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 This is the first time polls are being held in Ladakh since Article 370 was revoked.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 polls point to a historical first: Claudia Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country’s first Jewish and female president.
Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum gestures as she speaks on the day she is certified as presidential candidate for the ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party during a ceremony, in Mexico City, Mexico September 10, 2023. (photo credit: REUTERS/HENRY ROMERO)
The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc.
The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country’s first Jewish president, too.
Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the left-wing Morena party, which has been led by the country’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Since then, her momentum has only grown — a poll taken by the El Pais newspaper has 47% of voters supporting her, while Gálvez, her closest competitor, notched 30%.
If elected, Sheinbaum would join the ranks of the few Jews outside Israel who have been elected to their country’s highest office, including Janet Jagan of Guyana, Ricardo Maduro of Honduras, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Here is a primer on Sheinbaum and how her Jewishness has become part of the campaign.
She is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and political liberal who has beaten back crime.
Born to two science professors in Mexico City, Sheinbaum herself studied physics and became an engineering professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her research focused on, among other things, energy usage in Mexico’s buildings and transportation system. Along with a group of other experts on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she would go on to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
As Mexico City’s head of government, Obrador appointed Sheinbaum as his environmental secretary in 2000. She became a close ally and joined his new left-wing Morena party (named after the country’s Catholic patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe) in the early 2010s. In 2015, she was elected mayor of Tlalpan, Mexico City’s largest borough, before becoming mayor of the entire city in 2018. She stepped down as mayor this summer to enter the presidential race.
Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum gestures as she speaks on the day she is certified as presidential candidate for the ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party during a ceremony, in Mexico City, Mexico September 10, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/HENRY ROMERO)
Like the term-limited Obrador — whose approval rating of over 60% has been one of the highest in the world — Sheinbaum’s platform includes fighting Mexico’s deeply rooted corruption, continuing cash transfers to Mexico’s most vulnerable populations and developing Mexico’s energy sovereignty. But Sheinbaum will likely be more pro-environment than Obrador — while the current president has bolstered Mexico’s oil industry, Sheinbaum has said most of the country’s future “has to be related to renewable energy.”
As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum led the city through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Obrador appeared to minimize the threat of the virus, Sheinbaum advocated for masks and increased testing early on. And in a country plagued by violence, she has reduced her city’s murder rate by nearly half.
But some controversy also brewed during her time as mayor. Despite expanding public transport, there were at least a dozen accidents, some deadly, in the city’s subway system. Critics say she hasn’t done enough to fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure.
Sheinbaum also faced controversy involving infrastructure disaster as head of Tlalpan. In 2017, during an earthquake that killed more than 300 people in total, an elementary school collapsed in Sheinbaum’s district, killing 19 children and six adults. An apartment had been built on top of the school, destabilizing it, and some criticized her for allowing district officials to approve the construction permits. She apologized for what happened, but some parents of the deceased children still hold her accountable.
Her Jewish identity is more political than religious
Sheinbaum had Ashkenazi grandparents who immigrated from Lithuania in the 1920s and Sephardic grandparents who left Sofia, Bulgaria, in the 1940s to escape the Holocaust. She has said that she celebrated holidays at her grandparents’ houses, but at home, her family life was secular.
Sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018 that Sheinbaum feels connected to the history of Jews in political activism, but not as much so to the religion or its traditions. Like many secular, leftist Jews in Mexico, her parents moved to the south of the city to be closer to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a hotbed of political activism. She told a group of Jewish women voters during her mayoral campaign in 2018 that she was a proud Jewish woman.
She also hasn’t made any public pronouncement about Israel or spoken as a member of a minority, even though Jews make up less than 1% of the capital city’s population. It is not known if she belongs to any synagogue or other Jewish institution.
A Maldives national flag flutters as pigeons fly past during the morning in Male February 8, 2012. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/file photo Acquire Licensing Rights
More than a quarter of a million people vote on Saturday for the next leader of the tropical Maldives in a closely contested election seen as a battle for influence in the high-end tourist destination between India and China.
President Ibrahim Solih, who is seeking a second five-year term in the Indian Ocean archipelago, has championed an “India-first” policy during his time in power. He appears to be slightly ahead in the polls.
The coalition backing his main rival, Mohamed Muizzu, has a record of being close to China and has launched an “India out” campaign, promising to remove a small Indian military presence of several surveillance aircraft and some 75 personnel.
Muizzu entered the fray after former President Abdulla Yameen was banned from contesting the election by the Supreme Court in August following a conviction for corruption and money laundering.
A poll of 384 people published last month by the Baani Center think tank found that 21% of respondents favoured Solih compared with 14% supporting Muizzu.
“August’s poll reveals a majority of voters, 53%, remain undecided just three weeks before the first round vote on 9 September. This month’s poll has seen the most ‘undecideds’ since Baani began its monthly poll in April,” the organisation said in a statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, August 21, 2023. Theodore Manolopoulos/Greek Presidency Press Office/Handout via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, responding to calls by a US senator this week to announce elections in 2024, said on Sunday voting could take place during wartime if partners shared the cost, legislators approved, and everyone got to the polls.
Elections cannot currently be held in Ukraine under martial law, which must be extended every 90 days and is next due to expire on Nov. 15, after the normal date in October for parliamentary polls but before presidential elections which would normally be held in March 2024.
Top American legislators visited Kyiv Aug. 23, among them Senator Lindsey Graham, who heaped praise on Kyiv’s fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin but said the country needed to show it was different by holding elections in wartime.
Zelenskiy, in a television interview with Natalia Moseichuk, an anchor for the 1+1 Channel, said he had discussed the issue with Graham, including the question of funding and the need to change the law.
“I gave Lindsey a very simple answer very quickly,” he said. “He was very pleased with it. As long as our legislators are willing to do it.”
He said it cost 5 billion hryvnia ($135 million) to hold elections in peacetime. “I don’t know how much is needed in wartime,” he said. “So I told him that if the US and Europe provide financial support …”
He added, “I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections. And this is stipulated by the law.”
AI-generated political disinformation already has gone viral online ahead of the 2024 election
AI experts and tech-inclined political scientists are sounding the alarm on the unregulated use of AI tools going into an election season.
Generative AI can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos, it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen.
A booth is ready for a voter, Feb. 24, 2020, at City Hall in Cambridge, Mass., on the first morning of early voting in the state. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
“We’re not prepared for this,” warned A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. “To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.”
Among the many capabilities of AI, here are a few that will have significance ramifications with elections and voting: automated robocall messages, in a candidate’s voice, instructing voters to cast ballots on the wrong date; audio recordings of a candidate supposedly confessing to a crime or expressing racist views; video footage showing someone giving a speech or interview they never gave.
Fake images designed to look like local news reports, falsely claiming a candidate dropped out of the race.
“We’re not prepared for this,” warned A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. “To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.”
Among the many capabilities of AI, here are a few that will have significance ramifications with elections and voting: automated robocall messages, in a candidate’s voice, instructing voters to cast ballots on the wrong date; audio recordings of a candidate supposedly confessing to a crime or expressing racist views; video footage showing someone giving a speech or interview they never gave.
Fake images designed to look like local news reports, falsely claiming a candidate dropped out of the race.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled his country with an increasingly firm grip for 20 years, was locked in a tight election race early Monday, with a make-or-break runoff against his chief challenger possible as the final votes were counted.
The results, whether they come within days or after a second round of voting takes place in two weeks, will determine if a NATO ally that straddles Europe and Asia but borders Syria and Iran remains under Erdogan’s control or resumes the more democratic path promised by his main rival, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Speaking to supporters in Ankara, Erdogan, 69, said he could still win but would respect the nation’s decision if the race went to a runoff vote in two weeks.
“We don’t yet know if the elections ended in the first round. … If our nation has chosen for a second round, that is also welcome,” Erdogan said early Monday, noting that votes from Turkish citizens living abroad still need to be tallied. He garnered 60% of the overseas vote in 2018.
This year’s election largely centered on domestic issues such as the economy, civil rights and a February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people. But Western nations and foreign investors also awaited the outcome because of Erdogan’s unorthodox leadership of the economy and often mercurial but successful efforts to put Turkey at the center of international negotiations.
With the unofficial count nearly completed, voter support for the incumbent had dipped below the majority required for him to win reelection outright. Erdogan had 49.4% of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu, had 44.9%, according to the state-run news agency Anadolu.
“We will absolutely win the second round … and bring democracy” Kilicdaroglu, 74, the candidate of a six-party alliance, said, arguing that Erdogan had lost the trust of a nation now demanding change.
Turkey’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” and would make the results public once the count was completed and finalized.
The majority of ballots from the 3.4 million eligible overseas voters still needed to be tallied, according to the board, and a May 28 runoff election was not assured.
Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history and politics at St. Lawrence University in New York, said Erdogan was likely to have an advantage in a runoff because the president’s party was likely to do better in a parliamentary election also held Sunday. Voters would not want a “divided government,” he said.
Erdogan has governed Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003. In the run-up to the election, opinion surveys had indicated the increasingly authoritarian leader narrowly trailed his challenger.
With the partial results showing otherwise, members of Kilicdaroglu’s center-left, pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP, disputed Anadolu’s initial numbers, contending the state-run agency was biased in Erodgan’s favor.
Omer Celik, a spokesperson for Erdogan’s Justice and Development, or AK, party, in turn accused the opposition of “an attempt to assassinate the national will.” He called the opposition claims “irresponsible.”
While Erdogan hopes to win a five-year term that would take him well into his third decade as Turkey’s leader, Kilicdaroglu campaigned on promises to reverse crackdowns on free speech and other forms of democratic backsliding, as well as to repair an economy battered by high inflation and currency devaluation.
Voters also elected lawmakers to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament, which lost much of its legislative power after a referendum to change the country’s system of governance to an executive presidency narrowly passed in 2017.
Anadolu news agency said Erdogan’s ruling party alliance was hovering around 49.4%, while Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance had around 35% and support for a pro-Kurdish party stood above 10%.
“That the election results have not been finalized doesn’t change the fact that the nation has chosen us,” Erdogan said.
More than 64 million people, including the overseas voters, were eligible to vote and nearly 89% voted. This year marks 100 years since Turkey’s establishment as a republic — a modern, secular state born on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally strong, despite the government suppressing freedom of expression and assembly over the years and especially since a 2016 coup attempt. Erdogan blamed the failed coup on followers of a former ally, cleric Fethullah Gulen, and initiated a large-scale crackdown on civil servants with alleged links to Gulen and on pro-Kurdish politicians.
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.
