Anote Tong

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Anote Tong

Anote Tong (in Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
, ???; pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Chinese Language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"....
: Tang Annuò — his family name is of Chinese origin but it is now considered as Gilbertese by Kiribati people) (born 1952) is the president

President of Kiribati

The President of Kiribati is the head of state and head of government of Kiribati....
of Kiribati

Kiribati

Kiribati , officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. It is composed of List of islands belonging to Kiribati and one Tectonic uplift island, dispersed over 3,500,000 square kilometres, straddling the equator, and bordering the International Date Line to the east....
. He won the election in July 2003 with a slim plurality of votes cast (47.4%) against his brother, Dr. Harry Tong (43.5%) and the private lawyer Banuera Berina (9.1%). The elections were contested by the opposition, due to allegations of electoral fraud

Electoral fraud

Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud tend to involve affecting vote counts to bring about a desired election outcome, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both....
but the High Court of Tarawa

Tarawa Atoll

Tarawa is an atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, previously the capital of the former British Empire colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands....
had confirmed that there was no fraud.

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Encyclopedia

Anote Tong (in Chinese

Chinese language

Pinyin

President of Kiribati

The President of Kiribati is the head of state and head of government of Kiribati....
of Kiribati

Kiribati

Electoral fraud

Tarawa Atoll

Tarawa is an atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, previously the capital of the former British Empire colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands....
had confirmed that there was no fraud. He was easily re-elected on October 17, 2007, for a second term (64%).

The son of an Chinese

Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese people birth or descent who live outside the territories administered by the rival governments of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China ....
migrant who settled in the Gilberts after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
and of a Gilbertese woman, he went to St Bede's College

St Bede's College, Christchurch

St. Bede's College is a Roman Catholic day school and boarding school in Christchurch, New Zealand for boys aged 13 to 18 .St. Bede's College is the oldest Catholic Boys' College in New Zealand's South Island....
for his secondary school education, graduated from Canterbury University with a degree in Science, and then gained a Masters in Economics degree from the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science, more commonly referred to as The London School of Economics or LSE, is a specialist college of the University of London in London, England....
.

During the campaign, he promised to review the lease of a spy and satellite tracking base used by the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
and "to take appropriate actions at the right time." On November 7, he established relations with the Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , also known as Nationalist China is a country in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition into a multi-party democratic state with Political status of Taiwan....
on Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan is an island in East Asia. "Taiwan" is also commonly used to refer to the country governed by the Republic of China and to the ROC itself, which governs the island of Taiwan, Orchid Island and Green Island, Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean off the Taiwan coast, the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait, and Kinmen and the Matsu Islands...
, which led the People's Republic of China to sever relations and vacate its satellite base nearly a month later.

Tong was overwhelmingly re-elected to his seat in parliament in the August 2007 parliamentary election. On October 17, 2007, he was re-elected as president

Kiribatian presidential election, 2007

A presidential election was held in Kiribati on 17 October 2007, following the Kiribatian parliamentary election, 2007. President Anote Tong, who was re-elected to parliament in the first round of the parliamentary election, sought another term as president....
by a large majority. The opposition boycotted the election

Election boycott

An election boycott is the boycotting of an election by a group of voters, each of whom abstention from voting.Boycotting may be used as a form of political protest where voters feel that electoral fraud is likely, or that the electoral system is biased against its candidates, or that the polity organizing the election lacks legitimacy ....
due to the exclusion of two opposition candidates, including Tong's brother Harry.

He is married to a Kiribati woman named Meme and has seven children.

Speaking up on climate change

President Tong has attracted international attention by warning that his country may become uninhabitable by the 2050s due to rising sea levels and salination provoked by climate change

Climate change

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region over an appropriately significant period of time....
. Tong has stated on several occasions that Kiribati may cease to exist altogether, and that its entire population of 94,000 may need to be resettled as climate refugee

Climate refugee

A Climate refugee is a displaced person caused by climate change induced environmental disasters. Such disasters are evidence of human-influenced ecological change and disruption to Earth's climate system, primarily through the emissions of green house gases....
s. In June 2008, he stated that Kiribati may already have reached "the point of no return"; he added: "To plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful but I think we have to do that."

External links

, September 25, 2008