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The Globalist
Macron turns on the charm at the Africa Forward Summit as Paris eyes a regional reset
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UBS Narrator
Craft matters in small ways, like how a coffee is brewed, and in not so small ways, like how your money is cared for. Which is why for 160 years, UBS has elevated banking to a craft, tailoring unique strategies that combine human expertise with the latest technologies, all happening across 24 time zones and 12 key financial hubs. With you at the heart of it all, UBS advice is our craft.
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Chris Chermack
You're listening to the Globalist, first broadcast on 12 May 2026 on Monocle Radio. The Globalist in association with U. Live from London, this is the Globalist. I'm Chris Chermack. Coming up, I want to congratulate President
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Linda Lampenius
Macron for having the courage to recalibrate
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Steve Krawshaw
the relationship between Africa and France.
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Chris Chermack
Kenya's President Ruto welcomes France's Emmanuel Macron, who is on a charm offensive in Anglophone Africa. We'll have the latest from the French and African perspectives after that.
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Steve Krawshaw
I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will.
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Chris Chermack
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer defends his position amid Labour's local election losses last week. But will it sway the growing doubters within his own party? We'll also get the newspapers and we'll hear from the Philippines about the impeachment of the country's Vice president, Sarah Duterte for a second time. After that, we've got tourism news of fresh investments in Tanzania and South Africa. We'll hear urbanism news from Carlotta Rebelo. And finally, it is Eurovision week. And our continuing series of interviews checks in with Finland's hotly anticipated entry for the song contest. That's all up ahead here on the Globalist. Live from London. First, a look at what else is happening in the news. US President Donald Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on life support after rejecting a new counter proposal from Tehran to end the war as garbage. U.S. federal Reserve Chair nominee Kevin Warsh has cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate and is now expected to be confirmed by a full vote of the Senate later today. And the Cannes Film Festival kicks off today. Korean director Park Chan Wook leading an international jury that includes Demi Moore and Chloe Zhao. Well, stay tuned to Monocle Radio throughout the day for more on those stories. But first, it was at the start of last year that France officially ended its military presence in Africa's Sahel region amid a surge in military coups, unwelcome regimes and regimes fomenting France's own unpopularity in its former colonies. Well, now French President Emmanuel Macron is Shifting tack by hosting a summit with African nations in an English speaking country, Kenya, for the first time, the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi could also be named France Forward, given part of the goal is to build France's own image back in parts of the continent that have not been traditional allies. Well, I'm joined now from Johannesburg by Marissa Lourenceau, a political and economic risk analyst with a focus on southern Africa. And from Paris by Florence Biederman, former AFP news editor. Good to have you both on the show. Florence, let me start with you. What is Emmanuel Macron's goal here?
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Florence Biederman
Well, his goal, as you already said, actually it's to strengthen the political and economic links with Africa. France had a series of setback in its former colonies in West Africa. Its troop has been ousted of five countries that were fighting against Islamic insurgency. So the level of popularity is pretty low. And so the only hope, the only opening for France is to to try to regain some ground and to stay present politically and economically by courting English speaking Anglophone African countries. So the fact that this French African summit takes place in Nairobi is a first. I mean, those kind of grand meetings have been organized by France since the 1970s. And it's really a first and it's kind of a big change symbolically that it takes place in Anglophone Africa. So whether it will lead to a great presence of France because it has to face already like the presence of the UK of China. I mean, it's a daunting task to think you can put your foot in Anglophone Africa without the past that you had in the French colony.
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Chris Chermack
It is certainly a daunting task. Marissa, what are African leaders going to be looking to get out of this? Themselves around 30 or so attending. Are they open to this idea of Emmanuel Macron sort of boosting France's presence also in English speaking Africa?
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Marissa Lourenceau
From what I can see, there is broad openness, but I think that this is not an openness towards France specifically, but just an openness towards other foreign powers. I mean, we've seen African governments be very open to Gulf investment. China obviously has an entrenched presence. So I think that they're seeing France as one of many players. But I think that Macron has been quite strategic in how they've presented this conference. You know, it's not called the France Africa Summit officially. That's more the subheading. It's the Africa Forward Summit. And what it's doing is it's allowing African leaders to be on the world stage and look like they are united under the banner of Pan Africanism and that they're looking to tackle many of the region's issues and it looks like it's not being led by a European power. So I think politically this has been well received. But whether or not this actually leads to tangible results or France actually being able to make inroads on the continent, as it's been pointed out already, it's going to be competing with Gulf states, it's going to be competing with China. The EU has really, as a whole, as a bloc, has fallen behind on participation in Africa. It's also got to compete with the US in a much more aggressive Trump administration. So it's a tall order. But I think that this is the start of the reset that Macron is trying to achieve.
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Chris Chermack
And Marissa, just to stay with you on that, you talk about the other countries that are involved in Africa, but that these leaders are still open to investment. Is there a different approach that they are looking for compared to the UAE's, compared to the Chinas that they might welcome from France? Is that part of what this is as well?
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Marissa Lourenceau
I'm not sure necessarily that they see France as offering something different. I just think that they see France's eagerness and that they're looking to capitalize on that. I mean, Gulf investment is actually quite appealing to Africa because, you know, when France tries to come in with investment, it's not going to be as aggressive as the US under Trump. It's still going to follow, I think, the path that the EU has broadly taken, which is, which is to be very cautious. But what the EU is really struggling with is that it cannot compete with China, but it doesn't want to adopt anything like the China model. And like I said, I don't think it wants to adopt anything like the Trump model either. Why Gulf investment is so appealing is that it doesn't come with as many conditions and strings attached. And unfortunately, France is still going to have many of those strings attached. What Macron is trying to do though, though is he's moved away from the very, from the kind of security heavy model and he's talking about commercial partnerships and climate finance and tech. There's a partnership of equals language. I think that that will be well received. But again, whether translates well or whether it really, you know, when it comes down to bilateral discussions is welcomed by African presidents over other investment, I'm not so sure about that. We'll have to wait and see Florence
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Chris Chermack
to bring you back in on this. I mean, is this visit from Macron also a case of Going to places where France and Macro, Macron might still be popular. There aren't that many of those places left, particularly for Macron himself.
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Florence Biederman
I'm not sure about his popularity in Kenya, but if he comes and try to help. For example, he invited the Kenyan President, William Ruto, to the next G7 summit that takes place in France, in Evian, so to try to bolster African influence in the financial reward system where it is not unequal to others. So that's one very important point for African leaders. So that kind of action maybe will make him popular. But you know, he is still president for another year. Like that's his last African summit that his last month in power. So it also remains to be seen whether his or her successor will continue with this policy.
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Chris Chermack
Well, absolutely. And Florence, just to stay with you on that as well, given that this is Macron's last year, should we also see this a little bit as him focusing on foreign policy over a lot of the domestic troubles he has back home?
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Florence Biederman
Well, since he lost his majority after snap election in the Parliament, his role internally has really been, yes, very much reduced. And he has always enjoyed and been active on the international scene. And also he always had special interest for Africa. So I guess this is his last note, you know, on the continent. And that's why it's important for him
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Chris Chermack
and Marissa to bring you in from South Africa as well. One person who is not attending is South Africa's President Ramaphosa. Can you tell us why?
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Pete Parkonen
Sure.
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Marissa Lourenceau
So the main reason is really that there's a lot of domestic political issues at home and it would have not been a good look for Ramaphosa to be out of the country at this moment. But also because they are, there's obviously some very serious discussions happening, happening behind the scenes within his political party. So what happened is that our Constitutional Court ruled last week, Friday that parliament in South Africa could begin or there's grounds to begin an impeachment process into the President for a case dating back to 2020 when very many dollars were stolen from one of the President's farms and it was found that it was not reported properly and there was a cover up and the source of those funds has been called into question. So what happened was Ramaphosa came out and he addressed the nation and there had been a lot of speculation about whether or not he would resign. And he came out and announced that he would not be resigning. So I think it was very important that Ramaphosa was able to give this reassurance. He was able to give clarity to sort of end the speculation on how the next few months might look in politics. It was not really a good time for him to leave and not have those internal discussions. There perhaps has been some thought that relations between Macron and Ramaphosa are not good because, as we know, South Africa was disinvited to the G7, which we've just spoken about. Ruto was now invited to. This actually came from pressure from the Trump administration to not invite South Africa. But I don't think that this signals bad relations between the two. I think that for South Africa, this is very much a Trump problem. It's not something that has signaled bad ties with France. So it's very much down to domestic political issues which are now beginning to settle, at least.
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Chris Chermack
At least for now. Florence Peterman, journalist in Paris, and Marissa Lorenzo, risk analyst in Johannesburg. Thank you both for joining us. This is THE globalist. Well, here in the UK Yesterday saw Prime Minister Keir Starmer deliver a reset speech designed to prove to his own party that he has what it takes to continue leading them. Despite a heavy defeat in regional elections last week and municipal elections, still the vultures are circling. More MPs have called on the prime minister to step down. And the question does seem to be, at this point, more one of when Keir Starmer goes, rather than if I'm joined now from Manchester by Vincent McEvinney, journalist and monocle Radio regular politics commentator. Vinny we'll get to the significance of Manchester in a moment, but first of all, just tell us what Keir Starmer's message was yesterday.
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Vincent McEvinney
Well, Keir Salman needed to give the speech of his life. And he is a barrister, formerly very sort of senior and famous barrister. And so he's always comfortable on his feet speaking. But it felt a little bit like it didn't meet the moment. It felt like still an introductory speech. This is who I am. This is what I'm about. And this is someone who has been leading the Labour Party for the last six years. He's been prime minister for fewer than two years, though, now, and it still felt like it was thin on the ground. He sort of did announce some policies of renationalization of British steel, talked about sort of, you know, Europe and a closer relationship. But it didn't have the fight that I think Labour MPs in particular were hoping it would have had after such a kind of bruising defeat last week in a lot of local elections.
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Chris Chermack
And that lack of fight also led to more lawmakers yesterday calling for his resignation. We're up to what, about 70 now? But the Cabinet at least has backed him so far. There will be a meeting of the Cabinet later on today. Do you think at that point things could change?
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Vincent McEvinney
I think everything could change at the moment, the sort of 70 calling for him to go. I think some of them feel like he's not that much of an electoral asset, that even though he got that huge mandate, you know, this massive majority back in 2014, that it wasn't based on his popular person, you know, on his popularity. It was about the fact people were tired of Tory government after 14 years. They wanted a big change. It was less to do about him. But his backers would say this is a man that took them from the biggest defeat Labour had had since the Second World War under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 to that huge majority that he had to do a lot of work behind the scenes in the past, he fixing things after the Corbyn years. And it's the Corbynite faction, which is still maybe around sort of 30, 40 MPs, which are causing him problems at the moment. And a change of leadership now will actually do them more damage in the sort of public's mind, because people really hated how much the Tories changed leaders in their final years. So it's all in the balance. He's going to have to get his Cabinet really tight around him at this meeting. This isn't a sort of extraordinary meeting. This is their regular Tuesday meeting. There are whispers that, you know, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmoud, is saying he needs to make a plan to transition out. Once you do sort of, you know, making sounds like that, it does kind of set things on a path that can get away from you, as Tony Blair found in that transition to Gordon Brown. I think it will depend just how much kind of he can build back loyalty at Cabinet and outline a vision for how to, you know, maintain the majority that they've won at the next general election.
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Chris Chermack
Now, Vinnie, you are in Manchester, which of course has a lot of speculation around it right now in this moment. Just tell our international leg listeners who Andy Burnham is. This name that keeps popping up that many British sort of political observers will be very familiar with at this point.
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Vincent McEvinney
Yeah, I think there's. There's two things to say. There is who he is and there is where he is right now. So who he is, Andy Burnham, he is of the sort of spad generation, the same as the Miliband brothers, the same as Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, Ed Balls, the former Shadow Chancellor. They were all new labor spads in the early 1990s. They all became MPs, they all served in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. And then during the opposition years, Andy Burnham ran twice for Labour leader. He didn't run very well in those campaigns. He didn't become leader. And so he resigned as an MP a couple of years ago to come up here to Manchester and become mayor of this city. And he's well liked in this city. He's done quite an effective job at being mayor. But there are those in Parliament that think that that gives him the sort of bona fides to come down to London and to, you know, take over and be Prime Minister. The problem with that is Andy Burnham isn't an mp. You have to be an MP in order to be the Prime Minister. There was an attempt a few months ago for an MP for him to be allowed to run in the Gorton and Denton by election, which is one that the Greens went on to win. But Sir Keir Starmer and other members of the Labour Party blocked that. And that's being sort of criticized by some. But the fact is that Andy Burnham, although some Labour MPs like him and he does very well here in the Northwest, he isn't, as I said, that effective when it comes to national campaigning. He couldn't win the leadership twice. So. And at the moment he's just locked out from becoming it. So down in London, the two people you really need to watch are Angela Rayner, who was Keir Starmer's deputy Prime Minister, and Wes Treating, who's the Health Secretary. Angela Rainer is kind of locked in a difficult situation. She had to resign over a tax issue with a property deal that she did that's still being investigated. So she's effectively frozen from sort of running against him, despite what the Corbynites want, which is her to give it a real go. And that's why we saw sort of this back bench MP Catherine west, who no one had really heard of, coming out of the weekend, trying to really challenge Starmer. The big one to watch is West Streeting. He is, you know, a very skilled and talented communicator. He's done pretty effectively as the Health Secretary. And the sort of long held view in Westminster is he will run at some point, but he. Everyone thinks that he was waiting for the situation to arise rather than initiating it, rather than resigning and sort of trying to mount a leadership bid. But this could be, you know, this could be his moment because if he thinks, well, if I wait any longer. Andy Burnham might be able to get a seat as an MP somewhere and come down here and challenge me. He might think that there's a path, but I think he is still quite loyal to Keir Starmer and doesn't want to be seen to be ripping him from power because if he does, then get into the job. And it's incredibly difficult at the moment given the pressures. The UK was somewhat turning things around economically at the start of the year, but the Iran war has had a drastic impact. He might well think it's better to just wait a while and see what happens with Kir and prepare my sort of troops to mount a challenge when he goes.
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Chris Chermack
Vincent McEvin, politics commentator thank you very much for joining us on the show. Still to come in the program, Well, yesterday we heard from Greece, today we hear from Finland. The song you heard there in our countdown to the Eurovision Song Contest final this weekend. This is the globalist.
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UBS Narrator
Craft is a matter of perspective, a unique outlook, an obsessive attention to detail. With UBS's Chief Investment Office House View, we're focused on identifying the latest investment opportunities and market risks to help you achieve your financial goals. So you get the big picture broken down into thought provoking insights delivered daily and curated by over 200 globally connected, locally active analysts. UBS banking is our craft.
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Chris Chermack
Well, let's continue now with today's newspapers. Joining me in the studio is Steve Krawshaw, author, journalist and formerly Human Rights Watch UK director. Steve, good to have you here.
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Steve Krawshaw
Nice to be back.
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Chris Chermack
We have, well, a lot of somewhat depressing news to get through. First of all, we'll have some, some fun as well. But Donald Trump has commented, as I mentioned briefly in the headlines once again about the ceasefire in Iran. He now says it's on life support.
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Steve Krawshaw
Trump is impossible to deal with us both, all of us as citizens, let alone for politicians dealing with it around the world, isn't it?
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Vincent McEvinney
Exactly.
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Steve Krawshaw
He's done another bat flip. He said the wall had now come to an end and everything was sorted. And now sitting with a bunch of medical people behind him, he turns around and says, yeah, it's like you guys know, it's life support, massive life support and bail. Basically it's now all in danger because Iran is not doing what he was wanting. And it's quite troubling where what the US President is saying, it's difficult to take it seriously in either direction. You just hold your breath. What comes next? And unsurprisingly, we've again seen Iran kind of Trolling him, basically. And, you know, he's implied that they have no cards. They continually upset that, that cart as well. So that's what's going on there. And, yeah, very difficult to see ways out for it. It has been interesting that Nargis Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who's. Who's been jailed now let out briefly from hospital. Her heartbreaking words from inside her jail cell have been published in recent days. And her brother was interesting saying, like, this is making things worse for civil society, that all of this stuff, all of the attention goes on Trump's crazy stuff and not on getting some kind of rights appearing in Iran, which, of course, what the ordinary people of Iran are looking for.
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Chris Chermack
Can you tell us more about that, actually, Steve, while we have you here, because this is how the war even arguably started, at least Donald Trump suggesting that he was supporting efforts within Iran.
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Steve Krawshaw
There's a real sad irony there that, as I discovered myself when I was there a few years ago, I mean, the regime. But as we all know, the regime is hated. People so want that regime to end. They've risked and massively lost their lives over recent years, including, of course, especially in the past 12 months as well. And amongst ordinary Iranians, there was like, oh, this might be the end if there's something quick and swift. And of course, he, as you say briefly, he said, oh, we're going to end this regime, and et cetera. But actually, it quickly became clear he didn't remotely care about what ordinary Iranians wanted. He would then focus on the nuclear, and then, of course, he'll even switch from that, having had the hormones straight closed. He'll say, oh, we're just focused on getting the hormones straight open. Well, it was open before you started. So clearly he doesn't have any focus in any of the things he's doing, really. But it is sad that all of that, the backwash of that. It is yet again, the Iranian people who are suffering from.
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Chris Chermack
Absolutely. Well, let's move on to another conflict, frankly, but one that surprisingly may end, or at least Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, this weekend suggested that the war in Ukraine might be coming to an end. And he called for Gerhard Schroeder, of all people, the former German chancellor, to mediate. Tell us about this.
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Steve Krawshaw
He does have quite a nerve, this guy, doesn't he? I mean, between Putin and Trump, who's the guy with the greatest nerve on these things, as you say? So starting off with that. So the Guardian headline, EU rejects Putin's call for Kremlin ally Schroeder to restart the peace talks. Like, of course they're going to reject it. You have Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, who was completely in bed with Putin when he was in power, when he, Schroeder was like hosting birthday parties and things like that, but in the meantime has benefited millions and millions of of dollars, payments from the Russians for work that he was doing for big Russian companies. And Putin suggesting that Schroeder, who is now none of the European leaders, want to have anything to do with him. So he was put forward. So that clearly is not going anywhere. But in a sense that the story underlying that is really interesting. The Guardian has an accompanying piece called why Is Moscow Talking of End to War? And the short version is because it's not going very well, frankly. Again, Trump, who understands so little about everything, talked about Zelenskyy having no cards, but actually, it's pretty unclear what kind of cards Putin has. He hasn't moved things forward at all in the past four years. They seized a lot of territory, lost a lot of territory. And it's interesting, today's New York Times headline, the International New York Times, has as a very simple splash headline across the front page, russia's Advance Stalls Invading Forces Struggle to Make Big Gains in Ukraine When Drones are Everywhere. Drones, of course, has been the amazing secret source, if you like, of Ukraine, but not only the courage of Ukrainians, which I saw myself when I was writing my book on war crimes and justice in the last couple of years, they have shown extraordinary courage. And the Russians, finally, who have lost so many people, of course, as a result of this, are beginning to feel not just the small number who are protesting against Putin before, but a more general sense of dissatisfaction. It's not like a rebellion that's there in Russia, but we do already know that Putin himself is feeling very unsettled by where he is. So we don't know where things are going to go. Trump, unfortunately, clearly is not going to put pressure on Putin, but circumstances and the Ukrainians and I hope European governments are helping to create that pressure.
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Chris Chermack
Well, let's head back to the Middle East, Steve, because we also have this story from today that Israel is preparing to prosecute the first suspects from the October 7th attack that was led by Hamas.
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Steve Krawshaw
So this is an interesting story. So this is in the New York Times, and the parliament has just enacted a law which would make these trials possible. I was interested by this in different ways. Clearly, the crimes of October 7th were truly horrific, and those crimes should be prosecuted The ICC indicted a couple of the Hamas leaders who then themselves were killed. And theoretically this is the beginning of kind of due process. But actually it's not really. So it's a military tribunal, it's military tribunals. It kind of, in a sense there are parallels to Guantanamo in some way because the evidence is then polluted significantly by use of torture. So Israeli civil societies are quoted in the, in the New York Times piece are unhappy at the complete lack of process. People who've been held without charge for a long time and the evidence has been difficult to gather. But that's not just nicey nice civil society type saying, this is not good for those who've suffered if you don't have real justice. So on the one hand, it is good that something is happening. People aren't just locked up, there is something happening if they have committed the crimes. But of course, in the background to that, you have complete impunity, complete and utter impunity for crimes committed by Israelis and the Israel forces. And that's the big gap that we're waiting for. And again, when I was in Israel, west bank past couple of years, incredibly brave Israeli human rights lawyers, Israeli human rights NGOs who feel that that's what's needed as well. You've got tens of thousands of civilians who've died. We need to have some kind of acknowledgement of the crimes committed. But for the moment, there's absolutely no sign of that at all.
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Chris Chermack
Well, let's move on finally, Steve, to one other story. Not in the conflict regions of the world, but far at the end of the Earth. The Hole in the Ice at the End of the Earth is the title of this story.
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Steve Krawshaw
I love this story. It's a great thing. Again, this is another New York Times one, a long read in the New York Times, and it's kind of one of those rather beautiful poetic pieces. The end of the world in the geographical sense so often does have a poetic quality to it. So it's an expedition led by a South Korean scientist who, they've been working on it for years. And basically at heart, it's about how, and sadly, the world is also going to pieces in different ways. So it's a climate change story in some ways, but they are digging, drilling a hole into this huge glacier in order to try and find out basically how bad is the end going to be and when will it come. So this glacier, the Thwaites glaciers about the South Pole, is so huge that if and when it collapses, sea levels globally will rise by 15ft, which is a kind of pretty amazing statistic to get our heads around. So pretty apocalyptic, what they were doing with great, great difficulty and so on, those great kind of adventure stories of difficult weather, difficult this, difficult that. But was drilling the hole in the ice to find out exactly how thick things are and get a sense of predictions. But of course, it is just predictions. It doesn't actually stop any of the bad stuff happening. But it will. We will know, you know, which generation is it going to be. And it's not going to be that far away, unfortunately. So even that it is an inspiring story in terms of science, but the end point, not that inspiring, unfortunately.
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Chris Chermack
Inspiring for the science and perhaps put some of the conflicts of today into perspective. Steve krashaw, author, journalist thank you very much for joining us here with the Globalist on Monocle Radio. Now here's what else we're keeping an eye on today. US President Donald Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on life support after rejecting a new counter proposal from Tehran to end the war as garbage. Iran's foreign ministry defended its proposal as legitimate. The European Union has imposed new sanctions on seven Israeli settlers and settler organizations over violence in the West Bank. The bloc has also sanctioned several leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel condemned the sanctions and said its citizens had a right to settle in the West Bank. U.S. federal Reserve Chair nominee Kevin Warsh has cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate. Senate he's now expected to be confirmed by a full vote of the Senate later today. The Fed's current chair, Jerome Powell, who was heavily criticized by President Trump, ends his term on Friday. And the Cannes Film Festival kicks off today with the opening film, a world premiere of French director Pierre Salvadori's burlesque romantic comedy La Venus Electrique. Korean director Park Chan Wook leads an international jury that includes Demi Moore and Chloe Zhao. This is the Globalist. Stay tuned. Well, it is coming up on 1431 in Manila, 731 here in London. Now, yesterday, the Philippine House of Representatives voted to impeach the country's vice president, Sarah Duterte, for a second time. The case centers on allegations including misuse of public funds and threats, threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's family, and it could derail her expected 2028 presidential bid. Now, these two, once allies in the 2022 elections, the Marcos and Duterte camps are now locked in a bitter political rivalry, a sort of royalty, if one might call it that, in the Philippines. But I'm joined now by Richard Heydarian, academic and columnist for the Philippines Daily Inquirer Richard well, maybe royalty is the wrong word. These are sort of two major families, scions of Philippine politics. But tell us first of all, why Sarah Duterte herself has been impeached a second time.
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Richard Heydarian
Yeah, I think by that the vice president of the Philippines joins a very special club. I think President Trump could be also in that club of twice impeached high level officials. Of course, unlike in the United States, the only so the vice president of the Philippines are separately contested from the presidency. So it's seen as one of those top officials that could be impeached if indeed there is abuse of power. The difference this time is that the bank accounts were exposed. That didn't happen last year. And last year when Saluduterte was first impeached, the Philippine Supreme Court eventually came in and made new sets of rules that made it very difficult for the Senate. Similar to the United States, the Congress can forward the articles of impeachment, but it's the Senate that's going to conduct the trial. That time the trial did not happen at all. This time an overwhelming majority, 255 Filipino congressmen out of just over 300 forwarded these articles of impeachment. And this time the bank accounts were exposed, in addition to other charges against the vice president. And when it comes to bank accounts, of course we're talking about billions of pluses of very suspicious transactions that went through the bank accounts of the vice President, which seems to have been the decisive factor that drove many Filipino congressmen to once again support an impeachment trial. But this is the Philippines. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Just as the Congress was mustering this massive tsunami of numbers for yet another impeachment, there was a Senate coup whereby now the supporters of Vice President Cyrus III have taken over the Senate. It and it looks like these people are going to come up with all sorts of different schemes to either avoid the trial or water down the trial.
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Chris Chermack
Just tell us more about that. So Duterte's camp is now controlling the Senate, if you will. The Marcos camp obviously has the presidency. Tell us about this dynamic between these two massive camps. They were allied for a little bit. How has it broken down so completely and dramatically?
- [34:39]
Richard Heydarian
Yeah, I mean usually people use kind of a Game of Thrones kind of metaphors to make sense of the dynastic politics in the Philippines. I'll be a little bit more zoological. You know, the Philippines dynastic fights is more like a zoo without a fence. Right. So basically there are no rules here and all sorts of different predatory Political entities here have been fighting it out and duking it out. So the Philippine Senate there, it's really going to be a numbers game. I mean first of all, which block is in control? And that bloc has been very fluid. And as I said just over the past 24 hours, the Pro Duterte bloc was able to muster the majority to take over even more dramatically, one of the chief lieutenants of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been taken to the International Criminal Court for mass atrocities. Senator Bataderosa, the former police chief who was in hiding more or less because he knew that there was a warrant of arrest for him since last year, November. I knew about this warrant affairs. I'm sure he has better intelligence sources than me for quite some months. He suddenly showed up out of nowhere in order to cast a vote to make sure that there's a change of leadership in the Senate. That's how dramatic things are. And as we speak there's a kind of a hunkering down, there's kind of a bunker mode in the Senate protecting this ICC wanted senator from the police forces, thousands of them, them trying to take him to the ICC under the ages of Inderpal. Now having said that, I think the reality here is that this is going to be a points game. I doubt that you're going to get the 16 out of 24 senators, that super majority that is needed to evict to impeach the Vice President. But if there's indeed a proper trial and those money accounts, those suspicious transactions will once again come out, what's going to happen here, as you correctly pointed out, is political setback for the Vice President. For a long time the narrative was that she's the inevitable next President. Her lead in all pre election service was so overwhelming that many senators were even scared to conduct a trial against her. Guess what, that's now changing some of the potential other potential candidates, whether it's one senator like Senator Rafi Tulfo or former Vice President, a progressive Vice President and current Mayor Leonard Robredo. Though they're all neck and neck against the Vice President in some of the head to head races for 2020. So this is potentially gonna be more political points game than a knockout nonetheless.
- [37:05]
Chris Chermack
Just quickly, Richard, I mean you were referring to President Donald Trump twice impeached criminal convictions rather also not preventing him from becoming President a second time. So is there still an expectation in the Philippines as well that Sarah Duterte might prevail in the 2028 election?
- [37:26]
Richard Heydarian
Yeah, I mean that's why no one is holding their breath that there will be kind of a denouement anytime soon. I think the drama in the Philippines, the Netflix style drama, is going to go there for a while and perhaps we have to claim our, let's just say colorful politics on the fact that the Philippines is a former American colony. So I think the, the fruit doesn't fall too far from the tree.
- [37:48]
Chris Chermack
Taking a page out of the American book. Richard Heydarrian from the Philippines, thank you very much for joining us here with Monocle Radio. Well, it is 9:37 in Alexandria, 8:37 in Zurich. Now, attracting tourism to a country is about natural beauty and sights, but it's also about investment, sort of the first step, if you will, to build the hotels and infrastructure that can support the influx of visitors to your country. And according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, Tanzania and South Africa are the countries in Africa attracting more investment than any other at the moment. Well, I'm joined now by Paul Charles, founder and CEO of the PC Agency. Paul, great to have you on the show. Before we even get to this report, I did want to start with with the rather challenging time we have for tourism with of course, the Gulf War as we've been talking about on this show, hantavirus as well. You were at the event where this news of investment was announced aboard a cruise ship. I mean, how has all of this impacted the mood of the industry?
- [39:00]
Paul Charles
It's a fascinating time, Chris, at the moment because the the industry is rather split. You obviously have in the Middle east, the hub hope that the conflict will end very soon, enabling millions of people to come back to the region. But in the rest of the world, you have a very positive outlook towards more jobs in the sector being created as well as growth going beyond wider economic growth. So there's very much the expectation that travel and tourism this year will contribute far more than expected and grow far faster than wider economic growth, outpacing it by one and a half times over the next few years. So there's a lot more optimism, I would say, in some parts of the world than you might think.
- [39:47]
Chris Chermack
Well, and to that point, positive outlook with people looking for new places perhaps to go. Is that how we bring Tanzania and South Africa into this?
- [39:57]
Paul Charles
Yes, I think that more widely around the world there are pockets which perhaps are doing unexpectedly well or it's rather surprising, amazing that they're doing better than expected. And certainly this WTTC report points out that Tanzania especially as well as South Africa, but in particular Tanzania is recording very high levels of tourism investment. The Money coming in is substantially more than expected as investor confidence grows in East Africa. And that's for a number of reasons. Reasons I think primarily investment in infrastructure. And that's the thing that does build inflow of investment. It's are you expanding your airports, are you building more roads, are you improving the quality of communications infrastructure? All of these are areas which, aside from the beauty you talk about and the natural scenery that perhaps Tanzania is known for, are really important to inward investors these days.
- [41:01]
Chris Chermack
And can you tell us more about what is in Tanzania then? At what point were they starting this process? How much investment is needed for Tanzania to become a major tourist destination?
- [41:13]
Paul Charles
Well, there's enormous competition in the region, obviously with Kenya, which traditionally has attracted the lion's share, no pun intended, of inward investment investment. And I think that Tanzania has done very different things because it's realized it has to leapfrog what traditionally Kenya has done in terms of that investment in infrastructure, for example. But Tanzania has attracted billions more over the last year because it has streamlined various processes that on the face of it may sound pretty simple, but for many countries it's still very complex and difficult. For example, they've streamlined their visa system, their processing of visas, so it's much easier for travelers from Europe and Asia to get into Tanzania. Now, that may sound very simple, but it's a complex process to change those processes. And time and time again, countries which have made visa processing easier do get more in inward investment as well as more visitors. And then it's things like, like public private sector partnerships, making sure that there's strong leadership out of government and working with the private sector to upgrade infrastructure in key tourism areas, for example. So these are areas that do make a destination power ahead much faster than others.
- [42:39]
Chris Chermack
So that's the government side and what they're doing to attract the investment. Tell us now about the kind of investment that say Tanzania is seeing. What sort of hospitality and travel options are we seeing being built?
- [42:53]
Paul Charles
The big area that's seen huge growth is obviously from the private sector in terms of hotels and lodges being built. There's been a string of international hotel chains as well as eco lodges that have emerged, obviously adhering to sustainability standards and high eco standards. And that's what, what's driven a lot of the inward investment, these hotels and lodges emerging to, especially in the Serengeti, to attract more visitors into the area. So the government's obviously encouraged that. And when you bring more accommodation into a destination, you need more airlift as well, you need more seats to bring people in. So there have been very strong efforts by the Tanzanian government to open up direct flights, for example, into Dar, Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro to enable those visitors to come in and try those new hotels and lodges. So it's a cycle. Each of them needs each other. You need greater airlift when you have greater accommodation, they have to help each other. And you need strong government leadership to encourage that private sector to work together.
- [44:03]
Chris Chermack
And Paul, we just have about 30 seconds, but maybe quickly mention South Africa as well, a destination that is more well known but nonetheless also seen seeing an influx of investment.
- [44:14]
Paul Charles
Yes, I mean, South Africa obviously has suffered recently from well known energy problems and power outages, which have put off both local investment and inward investment. But it now seems to be getting through that period. It has upgraded energy infrastructure in many cases. It obviously makes 60 to 70% of its GDP from tourism. And the future looks much more positive for South Africa. And I think it will be a major contributor to travel and tourism growth in 2026.
- [44:48]
Chris Chermack
Paul Charles of the PC agency, thank you very much for joining us. This is the globalist on Monocle Radio.
- [44:58]
UBS Narrator
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- [45:35]
Chris Chermack
Well, it's time now for an urbanism news roundup. And for that I am joined by Monocle's senior foreign correspondent, Carlotta Rebelo. Carlotta, good morning. To Rotterdam, I understand.
- [45:45]
Carlotta Rebelo
Good morning, Chris. Yes, I'm joining you today from Rotterdam, a city that, as you know, has quite a few interesting urbanism projects. So I'm here to check out a few of the new ones.
- [45:55]
Chris Chermack
Well, excellent. Good luck to that for you. We wanted to start, though, with something else happening more further east of you. There are 10 U.S. mayors that have joined a Pact of Free cities.
- [46:07]
Carlotta Rebelo
Yes, Chris, so you might remember the Pact of Free Cities, which came up a few years ago. And this was done by the mayors of Bratislava, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw to resist authoritarian governance and what they call democratic backsliding. Now, this network, when it first appeared, was to try indeed to show the importance of cities and local authorities in upholding these values. And now the pact has expanded. You know, in 2021 it was extended by around 20 new members. So from those original four back in 2019, it now has a total of 39 signatories, but from today onwards, 10 more. And yes, 10 US mayors will be joining the pact. Until now, only Los Angeles May was part of the alliance, but now we'll have the mayors of cities like Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, to name just a few.
- [47:09]
Chris Chermack
So just tell us what the significance is of this. I guess the fact that 10 US mayors are joining, are we meant to see this as them sort of, I don't know, seeking asylum in the East?
- [47:21]
Carlotta Rebelo
Well, so this network is what they describe as a democratic solidarity network. So it's about mayors leaning in on each other because very few people know about the challenges that mayors face. And it's almost like a support group. And what we can make of these American mayors joining is really this increasing national pressure that they're feeling and the shifts that have been happening, as we know, in American cities, you know, the need to defend local autonomy and some of the democratic institutions. You'll remember the news about, you know, cities in the US that they're just to be sanctuary cities amidst the issues with immigration in the country and the pressures that they face from federal government. So that's just one of the examples where this network, this alliance, this support from their peers can come in handy. And at the end of the day, you know, shared challenges lead to shared solutions.
- [48:19]
Chris Chermack
Well, Carlotta, let's move on to a train story. We love a good train story here on Monaco. And this one particularly excited about. From Switzerland to London, there should be direct train services.
- [48:31]
Carlotta Rebelo
I know, and I thought you'd love this one, Chris. I picked this one just for you. But, yes, we know that the increasing challenges to try to get away from the monopoly of just Eurostar in London keeps coming up. And every, almost every year, there's stories of new lines. Well, this one involves Eurostar and SBB in Switzerland and also SNCF in France. And this is to directly connect Switzerland to London. Now, what I found so interesting is that they obviously want to capitalize on the fact that more than 4 million passengers per year fly between the two nations, between the UK and Switzerland, and that this train connection could really help not only boost that, but shift a lot of that air traffic towards rail. They were saying that initial studies have found that these direct rail connections could offer travel times from London to Zurich in six hours and five hours if you're coming from Basel. So this could really change the way the way people travel between the two. Now the memorandum of understanding has been signed between the three operators, and hopefully we'll start seeing some moves soon.
- [49:46]
Chris Chermack
We look Forward to that. And, Carlotta, something else that you brought us as well. Lime is launching parking wardens in San Francisco. They want to reward courteous parking and riding. Tell us what that is.
- [49:58]
Carlotta Rebelo
I wonder if there's other cities where this could be implemented, Chris, because as you know, not just with Lime, but with all of these shared bike schemes, the issue often is that they become amazed and paved. You try to cross the street, you try to, you know, walk around with a pram or with a wheelchair, and you are found with all these obstacles in the way. And you might remember the. The stories of not just not very far from here in Amsterdam, the canal full of lime bikes as well. So this is a really great idea that they want to launch in San Francisco to try to, you know, educate riders, as they put it. I think that's a very diplomatic way of, say, saying it, and also to encourage some safe riding behavior. Now, this issue might sound like a bit of a joke, this idea of sidewalk pollution in the sense of bikes scattered around, but it really has been one of the big points of contention when Lime wants to launch these schemes in different cities. That tends to be the issue that neighborhoods raise and that local authorities raise. So if this can go a step into changing that, I think they might be onto something here.
- [51:09]
Chris Chermack
Well, good luck to them improving the behavior of those who use Lime bikes. Carlotta, just very quickly, before you go, you're at the World Urban Forum next week in Baku. We'll hear from you there.
- [51:19]
Carlotta Rebelo
Absolutely. I'll be in Baku all week. A very exciting 13th edition of the World Urban Forum organized by UN Habitat, the agency by the United nations for housing. As we know, one of the most pressing issues that cities are facing. And they've released the numbers. 30,000 people are registered to attend. So I think it's going to be a great one.
- [51:39]
Chris Chermack
Chris, Carlotta, Rebelo, Monocle's senior foreign correspondent. We look forward to hearing from you then. Thank you. This is the Globalist on Monocle Radio. And finally on today's show, it is Eurovision week and our official correspondent, Fernando Augusto Pacheco has been busy interviewing some of the contestants. Here he speaks with Linda Lampenius and Pete Parkonen, representing Finland with a song that mixes classical music and pop. It is the current favorite to win the contest this year. Fernando starts by asking how the two musicians from different musical backgrounds met for the first time.
- [52:43]
Pete Parkonen
We actually didn't know each other before, and I have been playing classical music for the last few years. Only classical. Then I signed with a record company with Universal for pop music and started doing pop songs with different writers. And then we decided that I would go to umk, try to get in there, and we started writing songs.
- [53:03]
Marissa Lourenceau
And then.
- [53:04]
Pete Parkonen
Then this one song came up in the studio, the first version of it, and it absolutely needed a male singer because the story is about this, the man and the woman. And I have not lived in finland since spring 97, so I knew very little about the pop scene in Finland. And for a few months I had been Googling and I had been listening to Spotify for Finnish pop singers and rock singers and. And I had made lists like the best male singers and the best female singers in my mind. Then when in the studio, I said, oh, we totally need Peter Parkone for this one. And then the producer, he said, oh, I know him so well. You know, he's my good friend and we work together. I can call him. And I was like, okay, no, don't call him. He will not do anything with me. You know, I'm a classical violinist. You know, he's like this cool, cool, cool pop rock singer. But then you can.
- [54:02]
Chris Chermack
Yeah, tell the rest.
- [54:04]
Linda Lampenius
And Auntie Reezy called me and. And asked if I'm. If I would like to make a song with Linda. And I was like, well, how about tomorrow? And actually, actually all five of us got time into our schedule. We went to see next, very next day and started to do this song. And I was 10 to. Or not. I mean, two weeks that the song was almost ready and felt like, meant to be.
- [54:51]
L
Was it a challenge making this song? Because, of course, you know, Linda, you're playing, you know, the violin. We're having a lot of pop elements to that song as well. I think it's, you know, the. The match. I'm sure, you know, when I say challenging, it's difficult, but in the end, it was a fantastic pop song. Right?
- [55:09]
Linda Lampenius
Yeah. I don't know if it's.
- [55:10]
Steve Krawshaw
It's.
- [55:11]
Chris Chermack
It was.
- [55:11]
Pete Parkonen
It didn't feel like challenging. It was more like very. Gave us more ideas. It gave us more ways to go, you know, because I could put. Put a lot of, like, string parts underneath that go more like, in a classical way. And they add to the song so much more. Like there are so many dimensions in the song. And I have worked quite a lot with this earlier in my life, combining classical elements to pop and rock back in the 90s and beginning of 2000. So it was not like a new thing for me. But I hadn't been doing it now for a few years, and it felt very natural. Yeah, we never.
- [55:51]
Linda Lampenius
Yeah, it was like 4, 5 pros in our own estates in this room. So everyone just gave their own. I gave my pop rock and you gave your pop classical scene and the producer gave this. And so it was kind of like very natural how. That's why it went. Of course, there was a lot of work.
- [56:11]
Steve Krawshaw
Indeed.
- [56:12]
Pete Parkonen
And different versions.
- [56:13]
Steve Krawshaw
Yeah.
- [56:13]
Pete Parkonen
We tried different rocks. Oh, my God.
- [56:17]
Linda Lampenius
In all the points. But it didn't feel hard. But it was a lot of work in two weeks, which. Which felt was super interesting. We were like digging and digging where we can get. And now we're here.
- [56:29]
Marissa Lourenceau
Yeah.
- [56:30]
L
And you started the rehearsals. I know you know a lot of people. We've seen the clips, you know, the. The live violin.
- [56:36]
Steve Krawshaw
You know, how.
- [56:37]
L
How does it feel? I mean, we're about a week and a few days to go. How was the rehearsals?
- [56:44]
Linda Lampenius
It's amazing.
- [56:45]
Marissa Lourenceau
Good.
- [56:45]
Pete Parkonen
And it was like, for probably all of us, the second time, when the second day of rehearsals was of course better than the first one, because then you see all the things that you might want to change and you feel like, oh, this and this thing. Maybe we should do a little bit different. Or the lighting. Yeah. Now the light is a little bit too cold or something too warm. It's too light or dark and stuff like that.
- [57:14]
Carlotta Rebelo
More.
- [57:14]
Pete Parkonen
Yeah. With the list, how you listen to your. With the microphones and everything and. Yeah. So you. It's a lot of work, actually, during those rehearsal days.
- [57:24]
Linda Lampenius
Yeah. And it's as someone. Some guy said at the airport after he took a photo with us, that. And he said, like, how. How it feels to be the biggest TV show in the world. So they kind of like, oh, yeah, that. That now we are actually doing it so we can see how detailed it is that we've been practiced. This song. Eight months. This show. Eight months. So it actually is made for the biggest TV show in the world. So it's. It's very nice to go very deep in it and make it best as we can.
- [57:57]
Florence Biederman
Ye.
- [58:03]
L
Be la.
- [58:37]
Chris Chermack
Well, thank you to Linda and Pete, Finland's Eurovision entry there. Good luck on the song contest this year. For more Eurovision content, stay tuned for today's briefing as well. We'll have the Swedish entry there. That's all for today's program, though, thanks to our producers, Angelica Jobson in London, Laura Kramer, Desiree Bandley in Zurich, Ryuma Takahashi in Tokyo, also our researcher Josefina Gomez, and our studio manager, Lily Austin, with editing assistance by Steph Changu. After the headlines, there is more music on the way. And the briefing is live at midday in London. I'll be your host for that. The Globalist returns at the same time tomorrow. I'm Chris Chermack. Thanks for listening.
- [59:41]
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With ubs, you have a truly global partner incorporating new technologies, innovative approaches and unexpected opportunities, leading you to insights that help answer the questions that matter. Delivered with passion, care and unmatched expertise. Because it's about rising with the dawn each day, knowing that we can do even better. That's what banking is to us. Not just work, but a craft. UBS advice is our craft.