Photo of the day: Hollande meets the Castros

hollande-castroPhoto credit to Alex Castro / AFP.

Since US president Barack Obama announced on December 17 of last year that the United States will seek to normalize relations with Cuba (for the first time since 1961), there’s hardly been a day without some little nugget of news about the world opening a little more to Havana.cuba

In some cases, it’s been US-based companies, from Netflix to iTunes to AirBNB, announcing that they will take steps to do business in Cuba.

In other cases, it’s news that airlines will establish new routes between American cities and Havana — or, potentially, a ferry from south Florida.

But there’s also been a steady stream of world leaders making the trip to Cuba — the European Union’s high representative for foreign policy, Federica Mogherini, visited Havana in March, New York state governor Andrew Cuomo led a delegation in April. Pope Francis, who facilitated normalization talks between the United States and Cuba, is set to pay the island a visit in September, and US secretary of state John Kerry is tentatively planning a trip as well.

Today, however, on the same day that Cuban diplomats said that the country would exchange ambassadors with the United States by the end of the month, it was French president François Hollande’s turn. Hollande met with both president Raúl Castro and his brother, former president Fidel Castro. In remarks at the University of Havana, Hollande called on the United States to end its decades-long embargo of the island country, adding that the embargo has slowed the pace of Cuban development.

Despite the recent increase in official visits from international figures, Hollande is the first French president in more than a century to visit Cuba, and he’s the first Western leader to visit the Castro-led regime in Cuba since former Spanish prime minister Felipe González in 1986.

Hollande’s visit — and the endearing tone with which he embraced the Castro brothers — wasn’t universally popular with everyone.

Prominent writer Yoani Sánchez gently chided Hollande in a post at her Generation Y website (via the English version) for failing to meet with any dissidents or activists during his visit:

On this visit we needed reaffirmation that the France of the Rights of Man still believes in the unshakeable values that recognize the rights of individuals to disagree, to express their differences without fear and to organize around them. We demanded some words of support, words that would confirm for us that the government of the European country is willing to support, in Cuba, the desires for freedom that have so marked and modeled its own national history.

A man who has declared that French and Cubans have “shared the same movement of ideas, the same aspirations, the same philosophical inspiration, cannot believe that he has visited a country where citizens have chosen by their own free will to subordinate themselves to a totalitarian power. Does Hollande think that we have tacitly chosen the cage? Does he suppose, perhaps, that we are comfortable in our chains?

Komorowski trails in shock Polish presidential vote result

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It’s safe to say that Polish president Bronisław Komorowski’s surprise second-place finish in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday was one of the most unexpected events in Polish politics of the past decade.Poland_Flag_Icon

Even after exit polls showed Komorowski (pictured above) training the conservative Andrzej Duda, it was still difficult to believe the popular, capable, moderate incumbent could have failed in a race where polls previously gave him a wide lead.

Though the presidency is chiefly ceremonial, the president serves as commander-in-chief of the Polish army and represents Poland in international affairs, though the prime minister (nominally selected by the president) establishes foreign policy. Notably, the Polish president also has a veto right over legislation, though a three-fifths majority of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, can override a presidential veto.

The presidential vote is widely seen as a prelude to the more important parliamentary elections expected to take place in October 2015.

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Complacency among Komorowski’s supporters, the gradual rise in support for Duda (pictured above) and the surprisingly robust protest vote for former rock musician Paweł Kukiz, who waged a populist campaign that called for more direct representation in national elections. Kukiz demands the elimination of party-list proportional representation and the introduction of single-member constituencies, with legislators individually responsible for their voters’ demands. Ironically, Kukiz’s call for a first-past-the-post system coincides with widespread dissatisfaction with the electoral process in Great Britain, where the FPTP system made for some rather inequitable results in last week’s election. Nevertheless, Kukiz won over one-fifth of all voters on Sunday, and both remaining candidates are keen on winning over his supporters.

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Both candidates will now advance to a May 24 runoff and, though Komorowski is still expected to win reelection, there’s a chance that Duda could use the momentum of his first-round victory in the next two weeks to propel himself into the presidency. Duda, a 42-year-old member of the European Parliament, is the candidate of the nationalist, conservative Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) that held power between 2005 and 2007. Unlike Komorowski, he opposes plans for Poland to join the eurozone.

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Komorowski, nominally an independent but tied closely to the more pragmatic governing Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform), receives generally high marks for his performance as president. Komorowski, a former defense minister, has struck a reassuring tone on the threat of growing Russian ambitions in Ukraine and eastern Europe, and his reelection campaign has sought to reassure voters that he will be a steady hand with respect to Poland’s security.  Continue reading Komorowski trails in shock Polish presidential vote result