Foreign Digest: Italy, Sudan, China, Russia and Tunisia

Italy

            The new government of Italy won the required confidence votes in Parliament last week.  The anti-establishment populists will lead a coalition with the center-left, after their previous junior partner, the far-right Trumpist anti-immigrant pro-Russian League Party, had tried to scupper the last executive to take advantage of favorable polls.  The main center-right parties have thus been left marginalized.  The new Italian Government will try to avoid a sales tax increase, cut taxes by cracking down on tax cheating, implement anti-corruption reforms and work out an arrangement with the European Union, of which Italy is a member, in regard to migrants, but will move leftward on spending and other issues.  Italy is a strong ally of the United States as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in the War on Terrorism.

Sudan

            The new transitional government of Sudan was sworn into office last week, consisting of both the military leaders who overthrew the longtime Islamist tyrant and civilian democratic opposition members, with some vacant positions remaining.  They will lead Sudan for a little over three years until elections are held.

China

            Protests have continued in Hong Kong, the special territory of China, against the Peking-appointed local government because of violations of its autonomy and freedom by Communist China, which it had pledged to respect when the former British reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.  There have been acts of violence and arrests of protestors.  The demonstrators succeeded in getting Hong Kong’s government to withdraw a proposed extradition law that could have been used as a tool to extradite dissidents to the mainland for political purposes, but they are concerned about further encroachments on their self-rule and liberty, which have increased in recent years.

Russia

            There were mass arrests of the democratic opposition across many Russian Federation cities last week.  The opposition has been barred from competing in elections by tyrant Vladimir Putin, who does not tolerate free and fair elections, so it turned to the strategy of supporting officially tolerated candidates not from the dictator’s party, namely Communists and ultra-nationalists, in Moscow municipal elections.  Some of these extremist party candidates, who are tolerated to make Putin seem like a moderate choice, unexpectedly won local elections last year.  Earlier this month, by supporting such candidates, the opposition nearly deprived the ruling party of its majority in Moscow’s council and embarrassed Putin, who tries to create an image of being all-powerful, who retaliated with his typical tactic of phony investigations.  Many opposition leaders, journalists, critics and whistleblowers have been exiled, imprisoned or murdered, even abroad, by the ex-Soviet intelligence officer’s henchmen

Tunisia

           The first round of presidential elections are being held today in Tunisia for only the second time under its new constitution and its transition from dictatorship in 2011, when the authoritarian President was deposed, to representative government in 2014.  Parliamentary elections will be held October 6 at the same time as the expected presidential runoff.  There are a broad range of candidates, from Islamists to secularists on the center-right to the left, in this crucial test of Tunisian democracy, the crowning achievement of the Arab Spring.  A secular center-left party leads the ruling coalition government.