(From previous issue) :
As for his chances of re-election as president, they remain poor, with the economy refusing to take off after years of stagnation.
Still, the presidential ballots are not until 2017, so Mr Hollande still has the full year ahead to spring a few other surprises.
When Mr Malcolm Turnbull ousted the unpopular Mr Tony Abbott as Liberal Party leader in September, he became – somewhat embarrassingly – the third Australian prime minister to take office via a political coup in just five years. But this time, something was different.
It was not merely Mr Turnbull, 61, a former lawyer and investment banker, who believed he was destined to become the nation’s leader: The Australian public seemed to share his belief.
He is known for his progressive views and was long rated one of the country’s most popular potential leaders. He is a strong supporter of action on climate change while holding firm pro-market economic views.
Since taking office, however, the changes to the nation have been mainly in political style, rather than substance.
Mr Turnbull has stuck with Mr Abbott’s hard-line approach to refugees and avoided committing to a market-based carbon emission scheme. But he has tried to adopt a more measured approach to policy and public engagement than Mr Abbott. For instance, he has abandoned Mr Abbott’s fiery rhetoric denouncing Muslim extremists.
As yet, Mr Turnbull has been limited in his ability to stamp his mark on the country’s direction, having not won a mandate through elections. He will get a chance at the next general election, due next year. Polls show his coalition to be in a strong position. When scientist Tu Youyou won the Nobel prize for medicine this year, it not only gave her long-overdue recognition for discovering a cure for malaria, but also cast a spotlight on the potential of traditional Chinese medicine.
Dr Tu, 84, is the first Chinese to win a Nobel prize in medicine for work done in China and the first Chinese woman to become a Nobel laureate. She was credited for the discovery of the drug artemisinin, a part of standard anti-malarial regimens that saved millions of lives in Africa and Asia.
Trained in pharmacology and traditional Chinese medicine, she joined a secret research unit in 1969 to find a cure for malaria, which was killing Chinese troops fighting in the jungles alongside communist ally North Vietnam against the United States.
Studying a 1,700-year-old handbook of prescriptions led her team to discover that sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) has been used to treat malaria. The team extracted artemisinin from it and Dr Tu volunteered to be the first human to test it.
The team published a paper anonymously in 1977. But Dr Tu’s contribution was not known until 2011, when she won the prestigious Lasker prize for medical research. At the Nobel lectures this month in Sweden, she described artemisinin as “a gift from traditional Chinese medicine to the world”.
Low-key Indian politician Nitish Kumar is known as a man of few words. Yet, the leader of the Janata Dal (United) Party engineered the most stunning electoral upset of the year by defeating the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had pitched Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the face of its campaign in the Hindu heartland state last month.
Mr Kumar’s winning strategy was to invoke regional pride and create a “grand alliance” with his one-time rival Lalu Prasad Yadav’s party and Congress. The alliance won 178 of the 243 assembly seats, reducing BJP’s tally to just 58.
His strong governance record was also a winning factor.
In his 10 years at the helm from 2005, he wiped out criminal gangs that had overrun the state, built roads, improved healthcare and increased education access.
One of the first things Mr Kumar, 64, did after winning the election was to announce a ban on the sale of alcohol from April 1 – a promise he had made to women voters. In rural areas, men are known to spend their earnings on alcohol while their wives struggle to feed the family.
With Bihar one of India’s poorest states, his challenge is to push growth by revitalising industry.
Many are watching to see if Mr Kumar will emerge at the core of a possible opposition alliance that can challenge Mr Modi and BJP. When he first took that escalator ride down to the stage to announce his candidacy in June, real estate mogul Donald Trump was dismissed as an election sideshow – a joke candidate that would entertain for a few weeks and then flame out.
Yet, in the six months that followed, the billionaire has only seen his popularity go up.
The brash, outspoken 69-year-old has been a suffocating presence in the crowded Republican field, sucking up all the attention and oxygen from his hitherto more electable colleagues such as Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
His dominance has been so complete that, earlier this month, party leaders met privately for a discussion on how to stop Mr Trump from becoming the nominee at the party convention in July.
Just exactly how he is winning more support has been a matter of much debate, as has the question of whether he is simply shining a light on the country’s worst tendencies or actually encouraging them.
He has now accumulated enough outrageous, xenophobic and racist statements to sink multiple campaigns and, yet, he continues to thrive. At the start of his campaign, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers”.
He has made disparaging remarks about women, insulted a war hero and told multiple lies – from the number of refugees the US would take in to crime rates in the black community. In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and California, he called for a ban on Muslims entering the US.
It is unclear how all of this is going to pan out in the coming months, but Mr Trump has already made an indelible, often ugly, stamp on US politics.
When a New York Times reporter called him Indonesia’s second most powerful man recently, Mr Luhut Pandjaitan was visibly uncomfortable, saying “that is too much”. Observers, however, say the former Special Forces general is undoubtedly a central figure in President Joko Widodo’s government.
The close ties between them were forged long before Mr Joko entered politics; it was Mr Luhut who encouraged Mr Joko to run for Jakarta governor.
Now Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Mr Luhut has been tasked by the President, among other critical matters of state, to maintain a cohesive relationship with the Parliament, where Mr Joko’s coalition controls only 207 of the 560-seat house.
Mr Luhut remains a leading figure within the opposition Golkar party, a link which has enabled him to engage opposition politicians to push through legislation, such as a recently passed anti-corruption Bill.
He has also been proven to be a man of action, from working behind the scenes on the President’s behalf to leading Indonesia’s efforts in combating forest fires and fighting terrorism.
His relationships with power brokers and leaders in countries such as the United States and Singapore have also been put to good use.
Tempo magazine reported in October that Mr Luhut played a key role in opening doors for Mr Joko’s visit to the US that month, where the President stayed at the Blair House where visiting dignitaries to the White House stay. Mr Luhut said he was able to arrange for the stay because “I have many friends”.
—The Straits Times
(Concluded)
As for his chances of re-election as president, they remain poor, with the economy refusing to take off after years of stagnation.
Still, the presidential ballots are not until 2017, so Mr Hollande still has the full year ahead to spring a few other surprises.
When Mr Malcolm Turnbull ousted the unpopular Mr Tony Abbott as Liberal Party leader in September, he became – somewhat embarrassingly – the third Australian prime minister to take office via a political coup in just five years. But this time, something was different.
It was not merely Mr Turnbull, 61, a former lawyer and investment banker, who believed he was destined to become the nation’s leader: The Australian public seemed to share his belief.
He is known for his progressive views and was long rated one of the country’s most popular potential leaders. He is a strong supporter of action on climate change while holding firm pro-market economic views.
Since taking office, however, the changes to the nation have been mainly in political style, rather than substance.
Mr Turnbull has stuck with Mr Abbott’s hard-line approach to refugees and avoided committing to a market-based carbon emission scheme. But he has tried to adopt a more measured approach to policy and public engagement than Mr Abbott. For instance, he has abandoned Mr Abbott’s fiery rhetoric denouncing Muslim extremists.
As yet, Mr Turnbull has been limited in his ability to stamp his mark on the country’s direction, having not won a mandate through elections. He will get a chance at the next general election, due next year. Polls show his coalition to be in a strong position. When scientist Tu Youyou won the Nobel prize for medicine this year, it not only gave her long-overdue recognition for discovering a cure for malaria, but also cast a spotlight on the potential of traditional Chinese medicine.
Dr Tu, 84, is the first Chinese to win a Nobel prize in medicine for work done in China and the first Chinese woman to become a Nobel laureate. She was credited for the discovery of the drug artemisinin, a part of standard anti-malarial regimens that saved millions of lives in Africa and Asia.
Trained in pharmacology and traditional Chinese medicine, she joined a secret research unit in 1969 to find a cure for malaria, which was killing Chinese troops fighting in the jungles alongside communist ally North Vietnam against the United States.
Studying a 1,700-year-old handbook of prescriptions led her team to discover that sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) has been used to treat malaria. The team extracted artemisinin from it and Dr Tu volunteered to be the first human to test it.
The team published a paper anonymously in 1977. But Dr Tu’s contribution was not known until 2011, when she won the prestigious Lasker prize for medical research. At the Nobel lectures this month in Sweden, she described artemisinin as “a gift from traditional Chinese medicine to the world”.
Low-key Indian politician Nitish Kumar is known as a man of few words. Yet, the leader of the Janata Dal (United) Party engineered the most stunning electoral upset of the year by defeating the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had pitched Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the face of its campaign in the Hindu heartland state last month.
Mr Kumar’s winning strategy was to invoke regional pride and create a “grand alliance” with his one-time rival Lalu Prasad Yadav’s party and Congress. The alliance won 178 of the 243 assembly seats, reducing BJP’s tally to just 58.
His strong governance record was also a winning factor.
In his 10 years at the helm from 2005, he wiped out criminal gangs that had overrun the state, built roads, improved healthcare and increased education access.
One of the first things Mr Kumar, 64, did after winning the election was to announce a ban on the sale of alcohol from April 1 – a promise he had made to women voters. In rural areas, men are known to spend their earnings on alcohol while their wives struggle to feed the family.
With Bihar one of India’s poorest states, his challenge is to push growth by revitalising industry.
Many are watching to see if Mr Kumar will emerge at the core of a possible opposition alliance that can challenge Mr Modi and BJP. When he first took that escalator ride down to the stage to announce his candidacy in June, real estate mogul Donald Trump was dismissed as an election sideshow – a joke candidate that would entertain for a few weeks and then flame out.
Yet, in the six months that followed, the billionaire has only seen his popularity go up.
The brash, outspoken 69-year-old has been a suffocating presence in the crowded Republican field, sucking up all the attention and oxygen from his hitherto more electable colleagues such as Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
His dominance has been so complete that, earlier this month, party leaders met privately for a discussion on how to stop Mr Trump from becoming the nominee at the party convention in July.
Just exactly how he is winning more support has been a matter of much debate, as has the question of whether he is simply shining a light on the country’s worst tendencies or actually encouraging them.
He has now accumulated enough outrageous, xenophobic and racist statements to sink multiple campaigns and, yet, he continues to thrive. At the start of his campaign, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers”.
He has made disparaging remarks about women, insulted a war hero and told multiple lies – from the number of refugees the US would take in to crime rates in the black community. In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and California, he called for a ban on Muslims entering the US.
It is unclear how all of this is going to pan out in the coming months, but Mr Trump has already made an indelible, often ugly, stamp on US politics.
When a New York Times reporter called him Indonesia’s second most powerful man recently, Mr Luhut Pandjaitan was visibly uncomfortable, saying “that is too much”. Observers, however, say the former Special Forces general is undoubtedly a central figure in President Joko Widodo’s government.
The close ties between them were forged long before Mr Joko entered politics; it was Mr Luhut who encouraged Mr Joko to run for Jakarta governor.
Now Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Mr Luhut has been tasked by the President, among other critical matters of state, to maintain a cohesive relationship with the Parliament, where Mr Joko’s coalition controls only 207 of the 560-seat house.
Mr Luhut remains a leading figure within the opposition Golkar party, a link which has enabled him to engage opposition politicians to push through legislation, such as a recently passed anti-corruption Bill.
He has also been proven to be a man of action, from working behind the scenes on the President’s behalf to leading Indonesia’s efforts in combating forest fires and fighting terrorism.
His relationships with power brokers and leaders in countries such as the United States and Singapore have also been put to good use.
Tempo magazine reported in October that Mr Luhut played a key role in opening doors for Mr Joko’s visit to the US that month, where the President stayed at the Blair House where visiting dignitaries to the White House stay. Mr Luhut said he was able to arrange for the stay because “I have many friends”.
—The Straits Times
(Concluded)
