· August, 2011

Stories about Governance from August, 2011

Cambodia’s Sand Pirates

  31 August 2011

Residents in a Cambodian province complain against the negative impact of sand dredging in their area. Tons of sand from Cambodia are allegedly shipped to Singapore which are used to build beach resorts.

Russia: Why We Are Leaving Our Country Behind

RuNet Echo  31 August 2011

Recent months have seen a new spin on the topic of emigration that seems to be ever-present in the Russian online space. Several powerful blog posts written by people from different social groups have become a platform for expressing one's take on the present and future of the country and people's place in it.

Senegal: Grants for Pilgrimage to Mecca and Rome

  30 August 2011

Mamadou Sarr on assirou.net reveals [fr] how much money Senegal provides for pilgrimages: “The Senegalese government subsidizes the pilgrimage to Mecca to the tune of 1 billion 350 million CFA Francs [around 2.8 million USD] on years when no Christian pilgrimage to Rome is organised, and 1 billion CFA [around...

Chile: Mapuche Youth Takeover Municipal Building

  30 August 2011

Katie Manning from Mi Voz reports that forty Mapuche teenagers have staged a takeover –toma in Spanish– in Ercilla: “Since August 19, the 11-to-17-year-olds occupied the town’s government center. They’re not giving it back, they said, until Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter hears out their grievances over the “constant police presence”...

China: Who Could Have Known The Libyans Hate Gaddafi?

  30 August 2011

One of China's top military analysts at home, has turned the official line on Libya into something of a joke, and abroad, China's nominal support for Gaddafi may end up costing the country oil contracts and much more. Netizens look at the lessons Beijing could stand to learn.

Brazil: Mozambique Cedes Land to Brazilian Agribusiness

  30 August 2011

Mozambique is ceding 6 million hectares of land to Brazilian farmers. The idea is to draw on the Brazilian experience in the Cerrado, a biosphere similar to the African savanna, where industrial cattle grazing and soy plantations have already devastated 80% of the richest grasslands in the world.

Nepal: A New Prime Minister

  28 August 2011

United We Blog! for a Democratic Nepal reports that Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has been elected the 35th Prime Minister of Nepal. The previous Prime Minister Mr. Jhala Nath Khanal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) resigned on August 15th after serving...

Egypt: Omar Soliman Facebook Army

A poll conducted by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces on their Facebook page to see how much support each of the potential Egyptian presidential elections candidates had on the ground yielded 'fishy' results. Here are reactions online after news emerged that a Facebook army was hired to tweak them.

Singapore Elects New President

  28 August 2011

Dr Tony Tan was elected Singapore's seventh president on August 27 with a winning margin of only 7,269 votes. This was enough to beat the three other candidates in Singapore’s first presidential election in 18 years.

Cameroon: Deeply homophobic laws

  28 August 2011

Talking about risk of toughening the law on homosexuality in Cameroon, the bonaberi.com site reveals [fr] that: “While the first paragraph of Section 347-1 of the penal code banned homosexuality, the second and third sections state sentences of up to eight years for homosexuality committed by minors between 16 and...

Trinidad & Tobago: “The Real Reason” for SoETT

  26 August 2011

Jumbie's Watch reveals that he has been privy to “the real reason” behind Trinidad and Tobago's State of Emergency, saying: “Until an explanation is presented (promised at the opening of Parliament), I will just continue to support the actions being taken as very necessary at this time.”

Cuba: Pseudo-Transparency

  26 August 2011

Without Evasion considers Raul Castro's pledge “to develop a new brave, honest and transparent journalism during the Sixth Congress of the CCP”, saying: “If the coverage of what happened in Libya is an example of what our reformist General considers information transparency, we can clearly intuit how little faith we...

China: Independent Candidate Disqualified from Preliminary Round

  26 August 2011

Sophie from China Digital Times reports on how independent candidate from Lijiang Neighborhood in Panyu District of Guangzhou, Liang Shuxin, had been disqualified by the Neighborhood Committee under the pretext of an affirmative quota that restricts the candidates to non-Chinese Communist Party members and female.

Cambodia: Prey Sar Prison Blog

  26 August 2011

Titled “life in 1 square meter”, the blog is allegedly created by a prisoner inside Cambodia's Prey Sar prison. It's no longer online but it has been widely discussed by mainstream media and in online forums.

Cambodia: Map of Prison Overcrowding

  26 August 2011

Licadho creates a map to highlight the overcrowding in Cambodia's prisons. According to the group, Cambodia's prisons are filled to roughly 180 percent of their capacity.