capable of, according to Hilton L. Root, example setting, by changing their behaviour beyond the rhetorical level. Corruption was fought from ‘above’ through real, deep and sometimes unwished reforms (especially to the non-meritocratic top public officials), as Park’s dictatorship took the heavy-handed approach when it came to the ‘modernization’ of the South Korean state. Although ‘elite-cartels’ or ‘great corruption’ still remains, civil society and new anti-corruption laws are currently contributing to achieving a state free from corruption. Almost every Korean agrees that the root of accelerated economic growth and efficient and impartial institutions came from the ‘new deal’ under Park’s dictatorship, which was followed by meritocratic recruitment and a long-term and well-paid salary as a civil servant.

Botswana

Gaborone Street Scene, Botswana. Source: Wikimedia

Today Botswana has the third highest per capita income in Africa and can be compared to Costa Rica or Estonia as one of the recent successful development models. Although it is known that this African country is rich in natural resources and that this is one of the reasons which could explain its fast-growing economy, it is fair to say that the ‘clean’ or transparent way of managing its natural resource sector may be even more important than its growth. Again, two factors played a major role in achieving this; some tradition of hierarchical and meritocratic tribal (informal) norms, which removed bad rulers and allowed talented people to become chiefs, and a shared identity by (almost) every inhabitant of Botswana. This provided preconditions to the informal rules, which embodied the formal and modern/new rules. Secondly, despite an ethnic plurality, a major political centralization has remained since independence, which has been useful to approve laws that, for example, got to keep all subsoil mineral rights for the nation, not a particular ethnic group. This, not only enabled to keep relative equality among Botswana’s citizens, but it also gave greater support to the centralization process, allowing for diamond industry revenues to be used for building state bureaucracy and infrastructure, and to invest in education. All of these efforts to unify and keep Botswana politically centralized created a sense of one nation and fostered the effectiveness of the institutions through, to some degree, independent institutions, which function as watchdogs. Furthermore, in Botswana, unlike most Sub-Saharan countries, public administration since independence is based on meritocratic recruitment.

It may therefore be suggested that in spite of thinking of cultural traditions as obstacles to discourage corruption, it is more important to focus on how quickly we can get effective and neutral institutions based on meritocracy, which are in turn fuelled by a highly educated population. Second, to start a ‘virtuous circle’ with less corruption is like starting a game in which government and civil society have a ‘feedback’ relationship. Nevertheless, the existing literature identifies that at some degree a brave and strong government can carry out structural reforms on its own, which would be impossible to carry out in a quick and effective way by consulting every (corrupt) actor where corruption is widespread. To conclude, there is no single way to fight corruption and to date no country has been successful in fighting it by only following anti-corruption strategies. Overcoming corruption is a historical process which entails social and universal policies, visionary leadership and meritocratic recruitment of civil servants over a relatively short period of time.

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What is municipalism and why is it gaining presence in Spain?

Imagine yourself in the middle of the ocean at night. Everything is pitch black and you are in a small boat. You are cold, and the only thing that keeps you alive is your baby son, asleep in your arms. The boat stops moving forward and water begins to flood its base. Fear grips each of your muscles. Feeling the tension in your body, your son wakes up and starts to cry. Every passing minute feels like hours. You remember how you began your journey north several years ago, in hope of finding work and supporting your family. A neighbor in your community promised to help you, but you quickly realized that it was a lie. The abuse and violence began. Finally, a boat appears with the promise to take you to the mainland.

The days that follow are a blur. People take you from one place to another and speak to you in a language that is unfamiliar to you. You sign stacks of papers, thinking you understand what they say: that they will take care of your baby until you can do so on your own; you think that seems like a good idea, you need the help. And then comes a phone call. A phone call that all of a sudden takes you back to your home country, to the horror and the violence of your trip, to the threats and the deals made on the way that you would prefer to forget. The person on the phone tells you that you must work as a prostitute in order to pay off a debt that you did not even realize you had. You want to ignore the call, but you can’t. You know that your own safety, that of your baby and that of your family depend on it. And you give in.

Photo: Trafficking of Nigerian women and children: slavery across borders and prejudices / Women’s Link Worldwide

You don’t want to do what you’re doing, but it is your only option. You are always accompanied and rarely get to see your baby son. You talk to him over the phone and tell him to take care of himself. This is the only thing that makes it possible to live through the hardships that you face each day. You tell him that you love him, that you will be back together soon, that you just need to pay back a small amount of money and that you are working hard to earn it. You continue to tell him this until one day you are separated. They take you across Spain, from one city to another, from one street to another, from one club to another… you are rarely allowed to call him. The pain of the separation feels like a knife to your heart.

One day you call the center where you left him and they tell you that you cannot talk to your baby. They tell you he is gone. They hang up. You call again and they give you the same information. Distraught, you lose your papers, you yell, you become furious, you cry…. You are in such a state that your captors agree to take you to him. A woman accompanies you as a translator (and a guard). You arrive and the people you thought were helping you and taking care of your baby tell you that you cannot see him anymore. He is with another family. Upon hearing this, you realize your cruel reality. Only now, it is much more painful, because you have lost your son.

Human trafficking is a continuous violation of the human rights of women and children

Sadly, the narrative above is the true story of a woman from Sub-Saharan Africa. To protect her identity, we will call her Beauty. A couple of years ago, her case arrived at Women´s Link Worldwide, an international human rights organization that uses the power of the law to promote social change that favors the rights of women and children. Among many things, Women’s Link works to guarantee the rights of female victims of human trafficking, particularly those who suffer from sexual exploitation.

Photo: Trafficking of Nigerian women and children: slavery across borders and prejudices / Women’s Link Worldwide

The case of Beauty is not an isolated incident. Rather, it is one of many examples of the human rights violations suffered by women and girls who arrive in Europe. They are used, often sexually exploited, and do not receive adequate attention from authorities.

Human trafficking has been explained by the United Nations as:

[T]he transfer of human beings from one place to another within the borders of the same country or to another country for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced labor and begging.  […] The consent of the victim is irrelevant because it is usually obtained through deception, threats, the use of force and other forms of coercion such as kidnapping, fraud, abuse of power or taking advantage of the victim’s situation of vulnerability.

The most technical definition is found in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (known more colloquially as the Palermo Protocol.)

Beyond legal definitions, human trafficking is a cruel phenomenon and a form of slavery that destroys the lives, aspirations and dreams of women and girls, who represent the majority of victims. It is very difficult to list the human rights violations they undergo, because there are so many. One could say that all their rights are violated, beginning with the rights to live free from violence; to be protected from slavery or forced labor; to physical and mental integrity; the right to freedom, including freedom of movement; the right to health, including sexual and reproductive health; and the right to fair work and to decent working conditions where one is not discriminated against because of gender. This list of rights should also include the right to life, because the violent reality of trafficking sometimes takes away even this most basic of all human rights.

The obligations of states to protect female victims of trafficking

Unfortunately, human trafficking is also an illegal and lucrative business, just behind drug trafficking and weapon smuggling. Trafficking networks – some vast and extensively organized – deceive and subject millions of people to exploitation every day. Victims should not face this reality alone. They should receive protection from nation-states around the world, as established by international law.

Sadly, this protection does not often reach the victim. We see this in the case of Beauty. The authorities ignore or want to ignore that a woman is a victim of human trafficking.

And many times protection fails, especially in cases like that of Beauty. It fails because of our own prejudices and stereotypes and our inability to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person, to understand another reality that is different from our own, and to comprehend other experiences and other cultures. And what is worse, oftentimes little weight is given to these cases.

Photo: Trafficking of Nigerian women and children: slavery across borders and prejudices / Women’s Link Worldwide

In Spain, women like Beauty, who are black and victims of human trafficking for sexual purposes, are still deeply discriminated against by many public officials, including the police, administration and judicial authorities. The discrimination is based on multiple aspects, such as the color of their skin, their gender and their status. The European Court of Human Rights manifested this in the sentence B.S. vs. Spain, when it condemned Spain and recognized the extreme vulnerability experienced by African women in the country.

The authorities refused to recognize Beauty as a victim of human trafficking. Instead, they limited themselves and defined her as a prostitute who did not visit her son enough and who was not able to take care of her child. Without fully investigating her situation, they labeled her as a “bad mother” and rapidly began the adoption process to put her son in the care of a Spanish family.

Although it may seem that many of us have a limited role to play in combatting gross human rights violations such as those Beauty went through, we must at least know that they are taking place. This is not an isolated phenomenon. There are thousands of women, men, boys and girls who victims of human trafficking around the world and in our own countries. The woman we crossed paths with on the street last night and who seemed to be offering sexual services could well be in the same situation: a hidden victim of human trafficking. We should, at minimum, be aware of this issue and be sensitive to it.

(For more information about the human trafficking of women and girls, see the reports prepared by Women’s Link Worldwide on this topic.)

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The two major Spanish parties since the Transition lost nearly 3 million votes in the last municipal elections in May 2015. The country saw these results as evidence proving that the traditional bipartisanship was beginning to disappear. It was in these municipal elections that the citizen platform Levantemos El Puerto received more than 5,000 votes in a city of 90,000 citizens. The results also ended eight years of the Popular Party government, through a coalition between PSOE, Levantemos el Puerto and IU (United Left).

There are two main emerging parties that have entered the political spectrum in Spain: Podemos and Ciudadanos. Contrary to what was expected, after the 20^th December general election results, Ciudadanos obtained only 40 deputies and remains the fourth political force, far behind Podemos. Meanwhile, the party of Pablo Iglesias won 69 deputies and more than 5 million votes across the country. The international press gave significant space to these elections, highlighting in particular the loss of the absolute majority of the Popular Party, the difficulty of forming a government without a majority, and the emergence of new parties.

Beyond the successes that both Ciudadanos and Podemos may achieve in the near future, the movement that is occurring between different political actors at a national and especially local level must also be taken into consideration. Not only have the so-called “new parties” been ruling some of the most important cities in Spain for several months, the citizen platforms that have been engaged demonstrate there is hope to change the way of doing politics.

What is ‘municipalismo’?

Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, during “The March of Change”, a demonstration of Podemos supporters [Photo: Discasto via WikimediaCommons]

Municipalism refers to ​​political organization based on assemblies of neighbourhoods, practicing direct democracy, which would be organized in a system of free communes or municipalities, as an alternative to the centralized state.

In Spain, ‘municipalismo’ emerged in the 19th Century, within the republican and anarchist tradition. There were politicians like Pi i Maragall, the president of the First Republic, and others such as Fernando Garrido, who contributed to the Spanish reform of government policy linked to citizen participation. Pi i Maragall theorized about federal decentralization in order to include members coming from different social status, and coordinated the territorial decentralization in Spain. For him, federalism was not only territorial administration and democratic decentralization, the real autonomy of the citizens came from the idea of “making coalitions while embracing diversity”.

“[…] Whoever thought existing institutions should define this pact based on an established authority, territory, borders, race or language, was wrong. According to Pi (who followed Proudhon), the federal pact was a bilateral and mutual agreement; in other words, a pact based on equal treatment, mutual sharing and equity. But if the basic actor inside the federalist cells were not countries, nations or states, then what were they? Pi had the audacity to raise the possible bases of a communal federal pact by using systems where social organization exceeded both the local authority and the system of private property. The communal pact worked by a collective agreement regarding the management of common interests. The basis of these agreements were not nationalist inspiration (rooted in tradition, race, language or cultural elements), but settled on a short-term political pact. Pi did not explore the consequences of these ideas, but opened the way for the libertarian movement […]” Metropolis Observatory (29: 2014).

Municipalism in the 21st century

Kurdish women holding a portrait of Abdullah Öcalan, whose ideas of libertarian municipalism have inspired the Rojava Revolution in Syrian Kurdistan [Photo: Kurdishstruggle via WikimediaCommons].

The historian and activist Murrat Bookchin has redefined the concept, adapting it to the current capitalist context. He bases this redefinition in the recovery of people’s direct democracy at the district and neighborhood levels. He proposes a “civic confederalism” to prevent provincialism in the cities, and also a municipalized economy in opposition to the capitalist system. The “civic confederalism” structure is based on a network of boards where the citizens elect members directly. The members of these councils have revocable mandates and are directly and immediately responsible for their decisions in the assemblies. They subsequently have a purely practical and administrative function.

For example, the current Kurdish movement, linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is trying to build a civil society based on principles of libertarian municipalism. Abdullah Ocalan, founder and leader of the PKK, the Workers Party of Kurdistan (listed as a terrorist organization due to waging a violent war of national liberation against Turkey), adopted a form of libertarian socialism that few anarchists knew of: Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism.

What is happening in Spain?

After the general elections in December, it is still unknown if the proposals coming from the citizen platforms will be fully effective in Spain’s political context. In the municipal elections, the Catalonian Candidature of Popular Unity (CUP), mainly defined by its principles of nationalism, anticapitalism and Euroscepticism, presented 163 candidates, more than twice the candidates presented in 2011.

CUP assembly. The CUP is a political party based on municipalism and assemblyism [Photo via anticapitalistes.net]

But now, after the elections on September 27th 2015, the region of Catalonia faces a return to the ballot box after the CUP refused to support the pro-independence leader Artur Mas. Mas is the main leader of the movement for independence from Spain, and the CUP votes enable him to become the president again. In the September elections, the CUP won 10 parliamentary seats with 336,375 votes.

Aside from Catalonia, there are other important regions in Spain where citizens are coming together to do politics from people to people. In the last episode of TalkReal, the participants debated how this has evolved during the government of the municipal candidate Ahora Madrid in the capital city of Spain. The electoral program was developed including some demands and suggestions coming directly from citizens, who also stated what measures should have priority. Below you may see the program.

Celia Mayer, Councilor of Culture in Madrid, explains in the video that Madrid is now building an alternative way of doing politics through a process that began with the 15M.

“Firstly we have the municipalist movements, those that have occurred in the streets across Spain, in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Santiago, Cadiz…; and secondly, after the European elections, Podemos has shown Europe that there are other ways of doing politics. We find a particular DNA in the municipal experience that comes directly from the social experience that has been developing in recent years.“

In Spain, citizens demand new ways of doing politics, since corruption is a major concern for Spaniards. This demand may mean the proposal of different models that redistribute power and restructure institutions. Participatory democracy allows a greater involvement of citizens in policy-making processes by increasing public scrutiny of leaders. Thus, the process of holding leaders to account would be organically integrated within the new democratic structure.

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From November 30^th to December 11^th Paris will host COP21 (Conference of the Parties), the 21^st annual meeting of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

But why is Paris so important, if there is a COP every year?

Copenhagen, Durban… and the road to Paris

During COP17 in Durban, in 2011, the decision was taken to create the ADP (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action).

The mandate of the ADP was to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties, to be completed no later than 2015 in order for it to be adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties, and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.

COP21 in Paris.

Therefore, COP21 is the end of a long process started by COP17 in 2011, and it must deliver the results assigned to it: a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 2011, the ADP has held a total of 15 meetings during which the future text to be approved as a new agreement in Paris was put together. But the path was not as easy as one might think.

Until COP15 in Copenhagen (perhaps the COP brought climate change issues into the public eye), leadership on climate change action was taken mostly by the United Nations (with a predominantly top-down approach).

Greenhouse gas reduction targets were calculated on a global scale and guidelines were defined in order to implement the reductions, taking into consideration historical emissions by the world’s states. The Kyoto Protocol was an outcome of this top-down approach.

During COP15 in Copenhagen the agreement scripted for signature failed – due to a host of reasons, and with it the way the climate change issues had been tackled up to then. Many countries felt sensitivities were not treated equally. The countries asked for more country ownership of the processes – i.e., an approach at least partially determined from the bottom up.

After Copenhagen, the ADP became one of the key actors working on this bottom up approach to produce a new agreement. It faced the challenge of producing a text summing up all the national approaches, and at the last stages of the negotiations, it asked the UNFCCC secretariat and the ADP co-chairs to help compile the country’s inputs in order to add them to the multiple versions of the future agreement to be adopted at COP21 in Paris.

The process could be considered a constant switch from bottom-up to top-down approaches, with the ghost of the failure in Copenhagen as a motivating factor in the search for success in Paris.

What is being discussed in Paris?

The first week of the Paris Climate Conference was focused mostly on closing the ADP working group. Having finished its mandate, this working group will now present its text to the ministers, who will negotiate in order to reach a final agreement.

Image: Transition Network.

One of the hot issues this week was finance: it is still unclear how developed countries will provide finance to developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The paragraph of the text related to finance has not changed substantially since October, demonstrating how important and political this issue is.

This is very much linked to one of the other difficult topics: differentiation. This concept is designed to define which country should start reducing emissions first, or faster, or who should provide more help through finance. This historic debate asks developed countries to do more, since they bear more responsibility for creating the climate crisis in the first place.

There has also been a very strong discussion about the 1.5ºC target. The idea is that global temperatures should not rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius if the current shape of life on the planet is to be preserved, and in order to avoid the most dangerous of catastrophes. Studies, however, find that 2 degrees is not enough, and state that a maximum increase of 1.5ºC will be necessary in order to preserve low-lying islands and coastal areas. This more ambitious goal is very controversial for some countries, whose emissions would have to drop faster in order to meet that goal.

Human rights have also featured in the week’s highlights. They are included in the ‘purpose’ of the future Paris Agreement, together with labour rights, gender equality and the integrity of ecosystems. However, there have been attempts to remove this part of the paragraph, which has caused alarms to sound among the collection of NGOs and civil society participating in the negotiations.

Finally, one of the issues that has progressed the most this week is adaptation to the effects of climate change. For months now, there has been a push to include a Global Goal for Adaptation in the Paris Agreement. This Goal would define the general aim of adaptation, including enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change.

The following infographic by the Climate Trackers helps to understand some of the key issues in the text:

Infographic courtesy of ClimateTracker.org.

Today the COP will receive the final text proposed by the ADP in order to adopt a new agreement. Ministers will negotiate all week in order to conclude some of the ongoing debates.

Then, all eyes will be on Paris, in order to find out whether we are building a new mechanism which will be capable of dealing with what could be considered one of the biggest challenges humanity has faced so far.

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Map of Darfur [Wikipedia]

Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan, was re-elected last April with 94 per cent of the votes, and is accused of committing crimes under international law in Darfur. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Genocide is the intentional destruction of specific communities through murder and psychological harm; crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, deportation, torture and rape; and war crimes include looting and intentional attacks on civilians.

Obligation to cooperate

Between 2009 and 2010, Omar Al Bashir received arrest warrants issued by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. In June 2015 he travelled to Johannesburg, South Africa, to take part in an African Union summit along with fellow African leaders. The High Court of Pretoria issued an order to prevent Al Bashir from leaving the country, effectively calling for his arrest. This was triggered by an action initiated by the Center for Southern African Litigation, an association of human rights defenders.

Even though South Africa is bound by its international obligations to arrest Mr Al Bashir and send him to the ICC in The Hague, South African President Jacob Zuma was himself against the warrant and allowed the President of Sudan to leave his country through a presidential decree once the summit was over.

At this stage it must be pointed out that the International Criminal Court acts a last resort tribunal. Only in the case that a state should not want to conduct the trial or should have no jurisdiction over it, is the ICC entitled to take over the case.

Article 12 of the Statute of Rome establishes that South Africa does not have jurisdiction over Al Bashir’s charges, as the crimes were neither committed in South African territory nor is Mr Al Bashir a South African national. Therefore, South African authorities should have arrested the defendant and sent him to The Hague for trial.

Refugees, Sam Ouandja, 2004 [Photo: Hdptcar via Flickr]

Arrest procedure

Article 59 of the Statute of Rome sets out a specific procedure that states party to the statute must follow if a defendant should find itself in its territory. The procedure which should have been followed by South Africa can be summed up as follows:

• The state receiving a provisional arrest request shall take steps immediately to guarantee the person’s arrest.
• The defendant is to be brought before the relevant national judicial authority. This authority must determine whether the warrant is applicable under national law and whether the defendant’s rights have been respected while carrying out the arrest.
• Once the state has done this, the defendant must be sent to the Court as soon as possible if the state has no competence.

Does the ICC only prosecute African leaders?

Controversially enough, all cases having led to prosecution and the start of judicial proceedings and having been initiated by a complaint have been related to nationals of African countries. The 22 cases under investigation by the Prosecutor of the ICC took place in Africa. The African Union’s position, as well as that of many of its leaders, including South African President Jacob Zuma, is therefore that the ICC only ever examines African cases.

International Criminal Court investigations. Updated to January 2011

Many cases in earlier stages (i.e. preliminary examination) affect other regions of the world, including Palestine, Honduras, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and Georgia. This stage includes verifying whether the requirements have been met for the Court to exercise jurisdiction over these cases, but in no way entails the opening of formal prosecution proceedings. None of them have, as of writing, advanced to the prosecution stage, as many African cases have.

This raises controversy over the fact of whether the ICC enjoys full independence from the states which are party to it. It also raises the issue of dependence on international political events. It is clear that many human rights violations occur outside of Africa on a daily basis. Nevertheless, no senior political figure from outside of Africa has ever been tried or convicted at the ICC.

In order to prove its independence and objectivity, the ICC ought to become human rights-oriented and should attempt to prosecute senior human rights violators who are not African, to establish its international character.

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Fiscal and monetary policy are useful policy tools when adjusting an economy to maximise resources and minimise suffering. Countries like Sweden, Canada or the UK have been able to overcome the crisis faster than the Eurozone, which is still in an awkward position. The prevailing European moral discourse singles Germany out as an example of prosperity, sobriety and pragmatism to follow at all costs.

Much less expressed is the fact that Germany, much like the UK or Sweden, has its own monetary policy, as the ECB adjusts its monetary policy almost in its entirety to the German economy. That, and not the Greek indifference portrayed as the bad moral of this economic tale, is what has brought Greece where it is now.

Why has a referendum been called?

Syriza won last January’s general election. It is a left-wing party which is trying to break loose from the reigning neoliberal paradigm through welfare policy and fiscal stimulus aiming at reactivating an economy and a society in stagnation, while trying to eject the troika from the Hellenic Republic. Just a few weeks after gaining office, Syriza had to give up some of its boosting policies to obtain a bailout extension until the end of June, thus accepting new austerity measures.

As the troika seems to be treating Greece just like it did in 2008 – still shaming and blaming Greeks and their supposed overspending, unable to see that austerity has not worked for years and is indeed irrevocably contracting Greece’s economy – Tsipras’s government decided to bring last week’s negotiations to a halt. Each wave of cuts brings about an economic contraction, which in turn requires a new bailout, which will inevitably be conditioned to further cuts.

A woman listens to Alexis Tsipras’ speech summoning Greek citizens to vote [Twitter]

The Syriza government does not accept austerity as a moral principle and finds it useless as an economic policy tool. It has therefore decided to stop negotiating, labelling the new cuts proposed to them as inacceptable and useless, asserting that they would only extend the bailout for a few more months before having to negotiate further cuts. Given this deadlock, they have decided to ask the Greek people whether they should accept or not the Eurogroup’s proposals.

What is wrong with the referendum?

Mr Varoufakis has written in his blog that the referendum proposal was welcomed in the Eurogroup as nothing less than a tragedy. According to him, a Eurogroup member even asked him “how do you expect common people to understand such complex issues?”. From a democratic point of view, asking the people about their future can never be wrong. Nevertheless, in the neoliberal moral narrative, concepts like (investor) trust or (market) stability are more important than what a society might have to say.

Europe is on tenterhooks right now, knowing the vote of eleven million people in Greece on Sunday may and will affect the continent’s future for years to come. Stocks have fallen, savers look at their accounts with fear, the euro’s value keeps falling, and inward foreign direct investment is less than a third of what it used to be.

What are the options?

As in most referendums, the options are ‘yes’ and ‘no’. In this case, the question is oddly formulated. The ‘yes’ would mean a continuation of the European bailout and, therefore, of the austerity measures. The ‘no’ would reject more austerity and demand debt restructuring, but it would potentially imply Grexit and the return to the drachma or, at the very least, the creation of a parallel currency which could be printed by the Greek government.

Protesters hold a greek flag with ‘ change Europe’ slogan on it in front of the Greek parliament in Athens [Louisa Gouliamaki]

The truth is that both paths will be difficult. Promises of prosperity are being heard on both sides, but believing them is, if nothing else, naïve. Should the ayes have it, Greece would most likely remain in the euro area, paying the cost of not being able to engage in fiscal stimulus beyond tiny concessions like a reduced VAT for the hotel sector. Tsipras and his government are planning on resigning en masse if this happens, adding a new political crisis to an already weak country.

Should the nays have it, Greece would need to start preparing its exit from the euro and its return to the drachma, which would most probably be closely followed by a tough devaluation and a bank freeze to prevent a capital run which would result in a liquidity crisis if not stopped. Syriza’s preferred option would politically isolate Greece from the rest of the European Union.

In this context, the rest of the Eurozone would have to shield itself to avoid contagion. The euro’s value would fall without a doubt, although in the long run the Eurozone would not be gravely affected, as European assets in Greece have fallen to minimum levels since the first bailout in 2008.

And then?

The next few years will be characterised by poverty and recession – whether Greeks vote yes or no. If Greece votes in favour, poverty and recession will materialize due to policy prescriptions by the Eurogroup and the troika. If Greece votes against, they will come about due to the drachma’s weakness and the hostile conditions to investment which will result from the necessary bank freeze. In the short run, therefore, Sunday’s referendum is nothing but a gloomy choice between poverty and poverty.

In the medium and long run, the situation changes. If the motion is carried, the troika will most probably keep on requiring further cuts and austerity measures. The ECB will likely not engage in fiscal stimulus, as this would be unfavourable to Germany. Greece would be left at the expense of a paradigm and model change which is unlikely to occur in the next years. The troika is unlikely to restructure the debt, adding difficulty to the situation.

If the motion is not carried, a currency-emitting central bank would regain control over fiscal and monetary policy, being able to control interest and inflation rates in a way favourable to reactivating the Greek economy. Moreover, the drachma’s fall in value would make Greek exports more competitive, favouring both industry and tourism.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commision.

Because of this, well-known economists like Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz have declared they would vote no if they were Greek. A vote in favour benefits savers, who are nowadays more likely to be part of the country’s socioeconomic elite and less likely to be pensioners or middle class, at least in Greece. A vote against benefits less privileged classes and the impoverished middle class, as well as the 60 per cent of young Greeks who are out of work, and whose job prospects are a bit less bad with the drachma than with the euro.

The ‘no’ is being portrayed as a disaster for Greece. Many Greeks believe disaster has already struck and that an exit from the perverse moral narrative only becomes possible through the recovery of economic sovereignty. They believe Greece has been used as a scapegoat for the Eurozone’s initial structural faults, which should have never been established without a matching political union in the first place. Many other Greeks believe Grexit would distance them from the European, democratic and cosmopolitan ideal which was born precisely in ancient Athens.

It is hard to recommend a vote: an out-of-work 25-year-old and a 45-year-old with half a million in his bank account would benefit more from a no and a yes respectively. In any case, it is the Greek people as a whole who must decide in an informed, objective and reasoned vote, and for that, we must wait until Sunday. Kalí tíxi!

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Since his death, numerous theories have been thrown around about who the perpetrators and masterminds are, what their motives may have been, and what impact Nemtsov’s death will have on Russia’s fragile political opposition. Some fear that the result will be a renewed crackdown on opposition activists.

Whatever the motive for his murder, Boris Nemtsov’s true killers will probably never be found, and Russia lost a man who supporters say worked tirelessly to bring Russians together, regardless of ethnic background or creed, in an attempt to end the Putin regime.

A Sham Investigation:

At a meeting with top officials from the Interior Ministry on Wednesday March 4, President Putin demanded an investigation into the crime.

“The most serious attention must be paid to high-profile crimes, including those with a political motive,” Putin said. “We must finally rid Russia of the disgrace and tragedy of the kinds of things we recently saw and experienced: I mean the audacious murder of Boris Nemtsov in the very center of the capital.”

But Putin’s regime has a habit of choosing scapegoats who are either innocent of the charges laid against them or entirely ignorant of the origin of their order.

The murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 is a prime example of how the regime treats such acts. Chechen assassins were brought to trial, but nothing was ever really proven. In the end, the blame was placed on the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who denied the allegations from the safety of his mansion in London.

Flowers and candles left at the site of Nemtsov’s murder, Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s investigation into Nemtsov’s murder has been laughable. At the very beginning of the investigation, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Russian investigative committee, alleged that Nemtsov’s own supporters had killed him so he could be used as a “sacrificial victim”.

“Who knew Russia had such crack detectives — not just fast in their investigation of the murder of Boris Nemtsov but practically clairvoyant. Within a day of the dissident’s killing on Feb. 27, they offered a bundle of possible motives, predictably ranging from a business dispute to a love affair gone wrong, but with two big surprises,” wrote journalist Simon Shuster, tongue in cheek, for Time Magazine.

“For one, they ignored the possibility that Nemtsov’s conflict with the Kremlin had anything to do with the murder. And then there was the theory bizarre enough to make the victim’s friends do a double take: the sleuths suggested that some religious fanatic could have killed him for insulting Islam.”

Similar to the investigation into the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Chechen was singled out as the perpetrator. Zaur Dadaev, a decorated officer in the Russian security services and a Muslim, was quickly apprehended and put behind bars. Russian news agencies, citing the judge presiding over the case, reported the Dadaev had confessed to the crime. But some observers noted that it was suspicious that Dadaev had refused to confess during a public hearing. Dadaev later claimed that he had been pressured into admitting guilt while in custody. Some claimed that he had been tortured. In April, Dadaev’s pre-trial detention was extended until August 28.

Meanwhile, Nemtsov supporters called allegations that Nemtsov was murdered by radical Islamists “absurd”.

“The official version of the inquiry is more than absurd. In my opinion it is the result of a political order from the Kremlin,” Ilya Yashin, who co-founded the opposition movement Solidarnost with Nemtsov, told Agence France Presse.

Calls to Action:

In response, opposition economist Slava Rabinovich used his Facebook page to call for an international commission to investigate the murder. Rabinovich also encouraged Nemtsov’s family to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

“Boris Nemtsov’s rights have been violated — most importantly, the right to life. Including the ECHR, in parallel with the Commission, will give even more weight,” Mr. Rabinovich wrote.

This piece of advice became more relevant in the following days when it was revealed that the Nemtsov family has not been granted any legal representation in court proceedings because they have not been acknowledged as victims. This means that they have no access to investigators’ evidence and materials, and no procedural rights.

A Weakened Opposition?

Many in the opposition said they were discouraged by Nemtsov’s murder and feared for their own lives. There were discussions about whether it was better to just leave the country and go into exile, especially after other activists received death threats both online and at Nemtsov’s memorial service.

But not everyone adopted a defeatist attitude. Others were inspired to fight. Opposition figure Ilya Yashin vowed to continue Nemtsov’s work on a report detailing the use of Russian soldiers in the Ukraine conflict.

Yashin stated:

“He [Nemtsov] said in the very near future he was going to assemble and put in order various evidence and documents directly proving the presence of the Russian military on the territory of Ukraine and, accordingly, (exposing) President’s Putin’s lies that there are no Russian servicemen there.”

However Yashin had his work cut out for him, as much of Nemtsov’s research was not written down due to his expressed fear that the authorities would confiscate his notes. On May 12, opposition leaders released the finding of Nemtsov’s report. The report alleges that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was planned in advance and that Moscow has been hiring mercenaries to interfere in eastern Ukraine.

A National Traitor?

There is no doubt that Boris Nemtsov was an enemy of the Kremlin. While he had a successful political career under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, and even held the role of Deputy Prime Minister for 4 months in 1998, by the early 2000s he had become an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, who he viewed as authoritarian and undemocratic. Some tried to dismiss the importance of his work exposing the Putin regime’s crimes and misdemeanours, claiming that his audience was small and insignificant. But none would deny that Nemtsov worked tirelessly to expose the corruption of the regime, through written reports and face-to-face meetings with Russian citizens.

Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Right Forces parliamentary party, with President Vladimir Putin, July 2000, Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, opposition politician Vladimir Milov speculated that Nemtsov was murdered because his support for Western sanctions against Russia caused the Kremlin to view him as a traitor to the country.

In statements made to the Financial Times that were published the day of his death, Nemtsov drew attention to the fact that he has been trying to correct Russians’ misperceptions about Western sanctions and Putin’s food-import embargos.

“They believed that the embargo on imported foods is America’s fault, and they were surprised when I told them no, that was not Obama, it was Putin,” Nemtsov said. “This is what we need to make people aware of: the crisis, that’s Putin.”

Moreover, Nemtsov was a vocal opponent of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. In July 2014, Nemtsov had filed a complaint to the main federal investigative authority in Russia, the Investigative Committee, saying that he had received death threats related “to my political position on the events in Ukraine”. The full complaint was published by the Russian publication New Times here.

Meanwhile, Nemtsov had frequently appeared on online lists of “national traitors”.

“Anyone who watches Russian state television – and that includes the vast majority of Russians – will have seen a picture painted over the past year of a victimised Russia attacked by voracious western vultures who want, at least, to make Russia irrelevant on the world stage, and at worst to mount a coup and install a puppet government,” wrote the Guardian’s Shaun Walker the day after Nemtsov’s murder.

“According to this narrative, the Russian opposition are traitors, working to destroy the country.”

Unanswered Questions:

Now, nearly three months after his death, Nemtsov’s family and supporters are no closer to learning the truth about who ordered the opposition leader’s death.

“None of us, Nemtsov’s friends, doubt that the investigation has informed the president where the order for Nemtsov’s murder came from.” The decision about what to do with this information is “being made at the top,” State Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov told the Daily Beast.

This is a non-profit explanation