MONTREAL, Canada: The flight of banks and big businesses from Catalonia after the region of Spain voted for independence is familiar to many in Quebec who once suffered similar economic turmoil while flirting with secession from Canada.
Several companies with headquarters in Catalonia including banks Sabadell and CaixaBank, as well as real estate business Colonial and toll-road company Abertis, recently moved their registered headquarters to other parts of Spain, saying they feared being cut off from the massive European market in the event of a breakup.
There are similarities between the situation in Catalonia and Quebec when it twice voted in 1980 and 1995 on whether to split from the rest of Canada, said University of Quebec professor Mario Polese.
“Business people rarely support this kind of secession, in part because they worry it will harm their bottom line,” he explained.
The sudden rise of the separatist Parti Quebecois, which swept to power in the Canadian province in 1976, spooked many in its English-speaking minority, which held undue control of Quebec’s top corporations.
“For anglophones, it was a huge shock to see a small party that was born only seven years earlier suddenly take power and promise to hold a referendum on Quebec independence,” he said.
A year later, the secessionists imposed a law mandating French be used in business, as elsewhere in the daily lives of a majority of Quebecers.
Panic-stricken, “some 200,000 anglophones” left the province before and after the 1980 referendum, fearing Quebec would be isolated in North America and as linguistic tensions continued even after independence was rejected.
In 1977 and 1978, 263 head offices also left Montreal, according to the Quebec Employers Council, an association of the province’s largest companies.
Among them, Sun Life, a giant in Montreal’s financial sector, caused the biggest shock when it announced it was leaving its birth city for greener pastures in Toronto, taking with it some 800 employees.
Others such as Bank of Montreal kept their headquarters in the Quebec metropolis, but moved their operations to Toronto.
Until then, the port city of Montreal had been the economic capital of Canada, but all of these corporate relocations helped turn Toronto into what is now the country’s economic hub.
Although Quebecers would reject splitting from the rest of Canada in both referenda, the damage was done.
The Montreal Stock Exchange’s amalgamation with the larger Toronto Stock Exchange and its subsequently reduced role in capital markets following the 1995 Quebec referendum, which was narrowly lost by the separatists, was the final nail in the coffin.
In comparing Quebec and Catalonia, Polese noted a few key differences, explaining that Quebec had felt that it was in a “semi-colonial situation.”
“Even though two-thirds of Montrealers spoke French, it wasn’t obvious that this was a French city at the time. Most of the signs were in English, business was conducted in English and the economy was dominated by an anglophone minority,” he said.
“The big difference between Catalonia and Quebec is that here, even in the worst moments, a head office of a francophone company would never have thought of leaving the province, even if most of their executives were hostile to independence.”
This was especially the case in 1995 during the second referendum.
Since then a new generation of French-speaking Quebec executives have taken over, and the province has bounced back.
Today Quebec’s growth is among the best in Canada, its unemployment rate is at a 40-year low, and several Quebec companies have grown into multinationals.
It has also become a cultural and political powerhouse within the federation.
Flight of head offices from Catalonia: Quebec went through it
Flight of head offices from Catalonia: Quebec went through it
Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow suspended for a month from Dec. 30, says TASS
MOSCOW: Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow are to be suspended for a month from Dec. 30 after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed in Kazakhstan, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday citing Turkmenistan's national air carrier.
A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airlines crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian attack drones.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party to meet jailed PKK leader Saturday
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.
“The delegation left in the morning,” the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
The visit would be the party’s first in almost 10 years.
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
The PKK is regarded as a “terror” organization by Turkiye and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
Detained 25 years ago in a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, Ocalan was sentenced to death.
He escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 and is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the Imrali prison island south of Istanbul.
Saturday’s rare visit became possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally, MHP party leader Devlet Bahceli, invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce “terror,” and to disband the militant group.
Erdogan backed the appeal as a “historic window of opportunity.”
Afghan Taliban forces target ‘several points’ in Pakistan in retaliation for airstrikes – Afghan defense ministry
KABUL: Afghan Taliban forces targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan, Afghanistan’s defense ministry said on Saturday, days after Pakistani aircraft carried out aerial bombardment inside Afghanistan.
The statement from the Defense Ministry did not specify Pakistan but said the strikes were conducted “beyond the ‘hypothetical line’” – an expression used by Afghan authorities to refer to a border with Pakistan that they have long disputed.
“Several points beyond the hypothetical line, serving as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, were targeted in retaliation from the southeastern direction of the country,” the ministry said.
Asked whether the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi said: “We do not consider it to be the territory of Pakistan, therefore, we cannot confirm the territory, but it was on the other side of the hypothetical line.”
Afghanistan has for decades rejected the border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities in the 19th century through the mountainous and often lawless tribal belt between what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
No details of casualties or specific areas targeted were provided. The Pakistani military’s public relations wing and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday they would retaliate after the Pakistani bombardment, which they said had killed civilians. Islamabad said it had targeted hideouts of Islamist militants along the border.
The neighbors have a strained relationship, with Pakistan saying that several militant attacks that have occurred in its country have been launched from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
Indian state funeral for former PM Manmohan Singh
- Manmohan Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 on Thursday
- Former PM was an understated technocrat who was hailed for overseeing an economic boom in his first term
NEW DELHI: India on Saturday accorded former premier Manmohan Singh, one of the architects of the country’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s, a state funeral with full military honors, complete with a gun salute.
Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 on Thursday, after which seven days of state mourning were declared.
The honors were led by President Draupadi Murmu with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in attendance, along with the country’s top civilian and military officials. Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck also attended the ceremony.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who called the former prime minister his mentor and guide, joined Singh’s family as they prayed before his cremation.
Earlier, mourners gathered to pay their respects to Singh. His coffin, draped in garlands of flowers, was flanked by a guard of honor and carried to his Congress Party headquarters in New Delhi.
It was then taken through the capital to the cremation grounds, accompanied by guards of soldiers and accorded full state honors.
Modi called Singh one of India’s “most distinguished leaders.”
US President Joe Biden called Singh a “true statesman,” saying that he “charted pathbreaking progress that will continue to strengthen our nations — and the world — for generations to come.”
The former prime minister was an understated technocrat who was hailed for overseeing an economic boom in his first term.
Singh’s second stint ended with a series of major corruption scandals, slowing growth and high inflation.
Singh’s unpopularity in his second term, and lackluster leadership by Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, the current opposition leader in the lower house, led to Modi’s first landslide victory in 2014.
Born in 1932 in the mud-house village of Gah in what is now Pakistan and was then British-ruled India, Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast nation.
He won scholarships to attend both Cambridge, where he obtained a first in economics, and Oxford, where he completed his doctorate.
Singh worked in a string of senior civil service posts, served as a central bank governor and also held various jobs with global agencies including the United Nations.
He was tapped in 1991 by then Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to serve as finance minister and reel India back from the worst financial crisis in its modern history.
Though he had never held an elected post, he was declared the National Congress’s candidate for the highest office in 2004.
In his first term, Singh steered the economy through a period of nine percent growth, lending India the international clout it had long sought.
He also sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the United States that he said would help India meet its growing energy needs.
President Murmu said Singh would “always be remembered for his service to the nation, his unblemished political life and his utmost humility.”
Rival protests planned in South Korea after second leader impeached
- Vast protests both for and against suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol have rocked South Korea
- Yoon sought to impose martial law in early December, plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades
SEOUL: Protests were planned across South Korea on Saturday, as supporters and opponents of suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol prepared to hold rival rallies two weeks after he was impeached.
Vast protests both for and against Yoon have rocked South Korea since he sought to impose martial law in early December, plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades.
Lawmakers on Friday impeached Yoon’s replacement, acting president Han Duck-soo, after he refused demands to complete Yoon’s impeachment process and to bring him to justice.
It is up to the Constitutional Court to decide Yoon’s, and now Han’s fate, but demonstrators from both camps have vowed to keep up pressure in the meantime.
“Nearly two million people will come together to protect president Yoon,” said Rhee kang-san, a supporter of Yoon who is one of the rally organizers in Seoul.
“The rally continues our efforts to amplify the people’s voice against impeachment.”
An organizer of a rival anti-Yoon rally said the anger of those who supported his impeachment was “burning even more intensely.”
“The people are now strongly demanding Yoon’s immediate dismissal and punishment,” she added.
At the heart of the backlash against Han was his refusal to appoint additional judges to the Constitutional Court, which has three vacant seats.
While the six current judges can decide whether to uphold parliament’s decision to impeach Yoon, a single dissenting vote would reinstate him.
The opposition wanted Han to approve three more nominees to fill the nine-member bench, which he had refused to do, leaving both sides in deadlock.
The second impeachment on Friday thrust Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok into the roles of acting president and prime minister.
It also took the country into uncharted territory.
“We’ve had an acting president before,” said Lee Jun-han, a professor at Incheon National University. “But this is the first time we’ve had a substitute for a substitute.”
Choi said in a statement after the impeachment that “minimizing governmental turmoil is of utmost importance at this moment,” adding that “the government will also dedicate all its efforts to overcoming this period of turmoil.”
Like Han, Choi will face pressure from the opposition to accept the appointment of new judges.
If he refuses, he could face his own impeachment vote.
