New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday hit back at the government for raising Rahul Gandhi’s democracy remarks in Parliament, saying those “crushing” democracy are talking of saving it.
He also dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “dictator”.
Kharge took out a protest march from Parliament House complex to Vijay Chowk along with MPs of other opposition parties, including those of the BRS, Left parties and AAP, after the BJP launched an offensive against Gandhi for allegedly defaming India by his remarks on democracy and demanded an apology from him.
Gandhi had recently alleged in London that the structures of Indian democracy are under “brutal attack” and there is a full-scale assault on the institutions of the country.
Talking to reporters at Vijay Chowk, Kharge said, “They (BJP) are crushing and destroying democracy and are talking of saving democracy and the country’s pride.”
He charged that there was no rule of law and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was running the country like a “dictator”.
Democracy के बारे में जो @RahulGandhi जी ने वहाँ के कॉलेजों में कहा था, उनके भाषण को अपने ढ़ंग से पेश करने का काम मोदी सरकार ने किया।
मोदी सरकार, खुद Democracy को यहाँ कुचल रही है।
मैं 4 उदहारण देना चाहता हूँ जिसमें मोदी जी ने विदेशी धरती पर देश और देशवासियों का अपमान किया ! pic.twitter.com/dDBevrYOMz
“They are ‘suppressing’ opposition parties through ‘misuse’ of agencies. This is like ‘ulta chor kotwal ko daante’ (pot calling the kettle black),” the Congress chief alleged.
Kharge alleged that PM Modi has “ridiculed” India abroad several times and cited examples of his speeches in China, South Korea, Canada, UAE.
If the prime minister can say all kinds of things against India, why is it a crime if Rahul Gandhi does so, he said.
Kharge alleged that all this is being done by the government to divert attention from the Adani-Hindenburg issue.
“We are demanding a JPC on the Adani issue. The government is trying to divert attention from this…We are together and will continue to demand JPC on the Adani issue,” he said.
The Leader of Opposition also alleged that he was being discriminated against in the Rajya Sabha as the Leader of the House was allowed to speak for 10 minutes and when he rose the House was adjourned after two minutes.
Opposition parties earlier met in the chamber of Leader of Opposition to coordinate their strategy in Parliament.
This is the first day of the second part of the Budget session of Parliament.
Dharwad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday targeted Rahul Gandhi for his remarks on democracy in the country at an international forum and said no power in the world can harm India’s democratic traditions.
Without naming Gandhi and referring to the Congress leader’s remarks made in London — that structures of Indian democracy are under “brutal attack”, Modi termed it an insult to 12th century social reformer Basaveshwara, the people of Karnataka, India’s great traditions and its citizens.
The PM’s statement is being seen with political significance, as Basaveshwara is highly revered in Karnataka, especially by the dominant Lingayat community who form the major vote base of the ruling BJP.
Modi was on his sixth visit this year to Karnataka, where Assembly elections are due by May.
“I have come to the land of Bhagwan Basaveshwar and I’m feeling blessed. Among the contributions of Basaveshwara, most important is the establishment of Anubhava Mantapa, this democratic system is researched across the world, and there are several such things because of which we say India is not just the largest democracy, it is also the mother of democracy,” he said.
Addressing a large gathering after inaugurating the permanent campus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Dharwad here, he said, he has had the good fortune of unveiling the statue of Basaveshwara in London a few years ago.
“Statue of lord Basaveshwar is in London, but it is unfortunate that in the same London questions were raised on India’s democracy; the roots of India’s democracy have been nurtured by centuries of our history. No power in this world can harm India’s democratic traditions. Despite this some are constantly making it stand in the dock,” Modi said in a veiled swipe at Gandhi.
Such people are insulting Bagawan Basaveshwara, the people of Karnataka, India’s great traditions, country’s 130 crore aware citizens, he further said, adding “people of Karnataka should be cautious about such people.”
Earlier, in a veiled attack on Gandhi over his recent remarks in the UK, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said when India’s dominance on global platforms is growing, some people are criticising the country on foreign land.
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, and Union Minister Pralhad Joshi among others were present at the Dharwad event.
Karnataka is the engine of “high tech India”, Modi said. “It is important this engine gets the power of double engine government.”
Roosevelt was drawn to Buganda’s culture of political procession, royal decorum and military ceremony. Upon his arrival that December, the former president watched as chiefs and royals — donning locally-crafted barkcloth and flowing robes imported from the Indian Ocean World — moved in and out of the capital, negotiating labor, power and state resources. It was a kingdom with wide roads interlocking government posts, military frontiers, markets, banana groves, farms, mines, smelting sites and estates.
Roosevelt met with military leaders of the kingdom, who managed a powerful navy and army. Buganda’s army of 10,000 warriors had successfully expanded the kingdom’s interests throughout the nineteenth century. The army’s size and power ensured that the British Empire did not openly conquer Buganda (or Uganda more broadly). And Buganda’s naval interests reached throughout the region’s lakes and rivers, giving birth to a vibrant culture of wartime canoes. During the 1890s alone, over 30,000 trees were harvested to produce 10,000 vessels. While these canoes varied in size, the most prominent class was around 25 feet long and 5 feet wide, designed to carry around half a ton. Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, was shocked by what he saw.
Roosevelt’s avowed interest in other cultures, however, had yet to dim his sense of white supremacy. He agreed with notions that Filipinos, whose country was then under the control of the United States, were too backward to participate fully in their own governance. He helped arrange exhibitions that treated indigenous peoples from other countries almost like caged animals. And he was an apologist for European colonialism.
But what he saw in Buganda that Christmas changed him. Roosevelt’s political language and approach to Black politics began veering in a new direction. Here in the heart of Africa was a highly functioning political state with a level of order exceeding that in many European countries or anything he had encountered during his extensive travels. The reality of Buganda’s political sophistication commanded not only his respect. Buganda compelled Roosevelt to rethink his fundamental assumptions regarding Black progress and civilization. As he would note in one speech shortly after his visit, Baganda stood “far above most … in their capacity for progress towards civilization.”
That observation was to alter not only his own views on Africans, but on African Americans. And his changed attitude toward race would reverberate through the country he had led and would seek to lead again.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Cambridge: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack at the Centre during a lecture at Cambridge University, alleging that an attack has been unleashed on the basic structure of Indian democracy while also claiming that Israeli spyware Pegasus was being used to snoop into his phone.
Rahul claimed that he had been warned by the intelligence officers to be “careful” while speaking on the phone as his calls were being recorded.
Congress leader and ex-advisor to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sam Pitroda shared the YouTube link of Rahul Gandhi’s address to MBA students at Cambridge Judge Business School on the topic of ‘Learning to Listen in the 21st Century’, on Twitter.
“I myself had Pegasus on my phone. A large number of politicians had Pegasus on their phones. I have been called by intelligence officers who told me, ‘Please be careful about what you are saying on the phone because we are sort of recording the stuff. So this is the constant pressure that we feel. Cases on the Opposition. I have got a number of criminal liable cases for things that should under no circumstances be criminal liable cases. That’s what we are trying to defend,” the Congress leader said in his address.
In August last year, the Supreme Court-appointed committee, set up to look into the allegations of the government allegedly using Pegasus for snooping, had concluded that the spyware was not found in the 29 mobile phones examined by it, but the malware was found in five mobile phones.
Reading the report of the committee, the bench had said, “We are concerned about the technical committee report… 29 phones were given and in five phones some malware was found but the technical committee says it cannot be said to be Pegasus.”
Rahul alleged further that constraints were being put on the Parliament, press and the Judiciary in the country.
“Everybody knows and it’s been in the news a lot that Indian democracy is under pressure and under attack. I am an Opposition leader in India, we are navigating that (Opposition) space. The institutional framework which is required for a democracy — Parliament, free press, the judiciary, just the idea of mobilisation, moving around — all are getting constrained. So, we are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy,” the Congress MP alleged.
Sharing a picture of himself in the presentation slide in which he is seen being held by the police personnel, the Congress leader claimed that the Opposition leaders were “locked up” in jail for “just standing” in front of the Parliament House to talk about some issues, while also alleging that such incidents have happened “relatively violently”.
“In the Constitution, India is described as a Union of States, and that Union requires negotiation and conversation. It is that negotiation that is under attack and threat. You can see the picture which is taken in front of Parliament House. The Opposition leaders were just standing there talking about certain issues, and we were put in jail. That’s happened 3 or 4 times. It has happened relatively violently. You have also heard of the attacks on minorities and the press. You get a sense of what is going on,” Rahul claimed.
The Mexican president responded “there is more democracy in Mexico than could exist in the United States.”
“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” López Obrador said pugnaciously. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.”
The Mexican president is notoriously touchy about criticism, whether it comes from human rights groups, non-governmental organizations, the press, or Mexican regulatory or oversight agencies.
Price said in a statement that “Today, in Mexico, we see a great debate on electoral reforms on the independence of electoral and judicial institutions that illustrates Mexico’s vibrant democracy.”
“We respect Mexico’s sovereignty. We believe that a well-resourced, independent electoral system and respect for judicial independence support healthy democracy.”
At the root of the conflict are plans by López Obrador, which were approved last week by Mexico’s Senate, to cut salaries and funding for local election offices, and scale back training for citizens who operate and oversee polling stations. The changes would also reduce sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending.
López Obrador denies the reforms are a threat to democracy and says criticism is elitist. He argues that the funds would be better spent on the poor.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated over the weekend in Mexico City’s main plaza, calling the cuts a threat to democracy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion, senior Ukraine opposition politicians and former ministers were brimming with frustration. They’d been imploring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with them — something he’d not done since his landslide election nearly two years before.
They’d also been urging him to boost funding for the country’s armed forces for months, clamoring for Ukraine’s reservists to be called up as America’s warnings of an invasion intensified — an invasion Zelenskyy still thought unlikely. They wanted intensive war-planning, including the drafting and publication of civil defense orders, so people would know what to do when the guns roared.
“Ukraine is trapped with a national leader who does not think strategically,” Lesia Vasylenko, a lawmaker and member of the liberal and pro-European political Holos party, had told me five days before the invasion.
“I think that’s the thing he will be blamed for later. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about refusing to have in your entourage experts who know what questions to ask, and having advisers who can contradict and challenge you, and we may pay a price for that,” she’d fumed.
Of course, Zelenskyy’s missteps — as Vasylenko and many other opposition lawmakers see them — have since been forgiven, but they have not been forgotten. And these missteps form the basis of their worries for post-war Ukraine. They see a pattern that will become even more troubling when the guns fall silent, arguing that the president’s strengths as a lionhearted wartime leader are ill-suited for peacetime.
War hasn’t done anything to temper Zelenskyy’s impatience with governing complexities or with institutions that don’t move as fast as he would like or fall in line fast enough. He prefers the big picture, ignores details and likes to rely on an inner circle of trusted friends.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.
He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.
“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma.
“He thought peace would be easy to establish because all you needed to do was to ‘look into Putin’s eyes’ and talk to him sincerely,” said lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“He became president without any political experience, or any experience in managing state structures. He thought running a state is actually quite simple. You make decisions and they have to be implemented,” Kniazhytskyi told me. And when things went wrong, his reaction was always, it’s “the fault of predecessors, who need to be imprisoned,” Kniazhytskyi said.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now, he floundered as president before Russia invaded | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Yet, Zelenskyy’s transformation from disappointing peacetime leader to, in the hyperbolic words of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, “a new, young and magnificent founding father” of the free world, has been startling.
Even his domestic critics doff their caps to him for his strengths as a superb communicator: His daily addresses to Ukrainians have steadied them, given direction and boosted morale, even when spirits understandably flag. And they acknowledge he likely saved the country by declining U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s offer for “a ride” out of Kyiv.
“He has become a compelling leader,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the upcoming “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” According to Karatnycky, Zelenskyy’s strengths as a communicator match the times. “He’s good at channeling public opinion, but he’s more effective now because the country is much more united and surer about its identity, interests and objectives. He’s still the same guy he was — an actor and performer — but that makes him an ideal war leader because he’s able to embody the public impulse,” he added.
But when normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united, Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.
And that world hasn’t really gone away.
Domestic political criticism is mounting — though little noted by an international media still enraptured by Zelenskyy’s charismatic appeal and enthralled by the simple story of David versus Goliath.
Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada — the country’s parliament — frustration is building, with lawmakers complaining they’re being overlooked by a government that was already impatient of oversight before the war and now shuns it almost entirely. Zelenskyy has only met with top opposition leaders once since Russia invaded — and that was nearly a year ago.
“The routine of ministers being questioned by the Rada has been abandoned,” said opposition lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of the European Solidarity party and former deputy prime minister in the previous government of former President Petro Poroshenko.
“Wartime does call for urgent decisions to be taken quickly, and it calls for shortened procedures. And so that’s kind of understandable,” she said. “But we are seeing decisions being increasingly centralized and concentrated in fewer hands, and this is having an impact on the balance of political power, and [it’s] damaging to the system of governance we are trying to develop and the strengthening of our democratic institutions in line with the criteria laid out by the EU for convergence.”
Klympush-Tsintsadze is worried the recent wave of anti-corruption arrests was more an exercise in smoke and mirrors in the run-up to February’s EU-Ukraine summit — and one that might be used as an opportunity to centralize power even further. “If someone thinks that centralization of power is the answer to our challenges, that someone is wrong,” she added. “I think it is important to watch very closely how anti-corruption cases develop, and whether there will be transparent investigations, and whether the rule of law will be closely observed.”
According to Kniazhytskyi, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Zelenskyy is a populist politician and shares the personality-focused flaws of this breed. However, what cheers the opposition lawmaker is how Ukrainian civil society has bloomed during the war, how local self-government has been strengthened because of wartime volunteering and mutual assistance and how some state bodies have performed — notably, the railways and the energy sector.
It is this — along with a strong sense of national belonging forged by the conflict — that will form the foundation of a strong post-war Ukraine, he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Hungary’s reputation as the troublemaker of Europe will be burnished on Wednesday as its parliament begins debating a contentious issue: whether to give Finland and Sweden the green light to join NATO.
Along with Turkey, Hungary has yet to ratify the applications of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic defense alliance more than eight months after NATO leaders signed off on their membership bid at a summit in Madrid.
While NATO members are more concerned about the potential of Turkey to stonewall accession for the Nordic countries — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been blocking Sweden’s application, alleging that Stockholm is harboring Kurdish militants — the government of Viktor Orbán has also been dragging its heels on parliamentary approval for the process.
Hungary’s ratification process will finally begin on Wednesday, with a debate due to kick off in the parliament in Budapest ahead of a vote — expected in the second half of March.
But already, there are signs of trouble ahead.
Máté Kocsis, head of Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party caucus in parliament, said last week that a “serious debate” had now emerged over the accession of the two countries. Hungary now plans to send a delegation to Sweden and Finland to examine “political disputes” that have arisen.
Orbán himself echoed such views. The Hungarian leader, who has an iron grip on his Fidesz party, said in an interview on Friday that “while we support Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO in principle, we first need to have some serious discussions.”
He pointed to Finland and Sweden’s previous criticism of Hungary’s record on rule-of-law issues, asserting that some in his party are questioning the wisdom of admitting countries that are “spreading blatant lies about Hungary, about the rule of law in Hungary, about democracy, about life here.”
“How, this argument runs, can anyone want to be our ally in a military system while they’re shamelessly spreading lies about Hungary?”
Orbán’s comments have confirmed fears in Brussels that the Hungarian leader could try to use his leverage over NATO enlargement to extract concessions on rule-of-law issues.
Finland and Sweden have been among the most critical voices around the EU table over rule-of-law concerns in Hungary, with Budapest still locked in a dispute with the European Union over the disbursal of funds due to Brussels’ protests over its democratic standards.
European Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová said earlier this month that Hungary must sort out the independence of its judiciary “very soon” if it wants to receive €5.8 billion in grants due from the EU’s COVID-19 recovery fund.
Helsinki and Stockholm have kept largely silent on the looming vote in Budapest, reflecting in part a reluctance to stir up controversy ahead of time.
Sweden, in particular, has been treading a fine line with Turkey, seeking not to alienate Erdoğan even as allies now acknowledge the possibility of the two countries joining at different times — an apparent acceptance that Erdoğan could further hold up Sweden’s bid.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg visited Helsinki Monday, where Finland’s push to join the alliance topped the agenda. He urged both Turkey and Hungary to confirm the membership bids — and soon.
“I hope that they will ratify soon,” Stoltenberg said of the Hungarian parliament’s discussions. Asked if he was in contact with Hungary on the issue, he replied that it was a decision for sovereign national parliaments, adding: “The time has come. Finland meets all the criteria, as does Sweden. So we are working hard, and the aim is to have this in place as soon as possible.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss argued the U.K. should have “done more earlier” to counter Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric before he invaded Ukraine, and said the West depended on Russian oil for too long.
Truss — the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister who resigned amid market turmoil last year — was speaking in a House of Commons debate about Ukraine, her first contribution in the chamber as a backbencher since 2012. She has been increasingly vocal on foreign policy since leaving office.
The former prime minister, who as served foreign secretary for Boris Johnson before succeeding him in the top job, recalled receiving a phone call at 3.30 a.m. on the morning of the invasion, and told MPs: “This was devastating news. But as well as being devastating, it was not unexpected.”
Truss praised the “sheer bravery” of Ukrainians defending their country, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Cabinet for not fleeing the country in the aftermath. “I remember being on a video conference that evening with the defense secretary and our counterparts, who weren’t in Poland, who weren’t in the United States,” she said of Ukraine’s top team. “They were in Kyiv and they were defending their country,” she added.
But while Truss argued Western sanctions had imposed an economic toll on Putin’s Russia, said urged reflection. “The reason that Putin took the action he took is because he didn’t believe we would follow through,” she argued, and said the West should “hold ourselves to high standards.”
Ukraine, she said, should have been allowed to join NATO.
“We were complacent about freedom and democracy after the Cold War,” she said. “We were told it was the end of history and that freedom and democracy were guaranteed and that we could carry on living our lives not worrying about what else could happen.”
Truss urged the U.K. to do all it could to help Ukraine win the war as soon as possible, including sending fighter jets, an ongoing matter of debate in Western capitals despite Ukrainian pleas.
And the former U.K. prime minister said the West should “never again” be “complacent in the face of Russian money, Russian oil and gas,” tying any future lifting of sanctions “to reform in Russia.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: Congress leader and former finance minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday reacted sharply to George Soros’s “revival of democracy” remark.
In a series of tweets, he said, “I did not agree with most of what George Soros had said in the past and I do not agree with most of what he says now. But to label his remarks as an “attempt to topple the democratically elected government in India” is a puerile statement”.
The former union minister further said in the tweet that the people of India will determine who will be in and who will be out of the government of India.
“I did not know that the Modi government was so feeble that it can be toppled by the stray statement of a 92-year-old rich foreign national”, he said in another tweet.
He further said to ignore George Soros and listen to Nouriel Roubini. “Roubini warned that India is increasingly driven by large private conglomerates that can potentially hamper competition and kill new entrants”.
“Liberalisation was to usher in an open, competitive economy. The Modi government’s policies have created oligopolies”, he concluded in the tweets.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray on Friday described as dangerous for democracy Election Commission’s decision to recognise Eknath Shinde faction as real Shiv Sena.
“They (Eknath Shinde faction) have stolen our bow and arrow symbol, but people will avenge this theft,” Thackeray told reporters at his Matoshree bungalow in suburban Bandra.
Claiming that there was no democracy left in India, Thackeray said PM Modi should declare that dictatorship has started in the country.
“We will challenge in Supreme Court poll panel’s decision to recognise Eknath Shinde faction as real Shiv Sena,” he said. The EC decision is very dangerous for democracy, he added.
The EC decision indicates that the Mumbai municipal corporation elections will be declared soon, he said.
