Congrats Trinidad!

[the_future_modernes]

Trinidad and Tobago elects first woman Prime Minister

Trinidad and Tobago is to have its first woman premier after Prime Minister Patrick Manning was ousted in a snap election on Monday

Jubilant crowds gathered at the party headquarters of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Caribbean country’s attorney general, who is set to become its first female Prime Minister after Mr Manning conceded defeat late last night.

“We’ve lost the elections,” Mr Manning said bluntly on live television as Ms Persad-Bissessar’ United National Congress (UNC) party, a five-party coalition, headed toward a significant majority with preliminary results showing they had won 27 out of 41 seats.
“I take full responsibility for the defeat,” he added.

Mr Manning, whose People’s National Movement (PNM) has dominated politics in Trinidad and Tobago for half a century, had taken a gamble by calling the vote mid-way through his five-year term to thwart an opposition motion of no-confidence in him.MORE

HEEE!!!!! Here's hoping she has a successful term!!

This is interesting.

[the_future_modernes]

Portugal Looks to Former Colonies for Lifeline in Crisis

LISBON, May 24, 2010 (IPS) - First Angola, and now Brazil, Portugal's two largest former colonial possessions, are extending a helping hand to the battered Portuguese economy.

Besieged on all sides by international speculators, who according to local economists are trying to turn this country into "another Greece," Portugal may find a remedy for its weakness in stronger economic ties with its two "sister nations."

Last year Angola and Portugal created a bank intended to foment large joint ventures on an equal-share basis, in which the Angolan oil company Sonangol and the state Portuguese bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) are partners.

With an initial capital of one billion dollars, the CGD/Sonangol partnership promotes investment in the areas of energy, sanitation, hospitals, cement and construction, transport and telecommunications.

Now that Brazil has increasing clout on the world stage, Portugal sees the South American giant that was its colony for 322 years as offering another opportunity to rescue its precarious economic and financial situation.

This is the general conclusion reached by economic analysts in Portugal after Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's brief visit to Lisbon May 19, where he met with Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva and Prime Minister José Sócrates. MORE

Background
Portugal Faces Carve-Up by Financial Speculators

LISBON, Apr 26 , 2010 (IPS) - Worrying economic indicators and gloomy forecasts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are rapidly making Portugal a magnet for international speculative capital.

Independent lawmaker Rui Tavares, a historian, writing in the local press, described the international financial actors preparing to attack the fragile Portuguese economy as "gigantic octopus-vampires" that manipulate markets to make money.

The IMF revised its 2010 forecast for Portugal's economic growth sharply downward on Apr. 20.

Instead of the 0.7 percent growth estimated by the government of socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates, the IMF now predicts 0.3 percent, well below the average of one percent forecast for the 16 countries belonging to the Eurozone.

If the Portuguese economy goes into recession, it will lose at least 90,000 jobs this year and the unemployment rate will reach 11 percent, according to the IMF, which sees Portugal as the second most likely country to cause disruption in the Eurozone, after Greece, which formally requested an enormous financial aid package from the EU and the IMF last week.

A recession would be particularly serious for huge numbers of people in the lower social strata in Portugal, which along with Bulgaria and Latvia is one of the EU countries with the highest social and economic inequalities.

In practice, this means that nearly two million Portuguese, one-fifth of the population, will not command adequate incomes to provide them with minimum living standards, a situation that puts Portuguese families in a far more vulnerable position than those in Greece.