Month: November 2022

Pre-poll surveys have predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win a majority of the 182 seats in the state for a record seventh time in a row, defeating the main opposition Congress party and new entrant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Results will be announced on 8 December.

Analysts say that the biggest factor in favour of the BJP is Mr Modi’s appeal among voters.

“It is [Mr Modi’s] iconic, larger-than-life Hindu hriday samrat (the king of the Hindu heart) image which draws all the votes,” says political scientist Ghanshyam Shah.

Gujarat has a close connection with India’s current prime minister: Mr Modi was chief minister of the state for 12 years since 2002 and it was here that he polished his brand of strident Hindu nationalism, established his paradigm of development and his version of governance that is visible in several national policies.

It isn’t surprising, then, that Mr Modi is the face of the BJP’s election campaign in the state.

“You remove him and it all goes crashing like a pack of cards,” says Achyut Yagnik, a political analyst.

Gujarat’s chief minister Bhupendra Patel – the state’s third since Mr Modi stepped down to become India’s prime minister in 2014 – asks for votes in Mr Modi’s name, as do other BJP candidates.

The discourse of Mr Modi-vs-the-rest is so dominant that even the bridge collapse tragedy in Morbi district in the state just a month ago – in which 135 people died – isn’t really an election issue.

Then there’s the uncertainty caused by the AAP’s entry. Pre-poll surveys say that anti-BJP votes could be split between the Congress and the AAP, which could give the governing party a bigger majority than the record 127 out of 182 seats it won in 2002.

A 4 November survey by polling agency C-Voter has predicted anywhere from 131-139 seats for the BJP, 31-39 for the Congress and 7-15 for the AAP. Some other surveys have predicted between 115 and 125 seats for the BJP.

In the months leading up to the election, all three major parties in the fray have tried to woo voters by making lofty promises and trashing their opponents.

The Congress calls the AAP a “vote-breaker” in a conventionally bi-polar state.

The AAP, in turn, accuses the Congress of allowing the BJP’s “misrule” to continue since 1995, when the right-wing party first won the election.

And BJP president JP Nadda, who released the party’s manifesto over the weekend, has ridiculed his rivals’ poll promises and claimed that the BJP is winning hands down.

Federal home minister Amit Shah, also from the state and among the BJP’s top campaigners, has said that the party “will break all previous records”.

Like it did in other states, the BJP began its campaign with the promise of a “double-engine government” – one in power both nationally and in the state – which could deliver all-round development.

Since then, Mr Modi’s rousing speeches criticising his opponents have often made news.

“They call me names, they say they will show my place, they call me a lowly person. I am the most abused person. [But] I swallow all of it because it is the country’s development that is in my heart,” he has said.

Mr Modi has accused the Congress party of being soft on terrorism while it ran the federal government, referring to incidents including the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks which left 166 dead.

The party’s manifesto also says that the state government will set up an “anti-radicalisation cell” to identify and eliminate potential terror threats.

The BJP has also promised to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) – a single personal law for all citizens that experts have said would be “fiendishly difficult” to frame – if it comes to power.

While it’s in the lead, the BJP is not complacent. This month, Mr Modi has held more than 20 rallies in the stateand announced a slew of public schemes worth 2 trillion rupees ($24.5bn; £20.3bn). Two huge industrial projects which were slated to start operations in Maharashtra state were recently shifted to Gujarat.

Mr Modi has campaigned extensively in state elections before, but some analysts believe that the time he has spent canvassing ballots in Gujarat hints at “some panic in the BJP camp”. They also point to the fact that party leaders have also been using Hindu nationalist rhetoric in speeches instead of focusing on the government’s track record.

It’s an allegation the party’s supporters deny.

Mahendra Kajiwala, a businessman in Surat city, says the party needs to return to power to continue “the path of infrastructural development which Narendra Modi initiated”.

“I don’t know about [Hindu nationalist rhetoric], but I can say the BJP led by Mr Modi will win even if such issues are not raised,” he adds.

But the BJP has been facing some challenges too. Around 19 lawmakers who were not made candidates are contesting independently.

The state government has also been facing protests by government employees over issues including salaries and pensions; an inter-state river-linking project had to be scrapped following huge protests by tribal people; and a law aimed at prohibiting the movement of stray cows in public places had drawn outrage from cattle-rearers.

The Congress had given the BJP a scare in the 2017 election, winning 77 seats by taking advantage of rural anger over economic distress and a powerful upper-caste agitation for reservations. It is not expected to perform as well this time, but it has been working on strengthening its tribal and Dalit vote base and reaching out to Muslim voters as well.

More than the Congress, it’s the AAP’s forays into the urban voter base that the BJP is concerned about. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party has been reaching out to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds such as tuk-tuk drivers, roadside vendors, small traders and small-scale industrial units.

The party has also promised free power, schools and medical facilities like those found in national capital Delhi, which it governs.

With the BJP clearly in the lead, the Gujarat election may appear a tepid affair bereft of any wave – but with key state polls coming up next year and then the general election in 2024, all the contenders are hoping they end this year on a political high.

A heavy police presence has been reported in several cities, and some gatherings were quelled or failed to materialise.

Reports have emerged of people being questioned and their phones searched.

But overseas Chinese have continued protesting, in at least a dozen cities across the world.

Last weekend’s demonstrations had grown after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on Thursday.

It is widely believed residents could not escape the blaze because of Covid restrictions, but local authorities have disputed this.

As a result, thousands took to the streets for days, demanding an end to Covid lockdowns – with some even making rare calls for President Xi Jinping to stand down.

But on Monday, planned protests in Beijing did not happen after officers surrounded the assembly point. In Shanghai, large barriers were erected along the main protest route and police made several arrests.

On Tuesday morning, police could be seen in both cities patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram social media app had suggested people should gather again.

A small protest in the southern city of Hangzhou on Monday night was also quickly stopped with people swiftly arrested, according to social media footage verified by the BBC.

But in Hong Kong, dozens of protesters gathered in the centre of the city and at the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in a show of solidarity with demonstrators in mainland China.

Many also gathered outside Chinese embassies in major cities around the world like London, Paris and Tokyo, and universities in the US and Europe.

One expert suggested that local protests were not likely to die down any time soon, saying they were likely to “ebb and flow” because people were “not being called out to the streets in a controlled fashion… they move between social media and the street”.

But Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, added that it was also important to note that Chinese police had “tremendous capacity…[and] the ability of China to control these protests going forward… is quite high”.

Reports also claim that police were stopping people and searching their hones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPN) set up, as well as apps like Telegram and Twitter which are banned in China.

One woman told news agency AFP that she and five of her friends who attended a protest in Beijing had received phone calls from police, demanding information about their whereabouts.

In one case, a police officer visited her friend’s home after they failed to answer their phone, and asked whether they had visited the protest site, stressing that it was an “illegal assembly”.

It is unclear how police might have discovered the identities of those in attendance.

Police have also detained journalists covering the protests in recent days. News agency Reuters said one of its journalists was briefly detained on Sunday before being released.

BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was also held for several hours while covering a protest in Shanghai on the same night. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his detention was “shocking and unacceptable”, adding that Britain would raise concerns with China about its response to the protests.

Censorship has gone into overdrive on Chinese social media platforms since the weekend’s protests, to stop people seeing and discussing them.

Tens of millions of posts have been filtered from search results, while media are muting their coverage of Covid in favour of upbeat stories about the World Cup and China’s space achievements.

It’s a vastly different scene on Western social media platforms, which some Chinese people have taken to to share information including advice for protesters to avoid arrest.

One account on Instagram – a platform which is blocked in China and accessible only through a VPN – published a “safety guide for friends in Shanghai and across the country” and included tips like wearing dark coloured clothing for anonymity and bringing along goggles and water in the event that tear gas is fired.

The Chinese government has not acknowledged the protests or responded in any formal way.

Tessa Wong, BBC News, Singapore

Could the government listen to the protesters, and unwind zero Covid?

To do that now – while minimising deaths and infections – would be difficult, due to the country’s low vaccination rates among the elderly, a lack of highly effective domestic vaccines, and the government’s continued refusal to follow the rest of the world in using foreign vaccines.

“There’s a dilemma for the government,” Oxford University professor of modern Chinese history Rana Mitter told the BBC – do they import foreign vaccines “which may look embarrassing in nationalistic terms or do they try to hold the line by keeping the borders closed without any end date for this policy?”

China recently appeared to test the waters by loosening measures slightly, where they reduced some quarantine periods and stopped recording secondary contacts.

But, as seen in other countries such as Singapore and Australia which transitioned from zero Covid to living with the virus, any relaxation of measures would inevitably result in a jump in infections and deaths.

This is an outcome which Chinese authorities still appear unwilling to accept.

Read more from Tessa here.

China remains the only major economy with a strict zero-Covid policy, with local authorities clamping down on even small outbreaks with mass testing, quarantines and snap lockdowns.

While China developed its own Covid vaccines, they are not as good as the mRNA technology – such as the Pfizer and Moderna shots – used elsewhere.

Two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine gives 90% protection against severe disease or death vs 70% with China’s Sinovac.

The vaccines have also not been given to enough people. Far too few of the elderly – who are most likely to die from Covid – have been immunised.

There is also very little “natural immunity” from people surviving infections as a consequence of stopping the virus in its tracks.

It means new variants spread far more quickly than the virus that emerged three years ago and there is a constant risk of it being imported from countries that are letting the virus spread.

SNP plans to use the next general election as a “de facto” referendum were criticised by MSP Donald Cameron.

He claims civil servants should not be deployed on “party propaganda”.

The Supreme Court last week ruled that Holyrood did not have the power to hold a fresh vote. The Scottish government has been approached for comment.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wanted to hold a referendum on 19 October next year.

In May, the Scottish government allocated £20m to be spent on planning an independence referendum as part of its resource spending review.

But the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that she does not have the power to hold the vote without the UK government’s consent, because the issue is reserved to Westminster.

Court president Lord Reed rejected the Scottish government’s argument that any referendum would simply be “advisory” and would have no legal effect on the union, with people only being asked to give their opinion on whether or not Scotland should become an independent country.

Figures obtained by the Tories on Sunday revealed more than £1.5m of taxpayer cash would be spent on civil servant salaries who are tasked to work on the independence brief.

Following the Supreme Court judgement, Mr Cameron said he struggled to see any legal justification for ministers to spend the figure.

In his letter to permanent secretary John-Paul Marks, the Highlands and Islands MSP said he was seeking “urgent clarification” on whether this remained the position of the Scottish government.

He also urged Mr Marks to seek a ministerial direction to settle the matter.

In a statement, Mr Cameron added: “Nicola Sturgeon said her next step, after the Supreme Court’s judgment, was to try to turn the next general election into a ‘de facto referendum’.

“But that’s SNP strategy as a party – not a Scottish government policy. There is no excuse for impartial civil servants to be deployed on party propaganda in this way, and no reason for taxpayers’ money to be wasted on it.

“In the midst of a global cost of living crisis and huge cuts being imposed by the SNP on key public services, it’s outrageous for ministers to spend money pushing for a referendum that most Scots don’t want.”

Ms Sturgeon has said she was disappointed but respected the ruling of the court, and stressed that the judges do not make the law and only interpret it.

The first minister told a media conference that a referendum remained her preferred option, but in the absence of an agreement the SNP would use the next UK general election as a “de facto referendum” in an attempt to demonstrate that a majority of people in Scotland support independence.

The “precise detail” of how this would work will now be a matter for the party to debate, she said, with a special conference to be held in the new year.

Recent opinion polls have suggested that the country is essentially split down the middle on the independence question, but with a very narrow majority in favour of staying in the UK.

However the SNP and Greens form a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.

In his first foreign policy speech, the PM said the closer economic ties of the previous decade had been “naïve”.

He said the UK now needed to replace wishful thinking with “robust pragmatism” towards competitors.

But he warned against “Cold War rhetoric”, adding that China’s global significance could not be ignored.

Mr Sunak has faced pressure from Tory backbenchers to toughen the UK’s stance on China since he took over as Tory leader and UK prime minister last month.

The speech, to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, comes after protests in China over the weekend against the country’s strict Covid lockdown laws.

Police have made several arrests, and a BBC journalist was detained while covering a protest in Shanghai on Sunday. He was beaten and kicked by the police during his arrest, and held for several hours before being released.

Mr Sunak told the audience of business leaders and foreign policy experts that, in the face of the protests, China had “chosen to crack down further, including by assaulting a BBC journalist”.

“We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism,” he said.

He added that the “golden era” of UK-China relations was “over”, along with the “naïve idea” that more trade with the West would lead to Chinese political reform.

The phrase “golden era” is associated with closer economic ties under former prime minister David Cameron – but relations between London and Beijing have since deteriorated.

However, Mr Sunak stressed that “we cannot simply ignore China’s significance in world affairs – to global economic stability or issues like climate change”.

He added that the UK would work with allies including the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan to “manage this sharpening competition, including with diplomacy and engagement”.

“It means standing up to our competitors, not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism,” he added.

Mr Sunak and Chinese President Xi Jinping were set to meet for the first time at the G20 summit in Indonesia earlier this month, but the encounter was cancelled following a missile blast in Poland.

Mr Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss was reportedly planning to re-categorise China as a “threat” to the UK as part of a review of its foreign policy.

In his speech, Mr Sunak echoed the phrase used in the review – that China is a “systemic challenge”. He said there would be more details of the review in the new year.

But the “robust pragmatism” line in the speech was criticised by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, one of a number of backbenchers pushing for a tougher line.

Reacting to a preview of the speech, he wrote in the Daily Express that China had become a “clear and present threat to us and our allies”.

“I wonder if robust pragmatism now sounds more and more like appeasement,” he added.

The truth is, right now, we don’t know in practical terms what this new approach will actually amount to.

Mr Sunak is promising more detail in what is known as the Integrated Review – which will set out the UK’s national security and foreign policy – in the new year.

But we know already how China is now described: a “systemic challenge”.

The government hopes that people will understand that international relations, like any human relations, are complex and nuanced; that a binary approach, as they see it, would not be in the UK’s interests.

But for the prime minister’s critics, failing to describe Beijing as a “threat” is a big mistake.

Read more from Chris here.

Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy called the speech “thin as gruel”, accusing the prime minister of “flip-flopping its rhetoric on China”.

Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Sunak promised to continue support for Ukraine, adding: “We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

He promised to “maintain or increase” British military aid to the country next year, and provide new air support to protect civilians and critical infrastructure.

Mr Sunak visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, in his first visit to Kyiv since entering Downing Street.

During the visit, he announced the UK would supply Ukraine with additional anti-aircraft guns and radars, and increase the training offer to Ukraine’s armed forces.

President Zelensky’s wife, Olena Zelenska, made her own visit to London on Monday where she spoke about sexual violence allegedly being perpetrated by Russian troops in Ukraine.