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Wednesday Night Salon Magazine vol #8742 December 1998 |
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Wednesday Night Salon Magazine vol #8742 December 1998 |
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Wednesday #874 UK
December 2, 1998
United Kingdom
from the CIA map
Marcus Hope
C.G. of Great BritainWell - not even all the pundits of Wednesday Night
(873) foretold the interesting results of the election! Now that the Liberals are an opposition with a majority of the popular vote, the Charest team will certainly speak with moral authority in the Assembly. What will this mean for investment in Quebec? Will healthcare and education programs be modified? Does Mario Dumont represent a new face of electoral Quebec as was posited last week?
Wednesday Night examined some of these issues.
We also had the pleasure of introducing the new Consul General of Great Britain, Marcus Hope, who recently served as his country's ambassador in Kinshasa. He was able to cast some light on the accord recently announced by La Francophonie. We also heard his views of the Pinochet issue. Also for another night we will talk about the Congo and Great Britain's desire to clear out of its House of Lords the 759 dukes, earls, marquesses, viscounts and barons whose right to a seat has been passed down from generation to generation.
Thursday 17 December 1998 The judge's mistake General Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, may yet leave England a free man, at liberty to fly home to Santiago where he would be beyond the reach of other countries' extradition requests.
In other words, Back to the Real World, now that the election is over!
Wednesday Night #874
Special Guest: Marcus Hope, Consul General of Great Britain.
Julius Grey
Following successive Wednesday Evenings of domestic political speculation, the thirty or so guests gathered around the Nicholsons' dining room table on the evening of December 2, broadened the horizon of topics for discussion. Wednesday Night is back on track.
AUGUSTO PINOCHET
THE BACKGROUND:
In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected the first Socialist President of Chile. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet, commander in chief of the Chilean army, supported by The United States who distrusted its allegedly communist leanings, overthrew the Allende government, and in 1974 established himself as Head of State.
John Ciaccia
Julius Grey & Marcus Hope
Until his term of office ended in 1990, and possibly later as Army Commander, the Pinochet regime was marked with human rights violations, including mass imprisonment, torture and execution of dissidents.
While the cruelty of his regime is undeniable, Pinochet did increase prosperity in Chile and instituted important economic reforms.
Chile has not seen fit to charge its former president, but Spain has asked Great Britain to extradite Augusto Pinochet to that country so that he may stand trial for ordering the torture and murder of Spanish nationals while he held office in Chile.
Reed Scowen
General Pinochet claimed diplomatic immunity as a former head of state. The House of Lords has ruled in a five to three decision, that such immunity is held only by currently sitting heads of state.
It remains up to the Home Secretary to decide on the basis of the 1989 act on the rules governing extradition, whether the extradition trial is to be held.
THE ISSUES:
Tony Masi
Should a person who has been alleged to have committed a crime or series of crimes in his home country but not charged there be permitted to be extradited to a third country? Normally, heads of state who have committed grievous crimes are prosecuted in their own country when deposed or succeeded. Spain could claim no jurisdiction if the crime were a simple murder. In the case of General Pinochet, relevance might be successfully claimed, because genocide and crimes against humanity of course follow different rules. It is here that the lines of demarcation become blurred.
Linda Leith
For Great Britain, there are two issues. The issue of immunity has been decided. Immunity may be claimed by a sitting head of state but not by a former head of state. If indeed, this principle, seductive though it may appear, is confirmed, former United States Presidents travelling abroad might be extradited to Cuba or North Viet Nam, for example.
Curiously, monetary crimes such as pilfering the country the head of state is meant to protect are decided more easily. The Marcos case comes to mind.
Michael Judson
THE QUÉBEC ELECTION
THE MORNING AFTERFor the moment, this has been the best possible outcome for all parties. The collective wisdom of the population of Québec has again prevailed. Quebeckers did not want either a Liberal government nor a powerful P.Q. government. The opinion was expressed that M. Bouchard will make his mark on the Québec scene in the next two to three years and then leave. The results have also given rise to renewed public discussion of popular representation with some advocates invoking Mayor Trent's phrase "the tyranny of the rurality".
June Riley
In the medium term, increased fragmentation appears to be in the cards for the P.Q. future, with a consolidation of the PLQ. There is a climate for change among all the provinces which augers well for the future of Canada.
The Liberals lost the election through poor strategy. Permitting the ADQ to participate in the television debate was a major error. While Jean Charest talked about the importance of Canada to Québec, he enjoyed rising support, which evaporated when he began to fall into the P.Q. trap of debating their issues.
Québec is in dynamic as opposed to static equilibrium. Québec will be coming out of the debt spiral in the near future. A conservative estimate is 1.3 billion deficit this year. Next year only Québec and Ontario will remain in deficit position. Subsequent surpluses will most likely be spent on programs, with no intention of reducing taxes.
Eric Hamovitch
The night of the election the Canadian dollar rose to 65.75 cents U.S. The subsequent drop to 65.25 cents was a non-political recognition of the commodity crisis.
Ysobel Trujillo
The federal government has been paying down debt at an impressive rate. Economically, the outlook is for Canada to be the best of the G-7 countries with 2.5% economic growth, compared with 2% U.S.
Hamish Macaulay
From: "Prof. Desmond Morton" CA>
Sorry I was in Toronto yesterday.
Popular vote is interesting but M. Bouchard won the election with a large majority of seats. And if M. Charest had won , the large number of small francophone constituencies we would have acquired would have discouraged a major reform of this perennial problem, as it did for Bourassa and Lesage, and for provincial premiers everywhere. In BC, where Socredswon the small seats and the NDP won the big urban ones, the situation was preserved by the tiny NDP riding of Atlin, with barely 5000 votes, almost all of them from the Nisg'a band. Redistribution would have been a blow to the First Peoples and the NDP's most colourful (and useless) MLA.
Jacques Clement
Last week we said
Alan Mass
" Prediction of a big win for the Parti Québécois was unanimous. One opinion held that in the final analysis, le Parti Démocratique du Québec represents where a maturing Québec electorate is headed. Aside from positions on sovereignty, the two major parties have offered little concrete differences in policy; Mario Dumont has enunciated a different view, one which is more representative of the "New Québec".
Reported by Herbert Bercovitz Edited by Diana Thébaud Nicholson
873 vote
875 Congo
Thursday 3 December 1998 Pollsters percentages by BILL BROWNSTEIN
...A typical Leger & Leger survey consists of eight questions, which are put to 1,000 members of the electorate scattered in 16 regions of Quebec. In return, the company makes about $800 for each question. This works out to about $5,000 for a survey, not quite enough to retire on - even in Rimouski. ...Leger & Leger's last survey actually came closest of all the pollsters in calling the results Monday night, even though it was far off the final vote tally of 43.71 per cent for the Liberals and 42.7 per cent for the PQ. The firm's prediction was that the PQ would get 46 per cent and the Liberals 42 per cent.
Julius Grey
Proportional representation is based on the notion that the popular vote should determine how many seats in a legislature a political party wins. It is a seductive but ultimately flawed idea. In theory, proportional representation allows like-minded voters in a minority to win a fair share of representation.
Ron Hiscox
Better than kissing your cousin We face years of separatist games-playing, but threat of early referendum is gone NORMAN WEBSTER Moral victories are supposed to be as exciting as kissing your sister, but some are still better than others, and Jean Charest racked up a doozer on Monday. After a struggling campaign against Quebec's most compelling politician in decades, faced with the pollsters' predictions of wipeout, he led his Liberals to a victory in the popular vote and held Lucien Bouchard to fewer seats than Jacques Parizeau took in 1994.
Saturday 14 November 1998 Quebec voters in two camps. Unlike nous autres, francophones don't expect another referendum by JOSH FREED
Did you see the Charest Web All in French only ..it may be gone now!
Saturday 21 November 1998 The useless anglos. No room for anglophone concerns during election campaign by DON MACPHERSON
Saturday 21 November 1998 Goofballs in the dream palace by NORMAN WEBSTER
Wednesday 4 November 1998 Charest catches fire ???
a one song 'Johney' focused on referendum
================ 30 ===================== Items for the Wednesday Night Social Calendar:"TITTERS" presents
PUT ANOTHER MONOLOGUE ON THE FIRE
as part of the INFINITE FESTIVAL.This time they weave together the serio-comic, often poignant women in their repertoire. Among others meet Mary Martha, the crazed evangelist with a nymphomaniacal side, and Selma the glamour technician. Join them as they talk about food, sex, God, socks, Elvis, and appliances. So come on down, cozy up, take your shoes off and
Laura Mitchell performed
PUT ANOTHER MONOLOGUE ON THE FIRE --an evening of mostly monologues for one and two voices punctuated by upbeat comedy.Rumour has it:
"As a team they are excellent; They are also excellent as soloists."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer"These are seriously women who know how to make their presence felt."
Pat Donelly, Montreal"acute comic timing, ad infectious stage presence"
Seattle Review"Cosmopolitan Comedy"
CBC
- Show closed.. was great!
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or e-mail us your thoughts.
© 1997 by David T. Nicholson
Please phone (514) 934-0023
Wed874UK.htm Friday, December 04, 1998
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