POLITICS: For Women, Leaning Doesn’t Make For Leading
By Miren Gutierrez**

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - “A woman who enters politics changes; a thousand women who enter politics change politics,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet told the Spanish television channel TVE in a recent interview.It is the former that seems to ring more true. Most powerful women, particularly though not only in developing countries, are or have been members of elite families: widows, daughters, wives of powerful men, in societies where women do not have equal access to most things.

The list of female rulers who have derived their leadership from men is a long and telling one.

Mireya Moscoso (president of Panama from 1999-2004) was widow of three times former president Arnulfo Arias (who was deposed each time by the military). Before her, Isabel Martínez de Perón was president of Argentina from 1974-1976, following the death of her husband, President Juan Domingo Perón. Argentina has just elected its second woman president: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in December.

The success — or succession — of women began in Asia in recent times with Sühbaataryn Yanjmaa, widow of Mongolian hero Sühbaatar. She was the equivalent of head of state from Sept. 23, 1953 to Jul. 7, 1954. “If we consider such a post as having a real ruling status, she would have been (excepting queens) the absolute first woman political ruler in contemporary history,” says Zárate’s Political Collections (ZPC), a record of worldwide leadership.

Corazon Aquino was president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, after her husband Benigno Aquino — the leader of the opposition against dictator Ferdinand Marcos — was assassinated. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lankan president from 1994-2005, followed in the footsteps of her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three times prime minister, a rare instance of a woman taking leadership after another female family member.

Benazir Bhutto, assassinated Dec. 27, was Pakistani prime minister from 1988-1990 and again from 1993-1996. She was the daughter of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno (Indonesia’s first post-colonial president 1945-1967), led the world’s largest Muslim country from 2001-2004, and is expected to seek the post again in 2009. In Bangladesh, arch-enemies Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have both served as prime ministers and as heads of the two largest political parties. Hasina’s late father and Zia’s late husband ran the country at different times.

“These women share dynastic origins and ‘inherited’ political leadership,” says the German government-funded research report ‘Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia’.

Read more… 

En español

Un libro de Miren Gutiérrez sigue los pasos de Marc Harris, “uno de los mayores estafadores del Caribe”

la periodista donostiarrapresenta la obra ‘la ciudad de las cigarras’

La escritora ha comenzado a escribir su segundo libro, un trabajo que también excava en la historia negra de Panamá

Miren Gutiérrez en una presentación anterior de su libro.Foto: iban aguinaga

elene arrazola

El martes, día 18 de diciembre, soy la invitada en una rueda de prensa sobre mi novela La Ciudad de las Cigarras, en la Biblioteca Central, a las 12:30, y en una tertulia literaria, en el mismo lugar, a las 19:30, organizada por Donostia Kultura. Me presenta Beatriz Monrreal.

TERTULIAS LITERARIAS
18 de diciembre. 19:30.

BIBLIOTECA CENTRAL (San Jeronimo)

Dinamizadora: Beatriz Monrreal.
La autora asistirá a la tertulia.

La ciudad de la cigarras

Q&A: ‘If Journalism Becomes Further Marginalised, Look Out, World…’
Interview with Chuck Lewis, Fund for Independence in Journalism

ROME, Oct 29 (IPS) - Shrinking newsrooms, declining sales and audiences, vanishing foreign correspondents, concentration of ownership, shrivelling papers…is journalism imploding? Can independent journalism survive?

“Yes,” says Chuck Lewis, founder of the Centre for Public Integrity, and one of the most respected voices in journalism today. And the answer is non-profit journalism.

Lewis is a former producer of the CBS show 60 Minutes, and a journalist-in-residence at American University in Washington. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and many other publications. A pioneer of the non-profit model, Lewis speaks with Miren Gutierrez, IPS Editor-in-Chief about the future of journalism.

IPS: So, the news is that in-depth, independent journalism may endure…But investigative reporting is expensive, it could be risky too. Who will pay for it?

Chuck Lewis: Civic-minded, wealthy individuals who believe in the concept of an “informed citizenry” and public service journalism — local, regional, national, international…Great work itself will begin to attract “buzz” online, and other revenue sources could open up, from advertising, to subscribers/members, to paid partnerships with existing hollowed out media corporations desperately seeking content, etc. In some parts of the world, such as Europe, government funding or direct public subsidies (as with the BBC) are possible too, with its related issues…

IPS: In your recent article ‘The Non-profit Road: It’s paved not with gold, but with good journalism’, you say that while increasingly newspapers will develop into “print-digital hybrids” (an expression coined by Robert Kuttner, co-founder and editor of the liberal U.S. magazine The American Prospect), advertising revenue is still to come up to editorial payroll levels. So what happens in the meantime?

CL: In the meantime, downsizing will continue, bureaus will close, investigations will not be undertaken or funded…Some media organisations will cease to exist or become unrecognisable vis-à-vis news as we have known it…Celebrity-headline-entertainment-sport-weather pap instead, masquerading as “news”.

 Read more…

Q&A: ‘We Do Not Want to Halve Poverty: Eradicate It’
Interview with Sylvia Borren, Executive Director of Oxfam-Novib

ROME, Oct 8 (IPS) - Sylvia Borren is one of the three co-chairs of GCAP, together with Kumi Naidoo (Secretary General of Civicus) and Ana Agostino (Member of GCAP’s Feminist Taskforce).Marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Oct. 17, IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez speaks with Borren about what the GCAP (Global Call to Action against Poverty) campaign means for people.

IPS: Last year GCAP and the UN Millennium Campaign set a Guinness World Record for the largest single coordinated mobilisation in history, when 23.5 million people in more than 100 countries stood up against poverty on Oct. 17. Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika joined the demonstrations; in Jaipur, India, 38,000 cricket fans stood up; and in the Philippines thousands of people marched against poverty, among many other events. Do you expect to break the record this year?

Sylvia Borren: The amazing record of 23.5 million people around the world standing up against poverty can still excite me — but how sad that there was virtually no publicity about it. That will be very different this year I expect. I find I can’t predict the numbers, but this time there are different forms chosen to demand justice. There are stand-up actions, speak out and sing out performances, and football games ‘blowing the whistle on poverty’.

IPS: You have written the lyrics of the Poverty Requiem, to be performed by orchestras and choirs in several countries on Oct. 17. In what ways do you think singing can make a difference?

SB: The global song against poverty is taken from the Poverty Requiem which I wrote together with composer Peter Maissan. A dance was designed for it by le Grand Cru. We expect it to be performed in 20 countries. In the Netherlands it will be performed outside parliament, and in Maastricht and Heerenveen (both in the Netherlands), with a choir of more than 700 people. Last Friday we heard that the global song will be done in 16 places in India.

The Poverty Requiem is very moving, and connects the audience at an emotional level to the daily realities of poverty. And even more important: anyone can sing it, and anyone who does can’t get the music and the lyrics out of their head. It is a piece written for four choirs, two soloists, and dancers, and we have found that some people come again and again to sing it in different performances around the country.

Read more…

“Panameñismos” que convencen

libros, 05 Octubre 2007 0 comentarios, escribe el tuyo

Hoy habla Nacho Fernández, de la editorial Literaturas.com, sobre el libro La ciudad de las cigarras, de Miren Gutiérrez:

¿Cómo llegó este libro a tus manos?

Me lo envió su autora para que lo promocionara en editoriales españolas.

¿Qué te interesó más? ¿El autor o la obra?

La forma en que estaba contado y unos panameñismos que me parecieron muy estéticos en fusión con el castellano y daba otra sonoridad al texto.

¿Cuál fue la frase que te cautivó definitivamente?

Quizás su titulo La ciudad de las cigarras, contenía elementos muy atractivos para saber a que ciudad se refería y todo el submundo que podía aguantar ese término.

¿Por qué hay que comprar este libro?

Es la primera obra de la autora Miren Gutiérrez, una buena periodista que conoce muy bien el mundo de las finanzas y a los ladrones de cuello blanco. Es posible que por la intriga con que está narrado y el desenlace final pudiera ser una buena excusa para llevarse el libro a casa.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Algunos viernes, habla el editor

He pensado: ¿Por qué tiene que ser alguien ajeno a la edición de la obra quien opine sobre un libro? Quiero saber qué pasa por la mente del editor cuando publica un libro. Quiero entender por qué empeña su dinero en publicar a un autor. Quiero dejar que la voz del editor independiente se escuche.

There it is my new article on democracy in Peru.

Q&A: “Just Keeping the Achievements of Democracy Means a Daily Struggle”
Interview with Gustavo Gorriti, President of Instituto Prensa y Sociedad

Gustavo Gorriti

ROME, Sep 25 (IPS) - With former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos in jail, Peru faces a new era. How did it come to happen, and what is in store?IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez speaks with Gustavo Gorriti about the unprecedented decision of the Chilean Supreme Court to extradite Fujimori, who was president 1990-2000, and its significance.

Gorriti, an award-winning investigative journalist, covered Peru’s internal war in the eighties. He followed former head of intelligence service Vladimiro Montesinos’s career since 1983 — Montesinos was the source of Fujimori’s power, and his downfall. It was his actions that led to the allegations of murder and drug trafficking.

Gorriti is author of ‘The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru’ and the recent ‘Calavera en Negro’ (Skull in Black). He is columnist for Caretas newspaper and president of Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, a Latin American association that promotes independent journalism and freedom of expression. He was earlier associate director of Panama’s La Prensa newspaper, and co-director of Peru’s La Republica.

In the aftermath of Fujimori’s dissolving the Peruvian Congress in 1992 and seizing wide powers, a coup as it came to be called even though Fujimori was president already, Gorriti was kidnapped, and held in the Intelligence Service area of the Pentagonito, the army headquarters, where so many others were tortured and killed. Because of an international outcry, he was finally released.

IPS: This is the first time in history that a court orders the extradition of a former head of state to be tried for human rights violations and corruption in his home country. Fujimori’s extradition also means that all the main public servants involved in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres are arrested. (The Barrios Altos massacre took place in the Peru suburb of that name Nov. 3, 1991; 15 were killed by a death squad of the Peruvian armed forces. In the La Cantuta massacre, a professor and nine others from Lima’s La Cantuta university were abducted and ‘disappeared’ by a military death squad). Do you feel somehow vindicated?

Gustavo Gorriti: Fujimori’s extradition doesn’t vindicate me. It means that justice has, so far, been partially served. It also somehow closes an extraordinary period in our history filled with incredible paradoxes, ironies and twists of fate. Its lessons are that consistent action in defence of democracy and human rights, while exposing the crimes of tyrants will in due time end up with a similar scenario as the one we have in Peru: with Montesinos and Fujimori in jail, facing the results of their past misdeeds.

As for me, it has been a long road fraught with the kind of conflict and peril no journalist should have to face. Do I feel any kind of elation now? None at all. It took too long, most of the time uphill. It cost too much to many people and to the country as a whole. Much was lost, and will never be recovered. We’ll have to make sure that our democracy becomes unassailable to the Montesinos and the Fujimoris of the world, and severe measures may have to be taken. But there is no joy in it. At least, I don’t feel any.

Read more…

Artículo en español…

Q&A: Shipping Still At Sea
Interview with David Cockroft, Int’l Transport Workers’ Federation

ROME, Sep 3 (IPS) - A first officer’s certificate to navigate a ship and deputise for captain. No training, no skills. Price, 4,500 dollars. David Cockroft sent shock waves through the shipping business when he bought that certificate back in 2001 to show corruption in shipping registries.Cockroft’s campaign to protect seafarers and promote the shipping industry has continued since then. In an interview with IPS in 2004, the British champion of seafarers worldwide spoke of his efforts to counter the negative effects of U.S. legislation introduced after Sep. 11, 2001. And that was not the last of the challenges. Now he has taken up the environmental issue after Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Efthimios E. Mitropoulos declared that environment is the main issue facing maritime transport today.IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez spoke to Cockroft, now Secretary-General of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, ahead of World Maritime Day, Sep. 27.

IPS: You have been the ITF Secretary-General since 1994 and outlived four consecutive congresses, the last one in Durban. What has changed in the world of seafarers since you started, and with the Flags of Convenience (a foreign flag under which a vessel is registered in order to reduce operating costs and avoid regulations)?

David Cockroft: The world of seafarers has changed a great deal since 1994, and so has the ITF. We have strengthened our global presence in defence of seafarers rights in ports all over the world so that substandard ship owners know that there is a growing chance that an ITF union somewhere will provide support for exploited seafarers. At the same time we have established a strong dialogue with decent ship owners and managers who have an interest in maintaining standards.

When I attended my first ITF Congress as General Secretary in Geneva in 1994, there were fewer than 2,000 Flag of Convenience (FOC) ships under ITF agreement — and the number was falling. Today there are more than 8,000 and rising. And more than half of those ships are covered by the world’s first globally bargained collective agreement within the framework of the International Bargaining Forum.

Of course, the other major change in the world of seafarers is that they are currently in very short supply. The number of cases of exploitation and abandonment of seafarers has fallen drastically, but not because ship owners have all suddenly become paragons of virtue, but because freight rates are at a historical peak due to the continued growth of export/import based economies, particularly China.

Skilled seafarers at present can virtually name their own salaries. Everyone connected with the industry knows that this cannot go on for ever. At some stage there will be a major downturn and suddenly — as previously — there will be a glut of tonnage chasing a declining market.

Read more…

Artículo en español…

A new presentation of my book has been announced. The cultural association Donostia Kultura has organised a conference in San Sebastian, Spain, on December 16, Tuesday, at 19:30, at the Biblioteca Municipal Central, at Alderdi Eder, tel. 943 48 14 88. About 50 members of the association will be able to ask questions and share their views on the book, which will be presented by Beatriz Monreal. For more information, write to liburutegia_alderdieder@donostia.org.By the way, many people have asked me how to buy my book through the Internet. If you are interested, click on this.