2016年10月3日 星期一

Juan Manuel Santos哥倫比亞總統胡安·曼努埃爾·桑托斯. Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman


哥倫比亞公投:選民否決與左翼叛軍和平協議
哥倫比亞選民以50.24%49.76%的微弱差距否決了政府與哥倫比亞左翼反叛武裝力量簽署的和平協議。在經過長達四年的談判之後,哥倫比亞總統胡安·曼努埃爾·桑托斯(Juan Manuel Santos)與哥倫比亞革命軍(FARC)上周簽署停火協議。但該協議需要交付公投通過才能生效。桑托斯總統在發表全國講話時表示接受這個公投結果,但他稱將繼續努力,實現和平。桑托斯說,目前的停火仍然有效,他已責令談判代表前往古巴,與哥倫比亞革命軍磋商下階段措施。與此同時,左派叛軍哥倫比亞革命軍領袖希姆內斯表示,將確保停火得到落實。在經過長達52年的血腥衝突之後,哥倫比亞革命軍決定放下武器,加入哥倫比亞政治磋商進程。但批評人士說,該停火協議對哥倫比亞革命軍太寬大。美國仍然將哥倫比亞革命軍視為恐怖主義組織。
哥倫比亞公投結果顯示,和平進程已被不確定的前景所籠罩。反對這個和平協議的哥倫比亞前副總統弗朗西斯科·桑托斯(Francisco Santos)表示,他希望此後能達成一個更好的協議。他說,「『否決』陣營的勝利是正義與和平的勝利,是寬恕與和解的勝利。『否決』陣營的勝利是一個更具包容性的和平的勝利」,「它是包括我們所有人在內的、更穩定的和平」。哥倫比亞總統桑托斯曾警告說,如果公投失敗,將沒有停火協議的替代計劃。哥倫比亞政府與叛軍的衝突已導致26萬人喪生。公投失敗對桑托斯總統是一大挫敗。自2010年當選總統以來,桑托斯就承諾將結束導致800萬哥倫比亞人流離失所的衝突。一周前,桑托斯總統還與各國領袖和左翼叛軍領導人就結束拉丁美洲最長也最血腥的衝突在卡塔赫納舉行了慶祝儀式。
BBC中美洲事務編輯萊昂納多·羅查表示,桑托斯總統正經歷哥倫比亞歷史上最困難的時刻。記者們表示,如果他堅持承諾,稱目前沒有替代計劃,那麼雙邊停火協議就可能被取消,戰火就可能重燃。長達297頁的停火協議在哥倫比亞是一個具有重大分歧的問題,有人批評政府認為和平協議的簽署是理所當然的。很多反對這個和平協議的人很憤怒。他們認為,叛軍造成這麼多人死亡,並使很多人流離失所,該協議對叛軍太寬大,使他們躲過了牢獄之災。政府方面則在整個公投期間試圖消除人們的擔憂,當局耗資在電視上打廣告,並舉辦音樂會與和平集會,試圖吸引選民出來投票。(資料來源:哥倫比亞公投:選民否決與左翼叛軍和平協議BBC中文網, 2016/10/3



George Skadding / Time-Life Pictures / Getty Images


Former Presidents Harry Truman, left, and Herbert Hoover attend the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953
the World's Most Exclusive Club Was Born


By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy


Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman didn't have much in common other than the office they held, but together they created a tradition of presidential cooperation that would change history



1. How









It was one of those moments that, in a mere second or two, changed American history: on Jan. 20, 1953, at the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman greeted Herbert Hoover on the platform. "I think we ought to organize a former Presidents club," Hoover suggested.

"Fine," Truman replied. "You be the president of the club. And I will be the secretary."

Up to that moment, the Presidents club was more an idea than an institution. Some sitting Presidents consulted with their predecessors, but beyond sharing war stories, there were limits to what a former President could do unless he applied for a new job, like Congressman (John Quincy Adams) or Supreme Court Justice (William Howard Taft).

But with the coming of the modern, postwar age, the Presidents club became an actual fraternity, an abiding alliance between sitting and former Presidents born of the experiences they had shared, the mistakes they avoided and the opportunities they seized. Presidents can do more together than apart, and they all know it, and so they join forces as needed, to consult, complain, console, pressure, protect, redeem.

In the case of Hoover and Truman, they did much more.

(PHOTOS: Oval Office Secrets from Truman to Obama)

The club came about because the two men had already become among the most unlikely allies in American history. Truman had been in office for a matter of weeks in the spring of 1945 when newspapers began warning of the next disaster: "the most stupendous feeding problem in history," as the New York Times described the hideous famine facing 100 million European civilians who'd suffered through years of living in a war zone. Aware of the objections of many in the White House, Truman secretly mailed a letter to the still despised Hoover, inviting him back to the White House for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration 12 years before. The two men met on May 28, 1945; Hoover, an engineer by training who had been revered for his relief work following World War I, laid out for Truman what it would take to get the food from countries that had it to those that needed it, a massive logistical challenge on which millions of lives depended.

The austere Republican Hoover left the meeting skeptical that the novice Democrat Truman would do anything so radical as enlist a political enemy in a joint mission. "Nothing more would come of it," Hoover concluded in his memo of the encounter.

But he was wrong. In the year that followed, Truman enacted one Hoover recommendation after another, and sent the 71-year-old former President on a 50,000-mile mission around the world: with Truman's encouragement, Hoover, the man many Democrats revile to this day, met with seven kings, 36 Prime Ministers and the Pope. He gave 42 press conferences. When he was in Cairo in April of 1946, he and Truman did a joint radio broadcast exhorting Americans to conserve food: "The saving of these human lives is far more than an economic necessity to the recovery of the world," Hoover said. It was "a part of the moral and spiritual reconstruction of the world."

And it worked; by the end of that summer, Truman could announce that America had shipped five and a half million tons of grain to the ravaged regions of Europe, thereby keeping the nation's promise and forestalling a humanitarian catastrophe. "Every molecule in my body yells at me that it is tired," Hoover told a friend. "I am going away for a rest."

"Yours was a real service for humanity," Truman wrote privately to Hoover. By that time the two had battled enough common enemies to have seeded something like a friendship. "I know that I can count upon your cooperation if developments at any time in the future make it necessary for me to call upon you again."

(MORE: The Presidents Club)

And he did. Truman had discovered in Hoover a most surprising ally, whose commitment to serving the country and strengthening the presidency was undiminished by the fact that at that point the White House was occupied by a Democrat. Hoover helped Truman sell the idea of European relief to a skeptical Republican Congress. Even more important, he oversaw that radical overhaul of the Executive Branch: as a result of their partnership, the Hoover Commission, which Congress created, Truman sanctioned and Hoover chaired, produced the greatest transformation of the presidency in history, a concentration of power that ultimately yielded the CIA, the National Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, the General Services Administration, a unified Defense Department and much more.

And so it went: an unexpected partnership had produced a new kind of power — certainly a new kind of peerage. It was an arrangement that favored them both; by 1951, Truman and Hoover ranked three and five on Gallup's list of Most Admired Men. So as they watched Eisenhower on the Capitol steps preparing to take over the chair both had occupied, it was natural that they would recognize the particular value of a working alliance between sitting and former Presidents.

Not every President who followed would share their willingness to collaborate; but it was already clear that used wisely, the Presidents club could function as an instrument of presidential power. For all of the club's self-serving habits and instincts, when it is functioning at its best, it can serve the President, help solve his problems and the nation's, even save lives.

Adapted from The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, published by Simon & Schuster.






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Thought the Affordable Care Act was a bold "intrusion into the private business of health care"?


Did you know Hill-Burton Act signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on Aug. 13, 1946, is responsible for the construction of much of our health system's infrastructure? Read on for more on its monumental effect.





















A Bygone Era: When Bipartisanship Led To Health Care Transformation


A federal law enacted shortly after the end of World War II provided grants and loans to fund hospital construction that have left a lasting legacy.


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