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i n t e r n a t i o n a l
Issue 305 - Rabi ul Thani 16, 1433 / March 9, 2012
India’s ruling party loses key state election
India’s governing Congress party was badly beaten in a key state election Tuesday, a sharp rebuke that could cripple the already embattled national government over
the final two years of its term. With early returns showing Congress coming in fourth place in the Uttar Pradesh polls, party icon Rahul Gandhi admitted defeat. Gandhi, seen as his party’s likely next prime ministerial candidate, had put his reputation on the line by campaigning relentlessly across India’s most populous state. Mayawati, the bottom-caste dalit leader who is the state’s incumbent chief minister, also suffered a crushing defeat as the socialist Samajwadi Party’s victory appeared strong enough to allow it to form a government on its own. Mayawati’s party took a major hit, with the commission projecting it to win only 80
seats, while the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, was expected to secure up to 47 and Congress to take 28 -- a marginal increase from the 22 it held before the vote. Mayawati, who uses one name, drew criticism during her 5-year rule for spending a fortune on public parks complete with gigantic statues of herself and other party leaders instead of reforming the health and education systems. Ajit Kumar Singh, director of the Giri Institute of Development Studies in the state capital, Lucknow, said voters saw the Samajwadi Party as their best chance of ousting their mercurial chief minister. K.V. Prasad, a New Delhi-based political analyst with The Hindu newspaper, said the verdict showed that the Congress party was out of touch with grass-roots issues. “It’s not enough to go heli-hopping and waving your hands,” he said, a reference to Gandhi’s crisscrossing the state via helicopter. “The electorate is more aware now.” Prasad said voters knew that only the Samajwadi Party had the organization to realistically defeat Mayawati’s government. Congress didn’t fare much better in election results from four other states. While it held onto power in the tiny, insurgency-wracked state of Manipur in the northeast with 42 of the state’s 60 seats, it lost control of coastal Goa, with only nine seats to the BJP’s 21. In the state of Punjab, Congress lost to the local Sikh party Shiromani Akali Dal 56-46, with the BJP
taking 12. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, results were still too close to call. The results in Uttar Pradesh, where Congress leaders had hoped to triple their seat count, are a blow to Gandhi’s aspirations to be taken seriously as a national leader. Gandhi, a parliamentarian from Uttar Pradesh, is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has dominated Indian politics since independence from Britain in 1947. His mother is Sonia Gandhi, the Italianborn Congress party president; his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in 1991. The family is not related to independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. The Congress-led national coalition has been battered by corruption scandals and weakened by growing opposition from rebellious smaller parties within the government that have blocked major new legislation. Congress had hoped a strong showing would rejuvenate the government and give it leverage to widen the coalition and pressure its wayward allies to fall in line. A poor showing will leave the government limping toward the next election in 2014, even as economic growth slows and analysts say the nation is desperately in need of a transformative reform agenda. The massive elections in the five states were spread out from late January to March 3 and saw a high voter turnout, with at least 60 per cent of the electorate voting in each state. Source: CTV News
Syrian president defies international
President Bashar al-Assad pledged to crush “foreign-backed terrorism” Tuesday as Syria’s army turned on new targets after subduing the city of Homs. The regime’s forces pounded rebel-held towns and struck a bridge used by refugees to escape to neighbouring Lebanon, killing at least six people. Soldiers also launched a major assault on Herak, a town in the southern province of Dera’a, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Londonbased group. Two international envoys are about to visit Mr Assad - Baroness
Amos, the United Nations undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, who is due in Damascus on Wednesday, and Kofi Annan, the former UN secretarygeneral, who is expected this weekend as a representative of the Arab League. None the less, the president persisted with the belligerent rhetoric that he has displayed throughout the one-year uprising that has claimed up to 7,000 lives. Insisting that his security forces were fighting outsiders and not homegrown rebels, Mr Assad said: “The Syrian people have again proven their capacity to defend the nation and to build a new Syria through their determination to pursue reforms along with the fight against foreign-backed terrorism.” For a fifth consecutive day, aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were kept out of Baba Amr, the formerly rebelheld area of Homs that was captured by government troops last week. This broke an earlier assurance given by the regime and placed Syria in violation of a statement agreed unanimously by the UN Security Council calling for free access for aid workers. The ICRC
has also asked for a daily two-hour ceasefire across the country to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. Again, the regime had indicated that it was willing to accept this suggestion, but no such pauses have taken place. By keeping the ICRC out of Baba Amr, Mr Assad is risking greater diplomatic isolation and the possible disapproval of his two most powerful allies, Russia and China. At the UN, the U.S., Britain and France sought to win the agreement of Russia and China yesterday to a new draft resolution seeking unfettered access for aid agencies to the worst affected areas of Syria. President Barack Obama called the bloodshed in Syria “heartbreaking and outrageous” yesterday, adding that Mr Assad had “lost legitimacy” and his downfall was a question of “when not if”. Having previously protected Mr Assad in the Security Council, Russia and China have shown signs of a more flexible attitude, at least as far as humanitarian access is concerned. Any new resolution would have to be diluted heavily from earlier failed versions to exclude any mention of a “transition” from Mr Assad to a new government. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said the new draft was “a slightly modified version of the last vetoed document”, adding: “It should be substantially balanced.” But Western diplomats take the view that a watereddown resolution would still send a signal to Mr Assad that his isolation was increasing. “It is hard to see how Russia and China can object to something that focuses on humanitarian access. They would find themselves in a very difficult situation if they blocked it,” said an official. David Cameron spoke to Vladimir Putin on Monday and told Parliament that he “didn’t sense any sign of a shift” in the Russian leader’s approach. But he hoped to secure agreement “that it is absolutely essential that, at the very least, there is humanitarian access”. Source: Vancouver Sun
Romney wins 6 of 10 states on Super Tuesday but Santorum, Gingrich vow to fight on Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each won Republican presidential primaries in multiple states on Tuesday night, with Romney narrowly edging his rival in the key state of Ohio. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich won the primary in his home state of Georgia, once again reviving his campaign. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas did surprisingly well in a losing effort in Virginia, indicating that the tumultuous four-way GOP race is likely to rumble on for weeks.
Email hints bin Laden’s body may be in the US Osama bin Laden’s body may not have been buried at sea after all, according to leaked emails written by a senior official at the intelligence firm Stratfor. The emails were part of a massive WikiLeaks operation that in February began publishing information from Stratfor Global Intelligence, a U.S.-based firm which describes itself as “a publisher of geopolitical analysis.” It has been likened by some to a “shadow CIA.” The data was obtained by the hacker group Anonymous. It successfully attacked one of the firm’s servers, allegedly stealing more than 5 million emails. The U.S. government’s official position is that after the Al Qaeda leader was killed in Pakistan during a raid on his compound on May 2, 2011, his body was buried at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony in an undisclosed spot. But Fred Burton, vice-president of intelligence at the Stratfor, wrote in a May 2 email sent from his BlackBerry that he believed bin Laden’s “body bound for Dover, DE on CIA plane. Than (sic) onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda.”In another email Burton wrote: “If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman (sic) like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi’s ashes. We would want to photograph, DNA, fingerprint, etc. His body is a crime scene and I don’t see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen.” Eichmann was one of the architects of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II. He was captured by Israel’s
secret service in Argentina and put on trial in Israel. He was found guilty and later executed. Stratfor’s founder and CEO George Friedman replied: “Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being sentenced to death and executed. No one wanted a monument to him so they cremated him. But I don’t know anyone who claimed he wasnt eicjhman (sic). No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which I doubt happened.” Stratfor’s Friedman issued a statement when Wikileaks first began publishing the emails, calling the theft and publication of the emails a “deplorable, unfortunate – and illegal — breach of privacy.” He continued: “Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies. Some may be authentic. We will not validate either, nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questions about them.” Friedman said that he believes the release of these emails is “a direct attack on Stratfor” and “another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject. As you can see, emails sent to many people about my resignation were clearly forged. “We do not know what else has been manufactured. Stratfor will not be silenced, and we will continue to publish the geopolitical analysis our friends and subscribers have come to rely on.” Source: Toronto Star