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FROM ARAB SPRING oustings to sex scandal fallouts, 2011 certainly was a year of high profile resignations.
Political leaders, media names and banking personnel were all doomed, putting their own heads on the chopping block over the global economic crisis and various controversies.
Others, sadly were undone because of health reasons, natural disasters and national tragedies.
The resignation and flight of Tunisia’s president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January after mass protests kicked off the greatest period of civilian unrest ever seen in the Middle East and North Africa.
Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was the second leader ousted during the Arab Spring. The beleaguered president eventually admitted defeat on 11 February after 18 days of intense protests.
A party at Tahrir Square ensued:
(Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish)
From March, a host of high-ranking Libyan officials defected and fled to neighbouring countries as Muammar Gaddafi lost his once-firm grip on his people. The defections eventually led to the disintegration of the strongman’s power and the end of his regime.
As the Fianna Fáil-led coalition Government came under fire for its handling of the economic crisis and IMF/EU bailout, An Taoiseach Brian Cowen was lambasted for trying to appoint a new members to Cabinet after six ministerial resignations.
Mary Harney, Noel Dempsey, Dermot Ahern, Tony Killeen, Batt O’Keeffe all tendered their resignations in the third week of January as none of them intended to run for office again. Micheál Martin stepped down as Minister for Foreign Affairs after Fianna Fáil voted to retain Cowen as leader on 18 January.
The pressure eventually became too much for Brian Cowen and he stepped down as the leader of Fianna Fáil on 22 January. However, he remained in office as Taoiseach. He said he was leaving the post so the party could contest the General Election “free from internal distraction”.
Here is that announcement in full:
He survived sex scandals, corruption allegations and political gaffes but Silvio Berlusconi eventually succumbed to the economic crisis. On 12 November the media mogul stepped down as Prime Minister of Italy over fears that he could not steer the country from the brink of a bailout.
Celebrations – and a chorus of Hallelujah – were heard outside the Presidential Palace as thousands of Italians took to the streets following the announcement.
Gregorio Borgia/AP/Press Association Images
After weeks of wrangling with the Opposition, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou resigned from his post on 7 November after leaders agreed on a national unity government to guide the country through its second bailout.
Jürgen Stark, one of the top officials at the European Central Bank, quit his post on 10 September “for personal reasons”. Analysts suggested that his departure was linked to policy disagreements as the announcement came amid controversy over a risky programme to buy government bonds in the open market.
Portugal’s embattled Prime Minister Jose Socrates resigned on 24 March after the Opposition overwhelmingly defeated his last-ditch austerity budget. Just two weeks later, the country’s finance minister admitted that emergency financial aid would be needed.
Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the now-defunct News of the World, resigned from her post as chief executive of News International on 15 July over the phone-hacking scandal which engulfed the 168- year-old newspaper, the Metropolitan Police and the British political establishment.
CEO of Dow Jones (which publishes the Wall Street Journal) and Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man Les Hinton followed with his resignation on 16 July. The 67-year-old oversaw News Corp’s British newspapers between 1995 and 2007 – the time of the alleged hacking.
The snowballing scandal also saw the resignation of two high-profile police commissioners. Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, stepped down on 17 July after allegations of inappropriate “cosiness” between London’s police force and the media.
Just 24 hours later, assistant commissioner John Yates became the controversy’s next scalp as it emerged that he had checked the credentials of Neil Wallis, a former News International executive editor who was hired by the Met Police in 2009 and was later arrested in connection with phone hacking.
He was never a household name outside of Queens, New York but congressman Anthony Weiner shot to notoriety this year when he accidentally posted images of his genitals to his Twitter account. It eventually emerged that he had engaged in several inappropriate and explicit conversations with women over social networking sites.
In a shocking (and tearful) press conference he said he was not resigning but eventually he succumbed to the pressure on 16 June, ending any ambitions of becoming the next Mayor of New York City.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn‘s ambitions to become the next President of France were also wiped out this year as he was forced to resign as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund on 19 May amid allegations of sexual assault and attempted rape. Although the charges were completely dropped by the NYPD, more details of the French politician’s sexual past emerged in the aftermath of the scandal.
Dean of St Pauls Graeme Knowles resigned on 31 October over Occupy LSX protests that spilled across the historic church’s grounds in London. He said his position was “untenable” as criticism of the cathedral mounted. Two other clergy members resigned as they disagreed with how the protests were handled by the church.
Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff has lost six ministers this year with at least five facing allegations of corruption. As the country is hosting the football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, the most notable exit was that of Sports Minister Orlando Silva on 27 October.
Norwegian Justice Minister Knut Storberget resigned on 11 November over the police force’s handling of the massacre of 69 people on the lake island of Utoya earlier in the year. Emergency services faced criticism for their slow response time on 24 July.
Labour TD Willie Penrose resigned as Minister of State for Housing and Planning on 15 November over the closure of a military barracks in his constituency. He said he could not stand over a decision that was not backed up by facts and figures.
In our poll, 53 per cent of readers who voted believed the Midlands politician was wrong to resign.
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan stepped down on 26 August after his approval ratings plummeted over the government’s handling of the tsunami disaster and nuclear crisis. His 15-month tenure did not end on purely sour note, with his staff presenting him with a bouquet of flowers before he left office:
Eamon Dunphy quit his presenting job on Newstalk radio on the 29 October, stating the atmosphere at the station was "inhospitable" for journalists. The manner of his resignation kicked off an ongoing spat between himself and media magnate Denis O'Brien.
Here are Dunphy's last words on press freedom and Sam Smyth's sacking from TodayFM ahead of his own resignation:
(Uploaded by NattyNatful)
Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin resigned on 26 September after the country's president Dmitry Medvedev told him to. The order came after the pair had a public disagreement on economic policy.
In some necessary political manoeuvring Bini Smaghi left his post on the board of the European Central Bank on 24 June to ensure his fellow countryman Mario Draghi could take over as president.
UBS chief executive Oswald Gruebel fell on his sword on 24 September over an "unauthorised trading incident" by rogue trader Kweku Adoboli which could cost the Swiss bank up to US$2.3 billion.
Following the Green Party's dismal performance in this year's General Election, John Gormley resigned as leader on 20 March.
On 20 January, Google announced a reshuffle which would see Eric Schmidt stand down as CEO to become executive chairman and co-founder Larry Page take over as chief executive.
A major change at the Irish Times saw Geraldine Kennedy stepping down from the top job on 24 June.
On 25 August, Steve Jobs officially resigned as CEO of Apple. Battling cancer, the ingenious tech leader had been on a leave of absence since January.
In a statement published online, Jobs said:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."
The Bishop of Derry Dr Séamus Hegarty tendered his resignation given to the Vatican on 7 November, citing health reasons. In a statement he said he was recently diagnosed with a "irreversible and progressive" condition.
Ebola, Isis beheadings, planes going missing or being shot down, hundreds of lives being lost for countless of underhand reasons both in this country and overseas. I think I’ll build an ark
All steaming from the spineless chickensh*t sitting in the Oval Office.
Blaming Obama for Ebola?!
No everything other than Ebola. Worst President in History. At least Bush had some cojones.
You said everything. You lied, just like Obama!
Seriously Darryl, Bush has balls??? Tiny little shrew balls maybe, at a stretch….
Balls? I have balls! Now watch this drive.
Sean
It will contravene EU health & safety regulations, never be allowed.
I think I might book a ticket on your ark, Sean!
2 of everything. Except of course the political species
Guide to Treating and Preventing Ebola…
http://www.arhf.nl/docs/Amma4Africa_Ebola_Manual_Aug_2014_en.pdf
Maybe if he had been treated the FIRST time he presented at the hospital with symptoms he may have had a better chance.
RIP.
And obviously RIP to the thousands of African citizens who have met their fate with this terrible disease…. lest anyone think i am concerned only with westerners.
I doubt anyone cares what Mary Carey cares about.
Jesse Jackson would turn up to the opening of an envelope
You mean African American envelopes
Start restriction air travel between infected countries and European countries only way to controll the situation ! You don’t need to be in government to realise what the best solutions are
Ireland has no air travel to or from Africa. The recent epidemiological studies show France has a 75% chance of Ebola spreading there, UK 50%, Ireland it’s 5% because of that lack of indirect flights. The US has already started exit and entry screenings by ICE border guards.
We can’t terminate air travel or sea travel to the countries because their economies would collapse without trade and aid, followed my political collapse, and the virus spreading exponentially. Stopping casual travels with non-essential business is just a band aid really. There are 600 people from Africa flying into the UK every day and most of that is NOT casual stuff it’s business, trade or aid related. Even shutting off nonessential travel there is still thousands of people moving back and forth.
The best way to be ready is to have entry and exit screening and have proper protocols in place for hospitals and isolation, and we have already got that set up. We’ve had a National Pandemic Plan for years, we have stockpiles of adult and pediatric preparations of all the antivirual drugs and stockpiles of protective suits.
Locking down an entire country is not possible.Look at the US border with Mexico for example.Do you honestly think that this guy wouldnt have gone to a neighboring country and caught a flight from there.Short of stopping all flights from Africa landing it’s not possible.The best that can be done is to try and detect it at the airport.
Ryan,that actually makes it worse. Because if someone is coming to Ireland from West Africa they have to take at least two flights and come in contact with a lot of people. Someone in an earlier article said it’s relatively easy to retrace the steps of someone who is infectious, but this assumes that the person has perfect recall of all those he/she has met over the past number of days and that they have no reason to hide details of their journey.
This is the link to an article I read in the Guardian today. It’s worth reading in its entirety:
http:// http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak
“Peter Piot was a researcher at a lab in Antwerp when a pilot brought him a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had fallen mysteriously ill in Zaire
‘In 1976 I discovered Ebola – now I fear an unimaginable tragedy’
‘In large cities – particularly in chaotic slums – it is virtually impossible to find those who had contact with patients, no matter how great the effort. That is why I am so worried about Nigeria as well. The country is home to mega-cities like Lagos and Port Harcourt, and if the Ebola virus lodges there and begins to spread, it would be an unimaginable catastrophe.’ ”
I agree with you Ryan that we should have rigorous screening of people coming in to the country, and not just those whose point of origin in West Africa.
Apologies for the length of this comment.
I’m not saying we should not take major precautions. I actually wish the govt would let the emergency managers do more, I’d terminate all travel to and from the region indirectly to Ireland, since it would leave no real footprint on them economically for us cos were so small, I’d ask the HSE and OEP to come up with an Ebola specific pandemic plan, I’d distribute the protective gear from the warehouses to the hospital basements so it’s ready to hand.
It’s easy to retrace someones steps through contact tracing if you know what major waypoints they’ve hit, they might not remember every single person they touched against but if you know they were at the airport you can run through the CCTV, its harder with pandemic flu but with Ebola they have to exchange body fluids and you do remember who you did that with, if someone bleeds or pukes on you you will remember it.
I’m not trying to say it’s not a threat, it’s a MAJOR threat, I’m just trying to keep the threat in proportion. The odds are 5percent of it getting here, that is TINY. People who shared a lift with the Spanish nurse were panicking in Spain, people in the UK were canceling school visits by a guest speaker from Africa because they were Afraid she might infect their kids, the hysteria is getting really out of hand and someone needs to be keeping the threat in proportion to counter all the people posting hype and conspiracy theories.
Hi Ryan. I’d hazard a guess that way more then 600 people from Africa fly into the UK every day. Maybe you meant 6000? There are several flights a day from Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, on at least 3 airlines (BA, SAA, Virgin)….there is a daily flight from Harare, and Windhoek and more than one a day from Nairobi and Mombasa…regular flights from most countries every day…most of these long haul flights….I know that Ebola isn’t present in any of the places I mentioned but just felt it necessary to correct the 600 number. Thanks
Hi again Ryan…whereas Ireland would be in a very good position to treat any Ebola patient in isolation it isnt true that we have stockpiles of adult and pediatric preparations of all the antivirual drugs, one antiviral drug absent from the stockpile is a drug specific to Ebola. Thanks for your comments.
Hi Daniel – Just to correct you, mayybe you didn’t know that there are already restrictions in place which are working……most airlines that had flewn to the affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) stopped flying months ago…eg British Airways which extended the flight ban and cancelled all flights/bookings up to January 2015. …..in addition all departing (and arriving) passengers are screened at all airports in the countries affected (for the flights that still operate) …. also this is screening is happening in neighbouring countries where there is no infection (eg Accra, Abidjan)….The Ivory Coast closed it’s borders and closed all air and sea links with affected countries.
God help us when this hits Ireland.
Yeah. VPN in from home. Nobody needs to visit me, don’t even ring me. Texting could be dangerous too!! Whatsapp me ok?
Time to start buy your P100 compatible face masks before the panic.
It’s probably not going to hit Ireland Peter, the odds of it getting here are 5%. 80percent of the infections in Africa are a result of death rituals that are not practiced in the west, the other 20percent is the poor hospital set up and lack of proper containment protocols and finally the belief in conspiracy theories that WHO are spreading ebola or it’s not real, you have things like people breaking into quarantined hospitals and looting bloody sheets, no wonder it’s spreading so fast ffsake.
People need to stop listening to quacks and conspiracy theorists and start focusing on objective facts. It’s not airborne, it is hard to spread, and this outbreak has a lower fatality rate than previous ones, and were working on 4 separate vaccines.
People think but we can’t handle the Winter Vomiting Bus how could we handle this, the Norovirus is airborne and aerosolized, it can live on a flip-up bin top for hours and be whooshed into the air from a toilet flush then breathed in, Ebola does not work like that. Outside a human hosts body fluids it dies very quickly, it does not sit on surfaces or float in the air and while it’s theoretically possible to get it from saliva the concentration is not v high and your odds of surviving and inversly proportionate to how many virus particles you take in.
It’s quite simple, if you see sick Africans who are running a major fever and bleeding from the eyes, mouth or broken skin, call for help, short of that you have nothing to worry about.
What about the incubation period, when there are no symptoms, Ryan?
Someone infected with Ebola who is not showing symptoms is not contagious, the first symptoms are a burning fever (above 38.6′C), muscle pain, headaches and sore throat.
These are also the symptoms of many other conditions so the only way Ebola should be considered is if they have been in one of the hot zones (which now includes Spain and the US just to be on the safe side) within the last 21 days.
Ryan
15 year old refugee from liberia quarantined since monday in salzburg…his whole family died from it in liberia….that’s less than 2 hours drive from me.
If he made it over surely there are more in Europe but just not found yet…
God only knows if someone was to take a boat to Ireland and be sick with ebola….vomit in the bathrooms on the toilet for example…how do they trace anyone who has used the same toilets as this person. That person is hardly going to leave a note saying watch out I puked and have ebola.
Checking ports in Ireland is too late…they may have already had contact with Irish people en route and infected them.
Stats mean nothing….it only takes one case to prove them wrong. People need to be prepared and not take the attitude…it will never reach us we are ok.
Russia is making antiviral drug to treat Ebola.
Russia is beginning the production of an antiviral drug it has approved for the treatment of Ebola, a news report said, while a senior World Health Organization official urged stronger international efforts to contain the virus outbreak in West Africa.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-making-antiviral-drug-to-treat-ebola/507286.html
# You better be nice to Valdimir Putin.
Why is Vlad not part of your big conspiracy theory then ? Like to get your villains clear in my head
Frank only believes in western villains.
Valdimir Putin Is certainly on the defensive in this day and age and his patients is very quickly running out with the West’s dirty lies, cheating and warmongering.
The West may criticize Putin on his prompt decision to annex Crimea, but if one digs a little deeper one can see a justification for this. NATO’s made a promise not to advance eastwards going back to the break up of the Berlin Wall, NATO has broken this promise and is now sh**ting on Russia’s doorstep. .
Russia is also wide awake to the fact that the West has been arming Jihad terrorists to the teeth right across the middle east in its effort to destabilize and overthrow governments. Libya, Iraq, and now Syria an Ally of Russia. We can already see the US and its allies futile attempt to attack these so terrorists who are also fighting the same cause (Joke in itself)
Barack Obama is pushing the limit too far and its only a matter of time before Russia will take so much.
If you like the east and detest the west so much Frank then why don’t to move there?
Ablitive
Not a chance in hell that a simple antiviral developed by the Russians for the treatment of influenza and simply a molecular twist on Relenza or Tamiflu is going to do anything against Ebola.
These drugs belong to a class known as neuraminidase inhibitors and are used in the treatment of both Influenza A and B.
I think you will find that this is a Russian boast that was influenced by that other favourite Russian drug called vodka!
David Ronan. What would be the point of moving to Iran or Russia if the Psychopaths in Western powers intend on bombing them to oblivion..
Richard Rodgers, Wait and see what the West comes up with, a damned if you do and damned if you don’t vaccine and may be a microchip implant to finish it off.
The Ebola Vaccine is here. Consult your doctor and get vaccinated today!
What’s ironic in all this is it was actually the Russians who had a real (not a conspiracy theory fantasy) bioweapons programme with BioPrePerat in the 60s-90s they made everything in weaponized form, Smallpox, Botulism, Anthrax the works.
Ryan Carroll .. The tables have turned 180°, its the West that are now playing about with biological weapons. Its all about population control for its rising empire.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm was written as a satire against the corrupt elite of Soviet communism.
The book could now be applied to the West.
Fox News are gonna have a field day with this. At least the Daily Show will be entertaining.
And any other mainstream US cable news station.
Fox asked the CDC administrator yesterday why we don’t just shut down and isolate the affected countries by closing their borders…he actually had to pause for a few seconds in amazement at the stupidity of that question before going on to explain how without open borders no food or medicine is coming in winch would = total anarchy and the virus spreading way more.
No need to shut the African borders just stop all US bound flights from Western Africa, seems like common sense to me. What fox host said this might I ask or did you just pick it up second hand?
Megan Kelly . If you stop all US bound flights from west Africa you also stop doctors, trade missions and businessmen without whom the countries would not function.
If you only stop casual travel that’s only a tiny % of the problem anyway
This guy lied about being in close contact with victims at an airport health screening.He is at least in someway to blame for what happened to him.
Allegedly.
No allegedly about it. Coming from West Africa he would have been asked if he had visited or stayed in an area where there had been cases of Ebola. Do you think they would have just waived him through if he had said yes ?
Its not that I’ve no sympathy, nobody DESERVES the ebola death, nobody DESERVES to have their organs liquify…but I don’t have A LOT of sympaty He lied during his exit screening saying he had not been in contact with ebola patients when he had, and his casual lies put the entire North American continent in danger.
He played with fire and got burned for it. If he had told the CDC/WHO people at the exit screening that he’d been in contact with EBola infected directly (he’d helped transport his landlords infected daughter to hospital) they would have done blood tests on him, found the virus and begun treatment much earlier, he might have got into one of the trials and survived.
So sick of the authorities they had the chance to contain this while it was in Africa they should have put those countries on lockdown nobody in nobody out they shouldnt have brought infected patients out and treated them there its not rocket science just common sense.
Putting entire countries on lock down is not only far from common sense, it’s not really possible.
Yes it is possible they has restricted travel to war torn countries before.
Ebola, not covered under Obamacare.
It seems that Ireland is in love with Obama. Why?
We are perhaps the only country in Europe with a shrine dedicated to him.
Because he is the messiah of course. Given to us to heal the masses and part the rising sea…..I hope you sense the sarcasm in my tone.
Nobody’s in love with him, we just don’t believe in either reactionary right wing nutcases who are so far to the right that Obama looks like the radical left, or conspiracy theorists who think he is a cartoon villain.
By “reactionary” you mean someone who actually reacts, takes action? Sounds like exactly what we need now. The Middle East is in far worse condition now than it was the day Bush left office.
No I mean people so far off the fringe that Obama who is a centrist at best (by Europes standards he’s very conservative) looks like a raving lefty. The middle east is in this condition as a DIRECT result of decisions Geroge Bush made in 2003-2007 period, disbanding the Iraqi armed forces and dumping thousands of weapons trained p___D off men onto the streets, invading without a post-war plan and with less than half the troops the military told him they needed.
This is all on him and history will recognize that.
Obama might be a bad president but Bush will definitely take the prize as the worst president in US history, his deregulation (and Clintons) caused the biggest crash since the great depression, his foreign policy has destabilized the entire middle east, and he destroyed the bill of rights creating a big brother state that is now out of control
And why are people voting down a genuine enquiry?
People are still flying out infected countries now an Australian nurse I been tested for Ebola will people ever learn to stay away from infected countries ,
Guide to Treating and Preventing Ebola… must get some of these…
http://www.arhf.nl/docs/Amma4Africa_Ebola_Manual_Aug_2014_en.pdf
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