5 November, 2019

The 16 members of Ludovic Orbans Liberal cabinet take over their ministries./ ACUM bloc led by the pro-European prime minister Maia Sandu wins most seats in the second round of local elections in the Republic of Moldova.

Newsroom, 05.11.2019, 14:00

Government. The 16 members of the Liberal
cabinet in Bucharest led by Ludovic Orban are today taking over the ministries
they will be in charge of, following the investiture by Parliament of a new
minority government. After being sworn in before president Klaus Iohannis, the
cabinet held a first informal meeting yesterday evening, in which Ludovic Orban
asked his ministers to quickly make an assessment of the urgent problems. He
has promised that the government will be open for permanent dialogue and will
take into account the expectations of the Romanian citizens. We recall that the
Liberal government has replaced Viorica Dancila’s Social Democratic government
dismissed on the 10th of October following a vote of no-confidence.

Protest. The miners from two mines
in the Jiu Valley, in the centre-west, who barricaded themselves underground
nine days ago continue their protest, despite some of them suffering from
health problems. Some were taken to the hospital after being diagnosed with
high blood pressure or high blood sugar. The miners, who will see their jobs
terminated at the end of the year, are demanding an emergency order
guaranteeing them the same rights as other sector employees who were laid off.
They want a complementary monthly income for two years after lay-off and for
this period to be added up to their pension. Trade unions say the miners are
determined to continue their protest, the longest of its kind in the last 15
years, until their demands are met. The process to close and clean up the two
mines began at the end of 2017.

Republic of Moldova. The ACUM bloc
led by the Republic of Moldova’s pro-European prime minister Maia Sandu has won
the biggest number of seats in the second round of the local elections on
Sunday, said the president of the Central Electoral Commission, Dorin Cimil.
ACUM has won 91 of the 384 mayor seats in contention. They were followed by the
Party of Socialists close to the pro-Russian president Igor Dodon, with 83
seats, including that of the capital Chisinau, and the Democratic Party led by
the former prime minister Pavel Filip with 71 seats.

Freedom House report. Governments are
increasingly using social media to manipulate and spy on voters around the
world, which is a worrying trend for democracy, according to a Freedom House
report published on Tuesday. The organisation has found proof of advanced
surveillance programmes on social media in at least 40 of the 65 countries assessed.
In some states, the authorities simply block access to the internet to stifle
dissent or resort to entire armies of professionals to manipulate online
information and push fake news until it becomes viral, the report also shows.
China is the worst case with respect to abuses against internet freedom, its
government intensifying efforts to control information in the face of the
protests in Hong Kong and ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen
square massacre. In the US, law enforcement and immigration
agencies expanded their surveillance of the public, eschewing oversight,
transparency, and accountability mechanisms that might restrain their actions,
the Freedom House reports also writes.

Climate. France
has expressed regret over Washington’s official notification of the United
Nations with respect to its decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
An official from the French president’s office has said that president Emmanuel
Macron and the Chinese president Xi Jinping will sign a document declaring the
irreversibility of the Paris accord, which was signed by almost 200 nations
pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. US president Donald Trump’s
announcement is not a surprise. He had said earlier that his country would exit
the agreement. The announcement is the first step is a one-year-long process that
ends one day after the US presidential elections. US secretary of state Mike
Pompeo said the agreement was an unfair economic burden on the US. Under the
Paris climate agreement, the pledges made by each country are voluntary and
environmental groups hope the US, which is the second biggest producer of
greenhouse gas emissions in the world, will rejoin the agreement with a new
administration.