Weekend Box #111: Will Ofcom Crack the Code?, Scholz Beefs Up Baltics & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
Image credit/Paul Kagame on Flickr/License
WE’VE CHAD ENOUGH OF DICTATORS
On Monday, Chadians headed to the polls to vote in the country’s presidential election. In the last 24 hours, Mahamat Déby, who was a favourite to win, was declared the victor.
This is a landmark moment for Chad. The election will end a three-year transitional government formed after the sudden death of former dictatorial president, Idriss Déby, in 2021.
On the face of it, it the election could chart a path to a more civilian, democratic system in Chad. But there is scepticism within and without Chad about whether this vote will usher much in the way of genuine change. Given that Mahamat Déby is son of Idriss and leader of the transitional government, it is easy to see why.
The same scepticism has surrounded Déby’s main opponent, Prime Minister Succès Masra. Although Masra was a long-time opponent of Idriss Déby and was forced into exile in 2022, his decision to join the transitional government left many pondering his intentions. It was unclear if a Masra victory would have resulted in real democratic reform, or if in reality he had made a gentleman’s agreement with governing figures including Mahamat Déby to keep them in power.
Nor was the election free and fair. Some candidates were barred from running, allegedly due to political motivations, while others faced deadly repression, such as opposition leader Yaya Dillo, who was killed in February.
Polling day itself saw violence and allegations of voting irregularities. In the southern city of Moundou, a voter was killed after being barred from voting due to a lack of documentation. EU election observers were kept from fulfilling their role properly.
There is a small glimmer of hope for Chadians that this election will see, if nothing else, the first step on the path to stable and peaceful civilian rule. But genuine democracy in Chad feels remote – for now.
WILL OFCOM CRACK THE CODE?
UK regulator Ofcom has published its new Children's Safety Code, comprising 40 rules to govern how internet companies interact with young people, in the hope of making the internet safer for them.
Prominent campaigns by the likes of Esther Ghey and Ian Russell, alongside alarming statistics, have kept this issue in the spotlight. A recent study showed that 14% of teenagers aged 16 and under said that they had experienced image-based sexual abuse, while the National Crime Agency issued a rare urgent warning to schools about the dangers of ‘sextortion’ scams.
In response, the Code’s measures include more robust age checks; changes to sites’ algorithms to ensure ‘suggested posts’ and ‘for you’ pages take into account the ages of children; and limitations on harmful content, such as not allowing material relating to suicide or pornography to appear on children’s feeds at all.
Ofcom Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes said: “we won’t hesitate to use our full range of enforcement powers to hold platforms to account. That’s a promise we make to children and parents today.”
Punchy talk. The hope is that this Code, combined with the penalties mandated in the Online Safety Act (which can include fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover) will hold big tech companies to account.
While Dame Dawes claims the Code’s measures “go way beyond current industry standards,” parents and campaigners have criticised the Code for not going far enough. Bereaved Families for Online Safety, a group of the parents of 11 children whose death involved social media in some form, wrote an open letter to PM Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, expressing their concern that the code is “insufficient” to deal with a problem of this scale.
The draft Code is open for feedback until July 17, and expected to be enforced next year. Following this, firms will have three months to conduct inaugural child safety risk assessments.
SCHOLZ BEEFS UP THE BALTICS
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Lithuania on Monday this week and pledged Germany's unwavering support for the Baltics. Scholz promised to permanently deploy a brigade of 4,800 German troops in Lithuania to bolster its defences against an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Russia appears to be planning to double its troop presence near the border with the Baltics and Finland and has increased GPS jamming in the region, which is disrupting air traffic. Germany also claims to have been the target of Russian cyber attacks last week.
Scholz was in Lithuania this week visiting German troops taking part in NATO exercises.
On Monday the German Chancellor met with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauséda in Pabradé, eastern Lithuania, where he declared that “the security of our Baltic allies is our security." He reaffirmed Germany's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, declaring that "every [member] state can rely on us to protect every centimetre of their territory."
The German Bundeswehr division will begin deploying in 2025 and reach full combat readiness by 2027. This would be the first time Germany has permanently stationed troops outside its territory since World War II.
President Nauséda welcomed the German commitment to Baltic security, but questioned the chancellor on why troop deployment couldn't be faster, saying: “We don’t have the luxury of wasting even a minute.”
Meanwhile, Russia's Deputy Defence Minister Viktor Goremykin declared that Russia could seize the Suwalki corridor between Poland and Lithuania, which connects Belarus and the Russian enclave Kaliningrad, in a matter of hours. In this scenario, the 4,800 German troops would be among the first to face such a conflict.
Image credit/keso s on Flickr/License
TOYOTA PUTS BRAKES ON PROFIT GROWTH
Toyota’s results caused a stir in the market on Wednesday, as the manufacturer forecast a 20% fall in profit as it seeks new growth opportunities.
While a profit decline in the double figures is understandably cause for alarm, Toyota CEO Koji Sato explains that the manufacturer’s plans to invest in itself are to account for the forecast. Toyota predicts an operating income of 4.3tn yen for the year to March 2025 as it invests in “human capital” as well as its ‘multi-pathway strategy’ of manufacturing both hybrid vehicles and EVs. It will also invest 1.7tn yen into growth in areas such as artificial intelligence and software.
Shares in Toyota fell by as much as 3% on Wednesday after news of the forecast broke. Risky as Toyota’s investment strategy is, it shows just how committed it is to finding a way to compete with its Chinese rivals. Earlier this year the manufacturer announced a partnership with WeChat owner Tencent, a leader in China’s generative AI “race,” as it seeks to create a “game change” with its products that will help it close the gap with Chinese competitors, who Toyota’s CFO Yoichi Miyazaki has admitted are outpacing it.
The forecast and its fallout in the market hardly paint a positive picture, but in spite of that, the results announcement was not all doom and gloom for Toyota – far from it. The manufacturer’s results surpassed expectations with operating profit totalling 5.35tn yen or $34.5bn. This was in no small part due to its ‘multi-pathway strategy’, which helped Toyota benefit from strong sales for its hybrid vehicles as demand for EVs has fallen.
Given how rough Tesla’s recent results were, and what that says about the struggling EV market, perhaps Toyota are wise to take risks.
Image credit/ALDE Group on Flickr/License
VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: A WINNING VOICE
The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced this week, and among the winners was Russian journalist, opposition activist, and state hostage Vladimir Kara-Murza.
The prestigious Prizes, established by American newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917, reward excellence in "journalism, arts and letters." Last year the Pulitzers regime was tweaked to reward 15 categories of journalism and another eight across music, books, and theatre. All recipients receive $15,000, except for those in the public service category, who are awarded gold medals.
Vladimir Kara-Murza won the commentary category for his series of columns published in the Washington Post, with the judges recognising his “passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.” Kara-Murza’s dispatches from a prison colony in Omsk in central Russia were written despite his failing health that includes polyneuropathy affecting his hands and feet, following two previous incidences of nerve agent poisoning.
The top prize for public service was won by five journalists at ProPublica for their “groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court.” Their reportage exposed how billionaires had given gifts and travel to justices.
Among the other winners, the Associated Press won a prize in feature photography for its coverage of global migration through Latin America to the US, while the New York Times and Reuters news service each won Pulitzers for their coverage of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel and its aftermath.
The Pulitzers are administered by Columbia University in New York, which has itself been in the news for student demonstrations against the war in Gaza. The Pulitzer board met away from Columbia to choose its winners.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.