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March 22nd, 2009
Stories
Ukraine: Ternopil Regional Council Election
Regional council election in the western Ukrainian region of Ternopil took place on March 15, following much political drama.
Ukrainian parliament set the date for the snap election on Dec. 18, 2008 (UKR). On March 3, 2009, 141 MPs from Yulia Tymoshenko's Bloc (BYuT) and 147 MPs from Victor Yanukovych's Party of Regions voted to cancel the election. One of the parties running in the election - Oleh Tyahnybok's All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda (Freedom) - appealed the parliament's decision in court, and won the appeal on March 11. The next day, BYuT appealed the pro-election ruling, but lost on March 14, and, later that day, announced that it would not take part in the election. The Ternopil regional election commission, however, refused to take BYuT off the ballots.
Tyahnybok's Svoboda won the election (34.69%, 153,038 votes, 50 seats out of 120), presidential chief of staff Victor Baloha’s United Center Party came in second (14.2%, 63,143 votes, 20 seats), followed by Yanukovych's Party of Regions (9.8%, 41,303 votes, 14 seats) - and BYuT finished fourth (8.12%, 36,056 votes, 12 seats).
In the previous Ternopil Regional Council election (UKR), held in March 2006, BYuT won 34.49% of the votes, taking 54 seats, pro-presidential People's Union “Our Ukraine” had 31.27% of the votes and 48 seats, while neither the Party of Regions, nor Svoboda were represented in the Ternopil regional council then.
In a March 16 interview (UKR) with Ukrainska Pravda, Tyahnybok announced his plans to run for president of Ukraine in 2010.
Vakhtang Kipiani - LJ user vaxo, a Ukrainian journalist of Georgian descent, who ran (UKR) unsuccessfully for Ukrainian parliament in 2006 on Vitali Klitschko's Pora-PRP ticket - wrote this (UKR) about the results of the Ternopil regional council election:
I'm not going to congratulate anyone - because 34 percent for xenophobes and ultra-patriots isn't an event that fills one with joy. Inefficiency of corrupt and dishonest politicians who call themselves democrats always produces various dragons - from the red ones to brown.
I don't see anything dangerous about it, it's nothing but the symptoms of an illness, not the illness itself. A regional council, fortunately, isn't a place where the [”Protection of Ukrainians Program” - UKR] or whatever it's called can be carried out.
If the democratic, liberal right is missing in Ternopil region - this is when Tyahnybok's guys come to that spot. This was going to happen. And it has happened.
P.S. Ten percent of the [Party of Regions people] in the [fine Ternopil region] - that's [sick], too.
Below are a few comments (UKR) to Kipiani's post:
mykolap:
They've voted for those who are visible locally - it's all logical.
sunshine_ok:
That's true that this time local personalities have got the votes, not Yulia, or Vitya, or someone else. […]
And here is a similar observation (UKR) from LJ user ollko:
[…] In Ternopil region, Svoboda and United Center have basically done open list voting. There were no “outsiders” who [had paid to be included on the party lists]. Their people are known in districts and villages. This is one more explanation of the result they got. People are tired of brands and want specific individuals. […]
India's First Digital Elections
This post is part of the Global Voices special coverage on the Elections in India 2009.
Politics in India is essentially local and India's voters elect their representatives based on small local and regional issues, instead of the big national issues. As a result, election rallies and door-to-door canvassing, supplemented by local hoardings and print ads in the vernacular languages have traditionally been at the core of election campaigning in India.
In 2004, the incumbent BJP broke away from this pattern with its aggressive nation-wide ‘India Shining' campaign. It recruited advertising and PR agencies to manage its campaign, focused on the urban first time voter, advertised heavily on print and television, and allocated 5% of its campaign budget to an e-campaign, for revamping its campaign website, pushing out text messages, pre-recorded voice clips and emails to its database of 20 million email users and 20 million phone users, and offering campaign-related mobile ringtones for download (BBC/ BBC/ Rediff/ Hindu). The ‘India Shining' campaign didn't work eventually, and Sonia Gandhi led Congress to a surprise victory, once again reaffirming the almost magical appeal of the Nehru-Gandhi family amongst India's voters. Many observers even attributed BJP's loss to its “elitist” ‘India Shining' campaign (Live Mint).
In spite of its “failure”, BJP's India Shining campaign has set the pattern for all Indian election campaigns since then: spend 40-50% on print, 20% on outdoors, 15% on TV, 5%-10% on internet and mobile and the rest on radio, film theaters and on-ground activities (Live Mint).
What, then, has changed since 2004? For one, the demographic profile of India's electoral based has shifted. More than half of India's 1150 million population is younger than 25, 42 million new voters have entered the electorate since 2004, and, as a result of the newly delimited constituencies, the importance of urban votes has increased in the electoral collage. Not only that, the internet and mobile penetration in India has increased dramatically since 2004, from 26 million to 365 million for mobile, and from 16 million to 80 million for the internet. Even more importantly, shaken by the 11/26 Mumbai terrorist attack, and inspired by Barack Obama's success in the US elections, the young urban Indian is likely to step out to vote for the first time in India's recent electoral history. As a result, both BJP and Congress are targeting young, urban voters like never before. BJP and Congress, however, have adopted different tactic to appeal to this audience. While Congress is banking on the youthful appeal of Rahul Gandhi, the 39 year of scion of the Gandhi family, BJP has embarked on an aggressive 360 degree campaign, inspired by the Obama campaign (Chicago Tribune/ AFP/ Indian Express/ TOI/ Reuters).
While BJP's official website is nothing but a brochure, Lal Krishna Advani's website has several interesting features. To begin with, LK Advani's blog has been active since January 2009 and each of the ten odd posts have between 50 to 150 comments. Surprisingly, the Hindi version of LK Advani's blog has very few comments. The forum on LK Advani's website isn't much to look at, but it's doing well, with 6586 members, 2940 topics, and 9354 posts.
The Advani@Campus initiative seeks to build a grassroots volunteer campaign “to contact and mobilize young voters in thousands of college campuses across the country” (Telegraph/ DNA/ NDTV/ Indian Express). The focus on recruiting volunteers is reflected in a well-structured volunteer program. The tasks range from recruiting first time voters, promoting LK Advani's website and social media profiles, translating sections of the website, designing banner ads, and helping out with other campaign work. According to one report, BJP has recruited more than 7000 volunteers through the website (Business Standard).
Especially interesting is the Bloggers for Advani initiative run by Mallika Noorani. The initiative is coordinated through a Google Group (started based on a suggestion by yours truly), and encourages bloggers to display a Bloggers for Advani button and promote BJP's ideas on their blogs.
It seems that most of the social media initiatives on the Advani campaign are run by volunteers and encouraged by the campaign coordinators. In any case, it's difficult to identify which profiles or groups are official and which are unofficial. The official website links to a LK Advani Facebook page (with 390 supporters) and an Advani for PM Orkut group (with 960 members), but there are several other unofficial groups with similar memberships. The (official?) BJP Supporters Group on Orkut has 22,157 members. Similarly, there's confusion about whether the @BJP_ Twitter profile, which has 416 followers is indeed official.
A group which seems to work closely with the campaign team is the Friends of BJP group (Facebook/ Orkut), which includes several prominent professionals including Rajesh Jain and R K Mishra. Another unofficial website which is getting some traction is Join BJP.
Apart from these national level initiatives, several BJP leaders, including Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and V K Malhotra also have well-designed websites. Narendra Modi and V K Malhotra also have Twitter profiles.
The BJP is also running an aggressive online ad campaign, primarily with Google, with search ads across as many as 200,000 keywords, placement ads across 50,000 websites, and banner ads across 2,000 websites. With a billion searches every month, BJP's campaign is expected to recah 75% of India's internet users (Live Mint/ Economics Times).
BJP is also planning to send one billion SMSes to about 250 million cellphone users, who are not enrolled in the Do-Not-Call registry. Overall, telecom operators expect to make an additional revenue of $10 million from an extra traffic of 3-4 billion SMSes sent by all the political parties, apart from money from from multimedia messages, songs and wallpapers (Economic Times/ Indian Express/ Financial Express).
Last week, the BJP also released a detailed 30-page IT Vision document (PDF) with much fanfare. The document is partly a road map to reform and partly a pre-election populist pipe dream. It promises to give the highest priority to developing IT infrastructure and leveraging it for better governance and inclusive development. Specifically, it promises to match China on all IT-related parameters within 5 years. While many observers have dismissed the document as pre-election populism, others have pointed out that it is a testament to BJP's forward looking thinking that it believes that it can win an election by promising to transform India into an IT super-power.
The Indian National Congress, on the other hand, seems to be stuck in the web 1.0 era. Both the official Congress website and the Congress Media websites are online brochures. The Vote for Congress portal, which was supposed to revolutionize its online campaign by providing the Congress candidates a platform to blog (Hindu/ TOI), is still not up. None of the senior Congress leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh — have a website and, what's worse, their URLs are owned by cyber-squatters (Indian Express). The party does want to set up 600 internet kiosks across the country (Hindu) but without engaging interactive content, their effectiveness might be limited.
Shashi Tharoor — author and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations — is perhaps the only Congress candidate to seriously leverage the web in his campaign, with presence on Facebook and Orkut (CIOL/ Sify). Former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna has a Twitter profile. Some of the younger Congress candidates like Priya Dutt, Milind Deora (Facebook) and Sachin Pilot also have well-designed websites, but aren't really active on social media.
Several other regional parties have either set up, or revamped, their websites, in the run up to the general elections. The CPI-M (Live Mint/ Hindu/ Economic Times/ Indian Express) and Samajvadi Party websites seem to be the most well-designed. However, none of these websites are using social media tools, beyond asking for donations and newsletter subscriptions.
Many observers have pointed out that the digital campaigns by BJP and other Indian political parties are amateurish in comparison to Barack Obama's social media campaign (CIOL/ Networked World) and they are right. BJP's digital campaign can hardly be compared to Obama'a campaign, in terms of ambition, execution or results. The campaign is hardly going to change the course of the election; the election will still be decided in India's small towns and villages. But, even if it “fails”, the campaign will set a precedent for all future elections in India, just like the ‘India Shining' campaign did, five years ago.
Cross-posted on Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.
Angola: Pope is greeted by the largest crowd of his African tour
Pope Benedict XVI is welcomed in Luanda by the Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos. Photo: Diário da África, used with permission
The climax of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Angola was an open-air mass this Sunday, when nearly million people from various Angolan provinces and other African countries came to Luanda to hear the mass in Cimangola, on the outskirts of Luanda. Benedict XVI has been welcomed in Angola by the largest crowd of his first African tour, with many people coming from all over the country and abroad to be blessed by him on the traditional Sunday noon blessing. After the Mass, the pope was due to visit a women's rights centre in Luanda.
Helder de Souza [pt] is impressed by the Angolan people's display of faith:
Deve ser da presença do Papa em Luanda. A força e o entusiasmo do povo angolano manifestados durante a visita do Santo Padre impressionam-me. São aos milhares e milhares, pelas ruas dos percursos de Bento XVI, a manifestarem a sua alegria e o seu agradecimento pela visita. Mas impressiona-me também a capacidade de organização dos angolanos. As pessoas estão vestidas de branco, usam bonés com a efígie do Papa, escuteiros aos milhares vindos de todo o país, mulheres de todas as províncias, como que a quererem dizer que Angola agradece, na pessoa do apóstolo, a paz que está a viver.
There were, unfortunately, some tragic causalities. On Saturday, two people died and several were injured when a stamped broke out at a stadium where thousands of youngsters waited to listen to the Pope. There are reports of more people injured in another stampede when the pope arrived on Friday. Before the Sunday Mass, Benedict offered his condolences to their families.
In his messages addressed to the nation over the 3-day visit, the pontiff has spoken out against corruption, called on Angola to ease poverty, urged African leaders to allow greater press freedom, condemned abortion and sexual violence against women in Africa and urged Catholics to shun witchcraft, a belief that has spread in the country over the last few years. Hilcelia Falcão has followed the news:
Até agora, nada de novas polêmicas. E o clima tem sido de festa entre os angolanos neste segundo dia de visita de Bento XVI.
Depois da chegada, ontem, no aeroporto, com o povo espremido para disputar espaço na concorrida passagem de Ratzinger por Luanda, recebeu as boas vindas do presidente José Eduardo dos Santos e discursou pedindo justiça social e o fim da corrupção. Exortou angolanos, praticantes do animismo, a abandonarem a feitiçaria. E foi só.
Na agenda de cerimônias religiosas, houve missa na Igreja de São Paulo, onde foi ovacionado pelos fiéis. À tarde, foi a vez do encontro com os jovens no Estádio dos Coqueiros, com direito a empurra-empurra e muita gente passando mal.
Preparations - Luanda is given a facelift
More than on the Pope's message itself, Angolan bloggers have been concerned with the make up given in record time to Luanda, just a few days before the arrival of the Pope. Afonso Loureiro takes pictures of the city behind the scenes and comments:
A torre que fica em frente ao antigo Hotel Katekero foi pintada de amarelo casca d’ovo e vermelho tijolo. Para receber o Papa, dizem. O contraste entre os dois edifícios é abissal, porque o hotel continua com o aspecto de que não vê obras de conservação há décadas. Parece que o Papa só precisa de ver o que está em frente e o Hotel fica fora de vista. É pena que sejam só obras de fachada.
Image by Afonso Loureiro, used with the author's permission
Helena Araújo [pt] comments on the piece of news that the Pope decided to celebrate mass in a part of the city which was not initially on the plan and therefore had not been looked after:
Arranjaram-se as ruas de Luanda por onde o Papa ia passar.
Pintaram-se as fachadas das casas - ou as traseiras, nos casos em que era essa a parte da casa que se via da rua.
Distribuiu-se água, para o Papa não ver pelas ruas pessoas com baldes de água à cabeça.O clero, que “é esperto, e já é esperto há muitos anos”, como me contaram a rir, resolveu que a missa solene havia de ser feita num dos bairros degradados da cidade.
À luz destes acontecimentos, atrevam-se agora a dizer que a presença da Igreja Católica em África não é positiva…
The facades of the houses have been painted - or their back, in case it was the part of the house to be seen from the street.
Water has been distributed so that the Pope will not see people on the streets with buckets of water on their heads.
The clergy, “who has been smart for many years”, as I was told among giggles, decided that a solemn mass was to be celebrated in one of the slums of the city.
In light of these events, how dare you now to say that the presence of the Catholic Church in Africa is not good…
On the eve of Benedict XVI's arrival, the blogger at Menina de Angola [Girl from Angola, pt] also writes about how the Angolan capital has quickly changed:
“Se o trânsito de Luanda já é caótico normalmente, imagine com a Santidade por estas bandas. Várias ruas serão fechadas e todo o aparato de segurança vai estar de plantão. Dizem as más línguas que na ultima visita de um Papa em 1992, a guerra explodiu logo após a sua saída. Mas a gente sabe que isso é maldade do povo, não é?.
Enquanto a cidade se engalana para receber Bento XVI, outros bloguers nacionais vão deixando as suas opiniões acerca da igreja católica, nomeadamente em questões como a Sida e a presença do Papa na capital.”
“If the traffic in Luanda is usually chaotic, imagine with with the Holy Father around here. Several streets will be closed and the whole security apparatus will be on duty. Some people say that the last visit of a pope was in 1992, and the war broke out soon after his departure. But we know this is evil of the people to say that, don't we? While the city has been embellished to receive Pope Benedict XVI, other national bloggers start to pour in their opinions about the Catholic Church, particularly on issues such as AIDS and the presence of the Pope in the capital Luanda.
Regarding these issues, the blogger of the Parem o Mundo Quero Sair [Stop The World, I Want to Get Out] blog takes the opportunity to criticize some of the Vatican positions after very conservative remarks made by the Pope in the beginning of the trip that AIDS “cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”:
“Na África subsaariana, cerca de 25 milhões de pessoas estão actualmente infectadas com o vírus do HIV – 70% do número total de doentes no mundo. O vírus afecta 5% da população adulta e já deixou órfãs cerca de 11 milhões de crianças, contudo este senhor resolve apregoar por terras africanas que o uso do preservativo agrava a propagação da doença. Para mim, a partir deste momento, o senhor Papa passa a ser responsável por umas quantas mortes que venham a acontecer futuramente, pois infelizmente, existem muitos católicos em terras africanas que não duvido, sigam à risca os conselhos de Sua Santidade”.
Eugénio Costa Almeida writes about the fact that Luanda was the only Angolan city to welcome the Pope:
“Apesar de ser uma visita a convite do Presidente Eduardo dos Santos, vai recordar os 527 anos da evangelização de Angola e o facto de, Angola ter sido o primeiro país subsaariano a ser evangelizado. Ora se o assunto principal é a celebração da evangelização porque é que o Papa só fica por Luanda e não se desloca a Mbanza Congo, a capital do Reino do Congo, cidade onde se iniciou a evangelização do território que deu Angola? Tal como não vai ao Santuário da Nª Senhora da Muxima nem ao da Senhora do Monte, no Lubango. E já nem falo a outras partes do país. Parece que continua a haver quem ache que Angola é só Luanda e o resto é só beleza paisagística e faunística ou coutada de minas…
Porque só saindo das capitais o Papa Bento XVI poderá fazer jus à visita papal: “Abraçar África nas suas Mil Diferenças”.
“Despite the fact that this is an invitation of President Eduardo dos Santos, [the Pope] will remember the 527 years of evangelicalism of Angola and the fact that Angola was the first African Sub-Saharan country to be evangelized. But if the heart of matter is a celebration of the evangelicalism, why will the Pope only come to Luanda and not go to Mbanza Congo, the capital of the Kingdom of Congo, where the evangelicalism of the area that gave way to Angola began? He is neither going to the Shrine of Our Lady of Muxima or the Lady of Monte in Lubango. And I don't even mention other parts of the country. It seems that there are still people who think that Angola is Luanda only and the rest are just beautiful fauna and landscapes, or mine-filled… because only out of the capital the Pope can do justice to the papal visit: “Embracing Africa in its thousands Differences.”
Regarding these issues, Vatican representative D. Angelo Becciu answered: “We need to understand that the Pope is old and can not go to other provinces in the country”.
Image by Afonso Loureiro, used with the author's permission
After visiting Cameroom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Luanda on Friday March 20th for a 3-day visit ending his first African tour. He will return to Rome tomorrow morning. This was the first papal visit to Angola since 1992, when his predecessor John Paul II came and asked for the end of the civil war (1975-2002). Over 60% of Angolans are believed to be Catholic, a religion introduced in the country by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century.
Egypt: Arab Youth on a Presidential Mission
Egypt's first online radio - Radio Horytna - invites youth to apply for the position of President for any Arab country of their choice.
Shaymaa El Gammal wrote:
Maha ElEnany noted:
ان تكون شاب\فتاة عربي\ة سنك تحت 30 سنة لديك أفكار إبداعية قادر على التعبير عن نفسك، أفكارك، بدون خوف مؤمن بمواثيق حقوق الإنسان وبأهميتها في تغيير حياة الشعوب.
A young Arab man or woman, under the age of 30, creative, expressive, relentless, and a firm believer in human rights and their ability to change people's lives for the better.
Mostafa Fathy explained more about the initiative saying:
“هل تخيلت نفسك من قبل حاكماً لبلد عربي؟
راديو حريتنا يعطيك الفرصة كاملة لأن تصبح قائداً وحاكماً للبلد العربية التي تريدها .. فقط جهز أفكارك واستعد لأهم وأكبر تحدي للشباب العربي .. نحتاج لشباب مختلف في تفكيره .. شباب قادر على الإيجابية وعلى أن يكون في موضع مسئولية .. لن نتحدث كثيراً عن سلبيات بلادنا العربية وبعدها نصمت .. بل سنتحدث عن كل السلبيات التي نعيش فيها لكننا سنطرح لها حلولاً واقعية وقابلة للتنفيذ
Radio Horytna is now giving you the chance to become the leader of any Arab country of your choice … prepare your thoughts and ideas and get ready for the biggest challenge … we need people with vision and a fresh outlook … young people who are capable of positive thinking and accountability … we do not want people who will blabber on about the negatives in the Arab World … we want people who could bring realistic solutions to the table.
Malaysia unveils its second stimulus plan
Malaysia’s first stimulus plan last year was inadequate. So the government unveiled a second stimulus program this month. In his speech at the Parliament, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister defended the stimulus package:
The thrusts of the Stimulus Package are as follows:
- First : Reducing Unemployment and Increasing Employment Opportunities;
- Second : Easing the Burden of the Rakyat, in particular, the Vulnerable Groups;
- Third : Assisting the Private Sector in Facing the Crisis; and
- Fourth : Building Capacity for the Future.
He adds that “The Government is confident that the strategies and measures outlined in this Stimulus Package are comprehensive to prevent our economy from slipping into deep recession.”
We cannot depend on orthodox economic recovery policies. We must be bold in formulating innovative approaches to deal with the crisis. This is a very challenging time for all of us. We must be ready and strong to face the challenges ahead. We must draw upon our past experience to overcome the crisis.
myAsylum thinks the stimulus plan will not work:
Bailout sounds bad, but stimulus sounds positive, even though if analyzed, the RM 60B package doesn’t seem like it was designed to stimulate much of anything that can be construed as productive. Except maybe stimulate the public sector into growing even more bloated than it already is
E Contrario points out that the package does not address unemployment and poverty in Malaysia:
The package left out institutional reforms, made no mention in strengthening regulatory mechanism and improvement of economic governance.
As a result, we learn nothing from the crisis. We have not even embarked on any serious institutional reforms after we were hit by 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
The package has not addressed the crisis of massive unemployment and escalating poverty, especially urban poverty.
We are uncertain what will be mechanism to ensure funds injected into the economy can ‘trigger’ down to the bottom of the society. While uttering rhetorics against rampant neo-liberalism, the Government seems to blindly believe in the market to do the distribution.
Malaysian Economic Front hopes the stimulus will revive the economy in less than two years:
We must consider that government spending will never be able to restore or create demands to match for the demand of our goods before the economic downturn occurs. Due to the lower exports, our manufacturing sector will contract and capacity will be cut down to a sustainable levels Therefore plans must be laid to absorb retrenched workers from the affected sector.
When the stimulus was announced, it failed to inspire the stock market. Anil Netto notes that the stimulus plan is viewed as “belated official recognition that the country is being hard hit by the global economic and financial turbulence, with worse to come.” In a funny post, Art Harun instructs readers on how to earn from the stimulus.
Part of the stimulus involves scholarships for post-graduate studies. However, only few candidates are applying.
A member of Parliament lists his economic proposals. Vijay also suggests the following:
- Barter trade to partially circumvent commodity speculators, for example we can exchange our palm oil with Saudi Arabia for their crude oil.
- Unless you can prove that our country is in imminent danger of invasion, sell the scorpene submarines and other military hardware then use the proceeds to upgrade public transportation.
- Retrain a segment of fishermen to do fish farming, to stabilize the price of this diminishing resource, preserve marine ecosystems and save on diesel subsidies.
- Do away with internet provider monopoly, Streamyx service is so bad that businesses that rely on the wired world have had second thoughts about setting up shop here.
The thumbnail used was from the Flickr page of yinnxp
Hong Kong: Vindication of June 4 in Question
2009 is the 20th anniversary of June 4 Tiananmen Massacre. If there were reincarnation, people who had been killed then would be twenty years old this year. Some of them would probably become university students, who are usually regarded as conscience of the society. Sadly this year, at least two university student unions in Hong Kong want to distant themselves away from the “burden” of upholding the political stand in “Vindication of June 4″.
Yuen Yan wrote a citizen report in inmediahk.net about the City University of Hong Kong Students' Union Council's decision to bar the Student Press for distributing pamphlets in the upcoming June 4 Candle night Vigil because the action would imply a political stand in support of the “Vindication of June 4″.
According to Yuen Yan's report, the Student Council has spent 5 to 6 hours in the budget meeting on the publication of “June 4 special issue”. Members opposed the distribution of pamphlet in the Candle night vigil; below is a summary of the members' opinions:
1. 六四事件和城大學生無關係，尤其質疑編委在六四燭光晚會上公開派發特刊，是拿城大學生會會費，津貼學生以外的活動；
2. 編委出版的刊物無權到校外派發。評議員稱參與六四燭光集會是由城大學生會幹事會負責，編委會不可以參與當中活動；
3. 把《六四特刊》在燭光晚會上派發有可能煽動在場參與人士，引起混亂；
4. 建議在旺角街頭派發特刊，這樣比在六四燭光集會派更有意義；
5. 出版《六四特刊》會影響城大聲譽；
6. 六四燭光晚會是一個有政治立場的聚會，在六四燭光集會派發特刊等於支持平反六四。
2. The student press has not rights to distribute publication outside the school. The student union executive committee is in charge of June 4 Candle night vigil, while the student press has not role in it;
3. The distribution of “June 4 special issue” will invite people to join in the vigil, it is a seditious act and will create chaos;
4. One of the suggestion is to distribute the “Special Issue” in Mongkok pedestrian district instead of during the candle night vigil;
5. The publication of “June 4 special issue” would after the university's reputation;
6. June 4 Candle night is a political gathering and distributing the “special issue” during the candle night would be equal to the support of “vindication of June 4″.
After the discussion, a member proposed to cast an opinion vote and 9 out of the 10 attendees opposed the distribution of “June 4 special issue” and the student press was forced to withdraw this particular budget item in order to get their annual budget passed.
At the same time, the Hong Kong University Student Union will initiate a campus referendum vote on whether or not the Student Union should continue to uphold the stand of “vindication of June 4″. Galileo pointed out in the comment section of Yuen Yan's report:
但有點要留意係，同香港大學搞平反六四公投一樣，內地生比例現在已經夠高，未必過到。
Within a few hours, the discussion has spread through inmediahk.net, twitter, plurk and facebook. Sidekick re-tweeted my message and received more than a hundred responses in a few hours:
RT oiwan: 慢慢地，平反六四不再是共識了。。。香港真係恐怖：www.inmediahk.net/node/1002676
剛才未讀文章。單看 oiwan 那句，我即心酸得流起淚來…
其實現在應該要做的，不只是單單的平反，而是要有機會搵外人去跟雙方做truth & reconciliation。不過一定要在我們這一代要完成，否則歷史會習非成是，永遠無法撥亂反正，如西班牙佛朗哥死後…
其實我覺得最恐怖 (古怪) 的是, 內地當權者對六四是越來越開放的 (我覺得), 反而香港 (尤其是基層, 例如呢d 學校o既組織) 就越o黎越保守… 真係發神經!
最怕是，學生重視個人利益，並認同國家，最終令到他們有意無意的忽視、無視、甚至曲解這等「黑歷史」
叫佢地對住丁子霖講多一次！
有生之年，我們會看到嗎？這不是單單的平反，而係要查根究柢去了結。
六四是包袱還是傳承我們自己還要質疑？人權和自由和平等這些原則又是不是包袱？
所以，中共已經離全民洗腦又一步了……
我對呢種事情感覺好無力, 就好似一d 老人家,甚或自己既父母, 佢地對六四由始至終都係冇感覺, 但我一直認為, 社會起碼還有智識既人, 佢地正尋求一d 物質以外更重要既野, 自由, 人權等等…但當年死既係大學生, 現在話唔關佢地事既都係大學生…到底發生左咩事
如果六四距離太遠，2003年的沙士和七一大遊行理應是這一代最” 埋身”的政治經歷了，然而，在政的的大力過濾下，距離不夠七年的沙士竟也變成某些人口中的” 有人煽動”，還有人敢在說是”外國勢力
所以大家可以做好心理準備，六四將來會成為一個完全民間的活動，很缺錢，很少報導，但我們一定會為這件事拼死的做。
當, “平反六四” 只係30+ o既人做, 咁當d 人死鬼晒, 又或在社會各階層都不在其位時, 又點算呢?
教育? 香港大概已經不能起政治教育的地方吧, 甚至獨立思考的教育都做不來…. 但我地現在既討論, 最少就係我地做到的事, 我地的的確確更深刻咁記住啊
Below is a BBC live report on June 4 incident for refreshing our memory:
Links for Sun, 2009-03
Eternal Remont reports on how Russia tries to lure back emigrants to avert the country's seemingly unavoidable demographic decline.
Amazonian blogger Altino Machado [pt] received an impromptu visitor last week: a snake came to see what he was blogging about. Check the pictures out.
The Ivanov Report departs from its principle of not commenting on Russia's democratic opposition, which he feels refuses the realities of Russian politics for futile protest. As Boris Nemtsov and other opposition leaders are now seeking public office, a change in the opposition's attitude to politics might be discerned.
Baltic reflects on the economic crisis in Latvia, departing from the slogan “Nothing special, just crisis” - a phrase uttered by the country's former finance minister, showing what many Latvians consider an alienated political élite.
Mash at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying posts a rare video footage of the massacre by Pakistan army in a village near Dhaka, Bangladesh in late November of 1971. More such videos can be found at the Bangladesh Genocide Archive.
Yelena writes that Uzbekistan was called an ‘enemy of the Internet’ in recently published survey by Reporters Without Borders.
Kyrgyz opposition figure Alikbek Djekshenkulov’s prize pistol is at the center of a murder trial, reports Elena.
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