วันศุกร์ที่ 26 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Final push to finish line

For a month now, the campaign has grown increasingly frenetic. Supporters have poured into the streets by the tens of thousands for ruling and opposition party rallies alike. On motorbikes and by the truckload, campaigners have overrun cities large and small, chanting party slogans.
Today, that culminates in the largest day of campaigning yet, as parties strive to make one final pitch before the 24 hours of silence leading up to Sunday’s vote.
Nearly every one of the eight parties running — from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party down to the tiny Khmer Anti-Poverty Party — have big plans for the last day of the campaign period.
“We’re going to have a little fun on that last day,” Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker candidate Son Chhay told the Post.
Fresh from their cross-country tour, opposition leader Sam Rainsy and his deputy, Kem Sokha, will hit up battleground provinces Kampong Cham and Kandal today, finishing with a rally at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park.
The Cambodian People’s Party, meanwhile, is planning large rallies in nearly every major province, CPP spokesman and lawmaker candidate Khieu Kanharith said.
“For the last day of campaigning, besides showing off in urban areas, we concentrate on rallying our supporters at the district and village level; this will make a difference,” Kanharith said.
Funcinpec, too, said it was expecting a few thousand supporters at rallies in Phnom Penh, Banteay Meanchey and Kampong Cham.
The show of support has been a marked about-face from previous elections, many observed.
“In terms of campaigning, I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of the activism, the youth involvement, the campaigning on the streets,” said Laura Thornton, resident director of the National Democratic Institute.
She and others highlighted a near complete lack of violence as a significant shift in the pre-election atmosphere.
The handful of incidents — which have included supporters from the opposition and ruling parties chucking water bottles at one another, a bullet fired into the CNRP offices, and fighting between young party activists that ended when shots were fired into the air — have been isolated and relatively injury-free.
“It’s been quite a change, and as a citizen, I’m happy to see it,” political analyst Lao Mong Hay said. “I feel there is a rebirth of cultural peace. It could be a step towards genuine democratisation.”
By the numbers
Eight political parties will duke it out for 123 seats across the Kingdom’s 24 provinces.
The ruling Cambodian People’s Party, which holds 90 of those seats, is expected to retain power — but victory won’t come without a fight from the Cambodia National Rescue Party.
This alliance, formed from a merger between the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party in the wake of last year’s commune elections, will be hoping to do more than just build on the 29 seats they won last election.
The royalists, meanwhile, subsumed under the Funcinpec banner after a merger last year, have grand plans as well. Though Funcinpec won just two seats in 2008 and the now-defunct Norodom Ranariddh Party held only another two, party officials said they had high hopes for the future.
“Now [that] we joined together into one royalist party … our seats will increase this term,” said spokesman Tum Sambo. “We expect around 13, 14, 15 seats.”
For small parties, the chance to join the fight is half the battle.
“We don’t take the campaign so serious; what we take more seriously is the media,” said League for Democracy candidate Sang Leng, who is contesting Kampong Speu and, who, like others, complained that CPP domination of the media made it nearly impossible to get the word out.
At least 9.6 million people are registered to cast a ballot come Sunday for one of those eight parties. But how many show up is anyone’s guess. While 12 million ballot papers have been printed, it is likely overkill; in the past 15 years, voter turnout has been steadily declining.
Almost 94 per cent of voters cast a ballot in the 1998 election, a figure that fell to about 83 per cent five years later. At the 2008 election, only 75 per cent of those eligible to vote did so.
But voter numbers could be set to increase.
Analyst Mong Hay said that because the lead-up to the election had been calmer and less bloody than in previous campaigns, more people felt comfortable exercising their freedom to take sides.
“This time, the climate and environment is much, much different than previous elections. There have been fewer restrictions on the opposition and less intimidation,” he said. “I expect a bigger turnout than in previous elections.”
Looking forward
Almost doubtless, the CPP will win by a landslide. But for the first time since 1993, they will likely see a diminution in seat numbers, analysts predicted.
Shifting demographics, a re-energised opposition, and the near-surety that such meteoric gains can’t last forever, means the CPP will likely wind up ceding some seats to the CNRP.
“The opposition will make a big change, because the formula favours big parties,” said Cambodian Center for Human Rights president Ou Virak, who predicted that the CNRP could up the number of seats they held in Kampong Cham, Kampong Speu, Kandal, Prey Veng and Takeo provinces.
Less likely, however, was the possibility the CNRP could make inroads into remote, single-seat provinces.
“It’s nothing to do with rural and urban [however] … it’s more about access to radio. The CNRP is doing better in Phnom Penh because that’s where [radio] can be heard,” Virak said.
The labour force
Garment workers will be a key demographic in this election, as shown by the two major parties’ strong commitment to improving their minimum wage in the months before the election.
Most of the 400,000-plus workers in the industry are over 18, under 30 and female — and some researchers and social commentators believe them to be more politically aware and active than their counterparts at university.
The industry is divided along party lines. Pro-government unions take up most of the space; opposition-aligned unions — along with independent unions — do most of the striking outside factories, pleading for better working conditions.
“Most garment workers are pro-opposition and not voting in one area,” said Virak, from CCHR. “They’re returning home to areas where there is no media that the opposition can access. But they’re sharing a lot more information with their friends when they return to their provinces, which can have an overall impact.”
The land issue
According to NGOs, more than 700,000 people have been affected by land grabbing and forced displacement since 2000. About 10 per cent of the capital’s population — or 145,000 — have been evicted since that time.
The CNRP has made it a mission to put an end to forced displacement, but it remains to be seen to what extent it influences voters in eviction hotspots such as the Borei Keila and Boeung Kak communities in Phnom Penh and remote provinces such as Ratanakkiri, where economic-land concessions are swallowing up villages and forest.
Some affected by land disputes, however, are no longer in the Kingdom. They’re among the 300,000-plus Cambodians who have gone to Thailand in search of work.
Many of them work in factories or on Thai construction sites for companies that won’t allow them to return home to vote.
About three per cent of the vote will lie dormant across the western border — a figure that is higher when including Cambodian workers in other countries. None can lodge a ballot, because the government has no agreements with other countries to do so.
Demographic shift
Four million fewer voters were registered in 1998 than this election. As the population has surged and urbanisation has ballooned, the allocation of National Assembly seats has remained the same.
“It’s been 10 years and there have been significant shifts between populations in provinces. If you’re not shifting seats, you’re underweighting or overweighting votes,” Laura Thornton, resident director of the National Democratic Institute, told the Post last week.
Underscoring an increase in political activity in urban areas has been the number of youths campaigning across Phnom Penh in the past month.
This election will be Cambodia’s youngest. More than 3.5 million people between 18 and 30 will have the chance to vote, and for almost half of them, it will be their first national election.
Five years between elections is a long time. Technology moves fast, and since 2008’s election, the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook in Cambodia means young people are getting their information from sources other than just government-controlled media.
Keen to control the message, Hun Sen’s son, lawmaker candidate and youth-wing leader, Hun Many, earlier this week urged some 15,000 young CPP supporters to avoid rocking the boat.
“We have to protect the peaceful trees that we have been harvesting for fruit,” he told them.
Mounting concerns
With so many shifts since 2008, the stakes are high and complaints of irregularities are rife. Violence may indeed be a thing of the past, but non-ruling parties complained of ample interference, while monitors have repeatedly warned of the vast irregularities in the voter list.
“The cheating has gotten quite serious,” said the CNRP’s Chhay, who pointed to ghost voters, duplicate names and people being left off the registry as the biggest concerns come Sunday.
Since the start of the campaign period, 304 complaints have been filed with the NEC, many of them focused on relatively small issues, said Ke Rith, deputy director of the NEC’s legal services and dispute department.
“Most of the complaints are related to the destroying of leaflets or disturbing of campaigns, and this year, there has been some violence, of throwing stones at each others,” he said.
In a statement issued yesterday, election watchdog Comfrel said it had recorded a number of problems including threats made to opposition supporters, campaigning obstruction, outright or implied vote-buying, and unequal media access, among others.
Supporters from almost every party, meanwhile, have complained of their signs being torn down, vandalism and intimidation.
“We come across all the hassles,” said Khmer Anti-Poverty Party president Daran Kravanh.
Bigger still, is the raft of problems with the voter lists, which monitors have been seeking to highlight for months.
In an audit published earlier this year, NDI and Nicfec warned that 9.4 per cent of voter names had been wrongfully removed, while hundreds of thousands of extra names were elsewhere bloating the rolls. Separately, the Post has uncovered tens of thousands of exact duplicate names.
“Many people have two names — [they’re listed] in Phnom Penh and in the provinces. We don’t know whether NEC will clean it,” said Nicfec’s Puthea. “It’s better this election [regarding campaign violence], but we could not say about fair and could not say about free.”
If hundreds of thousands show up on Election Day, meanwhile, to find they’re off the list when they believe they have registered, “they may not take it lightly”, said NDI’s Thornton. “It has the potential to lead to chaos at the poll.”
Excess voter registration figures, coupled with some half a million temporary ID replacement forms issued since election registration closed, opens up the possibility of problems, Thornton said. “I just think this is not boding well. It makes me concerned about the quality of the election.”
Seeking to allay such fears, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Koy Kuong, insisted yesterday that elections would be “free, fair and peaceful”.
Speaking to reporters following a meeting between the foreign minister and the newly appointed Chinese ambassador, Kuong stressed that the government had similar wishes.
“We hope that the election will proceed smoothly, democratically and transparently; and not cause chaos as claimed by some.”
REPORTING BY SHANE WORRELL, CHEANG SOKHA, ABBY SEIFF, SEAN TEEHAN, KEVIN PONNIAH, STUART WHITE AND CHHAY CHANNYDA

วันอังคารที่ 23 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Kate and William bring home royal baby boy

By Laura Smith-Spark and Matt Smith, CNN
July 24, 2013 -- Updated 0120 GMT (0920 HKT)
Watch this video

Big day for Britain's newest royal

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: William and Catherine take their newborn prince home "like a normal couple"
  • William has changed his first diaper, but the royal couple is "still working on a name"
  • Catherine's parents are thrilled to meet baby, say he is "absolutely beautiful"
  • Ceremonial gun salutes and peals of bells for the new prince resound across London
London (CNN) -- They looked like "a normal couple" as they left the hospital, one bystander said.
Of course, most normal couples don't have a crowd of reporters, photographers and random well-wishers waiting for them to show off their new baby.
Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, emerged from St. Mary's Hospital in London on Tuesday evening to give the public its first view of the new heir to the British throne, joking that the still-unnamed boy had more hair than his father. Catherine and William took turns holding the child, wrapped in a cream-colored blanket, as they waved to well-wishers outside.
Photos: First look at the royal baby Photos: First look at the royal baby
What will royal baby\'s name be? What will royal baby's name be?
Photos: Reaction to royal baby Photos: Reaction to royal baby
William, Kate and baby leave hospital
The couple is "still working on a name," William said, "so we'll have that as soon as we can." But he added, "He's got her looks, thankfully."
The prince has already changed his first diaper, the couple told reporters.
"It's very emotional. It's such a special time," Catherine said.
The couple left the hospital Tuesday evening, with William carrying the boy out in a car seat and installing him in the back of a black SUV. Then he got behind the wheel for the trip to their residence at Kensington Palace.
On their way out, they walked out down the same steps where Diana, Princess of Wales, and Prince Charles gave the world its first look at Prince William 31 years ago.
"It was so exciting. It was fantastic," said Eliza Wells, one of those gathered outside the hospital. "The crowd erupted, because everyone's been waiting so long for it."
William and Catherine "both seemed very relaxed, even with the press there and the crowd," Wells said. "They just seemed like a normal couple."
Shortly before the departure, Charles stopped by for a brief visit with his first grandchild, accompanied by his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. He told reporters it was "marvelous."
And Catherine's parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, visited earlier, with Carole Middleton telling reporters the royal baby is "absolutely beautiful."
She said both mother and baby are doing "really well" and that she and her husband were "so thrilled" at being grandparents.
Bells, gun salutes
The 8-pound, 6-ounce boy was born Monday afternoon. He's third in line, behind Charles and William, for the British throne now held by his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Tuesday, London echoed with the sound of cannonades and music to mark the birth.
Guardsmen at Buckingham Palace, the queen's residence, played the Cliff Richard song "Congratulations" at the Changing of the Guard. The military ceremony, much beloved by tourists, involves a new guard exchanging duty with the old guard in the palace forecourt.
The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery in Green Park fired 41 shots in tribute to the boy, while the Honorable Artillery Company at the Tower of London fired 62 rounds.
At the same time the bells of Westminster Abbey, where William and Catherine were married in April 2011, began to peal, in keeping with royal tradition, and were set to continue for more than three hours.
The news of the boy's birth, announced about four hours after the event Monday, prompted cheers and celebration among the crowds of well-wishers outside Buckingham Palace. At least one group of well-wishers brought flowers, champagne and a card for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Social media networks were also abuzz with the news, which made headlines around the world.
'We could not be happier'
The new parents spent some time with their baby before calling family members -- starting with the queen -- to announce the birth, a Kensington Palace source told CNN royal correspondent Max Foster.
"We could not be happier," said Prince William, according to the Kensington Palace source.
Prince William remained at Catherine's side throughout the labor, and the baby was born naturally. An official bulletin was placed on a gilded easel outside Buckingham Palace.
The celebrations for the arrival of the new prince -- whose title will be His Royal Highness Prince (the baby's name) of Cambridge -- were hard to miss in the capital.
The fountains at Trafalgar Square were dyed blue; the BT Tower, a London landmark, flashed the words "It's a boy;" and the London Eye was illuminated in patriotic red, white and blue.
Farther afield, Canada -- where the British monarch is head of state -- turned its side of the Niagara Falls blue to mark the birth, and the CN Tower in Toronto was lit up the same color.
How Americans can honor royal baby
Arbiter: It took me back 31 years
Will and Kate: Modern royal parents?
Kate follows in Diana's footsteps
Betting on a name
It was a long wait for the media camped outside St. Mary's Hospital, but when the news of the birth finally came, the excitement of the moment was huge.
The Sun newspaper, Britain's best-selling tabloid daily, changed its masthead Tuesday to "The Son" to mark the occasion, above a picture of the official birth announcement, while the Daily Express and Telegraph emblazoned "It's a boy" across their front pages.
Recognizing that excitement over the prince's arrival is not universal, the Guardian newspaper's website lets users switch to a royal baby-free version of the home page. The front page of UK satirical magazine Private Eye simply says: "Woman has baby."
Many bets are being placed as the wait continues for the baby's name to be announced. British bookmakers Ladbrokes have James as favorite, followed by Henry and George, Philip, Alexander and Richard.
William's name was announced a few days after birth; his brother Harry's on departure from hospital.
Some British parents have delayed naming their newborns in recent days in hopes of either copying or avoiding the royal name, he said.
Royal joy
The official British Monarchy Twitter feed said: "The Queen and Prince Philip are delighted at the news of the birth of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's baby."
Charles Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, welcomed the birth of the baby. "We're all so pleased: it's wonderful news," he said in a statement.
"My father always told us how Diana was born on just such a blisteringly hot day, at Sandringham, in July 1961. It's another very happy summer's day, half a century on."
British Prime Minister David Cameron said, "It is an important moment in the life of our nation, but I suppose above all, it's a wonderful moment for a warm and loving couple who got a brand new baby boy."
Tributes around the world
The British monarch is also head of state in 15 Commonwealth countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Belize and Jamaica.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his country's congratulations on the birth of a future king.
"The arrival of the newest member of the Royal Family, a future Sovereign of Canada, is a highly anticipated moment for Canadians given the special and warm relationship that we share with our Royal Family," he said in a statement.
Barack and Michelle Obama also gave their best wishes.
"The child enters the world at a time of promise and opportunity for our two nations," the U.S. president and first lady said in a statement. "Given the special relationship between us, the American people are pleased to join with the people of the United Kingdom as they celebrate the birth of the young prince."
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also sent their congratulations.
On Twitter, topics related to the royal baby jumped to the top of the trending list in the United Kingdom on Monday morning. Worldwide, hashtags such as #RoyalBabyBoy and #Will & Kate were trending later Monday.
In a nod to modern times, Clarence House called for people to send news and images of any other new arrivals using the hashtag #WelcometotheWorld.
CNN's Atika Shubert, Dana Ford, Sarah Aarthun, Zarifmo Aslamshoyeva, Susannah Palk and Alla Eshchenko, and journalist David Simpson contributed to this report.

วันจันทร์ที่ 22 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Catherine's pregnancy brings back memories of Diana



by Peter Barker
LONDON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- For Britons waiting for the birth of the royal baby, many are able to cast their minds back to the days of Diana and the births of her two sons, now Princes William and Harry.
Social and digital media now make the wait for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge to give birth in a London hospital an event on which everyone can comment.
In the early 1980s, the public relied on four TV channels, BBC radio, and a dozen or so national newspapers to relay the latest news.
But the appetite for news about the royal family on almost any subject is insatiable and the media was careful to keep it fed then as it does now.
Diana had a tough time with the media from the beginning, when her naivety and inexperience at handling the press were exposed.
Before her engagement to Prince Charles was announced she was regularly door stepped by media at her home in central London and posed for back lit photos while still a children's nanny, innocent of the fact that the lighting exposed her shapely legs through the material of her dress.
Editors loved Diana because they could use her beauty to sell their newspapers, and after her marriage Diana was never far from the headlines.
She was better protected from the media once married, and also learnt how to use them -- making sure they knew of photo opportunities which suited her. Later on she used the media in her divorce from Charles.
DIANA & CATHERINE
Parallels exist between Diana and Catherine -- with both women being beautiful and glamorous and getting a lot of media attention, but the media presentation of Catherine is more developed than Diana.
However, the biggest difference may be that very weighty expectations were placed on Diana's shoulders from the very beginning.
While a lot is expected of Catherine, there is also a realization that the demands of media and duty played a part in her early death in a car crash fleeing paparazzi in Paris in 1997.
Diana's first pregnancy was announced in November 1981, just over three months after her wedding to Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Diana gave birth in June 1982 to Prince William at the same St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, which Catherine was admitted to.
Charles was 34 by this time, and there had been mounting calls in the media during the 1970s for him to get married.
His marriage and the swift birth of Prince William afterwards meant that the British royal family now had a successor to the throne that reached for two generations.
William is 32, but there was less pressure on him to get married, and less on Catherine to get pregnant than there had been with Diana.
Public and media felt there were still two generations of the Royal family waiting to succeed to the throne before it would be the turn of any of William's children.
Both mothers-to-be suffered mishaps during the pregnancy. Diana fell down the stairs at the country home of Queen Elizabeth II at Sandringham, while Catherine suffered morning sickness.
But it is the differences in the circumstances of the marriage and of their backgrounds and characters that stand out.
Catherine had a kind of apprenticeship to the role of royal wife with a long period as William's girlfriend.
This gave her chance to decide if she really wanted to be a royal duchess, with experience of the media and of the royal family and life from the inside.
Catherine had also been to university and came from a stable family background. And she was older than Diana when she married -- 29 to Diana's 19.
Diana came from a broken home, where her parents had divorced and fought a bitter custody battle over her and her brother and sisters.
TIMES CHANGING
The marriage of Prince Charles and Diana had come at the end of great social change in Britain through the 1960s and 1970s and was right in the middle of a period of serious economic crisis.
Members of older generations that had fought throw at least one and maybe two world wars were often staunch in their support for the royal family.
But younger generations born after the war had been formed by greater individualism in the 1960s and challenges to social hierarchies. They were more ambivalent about royalty.
For the generation leaving school and beginning their working lives in 1981 and 1982 the royal family and royal babies sometimes seemed a irrelevance from another planet, with nothing to do with real life.
For that generation, unemployment had risen from just over 1 million in 1979 when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won power, to 2.5 million in 1981.
It was to continue rising for another five years to over 3.5 million as the British economy's industrial base shrank and restructured. Old manufacturing jobs disappeared, and with it whole communities and ways of life which had lasted for 150 years were destroyed.
Charles and Diana were to have a second baby, Harry, in September 1984.
The Queen's second oldest son, Prince Andrew, was to marry in 1986 and they in turn had two princesses, Beatrice born in 1988 and Eugenie in 1990.
While many industrial regions of the country were devastated by unemployment, the royal family produced a counter-narrative of marriages and babies that seemed far removed from real life.
Parallels can be made with today, with the British and world economies suffering the after-effects of the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008.
The British economy is still behind its 2007 peak, wage growth is at 0.9 percent against inflation of 2.7 percent.
Catherine and William's royal baby will only be a momentary distraction from the everyday worries of most people.
EVOLVING ROYAL FAMILY
Catherine also has come to symbolize the change of royal institution, partly because she is from an ordinary family, unlike the royalty and aristocrats which the royal family used to marry.
She is also a product of a more equal age for women, and is part of a monarchy that is looking ahead to the next 50 years. This means changes in the way things are done.
Charles Kidd, editor of Debrett's Peerage, told Xinhua, "There have been changes I think, even since Diana's time. Diana did have ladies in waiting -- it is a rather old-fashioned expression."
The ladies in waiting were to help Diana in her duties, but they were also part of a strict social and court hierarchy that seemed remote from the public.
There was a perception that the royal family was distant from real people and issues.
Kidd said, "Kate has chosen to have a rather useful staff around her. Her closest female aide is not called a lady in waiting. Kate has a very useful secretary, whom she shares with her husband. She has a very effective but small staff."
Both Kate and William are able to have a notably more streamlined approach to their royal lives than the Queen or Prince Charles, partly because the bulk of royal duties don't yet fall on their shoulders.
Kidd commented, "Kate's staff is very different to, for instance, Prince Charles' who has a really very large staff because he obviously needs it with his patronages. He takes his role very seriously."

Royal baby: Kate gives birth to boy

A formal bulletin confirming the birth of a baby boy has been displayed at Buckingham Palace
The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby boy, Kensington Palace has announced.
The baby was delivered at 16:24 BST at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, weighing 8lb 6oz.
The Duke of Cambridge said in a statement the couple "could not be happier". He and the duchess will remain in the hospital overnight.
The news has been displayed on an easel in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in line with tradition.
A bulletin - signed by the Queen's gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, who led the medical team that delivered the baby - was taken by a royal aide from St Mary's to the palace under police escort.
The document said: "Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm today.
The official bulletin announcing the birth The official bulletin was signed by members of the medical team at the hospital


"Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well."
When the news was announced, a large cheer went up from well-wishers and journalists outside the hospital while a large crowd greeted the posting of the bulletin outside Buckingham Palace.
The Kensington Palace press release said the Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth of his son, who will be known as the Prince of Cambridge and who is third in line to the throne.
"The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families have been informed and are delighted with the news," it said.
A Kensington Palace spokesman said the names of the baby - who was delivered in the private Lindo Wing of St Mary's - would be announced in due course.
The Prince of Wales, in a separate statement, said he and the Duchess of Cornwall were "overjoyed at the arrival of my first grandchild.
"It is an incredibly special moment for William and Catherine and we are so thrilled for them on the birth of their baby boy," he added.
"Grandparenthood is a unique moment in anyone's life, as countless kind people have told me in recent months, so I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time and we are eagerly looking forward to seeing the baby in the near future."
BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said the duke and duchess spent time bonding with their son before they told the family their news.
Royal doctor Mr Setchell described the new arrival as "wonderful baby, beautiful baby", our correspondent added.
Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking outside Downing Street, hailed the "wonderful news".
"It is an important moment in the life of our nation but I suppose, above all, it's a wonderful moment for a warm and loving couple who've got a brand new baby boy," he added.
He said the Royal Family could "know that a proud nation is celebrating with a very proud and happy couple tonight".

Start Quote

May God bless this family with love, health and happiness in their shared life ahead”
Archbishop of Canterbury
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said: "I am sure that people across Scotland will be absolutely thrilled to hear the news of the birth of a baby boy to the Royal couple and will want to join me in wishing the proud parents many congratulations."
And Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones congratulated the couple "on behalf of the people of Wales" as "they enter their journey into parenthood".
The Archbishop of Canterbury, meanwhile, said he was "delighted to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the arrival of their baby boy".
"Along with millions here and around the world, I share in their joy at this special time," he added.
"May God bless this family with love, health and happiness in their shared life ahead."
Catherine and Prince William had arrived at the hospital at 06:00 BST ahead of a Kensington Palace announcement that she was in the early stages of labour.
The world's media had been camped outside St Mary's for days in anticipation of the birth.

วันเสาร์ที่ 20 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Obama, from Rev. Wright to Trayvon Martin

By , Sunday, July 21, 12:01 AM

President Obama’s comments on Friday about the killing of Trayvon Martin were remarkable in many respects, but not least because of the distance he has traveled since the equally notable speech he delivered in 2008 during the controversy about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
When Obama — then an aspirant to the presidency — spoke in 2008, he sought to translate and explain the grievances, fears and resentments of both whites and blacks concerning the volatile topic of race in America. He spoke as a bridge builder who was trying to give something close to equal weight to the views of each side.
On Friday, he again sought to calm a roiling controversy, but he spoke as an African American who happened to be president, and he spoke to explain why the not-guilty verdict for George Zimmerman has been so difficult for so many African Americans to accept.
Both speeches — one a formal address to an audience at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the other informal remarks delivered in the White House briefing room — displayed Obama’s eloquence and intellectual facility. But the motivations behind them were dramatically different.
In 2008, Obama’s candidacy was rocked by revelations about shocking and racially divisive comments his then-pastor had made from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
For Obama, this was a personal political crisis. He had joined that congregation as a young community organizer. Wright had presided over his marriage to Michelle Robinson and baptized their children. The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from one of Wright’s sermons.
Throughout his campaign, Obama had tried to transcend the issue of race. He was, as the saying went, a post-racial candidate, not an extension of the civil rights generation of black leaders who had preceded him.
In an interview later in the campaign, Obama told me this: “What you had was a moment where all the suspicions and misunderstandings that are embedded in our racial history were suddenly laid bare.”
He knew he could neither look away from the controversy nor escape it. He had to confront it or risk seeing his candidacy destroyed. “If we had not handled the Reverend Wright episode properly,” he said in that interview, “I think we could have lost.”
Jon Favreau, his speechwriter, was tasked with composing a draft but did so only after a lengthy conversation with the candidate. He knew the speech had to be that personal. Obama then took the draft and rewrote it. “This is really complicated,” he told friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in a telephone call late one night as he worked on it. He finished the speech around 2 a.m. on the day he was to deliver it. “I think it’s good,” he told friends that morning.
He talked that day in April 2008 about “the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.” He explained the roots of the anger in the black community and the resentment in the white community and the need for each side to understand the other.
He later told me, “I thought it was very important at that point for me to help translate the experiences both of Reverend Wright, but also how ordinary white Americans might feel in hearing Reverend Wright and how both sets of experiences were an outgrowth of our history and had to be acknowledged and dealt with, instead of just papered over or reduced to a caricature.”
The president was slower to speak in the wake of the verdict in the Zimmerman trial last weekend. He issued a written statement but otherwise remained silent as the rest of the country engaged in a sometimes stormy debate about whether the man who killed Martin should have gone free.
Only the president and perhaps the first lady know the full story of how he came to do and say what he did Friday. He told advisers Thursday that he wanted to speak out but that he did not want to give a formal speech, as he had in 2008. He chose a setting that was understated in the extreme — a surprise appearance before unsuspecting reporters on a Friday afternoon.
Obama faced a personal political crisis when he spoke about Wright. That was not the case Friday. But his comments were far more personal than those he made in 2008. Equally important, his words were not an effort to balance the scales or to give equal weight to the views of those who believe the jury was correct to declare Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter and those outraged by the verdict.
He barely mentioned George Zimmerman. He said he would let legal analysts and talking heads deal with the particulars of the case. Instead, his comments were all about Trayvon Martin and the black experience in America. “I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” he said.
This is, after all, a president who wrote a book — “Dreams From My Father,” about his search for racial identity as the child of a white mother and an absent black African father. He has thought long and hard about the complexities of race in America, and it was clear from what he said Friday that this is something he and his wife talk about privately.
He spoke not just as an African American but also as an African American male — “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago” — in a country where young African American males regularly die from gunshots or are, as he noted had happened to him, subject to being followed while shopping in a department store, no matter how innocently, or who can hear the locks on car doors click when they walk along a street.
He talked about an African American community that has seen “racial disparities” in the application of criminal laws. “Now this isn’t to say that the African American community is naive about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence,” he said. “It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.”
The president is rightly skeptical of calling for a national conversation on race, knowing that however much progress has been made over the past half-century, racial divisions and discrimination do and will persist. What he did was something no other American president could have done — giving voice, in calm and measured terms, to what it means still to be black in America.

วันศุกร์ที่ 19 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Back from Exile, Cambodia’s Opposition Leader Brings Thousands onto the Streets

Sam Rainsy, Kem Sokha
Heng Sinith / AP
Sam Rainsy, President of Cambodia National Rescue Party greets his party supporters during the arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, July 19, 2013.
“I have returned to rescue the country,” Sam Rainsy told the cheering crowd of thousands gathered Friday morning at Phnom Penh Airport. Cambodia’s opposition leader has landed amid a general election campaign in full swing — elections are slated for July 28 — but can be forgiven for missing the first three weeks of campaigning. Convicted in absentia for racial incitement and destruction of property, charges he insists were politically motivated, the 64-year-old has spent the last four years living in exile, mostly in Paris, until a royal pardon facilitated his return as head of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose authoritarian rule has spanned 33 years, has faced increased pressure from the international community to allow a free and fair election. Yet many people remain perplexed by the sudden change of heart that allowed his bitter rival’s return. And no one, least of all Sam Rainsy, believes the looming poll will be clean.
There is little doubt that Prime Minister Hun Sen will soon to extend his time in office by another five years. His Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, has guided the nation from the end of Pol Pot’s murderous Khmer Rouge through a period of stability and guarded prosperity. Yet his position hardly stems from popular assent. The CPP controls every form of governance, including appointing judges, police officials, village headmen and even the National Election Committee. Cambodia is blighted by “systemic corruption so we have to put our house in order,” Sam Rainsy told TIME prior to his return.
(MORE: Cambodia Election Campaign Promises Little Change)
Yet taking on Hun Sen remains a colossal task. The former Khmer Rouge battalion commander, who lost an eye in combat, was first installed as Prime Minister in 1985 after defecting to the Vietnamese, who were occupying Cambodia at the time. The CPP lost the country’s first democratic elections to Prince Norodom Ranariddh in 1993, but the prince decided to share power in the spirit of reconciliation. Such munificence was wasted on Hun Sen, however, who launched a coup four years later to regain his position as Cambodia’s sole leader. Little has changed since this time, and although Khmers regularly go to the polls — 9.6 million are currently registered to vote under the gaze of 7,700-odd domestic and international observers — nothing is left to chance.
Last month, all 28 opposition MPs were expelled from parliament (after the CPP, which holds 90 of 123 seats, decided to disqualify members of the two separate opposition parties that merged to form the CNRP). Local officials, all working under the auspices of the CPP, tightly control voter lists. Anyone thought to support the opposition can be summarily struck off, while legions of “ghost voters” swoop in to sway borderline ballots. Opposition groups allege that 10% of legitimate voters are turned away from polling stations; another 10% of voters are engaged in fraudulent practices that prop up the incumbents. So while the veneer of democracy is served by Sam Rainsy’s presence, “it will not change fundamental flaws in the election process, from the imbalance in the media, flawed voters list, and partial election management body,” says Laura Thornton, Cambodia director for the National Democratic Institute.
Sam Rainsy is under no illusions about what lies ahead. After fleeing Cambodia as a 16-year-old following the murder of his father, he returned in 1992 and briefly held the post of finance minister. A protracted battle with Hun Sen then forced him into exile in 2005, accused of defamation. A royal pardon was issued a year later, but fresh charges arose in 2009 when, in an ill-advised media stunt, he removed six demarcation posts at the Cambodia-Vietnam border — a much disputed frontier. Despite his latest reprieve, he is not registered to either vote or stand as a candidate in the upcoming election, and his role must likely remain that of cheerleader.
(MORE: In Cambodia, China Fuels Deadly Illegal Logging Trade)
As with all elections, the Fourth Estate has a huge roll to play in Cambodia this month, and, through nepotism or intimidation, virtually all media back the CPP. Earlier this month, Hun Sen banned foreign media broadcasts in the country, but made a swift U-turn amid an international uproar. Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are the only Khmer-language media that carry opposition views. Even Sam Rainsy’s return is receiving minimal coverage in Khmer language press, according to Thornton.
Hun Sen has meanwhile embraced alarmist rhetoric — warning of an “internal war and external war” and, curiously, of an epidemic of collapsing bridges should the opposition triumph. So why did Hun Sen ask King Norodom Sihamoni to allow Sam Rainsy’s return? A few say that the death of Hun Sen’s father, Hun Neang, on July 12 at the age of 89, prompted some soul-searching. But the most likely answer is aid. The U.S. has been vocal in calling for free and fair elections, and human rights dominated conversation when President Barack Obama arrived in Phnom Penh for frosty talks in November. Cambodia has a distinct aid culture — there are currently 2,465 registered nongovernmental organizations and associations, according to the Ministry of the Interior, giving one of the highest charity per capita rates in the world. USAID foreign assistance to Cambodia amounted to $76 million in 2012, and it is due to slightly increase this year.The freezing of these funds will be hugely unpopular domestically.
Sam Rainsy’s combative rhetoric will undoubtedly enthrall in the 10 days until polling, and is very likely get him into fresh trouble on the way. CNRP officials tell TIME that half-a-million people lined the street from the airport to Freedom Park where he addressed the crowd, and that the 10-mile journey took five hours. Local media heralded the homecoming as possibly the largest opposition rally the country has ever seen. “I think we are entering a new phrase in Cambodia history; it is the beginning of something like the Arab Spring,” Sam Rainsy told TIME by phone from Phnom Penh on Friday evening. Despite this optimism, huge barriers must first be overcome before democracy in Cambodia is anything more than a cynical façade.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/07/19/back-from-exile-cambodias-opposition-leader-brings-thousands-onto-the-streets/#ixzz2ZZ9vo5CX

วันพุธที่ 10 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556

Why Bad News Elsewhere Is Good News for China


China's Gloating
Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg / Getty Images
A paramilitary police officer stands guard in front of a portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate at night in Beijing, March 2, 2013
China‘s appearance in international headlines thus far 2013 has often been because of quality of life issues. The year began with reports of unusually high smog levels in Beijing and images of massive numbers of dead pigs clogging Shanghai waterways.  Next came stories of a run on milk powder supplies in Hong Kong, triggered by ongoing fears over tainted baby formula on the mainland.  And now comes a study suggesting that simply breathing the foul air of North China can shorten your life expectancy by more than five years.  Given the extent to which China’s leaders have based their legitimacy on the notion that they are making life better and better for ordinary Chinese people, it’s worth asking whether this rash of bad news could have an impact on a different sort of life expectancy issue: that of China’s Communist Party.
This organization’s ability to stay alive and kicking more than two decades after the Berlin Wall’s collapse – and then the implosion of the Soviet Union, which allegedly signaled the start of a global post-Communist era – has long been a source of intense speculation and fascination.  Could it be that the Party’s ability to live on borrowed time is finally running out?  If the only sort of bad news that mattered were the domestic kind, it would be tempting to say: Yes.  In fact, though, another kind of bad news, which perversely tends to be good news for China’s leaders, has also been abundant this year. I mean news of chaos and misgovernment in other countries.
(Click here to read TIME’s cover story on how China sees the world)
China’s leaders, we need to remember, have long pursued a multi-pronged strategy to defend the status quo.  They have cracked down hard on organized forms of opposition, while allowing greater individual freedom in some domains.  They have filled their speeches and the airwaves with depictions of good things that the government is doing, such as raising China’s stature in the global arena, improving living standards, developing an impressive transportation infrastructure, and maintaining stability.  But in a subtler and more cynical fashion, they have gone to great lengths to highlight troubling developments in other parts of the world.  This is done to discourage people from viewing foreign countries as potential models for emulation and to encourage them to wonder whether a change in how China is governed might result in the country spiraling off in a disturbing direction. In the 1990s, for example, much was made of how badly the former Yugoslavia and Russia fared, while more successful post-Communist states were largely ignored.
The years 2011 and 2012 were challenging for the story-telling side of this strategy. The July 2011 high speed rail crash near Wenzhou took some of the bloom off stories of China’s wondrous infrastructure moves.  Food scares inspired doubts about whether living standards can be said to improve when you worry about what you eat.  The Bo Xilai scandal undermined the idea that intense factional struggles within the elite, of the sort that created such havoc during Mao’s day, are a thing of the past.  And on the international front, the Jasmine risings in North Africa and the Middle East and moves toward democracy in Burma caused the same kinds of jitters among Chinese leaders that the Color Revolutions had earlier in this century.
The first half of this year has been a mixed bag on the domestic side.  There have been plenty of stories, including the pollution reports, which are hard to fit into the feel-good narratives beloved by the government.  Still, the orderliness of the transition of power, which began in November with the announcement of a new standing committee of the Politburo and ended with Xi Jinping replacing Hu Jintao as China’s President this March, has dampened last year’s concern about factional struggles as a source of instability.
(MORE: 10 Reasons Not to Go Locavore in China)
Where the opening months of 2013 have been less of a mixed bag for China’s leaders has been in the international arena.  Xi hasn’t accomplished much in diplomatic terms with his trips to foreign countries, but when it comes to events taking place in other parts of the world, there has been plenty of just the kind of bad news that is music to the ears of China’s leaders.
The latest reports out of Burma have been of inter-ethnic violence rather than democratization.  The leaks by Edward Snowden, meanwhile, have been a godsend for China’s leaders.  His revelations about American spying operations have made it harder for Washington to take the high ground with Beijing on the issue of hacking.  And his accounts of domestic surveillance operations undermine the idea that the only Big Brother states out there are ones that don’t hold elections.
Last but far from least, there is the news out of Egypt. When dictators began to fall in North Africa and the Middle East, Chinese official news organs were determined to frame the issue of what was happening in the region less in terms of whether democracy would come to formerly authoritarian lands, than in terms of whether once stable nations would descend into chaos.  Recent events in Cairo have, alas, given the Chinese authorities just the sorts of images they need to support the notion that this was at least one, if not necessarily the most important or only, question to ask.
When it comes to the life expectancy of individuals, as the recent report on North China reminds us, we need to take into account not just what the people in question are doing but also the kind of world in which they are living.  The same rule applies to the survival of the Chinese Communist Party, with the key difference that the worse the news about the wider world is, the longer it is likely to keep defying the odds and sticking around.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine and the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, an updated edition of which has just been published.