Bengaluru: The JD(S) on Thursday released its “Janata Pranalike” (People’s Manifesto) for the May 10 Assembly polls in Karnataka promising to restore four percent reservation for Muslims, to “throw out” Amul and to save Nandini brand calling it Kannadiga’s identity, among various assurances.
The party led by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has also assured to bring in a law reserving jobs for Kannadigas in the private sector, and has promised to provide free higher education for economically-weaker students.
Just ahead of the announcement of polls in Karnataka, the State Cabinet led by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had decided to scrap the four percent reservation for Muslims under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota and to distribute it equally among the dominant Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities. The JD(S) in its manifesto has expressed its commitment to restore 4 percent reservation for Muslims.
The promise to protect and strengthen Nandini brand in the manifesto, comes following a controversy that had erupted after the Gujarat-based dairy cooperative Amul’s announcement recently, to enter the Karnataka market to supply its milk and curd. A section including opposition Congress and JD(S) had expressed apprehension that Nandini, the brand from the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF), could be merged with Amul, and had targeted the ruling BJP and Union Cooperative Minister Amit Shah for it. BJP had rejected the charge.
The manifesto was released by JD(S) legislature party leader H D Kumaraswamy, state president C M Ibrahim, and manifesto committee chief and MLC B M Farooq, among other leaders.
The JD(S), which positions itself as a party of farmers, has announced the “Raita Bandhu” scheme promising to provide Rs 2,000 to agricultural labour families every month. Also, girls who marry youths who are farmers will be given financial assistance of Rs two lakh.
Among the various other assurances given in JD(S) manifesto are Rs 6,000 for pregnant women for six months, loan waiver for ‘Stree Shakti’ self-help groups, pension for Anganwadi workers, Rs 2,000 per month for auto drivers, Rs 2,000 for registered private security guards, and up to Rs 25 lakh for treatment of rare diseases under CM relief fund.
In the irrigation sector, the party has listed out its plans such as: increase funds for the Upper Bhadra Project from existing Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 5,000 crore and also complete the project in the next four years; it also promised to complete the ‘Yettinahole’ project in four years.
Reviewing the National Pension Scheme, re-introduction of free bicycles for school children, electric scooters for girls studying in higher education, housing scheme for 30 lakh homeless, encouraging green energy, are among the other takeaways from the manifesto.
Kumaraswamy has said that the party will launch a separate manifesto for Bengaluru in the coming days.
Aiming to come to power on its own, the JD(S) has set a target of winning 123 out of total 224 Assembly seats.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly suspended election campaigning after falling unwell during a live TV interview, which was unexpectedly cut short.
He returned after a 20-minute break to declare he had “serious stomach flu” after two days of heavy campaigning.
Erdogan, 69, is facing his most difficult election campaign so far.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the major opposition leader, has been picked to run for a coalition of six political groups.
He was one of several opposition figures that wished the president a swift recovery.
On Thursday, health minister Fahrettin Koca stated that the president’s health was OK and that he had “infectious gastroenteritis.” He stated that he will resume his regularly planned daily activities as soon as possible.
According to the most recent surveys, the presidential election will be a tight one, with Kilicdaroglu having a decent chance of winning.
The first round is scheduled for May 14, with a possible presidential run-off two weeks later.
Paraguay is bracing for what is expected to be one of the most fiercely contested general elections in the country’s short democratic history, with a vote which may see the ruling rightwing Colorado party defeated after more than 75 years of almost uninterrupted power.
The Colorado stranglehold on power has loosened in an election run-up marked by cries for change, pressure from the US, and the rise of a populist “anti-system” candidate known for punching and defecating his way through disputes.
“There’s an enormous difference with this year’s elections and it has to do with financial resources,” said political scientist Rocío Duarte.
For more than a decade the Colorado party has been bankrolled by the enormous wealth of former president Horacio Cartes, who remains the party president and the political patron of its current candidate, Santiago Peña.
But in January, he was targeted with US sanctions for “rampant corruption that undermines democratic institutions” and alleged links to Hezbollah, starving the Colorado electoral machine of funding and access to bank loans.
The current financial blow, along with deep internal party conflicts, has seen Peña fall in the polls to a statistical tie with third-time hopeful Efraín Alegre. Rightwinger Alegre is a candidate for the Coalition for a New Paraguay, a confederation of opposition parties that includes his own Liberal party, the country’s second-biggest political force.
“I’m optimistic that the opposition can win, but I’m very deeply pessimistic about what the Coalition [for a New Paraguay] will be able to do if it’s actually in government,” said political scientist Gustavo Setrini, pointing to a lack of coherent policy proposals from coalition leaders in response to enormous inequality, recession and rising extreme poverty rates.
“The two candidates are different flavours of clientelist neoliberalism. One is more linked to narcotrafficking and authoritarianism, and the other to the Liberal party and nominally more progressive elites,” he said.
Efraín Alegre, the Coalition for a New Paraguay candidate for the Paraguayan presidency, during a campaign rally on Monday. Photograph: Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images
Both Peña and Alegre have pledged not to raise taxes, despite Paraguay having an underfunded state and the lowest tax burden in South America, which greatly benefits society’s wealthiest.
One key difference between the candidates is their position on Paraguay’s diplomatic relationship with Taiwan: Paraguay is the largest of 13 countries to still recognise the island.
Alegre said he would consider switching recognition to China over Taiwan, in line with Beijing’s one-China principle, stating that Paraguay “loses many opportunities” that were not sufficiently rewarded by Taiwan.
“It would be a historic mistake for Paraguay,” said Carlos Fleitas, Paraguay’s ambassador to Taiwan, adding that Taipei is closely observing the elections following Honduras’s recent break with the island.
“The relationship with Taiwan isn’t only economic,” he said. “We share the same values of freedom and justice.”
On the street, however, the relationship with Taiwan “isn’t of importance for voters”, said Duarte. In contrast, she said that widespread discontent with state institutions and traditional parties had fed the rapid rise of the “anti-system” candidate Paraguayo “Payo” Cubas, a candidate who has drawn comparisons to Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro and El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele.
Paraguayo ‘Payo’ Cubas at a rally in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, at the weekend. Photograph: Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images
Cubas, a former senator who was expelled from Congress and is notorious for physical altercations and defecating in a judge’s office, has employed social media to run a bare-bones campaign. He has said he will instate the death penalty and spoke in favour of establishing a dictatorship, and he is currently polling in third at 23%.
“Payo is the only one who can tear it all down,” said Alejandro Daniel, an Uber driver in the Paraguayan capital, Asunción.
Duarte described Cubas as a belated example of the populist trend which swept across Latin America and the world in the past decade. “Everything reaches Paraguay a few years later, so now we’re seeing this anti-system current here,” she said.
Despite palpable disillusionment with traditional parties, many insist that a non-Colorado government is an essential step forward for Paraguay, where democracy was only introduced in 1989 following the 35-year rightwing dictatorship of Gen Alfredo Stroessner, of which the Colorado party itself was an integral part.
The National Campesino Federation (FNC), a powerful peasant farmer organisation, has taken sides in electoral politics for the first time, backing Alegre and the Coalition for a New Paraguay.
“The coalition offers us a respite. The other option is a continuation of the same politics without healthcare, without education, without land, without work, without productive policies for campesinos,” said the FNC leader Teodolina Villalba.
Alegre, should he win, could also face Colorado majorities in both houses of congress, also disputed on 30 April. And to implement any major changes, he would first have to avoid the fate of former president Fernando Lugo, the only non-Colorado president since democratisation began in 1989.
Leftist Lugo was impeached in 2012 by a hostile congress – including then senator Alegre – in what many analysts saw as a coup that truncated a promising process of deep transformation.
For Setrini, an Alegre administration would hold a position of enormous historic responsibility for ensuring progress in Paraguay’s tortuous process of democratisation.
“Interrupting Cartes’s model of the state is positive,” he said. “But the risk is that if you sell the Coalition [for a New Paraguay] as a change, but it’s totally unworkable as a government, you’re going to end up making people even more sour on democracy.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has had to abruptly cancel election campaign events after being taken ill on live television during an interview.
Cameras abruptly cut away from Erdoğan to one of his interviewers, Hasan Öztürk, who looked perturbed and began to rise from his chair before the broadcast cut entirely. In footage distributed by the president’s Justice and Development party (AKP), shot in the same location, Erdoğan explains that he contracted stomach flu following intense work on the campaign trail weeks before the pivotal election.
He later tweeted: “Today I will rest at home upon the advice of my doctors … with God’s permission, we will continue our campaign from tomorrow onwards.” The vice-president, Fuat Oktay, said he would attend campaign events across central Turkey in his place.
Turkey is holding parliamentary and presidential elections on 14 May, when Erdoğan faces a concerted challenge from a six-party opposition striving to unseat him after 20 years in power. Many polls give his main challenger, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a slight lead, amid discontent with an ongoing economic crisis and the government’s response to deadly earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey, and 8,000 in Syria.
Erdoğan cancelled personal appearances at a number of high-profile campaign events due to his sudden illness, including attending the opening ceremony of part of a Russian-funded nuclear power plant in southern Turkey and a nearby rally. The nuclear plant is the latest flagship infrastructure project that Erdoğan and the AKP are hoping will sway voters at the upcoming election, despite concerns about the relationship between government-led construction projects and collapsed infrastructure following the earthquake.
The AKP deputy chair, Erkan Kandemir, said Erdoğan would attend the ceremony at the nuclear power plant via video link. “Our president will attend the Akkuyu nuclear power plant ceremony, which is planned to be held tomorrow, online. Our Mersin rally is planned to be held at a later date,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Claire Bischoff, a Dominion spokesperson, said the company would have no comment on the trial delay. Representatives for Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., the entities Dominion is suing, did not immediately return requests for comment. In his statement, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said only that the trial, including jury selection, would be continued until Tuesday and that he would announce the delay in court on Monday.
That’s when Fox News executives and the network’s star hosts were scheduled to begin answering for their role in spreading doubt about the 2020 presidential election and creating the gaping wound that remains in America’s democracy.
Jurors hearing the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems would have to answer a specific question: Did Fox defame the voting machine company by airing bogus stories alleging that the election was rigged against then-President Donald Trump, even as many at the network privately doubted the false claims being pushed by Trump and his allies?
Yet the broader context looms large. A trial would test press freedom and the reputation of conservatives’ favorite news source. It also would illuminate the flow of misinformation that helped spark the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and continues to fuel Trump’s hopes to regain power in 2024.
Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and founder Rupert Murdoch are among the people who had been expected to testify.
Barring a settlement, opening statements are now scheduled for Tuesday.
“This is Christmas Eve for defamation scholars,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor.
If the trial were a sporting event, Fox News would be taking the field on a losing streak, with key players injured and having just alienated the referee. Pretrial court rulings and embarrassing revelations about its biggest names have Fox on its heels.
Court papers released over the past two months show Fox executives, producers and personalities privately disbelieved Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election. But Dominion says Fox News was afraid of alienating its audience with the truth, particularly after many viewers were angered by the network’s decision to declare Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Arizona on election night in November 2020.
Some rulings by the judge have eased Dominion’s path. In a summary judgment, Davis said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that fraud allegations against the company were false. That means trial time won’t have to be spent disproving them at a time when millions of Republicans continue to doubt the 2020 results.
Davis said it also is clear that Dominion’s reputation was damaged, but that it would be up to a jury to decide whether Fox acted with “actual malice” — the legal standard — and, if so, what that’s worth financially.
Fox witnesses would likely testify that they thought the allegations against Dominion were newsworthy, but Davis made it clear that’s not a defense against defamation.
New York law protects news outlets from defamation for expressions of opinion. But Davis methodically went through 20 different times on Fox when allegations against Dominion were discussed, ruling that all of them were fully or partly considered statements of fact, and fair game for a potential libel finding.
“A lawsuit is a little bit like hitting a home run,” said Cary Coglianese, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have to go through all of the bases to get there.” The judge’s rulings “basically give Dominion a spot at third base, and all they have to do is come home to win it.”
Both Fox and Dominion are incorporated in Delaware, though Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.
Fox angered Davis this past week when the judge said the network’s lawyers delayed producing evidence and were not forthcoming in revealing Murdoch’s role at Fox News. A Fox lawyer, Blake Rohrbacher, sent a letter of apology to Davis on Friday, saying it was a misunderstanding and not an intention to deceive.
It’s not clear whether that would affect a trial. But it’s generally not wise to have a judge wonder at the outset of a trial whether your side is telling the truth, particularly when truth is the central point of the case, Jones said.
The lawsuit essentially comes down to whether Dominion can prove Fox acted with actual malice by putting something on the air knowing that it was false or acting with a “reckless disregard” for whether it was true. In most libel cases, that is the most difficult hurdle for plaintiffs to get past.
Dominion can point to many examples where Fox figures didn’t believe the charges being made by Trump allies such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. But Fox says many of those disbelievers were not in a position to decide when to air those allegations.
“We think it’s essential for them to connect those dots,” Fox lawyer Erin Murphy said.
If the case goes to trial, the jury will determine whether a powerful figure like Murdoch — who testified in a deposition that he didn’t believe the election-fraud charges — had the influence to keep the accusations off the air.
“Credibility is always important in any trial in any case. But it’s going to be really important in this case,” said Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and the Law at the University of Minnesota.
Kirtley is concerned that the suit may eventually advance to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could use it as a pretext to weaken the actual malice standard that was set in a 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. That, she feels, would be disastrous for journalists.
Dominion’s lawsuit is being closely watched by another voting-technology company with a separate but similar case against Fox News. Florida-based Smartmatic has looked to some rulings and evidence in the Dominion case to try to enhance its own $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit in New York. The Smartmatic case isn’t yet ready for trial but has survived Fox News’ effort to get it tossed out.
Many experts are surprised Fox and Dominion have not reached an out-of-court settlement, though they can at any time. There’s presumably a wide financial gulf. In court papers, Fox contends the $1.6 billion damages claim is a wild overestimate.
Dominion’s motivation may also be to inflict maximum embarrassment on Fox with the peek into the network’s internal communications following the election. Text messages from January 2021 revealed Carlson telling a friend that he passionately hated Trump and couldn’t wait to move on.
Dominion may also seek an apology.
The trial has had no apparent effect on Fox News’ viewership; it remains the top-rated cable network. And there is little indication that the case has changed Fox’s editorial direction. Fox has embraced Trump once again in recent weeks following the former president’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, and Carlson presented an alternate history of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, based on tapes given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But a six-week ban pushes the outer boundary of anti-abortion rights proposals. And it could spell trouble for DeSantis among independents and suburban voters in a general election, if he makes it that far.
“We’re going to make him own this, and his agenda, everywhere he goes,” said a national Democratic operative granted anonymity to discuss party strategy. “Goes to Michigan? Abortion ban. Goes to Ohio next week? Abortion ban. And that will take different forms but we’ll hang this incredibly toxic abortion ban and his agenda around his neck with different tactics.”
The operative added that this is one of many points on which to attack DeSantis who has taken several stances on social issues that Democrats believe won’t sit well with swing voters.
A spokesman for DeSantis declined to comment for this story. But Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, told POLITICO that a six-week ban isn’t the millstone Democrats believe.
“Consensus is building across the country that once there’s a heartbeat, it’s a human being,” he said. “So the governor isn’t out of step at all. … In fact, it bolsters his standing.”
Though DeSantis has not formally entered the presidential race, the campaign to tie him to a six-week ban is already beginning, according to interviews with more than a dozen people from several battleground states.
Nascent plans include attack ads, knocking on doors in swing states where polling shows abortion has become a more prominent election issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, and registering voters throughout the country.
“Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations will make sure everyone knows his dangerous and radical record on abortion rights,” Jenny Lawson, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund said in a statement. The organization is considering door-to-door canvassing, digital ads and direct mail, Olivia Cappello, a spokesperson said in a recent interview.
The Planned Parenthood network has poured millions of dollars into voter outreach in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year. In the leadup to the decision, arms of the organization announced a $16 million ad campaign, and spent more than $50 million on the 2022 midterms a few months later.
The head of the much smaller Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida organization, who rallied against the ban in the state capital this week, has also promised an aggressive voter outreach effort.
“We have all vowed to go knock on doors and go to other states to let people know what DeSantis has done to Florida,” Sarah Parker of the organization said in an interview. “We don’t have a lot of money, but we’ll mobilize.”
DeSantis does not share that problem. A PAC supporting his likely candidacy boasted of raising $30 million several weeks ago, and he’s proven himself a prodigious fundraiser in the past — a benefit that’s helped him cement himself as the leading Republican alternative to Trump.
And for many on the right, particularly those miffed at Trump, DeSantis’ support of a six-week ban is proof that he is a more reliable ally in their fight to end the procedure nationwide.
“I’ve known him since he hit the ground in Congress,” Perkins said. “He, from the start, has been making very solid decisions on a host of policy issues, from religious freedom to economic issues.”
Florida’s six-week abortion ban received final legislative approval as the issue of abortion access once again dominates the headlines. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday agreed to allow the abortion pill mifepristone to remain on the market but with restrictions that will hamper access to millions of people unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
Florida now joins at least 12 other states — including Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky and Louisiana — that have approved bans on abortions after six weeks, a point at which many people don’t yet know they’re pregnant.
“This bill is atrocious,” said Ryan Stitzlein, NARAL’s senior national political director. “This issue may ignite a small part of their primary base but it’s deeply unpopular with voters in this country. … We’re activating our more than 4 million members across the country. They’ll be making calls, writing, knocking on doors.”
Democrats’ confidence is rooted in both public polling that demonstrates little bipartisan appetite for such strict abortion bans as well as recent case studies. Five months after Republicans failed to deliver widespread victories in the midterm elections, a Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court defeated her opponent by 11 points in a race centered around abortion. Even moderate Republicans crossed the aisle to donate to her winning campaign.
“You should ignore national polls because that’s not how people win a presidential nomination. They win by winning each state and if you look at the bellwether states that Trump or DeSantis need to win, they have major, major problems on the issue of abortion,” political fundraiser Patrick Guarasci — who worked on the winning campaign of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz — said in an interview this week. “They’re being held hostage by their donors and their far-right-wing extremists.”
Guarasci said abortion ranked as the top issue in the recent election.
“Trump or DeSantis will have a hard time winning a presidential elections without some kind of answer to that question,” he added.
Several dozen opponents have been staging demonstrations in Tallahassee, even getting arrested in acts of civil disobedience. Though they knew they stood no chance of changing the course of the bill, they continued to gather as recently as Wednesday night to denounce it. State Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried warned DeSantis will “will not stop with Florida.”
DeSantis isn’t the only Republican who will face pressure for his stance on abortion. Democrats are certain to note that Trump appointed the justices who overturned Roe. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), on his second day of campaigning since announcing a presidential exploratory committee, pivoted, deflected and avoided specifics when repeatedly pressed on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions.
But unlike Trump or Scott, DeSantis will have signed legislation limiting access. Democrats don’t intend to let voters forget.
“This man is clearly wrong for Michigan,” Michigan Lieutenant Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, said on a conference call ahead of DeSantis’ recent visit to the state. “But he is also wrong for America. He will be burdened by his anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-reproductive freedom stances.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
For Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, next month’s election is of massive historical significance.
It falls 100 years after the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular republic and, if Erdoğan wins, he will be empowered to put even more of his stamp on the trajectory of a geostrategic heavyweight of 85 million people. The fear in the West is that he will see this as his moment to push toward an increasingly religiously conservative model, characterized by regional confrontationalism, with greater political powers centered around himself.
The election will weigh heavily on security in Europe and the Middle East. Who is elected stands to define: Turkey’s role in the NATO alliance; its relationship with the U.S., the EU and Russia; migration policy; Ankara’s role in the war in Ukraine; and how it handles tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The May 14 vote is expected to be the most hotly contested race in Erdoğan’s 20-year rule — as the country grapples with years of economic mismanagement and the fallout from a devastating earthquake.
He will face an opposition aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” who is promising big changes. Polls suggest Kılıçdaroğlu has eked out a lead, but Erdoğan is a hardened election campaigner, with the full might of the state and its institutions at his back.
“There will be a change from an authoritarian single-man rule, towards a kind of a teamwork, which is a much more democratic process,” Ünal Çeviköz, chief foreign policy adviser to Kılıçdaroğlu told POLITICO. “Kılıçdaroğlu will be the maestro of that team.”
Here are the key foreign policy topics in play in the vote:
EU and Turkish accession talks
Turkey’s opposition is confident it can unfreeze European Union accession talks — at a standstill since 2018 over the country’s democratic backsliding — by introducing liberalizing reforms in terms of rule of law, media freedoms and depoliticization of the judiciary.
The opposition camp also promises to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions calling for the release of two of Erdoğan’s best-known jailed opponents: the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party Selahattin Demirtaş and human rights defender Osman Kavala.
“This will simply give the message to all our allies, and all the European countries, that Turkey is back on track to democracy,” Çeviköz said.
Even under a new administration, however, the task of reopening the talks on Turkey’s EU accession is tricky.
Turkey’s opposition is aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi” | Burak Kara/Getty Images
Anti-Western feeling in Turkey is very strong across the political spectrum, argued Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.
“Foreign policy will depend on the coherence of the coalition,” he said. “This is a coalition of parties who have nothing in common apart from the desire to get rid of Erdoğan. They’ve got a very different agenda, and this will have an impact in foreign policy.”
“The relationship is largely comatose, and has been for some time, so, they will keep it on life support,” he said, adding that any new government would have so many internal problems to deal with that its primary focus would be domestic.
Europe also seems unprepared to handle a new Turkey, with a group of countries — most prominently France and Austria — being particularly opposed to the idea of rekindling ties.
“They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, that has departed from EU norms and values and is doing its own course,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş a visiting fellow at Brookings. “If the opposition forms a government, it will seek a European identity and we don’t know Europe’s answer to that; whether it could be accession or a new security framework that includes Turkey.”
“Obviously the erosion of trust has been mutual,” said former Turkish diplomat Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, arguing that despite reticence about Turkish accession, there are other areas where a complementary and mutually beneficiary framework could be built, like the customs union, visa liberalization, cooperation on climate, security and defense, and the migration agreement.
The opposition will indeed seek to revisit the 2016 agreement with the EU on migration, Çeviköz said.
“Our migration policy has to be coordinated with the EU,” he said. “Many countries in Europe see Turkey as a kind of a pool, where migrants coming from the east can be contained and this is something that Turkey, of course cannot accept,” he said but added. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey should open its borders and make the migrants flow into Europe. But we need to coordinate and develop a common migration policy.”
NATO and the US
After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on March 30.
But the opposition is also pledging to go further and end the Turkish veto on Sweden, saying that this would be possible by the alliance’s annual gathering on July 11. “If you carry your bilateral problems into a multilateral organization, such as NATO, then you are creating a kind of a polarization with all the other members of NATO with your country,” Çeviköz said.
A protester pushes a cart with a RRecep Tayyip Erdoğan doll during an anti-NATO and anti-Turkey demonstration in Sweden | Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images
A reelected Erdoğan could also feel sufficiently empowered to let Sweden in, many insiders argue. NATO allies did, after all, play a significant role in earthquake aid. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın says that the door is not closed to Sweden, but insists the onus is on Stockholm to determine how things proceed.
Turkey’s military relationship with the U.S. soured sharply in 2019 when Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile system, a move the U.S. said would put NATO aircraft flying over Turkey at risk. In response, the U.S. kicked Ankara out of the F-35 jet fighter program and slapped sanctions on the Turkish defense industry.
A meeting in late March between Kılıçdaroğlu and the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake infuriated Erdoğan, who saw it as an intervention in the elections and pledged to “close the door” to the U.S. envoy. “We need to teach the United States a lesson in this elections,” the irate president told voters.
In its policy platform, the opposition makes a clear reference to its desire to return to the F-35 program.
Russia and the war in Ukraine
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey presented itself as a middleman. It continues to supply weapons — most significantly Bayraktar drones — to Ukraine, while refusing to sanction Russia. It has also brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea.
Highlighting his strategic high-wire act on Russia, after green-lighting Finland’s NATO accession and hinting Sweden could also follow, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Maybe there is a possibility” that Putin may travel to Turkey on April 27 for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power reactor built by Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, he said.
Çeviköz said that under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, Turkey would be willing to continue to act as a mediator and extend the grain deal, but would place more stress on Ankara’s status as a NATO member.
“We will simply emphasize the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, and in our discussions with Russia, we will certainly look for a relationship among equals, but we will also remind Russia that Turkey is a member of NATO,” he said.
Turkey’s relationship with Russia has become very much driven by the relationship between Putin and Erdoğan and this needs to change, Ülgen argued.
Turkey brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images
“No other Turkish leader would have the same type of relationship with Putin, it would be more distant,” he said. “It does not mean that Turkey would align itself with the sanctions; it would not. But nonetheless, the relationship would be more transparent.”
Syria and migration
The role of Turkey in Syria is highly dependent on how it can address the issue of Syrians living in Turkey, the opposition says.
Turkey hosts some 4 million Syrians and many Turks, battling a major cost-of-living crisis, are becoming increasingly hostile. Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to create opportunities and the conditions for the voluntary return of Syrians.
“Our approach would be to rehabilitate the Syrian economy and to create the conditions for voluntary returns,” Çeviköz said, adding that this would require an international burden-sharing, but also establishing dialogue with Damascus.
Erdoğan is also trying to establish a rapprochement with Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will only meet the Turkish president when Ankara is ready to completely withdraw its military from northern Syria.
“A new Turkish government will be more eager to essentially shake hands with Assad,” said Ülgen. “But this will remain a thorny issue because there will be conditions attached on the side of Syria to this normalization.”
However, Piccoli from Teneo said voluntary returns of Syrians was “wishful thinking.”
“These are Syrians who have been living in Turkey for more than 10 years, their children have been going to school in Turkey from day one. So, the pledges of sending them back voluntarily, it is very questionable to what extent they can be implemented.”
Greece and the East Med
Turkey has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric against Greece in recent months, with the Erdoğan even warning that a missile could strike Athens.
But the prompt reaction by the Greek government and the Greek community to the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and a visit by the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias created a new backdrop for bilateral relations.
A Turkish drill ship before it leaves for gas exploration | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
Dendias, along with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, announced that Turkey would vote for Greece in its campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2025-26 and that Greece would support the Turkish candidacy for the General Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization.
In another sign of a thaw, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi visited Turkey this month, with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar saying he hoped that the Mediterranean and Aegean would be a “sea of friendship” between the two countries. Akar said he expected a moratorium with Greece in military and airforce exercises in the Aegean Sea between June 15 and September 15.
“Both countries are going to have elections, and probably they will have the elections on the same day. So, this will open a new horizon in front of both countries,” Çeviköz said.
“The rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in their bilateral problems [in the Aegean], will facilitate the coordination in addressing the other problems in the eastern Mediterranean, which is a more multilateral format,” he said. Disputes over maritime borders and energy exploration, for example, are common.
As far as Cyprus is concerned, Çeviköz said that it is important for Athens and Ankara not to intervene into the domestic politics of Cyprus and the “two peoples on the island should be given an opportunity to look at their problems bilaterally.”
However, analysts argue that Greece, Cyprus and the EastMed are fundamental for Turkey’s foreign policy and not much will change with another government. The difference will be more one of style.
“The approach to manage those differences will change very much. So, we will not hear aggressive rhetoric like: ‘We will come over one night,’” said Ülgen. “We’ll go back to a more mature, more diplomatic style of managing differences and disputes.”
“The NATO framework will be important, and the U.S. would have to do more in terms of re-establishing the sense of balance in the Aegean,” said Aydıntaşbaş. But, she argued, “you just cannot normalize your relations with Europe or the U.S., unless you’re willing to take that step with Greece.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“I’m launching my campaign now because I believe that New Jersey can become an even better place for all of us, and I will be sharing my vision over the coming months for how we will make it happen,” he added. “I’ve never backed down from a fight before, and I’m ready to work hard for all the people of our great state to deliver the results New Jersey deserves.”
An accompanying announcement video opens with images of the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 and recounts how Fulop left his job as an analyst for Goldman Sachs to join the Marines, and it includes interviews with several veterans Fulop served with. It then highlights his policies in Jersey City, like paid sick leave requirements for many businesses and a $15 minimum wage for city workers.
Jersey City, which is directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, has seen a huge development boom under Fulop. Fulop boasted of helping attract major developments more inland from the city’s waterfront, which has seen periodic post-industrial building booms since the 1980s.
In his State of the City speech last month, Fulop highlighted the city’s efforts to make healthy food available in poor neighborhoods, a city program to resettle refugees, and deals that require developers to include affordable housing units in their projects. He’s also presided over an expansion of bike lanes.
Fulop’s candidacy itself is far from a surprise. He announced he would not seek reelection as mayor in January in what was widely viewed as a pre-gubernatorial announcement.
But it is a surprise that he announced his candidacy two years before the Democratic primary. Prospective candidates often hold off on formally announcing their candidacies because, if they accept public financing as most do, they’re be limited to $7.3 million ahead of the primary. However, a super PAC that’s run by his wife’s business partner called Coalition for Progress, which is all but officially considered Fulop’s, has $6.2 million in the bank.
Fulop spokesperson Phil Swibinski said that he does plan to pursue public financing.
Fulop, who grew up in Edison and whose parents owned a deli in Newark, was on the precipice of running for governor in 2017. He traveled the state to meet with power brokers, but suddenly backed off in the fall of 2016 to endorse Murphy, who will not be able to seek reelection due to term limits.
Fulop had been considered a top-tier candidate, and his sudden withdrawal from the race alienated and mystified some political allies at the time while boxing out then-Senate President Steve Sweeney, who was also expected to run.
Other frequently-mentioned potential Democratic candidates for governor in 2025 include Sweeney, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer.
Former 2021 gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has also said he intends to run again, though he’s likely to face other Republicans for the nomination.
Fulop’s political career began as a no-hope candidate for Congress in the Democratic primary against then-U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, who at the time was feuding with then-Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham, who recruited Fulop. Though Fulop lost that race badly, he shocked the city’s political establishment in 2005 by winning a council seat in the city’s quickly-gentrifying Ward E.
Fulop became a critic of the city’s Democratic machine, annoying then-Mayor Jerramiah Healy and gaining some prominence as a critic of Hudson County’s all-too-frequent corruption scandals. But after defeating Healy in 2013, Fulop took the reins of the political machine and became the target of critics who questioned his ethics.
Coalition for Progress, which was founded ahead of Fulop’s expected 2017 gubernatorial run, faced several complaints from ethics watchdog groups over a $1 million donation it received from a Delaware trust that appeared designed to hide the donor’s identity. The trust was formed on December 23, 2015 and made the donation the following day.
Seven months later, in an amended campaign finance report, the super PAC revealed the donor to be Vivek Garipalli, then the owner of the for-profit hospital chain CarePoint Health, which owns a hospital in Jersey City that Fulop once recommended for an ambulance contract.
In 2014, Fulop’s then-chief of staff, Muhammed Akil, was caught on tape in what sounded like an effort to try to steer a city energy consulting contract to a specific company, circumventing a public bidding process.
“What I don’t like about this, see, f—ing straight up this is the kind of s— where motherf—ers go to jail,” Akil said on the recording, which POLITICO obtained in 2017. Fulop heard the recording, according to a deposition, but Akil remained his chief of staff for nearly a year after and even after it became public, Fulop did not completely cut ties with Akil.
Fulop’s future opponents will likely raise some of those controversies, but so far they’re not commenting.
“OK,” Sweeney, who frequently butted heads with Fulop in the lead-up to the 2017 gubernatorial election, said in a phone interview when asked about Fulop’s candidacy. “That’s not really a shock, is it?
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Election officials do want elections to become boring again,” said Rachel Orey, the associate director of the BPC’s Elections Project and an author of the report. “We need to think more realistically about what it is that we actually need to do to improve elections.”
They might have their work cut out for them.
The explosion of election denialism, Orey says, has distracted “from the actual challenges that are undermining elections. If legislators’ attention is so focused on appeasing critics, they end up doing things that aren’t actually solving problems.”
One longtime recommendation they reup is to urge states to join or remain in the Electronic Registration Information Center — an interstate organization that helps states maintain their voter rolls — in an effort to make roll maintenance “a regular and uncontroversial part of the elections process.”
But what’s happening on the ground is the opposite. Several Republican-led states have left the organization over the last year after it was attacked by former President Donald Trump and his allies. Some affiliated with the organization fear more departures are coming.
BPC recommends improving funding for elections, a bugaboo for some in the field. The report’s first set of recommendations call for the state and federal government to supply more reliable funding for election officials.
The report argues that it is needed because “an increasingly interconnected, complicated, and contentious political environment means that vulnerabilities in one jurisdiction could cast doubt on the election and, ultimately, on American democracy as a whole.”
The report says states should “consider requiring that all ballots be in hand [of election officials] by the close of polls to be counted,” in an effort to expedite the amount of time it takes results to be tabulated. Election officials have become increasingly concerned about the window between when polls close and when a winner is clear, a time they say is ripe for bad actors to spread disinformation.
The idea would likely be unpopular with some Democrats who advocate letting ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and are received by officials days later to count.
That recommendation is part of one of the report’s other major goals, which is looking to have election results that are “trusted by candidates and the general public.”
That and other recommendations look to speed up ballot counting timelines, an effort to counteract “today’s rapid-information culture [that] perceives longer waits as inherently suspect.”
There is also a recognition that post-election work is just as important as what happens on Election Day.
BPC believes holding “cross-partisan” election audits could curb the misinformation that stemmed from states like Arizona, where the Republican-led state Senate ran a post-election review of Maricopa County that was widely panned by election experts as amateurish and fueling conspiracy theories.
“Getting some sort of agreed-upon, trusted approach to audit the process can really then enhance [elections],” said Scott Jarrett, who is co-elections director in Maricopa and a BPC elections task force member. “Not only for the near-term, but then for decades and decades of elections to come.”
The election certification process has been revealed as a weak point in American democracy. In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, allies of Trump targeted election certification in Michigan and elsewhere. And a handful of counties across the country had to be ordered by courts to certify some results during the midterms. “Certification challenges might increase in the days after the 2024 presidential election,” the report warns.
Among other things, the report urges lawmakers to allow state election officials to step in if a local jurisdiction does not certify, and allowing for “courts [to] expediently intervene” if officials refuse to certify.
The ultimate goal of the entire report, officials say, is to have elections run smoothly. The thinking there is that if voters have a positive individual experience, they will be more trusting of the system overall.
But they acknowledge that the heat on election officials likely isn’t going away anytime soon.
“I would love for it to be boring again, and people aren’t paying attention, and they just show up, vote and are confident that their vote has been counted,” said Monica Holman Evans, another BPC task force member and the executive director of the D.C. board of elections. “But I don’t know if that’s likely to happen.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Budgam, Apr 9: Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju Sunday said that there will be some amendments in the entire election process.
“We are looking towards making certain amendments in the entire election process but I can’t keep any commitment because it’s a consultation process that is going on,” the law Minister told reporters after inaugurating District Court Complex and District Aid Legal Council in Central Kashmir’s Budgam district.
Kiren Rijiju declined to give an appropriate date for elections in Jammu and Kashmir, however, as per news agency Kashmir News Trust he maintained that elections will be held at an appropriate time.
He said that the Government of India is in a process of defining what ‘fake news’ is all about and deliberations in this regard are going on.
“The definition of fake news, false news, misrepresentation, these are important things which require lots of deliberation and we are doing it,” he said.
When asked National Conference leader Dr Farooq Abdullah has appealed to all opposition parties to get united to defeat BJP in the next elections, Kiren Rijiju who is a native of Arunachal Pradesh said that all this shows that BJP is a strong party.
When asked about the conditional passport issued to Iltija Mufti – the daughter of Mehbooba Mufti, Kiren Rijiju said that he is a Law Minister and doesn’t issue passports. [KNT]
