Nothing to Lose
NEED TO KNOW
Nothing to Lose
KENYA
In late June, Kenyan President William Ruto blinked. After winning the 2022 general election on his plans to reform the economy, he scuttled planned tax hikes and conceded that he was reversing his position in the wake of protests by Gen Z and millennials who ransacked parliament and stayed on the streets for weeks, despite a crackdown that led to at least 50 deaths.
Now protesters want Ruto to step down, too, even after he fired most of his cabinet in a move designed to show his critics that he is open to change.
“The arrogance is gone, but the lies are still there,” wrote prominent social justice activist Boniface Mwangi on X, formerly known as Twitter, according to Reuters. “Yesterday they unleashed goons and police to kill peaceful protesters. That will not stop us.”
This attitude is one reason why the Economist believed the protests could change the East African country forever.
The protests erupted after Ruto announced his plan to raise levies on commodities, increasing living costs as many Kenyans are already struggling to make ends meet, wrote CNN. Now they have also expanded to include general discontent with government incompetence and corruption.
“It’s about a generation demanding a better future, one where they are not perpetually marginalized,” Daystar University political analyst Wandia Njoya told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
As Inge Amundsen, a senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, noted in the Conversation, Kenyan politicians frequently enact laws and rig regulations to benefit themselves and their circles. These politicians then use their influence to control companies, government agencies, civil institutions, and other groups, cementing their power and creating networks of patronage and illicit activities.
Ruto has announced reforms that aim to attack political corruption. But whether or not he can pierce the elite networks that benefit from these relationships will depend on how much political capital he wants to expend on changing the country’s power structure that helped propel him to office.
In the meantime, the protests are spreading on the continent. Youth groups are organizing similar mass demonstrations in Nigeria, Uganda, and elsewhere where officials appear more likely to help themselves than tackle the issues that are harming their constituents, noted World Politics Review. In Nigeria, for example, wrote Semafor, protests kicked off on August 1, leading to at least a dozen deaths. Military authorities have said they stand ready to restore order if necessary.
But that might only stop the momentum temporarily, especially as global economic growth is expected to decrease, exacerbating economic struggles and limiting opportunity.
“It’s a wake-up call,” Xavier Ichani, who teaches international relations at Kenyatta University in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, told Semafor, referring to the widening movement. “Governments need to move with speed and address the grievances of the people.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
After the Storm
BANGLADESH
Bangladesh’s President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament on Tuesday following the resignation and exile of longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while a renowned Nobel prize winner was appointed the country’s new leader, Reuters reported.
On Monday, following a fresh outbreak of violence over the weekend in which almost 100 people were killed, student demonstrators threatened continued protests if parliament was not dissolved.
Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister since 2009, stepped down and fled the country as demonstrators stormed her private residence, the BBC reported. Afterward, the army took control promising to install an interim government.
Following parliament’s dissolution, the streets of the capital Dhaka were calm Tuesday.
Students, however, opposed any military rule and sought for economist Muhammad Yunus to become prime minister, a move that was agreed between them, the president and military chiefs on Tuesday. Yunus received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his micro-loan development program, one credited with helping millions out of poverty, and earning him the nickname “banker of the poor.”
“When the students who sacrificed so much are requesting me to step in at this difficult juncture, how can I refuse?” said Yunus.
The economist was indicted in an embezzlement case in June, accusations his supporters say were trumped up because he was seen as a political rival to Hasina.
As caretaker leader, Yunus will face the challenge of addressing the demands of a youth-led political movement, repairing damaged administrative institutions, as well as dealing with economic issues such as inflation, unemployment, and declining foreign reserves, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Shahabuddin also said that Hasina’s arch-enemy, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, had been freed from house arrest. Khaleda Zia was convicted in a corruption case in 2018 that critics say was also orchestrated by the government.
The rivalry between the two women has defined Bangladeshi politics over the past few decades, often resulting in violence even as Bangladesh’s democracy backslid under Hasina, who was reelected for a fourth term in January in a questionable election boycotted by the opposition.
The dissolving of parliament essentially nullifies the election results.
Normal activity began to resume in the country with some schools and businesses opening. Some protesters guarded buildings to prevent them from being vandalized or looted and others tried to reassure minority communities, some of which had come under attack over the past few days.
Mourning the dead has also begun: About 400 people have died in the protests over the past few weeks, the Associated Press reported. The government, before it fell, refused to allow the victims proper burials. Now, the military, which is credited with restraint during the protests, has promised investigations into the killings, as well as to usher in new elections.
Students say they intend to hold the military to that.
“We have given our blood, been martyred, and we have to fulfill our pledge to build a new Bangladesh,” protest leader Nahid Islam told Al Jazeera.
A Campaign of Terror
VENEZUELA
Venezuela’s attorney general on Monday launched an investigation into opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzáles and opposition leader María Corina Machado, accusing them of inciting the armed forces to disobey the government, after the pair called on them to halt actions against protesters demonstrating against President Nicolás Maduro’s attempt to remain in office via electoral fraud, the Associated Press reported.
Top prosecutor Tarek William Saab, a close Maduro ally, based his decision on an open letter shared by the two opposition politicians hours earlier, asking the military and the police to stand “on the side of the people.”
Saab also accused Machado and Gonzáles of undermining the election process by announcing a different election winner “than the one proclaimed by the National Electoral Council, the only body qualified to do so.” The probe will look into alleged crimes of usurpation of functions, spreading false information, and incitement to insurrection, among other charges.
The letter came after a week of deadly clashes between security forces and demonstrators following a ruling by the electoral body, also made up of Maduro loyalists, declaring the incumbent had won the July 28 presidential election.
Machado and her allies released their own voting tallies, which showed that Gonzáles had dealt Maduro a knockout blow – a claim later confirmed by the Washington Post, which estimated that the opposition candidate had “likely received more than twice as many votes” as the president.
“It was an electoral avalanche,” Machado and Gonzáles wrote, calling on the police and the military to stop their support for Maduro. Around two dozen people were killed in the crackdown on protests over the past week.
The opposition did not react to Saad’s accusations and probe, CNN noted. Machado and Gonzáles have gone into hiding, fearing that they’ll be arrested or killed.
The United States and the European Union have called the elections fraudulent and pleaded for calm.
“We are calling on the authorities to stop this, this campaign of intimidation of the opposition and judicial intimidation,” said the EU, which earlier refused to recognize the electoral body’s results.
Back to the Future
TUNISIA
A court in Tunisia on Monday sentenced four potential challengers of President Kais Saied to prison and banned them from running for office, a move critics said was aimed at ensuring the incumbent’s reelection in the Oct. 6 presidential vote, Middle East Eye reported.
The ruling targeted opposition politicians Abdel Latif Mekki and Adel Dou, activist Nizar Chaari, and judge Mourad Massoudi. All four received eight-month jail sentences on charges of buying votes.
“It is a shocking rule, it aims to keep us away from running for the race after a series of restrictions,” Chaari told Reuters.
Another politician, Abir Moussi, was sentenced to two years in prison later on Monday. A critic of Saied, Moussi was arrested in October 2023 and convicted of insulting the country’s electoral body.
Judges used Decree 54, a law Saied introduced in 2022 to combat the spread of false information, on which to base their rulings. Critics have said the decree was used to censor political dissent.
The rulings highlight how the Tunisian government is cracking down on the opposition and civil society to secure another term for Saied, who critics say has destroyed the nascent democracy Tunisia developed in the wake of the revolution in 2011, the Guardian wrote. Then, mass protests forced a longtime dictator to flee the country and gave birth to the so-called Arab Spring.
Elected in 2019, however, the little-known professor dissolved parliament two years later and began to rule by decree, a move observers described as a coup. Since then, he has reconstituted the legislature with allies.
On Sunday, he officially confirmed he was running for reelection and denied trying to suppress rivals.
“There are no restrictions on potential candidates for the presidential elections (…) this is nonsense and lies,” Saied said.
DISCOVERIES
Citius, Altius, Fortius
Nearly 130 years after the first modern Olympiads, humans might be finally reaching their limits, research says.
This could bring the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) to a standstill at the Paris Olympics this year, in the very city where Pierre de Coubertin coined it in 1894.
“The rate of progression must naturally slow down,” physiologist Andrew Jones told the Washington Post.
In a 2008 paper, a group of researchers estimated that more than half of all world records at Olympic events, mostly the oldest, would be topped by 2027 – one year before the Los Angeles Games. But the scientists added that recently introduced sports might peak even faster than those that took over a century to do so.
Some argue the claim goes against human nature in its essence. “It’s part of who we are as a species to push limits and to push beyond what we think we’re capable of doing,” Brad Wilkins from the University of Oregon told the Post.
Equipment is one of the reasons for breaking record after record. While Jesse Owens had to dig holes in cinder tracks to place his feet at the beginning of his races, pressure-sensitive starting blocks and synthetic ground surfaces have since helped athletes surpass his historic wins.
Neuropsychological factors play a huge role, too. An Olympian does need to have all the right physical ingredients to succeed – the brain does the rest.
Science says that athletes’ brains are wired differently from those of ordinary mortals – and that is partly down to genetics. Research in 2015 found that a gene impacting dopamine transportation gave them an extra chemical boost to reach for the stars.
Then, a 2019 study on US student-athletes showed that they had greater abilities to mute surrounding noise and only focus on crucial sounds. Another paper established that elite performers’ cortexes were thicker in areas processing spatial information.
“Your body doesn’t know the history of the world. Your mind knows that,” said Team USA’s Noah Lyle. “If you turn your mind off and let your body just run, you see amazing things happen.”
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