According to an order in the Governement Gazette, Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs Pang Kin Keong has said that the area around Shangri-La Hotel Singapore has been designated as a special event area.
This is in lieu of the summit to take place on 12 June, between President of the United States Donald Trump and leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un.
The cordoning off of the area is also due to extra security measures that will be in place from 10 June to 14 June.
The public order also states that, the summit “may consist of a series of meetings between representatives of the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and includes any lead-in activities and social events connected with the Summit.
On the same day, another order was made Commissioner of Police Hoong Wee Teck, declaring a “special zone” within the special event area, where there are enhanced police powers, as well as tighter security. The smaller zone covers areas including Claymore Road, Cuscaden Road, and parts of Nassim Road and Grange Road.
As to the designated location of the summit, there has been no confirmation yet, however Shangri-La hotel has been said to be the likely venue, amidst speculation about other high-end hotels such as St Regis Singapore and Four Seasons Hotel Singapore and the Fullerton Hotel.
KUALA LUMPUR – His Majesty the Malaysian King Sultan Muhammad V has given his consent to the appointment of Tommy Thomas as the new attorney-general, said Bernama today in a statement.
The King acted upon the advice of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and gave his consent to the appointment according to Article 145 (1) of the Federal Constitution.
The Monarch also called on all Malaysians to accept that should not create religious or racial conflict as every Malaysian should be fairly treated regardless of race and religion.
While this clears the path for a new progressive Malaysia, it forces the AG appointed by Najib Razak out of office.
Apandi refused to resign from his post despite being sent on a garden leave.
“After taking into account the opinions of the Malay Rulers on (i) the appointment of attorney-general, (ii) the rights of Bumiputeras and (iii) the roles of the Council of Rulers as stated under Article 153 of the Federal Constitution, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong also consented to Apandi Ali’s termination of service as attorney-general by the federal government,” he said.
But Sultan Muhammad V has also expressed his disappointment and worry about inaccurate and negative media reports of late which could threaten peace and harmony in the country.
“His Majesty said that he has an obligation to uphold the Federal Constitution and preserve the special rights of the Malays and Bumiputeras, as well as to protect Islam,” said Comptroller of the Royal Household Wan Ahmad Dahlan Abdul Aziz.
Hurricane Irma demolished Sint Maarten in the Dutch Antilles, in September 2017. The island has yet to recover.AP Photo/Carlos Giusti
The 2018 hurricane season has now begun. It’s a good time to think about lessons learned from last year’s historic storms.
Hurricane Irma, which raged across the Caribbean from late August to early September 2017, was the strongest Atlantic hurricane since record keeping began in 1851.
In total last year, six major storms were Category 3 or greater, making 2017 the seventh most-active year in history and the costliest ever.
The Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology, a German research institute, estimates that reconstruction on the islands hit by Irma alone will cost at least US$10 billion.
But having recently completed a monthslong human rights analysis on the aftermath of last year’s deadly hurricane season, we believe that’s a low estimate. Our research identified another cost contributing to the challenges of rebuilding: corruption.
Devastation in Sint Maarten
We visited the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, which is part of the Netherlands, in February. Hurricane Irma’s destruction was still apparent.
Massive trees had been ripped out of the ground and toppled, their roots exposed. Vehicles and debris were scattered across the landscape. Marinas, a key infrastructure for this 14-square-mile island, were left in ruins, littered with the stranded remnants of boats that had smashed onto shore.
Amid such chaos, cleanup and rebuilding after an extreme weather event becomes urgent. And urgency, we found, breeds opportunities for corruption.
Government malfeasance is already prevalent in Sint Maarten, which has relatively lax regulation and a cash-fueled economy driven by tourism and casinos. The influx of reconstruction funds after Hurricane Irma created new opportunities for graft.
Local authorities told us, for example, that the initial days of debris clean-up in Sint Maarten involved over 1,000 workers, paid hourly, but only eight supervisors. Our interviews indicate that the scant oversight enabled fraudulent inflation of reported hours, wasting vital government funds on work left undone.
The Dutch government, which offered Sint Maarten $641 million in relief after Hurricane Irma, was concerned enough about misappropriation that it insisted on certain anti-corruption safeguards. They included establishing an “integrity chamber” to receive and investigate complaints about corruption on the island.
Sint Maarten’s prime minister refused to accept the funds under such conditions and, in November, resigned in the ensuing scandal.
Eventually, Sint Maarten’s government bowed to Dutch demands. The first installment of relief funding, managed by the World Bank, was released to the island in April, seven months after the hurricane devastated the island.
Corruption kills
Corruption in Puerto Rico may have actually contributed Hurricane Maria’s high death toll. While the government’s official tally is 64 storm-related deaths, a recent study puts the figure closer to 4,600 – in part because a prolonged blackout prevented many Puerto Ricans with chronic illness from getting necessary medical care.
After Hurricane Maria knocked out the island’s electric grid, the island’s power authority awarded a $300 million contract to the Montana-based company Whitefish Energy to repair it. The bidding process soon came under suspicion because it was clear that the company, which had just two employees, could never complete the task.
A Puerto Rico resident tries to reconnect his own electricity after Hurricane Maria. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources opened an investigation and the Whitefish contract was canceled.
After $3.8 billion in federal aid for the power grid, some 11,000 Puerto Ricans are still without electricity. Officials say even a mild hurricane could disable the grid again.
We believe progress would have been quicker if Puerto Rico’s first big energy contract had been correctly executed. After a disaster, corruption can literally kill.
After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, for example, an unprecedented $13.5 billion in aid money flowed onto the island – more than double its gross domestic product.
Much of this money never made it to those who needed it. A 2011 study by U.S. researchers found that only 44 percent of Haitians affected by the quake received any aid at all.
According to a comprehensive analysis by the Center for Global Development, Haiti’s government received just 1 percent of humanitarian aid and perhaps 15 to 20 percent of longer-term relief aid. The rest was channeled to charities and nongovernmental organizations, whose resulting projects were in many cases impossible to identify.
Time to get ready
The United Nations, which also offers valuable guidance on fighting corruption in its 2005 Convention Against Corruption, will soon launch an anti-corruption initiative offering tools catered toward small island developing states like those in the Caribbean.
Our work also identified several ways that Caribbean countries could limit how corruption harms future hurricane recoveries.
Better disaster preparedness – including building code compliance, zoning enforcement in exposed locations like beaches and hillsides and transparent, well-resourced disaster-response teams – would reduce turmoil after extreme weather. That, in turn, would minimize opportunities for the kinds of chaos-related corruption we documented across the Caribbean.
The European Commission created a similar task force in 2013. Today, European countries aren’t left scrambling to respond when disaster strikes. Instead, the Emergency Response Coordination Center monitors the disaster, continually poised to offer expertise, relief funding and first responders as needed across the continent.
Scientists predict that hurricane activity this year will likely be above average due to climate change. For the Caribbean, preparing for extreme weather means being ready for the human-made disasters that can follow it, too.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Money doesn’t grow in flasks – scientists have to find funds outside the lab.chuttersnap/Unsplash, CC BY
What is the place of a profit motive in the production of knowledge at public universities?
The Trump administration’s initial budget request presented in 2017 offered one answer to that question. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the budget proposal included a 17 percent reduction in funding for basic research. Proposed cuts to particular agencies and programs within them, such as research on basic energy sciences at the Department of Energy, were particularly acute. And while Congress intervened to avoid these cuts, the current funding package is nevertheless part of a long-term trend of reduced federal commitment to science.
Proposed and actual funding conveys a recurring message to American academic scientists: do more to attract money from other sources. In most instances, this means industry funding.
On the face of it, partnerships between academia and industry in the production of knowledge are both sensible and critical. Given sluggish economic growth and the prevalence of societal problems that require technological solutions, one might argue that universities should be extensively engaged in contributing to innovation and less concerned with research lacking an apparent connection to real-world impact. Why spend time and money on studying the mating habits of Japanese quail when there are problems like Alzheimer’s disease and excessive reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels that urgently need solutions right now?
Yet many critics argue that a profit motive in science creates a scenario in which scientists place their values and potential personal gain ahead of the public good, resulting in bias and conflicts of interest. Whether you are concerned about the advancement of science, economic innovation, or both, it’s worth considering the value and appropriateness of partnerships between academic scientists and the corporate sector.
What do researchers themselves think? I’ve spent more than a decade sitting down with hundreds of scientists around the world for in-depth conversations about their work. In my recent book, “A Fractured Profession: Commercialism and Conflict in Academic Science,” I examine how scientists experience the rise of commercialism in academic science. These researchers shared views with me that don’t necessarily fall neatly in line with either those who celebrate a profit motive in science nor those who lament it.
What actually motivates scientists?
Even if university administrators and federal officials reward profitable science, the scientists I spoke with say that profits are rarely their motivation. Commercialist scientists in academia certainly do not dismiss the importance of revenues or resources for research, but societal impact and the pursuit of status in science were more highly prized by the scientists in my study. Being able to claim that you reduced the cost of making a vaccine to less than the cost of the bottle in which it is stored, for example, is a new way to stand out at a university where most scientists are publishing in the top journals in their field. In this respect, self-interest – generating money and prestige – can coincide with the public good.
Perhaps more importantly to those who think that universities should operate even more like businesses than they already do, scholars are finding that average rates of return from commercialization — even at universities with the highest licensing income — are relatively low. In the same way that relatively few universities benefit considerably from big-time college sports, relatively few universities — typically those that are rich already — actually produce blockbusters that lead to financial windfalls.
Unlike some commentators and members of the public, most of the scientists I spoke with are relatively unconcerned with conflicts of interest and bias in commercially oriented research. In their view, peer review mitigates such questions. Even if a scientist stands to gain financially from the outcomes of her research, if an invention is not scientifically sound, researchers contend it would have little chance of success in the market.
The traditional scientists in academia I spoke with reported two chief values: support for curiosity-driven research and a long-term vision of the technological fruits of scientific research. Traditionalists are still the majority, but they encounter scarce resources for basic research and increasing pressure to connect their work to concrete societal impacts. In the words of one scientist, much of what scientists understand about cancer stems from work based on Nobel Prize-winning biologist Lee Hartwell’s curiosity-driven research on how yeast cells divide. “If he had to apply his research, he probably would have had to work for Budweiser,” he said.
Investing in a mix of sorts of science
What should be the role of the state and the market in the production of knowledge in the American research university? Both are critical.
History shows there’s an intrinsic value to letting people explore, because such exploration is critical to later marketplace innovations and economic prosperity. Today’s multi-billion-dollar global positioning system industries rely on Einstein’s general theory of relativity and ideas from 19th-century geometry, the latter of which were dismissed by contemporaries as useless. Other technologies, such as Teflon, saccharine and the pacemaker, were accidental creations. While corporations once valued having internal basic science laboratories where exploratory or “blue-sky” research took place, now the U.S government is the chief, and under-resourced, patron for this important work.
Few universities generate vast commercial returns from commercially oriented research. As a society, we must therefore be cautious in how eagerly we unleash the forces of the market in funding science in academia. Similar experiments in substituting the market for the state in primary schooling, prisons and the military have not clearly paid off.
Much as a diversified investment portfolio includes various assets that balance returns and risk, society would benefit most from a healthy mix of investment in curiosity-driven, use-inspired and highly market-oriented research in academia.
Until scientists can better articulate why science is as worthy of investment as any other form of infrastructure, they will likely continue to encounter the message delivered today: look to the market.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Grant #0957033 “A New Reward System in Academic Science.”
Robert F. Kennedy accepts the Democratic nomination as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1964(AP Photo/John Lent
There is something about middle children, especially in large families. They often struggle to define themselves. Robert Francis Kennedy was the ultimate middle child. Until shortly before his untimely death 50 years ago, he was still embarked on that struggle of self-determination.
Kennedy’s early career included working as a Senate staff member for the right-wing demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It would have been reasonable to conclude that as a young conservative he could only move farther right as he aged.
Kennedy turned the tables on the conventional wisdom by moving — both by circumstance and by calculation — in a more liberal direction. But it was a distinctive liberalism that was shaped by his origins in a family that, despite their enormous wealth, were regarded as outsiders.
I’m a political scientist who studies American government and U.S. legislative politics and I’ve worked as an adviser to Democrats in the Senate and House. It is clear to me that Robert, much more than his older brother John, was shaped by the tribalism of Massachusetts politics in the 1950s.
From tribalism via religion to liberalism
For all of their money and efforts to cultivate the outward signs of WASP affluence, the Kennedys were scorned by the first families of Massachusetts the way any group with long-established wealth regards parvenues. And it wasn’t just their Irish heritage that placed them at the margins of elite Bay State society, it was their Catholicism.
The Kennedy family in 1931. Robert is on the left in a dark sweater. Richard Sears, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum via Wikimedia Commons
Struggling to distinguish himself in his sprawling family – all clamoring for attention from their father, Joseph P. Kennedy – Robert sought out his mother, Rose, who took her religion seriously.
Competitiveness within the family also bred in him a combativeness that could verge on harshness that he struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to control. He made an early enemy of Senate Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson, while as a junior staff member, by publicly rebuking Johnson. As a former staffer myself, I remain astonished at such boldness, even from a Kennedy.
Robert worked tirelessly to promote the political fortunes of his brother Jack, first in his campaign for the House and then, in 1952, when he challenged Henry Cabot Lodge for the U.S. Senate.
It was this campaign in which Joe McCarthy intervened to boost Jack’s candidacy. McCarthy, a Kennedy family friend, prevailed on the Republican Senate Campaign Committee to go easy on Jack and do as little as possible to help fellow Republican Lodge.
Bobby’s role as a staff member on McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee on investigations would have caused the casual observer to mark him as a rising right-winger. Added to that was his service as counsel to Sen. John McClellan’s investigation of corruption in American labor unions, and his conservative credentials were cemented.
The transformation
The change in Kennedy came with his controversial appointment as attorney general in the administration of his brother at a time of great tumult in race relations. The criticism was that the appointment smacked of nepotism and that Kennedy was unqualified for the position; President Kennedy’s flip response was “I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”
It was the era of the Freedom Riders, the mostly African-American young people who boarded buses to the South to challenge segregation. Their confrontation with local authorities often led to violence.
But ultimately, Kennedy’s experience dealing with the resistance of Southern governors to racial integration caused him to sympathize with the struggle for equality. He also recognized the importance to the Democratic Party of the black vote in the North, especially in presidential elections.
After his brother John’s assassination, Robert Kennedy left the Justice Department and ran for senator in New York. He won, and during this period, his embrace of the plight of minorities broadened to include Mexican farm workers in their struggle to unionize.
Kennedy embraced civil rights late in his career; here he meets with civil rights leaders at the White House in 1963. Abbie Rowe, National Parks Service/JFK Presidential Library and Museum
In 1968, embattled Democratic President Lyndon Johnson declined to seek re-election in the wake of almost losing the New Hampshire primary to challenger Eugene McCarthy, the liberal anti-war Minnesota senator.
“I run to seek new policies,” said Kennedy at his announcement. “Policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities. Policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.”
Kennedy’s own death – assassinated right after he won the California Democratic primary just a few months after King’s – was a crushing blow to Americans who sought to right the wrongs of the nation both domestically and in the larger world. Americans hopeful for change were leaderless. Many rejected conventional politics and sought solutions in radical movements, in drugs, and in the panaceas of false prophets.
For those who stayed in the fight, Kennedy’s belated embrace of social justice was readily forgiven.
Ross Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Seven people, including three children, were injured after a four-car collision along Sheares Avenue on Saturday night. Dashboard camera footage capturing the accident shows a black Audi overturning after colliding into a silver vehicle and the impact from the crash causing the cars to hit two other vehicles:
Photos capturing the aftermath of the accident have also been circulating on social media. These pictures show the overturned black Audi, the silver car that is left with a punctured front left tyre and debris strewn about on the road beside the black Audi.
A group of people can also be seen waiting alongside the road, by a divider:
All seven victims were conscious and in stable condition, according to the Singapore Civil Defense Force (SCDF). The adults were conveyed to Singapore General Hospital, while the children were taken to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
A 66-year-old taxi driver was charged in court last week after he attacked a fellow taxi driver with a makeshift flamethrower made from a can of insecticide spray during an altercation.
The incident occurred along Harbour Front Walk around 8pm on 1 May last year and the assailant, Huang Shun Jin, has been charged with one count of voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapon over a year later.
According to the Chinese daily, Huang had gotten into a argument with the victim, Lin Jun Cai, over a traffic accident that day. As the dispute became heated, the drivers alighted their vehicles and clashed before Huang returned to his vehicle to grab a can of insecticide.
Huang then directed the spray of insecticide towards Lin while lighting it up, causing the highly flammable aerosol spray to turn into a fireball.
Lin was burned and suffered burn wounds on his face, ear, and neck, with some hair and parts of his eyebrows being burnt off as well. It remains unclear whether the victim will suffer permanent scarring on his face.
Although Huang initially pleaded guilty last Thursday, his lawyer claimed that Huang had undergone a surgery on his hand and thus it is unclear whether he intentionally lit the insecticide during the altercation.
Arguing that he is awaiting a medical report to determine if his client had intentionally lit the insecticide, Huang’s lawyer requested an extension so he could retrieve relevant records.
Three men have been arrested after a fight broke out, just after midnight yesterday at a coffeeshop at Block 711 Ang Mo Kio Ave 8. The fight reportedly left one man unconscious.
The fight began soon after six foreigners – two Malaysians and four Chinese nationals – who came together to meet at the coffeeshop to celebrate that two of them were leaving Singapore to go back home soon.
The celebration, however, took a dark turn when some people in the group suggested that the group move to a different location for more drinks and the other declined. The trio that were arrested reportedly got into a fight.
The police reportedly received a call for assistance at 12.16am and arrested three men between the ages of 35 and 39 when they arrived at the scene. One of these men was unconscious and was conveyed to Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
A photo published by the Chinese daily shows paramedics attending to a man lying on a stretcher. A woman who bore spots of blood on her hands and clothes was reportedly seen crying next to the man on the stretcher.
As shocking as it was, Malaysia is living a new era, where the Barisan Nasional regime run by ex-PM Najib Razak fell from its invincible perch.
Besides the roles played by PM Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and former DPM Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia had a smarter opposition this time around.
And most of the parties that joined the opposition Pakatan Harapan crafted by Anwar made huge sacrifices in the run-up to the crucial polls.
While most of the experts and analysts were saying the Pakatan Harapan had very little chance to defeat the mighty BN, the opposition proved them wrong.
But as much as the population in Malaysia is suddenly gloating on the immense capabilities of Mahathir, the sacrifices made by Anwar’s family, his party the Party Keadilan Rakyat or PKR and the sacrifices made by the Democratic Action Party or DAP cannot be underestimated.
The social media networks in Malaysia is filled with praises for Mahathir, and this is normal after he delivered such fatal blows to the BN and particularly to Najib Razak.
Nevertheless what is even more extraordinary is the cool attitude of PKR, Amanah and even the DAP leaders and followers in the aftermath of the historic elections.
Yet, a few rowdy elements who were supporters of the Party Islam Se-Malaysia or PAS who turned into PH sympathisers have joined force some elements of Mahathir’s party, the Bersatu to campaign against Anwar.
Despite the vile campaign by these elements, Mahathir and Anwar are collaborating to push ahead the PH agenda.
For this to happen, Anwar sacrificed his own daughter’s chance to hold a ministerial post in Mahathir’s cabinet.
Mahathir altogether pushed his son, Mukhriz Mahathir, to take hold of the Menteri Besar post in Kedah. This will allow him to prove his mettle as a future minister in the PH stable.
Ipso-facto let’s get back to the sacrifices made by these people and their parties to topple the Najib regime.
Mahathir was indeed instrumental in the victory, but it is what transpired in the corridors that made this victory possible.
The PKR accepted lesser seats – sacrificing a lot of its potential wins to both the Bersatu and the Amanah (the splinter group from PAS).
Without this, it would be impossible for Bersatu and for Amanah to obtain the number of seats they won at the GE14.
This is a lesson to other countries.
A leading opposition party like the PKR sharing its winning-odds with its partners.
On the other hand, the DAP, a long-serving opposition party in the country accepted the proposals that it would not have more seats than the younger PKR and the nascent Bersatu.
This is altogether an ultimate sacrifice made by the DAP.
But it allowed Mahathir to campaign in the Malay heartlands that he had total control over the DAP and that the Malays would retain the majority in the Parliament with the DAP getting lesser seats to contest.
The DAP factor was Umno-BN’s main strategy to maintain its good run in the Malay heartlands.
When the opposition coalition announced they will go in the elections with the PKR logo, it was a recognition by Mahathir that the PKR was indeed the leading reformist party in the country.
Hence with the DAP tamed by Mahathir, the Umno-BN strategists were lost in translation. They knew then, they were on the losing end. They knew the ‘anti-DAP’ rant would not bite. This impacted the BN’s entire election strategy. The election results are sufficient to prove that point.
In like manner, Mahathir fought for the freeing of Anwar right after he was installed as the new PM.
He returned the favour to Anwar’s family for accepting him and his men in the folds of the PH. This has set another benchmark in Asean politics. That is one can forgive and forget to work together to achieve a common goal.
Not to mention that their common goal, that of the PKR, DAP, Amanah and Bersatu were to topple Najib in the first place.
Correspondingly, this is where the PAS-supporters-turned-PH and new Bersatu supporters who were Umno supporters only months ago, are wrong.
They are wrong in their anti-Anwar campaign and they are wrong to believe that Mahathir will not follow his oath of stepping down to allow Anwar to become the 8th PM of a freed Malaysia!
Can the opposition in Singapore collaborate to win? Comment below.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 the situation with North Korea has shifted from a reckless escalation of tensions, to optimism about achieving lasting peace, and back to uncertainty. Donald Trump cancelled the US–DPRK summit, planned for 12 June in Singapore, but now it’s back on again.
How are we to read the state of play between the United States and North Korea and the implications this carries for regional stability?
There was a rapidly growing sense of alarm on both sides of the Korean border that the Trump administration would pursue a so-called ‘bloody nose strategy’ and push the peninsula into a violent conflict not of its own making. Anxieties in Japan and China were also running high. These anxieties undoubtedly were a powerful motivation for peace initiatives around the commitment to tighter UN sanctions on North Korea. They helped South Korean President Moon Jae-in launch his Olympic diplomatic offensive and gain a favourable North Korean response.
Optimism about resolution of the North Korean problem peaked when Trump announced on 3 Marchthat he would meet with Kim Jong-un, in what would be the first meeting between a sitting US president and North Korean leader, and when Moon and Kim held the third ever inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom on 27 April pledging to forge a sustainable peace.
But then in a strange letter to Kim Jong-un, Trump cancelled the summit. Trump criticised North Korea’s hostile remarks about US-South Korea joint military exercises, though this might have been a convenient excuse. While Kim Jong-un seemed to show understanding in his talks with Moon in April, North Korea’s dislike of US–South Korea joint military exercises, which it views as a dress rehearsal for invasion, is well known. The use of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers during the Max Thunder exercise added to North Korean frustrations.
North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan made clear that North Korea was not interested in unilateral nuclear abandonment such as occurred in the case of Libya. The ‘Libyan model’ had been provocatively touted by Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton. US Vice President Mike Pence’s intervention was also seen as hostile or unhelpful by North Korea. It was unsurprising that Pyongyang pushed back on talk of the ‘Libya model’, given that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi surrendered his nascent nuclear program only to meet a gruesome fate at the hands of NATO-backed rebels.
The short timeframe and the still many unfilled senior positions in the State Department make more difficult an already difficult negotiation process. There also seems to be a perception gap between the United States and North Korea about the extent and timing of a potential denuclearisation process. Trump appears set on a quick drawdown whereas the North Koreans want a phased approach and earlier concessions along the way. Rapid denuclearisation would be difficult to orchestrate given North Korea’s insistence on reciprocal negotiations which provide iron-clad guarantees for its post-denuclearisation survival and US wariness of easing pressure on Pyongyang until it demonstrates absolute and verifiable commitment to denuclearisation. A phased approach possibly taking 15 years has now been recommended by leading US experts including Siegfried Hecker, the only American to have seen the North’s uranium facilities.
Trump’s awkward cancellation of the summit first time round may simply have been a tactical ploy, a cunning step towards a better bargain. Trump’s unpredictability, nevertheless, left the region, including US allies such as South Korea and Japan, at sixes and sevens. Seoul was momentarily in deep shock, even if Tokyo was inclined to celebrate. South Korean President Moon’s swift action to convene another summit with North Korea’s Kim brought back a semblance of control and re-established initiative. But it was not the only move that revived the US–DPRK leadership talks.
The ambivalent nature of Trump’s cancellation of the summit and a flurry of tweets over the subsequent few days suggest that Trump was desperate to restore the summit that he had just canned. Vice Chairman of the Workers’ Party of (North) Korea Kim Yong Chol’s special sanctions exemption to travel to New York for US–DPRK working-level talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and to Washington to deliver a personal letter from Kim Jong-un to Trump provided the chance to resuscitate the Singapore meeting between Trump and Kim.
Glen Fukushima suggests in our lead article this week ‘[b]y meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore on 12 June, Trump hopes to emulate former US president George W Bush in 2001. The Gallup Poll showed Bush’s approval rating on 1 February 2001 to be only 57 per cent. But by 22 September, it had jumped to 90 per cent as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. After his meeting with Kim Jong-un on 12 June, Trump is certain to declare victory, thereby demonstrating to the world his genius as a dealmaker, his qualifications to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and his right to win the elections in November 2018 and 2020′.
Meanwhile Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has deftly pirouetted back into the game. Abe has been dealt a few very bad hands by Trump and his team, including the looming threat of a 25 per cent tariff on Japanese automobile exports to the United States. But he’s managed to schedule a meeting with Trump in Washington on 7 June, five days before the off-and-on-again 12 Junemeeting, in order to make a last-ditch plea to include in the Trump–Kim meeting the return of Japanese abductees, the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and the dismantling of not only North Korea’s missiles that can reach the continental United States, but also the short- and medium-range missiles that can hit Japan.
As Fukushima concludes, both Trump and Abe are under immense political pressure at home and a foreign policy victory could be critical, in different ways, to their electoral salvation.
translation. They knew then, they were on the losing end. They knew the ‘anti-DAP’ rant would not bite. This impacted the BN’s entire election strategy. The election results are sufficient to prove that point.