Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party on Sunday began a key meeting to carry out a major revamp of the party and the government ahead of next month’s annual session of the Parliament.
The meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) plenum started its three-day plenary session in Beijing on Sunday, with President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the party, presenting a work report, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The Central Committee plenary session is being held ahead of the annual session of China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the top advisory body — the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) — in the first week of March.
During the NPC’s annual session, China will unveil a new leadership, including a new premier to succeed the incumbent Li Keqiang who is retiring. Barring Xi, most of the officials at the top were expected to be replaced.
Earlier this week, the political bureau of the party discussed the draft plan for the reforms of the CPC as well as state institutions and finalised recommendations to be submitted to the Central Committee plenary for approval.
The Central Committee which was elected at the once in five-year Congress of the party held in October last year consisted of 203 members and 168 alternate members.
Xi, 69, was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term by the Congress.
In her remarks following her victory, Fried vowed to unite the party, and work to deny the White House to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to run for president.
“You better believe we are going to take it to Ron DeSantis every damn day,” Fried told a crowded room of Democrats gathered at a hotel just north of Orlando. Fried also vowed to send Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is up for re-election in 2024, “home to Naples” next year.
A few months ago, Fried told reporters and fellow Democrats that she wasn’t interested in becoming party chair. But now she’s in charge of an undercapitalized and deeply demoralized party that was crushed by Republicans last November. DeSantis defeated Democratic nominee Charlie Crist by nearly 20 points, Republicans gained a supermajority in the Legislature and the GOP picked up four more congressional seats, which helped them retake the U.S. House.
One of the most obvious signs of Republican dominance is that Florida flipped from a state where Democrats held a voter registration advantage to one where the GOP now has 417,000 more active registered voters.
In the 2022 elections, national Democrats largely abandoned the state and did not put any significant amounts of money in any of the statewide or congressional races.
Some Florida Democrats, such as Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have insisted that Democrats will not walk away from Florida in 2024, when President Joe Biden is expected to be on the ballot. Biden lost the state to former President Donald Trump by 3 percent.
Fried, who acknowledged Democrats had a “horrific November election,” pledged to ramp up “low dollar donations” while saying she has been talking to Democratic donors and national groups about reengaging with the state. She also discussed extending money to local Democratic groups and organizations and getting involved in more down ballot races.
“When we are showing success, when we are showing that we got a plan for success, the donors will be here,” said Fried.
Fried also argued that national groups will get more involved in the state because it is “ground zero” of the “radicalization of the Republican Party.” During her remarks to Democratic executive committee members before the vote, Fried also said she had been fighting against a “zealous fascist dictator,” though she didn’t say DeSantis by name at that time.
Republicans took glee in Fried’s selection, pointing how she was soundly defeated by Crist in the Democratic primary last August.
Christian Ziegler, who last week was elected chair of the Republican Party of Florida, said before Fried can even address all the Democratic Party shortcomings “she is going to have to start by convincing the 65 percent of Democrats who rejected her just months ago.”
“Fried drew the short straw,” Ziegler said via text. “The losing by Democrats will continue and Florida will better because of it.”
A significant number of Democrats pushed back against Fried after she jumped into the race for chair less than two weeks ago.
Some of those hesitant to support Fried said her decision to run for party chair would put her on the sidelines in the near term and take her out of the running to challenge someone like Scott. Samantha Hope Herring, a Democratic National Committee member from north Florida, said anyone who becomes chair will get “dirtied up.”
Steve Schale, a political strategist who directed Barack Obama’s Florida campaign in 2008, said that “the reality is, to do this job right you are going to have to make decisions to anger people who elected you to this job.”
“You can’t go into it with a mindset you will run,” said Schale, who said the main directive of the new party chair should be to raise money and register voters.
Thomas Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee member from Florida who backed Taddeo for chair, added that “it’s a punching bag job.”
“We need a chair that’s not interested in running again in 2024 or 2026 and is interested in the job,” Kennedy said. “You unseat Rick Scott and you’re a goddamn hero.”
When asked, Fried said she had not made any promises to Democratic executive committee members that she would forgo any future political campaigns in the next two cycles.
But she added she planned to be chair for “the foreseeable future” and that “no matter who wants to run for statewide office in the future we got to make sure the structure is here.”
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#Florida #Dems #elect #Nikki #Fried #lead #party #horrific #November
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Judith Whitmer, the insurgent party chair who wrested control of the party from mainstream Democrats, is facing a challenge in her reelection campaign next month amid doubts from her own former supporters and accusations that she abandoned her progressive principles. And even key figures in Bernie world — including Sanders himself — say they are unhappy and embittered by what’s transpired.
“The senator is pretty disappointed in Judith’s chairmanship, specifically around her failure to build a strong grassroots movement in the state,” said a person familiar with Sanders’ thinking. “A lot of us feel sad about what could have been. It was a big opportunity for Bernie-aligned folks in the state to prove some of the folks in the establishment wrong. And that hasn’t happened.”
The situation has left the Sanders coalition in Nevada fragmented right at the onset of the critical 2024 election. And it has set off larger debates about what, exactly, the progressive movement should be doing during the twilight of the senator’s career. There is even talk that it might simply be a waste of time for the progressives to win control of a state party’s machinery.
“There just has been a complete lack of competence or ability to accomplish anything significant,” said Peter Koltak, a Democratic strategist and former Nevada senior adviser for Sanders’ 2020 campaign, of the current state party leadership. “Look, there’s a lot of well-meaning activists involved there, but they don’t understand the ins and outs of how you build modern campaigns.”
In an interview, Whitmer expressed surprise over Sanders’ disappointment, pointing to a meeting she had earlier this year with him: “I think he would have said to me, ‘Hey Judith, I’m disappointed in what you’re doing’ if that was actually a true statement.”
But even for the most optimistic-minded liberal in the state, the state of disarray among the progressive movement in Nevada represents a shocking turnaround from 2021.
Back then, former Sanders aides, members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and other progressives united to elect Whitmer after working on Sanders’ win in the Nevada presidential caucus a year earlier. Sanders was part of the effort, sending texts from his political committee to encourage people to run for party posts and later fundraised for the state party. At the time, Whitmer promised to make the state party “accountable to the people,” revamp its get-out-the-vote efforts, and leverage the national party to make Nevada the first-in-the-nation primary.
The state party didn’t take Whitmer’s victory lightly. Shortly before it was sealed, party staff in an apparent act of protest moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from their own coffers to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and later quit their positions. Once Whitmer took her post, the Reid machine circumvented the state party and set up a coordinated campaign out of a local party in the state’s second-biggest county. Officials insisted it was necessary because Whitmer lacked experience in winning battleground elections.
“The previous administration pretty much burnt the house down,” said Whitmer. “When we got the keys, there was a lot of reorganization that had to be done. Records were missing and money had been transferred out.”
Whitmer’s critics — including those in the progressive wing — counter that any failures were largely hers. They accused her of having poor relationships with elected officials, of being a poor fundraiser, of failing to build the grassroots organizing infrastructure she promised, and of antagonizing leaders in the party.
They’ve bashed her over the state party’s decision to back a sheriff who appeared to support chokeholds as well as a lieutenant governor candidate, Debra March, who primaried the sitting Democratic lieutenant governor, who had been appointed by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak. They also accused her of trying to rig the March 4 election for state party chair by removing members from the state central committee, which chooses the chair.
Nevada was the lone state where the incumbent governor — a Democrat — lost in 2022. Beyond Sisolak’s defeat, Whitmer’s critics note that Nevada did not get the No. 1 spot in the Democrats’ new presidential nominating calendar.
“They had to create a separate coordinated campaign, which I think created a lot of confusion for a few months. And it wasn’t as united as it could have been,” said Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, a Sanders-supporting Democrat who ran against Whitmer in 2021. “[Sisolak] lost by a very small minority. If we could have gotten our voter registration or get-out-the-vote efforts sooner, he could have won.”
The state’s Democratic senators, House members and other statewide officials have endorsed Whitmer’s opponent, Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, who is challenging her for the state chair post.
But it’s not just establishment types who have gripes. Kara Hall, a leader in the Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, said Whitmer also hasn’t kept up relationships on the left. “She never once after she was elected spoke out and talked to the chapter,” Hall said.
The Las Vegas DSA, which played a key role in helping elect Whitmer two years ago, announced in a scathing statement this month that it was not backing her reelection.
“This is our lesson, and we hope socialists everywhere will pay close attention: the Democratic Party is a dead end,” it read. “It is a ‘party’ in name only; truly, it is simply a tangled web of dark money and mega-donors, cynical consultants, and lapdog politicians.”
Whitmer defended her tenure to POLITICO, arguing that she was elected to make change and delivered, providing party infrastructure to rural areas, raising money through small-dollar donations, and holding legislative roundtable sessions. She also said the state party successfully ran a mailer program for federal candidates and made over 1 million direct voter contacts.
“The state party has never invested resources in rural communities,” she said. “We actually provided resources and sent computer equipment and printers to each one of our rural county parties.”
Whitmer also shot back at critics who said she is rigging the chair election, describing the removal of committee members who have not attended recent meetings as “standard practice.”
As for the state party’s backing of March for lieutenant governor, she said that initially took place at a time when the Sisolak team had told her that he would not make an appointment. (A source on the Sisolak campaign said the governor never publicly decided to not appoint someone.) Whitmer said the party supported Kevin McMahill, the sheriff candidate, as a way to “keep extremists out of office.”
As Whitmer sees it, the criticism she endured from her own progressive brethren was not because she abandoned principles but because she opted to work within political realities.
“They really did not want to do electoral politics,” she said. “They wanted to work outside of the current electoral system. As the state party chair, I can’t do that. I can’t work outside of the system itself. I represent the Democratic Party. I don’t represent the DSA.”
Hall, the DSA leader, disputed Whitmer’s contention that the group was opposed to electoral politics, pointing out that the local chapter voted to make electoral research and recruitment a priority. But she said she now views the Democratic Party as a dead end not because of Whitmer or even the breakdown of their relationship.
“It has more to do with how the establishment reacted” to Whitmer’s victory, she said. “We did it the right way. We took seats on the [state central committee]. We got elected. We voted. We out-organized them. And then they just set up shop somewhere else. What I think about it is they’ll always do that.”
While the disappointment with Whitmer has left the future of the Nevada Democratic Party in a state of deep uncertainty, it has also sparked broader questions. For veterans of the Reid machine, those questions center on how to maneuver in the critical 2024 cycle without fracturing the party further. For Bernie followers, it’s whether it’s even worthwhile to take control of state parties at all.
“I think this is a lesson learned that that’s maybe not the best use of time,” said a former Sanders staffer in Nevada, who added that the progressive movement in the state has now been set back. “It really feels like any efforts to elect progressive or left-wing candidates here is back to square one. Whereas when Judith was coming into this role, there really was a foundation that could have continued to be built upon.”
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#Sanders #supporters #Nevada #Democratic #Party
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Rajouri: Union Home Minister Amit Shah addresses a public rally in Rajouri district, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. (PTI Photo)(PTI10_04_2022_000059B)
Bellary: Union Home Minister Amit Shah has directed the partymen in Hyderabad-Karnataka region to reach out to voters without bothering about mining baron Janardhana Reddy, who has launched a new party, sources stated on Friday.
Amit Shah had given this assurance in the core committee meeting of BJP leaders from four districts of Hyderabad-Karnataka region also known as Kalyan Karnataka on Thursday.
Janardhan Reddy, a former BJP leader, has now launched his own party Kalyan Karnataka Pragathi Paksha (KKJP). Actively campaigning in Bellary, Vijayanagara, Koppal and Raichur districts, he had announced that no one could stop him by raiding his firms. His statements followed ED and IT raids on his firms.
The BJP leaders and legislators from the region informed Amit Shah that Janardhana Reddy announced his candidature from Gangavathi constituency. Somashekara Reddy, present BJP MLA from Bellary city, brother of Janardhana Reddy has informed that Reddy is pitching his wife Aruna Lakshmi from Bellary city constituency.
The leaders told Amit Shah that Janardhana Reddy’s factor might give a challenging situation for BJP and benefit Congress party.
Sources explained that Amit Shah has directed the party leaders not to bother about Janardhana Reddy factor in the region. He told them that he is very much there and he will deal appropriately with the situation.
He also asked the party leaders to focus on building the party in their respective regions from the grassroots level.
Lahore/Peshawar: Fearing that the notorious intelligence agencies may torture senior Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf politicians at undisclosed locations, ousted premier Imran Khan’s party on Thursday filed a petition in a court seeking the release of the leaders who offered their arrests under the mass court arrest movement a day earlier.
The interim Punjab government on Thursday confirmed that police had arrested 81 PTI activists, including former federal ministers Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Asad Umar and Hammad Azhar, Senators Azam Swati and Waleed Iqbal (grandson of poet of Allama Iqbal) and former Punjab governor Omar Sarfraz Cheema. Khan’s party, however, insists that around 250 party workers have been detained by police in Lahore.
Initially, all the arrested PTI supporters were shifted to Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore but later its leaders were shifted to an ‘undisclosed location’.
Since neither the government nor the Punjab police confirmed the location of the detained leaders, the party and the families of the arrested leaders on Thursday filed a petition in the Lahore High Court seeking their “safe recovery/release.”
Zain Qureshi, son of former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said neither his father nor other leaders were presented before any court of law on Thursday nor the Punjab government and police are disclosing which jail they have been taken to.
The petitioners said the lives of PTI leaders are at stake at the hands of the government and police.
“If the detainees are not released from the illegal and unlawful detention, they may suffer an irreparable loss and injury,” they said and added that the arrested PTI leaders may be booked in false and frivolous cases in order to cause them maximum harm.
The PTI leadership is wary of the treatment meted out to the detained leaders.
Earlier, Senator Azam Swati had alleged that some senior ISI officers had inflicted severe torture on him while he was in police custody.
The PTI is fearing a similar situation in the case of these arrested senior leaders.
A Punjab police officer said that Qureshi has been shifted to Attock Jail while the other senior leaders are kept in different jails in Punjab.
Khan’s party on Wednesday began a mass court arrest movement from Lahore over what it called the violation of fundamental rights, abuse of the Constitution and the economic meltdown.
According to the party, every day a few hundred PTI workers and leaders will present themselves for arrest from different cities.
On Thursday, party workers and leaders presented themselves for arrest in Peshawar. “Tehreek-e-Insaf leaders, workers and people left for (Peshawar) Central Jail in large numbers,” the party said.
The mass court arrest movement will continue till the date for elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are not announced, a party leader said.
The PTI dissolved its governments in Punjab and Kyber-Pakhtaunkhawa provinces over a month ago. Under the Constitution, elections must be held within 90 days after the dissolution of an assembly.
The PML-N-led nine-party government has said that holding separate elections for the provincial and national assemblies is not possible because of the economic crisis and the law and order situation.
Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in April last year after a no-confidence motion was passed in the National Assembly, is seeking fresh general elections in Pakistan.
Khan has said that he has started the “Jail Bharo Tehreek” (court arrest movement) for Haqeeqi Azadi for two main reasons. “One, it is a peaceful, non-violent protest against the attack on our constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental rights. We are facing sham FIRs & National Accountability Bureau cases, custodial torture, attacks on journalists & social.”
He said the drive was against the economic meltdown “brought on by a cabal of crooks who have money laundered billions in looted wealth & gotten the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) (deal) for themselves while crushing the people, especially the poor and middle class, under the burden of spiralling inflation and rising unemployment.”
Khan urged the people to take to the streets to get “true freedom”.
Congress leader Pawan Khera was arrested at the Delhi airport on Thursday after being deplaned from a trip to Chattisgarh’s Around 50 members of Congress staged a protest on the tarmac, refusing to allow the aeroplane to take off.
Pawan Khera, a prominent Congress spokesperson, was compelled to board another flight. He was traveling to Raipur with a large group of Congress leaders for an All India Congress Committee conference (AICC).
He was apprehended at the airport by Assam Police, who arrived with an FIR, or First Information Report. He will be presented in a Delhi court and will be taken to Assam on transit remand, ANI reported.
#WATCH | “We will see (in which case they are taking me). It’s a long battle and I’m ready to fight,” says Congress leader Pawan Khera as Delhi Police takes him after he was deboarded from an aircraft at Delhi airport pic.twitter.com/cKXeo6kSb4
During a recent news conference, Khera misspelled Prime Minister Modi’s name when calling for a joint parliamentary investigation into the Adani-Hindenburg row.
“If Narasimha Rao could form a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee), if Atal Bihari Vajpayee could form a JPC, then what problem does Narendra Gautam Das…sorry Damodardas…Modi have?” he said, appearing to fumble upon the middle name with a colleague sitting beside him.
The BJP has demanded Khera’s arrest on charges of insulting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After a BJP representative submitted a police complaint, an FIR was lodged.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on February 20 called the remarks ‘pathetic’.
“Make no mistake- pathetic remarks by courtier Pawan Khera on PM’s father have blessings of the top levels of Congress, which is full of entitlement and disdain against a person of humble origins being PM. India will not forget or forgive these horrible remarks of Congressmen,” Himanta had tweeted.
Make no mistake- pathetic remarks by courtier Pawan Khera on PM’s father have blessings of the top levels of Congress, which is full of entitlement and disdain against a person of humble origins being PM. India will not forget or forgive these horrible remarks of Congressmen.
IndiGo Airline in a statement said: “A passenger was deplaned by the police at the Delhi airport from Raipur-bound flight 6E 204. Some other passengers have also decided to deboard on their own accord. We are following the advice of the concerned authorities. The flight is delayed as of now and we regret the inconvenience caused to other passengers.”
Khera stated that he was initially informed that there was a problem with his luggage. “I was told that there was a problem with my luggage, despite the fact that I just had hand luggage. They said you couldn’t fly. The DCP (Deputy Commissioner of Police) will thereafter meet with you. I’ve been anticipating this moment for quite some time. There is no indication of law and order “He stated.
The grand old party reacted very strongly to the development. Party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate called it ‘dictatorship’.
“Assam Police is arresting Pawan Kheda ji and taking him away. What crime has he committed that he has been arrested? If this is not dictatorship then what is?” she said.
पवन खेड़ा जी को असम पुलिस गिरफ्तार करके ले जा रही है।
उन्होंने कौन सा ऐसा जुर्म किया है कि उन्हें गिरफ्तार किया गया?
“Modi government is acting like a bunch of goons by deplaning Pawan Khera from the Delhi-Raipur flight and preventing him from joining the AICC Plenary. Using a flimsy FIR to restrict his movement and silence him is a shameful, unacceptable act. The entire party stands with Pawan ji,” Senior Congress leader KC Venugopal tweeted KC Venugopal.
Modi govt is acting like a bunch of goons by deplaning @Pawankhera ji from the Delhi-Raipur flight and preventing him from joining the AICC Plenary.
Using a flimsy FIR to restrict his movement & silence him is a shameful, unacceptable act. The entire party stands with Pawan ji. pic.twitter.com/mKVeuRGnfR
Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party as well as the state institutions will undergo a major revamp at a key meeting of the party to be held here next week, it was announced here on Wednesday.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by President Xi Jinping will hold its second plenary session from February 26 to 28, an official press release after the political bureau meeting of the Party held here on Tuesday said.
The Political Bureau discussed the draft plan on the reforms of Party and state institutions, which will be submitted to the second plenary session of the Central Committee for review, it said without disclosing the details of the planned reforms.
The Central Committee which is the top policy of the party was elected at the once in five-year Congress of the party held in October last year and consisted of 203 members and 168 alternate members.
Xi, 69, was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term by the Congress. The Central Committee plenary session will be held ahead of the annual session of China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the top advisory body the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
The two bodies were scheduled to meet in the first week of next month.
After the NPC annual session, China will unveil a new leadership, including a new Premier to succeed the incumbent Li Keqiang who is retiring.
Barring Xi, almost all officials at the top are expected to be replaced.
Lahore: Ousted prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Wednesday began a mass court arrest movement from Lahore over what it called the violation of fundamental rights, abuse of the Constitution and the economic meltdown.
The party shared footage of senior leaders, including former federal ministers Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Asad Umar, Senator Azam Swati and former Punjab governor Omar Sarfraz Cheema, sitting inside a police van. They asked the police present there to arrest them.
“Today 200 PTI workers and Lahore leadership including myself have presented themselves for arrest,” said Qureshi, who is the vice-chairman of the party.
“This movement will continue until the imported government puts an end to the lawlessness in the country” and is held accountable for the last 10 months in the people’s court, he added.
A large number of PTI workers and leaders gathered at the Jail Road. Some of the workers had chained and kept themselves in an ‘artificial jail’ they made.
The government has imposed section 144 on different roads including Mall Road Lahore under which not more than five people can gather there. “We have violated section 144 to go to jail,” Qureshi insisted.
The Punjab government and Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, however, said that police will not arrest any PTI worker for violating section 144.
“Only those PTI leaders will be arrested who are wanted in corruption or any other criminal cases,” Sanaullah said.
“The PTI leaders are doing photo sessions after boarding a police van in Lahore. They need political mileage through such stunts,” he said, adding that through this campaign 70-year-old Imran Khan wants to create anarchy in the country.
Information Minister Marriyum Auranzeb said that the PTI leaders have attacked a police van. “The PTI leadership will be arrested for attacking the police van,” she added.
On the other hand, Khan said that he has started the “Jail Bharo Tehreek” (court arrest movement) for Haqeeqi Azadi for two main reasons. “One, it is a peaceful, non-violent protest against the attack on our constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental rights. We are facing sham FIRs & NAB cases, custodial torture, attacks on journalists & social.” He further said the drive was against the economic meltdown “brought on by cabal of crooks who have money laundered billions in looted wealth & gotten NROs (deal) for themselves while crushing the people especially the poor and middle class, under the burden of spiralling inflation and rising unemployment.” Khan urged the people to take to the streets to get “true freedom”.
“As a matter of fact, this movement will take you to a free and happy Pakistan where your fundamental rights are protected. The ‘Jail Bharo Tehreek’ is the name of jihad,” he added.
The cricketer-turned-politician said he would also present himself for arrest once his bullet wound heals.
In November last year, Khan suffered three bullet injuries to his right leg during an anti-government rally in Wazirabad in Punjab province.
“There seems to be no rule of law in the country as despite the court’s order to hold the polls in Punjab within 90 days the state institutions are not ready to comply with it. If the elections are not held within 90 days in two provinces, it will create a constitutional crisis and promote jungle law in the country,” Khan said.
The PTI had dissolved its governments in Punjab and Kyber-Pakhtaunkhawa provinces over a month ago. Under the Constitution, elections must be held within 90 days after dissolution of an assembly.
The PML-N led nine-party government has said that holding separate elections for the provincial and national assemblies is not possible because of the economic crisis and the law and order situation.
Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in April last year after a no-confidence motion was passed in the National Assembly, is seeking fresh general elections in Pakistan.
Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party has claimed to have scored a “decisive victory” over the coronavirus pandemic by minimising the casualties and staunchly defended its much-criticised zero-COVID policy, saying that it has succeeded in preventing the widespread prevalence of variants.
Since December last year, millions of people in China contracted the Omicron virus and unofficial reports said thousands of people, especially those above 60 years old, fell victim to it.
More than 200 million people were treated and nearly 800,000 patients in severe conditions received effective treatment, according to an official press release issued after the party’s political bureau meeting held on Thursday.
With a strong sense of responsibility and strategic resolve, China has optimised and adjusted the COVID-19 prevention and control measures in light of the evolving situation, and effectively balanced pandemic containment with economic and social development, it said.
“As a result, we have succeeded in preventing the widespread prevalence of variants that are more virulent and fatal, effectively protecting people’s safety and health, and buying us precious time for winning the battle against the pandemic”, it said.
“We have scored a decisive victory in our response to COVID-19. China, a country with a large population of 1.4 billion, has created a remarkable feat in the history of human civilisation by successfully walking out of the pandemic,” the party claimed.
Since November 2022, the focus was on optimising response measures to safeguard the health and prevent severe cases and secure a smooth transition within a short period of time, it said.
China’s mortality rate of COVID-19 has been kept at the lowest level globally, it said without providing any data on the death toll during the recent Omicron spread in the country.
Last month Chinese health officials reported 59,938 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals across the country over the last 30 days, amid criticism from the WHO that Beijing was heavily under-reporting the magnitude of the pandemic.
China was the rare country where its vaccination campaign focused more on people below 60 years to keep the working-age population safe.
The country’s zero covid policy was effective to halt the Delta variant but fell flat to containing the Omicron variant of COVID.
Periodic lockdowns of top cities including Shanghai and arbitrary sealing of residential buildings resulted in rare public protests in December last year, prompting the government to lift the restrictions suddenly. It resulted in the massive spread of Covid in the country.
China reopened its borders to international travellers on January 8 after nearly three years.
The coronavirus initially broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 before it spread to other countries and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation.
Hyderabad: Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLC and Telangana Cheif Minister KCR’s daughter, K Kavitha on Thursday defended his father’s statement of calling the Central government as No Data Available government and said that the party stand by it.
“Our CM said that the NDA government is a ‘No Data Available’ government, and we stand by it as BRS party. After the Modi government came, there has been no census conducted and they (Centre) say that there are no data available for demonetisation, per capita income, Right to Information,” she said.
Earlier in the day, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman retorted to K Chandrasekhar Rao’s statement of calling the government as ‘No Data Available’ government and said that the State government itself don’t have any data on medical colleges in Telangana.
“When the centre asked for the list of places to put up medical colleges, the state listed Karimnagar and Khammam, but those places already had medical colleges. Now you are telling that you did not receive a single medical college in the 157 medical colleges from the centre. You do not have the data of which places in Telagana have medical colleges and you are blaming NDA as No Data Available,” Sitharaman told reporters in Hyderabad.
The minister also aimed at KCR for dubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious target of reaching a USD 5 trillion economy as a “joke”.
“How can you tell that aim of a 5 trillion economy is a joke? Every state should contribute towards it. Who are you laughing upon, the people? In 2014, the debt of Telangana was Rs 60,000 crores, but in the last 7-8 years it has crossed Rs 3 lakh crores,” she said.
