Chennai: The AIADMK Executive, in its meeting held here on Sunday, decided not to contest the May 10 Karnataka Assembly elections, and support the BJP instead.
The first executive meeting, since K Palaniswami was elected as the party’s General Secretary, was chaired by party Presidium Chairman Thamizhmagan Hussain.
The AIADMK’s decision to support the BJP in Karnataka comes at a time when the BJP Tamil Nadu President K Annamalai had engaged in a confrontation with the party. However, sources in AIADMK told IANS that the BJP national leadership has requested the party to extend its support in the Karnataka elections.
The party has decided to convene a public meeting in Madurai on April 20.
A total of 15 resolutions were passed in the executive meeting of which 10 were against the ruling DMK, including one condemning it for the deteriorating law and order situation in the state. One resolution was passed to authorise Palaniswami to lead the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The AIADMK, after the election of Palaniswami, is trying to win at least a few Lok Sabha seats from Tamil Nadu in 2024.
The party is trying to conduct several programmes in the run-up to the elections and the decision to support the BJP in the Karnataka elections is a political move.
The AIADMK had won only one seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in the 39 seats the NDA contested.
The DMK has announced that it would win all 39 seats in 2024 and has already appointed coordinators for each Assembly constituency to work among the masses.
Kolkata: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday alleged that the BJP is sharpening communal polarisation as the 2024 general elections approach.
He said that clashes between groups of people have been witnessed during the Ram Navami celebrations in some parts of the country.
“As 2024 (Lok Sabha elections) approaches, sharpening communal polarisation has become mainstay for the BJP for its electoral and political mobilisation,” Yechury said at a press conference here.
Stating that there is no history of clashes during the Ramnavami celebrations in the past in many of the places where they occurred, the CPI(M) leader claimed that it was engineered.
The CPI(M) leader said that the anti-BJP forces in the country have to unite to make sure that the saffron party does not continue to control the reins of the government and state power.
Yechury said that post the general elections next year, the actual formation of an anti-BJP alliance will take shape.
He claimed that this combine will form the next government, replacing the BJP-led NDA.
The CPI(M) leader said each state has its specific political alignments, but the idea is to maximise pooling of the anti-BJP forces.
“Both in 1996 and 2004, alliances were formed after the elections,” he said.
He pointed out that the CPI(M) supported the Manmohan Singh government in 2004 despite having fought the Congress in three states West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.
He said that the CPI(M) has decided to continue to talk with all the secular, democratic opposition parties.
“The effort would be, in the coming 2024 elections, in every state to maximise the pooling of patriotic and secular opposition forces so that the BJP cannot take advantage of a division in the opposition,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of Mamata Banerjee-led ruling party in Bengal being in it, the CPI(M) leader claimed that the Trinamool Congress’ credibility as an anti-BJP force has “always been questionable.”
Claiming that politics is not just about arithmetic and adding numbers, he said that it has to be seen who is a consistent ally.
“If the entire purpose of the Trinamool and the BJP is to isolate the Left and the Congress and the other secular forces, then the point is what in the future they will do together,” he asked.
In the past a number of opposition parties uch as DMK, the Left, RJD, JD(U) and NCP have held meetings to forge an understanding ahead of the 2024 general elections. However, the Trinamool Congress at that time had indicated it would like to remain equidistant from both the Congress and BJP.
Nevertheless, after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification, the TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee tweeted her condemnation and the party started sending its representative to various opposition programs.
Yechury termed as “peculiar” the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s assertion that if their lives “are difficult or made difficult with the support of the State”, would the Indian Muslim population be growing.
“This very argument is completely unacceptable,” he said.
The Left leader claimed that the real wages in India have remained stagnant over the last eight years of the Narendra Modi government.
“With inflation soaring, if the real wages are stagnant, that means people’s consumption are declining, which means poverty levels are increasing,” he said.
Yechury claimed that in the last 10 years, two India’s have emerged – shining India and suffering India, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
Alleging misuse of the ED, CBI and governors, he also claimed that the democratic system in the country is being destroyed.
SRINAGAR: In a move to ensure maximum participation of Kashmiri Migrants in the upcoming Assembly and Parliamentary elections, the Government has constituted teams to facilitate the enrollment of the displaced people from Kashmir putting up at Jammu and other parts of the India and help them cast their votes.
The Relief and Rehabilitation (M) Department has constituted 22 teams for in camp and non camp areas of JK UT, with an aim to spread awareness and manage facilitation of Kashmiri migrants in electoral rolls of the constituencies of their original residence in Valley. The department has also started various outreach programmes at Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Delhi and Chandigarh.
As per media reports, the teams of the Relief and Rehabilitation Organization have already been dispatched to outside Valley and they have visited Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh and on Thursday the team is visiting Bangalore in Karnataka and Ahmedabad in Gujarat where the Kashmiri migrants are putting up to get them enrolled as voters in Valley and ensure that they will vote in coming Assembly and Parliamentary elections from their respective constituencies in Kashmir.
Besides, two special teams have been constituted wherein 16 officers, 56 officials and 50 Casual labourers have been engaged under the supervision of Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner (M), J&K.
The process has already started and for Zonal Area Awareness Campaign, all the officers and officials of 22 Zones have been declared as BLO’s and have been assigned the task of conducting door to door awareness program and enrollment of Kashmiri Migrants in Electoral Rolls.
Excelsior reported that at present there are 1,20,000 migrant voters with Relief Organization and the department is motivating them to cast their vote in Kashmir so as to fulfill the gap created after their displacement.
The sole intention of the Government is that the Kashmiri migrants putting up in other States of country should actively participate in democratic process and exercise their right to franchise from the constituencies they belonged in Kashmir, Excelsior reported.
The whole Special Summary Revision campaign is being monitored under the supervision of Chief Electoral Officer, JK.
When Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal launched his Aam Admi party in 2012 and bid for power the following year, no one thought he would find political space and sustain himself.
A decade later, today, he has changed from the self-projected role of an angry young man to an ‘ambitious young man’ with grand plans for himself and his young Party.
With two states- Delhi and Punjab- under his belt, Kejriwal wants to lead the Opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. He has three goals:
Expand his Party to as many states as possible. Find a place in the country’s political high table. Position himself as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s primary challenger.
His optimism comes out in his recent prophecy, “Time is very powerful; nothing is permanent in the world. If one thinks that one will remain in power forever, then that’s not going to happen. Today we’re in power in Delhi, and they’re (BJP) in power in Centre; Tomorrow it might happen we’ll be in power in Centre,”
The AAP’s political journey has seen dramatic twists and turns. The Party has grown beyond recognition, and the BJP has overtaken Congress. At the same time, the Grand Old Party has shrunk.
Born from India Against Corruption movement, the AAP decimated Congress and the BJP in the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections. After 49 days, he quit as chief minister, only to return in 2015 and 2021. The AAP has no Lok Sabha MP but boasts 10 members in the Rajya Sabha. It is the only Party other than the Congress and the BJP to control power in two states, Delhi and Punjab.
The Party lost miserably in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Delhi. At another level, AAP faced a setback as it could not muster even one percent of votes in the assembly elections in Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. But the landslide win in Punjab last year brought back cheers.
After last year’s Gujarat polls, AAP is again ascending by gaining the national party status. It is the ninth national Party.
Compared to AAP, Samajwadi Party, JD(U), Telugu Desam, Rashtriya Janata Dal, and Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi couldn’t move beyond their turf. Parties like NCP, TMC, CPI, and BSP face derecognition.
Like many other Opposition parties, AAP faced pinpricks from the Centre. These have demoralized the Party and created a fear complex. After weighing the pros and cons, the AAP chief has decided to take on the BJP headlong, particularly after the recent arrests of his two ministers, Sisodia and Satyednra Jain.
For instance, despite the mutual discomfort between the two rivals -AAP and Congress- Kejriwal blasted BJP after the recent court verdict and the subsequent disqualification of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi from Lok Sabha.
The AAP chief alleged Modi is the most corrupt Prime Minister. He criticized the Prime Minister for his alleged closeness to industrialist Gautam Adani, who became the world’s second wealthiest man and joined the Opposition in their demand for a Joint Parliamentary probe last session.
He has questioned Modi’s educational qualifications and asked if his “degree is fake”. This came a day after Gujarat High Court fined Kejriwal and ruled that Prime Minister’s degree details were unnecessary.
Kejriwal went to the Lion’s Den Gujarat by talking about his “Delhi model.” during the last year’s Assembly polls. Modi came to power propagating his ‘Gujarat model.”
Kejriwal has openly joined other opposition leaders to challenge Modi before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
There are many ifs and buts before Kejriwal could achieve his goals. AAP continues to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues and those about the common man. Kejriwal plays a soft Hindutva to attract Hindu voters. He wants to win voters by offering freebies. But the strategy in the North may or may not work in the Southern states.
To succeed, Kejriwal must build his Party and sell his ‘Delhi model” successfully. Several factors influence the voters, including grassroots organization, anti-BJP sentiment, a credible local face, and the potential for implementing the Delhi model.
Secondly, Kejriwal needs to build second-line state leaders. The Party’s founding members, such as Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Shazia Ilmi, Kumar Vishwas, and Ashutosh, and civil society members, in the past decade, quit the Party protesting against Kejriwal’s highhandedness. Before the 2022 Assembly election, at least 11 MLAs either quit the Party or were disqualified.
Thirdly, he has made a personality cult around himself, and all powers are centred on him. He must learn to share power instead of concentrating entirely on himself.
The fourth is to build friendships with other opposition leaders and mend fences with Congress. If only two fronts exist, then Congress will not support him.
2023 will be a trial run before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections for all parties, but more so for AAP. Ultimately, win or lose depends on his electoral calculations and voters’ reactions.
Ukraine’s farmers played an iconic role in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, towing away abandoned enemy tanks with their tractors.
Now, though, their prodigious grain output is causing some of Ukraine’s staunchest allies to waver, as disrupted shipments are redirected onto neighboring markets.
The most striking is Poland, which has played a leading role so far in supporting Ukraine, acting as the main transit hub for Western weaponry and sending plenty of its own. But grain shipments in the other direction have irked Polish farmers who are being undercut — just months before a national election where the rural vote will be crucial.
Diplomats are floundering. After a planned Friday meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian agriculture ministers was postponed, the Polish government on Saturday announced a ban on imports of farm products from Ukraine. Hungary late Saturday said it would do the same.
Ukraine is among the world’s top exporters of wheat and other grains, which are ordinarily shipped to markets as distant as Egypt and Pakistan. Russia’s invasion last year disrupted the main Black Sea export route, and a United Nations-brokered deal to lift the blockade has been only partially effective. In consequence, Ukrainian produce has been diverted to bordering EU countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
At first, those governments supported EU plans to shift the surplus grain. But instead of transiting seamlessly onto global markets, the supply glut has depressed prices in Europe. Farmers have risen up in protest, and Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk was forced out earlier this month.
Now, governments’ focus has shifted to restricting Ukrainian imports to protect their own markets. After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw in early April, Polish President Andrzej Duda said resolving the import glut was “a matter of introducing additional restrictions.”
The following day, Poland suspended imports of Ukrainian grain, saying the idea had come from Kyiv. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after an emergency cabinet meeting, said the import ban would cover grain and certain other farm products and would include products intended for other countries. A few hours later, the Hungarian government announced similar measures. Both countries said the bans would last until the end of June.
The European Commission is seeking further information on the import restrictions from Warsaw and Budapest “to be able to assess the measures,” according to a statement on Sunday. “Trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable,” it said.
While the EU’s free-trade agreement with Ukraine prevents governments from introducing tariffs, they still have plenty of tools available to disrupt shipments.
Neighboring countries and nearby Bulgaria have stepped up sanitary checks on Ukrainian grain, arguing they are doing so to protect the health of their own citizens. They have also requested financial support from Brussels and have already received more than €50 million from the EU’s agricultural crisis reserve, with more money on the way.
Restrictions could do further harm to Ukraine’s battered economy, and by extension its war effort. The economy has shrunk by 29.1 percent since the invasion, according to statistics released this month, and agricultural exports are an important source of revenue.
Cracks in the alliance
The trade tensions sit at odds with these countries’ political position on Ukraine, which — with the exception of Hungary — has been strongly supportive. Poland has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, while weapons and ammunition flow in the opposite direction; Romania has helped transport millions of tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki | Omar Marques/Getty Images
Some Western European governments, which had to be goaded by Poland and others into sending heavy weaponry to Kyiv, are quick to point out the change in direction.
“Curious to see that some of these countries are [always] asking for more on sanctions, more on ammunition, etc. But when it affects them, they turn to Brussels begging for financial support,” said one diplomat from a Western country, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some EU countries also oppose the import restrictions for economic reasons. For instance, Spain and the Netherlands are some of the biggest recipients of Ukrainian grain, which they use to supply their livestock industries.
Politically, though, the Central and Eastern European governments have limited room for maneuver. Poland and Slovakia are both heading into general elections later this year. Bulgaria has had a caretaker government since last year. Romania’s agriculture minister has faced calls to resign, including from a compatriot former EU agriculture commissioner.
And farmers are a strong constituency. Poland’s right-wing Law & Justice (PiS) party won the last general election in 2019 thanks in large part to rural voters. The Ukrainian grain issue has already cost a Polish agriculture minister his job; the government as a whole will have to tread carefully to avoid the same fate.
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
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 )
SRINAGAR: National Conference President and Member of Parliament from Srinagar, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, questioned the “double speak” of the Government of India regarding assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday. “The Centre is saying the situation has normalized in Jammu and Kashmir. One of our local IGs is saying that militancy has declined but not over. Why this double talk?” Farooq said while talking to journalists during his visit to Anantnag.
“If the indices of security have improved, then what is holding them back from holding elections? First it was security, and then it was weather. Now that the weather is clear and the security situation admittedly better. What is it then? When we visited the Election Commission, we were told that the delimitation exercise, voter lists have been completed. All they are doing is managing new excuses every day to delay Assembly elections,” he said.
Responding to a question on the removal of chapters relating to Mughal history from NCERT books, he said, “It’s sheer mockery. What are we going to tell visitors who built the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, and many other fascinating buildings/structures? How will you hide the architectural and cultural insignias of Mughals spread across the country? It’s there to remain. People come and go, but history remains unchanged.”
Earlier, as per a statement to GNS, he visited Kokernag to commiserate with senior leader Choudhary Zaffar Ali Khatana on the demise of his brother Choudhary Amjad Ali Khatana. Joined by the party’s local unit and other South Zone functionaries, he expressed sympathies and condolences with the bereaved household and offered Fatiha for the deceased.
Among others, District presidents Altaf Ahmed Wani, Sajad Shaheen, senior leader Abdul Majeed Bhat Larmi, Provincial Vice President Syed Tauqeer Shah, and Reyaz Ahmed Khan accompanied him on the condolence visit. (GNS)
Similarly, Brandon Johnson, a Chicago union organizer, was hammered by his rival for previously leaning into the “defund the police” movement. But he stressed that his opponent Paul Vallas was not actually a Democrat, forcing him to repeatedly defend his credentials.
Both Protasiewicz and Johnson prevailed.
“Voters showed that they understand public safety to be much more nuanced than the way the Republicans try to frame it. That this is not just about having adequate law enforcement on the streets to promote public safety, but also about investing in mental health and substance use treatment and addressing poverty,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in an interview with POLITICO. “There are not just the short-term efforts to address crime, but also the long-term efforts.”
While both of Tuesday night’s races were nonpartisan, they did each contain a left vs. right ideological contrast that offered a temperature reading as to where voters stood on key issues. Johnson emphasized taxes on the ultrarich, while Protasiewicz played up protection for abortion rights as well as voters’ concerns about threats to U.S. democracy.
The through-line issue, however, was crime.
It wasn’t lost on state or national officials that had Johnson lost the race, they would have been forced to push back hard on the narrative that his “defund” position cost them the keys to City Hall. Instead, while concerns over crime did indeed dominate the race, voters weren’t buying solutions that simply called for adding more police. And they rejected the controversial police union that went hard after Johnson.
“The narrative coming out of the first election was that voters were scared out of their wits,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and pollster. “Now, after the last election, the story is that while voters are scared, they aren’t out of their wits.”
Pritzker, who helped raise critical money for TV ads in Protasiewicz’s race, said the GOP tactic to paint Democrats as soft on crime was also used in the midterms, and didn’t work then in Illinois and several key battleground states, either.
“We all got attacked on the simplistic vision of Republicans and we all are folks who believe you’ve got to address public safety in a nuanced and multifaceted fashion. We’ve said that to the voters and they responded,” Pritzker said.
“We saw it over and over again,” he added, pointing to the 2022 Democratic victories of Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin as well as his own in Illinois.
In Pritzker’s race last year, his conservative opponent, Darren Bailey, hammered the governor over Chicago’s persistent crime problem. Pritzker said polling showed crime was “an important issue” to voters, “but that didn’t mean they wanted to choose the more conservative or Republican candidate. That bore itself out.”
The same thing happened in Tuesday’s mayoral election in Chicago, said Pritzker, who did not endorse in the race that saw Mayor Lori Lightfoot shut out after the first round of voting. Her administration’s handling of crime was attacked by the eight candidates she faced in the first round, including Johnson and Vallas.
Vallas, a former public schools chief, latched on to people’s fears about carjackings in neighborhoods that hadn’t experienced it to the extent they do now. He proposed ramping up police officers on the streets and talked about opening schools for alternative programming for young adults.
Johnson, who had previously said defunding police was “a goal,” insisted during the race that he wasn’t suggesting taking funds away from police. He said he supported adding 200 detectives to solve crimes and funding social services programs that get to the heart of the crime problem.
The attention on Chicago and its handling of crime was on the radar of the national Democratic Party, too, with Biden weighing where the 2024 Democratic convention should be held. Chicago is a finalist, as are New York and Atlanta.
Pritzker called the Midwest “a blue wall” for Democrats, adding, “that was proven out last night. I do think that this puts us in the pole position to win the convention.”
Some in the Chicago contingent pushing their DNC bid had worried that Vallas winning the mayor’s race would complicate their efforts given critical remarks he had made about Chicago itself and a slew of top elected leaders, including Pritzker. They were heartened by the fact that Biden and DNC officials waited until the mayor’s race was over to decide.
For Biden, however, the greater impact is likely in Wisconsin, a state that’s central to his chances in 2024. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre connected the string of Democratic wins on abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
“Americans want the freedom to make reproductive health care decisions without government interference,” Jean-Pierre said. “Yet, though, you see that Republican elected officials are more committed than ever to attack those fundamental freedoms that Americans should have.”
Brian Stryker, a Democratic strategist who conducted polling for Protasiewicz, said the state’s 1849 abortion ban was very much top of mind for voters in Wisconsin. As were questions about whether the elected officials there would certify future contests. That Protasiewicz performed so well in suburban counties should serve as a potent signal to Democrats across the region, he said.
Garin agreed, but went even further.
“Wisconsin is evidence of a backlash against the MAGA power-grab and their assault on democracy and the rule of the people,” he said. “And Democrats in 2024 would be wise to tap into that.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar made a significant comment about the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir. He observed: “There is vacuum that needs to be filled,” and it immediately got translated into the widening duration between the elections held last in J&K, and now. Technically, this vacuum is about time. There, however, are larger issues involved, which this vacuum phrase invokes.
The last assembly polls in J&K, when it was special status state under Article 370, were held in November-December 2014. By that count, it is almost nine years between then and now. In practical terms, it’s since June 19, 2018, there has been no Assembly, first, it was kept in suspended animation, and then dissolved on November 21, 2018, in the most mysterious circumstances when a supposedly dysfunctional fax machine at Raj Bhawan, Jammu became the cause of not entertaining a plea by three parties- PDP, National Conference, and Congress, and few independents to form the government. Even if that controversial act of the then Governor Satya Pal Malik is to be condoned, the elections to the Assembly should have been held within the stipulated period of six months from the date of dissolution- that is by May 2019. Ironically, the parliamentary polls were held in April-May, 2019. It, in itself, dismissed the thesis that the elections were not possible because of the poor security situation. This logic remains beyond comprehension.
Again even if the argument is entertained that there are different sets of security covers needed for the parliamentary and Assembly polls, as the election of MLAs invokes intense electioneering and campaigning in wider areas than the Lok Sabha polls, even then some sort of date should have been announced. Prior to the abrogation of Article 370 and the split of the state into two union territories, the Election Commission of India had declared that it would take the call after the conclusion of the Amarnath Yatra. The pilgrimage to the cave shrine in the Himalayas in Kashmir, devoted to Lord Shiva at the height of 13,500 feet above sea level, however, was canceled on August 2, 2019, apparently, because it was under immediate threat of terror attacks. So that schedule got canceled with that only. As the whole landscape of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir changed on August 5, 2019, along with its political history and future outlook, the elections were not possible owing to security reasons, and also that there were apprehensions of noisy and violent street protests – holding of the polls that time would have been hara-kiri. Moreover, all the political leaders of the regional parties were put behind bars,- some under house arrest, others in detention elsewhere, and hundreds of others, stone throwers, and miscreants were also sent to jails. The issues got changed overnight from elections to Article 370 and the dismantling of the state into two union territories. In a place where the internet remained shut for almost one year, the elections were unthinkable.
There was rhetoric to show that doing away with Article 370 has brought changes that marginalized sections in society. There also was simmering against the move. There were several parties and sections of society who did not see the move as just a constitutional measure, depriving J&K of its special status and constitutional guarantees, but as something aimed at marginalizing their identity, culture, and demography.
In the hindsight, it’s clear now that the constitution of the Delimitation Commission in March 2020, was a move to gain time to test the ground for the political outcome. It was not without a reason that the Jammu region, perceived to be BJP bastion, got an increase of six seats from 37 to 43, while Kashmir, having more population, got just one more seat – 46 to 47. The Delimitation Commission report came out in May 2022- a delay of 14 months due to the Covid pandemic. After the Commission’s report, a summary revision of electoral rolls was ordered and it was completed in November 2022. That should have brought the elections into sight, but, in reality nowhere to be seen.
This vacuum runs against the spirit of democracy. The elected representatives in the Assembly form core of the democracy. If the people feel unrepresented, then the vacuum assumes greater and serious dimensions than merely the gap between the last elections and now.
Helsinki: Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s party was defeated in tight parliamentary elections on Sunday (local time) after a center-right party stressed on country’s economic troubles, New York Times reported.
Marin’s Social Democratic Party was outpolled after the center-right National Coalition Party-led by Petteri Orpo, 53, received the most votes followed by the right-wing Finns Party and the Social Democrats.
Petteri Orpo’s party National Coalition Party received more than 93.4 percent votes, which means that very soon, the country will get the new Prime Minister.
Marin, 37, was narrowly defeated. Despite her popularity, the election turned on the economy, and Orpo was successful in arguing that public spending should be reduced and that Finland’s debt is too high, New York Times reported.
The radical right Finns Party, meanwhile, gained seven new MPs and took 20 percent of the vote.
The National Coalition Party was on top with 20.7 percent, followed closely by the right-wing populist party The Finns with 20.1 percent, while the Social Democratic Party of Marin garnered 19.9 percent.
The Centre Party, Left Alliance, and Greens all suffered large losses after their participation in the current five-party coalition, with leaders of all three saying it would be difficult for them to go back into government after these election results.
According to Yleisradio Oy, the country’s national public broadcasting company, Orpo faces a difficult job forming a government in the new parliament, with his first task to put out feelers to each of the parties to find any common ground on the important issues and explore the prospect of drafting a government program.
Once that task is complete, he will enter into negotiations with his preferred coalition partners and set out a plan for the next four years.
The NCP has led in polls for almost two years, although its lead melted away in recent months. It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since Marin took office in 2019, according to Al Jazeera.
Sanna Marin, upon her confirmation by Parliament at the age of 34, became Finland’s youngest-ever Prime Minister and was the youngest serving state leader. She has been the Prime Minister of Finland since 2019 and a member of Parliament since 2015.
Recently, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was the latest female Prime Minister who stood down from her post. Chris Hipkins succeeded her as the new leader of New Zealand.
