The World Today for December 13, 2023

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Like Father, Like Son

CHAD

Opposition and civil society leaders in Chad recently asked the military junta running the Central African country to ask French troops to leave.

The opposition leaders want France, which formerly ruled Chad as a colony, to stop meddling in the country’s affairs, wrote Voice of America. Their voices are among many in the region who have been insisting that officials in Paris mind their own business and drop their imperialistic policies, bne IntelliNews explained.

For example, last week, the two remaining members of West Africa’s G5 Sahel alliance, Chad and Mauritania, said they were paving the way to dissolving the anti-rebel grouping backed by France after the other three founding countries – Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali – left after military coups.

The alliance, backed by France, which deployed soldiers to members’ territories, was created in 2014 to fight insurgencies. But the military rulers of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have all accused Paris of having an outsized role in the alliance and meddling in national affairs.

French troops frequently clash with Chadians, also. In September, for example, protests erupted after a French medic shot and killed a Chadian soldier who was receiving treatment on a French base. Chadian security forces fired live rounds into the crowd to end the unrest.

Critics of military chief and transition president Mahamat Idriss Deby, furthermore, claim that the French forces are bolstering Deby’s hold on power. The son of Idriss Deby Itno, the dictator who ruled Chad for 30 years until he was killed fighting militants in 2021, Deby had promised to cede power to a civilian government in October 2022. But he has extended his term to November 2024.

Chadians took to the streets to protest that decision in October 2022. As Human Rights Watch explained, security forces quelled the demonstrations with excessive force, killing 128 people and wounding more than 500. Deby has yet to hold anyone to account for the violence.

This context is important to consider as Chadian voters prepare on Dec. 17 to approve or reject a proposed new constitution. Deby and supporters of his junta are supporting the constitution, which would concentrate power in the head of state and central government, reported Africa News. His critics in the opposition, who prefer a federal system that disperses power to the country’s regional governments, believe the proposal is designed to maintain the junta’s power.

Noting that landlocked Chad is strategically important because it borders six volatile countries – Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Libya, Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan – Daniel Eizenga and Katie Nodjimbadem of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies sided with Deby’s critics.

“The December constitutional referendum seems intended to provide a veneer of validation for the junta’s continued management of the transition leading to presidential elections in October 2024,” they wrote. “The pattern of delay and obfuscation echoes the long-honed tactics of Idriss Deby who came to power by force in 1990 and then held on to it for three decades by evading term limits, resisting calls for democratic reform, and putting down multiple armed rebellions.”

The son, of course, is not the father. Many Chadians, however, see a spitting image.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

Tusk’s Tasks

POLAND

Centrist politician Donald Tusk was nominated as Poland’s new prime minister this week, ending eight years of right-wing rule by the Law and Justice Party (PiS) that saw relations with the European Union deteriorate, the loss of judicial independence and restrictions on reproductive rights, the Washington Post reported.

Tusk’s nomination follows the October elections, which saw his multi-party alliance secure a parliamentary majority, vowing to restore Polish democracy and rebuild ties with the bloc.

Polish President Andrzej Duda – an ally of PiS – had initially selected the conservative party to form a new government. But on Monday, outgoing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki failed to secure a vote of confidence in parliament.

That cleared the way for lawmakers to vote in Tusk as the next prime minister.

Even so, analysts predict that the centrist leader will now face a formidable set of challenges in altering eight years of PiS policies, noting that Duda could derail the passing of legislation until his term ends in 2025.

A key goal for Tusk is to secure the release of billions in grants and loans that the EU has been blocking while Poland contested the supremacy of EU laws, as well as permitted political interference in the appointment and disciplinary processes of judges.

Meanwhile, Tusk has also promised to transform public television, a vow that will face obstacles, including overhauling the regulatory bodies established by PiS to restrict press freedoms. Restoring independence to public media may require legal changes, which Duda could block.

During the campaign, Tusk also pledged a social revolution, aiming to address issues, such as the previous government’s anti-LGTBQ stance and women’s rights.

In 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal criminalized abortion under almost any circumstances, prompting mass protests against the PiS administration.

While Tusk has promised legislative changes that would allow abortion up to 12 weeks, women’s rights advocates say they want more expansive laws protecting reproductive rights.

Law Save the King

SOUTH AFRICA

A South African judge annulled the president’s recognition of the Zulu king on Monday, prolonging a royal saga over the succession involving one of Africa’s most influential monarchies and the country’s largest ethnic group, the New York Times reported.

After the death in 2021 of King Goodwill Zwelithini, who ruled the kingdom for 50 years, President Cyril Ramaphosa recognized King Misuzulu kaZwelithini in 2022 as the new monarch.

Judge Norman Davis ruled, however, that Ramaphosa failed to consider other legal provisions requiring that he settle succession disputes and consider a mediation panel’s advice before giving his blessing to the new king.

The panel had proposed the nomination of an interim king while a feud between would-be kings was being addressed.

Deciding who should sit on the throne is not as streamlined as in other monarchies because King Goodwill Zwelithini had six wives and 28 children.

KaZwelithini is the eldest son of the late king and his third wife, who was part of the ruling dynasty in Eswatini. This heritage justifies appointing Misuzulu as king, he and his allies said.

Meanwhile, other princes, making accusations of forgery, poisoning of rivals, and incest, challenged kaZwelithini’s recognition.

Nonetheless, the kaZwelithini camp said they were confident the status quo would remain, as the judge did not overrule an earlier decision based on customary law that he indeed was the rightful heir.

Though they do not govern within the South African republican constitutional system, Zulu kings rule over 14 million subjects who look up to them for guidance on moral and cultural matters. Politicians court them to win the hearts of the nation’s majority.

Down With Bureaucracy

MEXICO

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador plans to eliminate nearly all remaining government oversight and regulatory agencies before leaving office next year, the latest clash between the populist leader and Mexico’s autonomous institutions, the Associated Press reported.

On Monday, López Obrador said he would send a bill to Congress to dissolve the federal anti-monopoly commission and agencies regulating telecommunications, the energy market and access to government information.

He said that the bodies were “wasteful agencies that do not serve any purpose.”

The president has accused the anti-monopoly commission of hindering his efforts to increase the power of government-owned oil and energy firms. Meanwhile, he has complained that the information access agency processes too many freedom of information requests from the public.

Observers said it’s unclear whether López Obrador has enough support in the legislature to implement his plan, adding that a majority of the institutions are enshrined in the constitution.

Any elimination or overhaul would require a two-thirds vote in Congress.

But the proposal underscores the president’s dislike of any kind of oversight – including the separation of powers – that has been a staple of his administration.

He has sought to reduce funding for the judiciary and removed the need for environmental impact statements on government projects. He also cut funds for the electoral watchdog organization, attempting to limit its powers to enforce election rules.

These watchdog groups were established by his predecessors to regulate formerly state-dominated sectors, such as oil and electricity.

López Obrador is expected to leave office on Sept. 30, following the June 2024 elections, in which he is ineligible to run because of term limits.

DISCOVERIES

The Assumptions That Blind

Babies see the world differently than we do, a new study shows.

In fact, children under six months old are actually not easily fooled by visual illusions unlike older children or adults, the Guardian reported.

For their experiments, Japanese scientists showed a screen with red and green dots to infants ranging from five to eight months old.

Dots of one color moved upwards in the center but downward on the right and left, while dots of the other color showed the reverse motion.

Adults would experience a visual illusion when seeing these dots: All red dots appear to move in one direction and the green in the other.

To determine if infants also perceived this illusion, the team presented screens with dots of a single color either moving uniformly or in different directions.

The findings from 40 infants indicated that those younger than six months focused longer on the screen when dots moved uniformly, while older babies paid attention longer when dots moved in both directions.

This suggests that older infants perceived the illusion, while younger ones recognized the accurate color-motion combinations.

Researchers believe that this happens because information processing in younger infants is still developing and as a result, the children are making different assumptions about what they see.

“In this case, the illusion arises because the adult visual system assumes what you see in the center of the screen is a good guide to what’s happening at the periphery,” said University of Cambridge professor, Paul Bays, who was not involved in the study. Bays said the results were “consistent with the idea that younger babies have not yet built up the expectations about the world that create the illusion.”

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