CINA

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Two days ago (6.03) the German leading (bourgeois) magazine Der Spiegel published following interview with Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), the chairman of the CPN(M), commander of the PLA and Nepal's possible future PM:

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Welcome to the "newborn"..

If everything is going well in the coming hours (*), the Nepali CA will proclaim tonight the Pepublic of Nepal!! Already since yesterday afternoon the people in Nepal, especially thousands in Kathmandu are celebrating the end of the 240-years old feudal dictatorship by the Nepali Kingdom.

Well, of course it's (after almost 15 years of fierce struggle, especially by the CPN-M/PLA, against the monarchy) just the beginning of a long, long way toward to a (hopefully) real democratic society with a maximum of justice for the majority of the "ordinary" (i.e. the oppressed and exploited) Nepali people!!

But, in my opinion, without international solidarity... Well, I think you know what I mean!!

* Finally in the late night it became reality, as NepalNews reported:

Nepal becomes a Federal Democratic Republic

The historic first meeting of the Constituent Assembly (CA) has endorsed a proposal to amend the interim constitution implementing the declaration of Nepal as a federal democratic republic.

The officiating chairman of the CA, Kul Bahadur Gurung said that of the 564 CA members who took part in the voting on the proposal, 560 voted in its favour while four members voted against it.

The motion for implementing the republic declaration was introduced by the government.

Home Minister Krishna Sitaula introduced the proposal as per the Article 159 of the Interim Constitution, which was put for voting.

Following the voting result, the CA also approved a proposal stating that the King should vacate the Narayanhity royal palace within 15 days.

The proposal states that the King will lose all perks and privileges except his rights as a common citizen. The Narayanhity royal palace will be turned into a national museum or used in national interest as deemed necessary by the government, the proposal adds.

The CA meeting had started after 9 pm on Wednesday night at Birendra International Convention Center (BICC).

Earlier in the day, the major parties including Nepali Congress (NC), Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the Maoists had agreed to introduce a proposal to implement republic at the CA. They also agreed to establish constitutional president and executive prime minister and bring about necessary changes in the interim constitution for this purpose.

“The president will be the commander in chief of the national army. He will act as per the recommendation of the Prime Minister. He will be authorised to declare emergency in accordance with the cabinet decision,” said NC leader Bimalendra Nidhi.

He added that president will be elected by the CA and details about his election process will be worked out and incorporated in another amendment proposal soon.

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Since almost two weeks pogroms against immigrants/migrant workers from countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda, Congo, Somalia.. are hitting the townships of several South African cities, such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban etc. Until now at least 50 "foreigners" were killed and more than 50,000 had to flee their homes (photos and reports by the int'l media about it, please see below).

But last Saturday - and that's the good news - thousands of anti-capitalist activists took the streets of Johannesburg to protest against pogroms. The demonstration was organized by the Anti Privatisation Forum (APF) together with a large coalition of resistance organisations, while the "progressive" ANC - from the 1950s until the 90s in the struggle against apartheid state, but now the "ruling power" in the RSA - advised their members not to participate on the demo, because "it's organized by left-radical forces".

But here comes the very bad news: In Rustenberg, north-west of J'burg, according to the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, the next wave of pogroms is likely in preparation. Since few days leaflets are circulating calling on migrant workers, who are employed in the platinum mines there, to "leave the country immediately!"..

Following you can read APF's Statement on the "Anti Xenophobia March" in Johannesburg on last Saturday (5.24):

 
The Anti Privatisation Forum with the Social Movements Indaba and a large coalition of organisations marched on Saturday 24 May 2008 against xenophobia and hate, through the inner city of Johannesburg to the Gauteng Legislature to submit a memorandum to government. The public responded to the call from the Coalition Against Xenophobia in a colourful demonstration for the inclusion of foreigners in our communities. Over 5000 people marched despite SMS messages circulated in ANC circles discouraging participation in a march organised by the 'ultra left'. Well, thanks then to the ultra left for mobilising communities and concerned residents of Johannesburg against the insidious hatred bred by poverty, developing links with immigrant communities and being clear about why we are poor.

Fears are patrolling our freedom and already determine with who or what South Africans associate with. It is regrettable that the APF can report that the buses from its affiliates in Atteridgeville and Shoshanguve had to be cancelled for threatened reprisals. Buses and taxis from other townships did otherwise arrive for the march unhindered. For APF comrades, this was a march unlike any other at its start at the Pieter Roos Park below Constitutional Hill, the Minister of Public Service and Administration, assumed the platform to number herself among the 'we Africans united against the scourge of hatred'; one demonstrator at the march held a placard professing ‘Free markets/Free Immigration/Free South Africa’. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the marchers were agreed that the government’s consistent failure to deliver adequate basic services to poor communities, combined with macro-economic policies that have benefited corporate capital/the rich, are a large part of what is behind the explosion of xenophobia and hatred amongst the poor who live in this country. The memorandum addressed to Premier Mbazima Shilowa as well as the Departments of Housing and Home Affairs calls on the "South African government to acknowledge its role in the crisis, and to assume responsibility for providing solutions to the problems that speak to the root causes of the problem." This would include, the memorandum stated, the suspension of "the neo-liberal macro-economic policy approach."

While the government will be hard-headed in its insistence on finding a criminal motivation to the xenophobic attacks, the demands submitted to government are unlikely to be met. What the demonstration did achieve was an affirmation of African working class unity and to break the spell of tension that has been stalking Johannesburg streets for the last two weeks. Residents of Hillbrow and the inner city cheered the march from their balconies as is it proceeded down Claim and Pritchard streets. The loudest cheer en route to the Gauteng legislature came from the predominately Zimbabwean refugees at the Central Methodist Church. Immigrants taking refuge at the church had prepared to come to the march but their busses to the starting point had been delayed. Banners they had prepared the evening before were as critical of government's policies as the Coalition's memorandum: 'Mr Mbeki: is this what you call quiet diplomacy.' Incensed by the xenophobic coverage in the South African press, particularly the Daily Sun tabloid, another wit declared, 'Aliens are what you find on Pluto'.

Amongst the speakers on the march was a representative from the Refugee Fellowship based at the Central Methodist Church. Representatives of the Zimbabwean, Congolese, Cameroonian, Ethiopian, Mozambican, Somali and Nigerian immigrant communities also had opportunities to speak, all welcoming the solidarity demonstration. As government continues to treat the xenophobia as a criminal phenomenon, they have very little faith that the police will do anything to solve the problem. The South African police violently raided the Central Methodist Church in January this year, brutalising the desperate people sleeping on floors there. How can the police be trusted to find a solution to xenophobia when so many of them are confirmed xenophobes, relating to foreigners as cash machines? When the Remmoho Women's Group visited Alexandra police station on Tuesday, 20th May, refugees there spoke of harassment by members of the police force.

The solution to xenophobia is for 'the enemy at home' to be targeted by our organisation and our action. These enemies are not foreign immigrants but the corporate and government elites who commodify our basic resources, retrench workers, casualise employment, profit-gouge on basic necessities most crucial to the poor and engage in double-speak when it comes to treating all who live in South Africa with fairness, equality, and humanness. Treating xenophobic South Africans only as criminals reminds the APF of government's criminalisation of our members who protest for basic services. Both xenophobia and service delivery protests will not go away unless those with political and socio-economic power listen to the poor, unless social development involves people and is not conceived as a benefit trickling down from investments. With the upsurge in violence, the ANC government must, with all urgency, acknowledge that the time to start back-pedalling on its failed policies and arrogant political ‘rule’ is NOW!.

No-one is illegal!

☞ [5.24] Anti Xenophobia Coalition March (pictures/사진)

☞ APF

☞ South Africa IMC

*****

☞ Hunted by gangs, migrants flee the flames (Guardian, 5.24)

☞ Thousands flee South Africa attacks (al-Jazeera, 5.26)

☞ Is this the end of the Rainbow nation? (The Observer, 5.25)

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Since it's clear that the CPN(M) is the only/real winner of the CA election in Nepal the forces of the counter-revolution - the current ruling class and representatives of the ancient regime - are rearming! As Indian and Nepali news agencies reported today:

WHF warn of armed struggle to keep Hindu monarchy

Extremist Hindu organizations of Nepal and India have warned to launch armed struggle to keep the last Hindu monarchy in Nepal, reports Kantipur daily.

They have warned they would not accept the decision of the elected constituent assembly to remove monarchy.

The conference of World Hindu Federation(WHF) that concluded in Balrampur district of India, Monday, decided to focus their movement against Maoists.

The conference was participated by dozens of Hindu activists from both the countries.

The movement would be led by Hem Bahadur Karki, a retired army colonel and recently elected president of WHF, and former royal ADC Bharat Keshar Simha from Nepal, and by Yogi Adityanath, MP of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Gorakhpur, from India.

The daily further reports that they have decided to gather pro-Hindu activists from all over the two countries and start the movement from Terai.

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For almost 30 years the people - at least the exploited and oppressed people - in Cambodia fought for "national liberation" and independence (in the 1950's from the French colonial power, in the 1960/70's from the US Imperialism) alongside the peoples in Vietnam and Laos. But now, after a short era of hope in the 1980/1990's, the so-called "independence" is bringing new oppression and increasing exploiation to the poor people (and the poor are still the majority) in Cambodia, as The Guardian from last Saturday(4.26) reported folowing in detail:

Country for sale

Almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign speculators in the past 18 months - and hundreds of thousands who fled the Khmer Rouge are homeless once more

Sang Run, his hair stiff with sea salt, chugs out into the Gulf of Kompong Som in his weather-beaten turquoise boat, looking for blackling. He scours the shallow, blue water, waiting for a shoal to appear, before skimming his net across the water. He does the same every day, taking his catch to auction on Independence Beach in Cambodia's southern port city of Sihanoukville.

It looks like a scene Sang Run was born into. But 20 years ago the beach was deserted, and he was a schoolteacher in Mondulkiri, a forested province hundreds of miles away in the east of the country. Back then, he could talk all day about palm sugar and betel nuts. He was something of an amateur botanist, but had never seen the sea - nor had any of the group who today gather around his silvery haul flapping in the sand on Independence Beach. Former nurse Srey Pov, who runs a Khmer restaurant along the beach, also came from a province many miles away. She still cannot swim, she says, shrugging. Heads nod around her. Cambodia is a nation that would drown if their boat tipped over; it is also a country whose citizens mostly do not belong to the places where they have ended up.

The Khmer Rouge saw to that, eviscerating the kingdom after coming to power. It was a movement that drew inspiration from Mao's Cultural Revolution, collectivising all the land; but it grew to love terror more than ideology. The ferocity of the regime sent more than 300,000 rushing into exile. At least two million urban Cambodians were route-marched into the paddy fields to near certain death. Worst hit was the Eastern Zone, bordering Vietnam, where Sang Run came from. Its people were derided as "duck's arses with chicken's heads" as the Khmer Rouge grew to mistrust the Vietnamese and accused Mondulkiri people of being disloyal - too sympathetic to their neighbours across the border. Their names were added to those who were to be purged; the catalogue of "crimes" became so long, so general, that anyone could stand accused. The wave of random violence and retribution that scythed through the countryside for three years, eight months and 21 days killed one in five of the population.

Sang Run's family all vanished, but he survived, hiding in the forests, living off what he could pluck and hunt. When the Vietnamese invaded in 1978 - overthrowing the Khmer Rouge a year later - Sang Run found his way, like thousands of others, to Cambodia's 300-mile long shoreline. Stretching between Thailand and Vietnam, the region had been a Khmer Rouge stronghold, controlled by Pol Pot's notorious commander, Ta Mok, who was known as The Butcher. In the 80s, when the fishing shacks and noodle stores went up along the Sihanoukville coast, there was no development plan. There had never been a tradition of thriving fishing communities along the coast - few Cambodians lived there except in the old French colonial towns. The shoreline had been empty - miles of palm-fringed beach front interspersed with the few port towns, including Kep, Sihanoukville and Ream.

Survivors began to build new lives there, learning to love the sea. Some took boats to a nearby archipelago of 22 coral-fringed, uninhabited islands, building up clusters of villages on atolls with names such as Rabbit, Snake and Turtle. Within 10 years, the whole coastline had been patchily settled by newcomers, among them a former farmer, Soch Tith, a stocky man with corncob hands, who was sick every time he got in a boat, but still found his way to faraway Koh Rong, the largest of the islands - 7,800 hectares of jungle. There he cleared small patches to grow fruit.

By 2006, these communities had schools, political representation, and many householders even had papers, stamped by the Sihanoukville governor, Say Hak, which guaranteed them the permanent right to stay under the 2001 Cambodian Land Law. The central government in Phnom Penh had in the 90s designated the entire coast and its islands as State Public Land that could not be bartered or developed.

Then, during the past couple of years, a disturbing wave of rumours swept the coastal communities. Sang Run says that in September 2006 he heard that Snake Island, half a mile out to sea, had been secretly sold to Russians. He did not check. Cambodians ask little from their government; a wariness of authority is a legacy of years of blood-letting under Pol Pot. In any case, it was a familiar story. Shortly after Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, came to power in 1985, frenzied landgrabbing began: influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country. By 2006, the World Bank estimated that 40,000 had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone. But, until now, no one had bothered with the coast. Sang Run paid no particular attention to the Snake Island rumour. He should have - it signalled a radical new course for the Cambodian government.

Three months later, Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run's neighbours were knocked unconscious. Village Number One - a mundane name that failed to capture the beauty of its uninterrupted sea views and vegetable gardens that ran to the beach - had been erased. Sang Run heard that a hotel was planned, although no information was given to the people evicted from their homes for a further 18 months.

Nurse-turned-restaurateur Srey Pov tells us that, by early 2007, rumours were buzzing around Sihanoukville's covered market that virtually every island in the region was up for sale. Over the following months, Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, Koh Preus, Koh Krabei and Koh Tres were all snapped up by foreigners, who then started negotiating for mainland sites, too, among them public beaches with names such as Serendipity, Occheuteal and Otres. In February, 47-year-old Srey Pov was evicted, too, her Independence Beach restaurant shut down to make way for another rumoured hotel. "All I've got left is the chairs and tables," she says - they're stacked up in the cramped living room of her Sihanoukville home. Former farmer Soch Tith, on Koh Rong, was the last to hear that last month his island had been sold, too, to a British developer.

What none of these people knew was that the troubled kingdom of Cambodia, a precarious debtor-nation underpinned by more than £500m of hand-outs from the international community, had suddenly found itself a refuge for cash and speculators fleeing paralysed western financial markets. As London and New York, overcome by the US sub-prime crisis, began grinding to a halt last year, many in the City had moved on, transferring liquid assets to the east.

Foreign fund managers had started pitching up in Phnom Penh wearing linen shirts and khaki drip-dry jungle wear, alerted by the country's unexpected boom in tourism that in 2006 had seen one-and-a-half million visitors overcome the west's collective memories of Cambodia's recent past to travel to the temples of Angkor Wat. Enticed also by indicators that suggested the feeble economy was turning a corner, super-rich, predominately British, French and Swiss speculators, fuelled by a high-risk machismo, came hunting for profits of 30% or more. Their interest was land speculation: buying up large sites in developing countries that they would then sit on in the hope that, with the influx of tourists, land values would soar.

Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have, in effect, put the country up for sale. Crucially, they permit investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright - or at least on 99-year plus 99-year leases. No other country in the world countenances such a deal. Even in Thailand and Vietnam, where similar land speculation and profiteering are under way, foreigners can be only minority shareholders.
 

There were other inducements. Many foreign funds - hedge funds, property funds, private equity funds - operating on the outer margins of the financial world thrive on complexity, risk and maximising profit. In Phnom Penh, they found an ideal partner in the prime minister, who has created a unique business environment. Since the mid-90s, Hun Sen and the CPP have declined to enforce money-laundering legislation and have concerned themselves little with the probity of investors. Foreign businessmen were offered nine-year tax holidays, and were allowed to hold their cash in US dollars in banks outside the country.

"Only recently, no one would touch us," Brett Sciaroni, a Phnom Penh-based US lawyer who acts for many new western investors, tells us. "We were dirt. And suddenly we were gold." John Brinsden, a British banker, now vice chairman of Cambodia's national Acleda Bank, agrees: "In 2001, only 200 people came to the government's investment conference. At our most recent, we ran out of chairs."

In July 2007, Hun Sen, gambling on his people's tenuous connection with the land, changed the designation of the southern islands so they could be sold. The forests, lakes, beaches and reefs - and the lives of the thousands of residents - were quietly transferred into the hands of private western developers. Arguing that Cambodia could become a tourist magnet to challenge Thailand, the prime minister began a fire sale of mainland beaches. By March this year, virtually all Cambodia's accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign. Those who lived or worked there were turfed out - some jailed, others beaten, virtually all denied meaningful compensation. The deals went unannounced; no tenders or plans were ever officially published. All that was known was that more than £1,000m in foreign finance found its way into the country in 2007, a 1,500% increase over the previous four years. It was as if Alistair Darling, the British chancellor, had decided to raise some extra cash by trading the Isles of Wight, Man and the Hebrides, throwing in Formby Sands, the entire Cornish coastline and Brighton seafront - before trousering the proceeds.

It was abundantly clear to observers, including the World Bank and Amnesty International, that by making these private deals, Hun Sen was denying prosperity to most of his people, causing the country's social fabric to unwind like thread from a bobbin. Today, more than 150,000 people are threatened with eviction. Forty-five per cent of the country's entire landmass has been sold off - from the land ringing Angkor Wat to the colonial buildings of Phnom Penh to the south-western islands. Professor Yash Ghai, the UN human rights emissary to Cambodia, warned, "One does not need expertise in human rights to recognise that many policies of the government have... deprived people of their economic resources and means of livelihood, and denied them their dignity." He added, "I believe that the deliberate rejection of the concept of a state governed by the rule of law has been central to the ruling party's hold on power."
 

It was Hun Sen who, as early as 1989, realised the power of land. Rhodri Williams, a researcher for the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, points out that, as Hun Sen privatised the land, "he simultaneously cut off the rights of 360,000 exiled Cambodians, awarding prime slices to political allies and friends." The exiles were Cambodians who had fled the Khmer Rouge into Thailand and beyond in 1975; they had titles to the land, but this counted for nothing when they returned to claim it. Hun Sen said Cambodia should start again.

Although he bathes his speeches in socialist values, even his closest aides told us that Hun Sen was more often than not a pragmatist. He joined the Communist party in the 60s and enlisted in the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, before defecting to the Vietnamese-backed government in the 80s. In the 90s, he embraced the free market. Tourism was not a promising prospect in the early days - the remnants of Khmer Rouge, violently hostile to outsiders, were too much of a risk. When western travellers did begin to explore, they were taking their lives in their hands. In 1994, Briton Mark Slater, Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet and Australian David Wilson were kidnapped while riding a train through Sihanoukville, and all of them executed. Two years later, Christopher Howes, a British de-mining expert, together with a Cambodian colleague, were murdered as they worked 10 miles north of Angkor Wat.

By 2006, the country seemed safer, and was finally becoming a tourist destination. That September, the CPP received its first foreign offer in the coastal area: a Russian investor living in Phnom Penh wanted to buy an island. This deal would become the template for every developer to come. Alexander Trofimov created a Cambodian shell company to buy Koh Puos, or Snake Island. With cash apparently no object, he proposed to stunned government officials that he would link the island to a mainland beach - known as Hawaii - with a 900-metre suspension bridge. "He also asked to buy Hawaii beach," the official who oversaw that meeting told us. "And we gave it to him." No figures were published. The official claimed he didn't know them.

Locals who used the beach and island were kept in the dark. No one quizzed Trofimov. He produced a book of cut-and-paste designs that he said would encompass a £150m resort consisting of 900 tightly packed villas, a dolphin aquarium, two hotels, a shopping centre and a marina - all crammed into an egg cup-sized island. It was enticing stuff for the CPP, although the project faltered when Trofimov was accused of having sex with underage girls, and jailed this year. However, two more Russian businessmen seamlessly emerged to take up the reins, representing a Cypriot-holding company that, it later transpired, had owned the Koh Puos project from the off.

Arnaud Darc was quick off the mark, too. A quietly spoken and likeable French businessman, Darc had arrived in Cambodia in the 90s, building a hotel and restaurant business in Phnom Penh. In 2006, after hearing from a French colleague working at Sihanoukville's provincial airport that the runway was likely to be extended, he identified two massive beach-front sites totalling more than 220 hectares that he liked the look of. He brought in Jean-Louis Charon, a Parisian real estate tycoon, whose Nexity company is the largest in France, and whose name brought in "40 French high-net worths", as Darc described them; they raised £12.5m to be held by City Star, a foreign-owned investment company. "The maths was easy, and the returns potentially fantastic," Darc said. City Star's land values quadrupled as soon as the Cambodian government confirmed the airport rumours, a spokesman for the Sihanoukville governor's office told us.

The investors could have sold up and come away rich. But this was development with a difference. City Star investors wanted more, but did not want to go to the trouble of constructing anything. They were speculating on the future value of the land, believing that by adding only modest infrastructure, perhaps attaching big-name hoteliers, they would reap vast profits in seven to 10 years. Darc's group continued buying, snapping up 333 hectares on Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, two islands off Ream. Such was the appetite for easy money that City Star raised a further £30m in a matter of days from a second group of French high rollers last July, this time to buy in Phnom Penh.
 

Darc's model appealed to British investors behind LimeTree Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity group that in 2007 bought up chunks of beach front near Ream; sites it planned to leave idle for many years until prices peaked. This spring, a third entrepreneur, Frenchman Alain Dupuis, through his Cambodian company LBL International, bought Koh Sramaoch. Soon after, Koh Tonsay, or Rabbit Island, was auctioned off to Chinese investors; 14 fishing families were evicted to make way for a casino and a golf course.
 

On the mainland, Sang Run returned to the beach to find his village in Sihanoukville destroyed to make way, supposedly, for a hotel. A few hotels have been built, but generally the sites remain empty. The Cambodian economy has grown by more than 24% over 18 months and land values have in some cases risen by more than 100%, so there are fortunes to be made from doing nothing but wait.

Australians Rory and Mel Hunter were the only investors who made an attempt to incorporate into their plans the people whose land they were buying. An advertising executive, Rory had come to Cambodia to work for an agency in Phnom Penh. During a week-long vacation in 2006, he and his wife, Mel, had set out on a diving trip around the Koh Rong archipelago and fell in love with the twin islands of Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, attached to one another by a coral reef and cupped in a shallow strait - they were known collectively as the Sweethearts. "We dreamed of a beautiful resort where people could immerse themselves in a new part of Asia," Mel said. They began negotiations with two village men to buy their houses and those owned by 60 other families. "They thought we were nuts," Rory said. "The two head guys wanted £7,500 each. We agreed and signed the contract in a boat out in the strait. We helped take down their tin shacks, and slowly relocated all the families and their homes to Koh Rong, across the strait." They worked for weeks to clear 20 years of debris, while beginning negotiations with the government to buy the islands themselves.
 

The Hunters drummed up backing from a handful of British speculators, including a currency broker who (preferring we didn't use his name) tells us why he leapt at the opportunity. "I loved the deal from the start. Let's be honest, who wants 6%? I wanted a deal that would wake me up in the night, sweating. We could make good money," he says over drinks in Phnom Penh, his City suit exchanged for shorts and a T-shirt. "There was a buzz about Cambodia you don't get elsewhere. It's Cambodia, the killing fields and all that stuff. Something different to show your mates back home. I show them the visa in my passport. I have something they don't."

But the Hunters' enterprise would soon be challenged by a cascade of deals involving neighbouring islands. While they worked on retraining local fishermen on neighbouring Koh Rong, British property developer Marty Kaye bought the ground from under their feet. Kaye, who had spent much of his career working on construction in Hong Kong, had spotted the island while planning an £800m luxury tourist development on a nearby Vietnamese island, Phu Quoc. He told us: "I was walking down the beach on Phu Quoc, seeing where we were going to put the golf course, and I spotted another island. No one knew what it was. We looked on Google Earth and it seemed to be Koh Rong, in adjacent Cambodia. I said, 'Let's see if we can get anywhere on Koh Rong, too.'"

Kaye, who runs Millennium property fund, began negotiating. "Here was a chance to buy an undeveloped island almost as long as Hong Kong," he said. "Nowhere else in the world could you create your own kingdom from scratch - unlike the car-crash planning of Thai islands like Koh Samui." The Cambodian government gave him 18 months to produce more details, and he worked on an outline plan whose initial development would cost £100m. When the government signed the deal, it made no mention of the census it had just carried out recording how many thousands of people (the government won't reveal the figures) live on the 7,800-hectare island.

Kaye is not worried: "Two guys and a lawyer will see everyone. But what most of them don't understand is that even if they have papers, they are not worth anything. All of them are registered only locally, not in Phnom Penh, so they will have absolutely no case. Others are just squatters with no papers at all." It helped that Kaye's Cambodian partner was tycoon Kith Meng, a multi-millionaire with interests in banking, mobile phones and real estate - and a close friend of the prime minister, Hun Sen.

"Kith Meng wants everything done yesterday," Kaye said. "We are going to move as fast as we can. It's fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc." It is an investment that gives the present residents of Koh Rong just over a year to make a solid case for keeping their homes or finding new ones.

If they are evicted, places in the area to make a new home are becoming scarce. With all the big islands sold, even smaller outcrops have gone, too, including a clump of rocks known as Nail Island, bought by Ukrainian entrepreneur Nickolai Doroshenko, who has transformed it into a James Bond-style lair, complete with a giant fibre-glass shark that soars over the fortress-like construction. He already owns Victory Beach, in Sihanoukville, a restaurant stuffed with live snakes and a bar that advertises "swimming girls".

The sale of the century continued with the mainland beaches. At the end of January, the Sokha Hotel Group, run by Sok Kong, a Cambodian oligarch and Hun Sen ally, was confirmed as the new owner of the lion's share of Occheuteal Beach, the largest and most popular public dune in the region, which was closed off to make way for a 1,000-room hotel and golf course. The deal was originally negotiated in June 2006 when, local fisherman told us, bulldozers and 10 trucks of armed men demolished 71 homes and 40 local restaurants.

Not wanting to be left out, Say Hak, Sihanoukville's governor, acquired a small island for himself, on which he built a villa and jetty; while Sbaung Sarath, the wife of his deputy, bought half of Sihanoukville's public Independence Beach in February 2008, evicting scores of families in the process. Among them was Srey Pov. She travelled to Phnom Penh with 27 other families to protest, but returned with nothing. "The developer issued a warning," she says. "They threatened to pay the city authorities to get rid of us. We knew what that meant." Independence Beach now languishes behind high fencing, as Srey Pov feared, waiting for the five-star tourists who will enjoy exclusive access to the powder-white sand.

Days later, Sbaung Sarath struck again, securing part of Sihanoukville's Otres Beach, one of the last public dunes, where Queenco, a London-listed casino company, also announced in February that it had bought 56 hectares. Queenco declined to comment on its Sihanoukville project, but it has already had consequences - 100 fishing families have been evicted. They have built a row of makeshift bamboo shacks, held together with plastic sheeting and whatever rubbish they could recycle, along a 200-yard stretch of a nearby main road. On the day we visited, they were drying out from an overnight storm that had filled their ramshackle homes with rainwater.

Aom Heat, 63, used to have a wonderful view over Otres beach and the gulf beyond. She was forced off her land last April. Now all she can see are the hubcaps and exhaust pipes of lorries that tear by. She and many of her neighbours had arrived on Otres Beach after fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the early 80s, building a fishing village they christened Spean Ches, or Burning Bridge. "When the eviction notices were served on us in September 2006, we were determined to fight," she says. She could not bear to lose everything again. "We lodged a complaint with the Senate Committee on Human Rights that ruled it was a matter for the courts." But the Sihanoukville governor's men did not wait for a court order. They turned up at the seaside village in April last year, Aom Heat says, and, "they burned down 26 houses and bulldozed 86 more, destroying all the pots and pans, clothes and food supplies. We were in a blind panic." Thirteen injured men were arrested and jailed, including one of Aom Heat's sons. Although made homeless, they were charged with "wrongful damage of property", and nine of them found guilty without witnesses or evidence produced. Despite having served their time while waiting for the case to be heard, the men were thrown back into jail pending an appeal from the prosecution, who complained they had been dealt with too leniently.

No one can agree what impact the foreign land sales will have on the Cambodian economy because so little information is made public. Although Cambodia is nominally a democracy that has held three general elections to date, and has a nominal opposition party, the CPP parliamentarians and cabinet are remote and dismissive of their people. They are not required to report on their interests or assets, making it impossible to deduce how much Hun Sen and his cabinet have personally benefited - although the World Bank reported last year that corruption, coupled with a lack of transparency, was "choking economic growth".

Since the land sell-offs, members of the government and its allies have been splashing huge sums around. A Korean developer told us that when he marketed Phnom Penh's first skyscraper, the 42-storey Gold Tower project in February, all two dozen £750,000 penthouse suites were bought within 24 hours by "an honour roll of the CPP and its friends in the military". There are other telltale signs, such as the canary yellow Hummers and hi-spec Range Rovers with blacked-out windows that rumble around Phnom Penh, in a country where the average annual income is less than £150.

Simon Taylor, the director of Global Witness, an international NGO that was forced to leave the country last year, having accused the CPP of running a logging racket, paints a depressing picture: "A shadow state has grown up, a government that misappropriates public assets, extorts from businesses and manages an extensive illicit economy. It is administered by senior ministers who are fluent in the jargon of good governance and sustainable development." One of Hun Sen's closest advisers, who requested anonymity, disagrees, telling us: "Hun Sen believes that liberal democracy is unsuited to a country whose skills have been drained and demographics wildly skewed by the Khmer Rouge."

Everything comes down to how much money you have in your pocket, according to Doug Clayton, from Leopard Asia, a fund of Swiss and British bankers that is about to invest £25m in Cambodia. "This kind of money opens any door," he says. How does Clayton pitch the Hun Sen brand back home? "Candidly? In investment circles, no one knows anything about this place. It's off the radar. In our pitch I talk up the new economic figures. I talk up stability." Clayton adds: "When the dust settles, the government here will probably end up looking something like the one in Singapore." There, Lee Kuan Yew served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Cambodian pollsters, looking to the general election that will run this July, predict a clear CPP victory, putting Hun Sen at the helm for many more years, too.

What will this mean for people such as Sang Run, who is now surviving in a makeshift home behind Independence Beach? Has the legacy of the Khmer Rouge been purged? Naly Pilorge, director of Licadho, a local human rights NGO, thinks not: "Everyone claims Cambodia has come through the period of barbarism, but the sadism is still bubbling beneath the surface. Extreme violence, greed and disregard for the most basic human rights - of giving people a place to live - are still with us daily. The methods of the past are being used to dictate our future."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/26/cambodia

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Updated version (Tuesday afternoon):

The Nepali Election Commission, 4.22:
FPTP counting over, CPN(M) win 120 out of 240 seats

 
The counting for the votes under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) has been completed today.

According to the final tally, the Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist) have won 120 out of the total 240 seats under FPTP. It has fallen one short of commanding clear majority under FPTP.

Nepali Congress (NC) is a distant second with 37 seats followed by the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) with 33 seats. The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) bagged 30 seats while Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP) won 9 seats. Rajendra Mahato-led Sadbhavana Party has pocketed four seats. Two seats each have been won by Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP), Peoples Front and independent candidates. Rastriya Janamorcha won one seat.

The counting of votes under Proportional Representation (PR) category, too, is nearing completion.

☞ CPN(M) ‘officially’ claim to head new govt.. (eKantipur, 4.22)

Last Sat. (4.19) the Chinese/HK magazine Asia Times published following interesting, but also (in some parts very) controversial article:

A Maoist in Nepal's palace (*)

Early results and trends indicate that last Thursday's election will push Nepal from feudal monarchy to a "people's republic", without a democratic interlude in between.

The political party comprising former members of the Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) succeeded in garnering support sufficient to leave its democratic rivals far behind. The scoreboard on April 10 placed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) on top with 119 of 240 seats in the first-past-post segment of the poll. The nearest rival, the Nepali Congress, was trailing with 34 seats while the moderate communist party, Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML), stood third with 31 seats.

Pre-poll estimates had put the Nepali Congress ahead of others, expected to be followed by the UML. The Maoists were expected to be reduced to an unenviable 50 seats. But all such predictions failed, to the pleasant surprise of Maoist leaders. On the contrary, their party looked set to win a majority of the 335 seats filled through proportional representation of the electoral system. The remaining 26 seats in the 601-strong Constituent Assembly are to be occupied by government nominees.

"We have achieved more than what we expected," Baburam Bhattarai, a senior Maoist leader, said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Since his party was emerging as the leader among the three main contestants, it would be logical, he said, for them to head the next coalition government whose job is to assist the assembly to draw up a constitution that replaces the one promulgated in aftermath of first pro-democracy movement of 1990.

That statute transformed the active monarchy into a British-style constitutional monarchy which lasted until King Gyanendra staged a royal coup at the start of 2005. But Gyanendra's goal to return the monarch to the political stage alienated democratic forces, prompting many to join the Maoist campaign aimed at removing the monarchy for good. This process is to be completed in a few weeks time - at the first sitting of the newly-elected Constituent Assembly.

Bhattarai and several others in the present Maoist leadership drew inspiration from the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement in Peru. This correspondent remembers a time, in early 1990s, when Bhattarai collected the signatures of several parliament members to denounce Alberto Fujimori and demand for the release of Shining Path leader Gonzalo. While the insurgency in Peru failed, even after the loss of 69,000 lives, Maoists in Nepal take solace from the fact that their struggle has been successful, and with fewer deaths - officially just over 13,000.

Besides, the Maoist leaders claim that theirs has been a homegrown movement. This is a statement not substantiated by events and facts that surfaced in intervening years. Not all the arms and ammunition they used, for example, were from the police posts or army barracks their cadre stormed periodically. Similarly, some of their comrades who left the movement have made public the fact that their Supremo Prachanda and Bhattarai spent eight of the ten years in different locations in India, taking advantage of the unregulated, porous border between Nepal and India. Significantly, the signing of a 12-point agreement in 2005, between the alliance of seven parties and the Maoists' party, was held in New Delhi with tacit approval of Indian authorities.

But what is the secret of Maoist surprise success in the April 10 poll? What allowed them to thwart almost all the opinion polls, analyses and predictions?

First, it reflected the public's desire for a progressive change; it was the Maoists were ready and able to adapt. Second, the voters decided to punish the incumbent parties for their inability to provide basic security to the population, their inefficiency in performance and their indifference towards widespread corruption.

There may have been other, less encouraging reasons. Election watchers and analysts have recently reported firsthand reports of pre-poll irregularities and intimidation by Maoist cadre. Proxy voting was widespread, mainly on the Maoists' behalf; Nepalis working in Indian cities returned home in large numbers and cast votes impersonating those who had gone to work abroad. Another point repeatedly mentioned is the Maoist leaders' thundering pre-election speeches in which they threatened to resume the violent insurgency if they did not win the election. People who suffered during the previous insurrection may have voted for Maoists in order to prevent violence.

International election observers described the polling day as largely peaceful, but there was no way to monitor events in the interior or remote districts of Nepal.

Kathmandu-based Western diplomats and their Indian and Chinese counterparts could provide no credible reason why the Maoists made such surprising gains. On the contrary, it had been believed that the election would bring the Maoists down to their proper size - putting them in a position from which they could neither think of going back to the jungles for another phase of armed struggle nor command enough assembly seats to shake the foundation of a newly-installed government.

India's National Security Advisor M K Narayanan openly declared - through CNN/IBN - India's preference for the Nepali Congress to outdraw the other contesting parties. But other Indian political leaders blasted Narayanan's remarks as interference in a friendly country's internal affairs. In an editorial published on Monday, The Hindu, one of India's major newspapers, described New Delhi's assumption: "Official India, which erroneously worked on the assumption of Maoist defeat, also needs to accept the reality of Maoist ascendancy."

The poll's outcome is unlikely to be encouraging to anyone except the Chinese. But they, too, may have second thoughts once they review the Maoist position on issues such as autonomous regions and the right to self-determination. In Nepal, they have been advocating for autonomous regions based on ethnicity, often with the right to self-determination. This policy runs counter to China's current situation in Tibet.

The euphoria in the Maoist camp is palpable. Prachanda, who won from two constituencies, was already being projected as new Nepal's first president. If such a scheme is agreed on, he will evict "suspended" king Gyanendra and begin residing in Narayanhity Palace within weeks. (*)

Prachanda's deputy, Bhattarai, defeated his nearest rival by a wide margin of over 40,000 votes in the hilly district of Gorkha, the original homeland of the Gurkhas. He is likely to be the country next prime minister. If so, he will move to Baluwaataar, the official residence of prime minister where Girija Prasad Koirala currently resides.

Koirala is in a dilemma due to heavy electoral losses his Nepali Congress party incurred. His daughter, as well other members of the Koirala family, lost elections. Also there is mounting pressure from a party executive for Koirala to quit the premiership over his responsibility for the election debacle. Most of the Congress leaders are also of the view that any kind of association with the Maoists, especially in a coalition government, would invite further devastation for the party.

"Let the Maoist run their show and put their revolutionary agenda into action," said Laxman Ghimire, an executive member of the Congress party.

But Koirala's thirst for power is well known. The Maoists may make use of that weakness, as they have in the past, in order to smooth the path for a "progressive" government. Accordingly, the Maoist leaders may request that he continue to head the government (and remain as acting head of state) until the new constitution is drafted. Koirala's established credentials as a democrat could help the Maoists gain international acceptance and recognition.

The Maoists know they have formidable challenges ahead. For example, the touchy issue of evicting Gyanendra, the move to integrate Maoist forces into the national army and unpopular measure to deal with the soaring cost of petroleum products. They must also reassure the country's business community that no measures will be taken to discourage investment and that private properties will not be nationalized.

Prachanda has stated many times that the Maoists realize classical communism is not feasible in the 21st century. But others consider Maoist leaders to be master strategists who can employ a range of tactics to accomplish their mission. Had that not been the case, they could not have reached where they are today.

In 2005, they realized that their People's Liberation Army did not have the capability to defeat the then Royal Nepal Army, and reach power through military means. That is why they and entered into a political pact with disgruntled democratic forces under Koirala. Slowly and steadily, said a high-placed army officer, they achieved their objectives through Koirala who perhaps unwittingly yielded too much, ostensibly in his bid to salvage the peace process.

"Of course, the country needs peace, but at what price?" said the official.

Koirala's "cooperation" is crucial for the Maoists, and essential to consolidating their hold on power. Koirala may be carried away - once again - by their polite and promising words, and brush aside the Congress party's reservations against cooperating with the Maoists. In the end, Koirala runs the risk of being a modern-day Paul von Hindenburg, the second president of Germany's Weimer Republic. Hindenburg is remembered for having given the initial legitimacy to Adolf Hitler, and thereby his Nazi dictatorship, beginning in 1933. (**)

To some Nepalis, their situation in their country is not as alarming as it is made to appear. There is no need to be panicky, some are quick to say.

Apprehensions of external - Indian - military intervention are vastly exaggerated by those who prefer to gloss over the presence of a mighty China to the north. The red wave need not be read as an indicator of a major political disaster. The present scenario is no reason to be scared, despite the current phase of delicate transition.

"Will the Maoists be able to establish a totalitarian communist system in Nepal?" editor Prateek Pradhan of The Kathmandu Post asked in an article on April 17. He doesn't believe the Maoists have ability to change the country beyond recognition. Those who share Pradhan's view didn't lose any time mentioning the hordes of problems the Maoists will now be forced to confront. The regional identity issue raised by some Terai groups, for example, could become a formidable albatross for the Maoist government.

A counter argument, however, came a day earlier. Editor Mumaram Khanal of Dishabodh, a leftist publication in Nepalese, told a radio interviewer Wednesday: "[The] Maoists are a radical force; if they began to behave like one of the existing political parties they will soon cease to be a force to be reckoned with. They know what they are and what they stand for."

In other words, the Maoists won't stop their journey until they reached their destination.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JD19Df03.html

* Well, I hope that the CPN(M) activists - likely the possibly next (democratic elected) "rulers" of Nepal - are so wise to turn the former palace of the king for a while into a museum and later into a huge culture/community center for everyone (of the former exploited oppressed class)!!!

** Bullshit! The present developments in Nepal are not comparably to Germany in the early 1930s! The CPN(M) isn't a NSDAP and Prachanda is definetely not A. Hitler!! Finally that's just a very primitive anti-communist propaganda (even it's a result of stupid ignorance)..

Related articles:

☞ No residue of Monarchy will be kept, says Maoist Chairman (eKantipur, 4.21)

☞ Kicking out a king (Guardian, 4.16)

☞ Nepal king urged to exit gracefully (al-Jazeera, 4.16)

And here the latest (insane!!!) proposal/demand by (parts of) the - hopefully former!! - ruling class: World Hindu Federation (WHF) on Sunday warned the constituent assembly not to endorse Nepal as secular state nor end monarchy without referendum. "CA should write 'Hindu' state in the new constitution," said President of the federation, Bharat Keshari Singh, organizing a press meet at WHF premises at Bansbari. "Otherwise, we won't be silent spectators, rather we will unveil our regular plans of agitation in our upcoming conference to re-establish Hindu State at any cost." (eKantipur, 4.21)

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The latest results of the CA election, according to the Nepali Election Commission:

The CPN(M) have won 117 of the 212 constituencies in which the vote counting has completed till today. Nepali Congress (NC) is a distant second with 33 seats followed by CPN-UML at 29 seats. The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) has won 22 seats while Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP) bagged 7 seats. Nepal Sadbhavana Party (NSP) led by Rajendra Mahato and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) have won 2 seats each.
Of the total 240 constituencies in the First-Past-The-Post system, CPN(M) are very close to garnering simple majority.

Now the Nepali and especial the int'l bourgeois media is asking for the reason of CPN(M) possible victory. And AFP got the answer: "In Rolpa in west Nepal, a Maoist bastion during the revolt that ended in 2006, former rebels have told villagers they can see who they're voting for through binocular cameras in the sky. The illiterate and naive villagers tend to believe it." (That's not a joke, it's just a part of a "report" by AFP!!^^)

And of course not everyone in the Nepalese ruling class can accept the current reality, according to The Himalayan Times:

Tanahun NC Cadre Commits Suicide After Party's Defeat

Nepali Congress (NC) Devghat VDC Committee Secretary Laxminath Pokharel, 54, on Sunday night committed suicide after not being able to accept the result of Constituent Assembly (CA) elections. Pokharel committed suicide by hanging himself in front of his home, said Police Inspector of Tanahun's Abukhairini Area Police Post, Som Thapa.
He reportedly killed himself for being unable to accept the nationwide defeat of NC in the CA elections. He had been active in NC for the last 37 years.

Related articles:

☞ Maoists poised to take power in Nepal (IHT, 4.14)

☞ Maoists' Win is Positive Development.. (Himalayan Times)

☞ NC mulling over whether to stay in the gov't or not (NepalNews)

☞ Roter Stern über Nepal (Junge Welt, 4.14)

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Today's German conservative daily newspaper Die Welt came to the realization that, because of the increasing activities and influence of the neo-nazi/fascist organisations, the "Entire East-Gemany is a No-Go-Area" - especialy for people who are not looking like (f******)"Arians", i.e. white Germans.
Already before last week (4.05) the German leading bourgeois magazine Der Spiegel published following report:

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"THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S VICTORY!"

Last Thursday (4.10) the people of Nepal voted for the Constituent Assembly (CA). Although the election final results will be available in at least two weeks (according to the Nepalese Election Commission) the Nepalese media published a few first - actually interesting, for the Nepalese ruling class likely very outraged ( they "are seemingly at unease over the nationwide sweep of the election by the party of former rebels", i.e. the CPN(M), so today's Nepalnews)  - trends: Until now CPN(M) got 15 seats (but there are 601 in the CA!!), the (revisionist) CPN-UML and the (bourgeois) Congess Party each got four seats... [Updates coming till 5:00 pm Sunday show that the CPN(M) have bagged 57 seats of the total 94 election constituencies where vote counting has been completed. CPN(UML) got 17 and Nepali Congress 16 seats, according to the NEC.](*)

Chairman Prachanda triumphs in Ktm-10 as his party takes initial lead (Nepalnews, 4.12)

According to latest reports, CPN-Maoist chairman Prachanda has won in Kathmandu constituency-10 (KTM-10) with a huge vote margin, as his party has also taken an initial lead in seat counts. Our reporter at the vote-counting center said that the official announcement for the same would be made shortly.

Prachanda, or Puhpa Kamal Dahal, secured 20,499 votes, almost double than his close rival Rajendra Kumar K.C of NC who got 11,103 votes. UML fared badly in this constituency also as in other Katmandu constituencies that used to be its stronghold. The party’s bet for the constituency, Sanu Kumar Shrestha, managed to garner just 6,216 votes.

Along with Prachanda, another Maoist leader and minister in Koirala cabinet Hisila Yami has retained the winning streak of the party by emerging victorious with 9273 votes in Kathmandu constituency-7. Her closest rival Rajendra Prasad Shrestha of UML has come second with 6,114 votes while Pramila Singh Dangol of NC has got 5680 votes.

Three other top Maoist leaders have already donned the victory cap in various places across the country, and they are – Krishna Bahadur Mahara from Dang 3, Dev Prasad Gurung from Manang-1 and Pampha Bhusal from Lalitpur-3. Senior Maoist leaders Ram Bahadur Thapa (Badal) and Dr Baburam Bhattarai are also ahead in their constituencies in Chitwan-2 and Gorkha-2 respectively and are expected to win with considerable margin.

According to latest Nepalnews count, Maoists leads the seat count with 14 constituencies to its name , while NC and UML have 4 seats each and NWPP trails with 2 seats.

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/apr/apr12/news07.php

And some politicians had to take the first consequences:

M. Nepal set to quit UML General Secretary post

(eKantipur, 4.12)

Top CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal Saturday has decided to table his resignation from the post of party General Secretary.
Nepal’s resignation comes in the wake of his defeat in the Constituent Assembly elections from Kathmandu district constituency-2 with a huge margin of votes.

UML central leader Bishnu Rijal informed that Nepal has already tabled his resignation at the party central committee.

Nepal lost at Kathmandu-2, his home constituency, to previously not-so-popular Maoist candidate Jhakku Prasad Subedi.

Nepal had secured only 12,324 votes, while the winner Subedi had garnered 13,858 votes. 

The CPN-UML had ruled all the constituencies of Kathmandu district in the last parliamentary elections in 1999.

http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=143772

Related articles:

☞ CPN(M): "We want to continue working with parties.." (Nepalnews, 4.12)

☞ Carter says US should recognize Maoist poll victory (Nepalnews, 4.12)

☞ Maoists in early Nepal vote lead (al-Jazeera, 4.12)

☞ Surprise lead for Maoists.. (The Observer/UK, 4.13)

* For more informations:

☞ The latest CA election results (permanent updated by Nepalnews)

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In the last weeks the new Cuban gov't has announced and enacted a series of reforms. Last Monday (4.07) The Guardian published a very impressive report about the latest developments (*) on the Caribbean Island:

To save communism(**), Raúl

experiments with consumerism

Minor economic reforms by Castro's brother risk exposing inequality and encouraging the desire for change

From the ample girths and gold jewellery you could tell the Fuentes family was doing well, and from the determined way in which its five members strode into the shop you could tell they were about to do even better.

They had come for a Wanjiu pressure cooker and Daewoo washing machine, counting out the money with a certain panache. Why not? To be fleshy and flashy is to be part of Cuba's new revolutionary vanguard: Havana bling.

This was Dita, an electronics store in Galerías de Paseo, Cuba's dowdy answer to Harrods, and it was an incongruous scene. While Fidel Castro exhorted revolutionary solidarity from a banner outside the shop, the family members could hardly see the leader's words over the cardboard boxes they were hauling.

Out on the street they packed their trophies into a 10-year-old Ford - a modern showcase by local vehicle standards - and with a screech of the tyres sped home.

En route was the Karl Marx Theatre, but you doubted they would stop to see what was on.

Cuba is changing. In the past five weeks the government has announced and enacted a series of reforms unimaginable under Castro. It is now legal to buy mobile phones, computers and DVD players. Cubans may now rent cars and stay at hotels previously reserved for foreigners. More significantly, farmers can now cultivate idle state land and buy equipment without special permission.

Havana is buzzing with rumours of further announcements. Lifting restrictions on foreign travel, perhaps, or strengthening the near-worthless peso so more people can afford the goods that are priced in a separate currency created for foreigners.

"Finally the government is listening to us. This is stuff we've been asking for for years," said Andrea, a 44-year-old technician. It is fitting that a popular new import is an electronic pedal-bike. "Not a new era, a new cycle," she added.

Optimism is cautious. So far the changes do not add up to perestroika-style economic reforms, much less a glasnost-style cultural opening. The one-party state is tinkering with its half-century-old system to ease material hardship. The idea is to save communism in the Caribbean, not abandon it.

Havana remains a sea of decrepitude. Traffic remains a time-warp blend of 1950s American cars, three-wheel yellow cabs, Soviet-era Ladas and new Chinese-made buses. Stallholders still offer meagre wares in an illegal type of mouse capitalism. Most people are lean - if less gaunt than before thanks to easing food shortages.

"What the government is doing is a very small first step," said a western diplomat. "They are doing the easy things and giving people more freedoms. We are still waiting for the big changes that will make a difference economically. And that will be much harder to do."

The most important change so far is in agriculture, in which mismanagement has shrivelled cash crops such as sugar, tobacco and coffee and forced the lush island to import 80% of its food. Now decision-making has been decentralised and some restrictions lifted to give farmers more incentive to produce.

The other changes have merely legalised what has been common practice. The moneyed Cubans listening to reggaetón music by the pool bar in El Nacional hotel yesterday were the same ones who were there a month ago. Many had wangled computers, DVD players and mobile phones long before the bans were lifted. Those unable to afford such goods before still cannot afford them.

The announcements have signalled greater tolerance for displays of wealth and, by extension, displays of inequality. "Before if you had cash you would hide it but now people feel freer to show it," said the diplomat.

It is not news to Cubans that a small minority of the 11-million population is well off thanks to remittances from relatives in the US and shady hard currency dealings. The offspring of Communist party officials are among the so-called "mickies" who flash their designer gear.

Free universal education and healthcare remain solid but sanctioning spending sprees on previously banned consumer goods has given ironic resonance to revolutionary slogans.

"We can construct the most just society in the world," Castro's brave words said in another banner, this time overlooking the Carlos Tercero shopping mall. Beneath it passed some families with boxes marked Yamaha, Samsung and Phillips, and many who did not.

José, a waiter at a state restaurant who earns £9 a month, was off-duty, sipping a soft drink along with his nine-year-old daughter. The neighbouring table's family was clustered around a newly purchased £130 DVD player and sorting through a hawker's pirated wares. "We've got a VHS player but you can't get films for it anymore," José said. "My daughter doesn't have cartoons."

It is no coincidence that José was black and the neighbouring family white. Racism is illegal on the island but paler-skinned Cubans dominate government and the economy and are more likely to have relatives in the US.

The authorities appear uncomfortably aware that lifting economic restrictions risks exposing and compounding that inequality, at least in the short term. Speakers at a state-sponsored Intellectuals' Conference last week welcomed the reforms but hinted that social divisions could deepen. The comments were reported in the Communist party daily newspaper, Granma.

Raúl Castro knows reform is essential. Nobody starves but most Cubans struggle to put decent food on the table. Since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006, a transition confirmed with Raúl's inauguration as president last month, the 76-year-old has repeatedly spoken of the need to improve an economy, 90% of which is controlled by the government.

Only so much ruin can be blamed on the US embargo and when the Castro brothers die, taking with them the revolution's founding legitimacy, its fate will hinge on delivering better material conditions, said one Havana economist: "They know they have maybe five years to turn things around. It's fix or perish."

Sceptics say the effort is doomed. That no matter how much a moribund agriculture blossoms or how fast greater wealth trickles down, Cuba will remain an outpost of unworkable ideology until the day the place implodes.

Others paint a rosier scenario for a government with several advantages: a cowed opposition and submissive population; subsidised Venezuelan oil courtesy of President Hugo Chávez; strengthening ties with Asia and Latin America; and the example of China's and Vietnam's communists successfully riding economic liberalisation.

Raúl can already boast one remarkable feat: he has tamed the big brother who used to rail against the reforms now unfurling. Fidel's published "reflections", newspaper articles which are his only form of public communication, have largely avoided commenting on the changes. No one knows whether Raúl has persuaded the sickly 81-year-old to go along or simply overruled him.

The bigger unknown is how Cubans will react. Being given a little more economic opportunity could sate or whet the yearning for change, and shore up or undermine the regime. It is Pandora's Box and opening the lid even a fraction is a gamble.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/07/cuba

* btw.. THE MAIN obstacle for more and further (capitalist) reforms in Cuba is the U.S. policy of boycott against the island. If it would be lifted, in a very short time Cuba would follow the economical (at least!!) way of China or Vietnam!!
** Of course Cuba, as all the other former and current "socialst" countries, isn't/never was a "communist" society!!

Related articles:

☞ Raul's crowd-pleasing reforms.. (AP, 4.04)

☞ Cadres or caddies? (Guardian, 4.11)

☞ Nicht mehr so langweilig (Junge Welt, 4.07)

☞ Neuland auf Kuba (JW, 4.08)

☞ "CUBAN COLADA"