LETTER N° 17

From 22 to 28 APRIL

22

Montenegro

(Yugoslavia)

Parliamentary elections. Results :

"Victory is Montenegro" which includes President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists and the Social Democrat Party wins 42.1% of the vote (35 seats) against 40.7% (33 seats) for the "Together for Yugoslavia" bloc led by the Socialist People's Party; the Liberal Alliance takes 7.7%. Turnout is 80.1%.

22

Russia

(Kemerovo Oblast)

Legislative Assembly and Gubernatorial elections. Results :

Aman Tuleyev won a second five-year term as governor of the Kemerovo region, some 1,200 miles east of Moscow, with 93 percent of the vote. Tuleyev, who at times has allied himself with the Communists, came in fourth in last year's Russian presidential election.

22

Russia

(Tula Oblast)

Second-round gubernatorial election. Results :

Head of the Administration Vasily Starodubtsev wins more than 71% of the vote against 17% for Viktor Sokolovsky. In Kemerovo oblast, Head of the Administration Aman Tuleyev wins a second term with 93% of the vote.

22

Russia

Sochi City, Mayoral election. Result :

None of the six candidates in the Sochi mayor elections collected enough votes to be declared winner. 47 percent of all votes cast were given to Acting Mayor Leonid Mostovoi. Almost 30 percent of the voters cast ballots against all candidates.

22

Vietnam

Nong Duc Manh becomes secretary-general of the Communist Party.

Nong Duc Manh was born into a family of the Tay ethnic minority group in Cuong Loi village, Na Ri District, Bac Can Province on September 11, 1940. Mr. Manh became a member of the Communist Party of Viet Nam on July 5, 1963. He was deputy director of the Provincial Foresty Service and director of the Construction Company of the Foresty Service in former Bac Thai Province in August 1976 until January 1977. In the following seven months Mr. Manh kept only the post of deputy director of the same foresty service. He was appointed director of the same foresty service during July 1977 and September 1980. He became deputy chairman of the Bac Thai Provincial People's Committee in September 1980. In October 1983 he was appointed to the post of chairman of hte Bac Thai Provincial People's Committee and he kept the same post until three years later. He was elected to the post of National Assembly chairman to the ninth National Assembly in 1992. He was re-elected to the same post by the National Assembly in 1997.

23

Canada

(New Brunswick)

Provincial byelection in Kent South. Results :

Claude Williams, 45, was declared the winner about 45 minutes after the polls closed in the riding of Kent South. The Saint-Antoine, N.B., businessman easily outdistanced Liberal Lucille Riedle to win the seat on New Brunswick's eastern shore. Williams finished with 4,346 votes to 2,728 for Riedle. New Democrat Marguerite Girouard was a distant third with 370 votes.

25

Japan

Junichiro Koizumi, a reformer with a nationalist tinge, was elected prime minister of Japan. He received 287 votes out of the 478 ballots cast, while opposition Democratic Party chief Yukio Hatoyama got 127 votes.

Koizumi graduated with a degree in economics from prestigious Keio University in Tokyo. He got into politics in 1970, working as a secretary to Takeo Fukuda, an LDP elder statesman who later became prime minister.

SEE NEW GOVERNMENT

26

Ukrainia

The Communist-dominated parliament dismissed reform-oriented Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and his government, plunging the nation into political chaos.

Yushchenko was born in the town of Khoruzhivka in Sumy Oblast, which borders Russia. His first financial job was as assistant to the chief accountant at a collective farm in Western Ukraine. After serving his time in the Soviet Army he began work in the USSR State Bank and rose rapidly within its ranks. When Ukraine declared independence in 1991, Yushchenko was the deputy director of the commercial agro-industrial bank Ukrainia.

This week :

VIPS-GOV.

- CANADA

VIPS-FEDS.

- MEXICO

THIS WEEK'S STORY

22 of April 1500

Pedro Alvares Cabral

 

Arrival in Brasil

The Portuguese set foot in Brazil

On April 22, 1500, twelve Portuguese caravels were in sight of unknown shores in the South-Western Atlantic. As he was trying to skirt Africa, Pedro Alvares Cabral the navigator and his 1200 crew- men discovered almost by accident what would become Brazil. Such an unexpected conquest meant the beginning of a new era for small and daring Portugal. The new land named Santa Cruz by its discoverer would later be called Brazil after some coals-coloured local wood, the" pau brasil", which the Portuguese would trade abundantly. The Portuguese will settle in Brazil a few years following Cabral's journey. The Dutch and the French Huguenots remained the only contestants on the Portuguese claim over the country, but in vain.

A "spicy" race

Following his skirt of Africa, Vasco de Gama arrived in India and later, he victoriously returned to Lisbon in 1497-1499. King Manuel I of Portugal, whose nickname was the Fortunate, resolved to launch a new expedition in order to find out the best way to skirt Africa and to reach India.The purpose was merely commercial. The main point was competing with Venitians and Genoeses who had developped a fruitful spice trade by earth, with India. The young nobleman, Pedro Alvares Cabral was entrusted with a new expedition. He required the assistance of distinguished sailors such as Bartolomeu Dias who would double the Cape of Good Hope along with Vasco de Gama and die during the journey. Pedro Alvares Cabral reminded Christopher Colombus' first journey and thought it wiser to sail off African Shores in order to catch the Southern Atlantic trade winds and avoid the calm waters of the Guinean Gulf where sailing-ships usually stood still. Like many Europeans then, Cabral still ignored the land discovered by Colombus was reckoned as a new continent. Cabral's discovery of a large and wonderful "terra incognita" on the site of what would become the Brazilian city of Salvador was thus a real surprise to him. He therefore managed to send one of his caravels back to Lisbon with some beautiful parrots on board in order to inform about his discovery. 

And Portugal invented Brazil...

Pedro Alvares Cabral stayed about ten days at the place he thought to be an island and took possession of it on behalf of his King, ignoring the importance of such a location. The take over was authenticated with the 1493 agreement between Spain and Portugal. Despite its early involvement into explorations overseas the latter had to grant Spain a right of inspection over any forthcoming discovery, since Colombus' deed. According to the agreement ratified by Pope Alexander VI Borgia's Inter Caetera bull, all new lands standing at the West of the Azores Archipelago should be evangelized and therefore conquered by the Spaniards and the remaining lands, by the Portuguese ! On June 7, 1494, under the treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese managed to have the demarcation line removed further West, to 370 Leagues from the Islands of Cape Verde. Owing to a weird inspiration the lands discovered by Cabral could subsequently turn Portuguese in accordance with international law (after the Europeans) (and having no regard to previous consultation whatsoever with the natives !). After his take over of Brazil, Pedro Alvares Cabral resumed his journey towards the Cape of Good Hope, South of Africa. He reached India as he had planned. In Calicut, the samorim, or Lord of the Sea, did not welcome him but further down, in Cochin, Cabral would fill his caravels up with spice before his return. He came back to Lisbon two years later with four vessels and only a third of his initial crew, still they were loaded with spice... and had in mind some incidental discovery West of the South Atlantic.

By André Larané

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