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world news Diamars 13 Juli 2021

Dutch leader says easing lockdown was ‘error of judgment’

(AP) — The Dutch leader made, we are sorry about
apologized Monday for that,” Rutte told reporters in
what he called “an error of The Hague. Caretaker Health
judgment” in relaxing the Minister Hugo de Jonge said
Netherlands’ coronavirus the relaxation combined with
lockdown, a move that has a lack of social distancing and
led to a sharp surge in in- the delta variant “has had, of
fections. course, an accelerating effect.
You can unfortunately see
Caretaker Prime Minister that with hindsight.”
Mark Rutte’s government
scrapped most remaining The Netherlands is not alone
restrictions just over three in facing soaring infections.
weeks ago amid declining Countries across Europe
infection numbers and hos- are scrambling to acceler-
pital admissions. The eas- ate coronavirus vaccinations
ing meant that, among other in the hope of outpacing the
public spaces, nightclubs and spread of the more infectious
discotheques were allowed to delta variant.
reopen for the first time in
more than a year. More than 46% of the Neth-
erlands’ adult population is
On the first weekend after fully vaccinated and more
the relaxation, thousands of than 77% of adults have had
mainly young people flocked at least one shot. Health au-
to clubs in towns and cit- backtrack and on Friday rein- On Saturday, the country’s number of positive tests since thorities say they will admin-
ies across the country. Since troduced some measures to public health institute re- late December. ister first or second shots to
then, infections have sky- rein in the virus’ spread. ported more than 10,000 new more than 1.3 million people
rocketed. Rutte was forced to COVID-19 cases, the highest “An error of judgment was this week.

For democracy, it’s a time of swimming against the tide

(AP) - The old Nicara- tors have flexed their mus- of their authoritarianism. unparalleled,” said Sheri Ber- mother’s milk for authoritar-
guan revolutionary, with cles, and freedom has been in man, a political science pro- ians.
his receding hairline and retreat. 2020 was “another year of de- fessor at Barnard College,
the goatee that he had fi- cline for liberal democracy,” Columbia University. “It Russia’s experiment with
nally let turn grey, spoke The list is grim: a draconian said a recent report from the seemed that liberal democra- democracy, for example,
calmly into the camera as crackdown in Nicaragua, V-Dem Institute, a Sweden- cy was the way of the future.” was short lived after the col-
police swarmed toward with laws that now let the based research center. “The lapse of the Soviet Union. A
his house, hidden behind government paint nearly any world is still more demo- But within just a few years plunging standard of living, a
a high wall in a leafy Ma- critic as a traitor; a military cratic than it was in the 1970s the cracks began to show. weak leader in Boris Yeltsin,
nagua neighborhood. Sur- takeover in Myanmar, with and 1980s, but the global de- thug businessmen and bud-
veillance drones, he said, bloody repression that the cline in liberal democracy has Maybe the world was just ding oligarchs fighting for
were watching overhead. United Nations says has left been steep during the past 10 too optimistic. Democracy is control of state-owned busi-
more than 850 people dead years.” messy. nesses opened the way for
Decades earlier, Hugo Tor- since Feb. 1 and more than Vladimir Putin.
res had been a revered guer- 4,800 arbitrarily detained; a Countries like Sweden, Ger- “It takes a lot to make de-
rilla in the fight against tightening grip by Beijing on many and the United States mocracy work,” said Berman. Then came the financial cri-
right-wing dictator Anastasio Hong Kong, the semi-auton- can seem like democratic “Getting rid of the dictators sis of 2007-2008, which be-
Somoza. In 1974, he’d taken omous enclave where activ- outliers in a world increas- is not the end. It’s the begin- gan in the U.S. and rippled
a group of top officials hos- ists and journalists have been ingly dominated by authori- ning.” around the world. In the
tage, then traded them for harassed and imprisoned un- tarian leaders. U.S., banks teetered on the
the release of imprisoned der a sweeping national secu- As a result, many scholars verge of collapse and top of-
comrades. Among those pris- rity law. It wasn’t supposed to be like aren’t too surprised when ficials worried about another
oners was Daniel Ortega, a this. countries like Nicaragua or Great Depression. In the
Marxist bank robber who In mid-June, Hong Kong’s Myanmar stumble into au- European Union, America’s
would become Nicaragua’s last remaining pro-democ- The late 20th and early 21st thoritarianism. Both are very troubles helped lead to a debt
elected president and later its racy newspaper shut down centuries saw country after poor, with little history of de- crisis that sucked in Greece,
authoritarian ruler. operations after police froze country transition to demo- mocracy. Ireland and other nations that
$2.3 million of its assets and cratic rule. The Soviet Union needed outside economic
And on this hot Sunday in arrested five top editors and collapsed amid Mikhail Gor- Hard times and turmoil are bailouts.
mid-June, amid a weekslong executives, accusing them of bachev’s attempts at political
clampdown to obliterate foreign collusion. and economic reform. East-
nearly every hint of opposi- ern European nations that
tion, Ortega had his old sav- “Why does it have to end up had long been controlled
ior arrested. like this?” asked an Apple by Moscow became inde-
Daily graphic designer, Dick- pendent. In Latin America,
“History is on our side,” Tor- son Ng. decades of military dictator-
res said in the video, which ships gave way to elected
was quickly uploaded onto The backsliding of democ- governments. A wave of de-
social media. “The end of the racy, though, goes back far mocratization swept across
dictatorship is close.” before 2021, with a long Africa, from South Africa to
string of countries where Nigeria to Ghana.
But history -- at least recent democratic rule has been
history -- is not on Torres’ abandoned or dialed back, or “We had the largest num-
side. In the last few months, where democratically elected ber of democracies that ever
the growing ranks of dicta- leaders now make no secret existed in the world. It was