The INDIA bloc of opposition parties plans to hold talks on seat-sharing and hold its first public meeting in Bhopal in October.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Congress leader KC Venugopal, AAP leader Raghav Chadha, Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, and other opposition leaders during the Coordination Committee meeting of Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).(PTI)
The INDIA bloc comprising over two dozen opposition parties will soon hold talks regarding seat-sharing and will hold its first public meeting in Bhopal in the first week of October, Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said on Wednesday after a meeting of its coordination committee.
“The coordination committee decided to start the process for determining seat sharing. It was decided that the member parties will hold the talks and decide at the earliest,” a joint statement by the committee read.
“The first public meeting will be held at Bhopal in the first week of October on the issues of rising prices, unemployment and corruption of the BJP government,” it added.
For seat sharing, state-level committees will be formed to hold discussions with INDIA parties in that state.
Twelve member parties present at the meeting held at Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar’s Delhi residence agreed to take up the issue of caste census. The panel also authorised the sub-committee on media to decide upon the names of television news anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send their representatives.
“All alliance parties will participate in the public meeting (to be held in Bhopal) and raise issues of price rise, unemployment and corruption. There was also consensus over the caste census. We have also authorised our media committee to release the list of TV anchors on whose shows leaders of our alliance parties won’t participate,” AAP leader Raghav Chadha said.
National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, who attended the meeting, said his suggestion was not to discuss seats already held by alliance members and focus on the seats held by NDA parties.
“One of things I had proposed is that the seats that are already held by members of the INDIA block should not be open for discussion, we should be discussing the seats held by the BJP, NDA or parties that are not part of either of those alliances…”
I.N.D.I.A leaders’ meeting in Mumbai. Credit: PTI Photo
The coordination and election strategy committee of I.N.D.I.A bloc will meet here for the first time on Wednesday to discuss joint election campaigns, rallies and the contentious seat-sharing process.
The meeting will be held at the NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s residence here at 4 pm which will be attended by leaders including K C Venugopal, T R Baalu, Hemant Soren, Sanjay Raut, Tejashwi Yadav, Raghav Chadha, Javed Ali Khan, Rajiv Ranjan ‘Lalan’ Singh, Omar Abdullah, D Raja and Mehbooba Mufti.
However, Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee will not be attending the meeting, as he has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate. Trinamool sources said it would not be sending a replacement for the meeting as a “political point”.
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.
Finland elections: With 93.4% of the votes counted, the party looked set to get the most seats in parliament, 48 out of 200 in total.
Supporters of the liberal-conservative National Coalition Party cheer during the party’s parliamentary election party in Helsinki.(AFP)
Finland’s centre-right leader claimed victory in Sunday’s tight general election that saw the far-right post a record score to come in second, as Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats finished third.
“This was a great victory,” the 53-year-old head of the conservative National Coalition Party, Petteri Orpo, told his cheering supporters.
“On the basis of this election result … we will start negotiating a government in Finland,” he said.
Orpo could choose to build a government either with the far-right Finns Party or the Social Democrats, though he is at odds with both on various issues.
With 99 percent of votes counted, the centre-right was credited with 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, the far-right with 46 and the Social Democrats with 43.
In terms of votes, the result was even closer with the centre-right winning 20.6 percent, the far-right 20.1 percent and the Social Democrats 19.9 percent.
The biggest party in parliament traditionally gets the first chance to build a government, and since the 1990s that party has always claimed the prime minister’s office.
Orpo, whose comfortable lead in the polls shrank in the final stages of the campaign, has made the economy his top priority.
Finland’s debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 64 percent in 2019 to 73 percent, which his National Coalition wants to address by cutting spending by six billion euros ($6.5 billion).
Meanwhile, amid cheers of “Finland! Finland!”, the 45-year-old head of the anti-immigration Finns Party, Riikka Purra, thanked her supporters for the party’s “best election result ever”.
The party, which first served in government in 2015, has seen its support surge since last summer with the cost of living crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Purra even managed to secure the highest number of direct votes in the election, with her 38,000 beating out the 35,000 cast for Marin, whom polls have ranked as Finland’s most popular prime minister this century.
The eurosceptic Finns Party, which appeals overwhelmingly to male voters, wants a hard line on immigration.
Purra alleges that recent arrivals are behind a rise in street gangs and has pointed to neighbouring Sweden as a cautionary tale.
The Finns Party sees “Fixit” — an exit from the European Union — as a long-term goal and wants to postpone Finland’s target of carbon neutrality for 2035.
Tough talks ahead
Marin, who became the world’s youngest prime minister in 2019 at the age of 34, has struggled to convert her overwhelming personal popularity into support for her SDP.
“Congratulations to the National Coalition Party, congratulations to the Finns Party. Democracy has spoken,” she said as she acknowledged defeat.
Negotiations to build a government are expected to be thorny and could last several weeks.
Orpo has said he will keep his options open, and could cooperate either with the left or the far-right, whom Marin has qualified as “openly racist”.
Orpo’s National Coalition is at odds with Marin’s SDP on budget austerity, and clashes with the Finns Party on immigration, the EU and climate policy.
