For a smooth-running economy, rule of law matters

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

AUSTIN, Texas — Countries in which courts more easily enforce contracts see less economic volatility overall than nations that don’t adhere as well to the rule of law. That’s the finding from a study by a finance researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.

The research suggests that when contract enforcement is poor, employee morale suffers, ultimately sparking churn, which leads to more economic volatility and greater differences in productivity across companies. Countries that adhere less to the rule of law as measured by the World Bank have greater volatility in their growth rates and in the economy overall.

“In countries where the rule of law is worse, if I’m an employer, I have more incentive to default on my promises to you when a bad shock hits,” said study co-author William Fuchs, a professor of finance in the McCombs School of Business. “Without an avenue for concerned employees to seek help, you work less, become less productive, and that amplifies the shock to the economy.”

The findings appear in the Journal of Monetary Economics.

Fuchs, with Martin Dumav of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Jangwoo Lee of Chinese University of Hong Kong, used game theory—the study of how people make strategic decisions—to create a model in which two entities, such as a boss and an employee, interact over time.

The model includes two building blocks. The first is the concept that businesses are hit by shocks that make them more or less profitable. The second is that contracts are not perfectly enforceable, depending on the legal environment. This lack of contract enforcement can tempt a person to renege on a promise, and when it’s the boss, there’s a cost. The business relationship is damaged.

The team compared two theoretical economic environments, one with strong rule of law, or contract enforcement, and the other marked by poor enforcement. Then they studied the effects of economy-wide and company-specific shocks.

The researchers found that a 1-point decrease (in a scale of 1-5) in the rule of law measure is associated with a reduction in aggregate volatility by 1.2 percentage points. In countries with weaker legal systems, workers in less productive businesses are quicker to stop putting in effort during rocky economic times.

India and China, for example, which rely more on relational contracts based mostly on trust between parties, could potentially decrease the ratio of productivities of the most productive to least productive companies by about 60% if they could strengthen their legal systems to the level of that in the U.S.

The findings have implications for relationships among employers and employees, businesses, and governments across the globe. Building trust is especially important for businesses in countries where the rule of law is weak and relational contracts are the norm. Organizations can work on building trust well before a major shock hits, and empowering employees to challenge broken promises can also help companies gain credibility.

“The economic cycle could be smoother if you had better rule of law,” Fuchs said. “Whatever businesses can do to build trust and make a commitment to enforce promises, that’s a very valuable thing.”

For more details about this research, read the McCombs Big Ideas feature story.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Monetary Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.jmoneco.2022.03.010 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Self-enforcing contracts with persistence

The secret race to buy the ocean floor

Private companies are pushing for licenses to commercially mine the ocean floor. And the organization created to protect the deep sea is helping them accomplish this.

Step aside football: women's cricket booms in Brazil

Jun 07 2022

Brazil's Pocos de Caldas is the capital of a quirky quest to turn the land of Pele and Neymar into a passionate cricketing nation

Poços de Caldas (Brazil) (AFP) - On a concrete playground in a poor hillside neighborhood in Brazil, ecstatic children are chasing a ball at top speed.

But in an unusual scene for the football-mad country, they are indifferent to the goalposts nearby, instead swinging cricket bats and fielding drives.

Welcome to Pocos de Caldas, a city of 170,000 people that is the capital of a lovably quirky quest to turn the land of Pele and Neymar into a passionate cricketing nation.

Defying stereotypes, Brazil is emerging as a force to be reckoned with in cricket, especially the women’s national team, who were given professional contracts in 2020 – making the country the first in the world to take its women’s team pro before the men’s.

Brazil is the first country to take its women's team pro before the men's

Most players have learned the game from 63 community youth programs run by the organization Cricket Brasil, whose president is ex-professional cricketer Matt Featherstone, an Englishman who married a Brazilian and moved here two decades ago.

“My wife thinks I’m mad” for trying to get Brazilians playing cricket, jokes Featherstone, 51, a strapping sportsman with infectious enthusiasm.

But his charisma and community spirit have turned Pocos de Caldas, a tiny spa hub nestled in the green mountains of southeastern coffee country, into what Mayor Sergio Azevedo boasts is “the only city in Brazil where more kids play cricket than football.”

- Cricket, samba style -

When Featherstone moved to Brazil in 2000, he tried spreading his love of cricket at private schools, but soon realized he was competing against rugby, hockey, sailing and “everything else you can imagine,” he says.

Cricket Brasil's president is ex-professional player Matt Featherstone

But in poor neighborhoods, where the options were “football or football,” he discovered families were elated to have a new sports program.

Unlike in England, where cricket is sometimes seen as a game for rich men, “here we have a blank piece of paper to invent cricketing culture as we wish,” he says.

Roberta Moretti Avery, the women’s team captain, recalls her first reaction seeing cricket on TV.

“It wasn’t the best impression,” laughs the 36-year-old.

“I didn’t understand it, I just saw all these people dressed in white. And it seemed to last forever.”

But she noticed the sport was similar to a Brazilian street game she liked, known as “bats” or “taco.”

The story goes that Brazilian slaves invented the game, played with broomsticks for bats and bottles for wickets, after seeing cricket played by Brits brought over to build Brazil’s railroads in the 19th century.

Thanks to community projects, Pocos de Caldas has more than 5,000 cricket players

The enthusiasm and openness at Cricket Brasil ended up winning her over, says Moretti Avery, a petite dynamo with a wide grin and a mean swing honed by playing golf.

Brazil has put its own stamp on cricket. The women’s team play Brazilian funk at practice, samba before matches, and prefer loud parties at the grounds to tea and cucumber sandwiches.

“The way cricket was developed here was really cool. We’ve made it fun,” says Moretti Avery.

- Expanding horizons -

Thanks to the community projects, launched in 2009, Pocos de Caldas has more than 5,000 cricket players.

The mayor of Pocos de Caldas boasts it is "the only city in Brazil where more kids play cricket than football."

Cricket Brasil wants to reach 30,000 and expand to other cities.

Some are winning international recognition.

In October, Laura Cardoso, a 16-year-old all-rounder, made world headlines with what one sportswriter called a “miraculous” performance, bowling a hat-trick as Brazil took five wickets in six balls in the final over to win a dramatic one-run victory over Canada in the T20 World Cup qualifiers.

It was a feat never accomplished in a women’s T20 international.

Just back from a stint playing professionally in Dubai, Cardoso, a natural athlete with a powerfully compact physique, could well become one of the world’s top players, Featherstone says.

The young phenom, now 17, takes it all in stride.

“Oh my gosh, what did I do to get here?” she says with a laugh near the national team’s training center, donated by the city government.

Brazil’s women currently stand 28th in the T20 international rankings, and are aiming a lot higher.

They have won four of the past five South American championships.

And with success comes cash from the International Cricket Council and sponsors.

Cricket Brasil’s annual budget has grown from around $5,000 a decade ago to $350,000, enabling the organization to launch a trainee coach program and send promising talents to university.

Women's national team player Lindsay Mariano prepares to leave home for practice

Cricket has been life-changing for players like 20-year-old Lindsay Mariano.

“Before I played, I didn’t even have a passport,” she says, on a break from training for the national team’s upcoming African tour.

“Now, I’ve traveled around the world thanks to cricket.”

Royal workshop: Brazil gets first cricket bat factory

Jun 07 2022


Luiz Roberto Francisco makes hundreds of wooden bats for Cricket Brasil in Pocos de Caldas, Brazil

Poços de Caldas (Brazil) (AFP) - In a workshop with a stunning view of the mountains of southeastern Brazil, self-taught carpenter Luiz Roberto Francisco is chipping at a piece of pine and turning it into a rare artifact for this football-mad country: a cricket bat.

Francisco, 63, is the proud owner of Brazil’s first cricket bat factory, based in the small city of Pocos de Caldas in Minas Gerais state, population 170,000.

Not coincidentally, the leafy spa city is also the headquarters of Cricket Brasil, an organization headed by Matt Featherstone, an English ex-cricketer who has set the ambitious goal of getting 30,000 Brazilians playing the sport he loves in the next three years.

Since Featherstone, 51, retired from professional cricket and moved here with his Brazilian wife in 2000, he and Cricket Brasil’s 19 staff have managed to grow the sport exponentially.


When Francisco discovered there was no machine in Brazil to apply the 2,000 pounds of pressure needed to bring the bats to the right density, he invented one himself

There are now more than 5,000 cricketers in Brazil, thanks mainly to the organization’s 63 community youth programs, and the women’s national team have won four of the past five South American championships.

But that all ground to a halt when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, leaving those spreading the gospel of cricket without one key import: bats.

Enter Francisco, a retired electrician at the local Alcoa aluminum plant who is known around Pocos de Caldas as a deft handyman and ingenious problem solver.

Featherstone sought him out.

“He told me he needed someone to make cricket bats, and asked me: ‘Are you up to the challenge?’” Francisco says.

“I told him, ‘I accept!’”

- Gumption and YouTube -

Francisco had never held a cricket bat in his life.

But he used a combination of YouTube videos, trial and error, and sheer gumption to turn the woodworking shop on the porch of his house into Royal Bats, his new company.

From a YouTube video on crafting cricket bats, he learned he would need to apply two tonnes of pressure to the wood to bring it to the right density.


Francisco, the proud owner of Brazil's first cricket bat factory, named his company Royal Bats

“There was no machine in Brazil to do that,” says the bespectacled woodworking whiz, giving a tour of his tidy shop.

“So I tried some different things, and ended up inventing one myself.”

He wasn’t sure what kind of local wood would work best, so he started picking up scraps and branches anytime he came across them.

After months of trial and error, he and Cricket Brasil settled on pine.

Francisco can now churn out a bat in about five hours.

They cost about 100 reais (about $20) apiece – roughly 70 times less than a premium bat imported from overseas.

As cricketing culture continues to spread, Francisco is expanding his product line.

He now makes wickets and foldable cricket chairs, as well.

US Inflation News: The Number That Crushes Family Budgets Of Low-Income Americans The Most


By Panos Mourdoukoutas Ph.D.
06/05/22 

No matter how it is measured, inflation is at historically high levels. But the number that matters the most for low-income family budgets is grocery inflation, which runs at 13.2%.

After receding for several years, inflation, the precipitous rising of the price of goods and services, is back, and it's hurting the lives of U.S. consumers and businesses in several ways.

First, it's devastating family budgets of middle and low-income Americans and undermining the value of money set aside in conservative savings accounts that do not grow in value in line with rising prices.

Second, it pushes interest rates and the dollar higher, undermining America's export growth and the profitability of the nation's large businesses that draw a big chunk of their earnings from overseas markets.

Third, it threatens to push the nation's economy into another recession or another stagflation.

Fourth, it spoils the nation's mood, as evidenced in survey after survey. For instance, 18% of recent Gallup survey respondents named the old villain the top problem the U.S. faces, the highest since the mid-1980s.

But how high is inflation?

How does it affect the economy, especially the middle and low-income Americans who live under tight family budgets?

It depends on how it's measured.

First, there's the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of inflation at the retail level, a proxy for the rise of the cost of living for consumers. It ran at an annual rate of 8.3% in April, near a 41-year high.

Then there's the Producer Price Index (PPI), a measure of inflation at the wholesale level, a proxy for the broad impact of inflation across the economy, including the competitiveness of the nation's businesses in global markets. It ran at 8.8% in April, also close to a 41-year high.

And there's Personal Consumption Inflation (PCE), another measure of the cost of living. It ran at an annual rate of 6.3% in April, very close to the 6.6% March record.

Grocery inflation (GI), compiled by Numerator's Inflation Insights Hub, provides weekly tracking of prices and consumer sentiment to find out how inflation impacts all shoppers. It was running at an annual rate of 13.2% in May -- well above the other three inflation numbers, with health and beauty prices running at an annual rate of 10.1% and household inflation rising at 15.8%.

That's terrible news for middle and low-income Americans who spend a more significant part of their family budgets on groceries proportionally.

"With inflation on the rise, consumers continue to pay more for their everyday goods. This is especially true for grocery products. And with grocery prices rising fastest in channels like Online, Dollar, and Mass, middle-income shoppers are disproportionately more impacted, as they typically spend more of their grocery dollars in these channels than the average consumer," Shawn Paustian, of Numerator Analytics at Numerator, told International Business Times.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

South Africa confirms arrest of Gupta brothers in UAE

South Africa on Monday said the United Arab Emirates had arrested Rajesh Gupta and Atul Gupta, brothers who face charges of political corruption under former South African president Jacob Zuma.

© Rodger Bosch, AFP

The two countries ratified an extradition treaty in April 2021, but it was not immediately clear whether the arrests would lead to the brothers' return to South Africa.

"Discussions between various law enforcement agencies in the UAE and South Africa on the way forward are ongoing," South Africa's ministry of justice and correctional services said in a brief statement, adding that it will continue to cooperate with the UAE.

The brothers are accused of using connections with Zuma, who was in office from 2009 to 2018, to win contracts, misappropriate state assets, influence cabinet appointments and siphon state funds. Zuma and the Guptas deny any wrongdoing.

The Indian-born brothers left South Africa after Zuma resigned in 2018. An inquiry was established in 2018 to examine allegations of graft during Zuma's years in power.

The UAE’s ratification of the extradition treaty with South Africa was a move that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's government hoped would lead to the return of the Guptas to face charges.

South Africa's largest opposition party welcomed the arrests.

"We hope that this is indeed the beginning of arrests and prosecution of those who have – locally and abroad – looted our country for years and are directly responsible for the hardships that millions of South Africans face today," the Democratic Alliance said in a statement.

'Racketeering'

The Guptas came to South Africa in 1993 to build a sprawling business empire in mining, computer technology and media.

They had been granted South African citizenship but fled the country shortly after a judicial commission probing corruption started in 2018.

After four years of investigations, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo compiled a report, revealing how the wealthy brothers became enmeshed in the highest levels of government and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

In a series of reports published this year, the investigators said procurement contracts at the proprietor of all rail, ports and pipelines amounted to "planned offences of racketeering activity conducted by a racketeering enterprise" linked to the Guptas.

The investigators also concluded that Zuma "would do anything that the Guptas wanted him to do for them".

The corruption scandals engulfing Zuma led to his downfall. He was jailed last year for 15 months for refusing to testify before the investigators. He was released on parole, having served just two months of the term.

In July last year, Interpol said the Gupta brothers were being sought for fraud and money laundering in connection with a 25-million rand (€1.5 million) contract paid to a Gupta-linked company, Nulane Investment, to conduct an agricultural feasibility study.

Paul Holden, an investigator who runs an NGO alongside a former ANC MP, estimated that the cost of the Guptas' alleged illicit activities in South Africa could be as much as 50 billion rand (€3 billion).

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/criminal-capitalim-south-africa-wealthy.html

FEMICIDE IS NOT HONORABLE

Death of three sisters spotlights India dowry violence

Aishwarya KUMAR
Mon, June 6, 2022


Before the three sisters and their children were found dead in a well, they left a message blaming the family they had married into.

Kalu, Kamlesh and Mamta Meena were victims of a dispute over dowries, the often hefty sums Indian parents pay to marry off their daughters.

The sisters had wed brothers from the same household and lived under the same roof, but suffered constant violence from their husbands and in-laws, according to the trio's grieving relatives.

They were abused constantly, they say, including when their father failed to meet demands for more money.

All three were found dead last month near their marital home, a village on the outskirts of Jaipur, along with Kalu's four-year-old son and infant child. Both Kamlesh and Mamta were pregnant.


"We don't wish to die but death is better than their abuse," read a message on WhatsApp left by one of the sisters after their disappearance, a cousin said.

"Our in-laws are the reason behind our deaths. We are dying together because it's better than dying every day."

Authorities are investigating and currently treating the deaths as suicides, a senior police officer in Jaipur told AFP.

The sisters' distraught father, Sardar Meena, said life had been a living hell for his daughters, whose husbands banned them from pursuing their education and constantly harassed them for more payments.


"We had already given them so many things, you can see them in their home," he told AFP, counting off the beds, television sets and refrigerator he provided to the family.

"I am the father of six girls, there is a limit to how much I can give," added Sardar, who earns a meagre income as a farmer.

"I had educated them and just doing that was difficult."

Police have arrested the three husbands, their mother and a sister-in-law on charges of dowry harassment and spousal abuse.

AFP's attempts to contact the men's family were unsuccessful.
- 'Dignity of the family' -

India outlawed the practice of paying dowries more than 60 years ago, and harassment or extortion over the payments is a criminal offence.

But the custom persists, particularly in rural areas, undergirded by social conventions that treat women as an economic burden and demand compensation for accepting them as brides.

Local news outlets regularly report on marital property disputes that end in murder.


Last year, a man in the southern state of Kerala was jailed for life after using venomous snakes to murder his wife and take sole control of their property, which included a new car and 500,000 rupees ($6,500) provided by her family as dowry.

Courts have also been punitive in their treatment of dowry harassment, last month jailing a man in Kerala for 10 years after his payment demands were blamed for driving his wife to suicide.

A pervasive taboo around divorce -- only one in 100 Indian marriages end in dissolution -- has kept married women from contemplating escape from abusive situations.

For the Meena sisters, leaving was never seen as an option, even though their relatives were aware of the violence.

"Once they were married, we thought they should remain in their marital homes, to maintain the dignity of the family," Sardar said.

"If we had gotten them remarried in another home, and if that situation turned out to be worse, then what will we do? We'll lose face."
- 'End of the road' -

India's National Crime Records Bureau recorded nearly 7,000 dowry-related killings in 2020 -- around 19 women every day.

The same agency reported that more than 1,700 women killed themselves that year over "dowry-related issues".


Both figures are dependent on reports to police, and experts say the actual number of cases is much higher, as with other data on family violence.

"In an hour, some 30 to 40 women are victims of domestic violence... and these are just documented (cases), so it must be much more than that," Kavita Srivastava, an activist with India's People's Union for Civil Liberties, told AFP.

Srivastava said the dowry dispute involving the Meena sisters was just one part of their tormentors' efforts to control their lives and restrict their independence.

The fundamental cause, she added, was a widespread social acceptance of domestic violence in India that leaves women feeling trapped in oppressive and violent relationships.

"If even one woman has to kill herself because her marital life seems like the end of the road," she said, "I feel the Indian state has failed for those women."

ash-lth/gle/je/oho/smw/cwl

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for FEMICIDE 

British journalist, Brazilian indigenous expert missing in the Amazon rainforest

A British journalist and a Brazilian indigenous expert have gone missing in a remote region of the Amazon rainforest after receiving threats, authorities and indigenous-rights groups said Monday, raising fears for their safety.

© AFP - JOAO LAET

Veteran foreign correspondent Dom Phillips, 57, went missing while researching a book in the Brazilian Amazon's Javari Valley with respected indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, said The Guardian newspaper, where Phillips has been a longtime contributor.

The pair had traveled by boat to Jaburu lake, in the northern state of Amazonas near Brazil's border with Peru, and were expected to return to the city of Atalaia do Norte by around 9:00 am Sunday, two rights groups said in a statement.

The men had "received threats in the field" last week, said the groups, the Union of Indigenous Organizations of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA) and the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples (OPI).

They did not give further details, but Pereira, an expert at Brazil's indigenous affairs agency FUNAI with deep knowledge of the region, has regularly received threats from loggers and miners trying to invade isolated indigenous groups' land.

FUNAI told AFP it was collaborating with local authorities on the search effort. It added that Pereira was on leave from the agency "to pursue personal interests."

Phillips and Pereira had traveled to the region around a FUNAI monitoring base, and reached Jaburu lake Friday evening, UNIVAJA and OPI said.

They started the return trip early Sunday, stopping in the community of Sao Rafael, where Pereira had scheduled a meeting with a local leader to discuss indigenous patrols to fight the "intense invasions" that have been taking place on their lands, the groups said.

When the community leader did not arrive, the men decided to continue to Atalaia do Norte, about a two-hour trip, they said.

They were last sighted shortly after near the community of Sao Gabriel, just downstream from Sao Rafael.

The pair were traveling in a new boat with 70 liters of gasoline -- "sufficient for the trip" -- and were using satellite communications equipment, the groups said.

The federal prosecutors' office said it had dispatched police to investigate and activated a search operation, to be led by the Brazilian navy.

Two initial searches by indigenous locals "with extremely good knowledge of the region" have found no trace of the men, said UNIVAJA and OPI.

According to the newspaper O Globo, two fishermen were arrested by the police on Monday night, including a person with whom the two men had an appointment. The paper did not specify if it was the local leader in Sao Rafael who never showed.

'Time of the essence'

The missing men's families voiced alarm, along with high-profile organizations and figures including Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"We implore the Brazilian authorities to send the national guard, federal police and all the powers at their disposal to find our cherished Dom," Phillips's sister's partner, Paul Sherwood, wrote on Twitter.

"He loves Brazil and has committed his career to coverage of the Amazon rainforest. We understand that time is of the essence."

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Brazil's Foreign Press Correspondents' Association (ACIE) also voiced their concern and urged the authorities to act "immediately."

"I hope they are fine, safe and will be found quickly," tweeted Lula, the front-runner for Brazil's October presidential elections against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro -- who has faced accusations of fueling invasions of indigenous lands in the Amazon with his pro-mining and -agribusiness policies.

The Guardian said in a statement it was "very concerned" about Phillips, whose work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other leading media.

"We condemn all attacks and violence against journalists and media workers. We are hopeful that Dom and those he was traveling with are safe and will be found soon," it said.

Phillips, who is married and based in the northeastern city of Salvador, had previously accompanied Pereira in 2018 to the Javari Valley for a story in The Guardian.

The 85,000-square-kilometer (33,000-square-mile) reservation is home to around 6,300 indigenous people from 26 groups, including a large number with virtually no contact with the outside world.

FUNAI's base there, set up to protect indigenous inhabitants, has come under attack several times in recent years. In 2019, a FUNAI officer there was shot dead.

(AFP)

Hong Kong pro-democracy figures set for largest national security trial

Mon, June 6, 2022


Hong Kong's largest national security case was sent to trial on Tuesday, after lingering 15 months in pre-trial procedures during which most of the 47 defendants were denied bail.

Under the security law, which Beijing imposed in 2020 following huge, sometimes violent democracy protests, the pro-democracy figures are charged with "conspiracy to subversion" for organising an unofficial primary election.

Subversion is one of the four major crimes under the security law and can carry a punishment of up to life in prison.

The defendants, aged between 24 and 66, include democratically elected lawmakers and district councillors, as well as unionists, academics and others, whose political stances range from modest reformists to radical localists.

The case was first brought to court in March 2020, when most of the 47 were denied bail after a four-day marathon hearing before a judge handpicked by the government to try national security cases.

Most of the pre-trial hearings over the past 15 months, though held in an open court, have been subject to reporting restrictions -- with the court repeatedly refusing applications from defendants and journalists for them to be lifted.

Family members and legal representatives have told AFP that the opaqueness has made the defendants "frustrated and depleted", and allowed the prosecution to "move the goalposts".

After a three-and-half-day hearing that began Wednesday and Thursday last week and finished Tuesday, all but one of the 47 defendants were committed to a senior court by Principal Magistrate Peter Law, one of the national security judges.

Last Wednesday, Law announced that seventeen defendants had been committed for trial.

They included veteran activists "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, barrister Lawrence Lau, and journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho.

Twenty-nine others -- including legal scholar Benny Tai, who was also one of the leaders of the "Occupy Central" movement in 2014 -- were committed on Monday and Tuesday.

Defendants who submit a non-guilty plea are committed for trial, and those who plead guilty committed for sentencing, according to the Magistrates Ordinance.

The one outstanding defendant will join the cohort later after further proceedings before the magistrate.

Hong Kong faces scrutiny over whether its legal system can maintain its independence as China cracks down on dissent with the security law.

More than 180 people have been arrested over the past two years since the security law came into force -- the bulk of them activists, unionists and journalists -- and 115 have been prosecuted.

Three men have been convicted and sentenced to jail for 43 months to nine years. One of them sought to appeal his 69-month sentence on Tuesday, with the court reserving judgement until early September.

The 47 defendants form the largest group in one single case under the law.

Authorities say the security law has successfully returned stability to the financial hub, which was upended for seven straight months by large and sometimes violent protests in 2019.

But critics say it has eviscerated civil liberties and the political plurality the city used to enjoy.

su/reb/lb

Tunisia expert drafting new constitution says no reference to Islam

Sadeq Belaid, the legal expert appointed last month to head a committee to draft a new constitution, said the new document would contain no reference to Islam - FETHI BELAID

by Ezzedine Said and Aymen Jamli
June 6, 2022 — Tunis (AFP)

The legal expert charged with rewriting Tunisia's constitution said Monday he would present President Kais Saied with a draft stripped of any reference to Islam, in order to confront Islamist parties.

The first article of a constitution adopted three years after the North African country's 2011 revolution says it is "a free, independent and sovereign state, Islam is its religion and Arabic is its language".

But Sadeq Belaid, the legal expert appointed last month to head the committee drafting the new constitution, told AFP that "80 percent of Tunisians are against extremism and against the use of religion for political ends".

"That's exactly what we want to do, simply by erasing Article 1 in its current form," he said in an interview.

Belaid, 83, confirmed there would be no reference to Islam in the draft, which will be presented to Saied ahead of a planned July 25 referendum.

- 'Parties with dirty hands' -

The document is at the heart of Saied's unilaterally announced roadmap for rebuilding Tunisia's political system, after he sacked the government last July and later dissolved parliament, in moves described by rivals as a coup.

Belaid's comments are likely to spark heated debate in the Muslim-majority country, which has a strong tradition of secularism, but where Islamist-inspired parties such as Saied's arch-rival Ennahdha have played a major role since the 2011 revolution.

Belaid said he wanted to take those parties on.

"If you use religion to engage in political extremism, we will not allow that," he said. "We have political parties with dirty hands. Whether you like it or not, French or European democrats, we won't accept these dirty people in our democracy."

He accused Ennahdha and others of being "backed by foreign powers, states or mini-states with lots of money to spend, and who use it to interfere in this country's business. That's treason."

Belaid, a constitutional law professor who once taught Saied, now heads the president's "National Consultative Commission for a New Republic".

As well as redrafting the constitution, the commission is charged with leading a "national dialogue" which began Saturday and excludes political parties.

The powerful UGTT trade union confederation was invited but it questioned the dialogue's legitimacy, saying its outcomes have already been determined, and refused to take part.

- Empowering the president -

Belaid on Monday urged the UGTT to change course.

"The door is still open: whether you come or not, the train will leave on time," he said.

Many Tunisians have welcomed Saied's moves against political parties and a mixed presidential-parliamentary system seen as corrupt and inept, but others have warned that he risks scrubbing out the country's democratic gains over the last decade.

The president, himself a former constitutional law professor, has long called for a system with a powerful presidency.

Asked about the system he would propose, Belaid said that "the president of the republic could have greater powers -- or more useful ones".

The 2014 constitution, a hard-won compromise between leading party Ennahdha and its secular rivals, created a system where both the president and parliament had executive powers.

Under that arrangement, the president "only had powers to block, and that's very bad", Belaid said. "The president is the commander in chief. So he shouldn't just have the power to put on the brakes but also the power to lead -- moderately."

But the new system should be structured so the president cannot be "driven or attracted by the temptations of dictatorship, tyranny or abuse of power", he added.

Belaid is to present the new draft by June 15 to Saied, who is then to sign off on a final text ahead of a popular vote.

Sudan anti-coup protester killed as civilian bloc reject talks

Mon, June 6, 2022


Sudanese security forces killed a protester Monday during anti-coup rallies, medics reported, as the main civilian bloc rejected UN-facilitated talks with the military aiming to resolve the protracted crisis.

The latest killing brings to 100 the death toll during the crackdown on protests against the October military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the pro-democracy Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said.

The protester was reported to have been hit in the chest "by coup forces in Omdurman" the capital's twin city, the committee said.

The protests, the latest in months of unrest, comes as the United Nations, African Union and regional IGAD bloc push for Sudanese-led talks to solve the impasse since the military power grab in October that ousted the civilian Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC).

The FFC said it received an invitation from the UN-AU-IGAD trio for a technical meeting with the military on Wednesday, but "conveyed its apologies" and said they would not attend.

The October coup derailed a fragile transition to civilian rule that had been established following the 2019 ouster of president Omar al-Bashir.

The meeting "does not address the nature of the crisis" and any political process should work on "ending the coup and establishing a democratic civilian authority", the FFC said in a statement.

"This cannot be done by inundating the political process with parties representing the coup camp or linked to the former regime," it added.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric urged factions to take part in the talks "in good faith" and to "continue to work towards establishing a conducive environment for a constructive dialogue."

Burhan also called on political blocs to "engage in the talks".

- Tear gas -

Anti-coup protests broke out in several parts of Khartoum on Monday, with crowds demanding civilian rule.

They were met by a heavy deployment of security forces, firing a barrage of tear gas canisters, witnesses said.

Since the coup, Sudan has been rocked by near-weekly protests and a violent crackdown that has killed 100 people, according to pro-democracy medics.

Last week, Burhan lifted a state of emergency in force since the coup to set the stage for "meaningful dialogue that achieves stability for the transitional period."

Military officials have agreed to launch "direct talks" between Sudanese factions.

Authorities have in recent weeks also released multiple civilian leaders and pro-democracy activists arrested since the coup.

However, the FFC on Monday said that other activists still remain in prison and the iron-fisted suppression of protests continues.

On Saturday, the UN human rights expert Adama Dieng, on his second visit to Sudan since the coup, denounced the killing of protesters and "the excessive use of force" by security forces.

On Sunday, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee arrived in Sudan to "support the Sudanese-led process to resolve the crisis."

Sudan, one of the world's poorest countries, was already reeling from a plunging economy due to decades of international isolation and mismanagement under Bashir.

But the turmoil has intensified since the coup amid international aid cuts.

In separate unrest in eastern Sudan, crowds blocked main roads leading to Port Sudan, the country's main Red Sea trade hub, to protest a 2020 peace deal.

Protesters from Sudan's eastern Beja people say the fragile peace deal does not represent them.

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