{"id":26276,"date":"2019-10-04T15:27:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T20:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=26276"},"modified":"2019-10-04T15:27:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T20:27:24","slug":"theres-an-echo-out-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/10\/04\/theres-an-echo-out-there\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s An Echo Out There"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of corruption out there, since top political positions command power, prestige, and $money$, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised in the lead-off item in AL Monitor’s<\/strong><\/em><\/a> email reporting on lobbying:<\/p>\n

US lobbying emerges as key issue in Tunisian presidential election<\/strong><\/p>\n

Revelations first\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday by Al-Monitor have caused an\u00a0uproar<\/a>\u00a0in the upcoming Tunisian presidential election. Al-Monitor reported that an emissary for Tunisian presidential candidate\u00a0Nabil Karoui<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0had signed a $1 million lobbying\u00a0contract<\/a>\u00a0for US and international help getting elected. Rivals of the media mogul, who is already in jail on unrelated money laundering charges, are demanding that he be disqualified from the Oct. 13 presidential runoff between him and conservative lawyer\u00a0Kais Saied<\/em><\/strong>. One rival, the Democratic Current party, filed a criminal complaint Thursday, calling the contract with Canadian firm\u00a0Dickens & Madson (Canada)<\/strong>\u00a0a criminal act. A spokeswoman for the Tunis Court of First Instance today\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0the opening of an investigation.<\/p>\n

Karoui denies any knowledge of the Aug. 19 contract or the person who signed it, one\u00a0Mohamed Bouderbala<\/em><\/strong>. The contract calls on firm President\u00a0Ari Ben-Menashe<\/em><\/strong>, a former Israeli intelligence operative and arms dealer, to lobby the\u00a0United States<\/strong>,\u00a0Russia<\/strong>, the European Union and the United Nations in view of \u201cattaining the presidency of the Republic of\u00a0Tunisia<\/strong>.\u201d Ben-Menashe is tasked with striving to \u201carrange meetings\u201d with US President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and other senior US officials ahead of the Tunisian election. The contract also calls on the firm to seek a meeting with Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to obtain \u201cmaterial support for the push for the presidency.\u201d In a filing with the Justice Department this week, the firm said it received an initial payment of $250,000 around Sept. 25 from Karoui.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AL Monitor<\/strong><\/em> has an article<\/a> with more information. This I found particularly interesting:<\/p>\n

\n

The complaint also mentions Ennahda party, which has\u00a0retained<\/a>\u00a0Burson-Marsteller (now BCW) for public affairs work in the United States since 2014, as well as parliamentary candidate Olfa Terras-Rambourg, who retained Washington firm America to Africa Consulting in early September.<\/p>\n

Jaouhar Ben Mbarek, a Tunisian constitutional law professor, concurred in a post\u00a0on Facebook. \u201cThis can be considered foreign support and funding for Karoui\u2019s election campaign, which is in breach of Tunisia\u2019s electoral law,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis should lead to the disqualification of the candidate and of his party\u2019s lists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A list<\/em> appears to be the list of party-approved candidates, provided to make party-line voting an easier task. It’s fascinating that Professor Mbarek suggests that not only should candidate Karoui be disqualified, but so should all listed candidates. It’s sort of a death penalty, if only temporary.<\/p>\n

But it’s really part of the age-old story: the lust for gold and power, and the hell with the effect of the outcome on society. I wonder if they took the page directly out of Trump’s book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of corruption out there, since top political positions command power, prestige, and $money$, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised in the lead-off item in AL Monitor’s email reporting on lobbying: US lobbying emerges as key issue in Tunisian presidential election Revelations first\u00a0published\u00a0Wednesday by Al-Monitor have caused \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26277,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26276\/revisions\/26277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}