Hello! I hope you had a great week (and you’re doing well despite the heat wave, if you are in certain parts of Europe). There’s lots happening across the world. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the last member of the Rajapaksa clan hanging onto power, has resigned and fled Sri Lanka. But he has left behind a politically and economically unstable island nation of 22 million people.
Meanwhile, United States President Joe Biden is on consequential tour of West Asia, Rishi Sunak is leading the race (so far) to become the United Kingdom’s next prime minister, Pakistan is nearing resumption of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s resignation has been rejected by the president and there’s a bit about India’s population. Let’s get started.
This day that year
2016: Factions of the Turkish Armed Forces attempted a coup d'état. However, forces loyal to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — and supporters galvanised into action by the president on live news television — blocked the attempt. More than 300 people were killed and around 2,100 others were injured overnight. The Turkish government alleged that the coup leaders were connected to the Gülen movement. A crackdown was launched and thousands of soldiers, judges, education staff suspected of being connected to the Gülen movement were suspended, fired and/or detained.
2006: Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Noah Glass launched online microblogging service Twitter. It has since become an online public square and had just under 230 million daily active users in Q1 2022.
Gota gone
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned this week, after landing in Singapore. The Speaker of the country’s parliament confirmed that he had accepted the resignation letter Rajapaksa had sent through email. Singapore, however, is unlikely to be his final destination. It’s also unclear as to which country will provide him asylum.
Gotabaya was the last of the Rajapaksa clan to be holding onto power. Him fleeing marks the fall of the Rajapaksa dynasty.
Rajapaksa had earlier this week used a Sri Lankan military aircraft to flee to the Maldives, where the government of in Malé faced backlash from its own people for letting the Sri Lankan president fly in at a time when his country is in severe economic and political crisis.
Gotabaya, often shortened to “Gota”, fled to the Maldives days after protesters stormed his official residence and his secretariat. Images and videos of protesters jumping on a bed, swimming in his pool and cooking in his courtyard have gone viral.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe — whose party managed to win just one of the 196 seats up for polls in the last parliamentary election — was made the ‘acting president’. Wickremesinghe had also been appointed as the prime minister by Gotabaya in May. Currently, Wickremesinghe is both the acting president as well as the prime minister. A state of emergency has been imposed and the acting president has asked the military to do whatever it takes to restore law and order. But he has said that he’ll resign as the prime minister to make way for an all-party government (he hasn’t so far). Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has questioned the legality of Wickremesinghe being appointed the acting president. Premadasa has also said that he’s willing to take over the presidency — election for which is scheduled to happen in the coming week.
Protesters want Wickremesinghe to quit too and had occupied his office and official residence. Some of them also torched his private residence over the weekend.
Read more: As Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksas flee, Pandora Papers reveal ties to UAE properties
What happens to the bailout talks? The bailout negotiations “bankrupt” Sri Lanka is having with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have continued and will go on. However, political stability is a prerequisite. You need a government that enjoys the confidence of the people to sign on to a piece of paper having great importance. The sooner Sri Lanka manages to get a stable and functional government, the quicker the bailout negotiations will happen.
Gotabaya fleeing Sri Lanka, former president and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa having to promise the Supreme Court that they won’t leave the country until a plea filed against them is heard, and the offices and the official residences of the president and the prime minister being overrun by protesters was unimaginable even six months ago. They once ruled the country with an iron fist. But things have changed very quickly. The Rajapaksas — whose politics thrived on ethnic Sinhala nationalism — were once considered heroes by many, even though there were calls for them to be held accountable for the human rights violations that had taken place during the civil war which was brought to an end during their regime. Now they have been forced to quit and flee by the same electorate. Citizens from all communities — Catholics, Muslims, Tamils and the Sinhalas — are protesting together to ensure the Rajapaksa clan’s ouster. These are seemingly self-driven mass protests with the opposition parties playing a very limited role. After all, they are all affected by the economic crisis. There’s perhaps a big lesson politicians and the people of other South Asian nations can draw from this: when the economy goes downhill, communal and vitriolic politics doesn’t help hold power. In some ways, this reminds me of the phrase coined by former US president Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid”.
What else?
Biden in West Asia
US President Biden will meet leaders of the Arab world, including Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and de-facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah on July 15. This will be the first time Biden will meet the Saudi crown prince since becoming the US president. During his presidential campaign, Biden had promised to turn Saudi Arabia into an international pariah state over repeated cases of human rights violations — and particularly over the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi allegedly by Saudi agents. US intelligence has concluded that the crown prince approved Khashoggi’s murder, but the next-in-line to the Saudi throne has denies involvement.
Biden’s meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, often shortened to MBS, will be closely watched. Meeting the crown prince is unacceptable to some even within Biden’s own Democratic Party.
When asked during a press conference on July 14 about what he’ll say to MBS about the Khashoggi murder and other human rights practices, Biden said: “my views on Khashoggi have — they’ve been absolutely, positively clear. And I have never been quiet about talking about human rights.”
“I will bring up — I always bring up human rights. I always bring up human rights. But my position on Khashoggi has been so clear. If anyone doesn’t understand it in Saudi Arabia and everywhere else, then they haven’t been around for a while,” Biden added.
The American president will discuss a range of issues with leaders of Arab nations, including energy supply and security cooperation. In fact, energy supply is one of the main reasons why the Biden administration had to do a U-turn on their Saudi policy – moving from isolating Riyadh to engaging with it.
However, Biden has sought to highlight that the reason he’s travelling to West Asia is “much broader”. “It’s to promote US interests — promote US interests in a way that I think we have an opportunity to reassert what I think we made a mistake of walking away from: our influence in the Middle East,” the president said.
But before flying to Jeddah, Biden will stopover in West Bank to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinians want the Biden administration to do more in restarting peace negotiations with Israel.
“I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there. It’s my aim to keep it that way,” Biden wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post ahead of his trip to West Asia, explaining its importance. Read the piece here.
Other highlights of the tour:
US, Israel commit to preventing Iran from acquiring nukes
US President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a joint declaration committing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. According to this declaration signed in Jerusalem, the US committed to “use all elements of its national power” to ensure that Iran doesn’t acquire nuclear weapons. This is being seen more as a reaffirmation of the US’ commitment towards Israel. Negotiations between Iran and the West to return to the 2015 nuclear deal have been stuck for many months now. Tehran has always insisted that its nuclear programme is peaceful and it does not intend to build nuclear weapons. While Israel is widely believed to be possessing its own nuclear warheads, Tel Aviv has never publicly acknowledged or confirmed this.
I2U2 meet
Leaders of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the US convened for the first leaders’ meeting of the ‘I2U2’. The I2U2 is a new grouping and has been described by some as the West Asian ‘Quad’. The meeting focused on the food security crisis and clean energy; according to a joint statement. The leaders extended support for the Abraham Accords and “other peace and normalisation arrangements” with Israel and agreed that these are the first steps in a “long-term strategic partnership to promote initiatives and investments that improve the movement of people and goods across hemispheres, and increase sustainability and resilience through collaborative science and technology partnerships”.
UK PM race
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer (basically, the finance minister) Rishi Sunak is leading the race to become the leader of the ruling Conservative Party — and as consequence, the next UK prime minister. Sunak is followed by former women and equalities minister Penny Mordaunt and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Sunak is expected to reach the final run-off stage anyway. But an opinion poll suggests that Mordaunt has a greater chance of winning the head-to-head battle if she makes it to the final round. The election of acting UK PM Boris Johnson’s successor is expected to take a few weeks. The candidates will also participate in multiple live television debates.
India to become most populous country by 2023
India’s population is set to overtake that of China next year, the United Nations said on World Population Day (July 11). At that point, both China and India will have 1.4 million people.
The global population would reach the eight billion-mark by November this year. It is, however, growing at its slowest rate since 1950. The UN has projected that the world’s population could reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050. It will peak at 10.4 billion during the 2080s and will remain at that level until the turn of the century.
Population growth remains uneven across the world, with higher growth rates in developing nations and declining population in the most developed economies. The global life expectancy at birth fell to 71 years in 2021 as compared to 72.9 in 2019, mainly as an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pakistan nears IMF bailout
The IMF has said that it has reached a staff-level agreement with the Pakistani government for the revival of a bailout plan that will help the country alleviate some of its economic struggles. If approved, the plan could allow disbursement of $1.17 billion to Pakistan which is nearing a balance of payments crisis. The country’s foreign currency reserves have reportedly fallen to $9.8 billion, which would be enough for just over a month of imports. The bailout was announced in 2019 but was stopped by the IMF when the previous Imran Khan government failed to meet some of the loan conditions such as doing away with certain subsidies.
Draghi offers to resign
Mario Draghi offered his resignation as Italy’s prime minister on July 14 after his government lost support of the populist Five Star movement in a confidence vote. His resignation was rejected by President Sergio Mattarella who asked Draghi to address parliament and see if he can still command a majority. Draghi, called ‘Super Mario’ by his supporters for his role in combatting the Eurozone crisis, has led a unity government since February 2021. The former chief of the European Central Bank had been tasked by the president to run the government amid a political logjam during the COVID-19 pandemic and linked economic uncertainty. If the impasse is not resolved, the president could dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections.
Interesting stuff
“[Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo] Abe will be remembered as a politician who adamantly sought to transform Japanese politics. As well as promoting the so-called ‘Abe doctrine’ — the move away from six decades of state pacifism, Abe also sought to boost Japan’s international presence.” Saori Shibata, Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, writes in The Conversation about Abe’s disputed legacy. Read the piece here.
“People naturally look for patterns in the world. Experience something once, especially if that experience is traumatic, and you will start to see it everywhere.” The New York Times’ Max Fisher has written about why people across the world may be feeling gloomy about their future even though data suggests that humankind is better off today on many parameters. Read the full piece here.
The US — the largest carbon emitter over time — has caused more than $1.9 trillion in climate damage to developing nations between 1990 and 2014, according to a new study by Dartmouth College scientists. This includes $310 billion in damage to Brazil, $257 billion to India, $124 billion to Indonesia, $104 billion to Venezuela and $74 billion to Nigeria. However, the US’ own carbon emissions have benefited the country by more than $183 billion, the study suggests. These findings are likely to add to the growing pressure on the ‘Global North’ to provide climate reparations to the ‘Global South’. Read the Associated Press’ story here and the study published in the Climate Change journal here.
This was the first of the many images NASA released this week from its new James Webb Space Telescope. This picture, showing thousands of galaxies, is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken. The space telescope was able to capture it in one day’s work (similar deep field images from Hubble can take many weeks).
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