Electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being used for the first time for the council elections. (File Photo: PTI)
The voting for the fifth Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC)-Kargil is set to take place today. This is the first time polls are being held in Ladakh since Article 370 was revoked. The hill council election in Kargil is the first local poll in Ladakh since it was split from J&K in August 2019 and made a UT.
The counting of votes is scheduled for October 8 and the new council will be in place before October 11. The existing council, headed by National Conference’s Feroz Ahmad Khan, completed its five-year term on October 1.
A total of 95,388 voters, including 46,762 women, are eligible to exercise their franchise from 8am to 4pm.
A total of 85 candidates are contesting on 26 seats of the 30-member Hill Council.
The National Conference and Congress have announced a pre-poll alliance but have put up 17 and 22 candidates, respectively. The arrangement has been restricted to areas where there is a tough contest with the BJP.
BJP, which won one seat in the last election and later took its tally to three with the joining of two PDP councillors, has fielded 17 candidates this time.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying its luck from four seats while 25 independents are also in the fray, the officials said.
The decision was made by INDIA bloc’s media committee in a virtual meeting on September 14. (Image: PTI/File)
Calling it a “bullying” tactic and an “emergency”, the BJP on Thursday hit back at the INDIA bloc’s decision to boycott the shows of 14 television anchors from different channels. Certain media bodies like the National Broadcasters & Digital Association, also slammed the move and called it an “attack on democracy”.
Earlier in the day, the newly formed opposition front listed the names of 14 journalists saying they will not be sending their representatives to their shows.
BJP national president JP Nadda said this was the opposition “emergency mindset era”, which is alive among these parties and this was an exercise of “making ‘lists’ in true Nazi style”.
These days, the I. N. D. I Alliance is ONLY doing 2 things:
BASHING SANATANA SANSKRITI – each party is competing to outdo the other in hurling the choicest abuses towards Sanatana Sanskriti.
BULLYING THE MEDIA- filing FIRs, threatening individual journalists, making “lists” in…
Talking to news agency ANI, union minister Anurag Thakur said the step taken against the media by the INDIA bloc is “emergency 2.0″. “The steps that the INDI alliance have taken against the media is emergency 2.0… This shows that they do not believe in democracy…” he said.
Thakur said one emergency was declared by Indira, and the other has been declared by the ‘Ghamandiya’ alliance. “They do not trust democracy, you can see the state of affairs in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Those who used to talk about media autonomy have now taken such a drastic step to repress it,” he added.
BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya, however, said the 14 journalists should wear this as a “badge of honour” as they had “refused to bend when the opposition expected them to crawl”.
So I.N.D.I Alliance has released a list of journalists, who refused to even bend, when the Opposition expected them to crawl. They should wear it as a badge of honour. More power to them… pic.twitter.com/WPwivrLC2q
The BJP later issued a formal statement condemning the INDIA’s boycott decision, saying it reflected their “oppressive and dictatorial thinking”. “The decision taken by the INDI Alliance parties involved in the arrogant alliance to boycott and threaten journalists is highly condemnable. This reflects their oppressive and dictatorial thinking. BJP strongly condemns this poor mentality of the alliance”, posted Anil Baluni, BJP national media incharge.
Trump is already defending several other cases – just a year before he hopes to reclaim the presidency.
Pic: AP
A court in Georgia has charged Donald Trump with trying to illegally overturn the 2020 election.
Among the charges is ‘solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer’ in other words trying to persuade someone to betray their office.
It is the fourth set of charges against the former president.
Prosecutors brought 13 counts against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, which is most often used to target members of organised crime groups.
Ten other people have been charged including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former lawyer and ex New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, another of Trump’s ex lawyers.
The court in Atlanta sat beyond usual working hours as a grand jury decided whether or not to charge the former president.
Trump narrowly lost to Joe Biden in Georgia and his lawyers, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, made false claims of election fraud.
Audio of a call by Trump to Georgia’s secretary of state also emerged in January 2021 in which he suggested election officials could “find” the votes he needed to win.
Trump is already defending several other cases – just a year before he hopes to reclaim the presidency.
The most serious concern allegations he plotted to overturn his election loss, laying the ground for the infamous US Capitol riots.
He denies the claims and says they are politically motivated.
In a statement, the Trump campaign said: “They could have brought this two and a half years ago, yet they chose todo this for election interference reasons in the middle of President Trump’s successful campaign.
Parties of both current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu have claimed to have an early lead, but if neither finishes with more than 50% of the vote they will face off in another round.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu cast their votes in Turkey
Turkey’s election appears to be heading for a run-off despite both main rivals claiming to have an early lead.
Voter support for current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dipped below the 50% needed to secure a victory, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.
The opposition mayor of the Turkish capital, Ankara, said that it was “highly likely” the election was headed for a run-off at the end of the month.
Earlier, parties of both Mr Erdogan and main opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu both said they had the edge, with news agencies in the country offering competing results.
Both sides dismissed the other’s count. The official result is still yet to be announced.
Mr Erdogan, 69, who has been in charge of the country for 20 years, is seeking a third consecutive term as president but faces his toughest ever challenge.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking a third term as president
If no presidential candidate secures more than 50% of the vote, a run-off election will be held on 28 May.
Voting gets underway at an outdoor polling station in Bangkok
Voting has begun in Thailand’s general election, where the daughter of ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is the frontrunner.
The election is being described as a turning point for a country that has experienced a dozen military coups in its recent history.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army general who led the last coup in 2014, is seeking another term.
But, he is facing a strong challenge from two anti-military parties.
Voting on Sunday began at 8:00 am (01:00 GMT) at the 95,000 polling station across the country.
Around 50 million people will cast their ballots to elect 500 members of the lower house of parliament – and around two million people have voted early.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-O-Cha cast his vote in Bangkok early on Sunday
Leading the race is Pheu Thai (For Thais), led by Mr Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
The 36-year-old is harnessing her father’s wide patronage network while sticking to the populist message that has resonated with rural, low-income regions of the country.
Mr Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, is loved by many lower income Thais but is deeply unpopular with the royalist elite. He was ousted in a military coup in 2006, when his opponents accused him of corruption. He has denied the allegations and has since been living in exile since 2008 in London and Dubai.
“I think after eight years the people want better politics, better solutions for the country than just coup d’etats,” Ms Paetongtarn told the BBC in a recent interview.
Pheu Thai’s prime ministerial candidate Paetongtarn Shinawatra is the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Move Forward, led by Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old former tech executive, has also been rising fast in opinion polls. Its young, progressive and ambitious candidates have been campaigning on a simple but powerful message: Thailand needs to change.
“And the change is really not about having another coup. Because that’s a change backwards. It’s about reforming the military, the monarchy, for a democratic future, with better economic performance,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, from the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.
Meanwhile, Mr Prayuth, 69, is lagging in opinion polls. He seized power from the government of Mr Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, in 2014, following months of turmoil.
Rukchanok “Ice” Srinork is on the campaign trail for the general election on 14 May
In a cramped shophouse in one of Bangkok’s nondescript outer suburbs, a small group of volunteers feverishly pack leaflets in preparation for the daily ritual of canvassing for votes.
This is the decidedly low-rent campaign headquarters in Bang Bon for Move Forward, the most radical party contesting this month’s general election in Thailand.
Pacing among them is the parliamentary candidate, Rukchanok “Ice” Srinork, a 28-year-old woman brimming with energy, who constantly flicks through her social media pages. Ice’s team have bought cheap bicycles, and for weeks now they have been using them, in brutally hot weather, to reach out to residents in the smallest alleys of Bang Bon.
Ice is one of a slate of young, idealistic candidates for Move Forward who have joined mainstream politics in the hope that this election allows Thailand to break the cycle of military coups, street protests and broken democratic promises in which the country has been trapped for two decades.
Move Forward is the successor party to Future Forward, which exploded onto the political stage in Thailand five years ago.
It contested the first election permitted since a coup in 2014 deposed the then-elected government. Future Forward was something new, promising sweeping changes to Thailand’s political structures, including limiting the power of the armed forces, and, more quietly, suggesting changes to the monarchy, then a strictly taboo topic.
“Their agenda was basically about taking Thailand’s future back from the powers-that-be,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, from the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University. “In this century young people have had to live in a country that has been lost to an endless cycle – we had two coups, two new constitutions, a series of judicial dissolutions of parties. I think the younger demographic got sick and tired of it. And Future Forward tapped into that sentiment.”
It stunned conservatives by winning the third largest share of seats in the 2019 election. Thailand’s royalist establishment, a network of military officers, senior bureaucrats and judges, responded as it has to similar threats in the past – it had Future Forward dissolved by the Constitutional Court, and banned its leaders from politics. The party lost about one-third of its MPs, and its replacement, Move Forward, became a lonely opposition voice in parliament.
Move Forward’s Pita Limjaroenrat, 42, with supporters in Chiang Mai
Yet in recent weeks the party’s popularity in opinion polls has been surging again, alarming rivals. Many polls put its leader, the telegenic and articulate Pita Limjaroenrat, as the preferred candidate for prime minister.
That popularity is changing the reception Ice and her bicycling volunteers are getting in Bang Bon, traditionally the fiefdom of a powerful family from a rival party. People are genuinely interested in what these youngsters have to offer. Even older residents talk about the need for big changes in Thailand.
Ice herself epitomises this shifting political landscape. She admits she used to be a die-hard royalist, who cheered on the military coup and admired the man who led it, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is still prime minister today.
“I think that I’m doing this partly out of feeling guilty that I was part of a movement that encouraged the coup, a crime against 70 million people,” she says. “At that time, I agreed with it and thought it was the right answer for the country. But later I asked myself, how could that happen? How could this nation support a freaking coup? And that’s when I became taa sawang.”
“Taa Sawang” – literally, “bright eyes” – is the phrase adopted by younger Thais to describe their being enlightened about previously taboo topics, in particular the monarchy. It was a watchword of the mass protest movement that erupted after Future Forward was banned in 2020, at a stroke disenfranchising millions of younger voters who were hungry for change.
And that movement, while it was eventually crushed through the extensive use of the draconian lese majeste law, shattered the taboo, by calling openly, for the first time, for the powers and financing of the monarchy to be accountable. Three years later, Move Forward’s support for royal reform no longer seems so shocking. And more Thais seem willing to back the party’s broader agenda for change.
Chonticha “Kate” Jangrew’s journey has been from the opposite direction. Her “taa sawang” moment was much earlier, when she still a student.
She was among a very small group of dissidents willing to risk arrest by protesting against the 2014 coup that Ice was still cheering. She also joined the much bigger, monarchy-focused protests of 2020. But now she has decided to give up her activist life, and run as a candidate for parliament, also for Move Forward. “I believe to achieve the changes we want we have to work in parliament as well as on the streets,” she says.
Her pitch to voters in Pathum Thani, another district outside Bangkok, is unusual. “I have 28 criminal charges against me,” she tells them – two are under the lese majeste law, which carries a penalty of 15 years in prison for each. “But that shows you I am brave enough to speak out when I see something that needs to happen for our country.”
Even older voters seem charmed by her youthful sincerity. Almost everyone at the market where she appeared said they liked Move Forward, because they represented change, and would stick to their promises.
Hundreds of yellow-clad demonstrators gathered among the 10-deep crowds lining the procession route in central London to stand out from those clad in red, white and blue, and to hold up signs saying “Not My King”.
People protest monarchy on the day of Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla’s coronation. (Image: Reuters)
By Reuters: United Kingdom Police arrested the leader of the anti-monarchy group Republic and 51 others at King Charles’s coronation on Saturday, saying their duty to prevent disruption outweighed the right to protest.
Republic said its leader Graham Smith had been detained before the procession began and photos circulated on social media showing police officers seizing demonstrators’ placards.
“We absolutely understand public concern following the arrests we made this morning,” Commander Karen Findlay of the London Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
“Over the past 24 hours there has been a significant police operation after we received information protesters were determined to disrupt the Coronation procession.”
Republic vowed to mount the biggest protest against a British monarch in modern history and protesters booed as King Charles and Queen Camilla made their way to Westminster Abbey, and as the service was relayed publicly on large speakers.
“It is disgusting and massively over the top,” said Kevin John, 57, a salesman from Devon who was among the protesters.
“It is also hugely counterproductive by the police because all it has done is create a massive amount of publicity for us. It is completely crazy.”
Police did not confirm Smith’s arrest. They said they had acted because they believed protesters would seek to deface public monuments with paint and disrupt “official movements”.
“All of these people remain in custody,” Findlay said.
Police said in a separate statement on Saturday that they had arrested three people earlier in the day based on intelligence that protesters were planning to throw rape alarms at the procession, which could have scared the horses involved and thereby caused a risk to public safety.
Amongst the items seized during the arrests in London’s Soho district were a number of rape alarms, the police added.
Protests also took place in Glasgow in Scotland and Cardiff in Wales, with participants holding up signs saying: “Abolish the monarchy, feed the people.” On social media, many contrasted Britain’s cost of living crisis with the pomp and pageantry.
Although protesters were in a minority compared with the tens of thousands gathered to support the king, polls suggest support for the monarchy is declining and is weakest among young people.
With the crown passing from Queen Elizabeth to her less popular son, republican activists hope Charles will be the last British monarch to be crowned.
“It has a hereditary billionaire individual born into wealth and privilege who basically symbolises the inequality of wealth and power in our society,” said Clive Lewis, an opposition Labour Party lawmaker.
In London, protesters demanded an elected head of state, saying that the royal family has no place in a modern constitutional democracy and is staggeringly expensive.
“Don’t you think this is all a bit silly,” said one placard.
Most of the anti-monarchy protesters had congregated in Trafalgar Square next to the bronze statue of King Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, leading to a short-lived republic.
Since Charles became king last September, there have been protests at royal events. He was heckled at a Commonwealth Day event at Westminster Abbey in March and targeted with eggs in York in November.
Khan also reminded the military establishment that it should keep in mind that it can no longer be able to force the nation to accept “corrupt rulers”.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan. (ANI)
The Army chief is the most powerful person in Pakistan’s politics and everyone follows his decisions, ousted prime minister Imran Khan has said, slamming the military establishment for siding with the country’s “corrupt mafias” to ensure that he should not return to power.
Addressing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party supporters from his Zaman Park residence here on Friday evening, Khan urged the people to stand with the Supreme Court at the time when the “imported government” is trying to bring it down.
“The Army chief is the most powerful person in Pakistan’s politics. All follow his decisions. The military establishment is siding with the corrupt mafia – Sharifs and Zardaris – only to ensure that I must not return to power,” he said.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led coalition government has imposed an “undeclared ban” on the broadcast of the PTI chief’s speeches by the country’s electronic media.
Expressing his serious concerns over the division in the country’s Supreme Court, Khan said it will be a great tragedy for the country.
“Division in the Supreme Court will be a great tragedy. I appeal to the nation to stand with the apex court at a time when this imported government is making an all-out effort to bring it disrepute.
“Let me tell you… democracy in Pakistan is now hanging by a thread called Supreme Court and all those, who want democracy in the country, should stand with it,” the 70-year-old cricketer-turned-politician said.
The PTI chief said if the government does not stop conspiring against the apex court and continues defying the implementation of its decision to hold elections in Punjab on May 14, the nation must get ready to take to the streets after Eid.
One of the stars that aligned when Tony Blair felt the hand of history on his shoulder 25 years ago was the changing politics of the Irish lobby in the US. For years, American money had been funnelled to the IRA through an organisation called Noraid.
When I worked for the BBC in the early 1990s, I interviewed Irish Americans at a St Patrick’s Day fundraiser in New York who thought they were supporting freedom fighters against English colonial oppressors. They did not know that most people in Northern Ireland wanted to be part of the UK.
Netanyahu admits Israel is on the brink of ‘CIVIL WAR’ as he postpones judicial reform amid another night of violent protests
Underfire Israeli PM has attempted to seek compromise with his opponents
Comes after thousands launched a strike in protest of his overhaul plans
Bending to a wave of mass protests, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed his contentious judicial overhaul plan Monday and said he wanted ‘to avoid civil war’ by making time to seek a compromise with political opponents.
The announcement appeared to calm some of the tensions that have fueled three tumultuous months of unrest. But it failed to address the underlying issues that have polarized the nation, and the antigovernmental protest movement vowed to intensify its efforts.
In his prime-time address, Netanyahu, who had previously rejected calls to delay the legislation, took a more conciliatory tone than in recent speeches. He acknowledged the deep divisions in the country and said he was hitting the pause button ‘to prevent a rift in the nation.’
‘When there’s an opportunity to avoid civil war through dialogue, I, as prime minister, am taking a timeout for dialogue,’ he said. He vowed to reach a ‘broad consensus’ during the summer session of parliament, which begins on April 30.
He spoke after tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated outside parliament, and the country’s largest labor union launched a nationwide strike in a dramatic escalation of the mass protest movement against his plan.
Netanyahu and his religious and ultranationalist allies presented the overhaul in January just days after forming their government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history.
The proposal has plunged Israel into its worst domestic crisis in decades. Business leaders, top economists and former security chiefs have all come out against the plan, saying it is pushing the country toward an autocracy. Fighter pilots and military reservists have threatened not to report for duty, and the country’s currency, the shekel, has tumbled in value.
