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Friday, November 8, 2019

Russian election chief defends ban on Moscow candidates

August 29, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — The head of Russia's election commission is standing by a decision to keep a dozen independent candidates from running for the city legislature in Moscow, but concedes after weeks of protests drew unusually large crowds, thousands of arrests and unfavorable attention that the qualification rules are outdated.

The Central Election Commission said earlier this month that 13 opposition candidates failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot next month. Many outraged Muscovites saw the candidates' disqualification as a sign of how determined the Kremlin was to prevent President Vladimir Putin's opponents from gaining even lowly positions of power.

The commission's chief, Ella Pamfilova, insisted in an interview with The Associated Press this week that there was nothing she could do to stop what blew up into a major political crisis. Pamfilova argued that domestic Russian politics are outside her competence.

"As an individual, as a citizen I really wanted to allow the widest competition possible so that everyone gets registered," Pamfilova, who was a veteran opposition politician herself when she took the post in 2016, said. "The law that is in place — we have to stick to it to the letter, unfortunately."

She also noted that several candidates were reinstated upon appeal and that competition for the City Duma — about five candidates per seat — is high. In Moscow, independent Duma candidates are required to submit the signatures equivalent to 3% of their districts' voters to appear on the ballot, a prerequisite that independent election observers have said is designed to keep opposition candidates out of office.

The candidates excluded from the Sept. 8 election said they had presented the required number of signatures, but first Moscow election authorities and then Pamfilova's commission invalidated enough due to a variety of flaws to prevent their participation.

The violations included minor clerical mistakes or erroneous personal data that was entered by election officials. Pamfilova insisted that these mistakes were serious enough for disqualification. Hundreds of voters including celebrities spoke out after their signatures were dismissed as suspected forgeries. The most vocal government opponents were not only barred from running but ended up in jail for weeks for calling for the unsanctioned protests.

A trained engineer, Pamfilova entered politics at the age of 36 when she won a seat at the Soviet Supreme Council in 1989 in what was regarded as the Soviet Union's first free election in decades. She served as social welfare minister in Russia's first-post Soviet government for three years, and was a vocal opponent of the federal government's brutal military campaign in Chechnya. She made multiple trips to the region, negotiating the release of Russian troops captured by Chechen separatists.

Pamfilova's appointment was expected to end brazen corruption in Russia's elections. Putin had vowed to clean up election commissions that for years had ignored or directly participated in vote-rigging to favor Kremlin candidates at all levels.

Although Russian election observers initially hailed Pamfilova's efforts to clamp down on the most blatant voter fraud, this summer's Moscow City Duma campaign brought about questions of whether she has the power to overhaul the entire system.

Pamfilova, 65, who is proud of her democratic credentials and a track record of defending Kremlin opponents, said the commission looked into the forgery claims and reversed course on hundreds of signatures but it didn't change the outcome for any candidates: they still had too few valid signatures.

Although standing firm on the decision to disqualify the candidates, Pamfilova said this summer's election campaign has highlighted the flaws in the federal and local election legislation. "The good thing about what happened - it has showed that the system is outdated, that society is not going to forgive us for this," she said, adding that her commission will come up with amendments to streamline the signature collection for candidates and cut down the number of signatures required.

When asked if candidates like Lyubov Sobol, who was on hunger strike in protest for a month, would have been on the ballot under the new, simplified rules, Pamfilova was adamant that Sobol and other candidates had made too many mistakes in their filings. She recalled her own political career — Pamfilova ran as an independent candidate for Russian president in 2000 when Putin was first elected — and said the opposition should toughen up and comply with the laws the way they are.

Authorities initially refused to issue permits for opposition-led protest rallies that started in July after the commission's decision. Riot police were deployed to the protests and on July 27 beat up and brutally detained hundreds of people who offered no resistance. In an apparent attempt to ward off more protests, authorities arrested 14 people and charged them with rioting even though the July 27 rally did not see any property damage or major violence.

Three of the detained men had collected signatures for opposition candidates. Like the others they now face up to eight years in prison if convicted. Pamfilova said she wasn't familiar with the circumstances of the case but said she wished the three arrested activists had spoken to her beforehand to find out what was wrong with signatures they collected instead of attending the unsanctioned protest.

Pamfilova accused several candidates, including Sobol, of manipulating their supporters but conceded that the anger and frustration expressed in Moscow in the past six weeks were genuine. "People are asking for more," she said. "It's a young, well-off generation that grew up under Putin, and we have to be mindful of that, and we have to understand that this generation... they need find their place here, in Russia. They need social mobility."

Sobol rejected Pamfilova's claim in Tuesday's interview with the AP that she had spearheaded the July protests because she could not collect enough signatures, and dismissed the Central Election Commission chief as a "talking head" toeing the Kremlin line.

Pamfilova insisted that even putting the signatures aside there was a major flaw in Sobol's application: she did not fill in a form listing the candidate's foreign property. Sobol told the AP that she left it blank because she has no foreign property and quoted a presidential decree to prove her point.

Sobol and her allies have called on Muscovites to come out for another protest rally on Saturday after authorities turned down the opposition's multiple requests for an authorized gathering. "We did all we could to get the approval," Sobol said. "They are taking away from people the right to gather peacefully, unarmed, in a protest to defend their voting rights."

Rally, pickets call for fair Moscow elections

August 17, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — About 4,000 people have held a rally in Moscow to demand fairness in upcoming city council elections, and solo pickets protesting the exclusion of some opposition and independent candidates are taking place at prominent monuments.

The actions Saturday have been much smaller and less heated than recent weekend protests over the issue. Two unauthorized demonstrations were previously harshly broken up by police, with more than 2,000 people detained altogether; a sanctioned demonstration last week attracted as many as 60,000 people, the largest protest in several years.

The authorized rally on Saturday was organized by the Communist Party. The solo pickets are following a law that demonstrations by a single person do not require official permission. No detentions have been reported.

Rejected Moscow candidates likely to lose another round

August 06, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — A working panel of Russia's Central Elections Commission is recommending refusing the appeals of five opposition politicians who were denied spots on the ballot for the Moscow city council election, an issue that has sparked protests and mass arrests in the Russian capital.

The recommendation indicates it's almost certain that the full commission will reject the appeals when it meets Wednesday. The Moscow elections commission last month refused to register 19 candidates, including several well-known opposition figures, because of alleged signature irregularities on their nominating petitions.

Unsanctioned protests denouncing the decision took place in Moscow on July 27 and Aug. 3, both of which were harshly dispersed by police, who beat some demonstrators. More than 1,400 protesters were detained in the first demonstration and 1,001 in the one last Saturday, according to an arrests-monitoring group.

Nearly 1,400 detained in Moscow protest; largest in decade

July 28, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — Nearly 1,400 people were detained in a violent police crackdown on an opposition protest in Moscow, a Russian monitoring group said Sunday, adding that was the largest number of detentions at a rally in the Russian capital this decade.

OVD-Info, which has monitored police arrests since 2011, said the number of the detentions from Saturday's protest reached 1,373 by early Sunday. The overwhelming majority of people were soon released but 150 remained in custody, OVD-Info and a lawyers' legal aid group said Sunday.

Crackdowns on the anti-government protesters began days before the rally. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested and sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail for calling for Saturday's protest against election authorities who barred some opposition candidates from running in the Sept. 8 vote for Moscow city council.

Navalny was unexpectedly hospitalized Sunday with a severe allergy attack, his spokeswoman said. Kira Yarmysh said Navalny, who did not have any allergies beforehand, was taken from the Moscow jail to a hospital in the morning, arriving with severe facial swelling and red rashes. Hours later, she said Navalny was in a "satisfactory condition."

Russian police violently dispersed thousands of people who thronged the streets of Moscow on Saturday to protest the move by election authorities. Several protesters reported broken limbs and head injuries. Police justified their response by saying that the rally was not sanctioned by authorities.

Along with the arrests of the mostly young demonstrators, several opposition activists who wanted to run for the Moscow City Duma were arrested throughout the city. Police eventually cordoned off the City Hall and dispersed protesters from the area, but thousands of demonstrators reassembled in several different locations nearby and a new round of arrests began. Russian police beat some protesters to the ground with wide truncheon swings while others tried to push the police away.

Police said the protesters numbered about 3,500 but aerial footage from several locations suggested at least 8,000 people turned out. Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition figure who was barred from running for city council office in Moscow, was detained Sunday afternoon as he delivered food to some of the Moscow protesters still in jail.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Sunday decried the violent crackdown as "use of disproportionate police force" and the Russian presidential human rights council said it was concerned about the police brutality.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stayed away from Moscow over the weekend. On Sunday, he led Russia's first major naval parade in years, going aboard one of the vessels in the Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg, on the Gulf of Finland. The parade included 43 ships and submarines and 4,000 troops.

Russian police crack down hard on Moscow election protest

July 27, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police cracked down hard Saturday on demonstrators in central Moscow, beating some people and arresting hundreds of others protesting the exclusion of opposition candidates from the ballot for Moscow city council. Police also stormed into a TV station broadcasting the protest.

Police wrestled with protesters around the mayor's office, sometimes charging into the crowd with their batons raised. OVD-Info, an organization that monitors political arrests in Russia, said 638 people were detained. Moscow police earlier said 295 people had been taken in, but did not immediately give a final figure.

Along with the arrests, several opposition activists who wanted to run for the council were arrested throughout the city before the protest. Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition figure, was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail for calling for the unauthorized gathering Saturday in the heart of the Russian capital.

The protesters, who police said numbered about 3,500, shouted slogans including "Russia will be free!" and "Who are you beating?" One young woman was seen bleeding heavily after being struck on the head.

Helmeted police barged into Navalny's video studio as it was conducting a YouTube broadcast of the protest and arrested program leader Vladimir Milonov. Police also searched Dozhd, an internet TV station that was covering the protest, and its editor in chief Alexandra Perepelova was ordered to undergo questioning at the Investigative Committee.

Before the protest, several opposition members were detained, including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry Gudkov and top Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov. There was no immediate information on what charges the detainees might face.

Once a local, low-key affair, the September vote for Moscow's city council has shaken up Russia's political scene as the Kremlin struggles with how to deal with strongly opposing views in its sprawling capital of 12.6 million.

The decision by electoral authorities to bar some opposition candidates from running for having allegedly insufficient signatures on their nominating petitions had already sparked several days of demonstrations even before Saturday's clashes in Moscow.

The city council, which has 45 seats, is responsible for a large municipal budget and is now controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. All of its seats, which have a five-year-term, are up for grabs in the Sept. 8 vote.

Barring of Moscow council candidates draws 12,000 to protest

July 20, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — About 12,000 people have turned out to protest the Moscow election commission's decision to reject several opposition figures as candidates in the Russian capital's city council election.

The commission last week rejected signatures the candidates gathered to get on the fall ballot. Demonstrator Maria Semyonova said at Saturday's rally: "They are making North Korea of our country, depriving us of freedom and rights."

Alexi Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition figure, told the crowd that if the barred candidates were not allowed to register by next Saturday, he would call for protests at the office of Moscow's mayor and "we won't leave."

Moscow police said the protest was sanctioned and no arrests were reported.

A look at the 2 candidates for North Macedonia's presidency

May 04, 2019

SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — Newly renamed North Macedonia heads to the polls on Sunday for runoff presidential elections. Two candidates, both university professors, are competing for the post after the third candidate was knocked in last month's first round.

Although the president has a largely ceremonial position, with some powers to veto legislation, the outcome of the vote could trigger early parliamentary elections in a country deeply polarized between the governing Social Democrats and the opposition VMRO-DPMNE conservatives. Turnout will be crucial, with 40% needed for the election to be valid. The first round barely made it past that point, with a turnout of 41.8%.

Campaigning in the first round centered on a recent deal the Balkan country reached with neighboring Greece to rename itself North Macedonia in exchange for Athens dropping objections to it joining NATO and the European Union. This time round, the candidates have focused more on the issues of corruption, crime, poverty and brain drain.

Here is a look at the two contenders for North Macedonia's presidency.

Gordana Siljanovska Davkova, 63 — The first woman to run for president since the country declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Known for her love of yoga and rock 'n' roll, Siljanovska, a constitutional law professor, first emerged as a non-partisan candidate promoted by her university. Her nomination is now supported by the main conservative opposition VMRO-DPMNE party.

Siljanovska campaigned under the slogan "Justice for Macedonia, fatherland calls." She has been a vocal opponent of the deal with Greece that changed the country's name to North Macedonia and had hinted she would challenge the name agreement in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. But last week, Siljanovska said during a debate on national television MTV she will not "spend the whole mandate in reviewing the name agreement with Greece."

"I will fight for democratization of the undemocratic Macedonian political system," she added.

During a campaign speech, Siljanovska said her country needs a "radical reversal," and described it as being "in many elements a failed state."

Siljanovska served as minister without portfolio in 1992-1994 in the first government after independence and participated in writing the country's first constitution.

Stevo Pendarovski, 56 — A former national security adviser for two previous presidents and until recently national coordinator for NATO, this is Pendarovski's second bid for the presidency after being defeated by Gjorge Ivanov in 2014.

Pendarovski is running as the joint candidate for the governing social democrats and the junior governing coalition partner, the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration party. His candidacy is also supported by 29 smaller political parties.

He has defended the name deal with Greece, arguing it paved the way for the country to nearly finalize its NATO accession and led to hopes EU membership talks will begin in June.

His slogan "Forward Together" reflects his main campaign platform of unity, and he has made NATO and EU membership a key strategic goal, saying they will bring foreign investment, jobs and higher wages and prevent young people leaving the country.

"People should know what is at stake, they should not stay passive," he said during the television debate. "They have to go out and choose between two concepts - the one that is for progress, cohesion and integration in the strongest international organizations, (and) the other that draws the country back in time."

Lithuanian economist wins presidential election

May 26, 2019

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Prominent economist Gitanas Nauseda won Lithuania's presidential election after his opponent conceded defeat Sunday. "I am grateful to the people who voted today and I can promise that politics will be different now in Lithuania. Everybody deserves a better life in our beautiful country," Nauseda told a cheering crowd of supporters.

With 1,521 of the country's 1,972 voting districts counted late Sunday, data provided by Lithuania's Central Electoral Commission showed 55-year-old Gitanas Nauseda had taken 70% of the votes. His opponent, Ingrida Simonyte, a former finance minister, congratulated Nauseda.

"That is our people's will and I respect it. I already called Mr. Nauseda and congratulated him with this victory wishing him to be a good president for all the people of Lithuania," Simonyte told reporters.

The president's main task is to oversee Lithuania's foreign and security policy including acting as the supreme commander of the armed forces.

Lithuanians choose a president to take over from 'Iron Lady'

May 12, 2019

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Voters are going to the polls in Lithuania to elect a president to succeed Dalia Grybauskaite, who has completed her maximum two terms in office. Nine candidates are taking part in Sunday's vote, which could require a runoff in two weeks' time.

The leading candidates include Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, former banking economist Gitanas Nauseda and former Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte. The campaign has focused on domestic issues such as the economy, corruption and social welfare, even though foreign policy and defense are two of the presidency's main purviews.

Grybauskaite's anti-Russia views, no-nonsense style and karate black belt earned her the "Iron Lady" label previously applied to Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister. Voters are also having their say in a referendum on a constitutional amendment to allow dual citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians living abroad.

Voters to pick successor of Lithuania's popular 'Iron Lady'

May 10, 2019

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Nine candidates are vying in an election Sunday to become Lithuania's next president, including a well-known economist, a former finance minister and the incumbent prime minister.

Term limits require the Baltic country's current head of state, President Dalia Grybauskaite, to step down after two five-year terms. The election to choose the popular Grybauskaite's successor could go to a second-round vote.

The campaign has focused on domestic issues such as the economy, corruption and social welfare, even though foreign policy and defense are two of the presidency's main purviews. The leading candidates include Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, 48; former banking economist Gitanas Nauseda, 54; and former Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte, 44.

In recent public opinion polls, Simonyte has been in front with support from more than 26% of likely voters, but Nauseda and Skvernelis aren't far behind. Along with picking their president, voters on Sunday face a referendum on a constitutional amendment to allow dual citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians living abroad.

A presidential runoff would be held May 26, the same day Lithuanians vote for their EU parliament representatives and another referendum on reducing the number of lawmakers in the 141-seat Seimas assembly.

Skvernelis, who was a police officer before he entered politics, has suggested opening a dialogue with Russia, a departure from the recent governments in Vilnius, and floated the idea of moving the Lithuanian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

If the prime minister wins, it would be seen as "a concentration of political powers" for his ruling Peasant Greens Union party, said Tomas Janeliunas, a professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.

Grybauskaite's anti-Russia views, no-nonsense style and karate black belt earned her the "Iron Lady" label previously applied to Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister. Lithuania today is very different from the one Grybauskaite became president of in 2009.

"Ten years ago, our country was severely affected by the financial crisis and fully dependent on Russian gas, with no real existing NATO defense plans," she told The Associated Press. Now Lithuania is a "strong and prosperous state" that has diversified its energy supply and like its Baltic neighbors, joined NATO as well as the European Union, Grybauskaite said.

A vital job of successor will be staying alert to Russia's military activity in the Baltic Sea region, she said. "The geopolitical situation will remain tense," the outgoing leader said. "Therefore, further measures to increase military security, defense, and deterrence capabilities, fight aggressive propaganda, cyber and other hybrid threats will remain among the top priorities."

Ally of Kazakhstan's longtime ex-leader wins presidency

June 10, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — An ally of Kazakhstan's former president was named winner of the presidential election on Monday in a vote marred by a police crackdown on protesters who criticized the result as an orchestrated handover of power.

The Central Election Commission in this Central Asian country said Monday that Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won nearly 71 percent of the vote with all the ballots counted. The results have not yet been formally confirmed.

Tokayev became acting president when Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had led the country since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, abruptly stepped down. Shortly after Nazarbayev resigned, Kazakhstan's ruling party nominated Tokayev for presidency.

Some 500 people were taken into custody after police broke up rallies in Kazakhstan's two largest cities Sunday. Protests erupted again on Monday with people rallying in the capital Nur-Sultan, named after the former president, and the commercial capital Almaty.

An Associated Press photographer saw at least 100 people detained by police on a central square in Almaty Monday morning. The observers' mission of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe on Monday criticized Kazakh authorities for dispersing the rallies.

The OSCE said in a statement that the police response "hampered the conduct of democratic elections." "While there was potential for Kazakhstan's early presidential election to become a force for political change, a lack of regard for fundamental rights, including detentions of peaceful protesters, and widespread voting irregularities on election day, showed scant respect for democratic standards," the statement said.

Kazakh protesters dispute legitimacy of presidential vote

June 09, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — Hundreds of protesters held unauthorized demonstrations in Kazakhstan to oppose an early presidential election Sunday, drawing riot police and arrests. Police roughly broke up the demonstrations in Nur-Sultan, the capital, and Almaty, the country's main commercial city. Deputy Interior Minister Marat Kozhayev said about 100 protesters were detained in all, news reports said.

The protesters complained the snap election was illegitimate, staged as a show to hand over power to a loyalist of the longtime president who resigned in March. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the upper house speaker who became acting president when President Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down, is expected to win Sunday's contest easily.

Seven candidates are on the ballot, including a genuine opposition figure for the first time since independence. The resignation of the 78-year-old Nazarbayev, who had led Kazakhstan since it separated from the Soviet Union to become an independent country in 1991, came as a surprise to many who expected him to run for re-election next year.

The opposition candidate, Amirzhan Kossanov, said Sunday he had no complaints about violations during the campaign. "But the most important result, the peak of the election political process, is counting of the votes," Kossanov said.

Preliminary results were expected early Monday. Kazakhstan has experienced rising opposition sentiment recently. Anti-government rallies were held in the spring to protest what opponents saw as an orchestrated handover of power and to call for a boycott of the early presidential vote.

One of the most prosperous former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan stands at a crossroads between neighbors China and Russia.

Italy's president to pols: make solid deal or elections soon

August 22, 2019

ROME (AP) — Italy's president gave party leaders a few more days to try to forge a solid, durable governing coalition but served notice they must convince him soon they have found a formula for a new majority in Parliament or else he'll call early elections.

President Sergio Mattarella made clear that only a government solid enough to win the required confidence vote in Parliament would be considered an acceptable way out of the knotty, weeks-long political crisis.

Otherwise, said Mattarella, "the path is that of elections." Fast-rising nationalist leader Matteo Salvini yanked support for the governing 14-month-old populist coalition in a bid to come to power himself in fresh elections.

Mattarella, who is head of state, said he'll start a fresh round of talks with party leaders on Tuesday so he can "reach my conclusions and take the necessary decisions." He urged swiftness. "Political and economic uncertainties, on an international level, require it," he said, also citing the European Union's new leadership taking the helm this fall.

Mattarella didn't say which parties had told him they were trying to reach a coalition deal. But Italian news reports said the negotiations involved arch-rivals: the opposition Democrats and the 5-Star Movement, which was the main partner in the now-caretaker government.

The Democrats confirmed that negotiations between the heads of the two parties were indeed underway, even though the 5-Stars were shying away from confirming that. Any such deal, if successful, could foil Deputy Premier Salvini, the euroskeptic leader of the right-wing League, in his bid to force early elections and become premier.

He wants to capitalize on his soaring popularity, including in May's European Parliament vote. Premier Giuseppe Conte resigned on Tuesday after Salvini withdrew political support earlier this month. Since then, at Mattarella's request, Conte is serving in a caretaker role.

To call new elections "is a decision not to be taken lightly, after more than a year of the legislature's life," Mattarella said. Parliament's full term is five years, but in the volatile world of Italian politics rarely lasts that.

In rapid-fire order, the three main political parties pitched possible deals to rivals earlier Thursday. Parliament's largest opposition party, the Democrats, signaled a willingness to work with the 5-Stars to attempt to cobble together a pro-Europe coalition to counter Salvini and avoid an early election.

Salvini, who also serves as Italy's anti-migrant interior minister, kept up his press for early elections. But as a backstop against any deal between the Democrats and 5-Stars, Salvini dangled the possibility of a Cabinet overhaul that keeps his League party in a ruling coalition with the 5-Stars.

"If someone tells me 'Let's improve the team, let's improve the aim,' I'm a concrete man. I don't hold grudges," Salvini said. Barely an hour later, 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio, like Salvini a deputy premier, said that while "the most convenient path is to head to a vote," he'd be open to a political deal to keep the current legislature alive. But he didn't say with whom.

Earlier, Nicola Zingaretti, who leads the center-left Democrats, lobbied for the same solution as Di Maio: a coalition that could nail down durable, broad backing in Parliament. "Not a government at any cost," Zingaretti told reporters at the palace. "We need a government that changes direction, an alternative to the right."

Creating a viable replacement for Conte's collapsed government will prove a Herculean task for anyone. Both the Democrats and the 5-Stars have been weakened by infighting — and over a year ago they failed to agree to a coalition deal after the 2018 election that ultimately brought Conte's now-caretaker government to power.

Zingaretti said any new government must pledge to protect the "pro-European vocation" of Italy. The 5-Stars, however, frequently depict European Union policies as infringing on Italy's autonomy. Mammoth state spending under Conte's tenure, reflecting populist promises to voters by both the 5-Stars and the League, means whoever governs Italy for the rest of this year must slash tens of billions of euros from the proposed 2020 budget to avoid triggering higher sales taxes and other painful measures which could alienate voters.

Salvini with his "Italians first" agenda has openly challenged the EU's financial rules for the 19 nations including Italy who use the shared euro currency. Former center-right leader Premier Silvio Berlusconi warned against any "improvised majority that exists only in Parliament and not in the country."

The media mogul described his Forza Italia party — should it return to power in a right-wing government — as Italy's best guarantee of having leaders that would back pro-European policies and make sure Italy does not abandon the euro currency.

Italian premier's resignation could bring elections in fall

August 21, 2019

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday amid the collapse of the 14-month-old populist government, raising the possibility of new elections in the fall that could bring to power the anti-migrant interior minister who engineered Conte's downfall.

Addressing the Senate, Conte blasted Matteo Salvini for setting in motion a "dizzying spiral of political and financial instability" by essentially pulling the plug on the government. Salvini's right-wing League party sought a no-confidence vote against Conte earlier this month, a stunningly bold move for the government's junior coalition partner.

Conte blamed Salvini for sacrificing the government's survival in favor of his eagerness to become premier himself. A lawyer with no political experience who was tapped to break a postelection stalemate last year, Conte struggled to hold together his often ideologically opposed coalition's forces — Salvini's right-wing League and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. He handed his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella at the presidential palace Tuesday night.

Mattarella, who is head of state, asked Conte and the rest of the government to stay on in a caretaker role. The president could test if there's enough support for a new government. Failing that, he might try to build a consensus to back a "neutral" figure to head a government whose main goal would be to lead the country through year's end, enough time to make painful budget cuts to meet European Union parameters.

If no other path is feasible, Mattarella would have to dissolve Parliament. Elections could then be held as soon as late October — 3 ½ years ahead of schedule. Salvini, who sat next to Conte during his speech, smirking at times, declared, "I'd do it all again." He repeatedly kissed a rosary he slipped out of his pocket right after Conte rebuked him for associating "political slogans with religious symbols."

Pressing for elections as soon as possible, Salvini said: "I don't fear Italians' judgment." Salvini's party is soaring in opinion polls and triumphed in European Parliament elections in May. He's intent on capitalizing on this popularity with national elections.

His crackdown on migrants, whom the party's voter base largely blames for crime, appears to be a huge factor in Salvini's climbing popularity. The interior minister has adopted especially harsh measures against private rescue boats, which he contends essentially facilitate human trafficking of migrants across the Mediterranean from smugglers' bases in Libya to European shores.

Salvini insists that citizens are also behind his call for less influence by the European Union on everyday Italian life. Supporters at his rallies cheer his "Italians first" policies. Should any early elections sweep Salvini into power, financial markets could be rattled by his Euro-skepticism.

Depicting himself in counterpoint to Salvini's often-derogatory depiction of European Union rules, Conte said he had "tried in these 14 months to guide Italy's policy along the path of a critical pro-Europe line, but always oriented constructively."

Analysts will be focused on prospects that any Salvini-led government could further fray Italy's relation with Brussels. A League-led government would have a "stronger Euro-skeptic stand — fighting with Brussels on everything that is politically salient in Italy," Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of London-based Teneo analyst firm, told The Associated Press.

The outgoing government enacted some populist measures, including the 5-Star Movement's guaranteed minimum income to the jobless. Whoever holds the helm of government this fall, will have to slash spending, likely displeasing constituencies. Failure to do so would trigger another highly unpopular measure — an automatic increase of the sales tax.

Salvini is already campaigning for a slashed income tax, raising concerns about where a League-led government would find the money to deliver on that promise. While lawmakers argued, hundreds of kilometers (miles) to the south, the latest migrant standoff played out near a tiny Italian island. For weeks, more than 100 migrants had been stuck aboard a Spanish rescue ship and not allowed by Salvini to disembark at Lampedusa as part of his crusade against humanitarian rescue groups.

But hours after Conte resigned, the migrants finally set foot on Lampedusa. The Italian news agency ANSA said a Sicilian prosecutor ordered the seizure of the Open Arms rescue vessel and the migrants' evacuation. Prosecutors are investigating the humanitarian group's complaint against Salvini for alleged kidnapping for refusing to open the ports.

Former Premier Matteo Renzi, a leader of the Democrats, Parliament's largest opposition party, seized on Salvini's rosary display to blast the migrant crackdown. "Minister Salvini, I respect your religious faith," Renzi said, launching into a barb that played off their common first name, Matteo. "But if you believe in Chapter 25 of the Gospel, naturally by Matthew, 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you dressed me,'" if you have these values, unblock those persons held hostage by your policies."

Salvini has taken to dangling a rosary and invoking the protection of the Virgin Mary in political rallies around the country.

Associated Press Writer Giada Zampano contributed to this report.

Iran 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills at least 5, injures 300

November 08, 2019

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck northwestern Iran early Friday, killing at least five people and injuring over 300 others, officials said. The temblor struck Tark county in Iran's Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m., Iran's seismological center said. The area is some 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Iran's capital, Tehran.

Over 40 aftershocks rattled the rural region nestled in the Alborz Mountains, and residents rushed out of their homes in fear. The quake injured at least 312 people, state television reported, though only 13 needed to be hospitalized. It described many of the injuries happening when people fled in panic.

The head of Iran's emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, gave the casualty figures to state television. There were no immediate video or images broadcast from the area. Rescuers have been dispatched to the region, officials said. State TV reported the earthquake destroyed 30 homes at its epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage. Iran is on major seismic faults and experiences one earthquake a day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people.

A magnitude 7 earthquake that struck western Iran in 2017 killed more than 600 people and injured more than 9,000.

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Hundreds of Brexit Party candidates will run in UK election

November 04, 2019

LONDON (AP) — Nigel Farage unveiled hundreds of Brexit Party candidates for Britain's general election on Monday, and warned the governing Conservatives that the U.K. will never leave the European Union without his party's backing.

All seats in the 650-seat House of Commons are up for grabs in the Dec. 12 election. Farage says his party will run in almost every constituency unless Prime Minister Boris Johnson scraps his EU divorce deal.

Johnson hopes to win a Conservative majority so that he can break the country's Brexit deadlock and get his EU divorce deal through Parliament. Farage, who has run for Parliament seven times without success, says he won't be a candidate himself.

Farage's party, which was founded earlier this year, rejects Johnson's Brexit deal, preferring to leave the bloc with no agreement on future relations in what it calls a "clean-break" Brexit. The party says leaving with a deal, as Johnson wants, would mean continuing to follow some EU rules and holding years of negotiations on future relations.

Farage told a crowd of supporters at a rally in London that Johnson's deal "is not Brexit. It is a sell-out." Farage called the Conservatives are arrogant for not joining him in a "leave alliance." "There will be no Brexit without the Brexit Party," he said. "Of that I am certain."

U.S. President Donald Trump, a friend of Farage, also urged the two politicians to form an electoral pact, saying last week that Farage and Johnson together would be "an unstoppable force." But Johnson has ruled out doing a deal with Farage. And Brexit-supporting Conservatives have criticized Farage, saying he could split the pro-Brexit vote and allow the left-of-center opposition Labor Party win power.

Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said that "it would be a great shame if he carries on fighting after he has already won to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. "I understand why Nigel Farage would want to carry on campaigning because he has been campaigning for the best part of 30 years and it must be hard to retire from the field. But that is what he ought to do," Rees-Mogg told LBC radio.

Britain's unpredictable election taking place more than two years early, and after three years of political wrangling over Brexit. The Labor Party is trying to shift the campaign's focus from Brexit to domestic political issues such as schools, health care and Britain's social inequities.

The centrist Liberal Democrats, who want to cancel Brexit, are wooing pro-EU supporters from both the Conservatives and Labor in Britain's big cities and liberal university towns. Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson demanded to know Monday why she wasn't invited to take part alongside Johnson and Corbyn in the only televised debate of the campaign announced so far.

She said leaving her out of the Nov. 19 debate on broadcaster ITV would exclude "the voice of the millions of people who voted to remain, who want to stop Brexit." "It looks like they are sexist, or they are scared, or possibly both," she said.

5 candidates for Algeria's contested presidential vote

November 02, 2019

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria's electoral body Saturday announced five candidates for the Dec. 12 presidential election, including two former prime ministers and all products of the system challenged by months of pro-democracy protests.

The electoral authority validated the candidacies of former prime ministers Ali Benflis and Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and two former ministers, one of them a moderate Islamist, plus the head of a small party.

The elections are to replace former longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, forced to resign in April after protests and a stern warning from army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah, who has emerged as the country's authority figure.

Protesters had opposed Bouteflika's planned bid for a fifth term after 20 years in power and now want to dismantle the corruption-ridden system that kept him in office and the long-standing, if often shadowy, role of the military at the top. Bouteflika was Algeria's first civilian president since the nation's first leader after independence from France in 1962, Ahmed Ben Bella, was deposed in a coup.

Besides the two former prime ministers running in next month's presidential election, the other candidates are: former tourism minister and moderate Islamist, Abdelkader Bengrina; former culture minister and current interim secretary of the RND party that was in the governing coalition, Azzedine Mihoubi; and the head of the El Moustakbel (Future) party close to the FLN, also in the ruling coalition, Belaid Abdelaziz.

The announcement came a day after tens of thousands of Algerians marched for a 37th consecutive week to demand an end to Algeria's post-colonial political system. Protesters say they don't trust those currently in power to ensure democratic elections, citing their past links to Bouteflika.

The five who will run were among 23 people who tried to run for the presidency but fell short of the requirements. Rules for candidates included gathering 50,000 signatures from citizens on voting lists from at least 50 regions.

Residents of Mexican town struggle with fear after massacre

November 08, 2019

LA MORA, Mexico (AP) — After holding funerals for and burying some of the nine American women and children slain in a cartel ambush, residents of this town of about 300 are left to come to grips with the fear the attacks inspired among the tightly knit community.

"I do not feel safe here, and I won't, because the truth is we aren't safe here as a community," David Langford said between tears addressing mourners at the funeral for his wife, Dawna Ray Langford, Thursday in La Mora, whose residents consider themselves Mormon but are not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

While the sibling community of Colonia Le Baron has been peaceful since the 2009 murder of one of its members and subsequent installation of a security base, La Mora lacks such a presence — at least until Monday's killings prompted state and federal forces to deploy to protect those who came to mourn. How long they stay could be crucial to its future.

"We here in the mountains, we have no access to authorities, or very, very little," David Langford said. The burials Thursday took place as Mexican soldiers stood guard, a reminder of the dangers they face living amid a drug cartel turf war.

The first funeral was for a mother and two sons who were laid to rest in hand-hewn pine coffins in a single grave dug out of the rocky soil. Clad in shirt sleeves, suits or modest dresses, about 500 mourners embraced in grief under white tents. Some wept, and some sang hymns.

Members of the extended community — many of whom, like the victims, are dual U.S-Mexican citizens — had built the coffins themselves and used shovels to dig the shared grave in La Mora's small cemetery.

Mourners filed past to view the bodies and pay their final respects to Dawna Ray Langford , 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2. They were laid to rest together, just as they died together Monday when attackers fired a hail of bullets at their SUV on a dirt road leading to another settlement, Colonia LeBaron. Six children and three women in all were killed in the attack on the convoy of three SUVs.

In a raw, tearful service, relatives recounted valiant efforts to try to rescue their loved ones after the ambush, and how some of the children walked miles out of the mountains to the town, situated about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the Arizona border.

There was no talk of revenge in the deeply religious community, only justice. "God will take care of the wicked," Jay Ray, Dawna's father, said in a eulogy. David Langford called his wife a hero for telling her children to duck as their vehicle came under fire.

"I find it hard to forgive," he said. "I usually am a very forgiving guy, but this kind of atrocity has no place in a civilized community." "My children were brutally, brutally murdered," he said, "and my beloved wife."

Of the survivors, he said, son Cody had had a plate installed in his jaw, which was being wired shut for six weeks. Dawna's younger sister Amber Ray, 34, eulogized her as a devoted mother to her 13 children and homemaker who loved a good laugh and baked the best birthday cakes around.

"There isn't anything in life that a cup of coffee couldn't make better," Amber said Dawna was fond of saying. The three coffins, two of them child-size, were placed into the beds of pickup trucks, and family members rode with them to the grave, hundreds of mourners following on foot.

Later in the day, a memorial was held for Rhonita Miller and four of her children, all of whom also were murdered on the road between La Mora and Chihuahua state. In a grassy backyard before hundreds of attendees, she was eulogized as an "innocent spirit, beautiful heart" and a woman whose laugh "could light up a room."

Son Howard Jr. loved basketball and recently was delighted to make his first three-pointer; daughter Kristal was "the apple of her daddy's eye;" twins Titus and Tiana, born March 13, were remembered as "two perfect angels in the first precious moments of their lives."

Their bodies were to be taken later across the road where they died for burial in Colonia Le Baron. The two communities, whose residents are related, drew together in a show of grief. Patrols of Mexican army troops passed by regularly on the hamlet's only paved road.

Gunmen from the Juarez drug cartel had apparently set up the ambush as part of a turf war with the Sinaloa cartel, and the U.S. families drove into it. Mexican officials said the attackers may have mistaken the group's large SUVs for those of a rival gang.

But Julian LeBaron, whose brother Benjamin, an anti-crime activist, was killed by cartel gunmen in 2009, disputed that. "They had to have known that it was women and children," he said. He said the eight children who survived reported that one mother got out of her SUV and raised her hands and was gunned down anyway.

To many, the bloodshed seemed to demonstrate once more that the government has lost control over vast areas of Mexico to drug traffickers. And it called into question President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's "hugs, not bullets" security strategy of trying to solve underlying social problems instead of battling drug cartels with military force.

"Now this place is going to become a ghost town," said Steven Langford, a former La Mora mayor whose sister Christina Langford was among the women killed. "A lot of people are going to leave."

Associated Press Writer Maria Verza contributed to this report from Mexico City.

International court sentences Congo warlord to 30 years

November 07, 2019

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court passed its highest ever sentence Thursday, sending a Congolese warlord known as "The Terminator" to prison for 30 years for crimes including murder, rape and sexual slavery.

Bosco Ntaganda was found guilty in July of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role as a military commander in atrocities in a bloody ethnic conflict in a mineral-rich region of Congo in 2002-2003.

Ntaganda showed no emotion as Presiding Judge Robert Fremr passed sentences ranging from eight years to 30 years for individual crimes and an overarching sentence of 30 years. The court's maximum sentence is 30 years, although judges also have the discretion to impose a life sentence. Lawyers representing victims in the case had called for a life term.

Fremr said that despite the gravity of the crimes and Ntaganda's culpability, his convictions "do not warrant a sentence of life imprisonment." Ida Sawyer, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, welcomed the ruling.

 "Bosco Ntaganda's 30-year sentence sends a strong message that even people considered untouchable may one day be held to account," Sawyer said. "While his victims' pain cannot be erased, they can take some comfort in seeing justice prevail."

Ntaganda, who has always insisted he is innocent, became a symbol for widespread impunity in Africa in some seven years between first being indicted by the global court and finally turning himself in in 2013 as his powerbase fell apart.

Judges at his trial said he was guilty as a direct perpetrator of a murder and as an indirect co-perpetrator of a string of crimes including murders, rapes of men and women, a massacre in a banana field behind a building called The Paradiso and of enlisting and using child soldiers. Child soldiers also were raped by Ntaganda's troops and forced into sexual slavery, leaving them with lasting physical and psychological scars. Ntaganda himself used child soldiers as bodyguards.

"Some individuals who survived or witnessed the murders and attempted murders that Mr. Ntaganda was convicted of still bear permanent scars, both physical and psychological, including long-term memory loss, neurological disturbances and extensive physical scarring," Fremr said.

Ntaganda testified for weeks in his own defense, saying he wanted to put the record straight about his reputation as a ruthless military leader, but was unable to convince the three-judge panel of his innocence.

Ntaganda was the deputy chief of staff and commander of operations for rebel group the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo. The force's leader, Thomas Lubanga, was convicted by the ICC in 2012 of using child soldiers. He is serving a 14-year prison sentence.

Ntaganda earned a higher sentence because he was convicted of far more crimes. He has already launched an appeal against his convictions and has 30 days to appeal against his sentence. In their unanimous 117-page ruling, the three judges said they could find no mitigating factors that warranted reducing Ntaganda's sentence.

But they found plenty of aggravating circumstances, identifying in the murder convictions the "particular cruelty" of several crimes, the "defenselessness of some of the victims" and the fact that Ntaganda, as a high-ranking commander, personally committed a murder in front of his subordinates.

The Hague-based court was set up to prosecute atrocities around the world where national authorities are unable or unwilling to hold trials. It has faced opposition and criticism, most notably from the United States, which is not a member state of the court.

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, last year said the U.S. wouldn't cooperate with the court, adding that "for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."

India, Germany agree to boost industrial cooperation

November 01, 2019

NEW DELHI (AP) — India and Germany have agreed to enhance cooperation in tackling climate change, cybersecurity, skill development, artificial intelligence, energy security, civil aviation and defense production.

The two countries signed several agreements on Friday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying India is eager to benefit from Germany's expertise. Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would also like to collaborate with India in infrastructure projects, waste management and water supply.

Merkel is accompanied by several ministers and state secretaries as well as a business delegation. Germany is India's largest trading partner in Europe. Bilateral trade reached $21.9 billion in the 2017-18 financial year, an increase of 17% from the previous year.

'End of history'? 30 years on, does that idea still hold up?

November 07, 2019

LONDON (AP) — Months before the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, with the Soviet stranglehold over the Eastern Bloc crumbling, a young political scientist named Francis Fukuyama made a declaration that quickly became famous. It was, he declared, "the end of history."

But the heralded defeat of Communism didn't usher in a lasting golden age for Western, capitalist-driven liberalism. Far from it. In the decades since, seismic events, movements and global patterns have shaped the 21st century into a splintered, perhaps more dangerous era than the Cold War.

The 9/11 attacks happened; the Iraq and Syria wars helped produce the bloody emergence of the Islamic State group and, later, a refugee crisis. The economy tanked in 2008. China became a superpower. Russia resurged. A new populism took root.

All have had a transcendent impact. History, it seemed, didn't "end." Today, Fukuyama acknowledges that some developments over the decades have disappointed him. He says his book wasn't a prediction, but an acknowledgement that many more democracies were coming into existence.

Now the world is in a phase he didn't anticipate. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Fukuyama took time to reflect on some of what he has seen — and what could still happen.

AFTER THE WALL

THE FIRST YEARS

With the passage of the decades, Fukuyama says, now "you have a whole generation of people who didn't experience the Cold War or Communism."

In those initial years after the wall came down, new countries were born and Germany reunified. But wars and conflicts also erupted after the Soviet Union collapsed and postcolonial debt-settling spiked.

Some of the 1990s' bloodiest civil wars — Congo, Liberia — became footnotes to history. Rwanda endured a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands. Yugoslavia, ripped asunder by sustained violence, massacres and displacement, produced far more coverage and even new nations.

Western military intervention at the end of the 1990s blunted Serbia's nationalism and unshackled Kosovo. A weakened Russia was in no position to help its traditional ally in Belgrade. But the global economy was generally strong.

Then came 9/11.

THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY

TECTONIC SHIFTS

Al-Qaida took terror to a never-before-seen level that was watched in real-time around the world. In response, the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban, which had hosted Osama bin Laden as he plotted against the West. Eighteen years later, the United States is still there.

The Iraq War was based on false intelligence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, backed by the U.S. when he fought Iran, possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington pushed a "you're either with us or against us" global outreach that backfired in some places — most notably in Britain, where then-Prime Minister Tony Blair remains a political outcast to this day for following Bush.

Fukuyama was once aligned with neo-conservatives and supported the Iraq invasion, but later declared his opposition to the war. Now, he says the Iraq war undermined American policy around the world, while the 2008 financial crisis undercut the U.S. claim that it had established a good economic international order.

Says Fukuyama: "I think those two events paved the way for a lot of the populist backlash that we're seeing now."

POPULISM AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

Fukuyama says he's dismayed so many voters could choose divisive populist leaders who lack a formula for governing democratically.

A marriage of populism and nationalism is a dominant dynamic now in many places — from Trump's "America First" to Brexit, from Israel's refusal to give up settlements in occupied Palestinian territory to India's accelerated crackdown in disputed Kashmir and Turkey's recent invasion of Syria.

Fukuyama says the populist leader's playbook typically goes something like this: "I represent you, the people. You are pure and the elites are corrupt, and I need to eliminate them from our political system."

But Fukuyama says he still believes that the checks and balances in democracies' long-established institutions will continue to work.

Populism, he argues, isn't conducive to good governance — or, necessarily, prosperity. "Launching a trade war ... doesn't seem like a very good idea for continued prosperity," he says. "It could be that these types of movements will be self-limiting in the future."

SYRIA, THE ISLAMIC STATE AND THE GLOBAL REFUGEE CRISIS

The ruinous civil war in Syria, in its ninth year, began with an uprising against President Bashar Assad as part of the ill-fated 2011 Arab Spring that deposed autocrats but replaced them with more dictatorship, war and chaos.

The Syrian conflict brought suffering of a monstrous magnitude: hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced and the rise of the barbaric Islamic State group, which at one point controlled vast swaths of both Syria and Iraq and carried out terror attacks across Europe.

A byproduct of IS' rise was the global refugee crisis and the flight of persecuted millions on a scale not seen since World War II.

To Fukuyama, the rapid rise in migration produced cultural backlash and an anti-immigrant feeling that was exploited by "a lot of pretty opportunistic politicians who saw this as a big opportunity to mobilize new sources of support for themselves."

THE RESURGENCE OF RUSSIA

The road from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to today's powerful Russia has been messy and not without its initial humiliations for Moscow.

Boris Yeltsin's years in power after Mikhail Gorbachev's ouster as the last Soviet leader were characterized by a freewheeling approach to the free market which introduced kleptocracy, the selling off of state industries and the era of oligarchs, mafia and defeat in the first Chechnya war.

Then, on the stroke of the new millennium, Vladimir Putin came to power as a counterbalance to the Western liberalism he so often rails against.

On his watch, a second war with Chechnya killed thousands. Russia invaded Georgia and annexed Crimea from Ukraine after backing Russian separatists.

With fresh dominance in its own backyard, Russia began to look further afield, most notably meddling in the U.S. election, which some say helped Trump reach the White House.

In 2018, Putin — still in power, still a risk-taker — boasted of the development of new nuclear weapons that have no equivalent in the West. They came, he said, in response to U.S. withdrawal from a Cold War-era treaty banning missile defenses and U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system. "No one has listened to us," he said. "You listen to us now."

Fukuyama says of Putin: He "has created a form of Russian nationalism that is dependent on empire, (on) his control of all of the countries surrounding Russia. He feels that he is basically at war with the West. This is a hangover from Soviet times because that is the world he grew up in."

CHINA THE SUPERPOWER

China's authoritarian grip on anything it perceives as its internal affairs, from mass detentions and abuse of Muslims in Xinjiang Province to its no-patience approach to Hong Kong protesters, continues unabated.

Beijing's rise in the last three decades has redrawn the geopolitical map. Its financial clout, its attempts to extend its footprint with its Belt and Road Initiative and unresolved trade issues with the United States make it a wildcard more than ever.

Fukuyama says China's increased wealth and power is upending the international system — no matter how that power is used. But, he notes, since Xi Jinping came to power, China has moved in "a much more authoritarian direction."

The new landscape, he says, "has led to the current deterioration of U.S.-China relations. And I'm afraid that's a situation that is going to persist even if you had a different (U.S.) administration in power."

FROM 1989 TO 2019: THE BIG SWEEP

Looking back from today, Fukuyama still thinks the Berlin Wall's fall was, on balance, a huge gain for human freedom.

One of the darker historical ironies of the past 30 years — primarily in Europe — has been the shift by once-communist states to the far right, in some cases embracing ideologies not far from fascism. But despite "worries about countries like Hungary and Poland," Fukuyama believes they are still much better off than under a communist dictatorship.

Many people don't quite understand how being part of the European Union, for example, has afforded them peace and stability that didn't exist before.

Today, Fukuyama looks to other uprisings — protest movements in Hong Kong, Algeria and Sudan, for example — and says he holds out hope for a new moment when history might encounter another crossroads.

He calls it the "spirit of 1989."