Hello! I’m hoping that you had a fantastic start to the new year, and that you and everyone around you is safe amid this new Omicron-led wave of COVID-19 cases spreading across the world.
Last two years have taught us, among many other things, that predicting or forecasting the future is a futile exercise. So, I’m not going to do that. But it’s rather safe to talk about events that are very much scheduled to happen. Last week, we reviewed the ups and downs of 2021 in global affairs. This week’s edition looks at what awaits us this year.
But we’re also talking about the “old man” of Kazakhstan, and what’s happening in the oil-rich and strategically vital nation.
Before we begin: I’m aware that some of you didn’t receive the newsletter in your primary inbox over the last few weeks. The emails went into the promotions or spam folders instead. This has been a common problem with a lot of newsletters, as highlighted before. While there’s currently no way to ensure these emails land in your primary inbox, I’d like to recommend a popular fix for this problem: manually moving these emails into the primary inbox a few times when possible. Empirical evidence supports this jugaad. Once again, I really want to thank you all for your patience with this.
Let’s get started now.
This day that year
2001: John Kufuor was sworn-in as Ghanaian president in what was the African nation’s first peaceful transition of power.
1979: Pol Pot and other senior government leaders of the Khmer Rouge fled Cambodian capital Phnom Penh amid Vietnamese invasion — effectively ousting the regime. A pro-Vietnamese People's Republic of Kampuchea was established.
2022 — the schedule
Chinese capital Beijing will host the Winter Olympics — becoming the first city to host both the Summer (in 2008) and Winter Olympic games. Australia and the United States lead a diplomatic boycott of the games (European nations are facing pressure to do that same) due to the human rights situation there, but particularly because of the Uyghur genocide.
Queen Elizabeth II will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee (marking 70 years on the throne) on February 6. No other British monarch has reigned that long.
South Koreans will vote in the presidential. President Moon Jae-in cannot seek re-election, but his party’s candidate is currently leading in the opinion polls.
Five Indian states, including the most populous Uttar Pradesh, will head for provincial elections in the February-March timeline. The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has more than three times the population of France – which will head for presidential polls in April. President Emmanuel Macron is hoping to win another term in office. But centrist Macron is expected to face a tough challenge from far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and centre-right candidate Valérie Pécresse.
Australians will vote in the parliamentary election at some point in the first half of this year.
Then, there’s a big presidential election in the Philippines. Bound by a single six-year tenure as mandated by the constitution, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will not be contesting.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been heavily criticised for poorly handling the COVID-19 pandemic and his anti-vaccination approach, will be fighting to win a second term. I’m saying “fighting” because former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is already leading him by 10 percentage points in opinion polls – even before a formal announcement that he’s contesting.
The Democratic Party has a slim majority in the US House of Representatives (Lower House) and a de-facto majority in the Senate (Upper House). That might change in the November midterm elections. About 57.1 percent respondents surveyed by FiveThirtyEight (dynamic figures) disapprove of Biden’s work. That, coupled with a drawn-out post-pandemic economic recovery might just give the Republicans a majority in the Congress. That, in turn, may become a platform for Donald Trump, who still enjoys massive support within the party, to launch his 2024 presidential election campaign.
China’s communist party will hold its crucial 20th National Congress later this year. The National Congress is a big event that happens every five years. That’s where the party chooses its next leadership. This time it’s bigger. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s current (second) term is supposed to end in 2023 and he is widely expected to seek an unprecedented third term at this event. The two-term limit on the presidency was removed in 2018, effectively allowing Xi to remain in power for life (as long as the move is ratified by the party).
Read more: Xi says 2022 party congress will be ‘major event’ for China's politics
‘Old man, out!’
Battling major nationwide anti-government protests, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced on January 7 that he had authorised security forces to “fire without warning” at protestors. Since the protests started on January 2, more than 40 people including security personnel have been killed amid the bloody crackdown. Over a thousand people are estimated to have been injured and at least 2,300 demonstrators have been arrested.
The sudden protests were triggered in the western city of Zhanaozen on January 2 after the government announced a hike in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) price. These demonstrations quickly spread across the country.
Tokayev claimed that “20,000 bandits” had attacked Almaty — the country’s main city. He had previously claimed that foreign-trained “terrorists” were behind the protests, but failed to provide any evidence.
Many angry protesters have been reportedly chanting “Shal ket”, which translates to: “Old man, out!” This “old man” is a reference to 81-year-old former president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Remember that name. We’ll come back to it later.
Tokayev’s announcement of security personnel being allowed to fire at protesters without warning came a day after a peacekeeping force comprising 2,500 personnel from Russia and other former Soviet bloc nations arrived to help control the situation. This temporary peacekeeping mission, rather, a military intervention, managed by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was requested by the Kazakh authorities themselves earlier this week.
What is the CSTO?
It’s an intergovernmental military alliance (similar to NATO or a mini-Warsaw Pact). It comprises select ex-Soviet bloc nations mainly from Central Asia: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. The primary goal is to ensure mutual security and assist each other in times of security-related crisis. Signatories to the CSTO cannot join other military alliances. Russia is effectively the boss.
Tokayev’s response
The government withdrew the fuel price hike saying that caps will be restored for six months. However, this did not stop the protests which had by then moved on to seeking redressals for other grievances. For decades, Kazakhs have been angry about corruption and inequality in their oil-rich nation. These grievances had led to some protests earlier, but had never reached this level. In an authoritarian and surveillance state like Kazakhstan, it’s difficult to put together large coordinated protests against the government and against someone like Nazarbayev.
As the protests spread, Tokayev declared a nationwide state of emergency until January 19. Prime Minister Askar Mamin’s Cabinet was also nudged to resign (unlike many Commonwealth nations where the prime minister is the real decision maker, in Kazakhstan, executive powers are in the hands of the president). None of that has worked so far.
Kazakhstan is oil-rich and huge. It’s the ninth largest country and the largest landlocked nation. It has Russia to its north, other central Asian nations to its south, China to its south-east and the Caspian Sea to its south-west. But it’s home to only 19 million people.
The Nazarbayev context
Nazarbayev became the first president of Kazakhstan when the country gained independence during the Soviet Union’s collapse. He was the only candidate in the 1991 presidential election and secured 98 percent of the votes. While the Kazakh constitution dictates that a president cannot serve more than two five-year terms in office, it also specifically says that this term limit is not applicable to the first president of the republic (Nazarbayev). He was re-elected in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2015 – securing more than 80 percent votes every time. But these elections have been criticised for being neither free nor fair. Amid anti-government protests, Nazarbayev resigned in 2019. But he anointed Tokayev as his successor who won the 2019 snap election. Even under Tokayev, Kazakhstan has remained authoritarian and is ranked 128th out of 167 in The Economist’s Democracy Index. But it’s widely believed that Nazarbayev and his family retain ultimate control of the nation. In fact, Nazarbayev continued to chair the important Security Council until he was removed by Tokayev as a knee-jerk reaction to the protests. Over the past three decades, the Kazakh government tried developing a personality cult around Nazarbayev. The country’s capital Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) is dedicated to and named after Nazarbayev.
The country is also strategically important. As a former Soviet bloc and second-most Russian speaking nation, it sits in Russia’s sphere of influence. In fact, in 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin went as far as claiming that “Kazakhs had never had statehood”. And of course, it has a lot of oil. The Baikonur Cosmodrome (spaceport) has also been leased to Russia until 2050.
Yet, Nazarbayev had to tread a fine line over the past 30 years. Kazakhs were actually a minority within Kazakhstan when the country became independent. So Nazarbayev had at times resorted to nationalism to keep the Russian influence at bay. Still, Kazakhstan cannot antagonise Russia, even as it seeks cooperation with the West and their energy companies.
The reason Russia-led CSTO agreed to intervene is to ensure that no other global power, particularly the US, gets a foothold in Kazakhstan. Russia doesn’t want US influence in a nation at its doorstep. Moscow’s attempts to stop this have been seen in Belarus and Ukraine. From Putin’s point of view, the protests in Kazakhstan could not have come at a worse time. Russia is already locked in a tense situation along its western border with Ukraine. The last thing the Kremlin would want is another crisis at its southern border with Kazakhstan.
Pin it on the map
Time for some head scratching: This satellite image shows a large dam on a river in China. Since 2012, it has been the world's largest power station by installed capacity (22,500 MW). What is the name of the dam and where is it located?
The correct answer is at the bottom.
What else this week?
Million cases in a day
The US reported one million (10 lakh) new COVID-19 cases during the 24-hour period on January 3 — becoming the first country to breach the million-mark in daily infections. This is also the highest number of novel coronavirus cases (1,080,211) recorded in a day anywhere in the world.
Government modelling showed that about 59 percent of all active cases in the country for the week ending December 25 were caused by the Omicron variant.
About 62 percent of the population in the US had been administered two doses by January 4, according to data compiled by Our World in Data. Another 12 percent had been partly vaccinated.
China battles COVID-19 ahead of Winter Olympics
China, which claimed to have steered clear of the pandemic’s worst impact for almost two years, is now battling a possible resurgence. The world’s most populous nation had reported just over 102,000 COVID-19 cases over the first two years of the pandemic – though the figure has been widely disputed by external observers.
Xi’an, a city of 13 million people, was put under a strict lockdown in the second half of December after nearly 150 cases were reported there since December 9. How strict? Only one person per household was allowed to leave the house every two days only to purchase essentials.
Now, authorities have locked down a much smaller town of Yuzhou (population of 1.2 million) after three asymptomatic cases were found there. Rules are similar: people can only step out to buy essentials and everything else, including public transport, has been closed.
This ‘zero-COVID’ strategy (which Australia and New Zealand also walked back on) is being criticised. The question is if the exercise is tenable? Reports have emerged of food shortages and hospital delays leading to fatalities. The Guardian reported, citing social media posts which are strictly monitored by Chinese authorities, that a “significant number of residents have posted about their concerns and anxieties” — though “broad support” for the lockdown remains. The report suggests that neighbours have started bartering cigarettes and personal belongings for food.
Authorities in China are implementing the strictest measures because they want to avoid a COVID-19 wave at all costs. Beijing, the country’s capital, is set to host the Winter Olympics in less than a month. A big surge in cases now would disrupt the games and cause a major embarrassment to the government.
BBC's Tessa Wong has written about the 'messy cost of China's Covid lockdown playbook' here.
Will Finland join NATO?
Finland retains its option of joining the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin emphasised in her New Year’s message.
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö also said in his New Year’s address to the nation that “Finland’s room to manoeuvre and freedom of choice also include the possibility of military alignment and of applying for NATO membership, should we ourselves so decide. NATO’s business is the so-called Open Door policy, the continuance of which has been repeatedly confirmed to Finland, also publicly.”
This is big. Though Finland wasn’t in the Soviet bloc, it had to look at Moscow while making major decisions related to defence during the Cold War. The Scandinavian nation shares a very long border with Russia. Moscow sees NATO as a threat and has been working hard (like in the case of Ukraine) to ensure that countries situated either within its sphere of influence, or in its neighbourhood, do not join the military alliance. The main reason we are witnessing the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is because Russia wants to ensure that the US and NATO stay away from its western borders.
Earlier in December too, Niinistö had said that it is NATO and applicant nations that decide on membership, not a third party (hinting at Russia). Niinistö was responding to a question from news agency STT about what he thought about Russian President Putin’s proposal for Moscow getting legal guarantees that the alliance won’t expand eastwards.
Now wonder, Russian foreign ministry official Maria Zakharova warned that Finland’s (and Sweden’s) NATO membership would have “grave political and military consequences”.
Interesting stuff
No-vax Djokovic?
Not sure if it’s interesting or bizarre. Tennis world number one Novak Djokovic remains in Australian immigration detention after officials at the Melbourne airport revoked the visa he had been granted earlier based on a medical exemption from the country’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement. He had arrived to participate in the Australian Open. It’s unclear if his lawyers will be successful in overturning the Australian immigration’s decision in the coming days. If he isn’t let in, he would miss a chance to win a record-setting 21st Grand Slam.
Two other players who had entered the country under the same exemption are also being investigated, Reuters reported.
While vaccines are not yet mandatory in Australia, they are needed for specific activities. Djokovic was required to prove he was vaccinated, or make a case for getting an exemption from the rule. The decision to grant the 34-year-old an exemption was met with public anger. The Serb has not how he managed to get an exemption (which is now being challenged). He hasn’t clearly stated if he is vaccinated against COVID-19 or not. Though he had earlier publicly criticised mandatory vaccinations.
‘Pin it on the map’ answer: The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China.
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