Archive for the ‘president’ tag
Former Italian president Scalfaro dies at 93 (AP)
MILAN, Italy ? Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, a past president of Italy who held the post during the sweeping corruption scandal of the early 1990s that reshaped the country’s post-war political landscape, died Sunday in Rome. He was 93.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano paid tribute to his predecessor as “a protagonist in the democratic political life” and an example of “moral integrity.”
“As president of the republic, he firmly and steadfastly confronted one of the most difficult periods of our history,” Napolitano said in a statement.
Pope Benedict XVI remembered Scalfaro as “a distinguished” Catholic man of state, who “helped to promote the common good and the perennial ethical and religious values.”
Scalfaro was a key figure in postwar Italian politics, helping to write the constitution and to found the former Christian Democrats. He held numerous prominent government posts before becoming Italy’s ninth post-war president, a position that is largely ceremonial but carries the significant role of moral compass for the country.
As president from 1992-1999, Scalfaro was often called upon to resolve Italy’s recurrent political crises, either choosing a new premier or calling early elections. He once called Italy’s volatile political situation “pathological.”
The “Clean Hands” investigations launched in the early 1990s uncovered a broad system of bribes that wiped out much of Italy’s political class, including key members of the conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats. The scandals deeply eroded Italians’ trust in politicians and led to the demise of the two parties that had formed the pillars of post-war Italian politics.
Premier Mario Monti said Scalfaro “consistently defended the values” enshrined in the constitution “bearing witness with his actions and his rigor to all Italians, in particular the young.”
A devout Roman Catholic with a law degree from the Catholic University of Milan, Scalfaro spent the World War II years working to help imprisoned anti-Fascists and their families.
Then, in 1946, he won a seat in the assembly that wrote the constitution for the Italian Republic, declared in late 1947 after a popular referendum abolished the monarchy.
Scalfaro, a native of the northern city of Novara, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian republic’s first general election in 1948 and remained a deputy until he was elected president in 1992.
Scalfaro held junior posts at various ministries through the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1966, he gained his first Cabinet position when Premier Aldo Moro appointed him transportation minister.
In subsequent governments, Scalfaro served two more stints as transport minister and was education minister and interior minister. He was vice president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1976 to 1983.
He became a senator for life after completing his term as president.
He is survived by a daughter, Marianna. A funeral is set for Monday afternoon in Rome.
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Obama takes on big government: ‘It has to change’
President Barack Obama delivers remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
President Barack Obama delivers remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
President Barack Obama waves after delivering remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
President Barack Obama delivers remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
President Barack Obama delivers remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama suggested Friday that six economic government agencies be meshed into one, an election-year idea intended to halt bureaucratic nightmares and force Republicans to support him on one of their own favorite issues.
“The government we have is not the government we need,” Obama told business owners he’d gathered at the White House.
In an election year and a political atmosphere of tighter spending, Obama’s motivation is about improving a giant bureaucracy, but that is hardly all of it.
To voters sick of dysfunction, Obama wants to show some action toward making Washington work better. Politically, his plan would allow him to do so by putting the onus on Congress and in particular his Republican critics in the House of Representatives and the Senate, to show why they would be against the pursuit of a leaner government.
Obama asked Congress to give him a kind of reorganization power that no president has had since Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon. It would guarantee Obama a vote, within 90 days, on any idea he should offer to consolidate agencies, provided the idea would save money and reduce the size of government.
It would be up to lawmakers, therefore, to grant Obama this fast-track authority and then decide whether to approve any of his specific ideas.
Politically, Obama is seeking advantage on the turf often owned by Republicans: Smaller government. He is attempting to directly counter Republican arguments that accuse him of presiding over the kind of regulation, spending and debt that can undermine the economy: a dominant theme of this year’s debate and one often cited by his potential re-election rival, Republican Mitt Romney.
His first target would be to merge six major trade and commerce agencies into a one-stop-shopping department for American businesses. The Commerce Department would be among those that would cease to exist.
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner said streamlining government was always a potentially good idea but expressed suspicion about whether the plan by Obama would really help business. Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, pledged Obama’s plan would get a careful review.
But he added: “It’s interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control.”
Associated Press
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IBM Names Sales Chief Virginia Rometty As CEO, Samuel Palmisano Will Remain As Chairman
IBM’s board of directors has just named Virginia M. Rometty as the company’s new CEO and president, replacing Samuel J. Palmisano, who currently is IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. Palmisano will remain chairman of the board. Rometty will become CEO effective January 1, 2012. Rometty was previously senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy. Rometty joined IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer. She was previously senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, and then was promoted to global sales leader. In her most recent role with Big Blue, She is accountable for revenue, profit, and client satisfaction in the 170 global markets and for the company’s worldwide sales results, which exceeded $99 billion in 2010.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lCQ3Ebn1JDU/
Venezuelans ponder life without Chavez (AP)
CARACAS, Venezuela ? Since Hugo Chavez became Venezuela’s president more than 12 years ago, he’s been a constant presence in the lives of Rosiri de Blanco and her family.
The 41-year-old mother of four has loyally watched Chavez’s weekly TV program “Hello, President” and received subsidized food from the popular markets his government set up. When her hillside slum home was damaged in a mudslide in November, she and her neighbors moved into a public housing complex covered with posters of the charismatic leader.
Then, without warning nearly four weeks ago, the ever-present “comandante” disappeared from public sight.
De Blanco and her fellow evacuees in the Conde housing complex are now discussing what would have been unthinkable just a month ago: the possibility of a Venezuela without Chavez.
“Without Chavez, there’s nothing,” de Blanco said as she and her neighbors prepared to hold a small Mass for the president’s recovery in their building’s courtyard. “It’s necessary to think about him, but it’s necessary to have a positive attitude. We are asking God that Chavez leave all this behind him.”
Despite the president’s return from Cuba on Monday, his health and political future remain very much in doubt as he recovers from a June 20 surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region.
The 56-year-old leader appeared fatigued during his speech to thousands of supporters Monday afternoon from a balcony of the presidential palace. He himself admitted during the address, “No one should believe that my presence here … means that we’ve won the battle. No, we’ve begun to climb the hill. We’ve begun to beat the illness that was incubated inside my body.”
Talk about Chavez’s future is buzzing across this bustling capital city, as newspapers, radio programs and conversations on the street weigh questions of succession and the fate of Chavez’s socialist-inspired Bolivarian Revolution.
De Blanco said she wept the night of June 30 when she watched a thinner, weakened Chavez reveal his medical state for the first time.
For much of the past month, Venezuelans had the unusual experience of seeing very little of Chavez publicly. He arrived in Cuba on June 8 for what his government said was a scheduled visit.
In the following weeks, there were no broadcasts of “Hello President” or the usual hourslong televised speeches by the famously loquacious leader. Until his June 30 revelation, Venezuelans received scant communication from the president, such as a June 12 phone interview with state television and short videos of him convalescing in a track suit.
Chavez stunned the nation with his announcement of the cancer. He didn’t say what type of the disease he was fighting or reveal his prognosis for the future.
With tongue in cheek, Venezuelan comedian Andres Schmucke wrote in the newspaper El Universal that he found himself starting to miss Chavez, despite all the problems his government had left unsolved.
“It’s been 13 years seeing you every day, hearing you every day, reading news about you every day,” Schmucke wrote. “I miss your televised speeches. I miss ‘Hello, President.’”
Chavez supporters in Caracas have tried to keep the president in the spotlight by holding daily rallies wishing him a quick recovery. Over the weekend, hundreds of children and their parents marched through the center of town waving signs printed with slogans such as “We’ll have Chavez for a while” and “You are my inspiration.” They finished in a park and wrote notes to their president on a wall topped with the words “A Rainbow of Love for Chavez.”
Government news media have joined in by running ads blaring an administration slogan: “Onward, Commander.”
Computer programmer Carlos Rivas, 38, said he’s enjoyed the break from his ever-present leader.
“I feel more peaceful without Chavez talking everyday,” Rivas said. “He’s mortal like anyone else. A Venezuela without Chavez is possible.”
Rivas and his wife were leaving a park in of one of Caracas’ affluent neighborhoods, where thousands of people were enjoying their four-day weekend celebrating the country’s bicentennial. Not far away was a manicured square that has long been a gathering spot for Chavez opponents.
His wife Rosa Lopez, a 32-year-old electrical engineer, said she believed the country was ready for a change. Many young professionals like herself have left Venezuela, she said, due to low salaries and annual inflation rates that have hovered around 30 percent over the past three years.
“It’s healthy for the country to have another leader,” Lopez said. “People are happy. They aren’t worried about Chavez or his health.”
For de Blanco and her fellow evacuees, the uncertain fate of Chavez’s government has sparked worries that they could lose benefits such as government-subsidized food and shelter.
Chavez’s administration has housed storm refugees all over the capital city, some in an unfinished downtown shopping mall expropriated by the government.
Andres Avelino, who also was forced from his home during last year’s torrential rains, credited the Chavez administration with providing his government pension.
“These are benefits that we have never had before,” said the 60-year-old retired construction worker. Many in his working-class neighborhood, San Agustin, wore the bright red shirts that have become the norm for Chavez supporters. Avelino’s shirt touted Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, while another man’s shirt read: “Chavez is the Winner.”
Avelino said he believes deeply in Chavez and prefers not to imagine a future without him. Without Chavez, he said, “it would get ugly in Venezuela.”
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