← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The Albanian Riviera
00:28:09
Albania, not so long ago a redoubt of hardline Communism, is now hoping for EU membership.
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Hi.
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This is a download from BBC Radio. It's the latest edition of Radio 4's From Our Own correspondent and it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello, and welcome to the Albanian Riviera. The sunbeds and beach umbrellas are wheeled out as this once sternly Communist country bids for EU membership. What impact is the Pope having on his visit to Brazil, a nation bursting with economic optimism but still still in places desperately poor? We hear about the day luck ran out at a favourite supermarket in Baghdad, and why Chinese aid isn't always a blessing in the South Pacific, but you can rely on their corner shop. The French President Francois Hollande has told his ministers extended summer holidays are not appropriate this year. He'd hoped to be able to send them off on the back of optimistic news about the economy, but the signals were mixed. Some growth is forecast, but unemployment is still climbing. 11% of the French workforce could be out of a job next year. Monsieur Hollande, who says he won't be going to the presidential retreat on the Cote d' Azur this summer, is under pressure from political opponents to overhaul the economy. As Emma Jane Kirby's been finding out. His critics say it's become harder and harder for businesses to flourish in France.
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Think French underwear, Think French knickers. Nope, Think again. Think men's pants, patriotic pants with a white waistband embossed with the tricolour colours and selling for around 32 pounds a pair. I must admit I was mainly thinking about the price as I watched the Sleep Francais label being machine stitched into a large pair of Jersey cotton boxes with. But I'm sure the company director, Guillaume Gibourt, was thinking that Gallic confidence was at last being restored to where it matters most. It was a bet. HE LAUGHS A bet to show it's still possible to make things in France. And with no apparent sense of irony, he Le Sleep Francais is just like a little cocky Frenchman saying, yeah, we can still do it. At just 28, business school graduate, Guillaume is going where many French men have gone before him, but where few attempted to go. Now, at the start of the 1980s, more than a million people were employed in France's textile industry. Today, around only a tenth of that number remains tangled in high taxes and wedged by rigid labour codes. France's knickers are in a twist. Last year, the leading luxury underwear firm, Le Jaby, prompted national fury when it relocated to Tunisia. And in a bid to bring down production and labour costs. When a French business pays a worker, it must pay almost the same amount again. In social charges, national insurance and so on. Unable to compete with cheaper products coming from European neighbours and from Asia, many smaller textile companies have simply folded. The financial burden of the famed social model has made it practically impossible for manufacturers to compete globally. Guillaume's gamble is that the home grown hallmark will prompt his customers into nostalgic and patriotic pant wearing. But while the Made in France label may assure those sporting the briefs that they're wearing quality, it's also guaranteed Guillaume a host of complications. I started my company in 2011, he explained, and if it wasn't for the huge social charges of the taxes imposed on my business, I think I would have expanded much faster and much further. But it's just too risky to take on more staff. So I just take interns who are inexperienced and who can't really drive the business forward. The 3,200 pages of France's Code du Travail dictate everything from job classifications to the ability to fire workers. Few employers are willing to risk hiring staff during a boom in demand because if orders drop, it's extremely complicated and and very expensive to let workers go. Much of the rule book was written over a century ago, when Frenchmen were presumably still in woolen long johns. Innovation is the key, Guillaume assured me as he jigged around with nervous excitement. I know we have a very poor business climate in France, but we just have to keep coming up with new ideas. I'm going to Tokyo next week to try to sell the French touch to the Japanese. During the last race for the French presidency, Guillaume managed to market his pants by doctoring all the candidates election posters. Francois Hollande's mantra the time for change is now became the time to change your pants is now. Nicholas Sakozy's maxim everything is possible became everything is possible in pants. He's too cheeky to miss a new advertising trick. At the end of my visit, which coincided with the news of the birth of His Royal Highness Prince George, he presented me with a mini pair of navy blue briefs in the hope that I could slip them into the nursery at Buckingham Palace. The IMF and the European Commission have warned the high tax burdens imposed on France's businesses and the over regulation of the Labour Code, a crippling innovation and preventing job creation. They are also leaving French businesses with the lowest profit margins in the European Union. The French president and other members of his cabinet continue to appear defiantly on French television to boast that France is still a grande nation and will show the EU who wears the pants around here. But a Big nation needs big pants, and at the moment France is being squeezed into a model it has long outgrown. Come back and see me in two years. Guillaume smiled ruefully. I hope I'll still be here, but I can't really guarantee it. I watched him with his co workers, enthusiastically poring over new designs for the next generation of pants. If the French government doesn't urgently put new elastic into its economy, Le Sleep Francais could soon find itself sagging and slipping down to the knees and getting
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a full briefing in France there. Emma Jane Kirby Pope Francis was at the famous Copacabana beach in Rio the other day, but it was far from bikini weather. He told the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who'd gathered for a rally celebrating Brazil's World Youth Day that their faith was stronger than the cold and the rain. His visit comes after months of anti government protests in Brazil and elsewhere. This week, he told people he wanted them to take to the streets and stir things up. Wira Davis has been considering what impact the papal visit is having on this fast developing nation.
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It's a happy coincidence for the Catholic Church that this year's World Youth Day coincided with the recent election of a new pope, not just any pontiff, but the first from Latin America and also the first Jesuit pope. It has struck me more in these last few days how confident and happy most Brazilians seem to be in their faith. Religious symbols are omnipresent here in Rio de Janeiro, of course, the stunning art deco representation of Christ the Redeemer looks down on the city from the Corcovado mountain. There are well resourced television channels run by the Catholic Church, and the recent election of Pope Francis filled the airwaves and newspaper pages in the same way that a royal birth does back home in Great Britain. It's not just the Catholic Church that finds followers in Latin America's biggest country, and indeed in the continent in general. The dramatic growth of Protestant evangelical churches for a while seemed to catch the stale same old approach of the established churches. Cold tele evangelists like Silas Malafi of the assembly of God Network promise the earth if you work hard, follow the Lord, and of course do your bit to fund and support the church. The evangelical's message of individual as opposed to community, responsibility and the attainment of success and wealth sits well with those aspirational Brazilians who want a piece of this country's recent economic success with God's blessing. It's only recently that the Catholic Church has woken up to the challenge and making the church attractive and accessible to Its youth is now seen as an essential priority. Witnessing several hundred thousand young people on Copacabana beach waving flags from more countries than I could count perhaps proved the Catholic Church was beginning to get it right. More than one Vatican insider has told me that Pope Francis has been like a breath of fresh air in the Holy See. On the face of things, he's no less of a traditionalist on ethical issues than his predecessors, including his stance on abortion, women in the priesthood and gay marriage. But Francis style is radically different, and for that he's loved in his native Latin America an effusive, occasionally enthusiastic Argentine who's clearly comfortable in his own skin. As one Vatican aide told me this week, the contrast with Pope Benedict couldn't be more different. Many observers say that Francis just may be the salvation of the church in this overwhelmingly pious region and stop the slide of support towards the evangelicals. There's been much speculation here that Pope Francis straightforward and simple style might herald a return to the continent of liberation theology. The 1980s inspired left wing grassroots ideology that found support among priests and occasionally bishops across the region. Francis is a Jesuit whose pronouncements on poverty and and the evils of power and money have prompted many to compare him to the many liberation theologists who lost their lives under the military regimes they actively opposed. But Some believe the 76 year old pontiff is unlikely to be the radical successor to St. Peter that many observers are hoping for. Nevertheless, on a visit to Virginia, one of Rio de Janeiro's toughest favelas or shanty towns, he he again warned about the evils of pursuing money and power above spiritual fulfillment. One of the new Pope's first duties here was the service at Brazil's national shrine, Our lady of Aparecida in Sao Paulo state. It is the world's second largest basilica, built near to the site where local fishermen apparently found a small statue of the Virgin Mary in the early 18th century. At Aparecida, Pope Francis addressed another huge audience, this time mainly working class Brazilians rather than the international pilgrims based back in Rio in a country replete with religious icons and almost overflowing in recent days, at least with young Catholics confident in their faith. I was reminded of a visit to a parecida when I lived in Brazil as a child. It was a defining moment in my own youth. It was a crucial factor in turning me against religion. The sight of so much money lavished on such a huge shrine and of poor, pious pilgrims crawling on their hands and knees to burn candles at an altar left a deep scar on my impressionable teenage mind. Brazil is a country bursting with economic optimism, but there's still widespread poverty and despair. For some Brazilians, whatever their denomination, God or Jesus is the answer. Faith can go a long way, but I just can't help thinking that if Brazil is going to overcome some of the great challenges it faces in the coming years, it might take a little bit more.
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Wira Davis in Rio de Janeiro, the speaker of parliament in Iraq says the escape from Abu Ghraib prison of hundreds of inmates will make the country's already dire security even worse. Mr. Osama Al Nujaifi told correspondents in Baghdad this week the situation was grave. Nearly 3,000 people are believed to have been killed in Iraq during the past four months. More than 7,000 injured. Murders, shootings and kidnap are again part of daily life there. Prashant Rao's been telling us what happened when one particular supermarket in the capital, Baghdad, was targeted by bombers.
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There are a million different ways to measure progress in a country. How fast is its economy growing? Are are its citizens living longer? Do more people have higher paying jobs? Are young people getting a good education? For years in Baghdad, I had my own little measure of a supermarket called Warda. Warda, which means flower in Arabic, is owned by a Christian family and lies along a busy road in Baghdad's main commercial district. When I first moved here in 2009, it had all the basics I cereal, ice cream, cookies, pasta. But it was a musty place. It had glass doors with heavy handles. The customers always seemed to be exclusively men, and if you handed a wad of Iraqi dinars to the cashier, he would add up your total on a handheld calculator, even though few of the items had any price tags, and would work out your change in his head. Over the years, though, Warda got better. The owners invested in nicer lighting and electronic cash registers that displayed the exact change in dinars and US Dollars over time. They broke through a wall and opened a bakery and then a fresh fruit stall, and on and on. After a while you would even see standalone stalls in the aisles with smartly dressed women offering free samples of the latest foreign cheeses. To me, Warda was a good side of Iraq. Through all the violence, the corruption, the bureaucracy, Somehow this supermarket had managed to get better, to expand. I would joke to my friends that Warda's pricing was like that of a drug dealer, or at least how my year 7 teacher had scared me into believing drug dealers operated. I would get hooked on a particular type of chocolate chip cookies and suddenly they would disappear, only to reappear again weeks later with higher prices. Of course, I paid. I was a junkie. I was hooked on Warda. I loved the fact that I could buy delectable Indian pickles, nice pasta sauces, and warm, freshly baked bread. But like all things in this country, eventually its luck ran out. A little while ago, a minibus rigged with explosives was parked in front of Warda and then detonated. It was evening, and I happened to be out meeting someone when I heard about the explosion. I made my way over, careful to visit plenty of time after the blast, wary of the secondary bombs that militants often trigger once security forces arrive at the scene of an attack. When I got there, I was horrified. The store's front facade was destroyed where once its name had been proudly displayed. All that was left was mangled metal. Cars in the parking lot were destroyed. Shattered glass was everywhere. Heavy vehicles had already begun moving the debris. In all, four people were killed and several others wounded. I visited again the following morning and spoke to some of Warda's employees, all of whom were pitching in however they could, picking up shards of metal, mopping up the mix of dirt and blood on the store floor. They told me two of the store's employees, Ashur and Jaber, had been killed. They said the other two who died were her mother and her daughter. Another worker there, Tha', r, whose hands and clothes were covered in dust, admitted he'd been terrified when the bomb went off, but he nevertheless rushed into the mayhem to see if he could help anyone who had been hurt. He could smell the powdered explosives, the blood and the burning flesh. Maher, another employee, choked back tears as he dismissed any hopes that the families of the victims would receive government support. Here we were all working together, Christians, Muslims, Sunnis, Shias, he said. We are all friends here. They all insisted that the store would be back up and running soon. They had no idea how long reconstruction would take. Weeks, months, it did not matter. We want to start rebuilding, another employee, Ehab, said. We Iraqis, we're used to these things. We will start again. On my way back to the office, my colleague told me of how, before the decade of bloodshed that followed the invasion in 2003, the death of a family member from old age was a traumatic experience. It was one that hit a community hard. But now, now, my colleague told me, we say they are the lucky ones.
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Prashant Rao in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Albania's become the latest Balkan country to say it wants to join the European Union. Its president this week joined representatives of seven other Balkan nations at the region's first ever joint summit, which was held in Slovenia. Croatia became a Member on the 1st of this month and accession talks with Serbia are now underway. Balkan countries wishing to join the European Club must first satisfy Brussels that they've successfully tackled a range of problems including corruption, organised crime and smuggling. Julia Langdon crossed over from nearby Corfu to see how formerly communist Albania was shaping up for possible EU membership.
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For 30 years I've been visiting the north east coast of Corfu and for all that time I've been looking at Albania, often with a shiver at what little we knew about it. Its bare coastline and forbidding mountains seemed to represent the isolation of the country cut off by communism for half a century. Home to the mafia, the badlands of the Balkans. In the old days, the Straits of Corfu were raked by Albanian searchlights trying to catch those desperate enough to risk a nighttime swim or a paddle in the inner tube of a car tyre to escape its hunger and brutality. When communism collapsed, I'd heard the putt, putt of outboard engines at night. On piratical missions, the children usually sleep through the early morning gunfire. I used to joke, but it was true. I had watched the tracer bullets light up the nighttime sky of a Saranda, the small city in the south of Albania where the last violent rebellions occurred as this poor benighted country struggled to secure some sort of democracy 20 years ago. And now I am approaching Sarande for the first time. I am on the hydrofoil, the flying dolphin prepared for heat and poverty and boys begging for biros. And what was the last thing I expected to see? Sun umbrellas on the beach. Welcome to the Albanian Riviera. There is a promenade with cafes, bars, fairy lights, restaurants and tourist shops selling the universal tourist hat. There are oleanders and palm trees and hibiscus and solanum. There are sun beds, a water play park, carefree children diving from a platform on a jetty, and holiday makers, although few of them apparently foreign visitors. There are also cars, expensive ones. And in the middle of this very small city, nice looking apartment buildings, smart hotels, era a pretty dark haired Albanian in her 40s is a tourist guide who wants to boast as much about the new Albania as explain about the archaeological site of Butrint that I plan to visit. Where once the second language in schools was Russian, now it is English and Ira speaks it enthusiastically. She also relishes the freedom to say what she wants without fear. They've just had an election Here. And Ira, whose name means echo, is very pleased with the result. Albania is making a big progress on the road of democracy now, she tells me. Before, if we would complain, we very soon would find ourselves in police station. A lot of things are changing here. She is old enough to know about the bad old days. When she was a girl, the youth of Albania were forced to work in the fields on Sundays in this area. They planted olives and oranges. Agriculture and fishing are still hugely important to the economy, but the average monthly wage is only just over £200. It does sound better in Albanian Lek, where it converts to 32,800 and the old age pension is less than half of that. People are helped by their children, says Ira, and also by the informal economy and by money sent home by the 4 million Albanians who live elsewhere. There are problems in this transition economy. There is building work everywhere. The infrastructure is far from adequate. There are cars but no car parks. There are limited consumer goods but no rubbish collection. There is fly tipping at every turn. There is only one airport named after the country's most famous native, Mother Teresa, but that's in the capital, Tirana. Six hours drive away if you're lucky. Most of the roads are frightful. None of this dents era's optimism. We hope new politicians will do better things for us in future. She believes the government can secure membership of the European Union and will assert the rule of law over the traditional culture of revenge, with which still holds sway in what she calls the backward North. This problem is a priority of the government, she tells me, along with nepotism, corruption and organised crime, it is also one reason why Albania has so far failed to join the European Union. But things are moving. And what's more, the new leader, Edi Rama, has a secret weapon. There are 13 year olds running around this country called Tuny Bluh in tribute to the former British Prime Minister's support in 1999 for the beleaguered Albanian population in neighbouring Kosovo. He is very popular here and he has offered to help the country towards EU membership. Somehow, however, I still suspect it will be a long time yet before Ira's optimism echoes through the corridors of Brussels.
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Julia Langdon in Sarande on the Albanian Riviera. The government of Tonga in the South Pacific earlier this month formally accepted a large gift from China. It was a turboprop aircraft for the kingdom's new domestic airline. The present was part of ongoing celebrations of the 15th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1998. But John Pickford just back from the archipelago once known as the Friendly Islands, says the gift of the plane has stirred up concerns in Tonga about China's growing presence in the country.
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The domestic airport in Tonga's capital Nuko Lofa was eerily quiet. The friendly cafe where three years ago I'd enjoyed the delicious locally grown coffee had gone and no sign of my plane. Waiting with me in the shade for something to happen was a young Chinese man in shorts and T shirt booked on the same flight, returning to his wife and grocery store on the island of Hapai. We started chatting and during our long wait I learned quite a bit about Johnny Wang. How he came to Tonga from Shanghai and his two young children live there with his mother in law. He sends remittances and visits them during Chinese New Year. How he's learned to speak Tongan. I watched him joking with the baggage handlers, become a Tongan citizen and enjoys his new life on Ha'. Apai. Very quiet, very peaceful, he says, and easier to make money than in China. We started talking Tongan airline politics. How the Chinese government's gift of a new passenger plane for interisland flights had prompted the New Zealand based company that had been providing a domestic air service to pull out, saying it couldn't compete with a subsidised airline. The Chinese manufactured MA60 aircraft had has been delivered, but no Western government has given it a safety certificate and New Zealand has suspended a multi million dollar aid package to Tonga's tourism industry until these air safety concerns are resolved. As the whale watching season gets underway on outlying islands like Ha' Apai and Wavao, the flight's fiasco is playing havoc with their tourist economy and it stirred up concerns among some Tongans that Chinese aid, generous, visible and impressive as it's been in recent years, can be a mixed blessing. Urban roads laid without proper drainage so nearby houses get flooded when it rains. Grandiose public buildings poorly adapted to a tropical oceanic climate that are costly to keep cool and maintain. Cabinet Minister Clive Edwards chose his words carefully. Some of the buildings they've put up, he told me, are a disappointment. I was sitting with him in his office in the Ministry of Justice. Including this one? I asked. He laughed, a deep, guttural Tongan laugh. On islands across the Pacific you'll find very visible evidence of Chinese big project aid. Sports stadiums and parliament buildings, government offices, police stations. There are three things the islands have which make them of growing interest to votes in the UN Fish and potentially mineral resources in Tong'.
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China's visibility is all the Greater. Because of the several thousand strong Chinese minority, there is a degree of tension between the two communities. From Tongans, you hear phrases like the Chinese are bad drivers and the Chinese are everywhere. What is not in doubt though, is the key role the Chinese play in the business sector. They are especially competitive in the family run grocery stores. The Fale koloas, as they are called. Large Tongan families work on the principle to each according to his need, from each according to his capacity. But as local shipping agent, fine, Tohe explained to me, you can't run a grocery store that way. If a relative can turn up and say, my uncle's died, there's going to be a feast, give us all the chicken in your shop. You're not going to stay in business long. The plane did finally get me to Ha', Pai and a day later I'm cycling across a causeway between two small islands. There's repair work going on and a Chinese foreman in charge. I hear an engine revving behind me and a delivery van rumbles past. I note how clean and new it looks compared with most vehicles you see in Tonga. It stops on the other side of the causeway and a head leans out of the front window and grins at me. It's Johnny Wang, my companion from the plane. I am delighted to see him. His pale, smiling face looks so exotic on that lush green atoll beside the clear blue sea. Then I remember I need some toothpaste and new batteries for my torch. And I realise that I am reassured by Mr. Wang's presence. I know he'll have what I want. 20 minutes later, I'm inside his shop. It's an emporium compared with the local competition. Tools, footballs, rice, tinned food, nappies. And if he's asked for something he hasn't got, he says he'll try to get it. As I cycled back with my toothpaste and batteries, I realised that whatever the future role of the Chinese state in Tong', e, the niche Mr. Wang is filling on Ha' Apai will be his to occupy for a long time.
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And that's it. John Pickford shopping in the friendly islands, bringing this edition to a close. There'll be more from correspondents in distant corners of the world next Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.