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Global Pulse: Kim Jong-un met Xi Jinping in an unannounced, secret visit to China

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Reports of Kim Jong-un travelling to Beijing this week have been confirmed, in his first trip outside of North Korea since he came into power in 2011. Populists in Italy are getting closer to forming a government, signalling a shift in the political landscape. Egypt will hold its presidential election this week, and the way it pans out is crucial for democracy in the region — even though the outcome is known already.

A secret visit

Both Chinese and North Korean state news media reported that the North Korean leader had visited Beijing in an unannounced meeting. The meeting with Xi Jinping comes weeks before the planned summit meetings with America and South Korea, write Steven Lee Myers and Jane Perlez in the New York Times. 

“The surprise discussions added another layer of complexity to the rush of global diplomacy around North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” they writes.

“Mr. Kim’s trip unfolded in extraordinary secrecy and security; it was confirmed only after he left Beijing on the same armored train that stirred speculation when it arrived mysteriously in the Chinese capital on Monday. (Both Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather, the North’s former leaders, used similar trains for foreign trips.)”

Kim Jong-un made the trip at Xi Jinping’s invitation. He allegedly told Xi that he is open to dialogue with the United States.

“The visit suggested that Mr. Kim values or needs China’s approval — and possibly its advice — as he seeks to capitalize on a risky diplomatic opening with Mr. Trump after more than a year of tension and threats,” Myers and Perlez write.

“Over the past six years, relations between the two leaders have been widely reported as chilly. Mr. Kim rebuffed overtures from China, and purged officials who had previously served as the main channels to Beijing, including his uncle, who was executed.”

“Now, with no prior fanfare, Mr. Xi has become the first major foreign leader to meet Mr. Kim.”

“Their meeting may help ease tensions between China and the North after years of deepening rancor. China supports the international efforts to rein in the North’s nuclear weapons development, but experts say it also wants to keep the North as a stable buffer on its northeast border.”

A new generation of politics

The Five Star Movement (M5S), a grassroots political party begun by a comedian, won the majority in the Italian election, and is edging towards forming a coalition. Roberto Fico, from the party, was chosen to be Speaker of the chamber of deputies, Italy’s lower house.

“His election signalled not just a change of style, but a shift in the political landscape that shortened the odds on an all-populist government emerging from the consultations that President Sergio Mattarella is to initiate after Easter. Mr Fico, who began in politics as an environmental activist, won with the help of the populist-right Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia party. Yet more strikingly, his colleagues in the Senate voted to make Elisabetta Casellati the new Senate president. Ms Casellati was the candidate of an electoral alliance including the League and Forza Italia. She is known for her loyalty to Mr Berlusconi, whose scandal-strewn past represents much that the M5S was founded to oppose,” writes The Economist. 

“A coalition of the League and the M5S, which won the most votes of any party at the general election on March 4th, could offer the country stability. It would have clear majorities in both houses. But it would send tremors of apprehension through markets and European chanceries, for it would put into office two parties that have vowed to defy the euro zone’s budget-deficit limits and whose electoral pledges, if implemented, would add tens of billions of euros to Italy’s already worryingly high public debt (more than 130% of GDP).”

The League and M5S both have very different policies. Salvini and Di Maio (the young M5S leader) know that they will face a backlash if they team up. Yet, they seem to have formed a rapport.

“Italian government talks are unpredictable, however. Other possible combinations include a coalition with Forza Italia; a link-up between the M5S and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), even a broadly based government of national unity. In any case, an all-populist coalition could give itself a limited mandate to alter Italy’s hotchpotch of an electoral law, enact a few popular reforms and then go back to the country. Their aim then would be to wipe Forza Italia and the PD off the map and install a new, populist two-party system.”

Another sham election

“Egypt’s presidential election this week could have been one of the most competitive in its history, even with the exclusion of banned Islamist parties,” editorializes the Wahsington Post. Instead, it isn’t. Three former military leaders announced their bids to be president and challenge Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, but in the end none of them appeared on the ballot.

“Mr. Sissi then took to television to proclaim his disappointment that other “distinguished people” were not running against him. “We are not ready, isn’t it a shame,” he said. We’d call that Pharaonic cynicism,” the editorial board writes.

“The lineup of candidates Mr. Sissi might have faced showed that dissatisfaction with his rule runs deep even inside the military establishment. That’s because his regime has been the most repressive in Egypt’s modern history, having tortured or murdered thousands of real or suspected opponents and imprisoned tens of thousands of others.”

“In keeping with its affection for Arab strongmen, the Trump administration has shrugged at all this — though some military aid to Egypt was withheld last year under pressure from Congress. Those in Washington who recognize the trouble the Sissi regime is storing up, such as the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt, have stopped hoping the White House would pressure the dictator for change. Instead, in a pre-election letter to acting secretary of state John Sullivan, it urged the administration “not to treat this election as a legitimate expression of the Egyptian people’s will and to withhold praise or congratulations.””

“No such luck. Even as news services reported dismally low turnout, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo cheerfully tweeted, “As Americans we are very impressed by the enthusiasm and patriotism of Egyptian voters.” It’s one thing to tolerate the Sissi regime; why must the Trump administration also propagate fake news on its behalf?”

 

 

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