Has the Labour Party let its women down in 2001? Sheer numbers would suggest so. It has fielded fewer women–149, compared with 158 in 1997. And because not as many are fighting for winnable seats, fewer are likely to be elected this time around.
But the future of parliamentary equality is not as bleak as those stats might suggest. Labour’s recent constitutional reforms have given birth to the Welsh Assembly, 40 percent women, and the Scottish Parliament, 38 percent women. Only one in eight M.P.s in Westminster is a woman, but this is because British antidiscrimination laws bar the party from stacking its lists of parliamentary candidates in women’s favor. Fair or not, Labour seeks to change that law after the election–earning kudos galore from women’s groups. Such affirmative action is important, says Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality. “Left to their own devices, parties don’t select enough women.” After next week’s election, Stephenson and others will be watching–in case Labour reneges on that promise. INVESTIGATIONSMistaken ID The FBI built its case against nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee with the CIA’s discovery of leaked Chinese documents that seemed to show Beijing had obtained U.S. nuclear-warhead secrets from the Los Alamos weapons lab. But a judge released Lee with apologies late last year. Now the CIA, after finally translating all of the Chinese documents, has discovered that Los Alamos could not have been the source: most of the documents contain aerospace secrets, far from Lee’s or Los Alamos’ fields of expertise. The Lee investigation showed “such unbelievable incompetence,” says one source, “that it’s now virtually impossible to find out the truth.” UKRAINEA Widow’s Bitter Words Two months after his disappearance last September, Georgi Gongadze–the muckraking editor of a Ukrainian Web site–turned up as a headless corpse. But the government of President Leonid Kuchma, the target of Gongadze’s exposes on corruption, couldn’t get its version of what happened straight. It questioned whether the corpse really was Gongadze’s and suggested that the journalist might be alive and well in the Czech Republic. Finally, it declared this month that Gongadze had been killed by two drug addicts, who in turn were murdered themselves. His widow, Myroslava Gongadze, 28, who recently moved to the United States, talked with NEWSWEEK’s Andrew Nagorski:
NAGORSKI: What is your reaction to the government’s findings? GONGADZE: You can’t believe anything anymore. This whole investigation is a chronology of lies. They said so many things, then contradicted themselves. I’ve demanded a new investigation with new investigators, with foreign experts. If they don’t do this, I’ll consider the president and his entourage responsible for the fate of my husband.
A former security guard released tape recordings with Kuchma allegedly telling his Interior minister to get rid of your husband. Kuchma says they were doctored. What do you believe? I have no doubts the tapes are real. There are only three possibilities of what happened after he said this. The first: he wanted to do this, he ordered this done and they did it. The second: he said this emotionally, not realizing what he was saying, and his subordinates took him literally and did it. The third: somebody heard what he said and made use of it. Only a court can say “guilty” or “not guilty.” But there are facts that show that, most likely, they were involved in this murder. When I heard these tapes, I realized I was a very naive person. It’s hard to imagine that the president of your country could be involved in murder.
Did your husband sense the danger? He had been warned to stop writing, to close the Web site. He was followed by cars, on foot, openly; they photographed him. I told him to be careful. But he was very idealistic, and he wasn’t afraid of anything. PRANKSPutting Their Stamp on Art Artists are natural rebels, and rebels love tweaking the authorities. Chicago designers Michael Thompson and Michael Hernandez de Luna have devised a novel–and provocative–test for global postmasters. Their counterfeit stamps look like the real McCoy, with a diabolical twist. Which would you guess slipped by the world’s mail carriers–and which were returned for insufficient postage?
‘EAT WHALE.’ Slipped through the Japanese net. No surprises there, says Thompson, clearly an animal-rights man. No doubt the country’s earnest marine-mammal munchers took it literally.
‘PROPERTY OF MONICA LEWINSKY.’ Didn’t go down too well in Germany. Protests de Luna: the forensic blob of white paint on the dress is “abstract art.”
‘LOVE 2.’ Jesus and his mother in an embrace. En route to Mexico, it was sent home with a note: “This isn’t decent for the country of destination.”
‘PEACE THROUGH POWER.’ Sent from India in 1999, it arrived home to Thompson shortly after Pakistan retaliated with a nuclear blast of its own. The nuclear tests caught the world by surprise. So have some of these stamps.
SPORTS TALK A Huge Hit Baseball, America’s national pastime, is back in full swing. But Japan’s Ichiro Suzuki is all the country’s talking about this season. Before he landed in Seattle this year, U.S. pitchers boasted how they would “knock the bat out of his hands.” Now, say pundits, he’s hitting ’em as if he had a tennis racquet. Pitchers haven’t found his weaknesses, if he has any. And the composure and instinctive hitting he learned in Japan is paying off. He’s the new superstar–“Tiger, Pele… you have company,” raved The New York Times. Sports savants now talk of Japan as the next farmground for U.S. baseball. For the thousands of Japanese fans flocking to Seattle to catch their big hitter, there’s a bonus: they may soon get to see far more stars from Japan shine under the star-spangled banner.
ANGER MANAGEMENTARE THEY STILL SEEING RED?
It was a double whammy for China last week. First the U.S. visit by Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian. Then Dubya welcomed the Dalai Lama into the White House. Beijing was outraged, and it looked like Washington had done it all on purpose. But underneath the surface tensions, the Bushies and Beijing say they are taking steps to cool tensions, even as they continue to stick it to each other. Bush aides insist they don’t want a cold war with China, despite actions by the White House that Beijing sees as provocative.
There will be plenty of opportunities ahead to test their resolve. On June 2 Chen makes another stop on U.S. shores. Later in the month Taiwan is scheduled to test its new, U.S.-made Patriot missiles, sure to be seen in Beijing as another jab.
But Bush also wants to send two major positive signals–even if the concessions damage his relations with his own conservative supporters. First, the president is expected to approve China’s “normal trading” status for 2002. Second, his administration will not try to block Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Bushies believe they are seeing similar gestures from Beijing. At a recent Politburo-level meeting, according to versions reaching Washington, President Jiang Zemin counseled a low-key, cautious approach toward the new administration.
But the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in late October could spark things off again. If Beijing doesn’t get anything substantial from Bush at the summit in Shanghai, such as a reaffirmation of U.S. support for the one-China policy, it might harden its policy toward Washington and Taiwan. Then, despite all the diplomatic efforts of the previous months, it would be back to confrontation.
