65% of Thai firms to maintain or increase employment in 2021: survey
ColumnsFeb 17. 2021Kristoffer Paludan, Regional Director of Michael Page Thailand
By THE NATION
Hiring by companies dipped 37 per cent in 2020 during the first Covid-19 wave but optimism is starting to show, with 33 per cent of firms looking to increase their headcount and 32 per cent saying they would maintain the status quo in 2021, the Talent Trends 2021 Report by professional recruitment services Michael Page Thailand showed on Tuesday.
“Like other markets in the region, Thailand’s technology sector stayed afloat and resilient, particularly for e-commerce and other Internet-based businesses,” regional director Kristoffer Paludan said.
“Food production, too, proved to be a bright spot, which in turn carried other associated industries, such as chemical, agriculture, and agritech.”
In view of the economic demands, the sectors earmarked for highest hiring are industrial/manufacturing, fast moving consumer goods, technology & telecommunications, healthcare/pharmaceutical and retail.
According to the report, Covid-19 has also served to hasten adoption of digitisation. Over the course of the year, companies in Thailand have adapted to digitisation demands “within impressively short time frames”. Technologies such as virtualisation and cloud access have allowed many businesses to get as close to business as usual as possible.
The report also said 67 per cent of employed technology professionals in Thailand anticipated looking for new opportunities in 2021, while another 31 per cent are passively open to new ones, suggesting increased employment activity.
Considering the competition for high-potential tech professionals, Paludan advises: “Candidates move jobs primarily due to the dynamic nature of the business, which is constantly adapting to changing market demands and practices. These are agile organisations that provide a steep learning curve and the opportunity for regional mandates in the medium-to-long term.”
As a viable option to bridge skill gaps arising from their move to recover in 2021, 42 per cent of companies in Thailand cited their continued investment in employees by providing training to upskill the workforce, while 46 per cent turned to the use of automation for basic processes.
Thai professionals have also been empowered with the wealth of information available to them when considering a new job offer. Some 40 per cent of the study’s respondents claimed they did extensive research on the company before applying for a job.
ColumnsFeb 16. 2021Ms. Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
By Chloé Bernadaux Special to The Nation
“2020 has been a disastrous year for human rights in Europe,” commented Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, at a speech in front of the Council of Europe at the end of last year.
In an unprecedented fashion, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a tremendous increase in human rights violations in 2020 throughout the world. According to Reporters Without Borders’ tracker 19 mapping human rights cases of abuse worldwide, Europe is no exception to the rule. While it contains one of the most advanced human rights protection systems globally, the old continent has seen itself prey to governmental and media attempts to erode democracy and human rights.
Infringement to human rights peaked last March in Hungary when President Viktor Orbán used the pandemic to seize unlimited power through an emergency law granting him absolute power to suspend rules, bypass the parliament and adopt decrees, without any judicial oversight. This law also offered the Hungarian prime minister the ability to jail journalists and activists criticising his policies under the pretext of spreading disinformation.
While Hungary arguably remains a specific case within Europe for its long-standing record of human rights violations, the region indicates some worrying trends in its ability to protect the rights encompassed in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Degradation of rights protection in Covid era
The response to the Covid-19 pandemic by member states of the Council of Europe has not remained undisputed as far as the protection of fundamental freedoms is concerned. Many European states declared a state of emergency. They introduced a wide range of legal measures that derogate from their internal constitutional laws and the European Convention on Human Rights.
While these measures have undeniably affected society’s normal functioning and people’s way of life, the Convention itself does not preclude derogations from the obligations outlined in emergency times. Article 15 indicates that derogations from obligations under the Convention are allowed “in time of war and other public emergencies threatening the life of the nation”. Nevertheless, this clause remains valid “to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law”. Until today, the application of Article 15 had remained confined to situations of political violence and terrorism.
As Europe faced the second wave of the virus, many member states reintroduced states of emergency. These typically allow temporary limitations to individual rights, such as freedom of movement under Article 45 of the Convention, freedom of assembly and association under Article 12, as well as private life under Article 7.
Nevertheless, in its “Covid-19: Toolkit for member States” published last April, the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, posed limits to the ability of states to derogate from the Convention’s obligations. Any derogation must have “a clear basis in domestic law” to prevent arbitrariness and cannot justify any action that goes against the “essential requirements of lawfulness and proportionality” set out in the Convention. The common understanding is that the pandemic’s exceptional circumstances can uphold some rights, yet governments shall deploy substantial efforts to preserve them.
However, such efforts towards human rights protection from national authorities have failed to materialise across Europe.
A worrying trend took shape in the increasing deficit of transparency from governmental authorities, including mandatory detentions and technological surveillance, as observed in Ireland. To add, civil society organisations in several member states expressed concerns over police misconduct during protests. Alarming instances of racism have also been observable, as exemplified by the violent beating of a black man in front of his house by two French police officers in Paris.
Covid-19 exposes structural vulnerabilities of Europe’s social democracies
The coronavirus-related health challenges have provided certain actors and authorities with a pretext to infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms. Such a context dominated by the discourse on an “emergency” situation with an exceptional character requires increased attentiveness to human rights violations.
Vulnerable populations, such as migrants, refugees, racial minorities, the homeless, elders, women, disabled people, and children, have found themselves on the frontline of these violations. Arguably, the Covid-19 pandemic did not create, yet only laid bare structural challenges, and fragilities of Europe’s democracies, highlighted by the glaring social inequalities which deepened across the continent.
For instance, women have been significantly impacted by governmental responses to the pandemic, which further exacerbated gender violence and inequality. According to a study requested by the European parliament, across Europe, calls to domestic violence outlines have increased by 20-60 per cent.
Furthermore, the coronavirus response also disproportionately impacted disadvantaged children across member states by infringing on the fundamental right to education. A report by Save the Children shows that in Romania, 23 per cent of vulnerable families could not purchase medicines for their children. In Spain, emergency food measures could only reach half of the children normally provided with school meals during the crisis.
Older people have also been particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus lockdown measures because of their social settings which isolated them further from their families and communities. Shortages in the healthcare sector and isolation of elders have increased the risk of abuse, with data from the UK suggesting a 37 per cent rise in the country.
Several asylum-seekers have also been unlawfully rejected at EU borders and sent back to their home countries, violating the 1951 Refugee Convention. To add, the inadequacy of living conditions and overcrowding in detention centres raised alarming concerns. Asylum seekers in Italy launched a hunger strike to protest against the spread of the virus in the centre, inadequately equipped to respond to the health crisis. In Belgium, some centres released detainees without any assistance.
Suppose the issues listed above receive the attention they deserve. In that case, the Covid-19 pandemic could provide an opportunity to formulate a wake-up call for increased social inclusion across European countries, with solidarity at the heart of its response. Recalling Mahatma Gandhi’s words, it is today more compelling than ever to bear in mind that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”.
Empowering citizen base and improving social ‘bonding’ for rights protection
As highlighted in the November Bulletin by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, local authorities and grassroots organisations have played a prominent role in supporting society’s most vulnerable groups.
Local and regional authorities appeared to have taken up an unprecedented responsibility in providing access to services and information directed towards certain societal groups on a daily basis. The bulletin also noted that member states with greater decentralisation of responsibilities had proven better-equipped authorities to tackle the pandemic’s health challenges.
The voluntary sector also took a primary seat in proactively advocating for the rights and interests of the diverse marginalised groups within society and increased its role as an essential social service provider. Altogether, these structures have proven uniquely capable of strengthening the citizen base at its core and instilling a sense of solidarity within communities.
Robert Putnam, in his sociological study “Bowling alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, suggests that increased social capital and trust within society generates adequate civil engagement, necessary for the healthy functioning of democracies.
Further, according to Putnam, increased trust and civic engagement in society go hand in hand with the efficient protection of freedom and human rights. “Far from being incompatible, liberty and fraternity are mutually supportive,” notes Putnam, in his study demonstrating the strong positive correlation between equality and bonding social capital.
In contrast, the beginning of 2021 witnessed widespread anti-lockdown protests, primarily dominated by extreme rights across the continent. Trust in government institutions across Europe has reached its lowest. In such a societal context captured by distrust, a weakened citizen base could prevent the European societies’ ability to deliver sustainable solutions supported and trusted by the population.
Arguably, the media, when providing factual and objective information on all matters of public interest, plays an essential role in consolidating social bonding. In contrast, when resorting to “sensationalism, improper language, or reporting in ways that may raise the alarm unnecessarily or provide a platform for divisive views to spread”, as Dunja Mijatović warns, the media could instead decrease trust among society, endangering the health of healthy democratic societies.
More salient than ever is the mobilisation of all citizens around a collective response to the virus. In democracies, social trust or “bonding capital” plays a central role in empowering the citizen base. And this trust cannot be achieved without an irrevocable and unconditional commitment to human rights.
The Covid-19 crisis taught us that only governance in compliance with the rule of law and human rights is capable of adequately managing the challenges associated with this unprecedented crisis. More clearly than ever before, preserving human rights proves an essential pillar to managing the health crisis and must be actively incorporated within public policies.
Paying heed to the many challenges to individual rights posed by the health crisis must be part of a genuine effort to restore trust in today’s European societies.
Chloé Bernadaux is an international security specialist (Sciences Po Paris) writing on the neighbourhood policy, Euro-MED relations, and disarmament affairs. She is the IFIMES newly appointed representative in Paris (Unesco).
What I call “The Big Divergence” is the diverging paths among business, finance, technology, government, and our way of living and working. This blog series explores 25 key aspects of The Big Divergence, starting with what customers—both individuals and businesses—are longing for.
Now is the time—the opportunity—for those who can step up to give guidance to people, businesses, society and government. It is the time for those who can explain what a good next normal should look like, and how we get there. This is the time for all of us to engage as leaders, to identify, test, learn, and implement paths. Now is also your time to engage with the questions asked in this article, to set early leadership in building your action plan, and to join and co-lead conversations on these ideas.
Divergence in Business
There will be a rebirth of safe leaders, trust capital and market presence. 100-year-old businesses may be reborn.
Slow-fast innovation will grow. Businesses will need some deep and slow understanding of needs, and be able to build solutions quickly.
SEE: Service for Everything Else will evolve. Some service providers will pick up what is non-core for others.
Digital Glocalization will spread. Hardware and human services will be sourced globally and locally, at the same time.
Businesses will exploit the novel tension of Balkanization versus Counter-Balkanization.
Divergence in Finance
Companies with strong balance sheets will use their position to aggressively grow.
Some businesses will suffocate from “Monte”—what ancient Florentines called debts due to a crisis.
Some market leaders will be fueled by excessive cash, and will be looking for outsized returns.
Government finances will thrive as never before by selling their cheaply acquired assets at real value.
The golden age of M&A will emerge, triggered by Monte fire-sales and government selling the assets mentioned above.
Divergence in Our Way of Living & Working
Humans will long for truth and clarity after the cacophony of conflicting messages during crisis.
There will be a shift from generosity to individualism. People may move toward “my tribe” vs. the open-ended community.
Work/life will shift toward life, caused by reduced control of people working from home.
A new boom of luxury will emerge. People will spend more as the fragility of life gets realized by many.
Psychosocial stress will increase as escaping from command and control becomes more difficult.
Divergence in Technology
Alpha leaders will become digital. Management command/control will be reinvented in a home-working world.
A 2nd reality—a parallel digital life—will extend the physical world while promising a safe escape.
Personal intelligence will become mainstream, combining AI with user experience as personalized service.
Robotics will become prevalent outside of manufacturing as AI extends its physical representation into the real world.
Infrastructure will be re-invented beyond connectivity to a supra-repository of strategic technologies.
Divergence in Government
There will be a public desire for authority, along with reduced relevance of spontaneous cooperative free agency.
Subsidy will take the place of taxation for critical technologies such as digital bio/pharma or surveillance.
There will be a cut back on regulation, such as privacy laws, medical approvals, or charging operators for licenses.
Interconnectedness will challenge sovereignty, with transnational entities moving to active roles.
We will revisit the roles of government – making laws, war, police, education, and control of asset use.
My Call to Action
Please respond to this article with your views. Reach out by email to be interviewed in an article, podcast or video. Take exemplary leadership by building your action plan and sharing it with others, and co-lead the planning, discussion and actions by joining our group.
Christian von Reventlow is a guest speaker on innovation for Singularity University. He is focused on transforming organizations’ cultures, core processes, and governance to create value through innovation. He wins Board support for the mission, operates outside-in starting with customer value and drives enterprise-wide deployment of the latest digital technologies such as AI, AR, IoT, digital twins, and edge computing. Christian believes positive global impact can get created by applying technology with humans and the planet in mind. His career spans two and a half decades of management- and officer-level assignments at global technology companies including TELSTRA, Deutsche Telekom, Intel and HERE.com (Nokia/Microsoft), creating multiple startups. His leadership profile is marked by a collaborative approach at the executive level and a dedication to managed personal accountability at the operating level. Christian has a Doctor of Electrical Engineering degree from the Technical University Berlin, and a Master of Physics degree from Ruhruniversitaet Bochum.
From leadership to China, economy, Covid-19 and battles over press freedom, Myanmar is in a tight spot on many fronts.
NLD’s relations with the military
Most of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s ministerial appointees were political prisoners during the decades of military rule. However, though they remained “activist” by nature, they proved to be “ineffective” as administrators – fuelling rumours over the past few years of an eventual coup.
The National League of Democracy (NLD) team’s performance was always compared to that of its predecessor – General Thien Sien – who began the country’s democratisation and liberalisation process leading to the 2015 national elections. NLD won this election by a landslide.
After the November 2, 2020 election, the military-backed USDP (Union Solidarity and Union Party) and the military began slamming the election process, putting NLD’s landslide win down to massive fraud. The call for an investigation was rejected by both the Union Election Commission and the NLD-led government.
On January 31, the military press team issued a statement citing more than 10 million instances of voter fraud and urged the Union Election Commission to release a comprehensive electoral roll call. This request was again rejected by the government and the commission.
There has been no love lost between the military and NLD politicians, most of whom are now under house arrest.
Peace Talks
Uniting different ethnic factions – especially armed groups – was Suu Kyi’s flagship policy. But progress was being made at a snail’s pace and had even stalled over the past few years.
All was not going well and increased activities by insurgency groups like the Arakan Army further fuelled conflicts from the eastern to the western border. But Suu Kyi proved to be her father’s daughter and threw all her energy into making it work. Her father General Aung San was an iconic political and military leader.
However, many critics warned the effort was a strategic mistake, suggesting the economy should have been the priority as a prelude to bringing about peace among the different factions.
At this juncture, it’s difficult to say which direction the peace talks will take. The different ethnic groups probably prefer to negotiate with a civilian government instead of with military hardliners, even though the latter is always going to have the final say.
As of now, the coup is being condemned by most large ethnic groups with armed factions, such as the Karen National Union.
The Rohingya
This was one of the few issues that Suu Kyi saw eye-to-eye with the military. However, her defence of Myanmar’s back-to-the-wall policy for the Rohingya people isolated her from the world completely. She may have gone to the World Criminal Court in the Hague, but she never once visited the Rakhine State.
The repatriation of millions of displaced persons, not just those in Bangladesh, but also those within Rakhine State, will continue pressuring Myanmar politically, economically and socially.
The military is unlikely to give way as this has always been a populist tool for local support.
Covid-19
Myanmar’s poor public health system meant that infections were going to get out of hand. The number of confirmed cases now stands at 140,354 with 3,318 deaths. So far, 125,324 have recovered.
Dr Thet Khine Win, a secretary of the Health Ministry, has been named the health and sports minister, indicating the Covid-containment strategy will continue under the new military government.
Vaccines began arriving in the country last week from India through its Covidshield programme, though a concerted effort to inoculate the population has yet to take off. Overall, Myanmar is dealing with fewer cases in the second wave of Covid infections.
The pandemic, however, has hit the economy very badly. GDP growth has been stagnant over the past year and more people are living in poverty.
Economy
The NLD-led government’s Achilles heel, the economy has played second fiddle to peace efforts over the past four years.
Economic sentiment was further dampened by the Rohingya exodus crisis and a sharp drop in tourism in 2019. By 2020, businesses were staggering under the burden of the outbreak.
Also, since NLD took over, little change has been made to the lives of people at the grassroots level and the pandemic has pushed many into poverty. Some political pundits suggest that NLD would have lost more seats in the November 2020 elections if it did not play the “return to military rule” tactic. The economy grew about 6 per cent in 2019, far lower than is expected by an investment hungry nation.
China, however, continues to be Myanmar’s biggest foreign investor.
Some progress was seen under the NLD-led economic team in investment in the power supply and transportation sectors.
Nonetheless, the business sector has over the past few years complained about cabinet members’ indecisiveness and incompetence.
Press Freedom
Suu Kyi proved to be more intolerant and draconian than her predecessor General Thein Sein. Proving to have a “thin skin”, she often used the “rule of law” – among the harshest in the world – to muzzle freedom of speech and subsequent building of democracy.
Several journalists were thrown in jail and many media organisations were intimidated. The most high-profile case was that of two local Reuters journalists, who were jailed for looking into army atrocity against a Rohingya community.
Suu Kyi’s government was also an active user of the infamous telecom law, in which a suspect can be jailed without trial.
Press freedom, despite all hope, all but disappeared since NLD took over in 2015, and self-censorship prevailed throughout.
No improvement is expected under the military junta.
Leadership
Suu Kyi’s leadership was almost always compared with that of her predecessor, former president Thein Sein. The general was credited with opening up Myanmar on both political and economic fronts.
She was not seen as a competent leader, but more as a popular icon.
The collapse of Myanmar’s education sector from decades of military rule resulted in inexperienced civilians holding ministerial posts and an inefficient bureaucracy that could not push forward Thein Sein’s achievements.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing now controls the executive, military and judiciary sectors. His ambition to become the president has been noted and he could run in the next election, which the military appears to be aiming to hold in a year.
Though Min Aung Hlaing’s style of governance is not clear yet, his initial statements indicate that he aims to boost the economy and get the Covid-19 outbreak under control.
His quickly announced cabinet includes 11 new members, mostly former ministers of the USDP government or former military officers.
China
Myanmar’s ties with China became closer over the past four years after it was isolated over the Rohingya crisis. Suu Kyi was pulled into China’s orbit along with the military. Though Beijing is sticking to its policy of non-interference, China along with Russia continues to defend Myanmar at the UN Security Council.
China does not want to see Myanmar plunge into political instability and chaos, especially at its borders, and also because many projects under the Belt and Road initiative are under negotiation.
Myanmar is key to China’s strategic interests in the Indian Ocean and the further development of Yunnan province as well as energy supply from the Bay of Bengal.
The World
The arrests of Suu Kyi and senior NLD members is a watershed in Myanmar’s relations with the world. She has lost her popularity because her stance against the Rohingya showed her as an ineffective, stubborn and self-serving leader.
But many will also be disappointed as Myanmar steps back from democracy after having come so far, into another possibly very long military rule.
The new military government will propel economic management to the forefront as they have far more capable people in this area than Suu Kyi ever did.
The military may also reach out to the US to try and avoid sanctions. But things won’t be easy even if they show progress. The Rohingya crisis will be pivotal.
Shaping a new labour market for the post-pandemic economy
ColumnsJan 29. 2021Angel Gurría (left) and Klaus Schwab
By Angel Gurría and Klaus Schwab
What took a decade to achieve unravelled within a matter of months.
It seems like another age, but the start of 2020 had marked a decade of decline in the unemployment rate of the world’s advanced economies. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the unemployment rate in OECD countries increased by an unprecedented 3.6 percentage points between February and April, to 8.8% – the highest rate in a decade. The OECD unemployment rate has since fallen but is expected to remain above pre-crisis levels throughout 2022.
In the meantime, the devastation to lives and livelihoods around the world caused by the pandemic continues, with the rollout and distribution of vaccines expected to take some time.
As the health crisis continues, its effects on employment risk becoming long-lasting. In addition, accelerated technological adoption risks creating a “double disruption” in labour markets, with many jobs unlikely to return[1]. At the same time the overall projections for job creation in the next five years are still higher than those of job losses. New jobs are expected to emerge due to shifting demand patterns and the use of new technologies in sectors such as the green economy, care economy and the education sector, as well as new roles in Data and AI across all industries and sectors.
How, then, should government and business leaders begin to shape a new labour market in 2021 and beyond – and support workers to thrive in the jobs of tomorrow?
Building a bridge to the recovery phase: public sector support for income, skills and jobs
The immediate responseto the economic challenges posed by the pandemic was unprecedented[2]. Governments around the world pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy, providing the necessary short-term support for businesses and workers in sectors that could not operate at full capacity. The use of short-time work schemes peaked at almost one in five employees across countries in the OECD for which data is available.
As the pandemic continues to unfold, governments must continue some of the urgent measures. They can make income-protection schemes more responsive to the changing situations of people, promote adequate occupational safety and health in all workplaces to ensure a safe return to work, and enhance social protection for those workers who are least covered such as ‘gig work’ and those in informal employment.
At the same time, they must lay the foundations for a more resilient and inclusive recovery, and governments must also turn their attention to preparing workers and re-allocating talent to new, growth jobs and professions in the medium-term.
Government policies can support this agenda with retraining and job creation through subsidies, targeted tax cuts, and investment programs, while social protection provisions can be reshaped to ensure better coverage of workers in non-standard forms of employment. Public and private employment services will also need to be expanded to support unprecedented numbers of jobseekers in their reskilling and job transition from declining occupations to emerging or growing occupations.
Reskilling and upskilling: an urgent task for stakeholder capitalism
It is estimated that 50% of currently employed workers will need reskilling by 2025 to meet the needs of a changing labor market. This will demand a significant expansion of mid-career reskilling and upskilling. For businesses there is a clear return on investment in doing so; two out of three employers expected to see a return within a year.
Employers’ commitments to quality work, fair wage practices and merit-based management practices can further incentivise and complement the learning agenda. Workers in OECD countries whose jobs are at high risk of automation remain 30 percentage points less likely to participate in adult learning than their counterparts in low-risk jobs[3].
The crisis led to a fivefold increase in employer provision of online learning opportunities to their workers and a fourfold increase in the number of individuals seeking online learning on their own initiative[4]. However, these efforts must be further accelerated and coordinated, both to support workers and to ensure adequate talent is available as businesses and economies bounce back. The Reskilling Revolution platform brings together leaders from governments, business and society together to collaborate on providing better education skills and jobs to 1 billion people by 2030.
Ensuring that no one is left behind in the labour markets of tomorrow
The crisis has not affected everyone equally. Women, youth, ethnic minorities and low-income workers are among those hit hardest. Young people have faced disruption to planned assessment and university closures. In addition, as hiring has slowed, young people entering the labor market are facing a reduction in entry-level opportunities, internships and apprenticeships. Top-earning workers have been able to work from home, while low-earning workers have less opportunity to do so.
There is no time to waste to put in place comprehensive policies to avoid creating a lost generation and greater disadvantages for those who were already impeded from full access to learning and earning. Both public and private sector efforts must ensure that as we rebuild, the post-pandemic labour market embeds justice and fairness for all segments of society.
Resilience, inclusion and sustainability must be at the heart of international collaboration in 2021. To that extent, better aligning public and private policies and actions is crucial. By joining forces to address these issues, the OECD and the World Economic Forum will help build a future of work that works for all.
[1] Future of Jobs Report 2020, World Economic Forum
[2] OECD Employment Outlook 2020: Worker Security and the Covid-19 Crisis, OECD
[3] OECD Employment Outlook 2019: The Future of Work, OECD
[4] Future of Jobs Report 2020, World Economic Forum
Angel Gurría is Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Klaus Schwab is Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, and the Author of “Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet” (Wiley)
This article is part of the Davos Agenda, a virtual event occurring 25-29 January 2021.
Navalny has interpreted the crackdown against him as a sign of Putin’s fear. But the Kremlin has insisted that Navalny had violated the law.
Tensions that could sour relations between Russia and the West, pre-eminently Europe and the United States, have intensified ever since Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow after his discharge from a hospital in Germany.
There is an element of bitter irony that clouds his return following treatment for nerve agent poisoning ~ allegedly at the behest of Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has claimed that Navalny’s return and the resultant tension with the Western powers represent “an absolutely internal matter”.
Perhaps on the face of it, it is. But it shall not be easy for Joe Biden’s United States and Europe, across the Atlantic to accept the global condemnation of his arrest at the Moscow airport and spirited calls for his early release.
Not the least because Navalny has blamed the Putin government for his poisoning.
Tensions between Russia and the West have distinctly exacerbated over the past three days; some countries of the European Union have even called for an additional cache of sanctions against Russia.
The Kremlin remains ever so adamant, going by the statement of its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.
“We are talking about a fact of non-compliance with the Russian law by a citizen of Russia. This is an absolutely internal matter and we will not allow anyone to interfere in it and do not intend to listen to such statements.”
For the record, Navalny was detained at passport control at Moscow’s Sherenetyevo airport after flying in on Sunday evening from Berlin, where he was treated for the poisoning in August. Russia’s most prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaginer, Navalny allegedly violated the probation terms of his suspended sentence in a 2014 money-laundering conviction, which was deemed arbitrary by the European Court of Human Rights.
Officials are seeking that he serves the three-and-half-year suspended sentence in prison.
Navalny has interpreted the crackdown against him as a sign of Putin’s fear. But the Kremlin has insisted that Navalny had violated the law.
The Kremlin claims that questions the law-enforcement entity had for Navalny have “nothing whatsoever to do with the Russian President”. Attitudes have, therefore, stiffened on either side of the fence that divdes the Kremlin from the anti-establishment segment.
Even the UN Human Rights office has raised alarm over Navalny’s arrest, indeed a response that has been clothed with the demand for his immediate release.
The office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has let it be known that it was “deeply troubled” by Navalny’s arrest.
It has appealed to the Russian government to respect his right to the due process of the law. The government in Moscow is incidentally headed by the prime suspect, named Mr Putin. The Russian President’s defiance of Western democracies cannot be readily agreeable. And thereby hangs a tale.
Alexei Navalny deserves humane treatment. And not behind bars.
Wednesday, a sense of normality returned to Washington as Joe Biden took his oath of office as US president, bringing to an end four tumultuous years of Trumpism. Donald Trump’s time in the White House was a veritable roller-coaster ride, with the former president throwing convention to the wind and creating a number of crises domestically and in foreign affairs. Therefore, Mr Biden has a major task ahead of him, and it will require the veteran American politician to go the extra mile to put out
It is a fact that Joe Biden is no revolutionary statesman; in fact, he represents the status quo ante, a return to predictable American politics. However, after Mr Trump, one can say that a return to ‘normal’ may not be such a bad thing. On the home front, Mr Biden has to deal with a raging coronavirus pandemic, a floundering economy and a nation deeply divided along racial and ideological lines.
Overseas, he will have to steer American policy in a positive direction after Donald Trump provoked China as well as Iran. He will also have to coax America out of isolation mode and steer it towards reintegration into the global mainstream.
Within the US, the Trump era exposed racial tensions that had been bubbling under the surface for long and that exploded last summer during the Black Lives Matter protests, following the murder of George Floyd. Meanwhile, the attack on the US Capitol earlier this month by Trump supporters showed that the far right in the US is hardly a spent force, and has literally shaken the corridors of power. Therefore, ensuring racial justice and checking the mushroom growth of far-right white extremism must top Mr Biden’s domestic agenda.
The Covid-19 pandemic also looms large over the US; the new president has already signed a raft of measures to deal with the crisis. Moreover, Mr Biden has reversed the so-called Muslim ban, while saying that the US was back in the Paris climate accord. On the foreign front, a number of issues await the new US leader’s attention. These include the confrontation with China, whom Mr Trump accused of “ripping off” the US, setting in motion a steady decline in Sino-American relations. Mr Biden’s predecessor also ripped up the Iran nuclear accord and at one point brought Washington and Tehran dangerously close to war.
Further, Mr Trump’s mollycoddling of Israel destroyed any illusion of American neutrality in the Arab-Israeli dispute. All these foreign issues will test Mr Biden’s mettle and require progressive thinking. Where Pakistan is concerned, key members of the new president’s team have said this country is an ‘essential partner’ especially where peace in Afghanistan is concerned. It is hoped the Biden administration works to improve the bilateral relationship with Pakistan in order to help bring peace and prosperity to South Asia.
ColumnsJan 21. 2021The Field of Flags Art Display is seen along the National Mall on the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on Wednesday Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. The mall was closed to the general public due to safety concerns. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
By The Washington Post · Robin Givhan · OPINION, OP-ED
The field of flags – 200,000 of them planted across the National Mall which was silent and otherwise empty – was as uplifting as it was sobering. In the silence and the cold, they blew in the breeze as the 46th president was sworn in and the 49th vice president made history.
The words of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” belted out by a pop star with enthusiasm and heart, were gut-wrenching. The tiny flags pinned on so many politician’s lapels seemed less perfunctory and more like an act of faith. American flags welcomed president Joe Biden and the new first lady to the White House when the outgoing administration did not.
The American flag on this Inauguration Day wasn’t a sign of victory as much as it was an emblem of stubborn endurance. Democracy survived for yet another day. And a generation of Americans must reckon with the uncomfortable realization that a democratic tomorrow is not assured.
“We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile,” said Biden in his inaugural address. “At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”
It was a close call for this country and one we won’t soon forget. The civic unrest of 2020, ignited by calls for racial justice, mutated into mobs storming the U. S. Capitol only two weeks ago fueled by a desire to subvert the Constitution. They broke out windows and vandalized historic rooms all while cowering behind the American flag. And while the glass can be replaced, the vandalism scrubbed away, the country’s citizens bear the scars of anger and fear, suspicion and cynicism.
Our volatile history of racial injustice has never been resolved. Instead, we’ve tiptoed around it, whispering and hanging back instead of getting on with the difficult work of defusing it. Over countless generations we’ve been putting out stubborn fires, professing shock when white supremacy flared up and willfully misunderstanding the difference between grievance and justice. We must contend with these threats.
But on January 20, the American flag flew over the U.S. Capitol and despite the recent assault on it – regardless of the civic unrest and the political division – it represented the best of us. Its promised meaning resonated more deeply than ever. Once again, the country moved forward.
We began by taking a step back.
More than 400,000 souls have been lost to covid-19 and the nation finally grieved them on the night before Biden took the oath of office. Their memory was honored by pillars of light shining in the darkness alongside the Reflecting Pool – with Biden noting that the painful act of remembering sets the foundation for a community to collectively engage in recovery.
On Tuesday morning, the flags on the National Mall reminded us of the many citizens who didn’t survive the coronavirus pandemic to see this day. They stood in for the rest of us kept away by unprecedented security. The flags reminded us how much our national pride has been wounded as so many are hungry and unhoused. But the flags also reassured us that because democracy held up, there’s hope.
When Lady Gaga sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” she lingered on the phrase, “Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” Our national anthem is a complicated song if only because our history is so freighted. It rallies the country around the aftermath of a battle; it was written by an enslaver. But in these times, the words speak to a nation that has been through a different kind of battle, one that was not brought to our shores but one that was ignited from within. We have been at war with our own democracy. So far, we’ve failed to topple our own moral code. We’ve failed to annihilate ourselves and for this we can be thankful. Our flag is still there.
Gaga personalized the anthem but still sang it simply, without a circus of musical tricks. She stood on the inaugural platform dressed in a navy cashmere jacket and a buoyant red silk skirt made for her by Schiaparelli, a Paris-based fashion house helmed by Daniel Roseberry. “As an American living in Paris, this ensemble is a love letter to the country I miss so dearly,” Roseberry said in a statement. His sweet missive was a reminder that we are intertwined with the world. We can’t wall ourselves in and we can’t wall others out no matter how hard we try. A gilded dove brooch – a sign of peace – was affixed to the bodice of Gaga’s jacket. It was a plea to calm the national waters.
It’s exhausting, after all, to hold on through the kind of turbulence of late. Anger is exhausting. Rage is disorienting. Everything about this inauguration seemed an effort to soothe a nation, from Garth Brook’s simple rendition of “Amazing Grace,” to the young poet laureate Amanda Gorman who spoke of the need to step into our history before we can move beyond it. We’re a country in need of grace and mercy and no small amount of understanding. That was the message in every speech and every song, every scrap of fabric, every simple gesture.
Fashion played its role as it spoke to the occasion, the history that unfolded and the way in which the administration sees the country moving forward. It celebrated America in its diversity and complexity. President Biden wore a navy suit and overcoat created for him by Ralph Lauren – an iconic American brand that interprets this country’s past and its present through rose-colored lenses that can sometimes seem out of touch and removed from the realities of our daily lives. And yet today, its version of starry-eyed optimism and familiar tradition was an acknowledgment of the way in which we imagine ourselves to be. It reminds us of the things that we once believed to be immutable and universal: the American Dream. We now know that we all dream differently but perhaps somehow we can still find common ground.
The first lady chose a dress and coat by the New York-based label Markarian, which was founded by Alexandra O’Neill in 2017. The 34-year-old designer who grew up in Colorado created the ocean blue tweed coat adorned with crystals paired with a matching dress in her New York workroom. The color, O’Neill said, expresses a sense of calm and stability, The chance to create the ensemble at all feels like a jolt to an entire industry. “I think Dr. Biden recognizes the impact her fashion choices have on American designers, on emerging designers – especially in these trying times,” O’Neill said.
Who will the Biden administration push into the light? Who do all those flags represent? The flag belongs to us all and yet it has been weaponized against so many. It’s been used to elevate one man’s patriotism over another’s, to declare some parts of the country more authentically American than others, to belittle some people’s hurt while carefully nursing others through their pain.
So it meant something to hear Jennifer Lopez, with her Puerto Rican roots, sing “This Land is Your Land” and savor the words: “This land was made for you and me.” It was monumental to watch Kamala Harris take the vice-presidential oath of office becoming a long list of firsts to step into such high office: woman, Black woman, Asian-American woman. She stood on the Capitol where a mostly White mob had tried to declare it theirs and theirs alone. She stood dressed in a purple overcoat and dress by a Black designer Christopher John Rogers.
Harris carried the multitudes with her as she made history. She allowed them to stand under the flag in all of its beautiful, frayed glory.
The flag represents our democracy, of course – the way in which we govern this country. But it also symbolizes the way in which we conduct our lives, relate to our neighbors and define ourselves. And for at least one more day, it was a reminder that we have the capacity to live under the flag with grace and calm.
On the third Wednesday in January, Joe Biden sought to put things back in sync with the nation’s history
ColumnsJan 21. 2021President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 in Washington. Biden became the 46th U.S. president during the ceremony. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
By The Washington Post · David Maraniss · OPINION, ESSAYS
On the third Wednesday in January, after a first Wednesday of insurrection and a second of impeachment, came an inauguration that promised to be unlike any in American history. In some ways it was. The surrounding atmosphere was haunting, threatening, weird and emotionally charged. Yet in its depth, purpose and artful presentation, what took place during the ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol managed to lift the mood and evoke a sense of reassurance and hope.
President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff depart after the inauguration ceremony. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Ricky Carioti
As the sun shone at noon, Donald Trump’s presidency was done and gone; Joe Biden’s time had come. He had already taken the oath of office on a five-inch-thick family Bible and was a few minutes into his inaugural address by then. He had just uttered the words “Let’s start afresh.” Those who had been counting down the days and then hours to the end of a toxic presidency could exhale in relief at last. Votes mattered. The system triumphed. “Democracy is precious,” President Joe Biden said. “Democracy is fragile, democracy has prevailed.”
Everything about the inaugural ceremony represented a determined effort to put things back in sync with the nation’s history. The songs, the poem, the prayers, the greetings and oath-takings, a presidential address focused on unity and healing – all were attempts to say this is what America does, this majestic handoff from past to present. It happened, but barely. There was no meaningful handoff from 45 to 46, and the peaceful transfer of power, a notion traditionally evoked to symbolize a resilient democracy, threatened to be a hollow phrase.
There was little peaceful about the transfer. Not after the deadly storming of that very Capitol two weeks ago by an insurrectionist mob invited and incited by Trump in his two-month effort to deny his loss of power through any means necessary, election results be damned. The scars of that deadly riot were still evident in scraped walls and broken windows within a short distance of the inaugural stage. And there was nothing serene about a ceremony taking place within a vast militarized zone ringed by thousands of rifle-toting soldiers and barricaded by high fences, barbed wire, Jersey barriers and hulking army trucks, an armed camp necessitated by what Trump and his conspiracy theory-obsessed true believers had wrought. The National Guard guarding the nation against itself.
It was not even a transfer in any accepted sense. Soundly defeated and twice impeached, Trump abandoned his post and any semblance of traditional decorum by avoiding the inaugural scene altogether, shunning the Bidens, leaving that greeting to a White House usher. After issuing a flurry of midnight pardons, he play-acted his way out of town with a faux-pomp military send-off at Joint Base Andrews in the morning chill, one last petulant act to feed the wounded ego of a shrunken man, so self-aggrandizing that even his vice president declined to be part of it and the paltry assemblage consisted mostly of family and paid staff.
Trump had always longed for a strongman-style military parade, but this leave-taking – with its trappings of a military band and 21-gun salute – before his exile to Mar-a-Lagoland would have to suffice, though it could not match the display of might he unwittingly left behind on the streets of Washington.
Then came an elegant ceremony at the Capitol, an inauguration marked by who was there and who was not. The Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas were there to greet and induct the new first couple into their select club, and the nonagenarian Carters would have been had circumstances not made traveling perilous. Many congressional Republicans were there, including some who had encouraged and endorsed the antidemocratic lie that Biden won only because of voter fraud. Mike Pence was also there, breaking at long last four years of obsequious vice-presidential fealty. Although from a Biden perspective Trump might have been the only person not missed, he was by no means the only one missing. The anxious convergence of a domestic terrorism threat and the year-long contagion of the coronavirus dramatically diminished the throng that in normal circumstances would have flooded into Washington to cheer a new president into office.
When Biden and Barack Obama were first inaugurated as vice president and president 12 years ago, the National Mall teemed with expectant masses stretching from the Capitol back to the Washington Monument and on toward the Lincoln Memorial horizon. This time, although Biden had won the votes of 81 million citizens, more than anyone before, few of his supporters could witness the culminating event of the 2020 election. At the end of a virtual campaign in a virtual year came a largely virtual inauguration. Biden’s crisp and forward-looking inaugural address, his call to “end this uncivil war” and find unity in its place, resounded past a scattering of socially distanced guests below the stage and echoed into the haunting beyond, an eerily silent rectangular expanse artistically filled with 200,000 American flags flapping in the winter wind that were meant to represent the crowd that was not there.
If Biden promised a clean break from the immediate past, with a resolve to lead America out of recession and plague and into a more diverse and equitable future, he did so with the distinction of being the oldest president – 78 at his inauguration. The average age of his predecessors upon taking office was 56, making him 22 years above par, and the two most recent Democratic presidents were far younger than that. Bill Clinton was 46 and Barack Obama 47. Along with age in Biden’s case, unlike Trump’s, came political experience. Biden entered the White House having spent 36 years in the Senate and eight more as vice president, more time accumulated on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue than any president before him, surpassing even Lyndon B. Johnson in that realm. He was also the first president from the first state, Delaware, and the second who happened to be Catholic, after John F. Kennedy.
A more important breakthrough comes from his vice president, Kamala Harris, the first woman and first person of Black and South Asian American heritage to hold that position. In a nation riven by racism, in an era afflicted by resurgent white nationalism, it was notable that Harris was sworn in by the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, on a Bible that belonged to the first African American justice, the late Thurgood Marshall. The trajectory of racial progress, uneven as it has been, could be traced from there back 160 years to the first inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. Swearing in Lincoln that March day was Chief Justice Roger Taney, the jurist who oversaw the 1857 Dred Scott decision decreeing that enslaved African Americans, even if living in a free state, were not citizens and did not deserve freedom.
Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861 on the other side of the Capitol, on the East Portico, but in many ways the atmosphere then was most comparable to what Biden encountered. Like Biden, Lincoln entered an anxious city in a divided nation. With seven Southern states already split from the Union and threats on his life evident, his inauguration also had a martial feel, the Capitol guarded by a cordon of infantry troops. Lincoln arrived in Washington by train, rolling through Wilmington, Del., on the route from Illinois, but when he reached Baltimore the danger was so great he was secretly switched in the middle of the night to another locomotive. Biden, the ultimate train enthusiast, had hoped to ride the rails from his home in Wilmington into the capital as well, but those plans were scuttled because of the threatening circumstances.
Biden’s public posture since the November election was to convey a sense of calm amid the clanging chaos of the moment. In some quotidian ways, his administration will return to a governing style that exudes old-school normality. Daily news briefings. Intense policy discussions. Decisions based on fact and science. More debates about substance, less posturing and propaganda. Dare to be boring. No governing by predawn Twitter and gut and whim and insult and narcissistic need.
But some things will not be so easy to change. Barack Obama’s first election was greeted by a satirical headline in the Onion newspaper that captured the difficulties of inheriting an economy in free fall: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” As Biden entered the White House Wednesday afternoon, he faced Obama’s worries multiplied. Jobs lost by the millions. Businesses shuttered in every city and town. The nation’s children struggling with closed or virtual schools. The medical world battling a contagion that had already taken an unthinkable toll of 400,000 dead. A political opposition that had lied about his election victory and continued to argue that his legitimate claim to the presidency was somehow still illegitimate. All that piled on top of other pressing domestic and foreign policy concerns.
The contrast between past and future was never starker than one moment on the morning of the Final Half Day. At 8:47, after a meandering final speech at the airfield in which he uttered the immortal last words, “Have a nice life, we will see you soon,” Trump, the congenital divider, disappeared into Air Force One, taking with him the nuclear briefcase, which would be his only until noon, suitcases full of grievances that would be his forever, the lowest end-of-term poll ratings of any president since polls have been taken, and a growing consensus among historians that he would rank at the bottom of the presidential barrel.
Seconds after Trump stepped inside the plane, Joe and Jill Biden emerged from their overnight lodging at Blair House. As an irrepressible uniter, Biden was on his way to make his first small unifying effort by convening congressional leaders of both parties at a morning church service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. It was a classic move by a refreshingly optimistic man who promised in his address to devote his “whole soul” to that cause even as he understood that unity was “the most elusive of all things in a democracy.” In today’s political cauldron, what unity meant depended on who was talking and for what purpose.
Back on the frigid January day in 2009 when Obama and Biden were first inaugurated, several hundred people who held purple-coded tickets never got to witness the ceremony, stuck for hours behind a checkpoint that backed them up deep inside the Third Street Tunnel. They huddled and shivered and cried and sang in what became known as the Tunnel of Doom. At noon on Jan. 20, 2021, there was a sense that America might finally be emerging out of a long tunnel of doom of a more dangerous sort. Or not. The future is uncertain, but one thing seemed like a sure bet in the sunlight of a new day. President Biden would not order his press secretary to lie about the size of his inaugural crowd.
To import vaccines at high cost, to store them in special facilities and then have people refuse them is a daunting prospect.
While some countries ~ principally the United States, the United Kingdom and a few others ~ have already launched ambitious vaccination programmes and others including India plan to do so in the next few days, the studied reluctance of some countries that had fared relatively well in controlling the coronavirus epidemic to commence vaccination drives must invite attention.
These countries have not yet approved any of the vaccine candidates on offer and have opted to observe developments across the world before taking a decision. Among them are Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia.
Even Hong Kong’s local administration has opted for a cautious approach, notwithstanding China offering vaccines, with a medical expert on the island territory’s Executive Council telling a news agency that “it’s not a bad thing to sit back a bit and see how others are doing.”
Many experts in these countries have explained their concern by saying that the vaccines for the first time ~ and following accelerated development programmes ~ use mRNA technology that makes the human body produce proteins that then develop protective antibodies and must thus be evaluated very carefully.
But there are other factors at play, too. South Korea, for instance, has expressed concern at the manner in which pharmaceutical companies have sought and obtained legal immunity following rushed negotiations where one party ~ the supplier ~ has held all the cards. The country’s Health minister Park Neung-hoo told a recent news briefing, “It is nearly universal around the world that extensive immunity from liability is being demanded.”
He added that rushing to vaccinate populations “before we identify risks is not so necessary for us.”
Despite Opposition criticism, New Zealand’s approach has been similarly measured, aided no doubt by the fact that the country’s early anti-virus measures that won Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acclaim have largely controlled the epidemic.
Another concern cited by these countries is that a botched roll-out of the vaccination programme could further erode public confidence in the efficacy of the vaccines. A recent survey had found that the numbers of those willing to take the vaccine had dropped a whopping 9 percentage points from last October to November.
To import vaccines at high cost, to store them in special facilities and then have people refuse them is a daunting prospect. In any event, experts argue that jumping the gun without analysing all factors is inadvisable, unless a country faces a galloping rise in numbers of afflictions, as reported in the USA and UK, making vaccination, even in a worst-case scenario, the lesser of two evils.
With most Asian countries having achieved relatively greater success in controlling the virus, and with people having embraced safety precautions with far greater enthusiasm than in parts of Europe and the US, policy-makers believe there is no need to panic, even if the delay in vaccination draws political backlash, as indeed it is now beginning to.
Kristoffer Paludan, Regional Director of Michael Page Thailand
Ms. Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
Angel Gurría (left) and Klaus Schwab
Alexei Navalny
Joe Biden
The Field of Flags Art Display is seen along the National Mall on the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on Wednesday Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. The mall was closed to the general public due to safety concerns. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 in Washington. Biden became the 46th U.S. president during the ceremony. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
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