On June 23, 2006, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz fired his deputy and the minister of finances Zyta Gilowska after she had been formally charged with perjury. Gilowska allegedly had lied about being an agent of the Communist secret police (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, SB) before 1989. Her codename was “Beata.” Gilowska vehemently denied all charges. The ensuing vetting trial of the politician and the accompanying public debate laid bare serious flaws in Poland’s judicial and legislative process. They also exposed the impact of the nation’s totalitarian past on its democratic present. The Firing The rumor mill churned out stories about Gilowska’s [...]
In August, employees of the Singapore Ministry of Education received a memo telling them to guard their computers against miscreants “targeting Singapore government’s web presence . . . in an attempt to discredit the event and embarrass the organizing country.” The event is the annual meeting of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The miscreants are anti-globalization protestors. Yes, the IMF and World Bank are in town, with a total of more than 10,000 delegates, advisors, and hangers-on. This time, the hangers-on will not include the sideshow of civil society and anti-globalization protesters [...]
HONG KONG — Global leaders — meeting far and wide from the UN General Assembly in New York to the IMF annual summit in Singapore — were quick to condemn the military coup in Thailand that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. But the reality is the coup could actually end months of political uncertainty and benefit the country over the longer run. This was reflected on Asian stock and foreign exchange markets, where benchmarks fell in only a limited fashion in the immediate aftermath of the coup, with investors sensing the end of a difficult and messy era in Thai [...]
