Tag: Parliament

Joe Biden: EU conservative hero

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Joe Biden’s European friends may be miffed about his climate law.
But the U.S. president’s America-first, subsidy-heavy approach has actually gained some grudging — and for a Democrat unlikely — admirers on the Continent: Europe’s conservatives.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook.

Their frustration is homing in on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a putative conservative the EPP itself helped install. Officials fear they have let von der Leyen lead the party away from its pro-industry, regulation-slashing ideals, according to interviews with leading party figures.
Biden’s law has now brought their grumbling to the surface.
On Thursday, a wing of EPP lawmakers defected during a Parliament vote over whether to back von der Leyen’s planned response to Biden’s marquee green spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their concern: it doesn’t go far enough in championing European industries.
Essentially, they want it to feel more like Biden’s plan.
The IRA was an “embarrassment” for Europe, said Thanasis Bakolas, the EPP’s power broker and secretary general. The EU “had all these well-funded policies available. And then comes Biden with his IRA. And he introduces policies that are more efficient, more effective, more accessible to businesses and consumers.”
A bitter inspiration
European leaders were blindsided last summer when Biden signed the IRA into law.
Since then, they have complained loudly that the U.S. subsidies for homegrown clean tech are a threat to their own industries. But for the EPP, ostensibly on the opposite side to Biden’s Democrats, the law is also serving as bitter inspiration.
“It’s a little bit like in the fairy tale, that someone in the crowd — and this time it wasn’t the boy, it was the Americans — pretty much pointing the finger to the [European] Commission, and saying, ‘Oh, the king is naked?’” said Christian Ehler, a German European Parliament member from the EPP.
Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
Under the EU’s centerpiece climate policy, the European Green Deal, the European Commission, the EU’s policy-making executive arm, has doggedly introduced law after law aimed at squeezing polluters from every angle using tighter regulations or carbon pricing. The goal is to zero out the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Biden’s IRA approaches the same goal by different means. It is laden with voter- and industry-friendly tax breaks and made-in-America requirements. Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission.
For some, the sense of betrayal isn’t directed at Washington, but inward.
“We learned that we lost track for the last two years on the deal part of the Green Deal,” said Ehler, who is using his seat on Parliament’s powerful Committee on Industry, Research and Energy to push for fewer climate burdens on industry. “We are in the midst of the super regulation.”
The irony is that Biden and the Democrats probably wouldn’t have chosen this path were it not for Republicans’ decades-long refusal to move any form of climate regulation through Congress.
The IRA was a product of political necessity, shaped to suit independent-minded Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin of coal-heavy West Virginia. If Biden and his party had their druthers, Biden’s climate policy might have looked far more like the Brussels model.
Let’s get political
As party boss, Bakolas is preparing the platform on which the EPP — a pan-European umbrella group of 81 center-right parties — will campaign for the 2024 EU elections.
He is also flirting with an alliance with the far right, meaning the center-right and center-left consensus that has dominated climate policy in Brussels could break up. Bakolas advocates “a more political approach.”
“We need to do the same [as the U.S.], with the same tenacity and determination,” he said.
One big problem: It’s hard for the European Union, which doesn’t control tax policy, to match the political eye-candy of offering cashback for electric Hummers (something Americans can now claim on their taxes).
“Can Europe, this institutional arrangement in Brussels … act as effortlessly and seamlessly as the American administration? No, because it’s a difficult exercise for Europe to reach a decision … but it’s an exercise we need to do,” said Bakolas.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
In other words, the EPP is looking to emulate Biden’s law — at least in spirit, if not in legalese.
The conservative thinking is beginning to coalesce into a few main themes: slowing down green regulation they feel burden industry; using sector-specific programs to help companies reinvest their profits into cleaning up their businesses; and slashing red tape they say slows already clean industries from getting on with the job.
EPP lawmaker Peter Liese said he had been “desperately calling” for these red-tape-slashing measures. He was glad to see some in von der Leyen’s contested IRA response plan. But Liese and the EPP want more.
“We can have an answer of the two crises, the two challenges, that we have: the climate crisis and challenge for our economy, including the IRA,” said Liese.
Green groups and left-wing lawmakers argue the EPP is simply using the IRA and Europe’s broader economic woes as a smokescreen to cover a broad retreat from the Green Deal. In recent months the party has blocked, or threatened to block, a host of green regulations proposed by the Commission.
“This is like trying to put on the ballroom shoes of your grandfather and trying to do a 100-meter sprint,” Green MEP Anna Cavazzini told Parliament on Wednesday.
Bakolas rejected that.
He said the party had finally woken up to the need to set a climate agenda that better reflected its own, center-right, free-market ideals.
“What the IRA did,” he said, “is to ring an alarm bell.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
How Qatar used a secret deal to bind itself to the EU Parliament

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In February 2020, Eva Kaili, the European Parliament’s high-flying vice president, was on stage at the five-star Ritz Carlton hotel in Qatar’s capital Doha, moderating a discussion about social media giants and democracy.
“We see always efforts of political interference among member states, even in Europe,” she said, turning to her co-panelist. Kaili looked down at her notes. “How do you feel in this country and [its] role in the stability of the whole region?” she asked.
“The country that is hosting us today has made a great progress during the last years,” came the laudatory reply as former EU commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos answered.

This snippet of conversation from a two-day conference would have passed unnoticed at the time. But heard today, the praise is laden with irony. Kaili is in jail, swept up in a high-octane corruption scandal gripping the EU establishment in Brussels, in which Qatar — and also Morocco — are accused of paying off EU lawmakers in order to influence Parliament’s work.
The conference did not come out of the blue. Its seeds had been planted some two years prior, when then-Parliament member Pier Antonio Panzeri, the alleged ringleader of the corruption plot, signed a semi-official cooperation deal with an organization linked to the Qatari government. POLITICO has now obtained the document, after first reporting on its existence last month.
The pact, which Panzeri inked as head of Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, connected the EU body to Qatar’s own human rights commission. It pledged “closer cooperation” between the two sides, mentioning annual “projects” and the exchange of “experiences and expertise.” The language laid the groundwork for years of collaboration, including conferences and lawmaker trips to Doha, with Qatar covering business class flights and luxury hotel stays.
Notably, however, the agreement does not officially exist, according to the Parliament. The memo never went through to lawmakers for review — despite Panzeri saying it would — nor did it go through any formal channels of approval.
“The European Parliament has no official knowledge of the document you refer to,” a Parliament press services official told POLITICO.
Yet the document does exist, illustrating how a foreign country was able to establish substantial links to EU lawmakers and a European Parliament committee without ever triggering formal alarm bells in the institution.
“This is problematic,” said Monika Hohlmeier, a senior MEP from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) who leads the budgetary control committee. “It shows that we should be much more aware of what is happening.”
“This is extraordinary,” marveled someone with knowledge of how the human rights committee (known as DROI) functions.
Qatar has consistently maintained that it rejects any allegations of undue interference in the EU’s work.
The signing
Panzeri signed the deal on April 26, 2018, during a DROI committee meeting in Brussels with Ali bin Samikh Al Marri, who chaired Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC). The NHRC says on its website that it enjoys “complete independence” from Qatar’s government.
Addressing a handful of MEPs in a largely empty room, Al Marri argued the Qatari government had made “tremendous strides” on human rights reforms, albeit also admitting it was not yet sufficient. He slammed Saudi Arabia and other Gulf neighbors for imposing what he called “collective sanctions” amid a diplomatic stand-off that resulted in “human rights violations.”
At the very end of the hour-long committee meeting, Panzeri made a brief, passing reference to a “consultation and cooperation document that we will sign today and we will provide to the members of the DROI subcommittee.”
But they didn’t receive it.
“It has never happened,” said Petras Auštrevičius, a Lithuanian liberal MEP who led his group’s work on human rights at the time. Two former MEPs with coordination roles on the committee, Barbara Lochbihler and Marie-Christine Vergiat, also said they had no memory of such an agreement.
Auštrevičius added that even the decision to invite Al Marri to address the committee that day had not been signed off by fellow MEPs, in line with normal practice.
“It seems that the Chair [Panzeri] decided to invite [Al Marri] following a recent private visit to Qatar, which I was not aware of,” Auštrevičius said.
Indeed, on the day the deal was signed, Panzeri was freshly back in Brussels after a trip to Qatar with his parliamentary assistant, Francesco Giorgi.
During the trip, Panzeri met the then-Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, his human rights counterpart Al Marri, and praised Qatar’s labor reforms ahead of the football World Cup, according to a media report Panzeri retweeted.
Al Marri would later become Qatar’s labor minister, as global criticism mounted over Doha’s treatment of the migrant workers building the World Cup stadiums.
Giorgi, Panzeri’s assistant, would later be detained alongside his boss and Kaili in the authorities’ initial sweep of arrests. All three were charged with corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization.
The conference did not come out of the blue. Its seeds had been planted some two years prior, when then-Parliament member Pier Antonio Panzeri, the alleged ringleader of the corruption plot, signed a semi-official cooperation deal with an organization linked to the Qatari government | Photo via European Parliament
Panzeri has now brokered a plea deal with prosecutors, admitting to bribing MEPs in exchange for a reduced sentence. Kaili and Giorgi, who are partners, deny any wrongdoing. Lawyers for Panzeri and Kaili did not respond to a request for comment.
Nearly five years later, Parliament officials are scratching their heads about how such a deal could have been signed. Even the signing itself is shrouded in mystery.
According to the Parliament’s press services, the deal was signed in Panzeri’s office. But a photo of the signing shows an EU Parliament staff member present, as well as the official EU and Qatar flags. And a second person familiar with the committee’s work said the signing took place in one of the Parliament’s official protocol rooms, normally used by foreign delegations.
The text of the deal itself is vague and jargonistic.
“It has been decided to continue the bilateral activity through a consultation and cooperation understanding between the two parties,” it reads on a single side of A4 paper.
“This understanding,” it adds, “aims at regulating and facilitating the relations between the NHRC and DROI through the promotion of closer cooperation, the exchange of bilateral expertise, information and contacts regarding human rights.”
Panzeri’s ‘delegation’ in Doha
In 2019, one year after “this understanding” was reached, Qatar co-organized its first conference in Doha in partnership with the Parliament, or at least with the Parliament’s logo plastered all over it. The topic: Fighting impunity.
At the conference, Panzeri praised Qatar as a “reference” point for global human rights standards. An article in the Gulf Times quoted Panzeri as saying the conference was a direct outgrowth of his 2019 deal. Later, “fight impunity” would even become the namesake cause of Panzeri’s NGO.
Then came the 2020 conference, held in Doha on February 16 and 17 and apparently co-organized with the European Parliament. The new topic: “Social media, challenges and ways to promote freedoms and protect activists.”
The Parliament press services official denied the event was co-organized, saying “it was not an event of the institution, but we still have to investigate how they could use the logo [of the Parliament].”
The 300 attendees had business class flights paid for by the Qataris, plus accommodation in the Ritz Carlton hotel, and a dinner at the national museum of Qatar to end the conference.
Kaili is in jail, swept up in a high-octane corruption scandal gripping the EU establishment in Brussels, in which Qatar — and also Morocco — are accused of paying off EU lawmakers in order to influence Parliament’s work | Photo via European Parliament
Kaili was far from the only top EU politician there.
As she wrapped up her moderating duties, Kaili thanked Panzeri for “organizing actually this delegation.”
Panzeri — who had left Parliament in 2019 — was sitting in the front row next to his now-detained assistant, Giorgi.
Also present was Socialist and Democrat (S&D) lawmaker Marc Tarabella, who was arrested last week as police expand their probe. Belgian prosecutors suspect Tarabella took up to €140,000 in cash from Panzeri to influence EU work on Qatar.
Tarabella’s lawyer, Maxim Töller, denied Panzeri organized the trip: “It’s not Mr. Panzeri. … Well, he was on the trip.”
Tarabella failed to disclose the subsidized trip until last month, years past Parliament’s deadline. Tarabella made a number of excuses for the late declaration, including that he thought it was no longer possible. More broadly, he has proclaimed his innocence in the corruption probe.
Two other EU lawmakers present at the event — S&D member Alessandra Moretti and EPP member Cristian-Silviu Bușoi — also failed to declare their subsidized attendance until after the corruption probe came to light.
“It was an event sponsored by the European Parliament, so the Parliament was aware of the event and of my participation,” Moretti said. “In the spirit of full transparency, I decided to publish it.” She denied being part of a Panzeri-created delegation.
Bușoi, who led the Parliament’s unofficial “friendship group” with Qatar, said: “The 2020 event was declared later due to a staff error.” He also denied being part of any Panzeri-orchestrated delegation.
After Panzeri left Parliament in 2019, S&D lawmaker Maria Arena replaced him atop the DROI committee. In January, she told POLITICO she had not continued Panzeri’s agreement.
The conferences, however, did continue.
In addition to the 2020 event, Arena later went to Qatar in 2022 on Doha’s dime for an NHRC workshop. She eventually stepped down as committee chair after POLITICO disclosed Arena failed to declare the subsidized trip on time. Arena did not reply to a request for comment for this piece.
And for all the confusion around the deal, one thing is clear: For Qatar, it never ceased to exist.
“The relationship with the European Parliament is of utmost importance to us,” Al Marri wrote in May 2021 to two EU lawmakers, including Arena.
Its evidence? “the Memorandum of Understanding we signed with the Human Rights Subcommittee.”
Elena Giordano, Camille Gijs and Nektaria Stamouli contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
Parliament says China is committing a genocide. Why were officials planning to meet one of the perpetrators? | James McMurray

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The oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Islamic minority people in China’s Xinjiang region has come into stark focus over the past five years.
First, minorities were interned in “re-education facilities” for indeterminate periods. Then came evidence of Chinese “minders” being sent to live with Uyghur families and report on their behaviour, of checkpoints on pedestrian streets, face-scanning cameras, the enforced installation of state spyware on personal phones, forced controls on fertility and the closing or demolition of mosques and other religious sites. Throughout all this, a man named Erkin Tuniyaz has been a leading official in Xinjiang’s regional government, and an enthusiastic defender of this “Sinicisation” of Islam. Since 2021, he has been the formal leader of the entire region.
Yet none of this stopped British Foreign Office officials from planning to meet with Tuniyaz during a visit to London – a visit that has now been cancelled, after hurriedly arranged protests, condemnation by prominent politicians from the Labour and Conservative parties, and calls for his arrest under torture laws. News of the cancellation came not in an official announcement, but rather from the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, which tweeted that it had heard the news from government sources. This is characteristic of the whole affair: Tuniyaz’s visit was initially announced only in an email to activist groups , and his schedule was never published.
The furtiveness of the planned visit implies that the Foreign Office was fully cognisant of how unwholesome it was. Tuniyaz is not a peripheral figure in the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s minority peoples. Indeed, he has been a vocal defender of the mass internment camps there. The British government was aware of this: it has previously condemned the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s minorities and sanctioned other Xinjiang officials – including Tuniyaz’s deputy, Chen Mingguo – for their roles in the outrages that parliament has recognised as a genocide. In return, China has sanctioned many of our politicians, activists and academics for speaking out about the situation in Xinjiang.
That Tuniyaz is himself Uyghur is no irony. Rather, his role as chairman is a product of the Chinese state’s cynical use of complicit members of minority groups to provide a veneer of equality and representation to Beijing’s rule of Xinjiang. As elsewhere in China, the government is subordinate to the party. While Xinjiang’s chairmen have always been Uyghurs, the party secretaries to whom they are subordinate have – with a single exception in the 1970s – always been Han, China’s dominant ethnic group. Chairmen like Tuniyaz are simply the face of policies decided on by party secretaries.
It is likely that it was intended that Tuniyaz play a similar role in his visit to London, which was only one of his intended stops in Europe to “discuss this situation in Xinjiang”. In the face of the backlash, these trips have also been cancelled. However, the fact that they were planned at all suggests that Beijing was hopeful that the attention of the world had moved elsewhere, and it could begin to put behind it the scrutiny it has faced over the treatment of the Uyghurs. Given the willingness of British officials to meet Tuniyaz, such hopes may not have seemed farfetched.
Erkin Tuniyaz has been a vocal defender of Xinjiang’s mass internment camps. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The British government was slow to act on the abuses in Xinjiang from the start, imposing sanctions only after years of campaigning from brave Uyghur exiles and other human rights activists. Among those who attended a protest against Tuniyaz’s visit outside the Foreign Office on Monday was Rahima Mahmut, a longtime Uyghur activist, singer and translator. As with other vocal Uyghurs living in the west, her decision to speak out over the years has had terrible consequences – she can neither return home, for fear of arrest; nor contact her family there without putting them at further risk. Many Uyghurs living in the UK simply will not discuss Tuniyaz’s visit with journalists, fearful of drawing the attention of Beijing which, in its well-documented efforts to silence criticism from abroad, is fiercely engaged in efforts to control the discourse around Xinjiang. Tuniyaz’s planned visit can only be seen as a part of those efforts.
The cancellation of Tuniyaz’s visit is testament to the bravery and commitment of those who fought against it. But it also attests to the inconsistency of Britain’s approach. There should have been no meeting to cancel in the first place – Tuniyaz, as a defender and an overseer of the abusive policies in Xinjiang, should not be allowed to walk the streets of London. As the protesters argued on Monday, the British government should be listening to their experiences rather than to the state propaganda pushed by representatives of Beijing. Had it done so, Tuniyaz would already be on the sanctions list, as he is in the United States.

The claim, from the prime minister’s office, that the meeting was agreed to with the intention of making clear the UK’s “abhorrence over the treatment of the Uyghur people” makes little sense. The official British position is already clear, but it will remain unconvincing until those responsible for the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s Turkic and Muslim minorities know that they are not welcome here.

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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 15, 2023
Pakistan govt calls emergency session of parliament; introduces bill to raise Rs 170 billion taxes

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Islamabad: The cash-strapped Pakistan government on Wednesday introduced a money bill in parliament to raise Rs 170 billion in taxes by June this year as part of conditions by the IMF to get the next tranche of an already agreed loan.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar presented the Finance (Supplementary) Bill, 2023, in the National Assembly — the lower house — empowered to legislate on money matters.
Pakistan and IMF officials held 10 days of marathon talks in Islamabad, from January 31 to February 9, but could not reach a deal as the fund demanded prior actions before signing any agreement to release USD 1.1 billion out of the USD 7 billion deal agreed in 2019.
Speaking in the house after introducing the bill, Dar said the government was aware of the hardships of common people and tried its best to not further burden them through new taxes.
He also accused the previous government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by Imran Khan of damaging the national economy. “When we were in the government, Pakistan’s economy was 24th largest in the world, but now it has dropped to 47th position,” he said.
Dar also said that the devastating floods of the last year also played havoc with the economy, creating huge problems for the government.
The government was forced to bring legislation through the parliament after President Arif Alvi on Tuesday refused to promulgate an ordinance to raise the new taxes and “advised” the finance minister to take parliament into confidence over the Rs 170 billion taxes.
The Cabinet met after the president’s “refusal” and approved the bill later in the evening after a debate. It also summoned the parliament to meet in an emergency session and pass the new bill.

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) issued an order after the cabinet meeting to enhance a federal excise duty on locally manufactured cigarettes, which would generate up to Rs 60 billion in taxes on tobacco products, while the Finance Division issued a notification increasing the general sales tax by one per cent to 18 per cent to raise another Rs 55 billion.
The remaining amount of Rs 55 billion to fulfil Rs 170 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) demand was being collected through an increase in excise duty on airline tickets, and sugary drinks as well as an increase in withholding tax rates through the Finance (Supplementary) Bill 2023.
Pakistani and IMF officials are now holding talks in virtual settings to finalise a deal to provide the much-needed funds to shore up the foreign exchange that dropped to below USD 3 billion this month.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 15, 2023
Will keep raising Adani issue inside and outside Parliament, it’s a big scam: Kharge

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New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said his party will keep raising the Adani issue inside and outside Parliament and added that if the government does not work democratically, “people will get rid of it”.
Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters here, Kharge posed a set of 10 questions to the government on various issues, including a controversy involving the business group headed by industrialist Gautam Adani and the expunging of certain remarks made by party leader Rahul Gandhi and him in Parliament.
Alleging that the Adani “scam” is a huge one involving public money, he wondered why is the government reluctant to order a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into it.
Kharge said he had not said anything unparliamentary in his speech in the Rajya Sabha and only asked certain questions on the Adani issue.
“Why is the Modi government not conducting a joint parliamentary committee probe into the allegations against the Adani Group? What is the reason behind (Prime Minister Narendra) Modiji and his government not even allowing (anyone) to raise the word Adani in Parliament?” he asked.
“Why are the RBI, the SEBI, the ED, the SFIO, the corporate affairs ministry, the IT (department) and the CBI paralysed? So many scams have happened and why are they still silent? They only see other people but not him (Adani),” the Congress president alleged.
“Modiji is now using our Parliament like a washing machine to wash the scams of his friend,” Kharge later alleged in a tweet in Hindi.
He said it is the opposition’s job to ask questions of the government.

The people of the country have elected parliamentarians and it is their responsibility to protect people’s money and rights and ask the government questions on the impact of scams on common people, he added.
“But they did not agree to the (formation of a) JPC nor allowed us to raise the issue in Parliament and that is why our people are agitated.
“We will keep asking questions of the government in parliamentary democracy. But the government does not want to allow Parliament to function democratically and is talking of autocracy. If the government is not ready to work democratically and talks of autocracy and dictatorship, people will get rid of it,” the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha said.
“Shouldn’t the falling value of the LIC’s money, invested in Adani’s companies, be questioned? Shouldn’t questions be asked about the Rs 82,000-crore loan given to Adani by the SBI (State bank of India) and other banks? Shouldn’t questions be asked as to why Rs 525 crore of the LIC and the SBI were invested in Adani’s FPO, despite a more-than-32-per cent fall in Adani’s shares? Shouldn’t questions be asked as to why the value of the LIC’s and SBI’s shares fell by more than Rs 1 lakh crore in the stock market?” Kharge asked.
“Is it a fact that France’s Total Gas has stopped its USD 50 billion investment in Adani’s company, pending the completion of an investigation against Adani? Has the world’s largest equity investor, Norway Sovereign Fund, sold all Adani shares worth USD 200 million?
“Has the MSCI downgraded the ranking of Adani’s companies? Have Standard Chartered, City Group, Credit Suisse stopped lending against Adani’s dollar bonds? Has Dow Jones removed Adani’s companies from the ‘Sustainability Indices’?” he asked.
“What is the reason that Modiji and his entire government do not allow even the utterance of the word Adani in Parliament?” Kharge asked, adding that the country demands answers to these questions.
The Congress chief said he has written to the Rajya Sabha chairman over the expunging of his remarks. By merely expunging his remarks, the allegations made by people and the media will not be cleared, he added.
On his remarks in the Rajya Sabha and that of Gandhi in the Lok Sabha being expunged, Kharge said, “You can well imagine what is going on in the name of democracy.”
He said he was the floor leader in the Lok Sabha for five years and the leader and the deputy leader in the Karnataka Assembly, but had never seen verses or words like “washing machine” being expunged.
“The entire opposition is together on the demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the Adani issue. There is unity on this and everyone wants to save the country and protect poor people’s wealth,” he said.
Asked about the Rajya Sabha chairman’s role, Kharge said, “I don’t want to say anything, you have seen it for yourself…. If I say something, they will say I am raising questions on the chairman…. I have great respect for him. We want parliamentary democracy and that is why we are moving with sensitivity.”
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also alleged that “Parliament TV blacks out whatever Opposition demands and does”.
“Yesterday, Chairman of the Rajya Sabha chided the Leader of Opposition for not elevating level of the debate. He is of course silent at the way the Jagadguru of Jhoot debased it completely with cheap personal swipes at his opponents. Chanting ModiChalisa does not elevate debates,” the former Union minister wrote on Twitter.
Adani Group stocks have taken a beating on the bourses after US-based short-selling firm Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share-price manipulation, against the business conglomerate.
The Adani Group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 10, 2023
Budget Session of Parliament

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Budget Session of Parliament
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Ministers and other MPs after replying to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address in the Rajya Sabha during Budget Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (PTI Photo)
New Delhi: Congress MPs Ravneet Singh Bittu and Gaurav Gogoi with Samajwadi Party MP Ramgopal Verma at Parliament House complex during Budget Session, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (PTI Photo/Kamal Singh)
New Delhi: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar tries to pacify opposition members raising slogans during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s replying to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address in the Rajya Sabha, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (PTI Photo)
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LONDON — “Back to her old self again” was how one erstwhile colleague described Liz Truss, who made her return to the U.K.’s front pages at the weekend.

That’s exactly what Rishi Sunak and his allies were afraid of.

Truss, who spent 49 turbulent days in No. 10 Downing Street last year, is back. After a respectful period of 13 weeks’ silence, the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister exploded back onto the scene with a 4,000-word essay in the Sunday Telegraph complaining that her radical economic agenda was never given a “realistic chance.”

In her first interview since stepping down, broadcast Monday evening, she expanded on this, saying she encountered “system resistance” to her plans as PM and did not get “the level of political support required” to change prevailing attitudes.

While the reception for Truss’s relaunch has not been exactly rapturous — with much of the grumbling coming from within her own party — it still presents a genuine headache for her successor, Sunak, who must now deal with not one but two unruly former prime ministers jostling from the sidelines.

Boris Johnson is also out of a job, but is never far from the headlines. Recent engagements with the U.S. media and high-profile excursions to Kyiv have ensured his strident views on the situation in Ukraine remain well-aired, even as he racks up hundreds of thousands in fees from private speaking engagements around the world.

Wasting no time

Truss and Johnson have, typically, both opted for swifter and more vocal returns to frontline politics than many of their forerunners in the role.

“Most post-war prime ministers have been relatively lucky with their predecessors,” says Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. “They have tended to follow the lead of [interwar Conservative PM] Stanley Baldwin, who in 1937 promised: ‘Once I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the man on the bridge, and I am not going to spit on the deck.’”

Such an approach has never been universal. Ted Heath, PM from 1970-74, made no secret of his disdain for his successor as Tory leader Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher in turn “behaved appallingly” — in Bale’s words — to John Major, who replaced her in Downing Street in 1990 after she was forced from office.

But more recent Tory PMs have kept a respectful distance.

David Cameron quit parliament entirely after losing the EU referendum in 2016, and waited three years before publishing a memoir — reportedly in order to avoid “rocking the boat” during the ongoing Brexit negotiations.

And while Theresa May became an occasional liberal-centrist thorn in Boris Johnson’s side, she did so only after a series of careful, low-profile contributions in the House of Commons on subjects close to her heart, such as domestic abuse and rail services in her hometown of Maidenhead.

“You might expect to see former prime ministers be a tad more circumspect in the way they re-enter the political debate,” says Paul Harrison, former press secretary to May. “But then she [Truss] wasn’t a conventional prime minister in any sense of the word, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that she’s done something very unconventional.”

Truss’s rapid refresh has not met with rave reviews.

Paul Goodman, editor of influential grassroots website ConservativeHome, writes that “rather than concede, move on, and focus on the future, she denies, digs in and reimagines the past,” while Tory MP Richard Graham told Times Radio that Truss’ time in office “was a period that [people] would rather not really remember too clearly.”

One long-serving Conservative MP said “she only had herself to blame for her demise, and we are still clearing up some of the mess.” Another appraised her latest intervention simply with an exploding-head emoji.

Trussites forever

But despite Tory appeals for calm, the refusal of Truss and Johnson to lie low remains a serious worry for the man eventually chosen to lead the party after Truss crashed and burned and Johnson thought better of trying to stage a comeback.

Between them, the two ex-PMs have the ability to highlight two of Sunak’s big weaknesses.

While Truss may never live down the disastrous “mini-budget” of last September which sent the U.K. economy off the rails, her wider policy agenda still has a hold over a number of Conservative MPs who believe they have no hope of winning the election without it.

This was the rationale behind the formation last month of the Conservative Growth Group, a caucus of MPs who will carry the torch for the low-tax, deregulatory approach to government favored by Truss and who continue to complain Sunak has little imagination when it comes to supply-side reforms.

Simon Clarke, who was a Cabinet minister under Truss, insisted “she has thought long and hard” about why her approach failed and “posed important questions” about how the U.K. models economic growth in her Telegraph piece.

Other Conservatives have been advocating a reappraisal of the actions of the Bank of England in the period surrounding the mini-budget, arguing that Truss was unfairly blamed for a collapse in the bond market.

But Harrison doubts whether she may be the best advocate for the causes she represents. “There’s a question about whether it actually best serves her interests in pushing back against a strong prevailing understanding of what happened so soon after leaving office.”

Johnson, meanwhile — to his fans, at least — continues to symbolize the star quality and ballot box appeal which they fear Sunak lacks.

One government aide who has worked with both men said Johnson’s strength lay in his “undeniable charisma” and persuasive power, while Sunak, more prosaically, “was all about hard work.”

These apparent deficiencies feed into a fear among Sunak’s MPs that he is governing too tentatively and, as one ally put it recently, needs to rip off the “cashmere jumper.”

It’s been posited that British prime ministers swing back and forth between “jocks” and “nerds” — and nothing is more likely to underline Sunak’s nerdiness than a pair of recently-deposed jocks refusing to shut up.

Trouble ahead

Unluckily for Sunak, there are at least three big-ticket items coming up which will provide ample ground on which his nemeses can cause trouble.

One is the forthcoming budget — the government’s annual public spending plan, due March 15. Truss and Johnson are unlikely to get personally involved, but Truss loyalists will make a nuisance of themselves if Sunak’s approach is judged to offer the paucity of answers on growth they already fear.

Before that, Truss is expected to make her first public appearance outside the U.K. with a speech on Taiwan which could turn up the heat on Sunak over his approach to relations with China.

One person close to her confirmed China would be “a big thing” for her, and is expected to be a theme of her future parliamentary interventions.

Then there is the small matter of the Northern Ireland protocol, the thorniest unresolved aspect of the Brexit deal with Brussels where tortured negotiations appear to be reaching an endgame.

Sunak has been sitting with a draft version of a technical deal since last week, according to several people with knowledge of the matter, and is now girding his loins for the unenviable task of trying to get a compromise agreement past both his own party and hardline Northern Irish unionists.

A Whitehall official working on the protocol said Johnson “absolutely” had the power to detonate that process, and that “he should never be underestimated as an agent of chaos.”

One option touted by onlookers is for Sunak to attempt to assemble the former prime ministers and ask them to stand behind him on a matter of such huge national and international significance. But as things stand such a get-together is difficult to picture.

At the heart of Johnson and Truss’ actions seems to be an essential disquiet over the explosive manner of their departures.

They appear fated to follow in Thatcher’s footsteps, as Bale puts it — “not caring how much trouble they cause Sunak, because in their view, he should never have taken over from them in the first place.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

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