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The story of the Good Samaritan is one that will form the theme for many sermons this yuletide period, as pastors and other men of God strive to drive home the point that we are in a season of love, and remind adherents of the faith to show a lot of love to other people. Some of the men of God will go a step further to remind the faithful not to show love in this season alone but let it become a habit that will transcend a show during festivities such as Christmas, rather turn it to a way of life – one that is committed to showing love to others all year round.

Sadly, this will not be the case for a significant proportion of these faithful. Many will be overflowing with acts of love till the first few weeks of January, but their inactions afterwards suggest it was some huge investment to ensure returns through the rest of the year – returns meant to be ploughed into their personal lives alone. The story of the

Good Samaritan is significant in a lot of ways in that it somewhat surrealistically points out some facts about our everyday living, but ends by suggesting a commendable way to spend our lives. It is an acknowledged fact that the road in which the traveller who was attacked – on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho – was a notorious one. In fact, the way was known as the “Way of Blood” because of the blood that was shed there by robbers on a regular. So, it was not uncommon for people to be waylaid irrespective of their nationalities.

It strikes an interesting chord to note that a cross section of people plied this route – the traveller, who was presumably Jewish, the Priest, the Levite, and of course, the Samaritan. The import of this little detail to present times is irrespective of our nationalities, positions,social status, or exposure in life, there are certain things that tie us all together. In literal terms, there are roads that we all ply. In not so literal terms, there are experiences we all share. So, here comes a bitter reality; sometimes everyone is on the same pedestal. Another significant point to this story is we are not all the same! As perfectly captured by the story, we all have different backgrounds.

Consequently, these varying backgrounds imply differences in our upbringing, exposure levels vis-à-vis education, social status, financial capacities, amongst other differences.

As also perfectly depicted in the novella by George Orwell, Animal Farm, with the famous phrase “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, we are not all the same. Simply put, some persons are more privileged than others. Some people have and others do not. Some are above while others are beneath. Sad and unfair as it may seem, it’s just the way things are. And, according to a wise cow in some movie I saw, “The way things are are the way things are.” It is also important to note here that these differences will lead to extremes. This is evident in the distrust, dislike, and even hate felt by members of these different classes, one class to another, and even intra-class as well. The story is typical of Jesus’ provocative speeches in that the Samaritans and Jews generally despised each other.

However, in spite of the chaos stirred by the story, a better way is shown. A way in which religious, political, financial or other differences are put aside, and people simply find it natural to come to the aid of each other. One more significant thing about the story is that the events leading up to the Samaritan’s gesture did not occur on a holiday or during any festive period. This is profound. The tendencies of people to do a lot of good during festive periods, especially the Christmas period, has become a tradition in itself. People find it almost natural to do good during this period, and then do almost no good at all during other periods of the year. The point of this piece, incase it is lost on you, is that most persons around are periodic in their Good Samaritan gestures. This will get us nowhere except feed a few for the Christmas only so they can wait another 365 days for another sumptuousmeal. Sad!

That said, another chance is here again for you to do some good. A few friends of mine under the aegis of Feeding the Nation plan to feed 50,000 hungry people on December 26. This is not a call for you to do a yearly good deed, but it is hoped that if it is your habit to do good, then you do a little more, and if it is not on your list of priorities, you will include it and getting on board will trigger something in you that will turn you into a Good Samaritan all year long. To achieve this feat, 120 bags of rice, 650 cartons of turkey, 50,000 bottles of water, 100 volunteers, and other logistics are required. In monetary terms, N10,235,000 million will make this a reality. If you would like to be a part of this you can reach my friends on feedthenation@yahoo.com or call 08125793453, 07029152606. If you have been indicted, do not panic, there is redemption for you, and you can start now. Afterwards, remain a Good Samaritan all year long.

Isn’t it an irony
that the law would find someone guilty of a criminal offence, condemn
the person to death, and then make serious efforts to prevent the
person from committing suicide? This is how Richard Hughes captures the
irony in his novel, A High Wind in Jamaica:

“The night before
the execution, Jonsen managed to cut his throat: but they found out in
time to bandage him. He was unconscious by the morning, and had to be
carried to the gallows in a chair: indeed, he was finally hanged in it”
(p.278).

Even as one
condemned to death, Jonsen still does not have the right to kill
himself! The only right he has is to submit himself for execution at
death o’clock! And, of course, he has the right to refuse having a
priest pray for his soul before it is separated from his perishable
self. As a matter of fact, the Law does not want Jonsen to kill himself
so that it would have the pleasure of killing him, however minimal and
laughable that role is. That explains why he is bandaged up, and
possibly given some treatment, and then taken to the gallows.

The Law says the
condemned criminal does not deserve to live and has to be killed, but
would not allow that person to actualise that declaration of “does not
deserve to live.” The Law appears to want to have the pleasure of
carrying out that ritual of killing the criminal. If the criminal hangs
himself in prison, and attempts to cut his or her throat as in Jonsen’s
case, such a criminal has cheated the Law, or has prevented the Law
from experiencing the pleasure of exacting the capital punishment.

Are we are all not
already dead before the Law? The Law and only the Law can take life. No
one else can do so without permission from the Law.

The Law alone has the right to be wrong. No one can legally condemn the Law in the language of the Law.

This paradox is
worse when the Law is an individual and an individual is the Law. The
individual whose word is law deprives us of independent thought,
action, speech, and above all, life. Our lives are hidden in the life
of the individual that is the Law. Our lives, paradoxically, are not
ours.

The theatre of
legal execution wants its performance to be according to the script.
Subversion in which assigned roles are played by those not cast for
them cannot be allowed

In many cases,
effort is made to make sure that the condemned criminal is properly
fed, the impression being that the Law is protecting the criminal’s
right to life, or rather being in support of the criminal’s desire to
satisfy the most basic of what Abraham Maslow referred to as the
“Hierarchy of Human Needs.”

Interestingly,
after posturing as defending the criminal’s right to pursue a
satisfaction of physiological needs, the Law would devour the body of
the criminal. For skeptics like me, the Law seems to be playing the
hypocrite in such a case. Perhaps it is part of the performance of the
mega script for which many have often come to refer to the Law as an
“ass.”

In some ancient
perspectives, feeding the condemned criminal is both a spiritual and
moral obligation. The spirit world, it is argued, has its own laws
concerning the respect that every soul deserves and would surely exact
its judgment on anyone or any system that violates the right of a soul
to fair treatment. In other words, a criminal that receives unfair
treatment before execution has a case against the executioner at the
“court” in the spirit world.

But with regard to
the exercise of the right to execute the criminal, one cannot help but
understand the Law as not being willing to miss the cathartic pleasure.
For some people who believe in the absolute right of the Law to deal
with the criminal as it likes, such exercise of the pleasure to
preserve and later execute the criminal is one way of signifying how
the commission of crimes leads to the tragedy of losing one’s rights
and integrity.

Ideally, the Law is
about justice, is indeed justice, which is why it has taken the role of
determining who is given what punishment or reward for which act. The
Law wants to make sure that punishment by death is a lasting ritual.

Not that one is
opposed to execution ordered by the Law. One is rather amused at how
the Law desperately tries to prevent the condemned person from
participating in the termination of his or her life, other than just
submitting the self for the show. The Law does not want any deprivation
of its right to take life on behalf of its Maker.

Legal execution may
be justified as equitable punishment for offence, but they are also a
drama of the absurd in which the Law may choose to be ridiculous in
enforcing its right to kill.

With so much stress
in a country like Nigeria today, many people easily get edgy, snapping
at others over trivial issues, heckling and biting and tearing.
Obviously, the emotional lives of many people are in the kind of
trouble that constantly looks for ways of expression.

If you want to
make matters worse when someone is “boiling,” advise that person to
seek help from a psychiatrist. Who would agree with you if, during the
imbroglio that results, you start delivering a lecture on how what you
said was not what you meant? Definitely, madness is enjoyable when it
involves at least two people who cooperate.

Teasing is one of
the wonderful ways that human beings use discourse in softening the
seriousness of everyday struggles. Men tease women and women tease men.
But more than just being a matter of laughing at the other, it is a
great way of laughing with the other.

In my Igbo culture,
teasing the opposite sex does not attract extreme censure form the
guardians of political correctness, even when viewed through the lens
of modern gender consciousness, it is easy to read the expressions as
offensive.

A woman could turn to a man and say: “Go and shave your beard; it makes you look like a monster!”

And the man, without any feeling of hurt, would tell her: “You are jealous of my beard!”

And the woman would deny it flatly: “How can? I don’t belong to the zoo.”

And the man, smiling, would give it back to her: “When you women start telling the truth, you will start growing beards.”

And the woman, in mock annoyance, would cry out: “The truth is that we don’t want it!”

And the man would fire back: “Oh, I forgot that you women actually have beards, but at the wrong places.”

And the woman would laugh and playfully hit him with her fists or with any harmless object she is holding.

And to consolidate
his victory in this debate, the man would add: “You women want us to be
like you; that’s just what you want.”

Where else could
one still find this kind of cross- gender humorous exchange than in an
African rural community where, in spite of the so-much advertised
mistreatment of women, there exists some mutual understanding that this
kind of banter feeds community life? Women freely joke about men’s
sexual lives and weaknesses, and men do so too. They do not see this
kind of talk as being morally contaminating to the extent that they
would no longer be able to talk later with their Maker.

It is not all about
the body and sex: it could also be a focus on food and the kitchen.
Although in modern feminist agitation, cooking for the family is
sometimes viewed as one area of domestic life where the metaphorical
and literal enslavement of women is enacted in the patriarchal context,
men in local Nigerian environment reconfigure the kitchen as
“cheating,” using this play on the sound of “kitchen” to suggest the
woman’s conspiratorial posture. Articulating “kitchen” as “cheating” is
an invitation to laugh at a serious fear about what a woman could do
with, and in, the kitchen where she presides over the stomach of the
family, or over the stomach of her man.

Local Nigerian men,
in teasing women as being in their “cheating” instead of “kitchen”
confess to the enormous power that women wield as those in charge of
food preparation, not only because a woman may choose to eat the
choicest part of the food in the kitchen before serving it, but also
because she decides what quantity and quality to serve the man. She can
also decide to snuff out the life of her man by dropping a little
dangerous something in the egusi soup she is going to serve him, and
there goes Papa Ngozi, twitching and twisting like a worm as he joins
his ancestors!

When men tease
women about “being in the cheating”, they are actually crying in their
laughter, crying in their souls about the danger they have brought upon
their lives by insisting that cooking for the family is a woman’s task.
Perhaps, women recognise this cry of despair in men’s deconstruction of
“kitchen” and so some of them try to intensify the fear in their
responses, for instance saying, “Yes, the kitchen is my office. That is
where I sign my signature before you can eat any thing!” Or, by saying:
“You can return to the kitchen to burn your beard if you like; that
would perhaps teach you what a barbecue is like!”

The laughter in the
verbal hide-and-seek remains an essential part of a gendered tenor in
social interaction. It gives men and women the opportunity to play with
words, with their gender differences, and with hopes and fears.
Essentially, that act of playing with words with the gendered other
announces that a society that cannot laugh at its differences and
conflicts has not even got enough capacity to manage them.

Imagine, for a
moment, that George W. Bush had been president when the Transportation
Security Administration decided to let Thanksgiving travellers choose
between exposing their nether regions to a body scanner or enduring a
private security massage: Democrats would have been outraged at yet
another Bush-era assault on civil liberties; Liberal pundits would have
outdone one another comparing the TSA to this or that police state; and
Republicans would have leaped to the Bush administration’s defense,
while accusing liberals of going soft on terrorism.

But Barack Obama is
our president instead, so the body-scanner debate played out rather
differently. True, some conservatives invoked 9/11 to defend the TSA,
and some liberals denounced the measures as an affront to American
liberties. Such ideological consistency, though, was the exception;
mostly, the Bush-era script was read in reverse.

It was the populist
right that raged against body scans, and the Republican Party that
moved briskly to exploit the furor. It was a Democratic administration
that labored to justify the intrusive procedures, and the liberal
commentariat that leaped to their defense.

This role reversal
is a case study in the awesome power of the partisan mindset. Up to a
point, American politics reflects abiding philosophical divisions. But
people who follow politics closely – whether voters, activists or
pundits – are often partisans first and ideologues second. Instead of
assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the
arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be
doing. Our ideological convictions may be real enough, but our deepest
conviction is often that the other guys can’t be trusted.

How potent is the
psychology of partisanship? Potent enough to influence not only policy
views, but our perception of broader realities as well.

A majority of
Democrats spent the late 1980s convinced that inflation had risen under
Ronald Reagan, when it had really dropped precipitously. In 1996, a
majority of Republicans claimed that the deficit had increased under
Bill Clinton, when it had steadily shrunk instead. Late in the Bush
presidency, Republicans were twice as likely as similarly situated
Democrats to tell pollsters that the economy was performing well. In
every case, the external facts mattered less than how the person being
polled felt about the party in power.

This tendency is
vividly illustrated by our national security debates. In the 1990s,
many Democrats embraced Clinton’s wars of choice in the Balkans and
accepted his encroachments on civil liberties after the Oklahoma City
bombing, while many Republicans tilted noninterventionist and
libertarian. If Al Gore had been president on 9/11, this pattern might
have persisted, with conservatives resisting the Patriot Act the way
they’ve rallied against the TSA’s Rapiscan technology, and Vice
President Joe Lieberman prodding his fellow Democrats in a more
Cheney-esque direction on detainee policy.

But because a
Republican was president instead, conservative partisans suppressed
their libertarian impulses and accepted the logic of an open-ended war
on terror, while Democratic partisans took turns accusing the Bush
administration of shredding the Constitution.

Now that a Democrat
is in the White House, the pendulum is swinging back. In 2006, Gallup
asked the public whether the government posed an “immediate threat” to
Americans. Only 21 percent of Republicans agreed, versus 57 percent of
Democrats. In 2010, they asked again. This time, 21 percent of
Democrats said yes, compared with 66 percent of Republicans.

In other words,
millions of liberals can live with indefinite detention for accused
terrorists and intimate body scans for everyone else, so long as a
Democrat is overseeing them. And millions of conservatives find wartime
security measures vastly more frightening when they’re pushed by Janet
“Big Sis” Napolitano (as the Drudge Report calls her) rather than a
Republican like Tom Ridge.

Is there anything
good to be said about the partisan mindset? On an individual level, no.
It corrupts the intellect and poisons the wells of human sympathy.
Honor belongs to the people who resist partisanship’s pull, instead of
rowing with it.

But for the country
as a whole, partisanship does have one modest virtue. It guarantees
that even when there’s an elite consensus behind whatever the ruling
party wants to do (whether it’s invading Iraq or passing Obamacare),
there will always be a reasonably passionate opposition as well. Given
how much authority is concentrated in Washington, especially in the
executive branch, even a hypocritical and inconsistent opposition is
better than no opposition at all.

At the very least,
the power of partisanship means that there will always be someone
around, when Americans are standing spread-eagled and exposed in the
glare of Rapiscan, to speak up and say “enough!”

© 2010 New York Times News Service

It appears that
the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) under the
leadership of Attahiru Jega, has quietly started an in house
investigation into the conduct of some of its employees who are
suspected of aiding the fraud in the Ekiti State governorship election
re-run.

According to
reports, the commission has set up a three-man panel to investigate, in
the first place, the conduct of Ayoka Adebayo, the resident Electoral
Commissioner in Ondo State at the time of the elections. INEC is
believed to also be investigating the conduct of other electoral
officers particularly in areas where elections results have been
overturned or cancelled. The body is reported to have started, what is
believed to be the first phase of a house cleaning exercise to ensure
it does not go into next year’s polls with officers of questionable
integrity.

INEC certainly has
its work cut out. Recent electoral verdicts in Ekiti, Osun, Ondo, Edo
and Anambra States are an indication of wide spread problems during the
last elections, and it is right that INEC is trying to do what it can
to weed out staff with tainted credibility.

We at NEXT commend
INEC for this quietly taken but ultimately critical decision. It is
good that INEC set a precedent as we limber up for elections next year.
It is proper that INEC staff found to have colluded with election
riggers be booted out and not be given another chance to steal people’s
votes. It is also commendable that INEC is undertaking this
housekeeping exercise without making a song and dance about it. Far too
many times, public institutions announce grand plans, which ultimately
fail to materialize.

However, INEC’s
actions alone cannot guarantee the end of rigging, so we are also
recommending that the Judicial Commission borrow a leaf from INEC and
look into punishing members of the bench who are found guilty of
colluding with riggers. Earlier election tribunals had mixed results
and in some cases appeared to have sided with riggers. It is important
that if any wrongdoing took place, it be sanctioned.

The only way to know for sure is if the Judicial Commission begins a house cleaning exercise just like INEC.

But again, even
that will not be enough to push the final nail in the coffin of
riggers. We at NEXT believe we must also find means of sanctioning
those who benefit from rigged elections. It is not enough to hold
electoral officers and members of the judiciary to account, the
politicians who get into office as a result of fraudulent elections
must also be penalised.

So far the
National Assembly has refused to criminalise rigging. There are no
provisions in the new Electoral Act or the new Constitution for
punishing the principal beneficiaries of rigged elections. In other
words, we do not have a mechanism for indicting those who are most
likely to initiate the process of rigging. We at NEXT believe that the
law should be crafted along the same lines as the law dealing with
theft where both thieves and receivers of stolen goods, get punished.

The National
Assembly is still in the process of making amendments to the
Constitution. It is not too late for it to do right by Nigeria by
ensuring that this class of cheats gets their just desserts. We
recommend a ban from elective office for five years, for first time
offenders and a life ban for repeat offenders. This should be in
addition to efforts made to recover any benefits, monetary and
otherwise, the person has enjoyed as a result of sitting in a public
office illegally.

As long as
beneficiaries can walk away from rigged elections with no penalty, they
will continue to use their immense resources to tempt not only poorly
paid civil servants and electoral officers, but young disenfranchised
youths who they turn into political thugs. Our only hope of dealing a
deadly blow to electoral fraud and rigging is if everyone who takes
part in rigging faces severe sanctions.

When President
Jonathan assumed the office 7 months ago, most Nigerians including this
writer were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But as the
saying goes, “show me your advisers, and I’ll tell you what kind of
leader you are.”

Take the
“Honorable” Minister finance for example, I sent him three email
messages on my idea to create over 100,000 jobs for Nigerians. He got
all the mail, and read them, as confirmed by my outlook. He did not
even have the courtesy to respond.

Twenty-five years
ago, I had sent a graduate research idea to President Buhari, through
the Nigerian embassy, to encourage Nigeria to create a sovereign wealth
fund, buy refineries and retail gas stations in the U.S. This was my
initial reason for contacting Mr. Aganga to congratulate him for
encouraging the Nigerian government to start a sovereign wealth fund.
But I was disappointed in his failure to even respond.

I sent similar
letters to the minister of information, Mrs. Akunyili, about my idea to
create up to $6 billion of internally generated funds for Nigeria
without borrowing, and up till today, I have yet to receive a response.
At least, when I send similar suggestions to U.S administrators,
including those at the White House, I usually get a response.

My doubts about
the competence of the people that the president surrounds himself with,
were confirmed when Mr. Aganga said a few months ago that Nigeria’s
unemployment rate was 19.7%. I searched everywhere to find out where he
got his numbers from and I am still looking.

My contact with
the Nigerian minister of power has not been that positive either, since
Mr. President is his own minister of power, I would have thought that
the ministry would be more responsive. In the six months since we we’ve
been talking to Mr. President about generating power, China has built
over 36,000 megawatts of power for its people. It is one thing to write
slogans on the pages of Facebook, but Nigerians need electricity and
jobs.

A few days ago,
Mr. Aganga stated that Mr. Atiku has poor knowledge of the economy. Out
of the over 130 comments on the pages of Next, 90% challenged Mr.
Aganga’s explanation of the state of Nigeria’s economy. While most did
not side with Mr. Atiku, they all concluded that Nigeria’s economy is
heading in the wrong direction. So instead of the Jonathan government
coming up with concrete facts and plans, they think it is better to
keep slinging mud at others who criticize their rudderless ship.

Mr. Aganga claimed
that the government spent $5.6 billion on NIPP, yet Nigerians are still
in darkness. Yesterday, the Presidential adviser on power, Prof. Nnaji
stated that Nigeria aims for 20,000 megawatts of power in the next 10
years yet it takes China less than six months to build 20,000
megawatts.

The question is,
why would it take Nigeria 10 years? I am still awaiting a response to
the email I sent to Prof Nnaji six weeks ago regarding information on
his road map and the procedure required to obtain a power purchase
agreement with the Nigerian government. These are some of the questions
Nigerians should be asking when they go to the polls in 90 days, Can
President Jonathan solve Nigeria’s power problem and create jobs for
Nigerians

The lesson is that
Nigerians are no longer as gullible as the politicians assume. If the
president thinks he can win the election by throwing numbers around
instead of coming up with concrete plans on how to fix the economy,
provide electricity and create jobs, he may be surprised that Nigerians
would rather support someone else instead of a leader who has
surrounded himself with yes men and women who can’t even respond to
suggestions from Nigerians.

Show me your advisers, and I’ll show you what kind of leader you are.

Toyin Dawodu is
the Managing partner of Capital Investment Group and founder of Nigeria
Let There be light, a movement to create meaningful change in Nigeria.

toyin@capvestgroup.com

When you are an
Editor of national media organisation and also have the rare privilege
of writing a regular column, you have to exercise great judgment in
deciding what your topics should be. But this isn’t as easy or
straightforward as it sounds.

The ability to be
fair and balanced is an essential quality in an editor. But that is not
enough; you must also be seen to be fair and balanced. And as the umpire
that directs newsgathering and has the final word on what gets into the
paper and what does not, perception is important and can help determine
the level of trust established between a media organisation and its
audience.

In a complex and
potentially volatile place like Nigeria, the decision on what subject to
write on, can sometimes be a fine balancing act entailing some tough
judgment calls. Some subjects can even be taboo; not because I do not
have an opinion about these things, or that I lack the courage or
conviction to publicise those beliefs but because there is a real danger
that my beliefs could be mistaken for the opinion of the paper and some
may even assume it influences the way we gather and disseminate news
and information.

I have been
pondering for some time the question of attributes that need to be
present in the man or woman we elect as president in next year’s
elections. But, I have also been wary of writing about it to avoid the
perception that I am endorsing this or that other candidate. Yet I have
not been able to completely push the issue out of my mind.

So I have come up
with a solution, a list of attributes that I believe we should be
looking for in the next Nigerian president and indeed everyone we are
putting in an elective office.

Some will find the
list simplistic and naive and say it does not take into account all the
various nuances and paradoxes inherent in human character and present
day Nigeria. I think it is a decent list and invite you to add to it.
Maybe when we have put together a list that we believe is complete, we
can circulate it and encourage voters to use it as check before they
cast their vote.

So here goes:

It is my judgment, that the following qualities are essential in anyone seeking to lead Nigeria successfully –

1. A truly
detribalised Nigerian- A person who will take decisions based on the
overall interest of Nigeria and not a single state or region. A person
who although proud of his or her roots, does not feel a sense of
superiority and genuinely judges people based on their actions and not
their place of origin.

2. A person with
integrity – A man or woman who has no record of enriching himself or
herself from public coffers. A person whose wealth can be measured and
traced, who has not shown any indication of the rapacious greed we have
come to associate with Nigerian politicians. A leader who will put
national interest above the need for personal enrichment and monetary
benefits.

3. A smart person –
Someone with the brain, or to put it another way, the processing power
to deal with the complexity of the Nigerian situation and with the
intellectual capacity to craft plans for addressing its many problems
and actually execute those plans.

4. A ‘unifying’
candidate- A person that will be acceptable and trusted by all regions
across the nation, with the capacity to unite the country and ensure buy
in for his or her policies across the tribal and political spectrum in
this nation. A candidate that will not exacerbate further, the divisions
that already exist, but lead Nigeria to celebrate its diversity while
harnessing it for cultural and economic growth: A man or woman who
passionately believes in the Nigerian project and will work diligently
to realise it.

5. A candidate with
the strength and courage – to take tough decisions, to stand up to
politicians who refuse to pursue an agenda of national growth. A man or
woman with he dogged determination and audacity to do the right thing no
matter whose ox is gored.

6. A spiritual
person – Someone who has genuine faith and spirituality and is not
merely religious in the way many Nigerians are. It should not be about
how often the candidate goes to the mosque or church or how many times
the person proclaims their religiosity. It should be an examination of
the person’s life, both the public and the private to see if God plays a
part in that life. Does he do good by his neighbours, is he or she
honest in everyday dealings? Does he or she conduct their affairs with
honour and fairness? Does the person’s behaviour make them the ideal
role model for the society we are trying to build?

These are my six. Should the candidate we vote for be in possession
of all of these attributes or would the possession of 5 out of 6 be
acceptable for president, vice – president, governor, senator, house of
representative member, local government chairman etc?

Americans
tend to associate “modern slavery” with illiterate girls in India or Cambodia.
Yet there I was the other day, interviewing a college graduate who says she
spent three years terrorised by pimps in a brothel in Midtown Manhattan.

Those who
think that commercial sex in this country is invariably voluntary – and
especially men who pay for sex – should listen to her story. The men buying her
services all mistakenly assumed that she was working of her own volition, she
says.

Yumi Li (a
nickname) grew up in a Korean area of northeastern China. After university, she
became an accountant, but, restless and ambitious, she yearned to go abroad.

So she
accepted an offer from a female jobs agent to be smuggled to New York and take
up a job using her accounting skills and paying $5,000 a month. Yumi’s
relatives had to sign documents pledging their homes as collateral if she did
not pay back the $50,000 smugglers’ fee from her earnings.

Yumi set
off for America with a fake South Korean passport. On arrival in New York,
however, Yumi was ordered to work in a brothel.

“When they
first mentioned prostitution, I thought I would go crazy,” Yumi told me. “I was
thinking, ‘How can this happen to someone like me who is college-educated?”‘
Her voice trailed off, and she added: “I wanted to die.”

She says
that the four men who ran the smuggling operation – all Chinese or South
Koreans – took her into their office on 36th Street in Midtown Manhattan. They
beat her with their fists (but did not hit her in the face, for that might
damage her commercial value), gang-raped her and videotaped her naked in
humiliating poses. For extra intimidation, they held a gun to her head.

If she
continued to resist working as a prostitute, she says they told her, the video
would be sent to her relatives and acquaintances back home. Relatives would be
told that Yumi was a prostitute, and several of them would lose their homes as
well.

Yumi
caved. For the next three years, she says, she was one of about 20 Asian
prostitutes working out of the office on 36th Street. Some of them worked
voluntarily, she says, but others were forced and received no share in the
money.

Yumi
played her role robotically. On one occasion, Yumi was arrested for
prostitution, and she says the police asked her if she had been trafficked.

“I said
no,” she recalled. “I was really afraid that if I hinted that I was a victim,
the gang would send the video to my family.”

Then one
day Yumi’s closest friend in the brothel was handcuffed by a customer, abused
and strangled almost to death. Yumi rescued her and took her to the hospital.
She said that in her rage, she then confronted the pimps and threatened to go
public.

At that
point, the gang hurriedly moved offices and changed phone numbers. The pimps
never mailed the video or claimed the homes in China; those may have been
bluffs all along. As for Yumi and her friend, they found help with Restore NYC,
a nonprofit that helps human trafficking victims in the city.

I can’t be
sure of elements of Yumi’s story, but it mostly rings true to me and to the
social workers who have worked with her. There’s no doubt that while some women
come to the United States voluntarily to seek their fortunes in the sex trade,
many others are coerced – and still others start out forced but eventually
continue voluntarily. And it’s not just foreign women. The worst cases of
forced prostitution, especially of children, often involve homegrown teenage
runaways.

No one has
a clear idea of the scale of the problem, and estimates vary hugely. Some think
the problem is getting worse; others believe that Internet services reduce the
role of pimps and lead to commercial sex that is more consensual. What is clear
is that forced prostitution should be a national scandal. Just this month,
authorities indicted 29 people, mostly people of Somali origin from the
Minneapolis area, on charges of running a human trafficking ring that allegedly
sold many girls into prostitution – one at the age of 12.

There are
no silver bullets, but the critical step is for the police and prosecutors to
focus more on customers (to reduce demand) and, above all, on pimps.
Prostitutes tend to be arrested because they are easy to catch, while pimping
is a far more difficult crime to prosecute. That’s one reason thugs become
pimps: It’s hugely profitable and carries less risk than selling drugs or
stealing cars. But that can change as state and federal authorities target
traffickers rather than their victims.

Nearly 150
years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it’s time to wipe out the remnants
of slavery in this country.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Dateline
Kinshasa – The annual EU-ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly kicks off in the
Congolese capital this week against a background of challenging developments in
international relations. Prominent on the agenda are issues such as climate
change, governance and democracy, post-conflict reconstruction in war-torn
countries, and immigration and religious toleration in the New Europe.

The
partnership between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific
(ACP) Group of States has long been regarded as a model for North-South
cooperation. In spite of all the rhetoric of interdependence and equality, no
one can be in doubt that Europe calls the final shots by sheer virtue of its
control over the purse strings – some €23 billion under the 10th European
Development Fund (EDF).

Africa in particular can lay claim to having
several friends in the EU Parliament, but be that as it may, there are growing
concerns within ACP circles that the EU may be turning its back on an age-old
relationship. With its new overtures towards Latin America and the new
priorities being given to the so-called “European neighbourhood” – Eastern
Europe and North Africa – there are legitimate fears that Europe may be
disengaging itself from its traditional partnership that goes as far back as
the Rome Treaty 1957 that saw the creation of the Common Market with an associated
status for the erstwhile colonial dependencies.

Former
U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger once remarked that if he needed to talk
to the Kremlin he always knew precisely who to call; ditto for Beijing and
Tokyo. He lamented that, for Europe, you never could know who to call.

With the
coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2009 the Kissingers of this
world no longer have to worry. Under the new treaty Europe is to reform its
internal architecture so as to have coherence and more effectiveness on the
international arena. Under the new plan, the EU now has a High Representative
of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in the person of Catherine
Ashton of the United Kingdom. She effectively combines the role of foreign as
well as defence minister and would have a new corps of foreign service
personnel at her disposal.

Well and
good for Europe. The problem for the ACP is that for the first time in its long
years of evolution, Europe has a constitutive legal document that makes no express
reference to the EU-ACP partnership. It is also not clear if the ACP can be
entitled to a predictable envelope of financial resources as had been the case
hitherto. This is a major concern to several African countries whose annual
budgets depend on significant contributions from foreign donors, notable among
them Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and Mozambique.

The simple
truth is that the EU remains the largest donor in the world – well ahead of the
USA, Japan, China and the World Bank. What Europe does or fails to do will have
major implications for the life-chances of so many on our continent.

There is
also the question of the ongoing negotiations on Economic Partnership
Agreements (EPAs). For more than three decades the ACP enjoyed concessional
trading terms with the EU, with duty-free access for most of the imports from
the poorest countries. Such arrangements, we are told, are no longer compatible
with current WTO international trading rules.

The EPAs
being negotiated between Europe and the regional economic communities of the
ACP are supposed to replace the erstwhile trading arrangements that had been
put in place over decades of painstaking multilateral negotiations. While the
Caribbean has made significant progress in reaching an agreement with the EU,
much of Africa and the Pacific are yet to make any major progress. I am told
that our own ECOWAS is expected to reach an agreement by year’s end 2010, all
things being equal.

Former EU
Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of Britain’s New
Labour, never endeared himself by what appeared to be a bullying approach to
the EPA negotiations. The Europeans seem
unmoved by the concerns of some of the poorest countries that wholesale trade
liberalisation would wipe out local industries while poor peasant farmers will
suffer devastating income losses as they try to compete with over-subsidized
European farm products. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU commits
over 30 percent of its budget to farm subsidies (amounting to €43.8 billion in
2010).

It is my
first time ever in Kinshasa. I find it to be a lovely city, although the signs
of its manifold traumas are everywhere to be seen. During the course of this
week, parliamentarians from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific will jaw-jaw
about all the aforesaid issues. But it is doubtful if any of this will shift
Europe’s fundamental position in any way. We would not need a magic lantern to
peer through the fog of doublespeak and obfuscation.

The
handwriting on the wall is clear: we live in a world where national interests
ultimately prevail; where there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies.
Anyone who approaches international economic diplomacy with the bowl of
mendicancy and nothing else besides, would make of himself a lone voice crying
in the wilderness.