Members of parliament are up for sale. Yawn.

You can decry India's politicians on a thousand counts, but you certainly cannot fault them when it comes to meeting expectations. Without exception, they succeed in falling to lower depths in moronic nautankis that we depend on them to provide.

Take yesterday's no-confidence motion for instance. There was, as usual, shouting of slogans and stamping of desks. You could find familiar unruly hooligans swamping the floor of the house, whooping as they did so. Then there were the wads of money thrown up along with a myriad accusations. And finally, in a familiar flourish, there was the promise of an all-revealing CD thanks to a TV channel's sting operation.

Okay, so members of our parliament were bribed to sell their vote. Yawn. What's new???

Ah! Apparently they did not accept the bribe!! Instead, they threw up currency notes in the parliament so that CBI could seize them and investigate!!!

Yeah, right!!!!

Honestly, after years of Ekta Kapoor on TV and Politics 101 in the newspapers - who's going to buy that flimsy bullshit?? As you and I and all Indians can guess... no, not guess - we KNOW - the MPs who felt insulted at being presumed for sale were probably never approached for a bribe at all and made the whole thing up. (Had they really been offered a bribe, they would have accepted gracefully.) OR, they were bribed and then a contesting buyer for their vote bribed them even higher to spill the beans.

All this very exciting indeed, but am afraid that such conspiracies are repeated so regularly that, frankly, the episode hardly deserves attention even in a blogpost.

So let's turn our attention to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh instead, the man who survived and said the only thing I find amusing in the whole fiasco:

The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.

[Full speech here]

LOL. Manmohan Singh may not have learned the ropes of power under the shadow of Sonia Gandhi. But he has certainly picked up the politician's flair of a good speech in his struggle against the Bharatiya Janata Party

Sudan's president charged with genocide - but who will bell the cat?

Five years and counting. Finally, after an inhuman government (led by Omar al-Bashir) and its beloved militia (the janjaweed) have ratcheted a score of 200,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced in their own country, Sudan, the international governments are wondering what to do about it.

200,000. That's 5-times the number of civilians killed in Iraq since 2005.

2,500,000 displaced. That's more than three-times the Jews that emigrated to Israel after the holocaust.

If the numbers don't chill you, the anecdotes will. Press reports as well as the United Nations are aghast - at citizens being forced out of their homes and into camps, at refugees in camps being attacked and murdered, at mass tortures and mass rapes, at the recruitment of child soldiers, at girls as young as 5 being sexually abused, with their parents being forced to watch,... at innumerable other crimes against humanity.

However, the governments are, as I mentioned, still only wondering how to react. And even this effort of thought they have been forced into - by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which held Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir responsible for genocide earlier this week.

This is not the first time that the United Nations has issued a wake-up call, and by the looks of it, it won't be the last either.

After all, the last time the ICC held someone in Sudan to account for murder, it led to little more than some press releases by government spokespersons. As a result, even ten months later after indictment, Ahmad Harun is not only walking free but also strutting as a Government minister for providing relief to the victims of violence and displacement in Darfur! He continues his abusive reign as the humanitarian affairs minister.

Similarly, Ali Kushayb, the other criminal charged at the same time as Harun, also runs free as the "colonel of colonels" of the janjaweed militia.

It must have been infuriation against nothing changing that forced the ICC to bring up an unprecedented charge - the indictment is the first against a ruling president. Nevertheless, the bravado is unlikely to bring chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's (involved with both the earlier indictment and the latest) frustration to an end.

US and UK armies are overextended. Europe has an economy to worry about. African countries mind only their own business (see Zimbabwe's election for instance). Asia (except China) has no muscle to show. And China has too much at stake in Sudan's oil to wrangle with the ruling powers that be. (Moreover, China has too many skeletons of its own that it doesn't like others talking about - so it won't be setting a 'bad precedent' by criticizing Sudan.)

Naturally,

"China expresses grave concern and misgivings over ICC's charge against the Sudanese leader. The relevant actions of the ICC should be conducive to the stability in Sudan ....not the opposite.

"...We will work with the international community and continue our contribution to achieve at an early date the peace, stability and development in Darfur."

Liu Jianchao, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson in an interview


Wow. This must be some strange usage of the word stability that I was previously unaware of.*


*(With apologies to Douglas Adams)