Month: May 2024

Singapore will swear in Lawrence Wong on Wednesday as the city-state’s new prime minister, as Lee Hsien Loong steps down after two decades in office.

Wong, formerly deputy prime minister, will become the second non-member of the Lee family to lead the affluent nation when he is inaugurated at 8:00 pm local time (1200 GMT).

The 51-year-old, US-educated economist is widely seen as a social media-savvy stalwart who effectively handled the Covid-19 crisis when he oversaw the government’s pandemic taskforce.

“He brings a style of leadership that’s more attuned to a different generation,” said Mustafa Izzuddin, a political analyst with consultancy Solaris Strategies Singapore.

“The core principle of what Singapore is about will remain because it is a system that has worked for many years. But I think his style may be slightly different because he comes from a different generation.”

Wong, who was also finance minister, had been selected as Lee’s heir-apparent in 2022 from a new generation of lawmakers from the People’s Action Party (PAP) which has ruled uninterrupted since independence in 1965.

Outgoing premier Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, was Singapore’s first prime minister when it became a sovereign nation after a brief, unsuccessful union with Malaysia.

The stern patriarch, who once said he preferred to be feared than loved, oversaw the transformation of Singapore from a sleepy British colonial outpost to a financial hub in a little more than 30 years.

In 1990, the elder Lee handed power to his deputy, former shipping executive Goh Chok Tong, who was initially considered a “seat-warmer” for the patriarch’s son.

Goh, however, stayed on for 14 years before the younger Lee took over in 2004.

Wong, who becomes the fourth prime minister in Singapore’s history, must lead the PAP to the next general elections, which are not due until November 2025 but could be called as early as this year.

In the previous election in 2020, the opposition showed its strongest performance since independence but hardly made a dent in parliament as 83 out of the 93 seats were won by the PAP.

The PAP’s squeaky clean image was recently stained by scandals which saw two lawmakers resign and a minister charged with graft.

The Workers’ Party, Singapore’s main opposition party, has also suffered from scandals with two members resigning and its leader charged for giving false testimony before a parliamentary committee.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “epochal change” in war preparations by achieving arsenal production targets during his inspection of a tactical missile system, state media reported Wednesday.

It comes as analysts say the nuclear-armed North could be testing and ramping up production of artillery and cruise missiles before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine.

During his inspection of the tactical missile weapons system on Tuesday, Kim expressed “great satisfaction over the production results registered by the defence industrial enterprises” this year, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch.

Kim “particularly stressed the need to bring about an epochal change in the preparations of the KPA for war by carrying out the munitions production plans for 2024 without fail,” it added.

Missile launchers produced so far this year are intended for military units in the country’s west, KCNA said.

The largely isolated country has recently bolstered military ties with Russia, and Pyongyang thanked Moscow last month for using its UN Security Council veto to block the renewal of a panel of UN experts that monitored international weapons sanctions on Kim’s regime.

South Korea and the United States have accused North Korea of supplying weapons to Russia, despite UN sanctions banning such a move.

Inter-Korean relations are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang declaring South Korea its “principal enemy”.  It has jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and threatened war over “even 0.001 mm” of territorial infringement.

Modi remains roundly popular in India, in large part due to his cultivated image as an aggressive champion of the country’s majority faith.

Varanasi is the spiritual capital of Hinduism, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river, and the premier has represented the city since sweeping to power a decade ago.

“I swear on God… I will have faith and allegiance to India’s constitution,” Modi said before handing over the paperwork to an election registrar, flanked by a Hindu mystic dressed in a loincloth.

Hundreds of supporters had gathered to applaud Modi outside the local government office where he lodged his nomination, at the end of a two-day campaign stop packed with numerous public displays of worship.

 

 

“It’s our good fortune that Modi represents our constituency of Varanasi,” devout Hindu Jitendra Singh Kumar, a 52-year-old farmer.

“He is like a God to people of Varanasi. He thinks about the country first, unlike other politicians.”

Modi waved to the gathered crowd after emerging from the office before leaving with his entourage, made up of senior figures from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The 73-year-old Modi, who has made acts of religious devotion a fixture of his premiership, had spent the morning visiting temples and offering prayers at the banks of the Ganges.

Tens of thousands of supporters had lined the streets of Varanasi to greet Modi as he arrived in the city on Monday, waving to the crowd from atop a flatbed truck as loudspeakers blared devotional songs.

Many along the roadside waved saffron-coloured flags bearing the lotus flower emblem of the BJP, throwing marigold flowers at the procession as it passed by.

 

 

Modi and the BJP are widely expected to win this year’s election, which is conducted over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.

Varanasi is one of the last constituencies to vote on June 1, with counting and results expected three days later.

Since the vote began last month, Modi has made a number of strident comments against India’s 200-million-plus Muslim minority in an apparent effort to galvanise support.

In public speeches he has referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”, prompting condemnation from opposition politicians and complaints to India’s election commission.

The ascent of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist politics despite India’s officially secular constitution has made Muslims in the country increasingly anxious.

“We are made to feel as if we are not wanted in this country,” Shauqat Mohamed, who runs a tea shop in the city, told AFP.

“If the country’s premier speaks of us in disparaging terms, what else can we expect?” the 41-year-old added.

With the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) seeking talks with the “real power”, incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan has said that he will write a letter to Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Asim Munir on the worsening economic and political situation in the cash-strapped country.

During an interaction with journalists in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on Monday, Imran said: “I will write a letter to the army chief on the [prevailing] situation in the country.”

The PTI founder made the remarks days after he assigned an “important responsibility” to former president Dr Arif Alvi, who had been making efforts to bridge the gap between the establishment and the former ruling party.

The deposed prime minister, who was removed from power via a parliamentary vote in April last year, had assigned Alvi with the task after turning down the military’s demand to apologise for the May 9 riots and distanced his party from the violent protests that broke out in the country last year soon after his arrest.

Responding to a question about the £190 million settlement case, the PTI founder said that Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) had seized the amount after finding it “suspicious transactions” but not “money laundering”.

During the PTI government, the NCA seized assets worth 190 million pounds from a property tycoon.

“If the case goes on in the civil court, the money will not return to Pakistan for another 5 years.”

Private party and the UK’s NCA had demanded not to disclose the agreement, he added.

When the incarcerated former premier asked if he would call then special assistant to the prime minister (SAPM) on accountability Shehzad Akbar and Farhat Shahzadi alias Farah Gogi, to prove his innocence, the PTI founder replied that he just met Gogi thrice and the meetings were related to his wife.

“Shehzad Akbar will be picked up from the airport if he returns homeland in this situation.”

It is pertinent to mention here that an accountability court in Rawalpindi, in February 2024, indicted Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi in the £190 million reference.

Imran Khan — Bushra Bibi and other PTI leaders — is facing a NAB inquiry related to a settlement between the PTI government and the property tycoon, which reportedly caused a loss of £190 million to the national exchequer.

As per the charges, Imran and other accused allegedly adjusted Rs50 billion — £190 million at the time — sent by Britain’s NCA to the Pakistani government as part of the agreement with the property tycoon.

They are also accused of getting undue benefit in the form of over 458 kanals of land at Mouza Bakrala, Sohawa, to establish Al Qadir University.

During the PTI government, the NCA seized assets worth 190 million pounds from a property tycoon in Britain.

The agency said the assets would be passed to the government of Pakistan and the settlement with the Pakistani property tycoon was “a civil matter, and does not represent a finding of guilt”.

Subsequently, then-prime minister Imran Khan got approval for the settlement with the UK crime agency from his cabinet on December 3, 2019, without disclosing the details of the confidential agreement.

It was decided that the money would be submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of the tycoon.

Subsequently, the Al-Qadir Trust was established in Islamabad a few weeks after the then-PTI-led government approved the agreement with the property tycoon.

Zulfi Bukhari, Babar Awan, Bushra, and her close friend Farah Khan were appointed as members of the trust.

Two to three months after the cabinet’s approval, the property tycoon transferred 458 canals of land to Bukhari, a close aide of Imran, which he later transferred to the trust.

Later, Bukhari and Awan opted out as the trustees. That trust is now registered in the name of Imran, Bushra and Farah.

NAB officials were earlier probing the alleged misuse of powers in the process of recovery of “dirty money” received from the UK crime agency.

Following the emergence of “irrefutable evidence” in the case, the inquiry was converted into an investigation.

According to the NAB officials, the PTI founder and his wife obtained land worth billions of rupees from the property tycoon, to build an educational institute, in return for striking a deal to give legal cover to the property tycoon’s black money received from the UK crime agency.

India’s six-week election resumed Monday including in Kashmir, where voters appeared eager to express discontent with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cancellation of their disputed territory’s semi-autonomy and the security crackdown that followed.

Modi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win the poll when it concludes early next month.

But his government’s decision in 2019 to bring Kashmir under its direct rule — and the subsequent clampdown — have been deeply resented among the region’s residents, who voted Monday for the first time since the move.

“I voted for changing the current government. It must happen for our children to have a good future,” civil servant Habibullah Parray told AFP.

“Everywhere you go in Kashmir today you find people from outside in charge. Everyone wants that to change.”

Boycotts called by rebel groups left few Kashmiris willing to participate in past elections, with just over 14 percent of eligible voters in Srinagar casting a ballot during the last national poll in 2019.

By the time polls closed on Monday, nearly 36 percent of eligible voters in the constituency had cast a ballot, well below India’s average turnout but the highest figure in the constituency in nearly three decades.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947. Both claim it in full and have fought two wars over control of the Himalayan region.

Rebel groups opposed to Indian rule have waged an insurgency since 1989 on the side of the frontier controlled by New Delhi, demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan.

India accuses Pakistan of backing the insurgents, a charge that Islamabad denies.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians in the decades since, including a spate of firefights between suspected rebels and security forces in the past month.

 

 Violence has dwindled since the Indian portion of the territory was brought under direct rule five years ago, a move that saw the mass arrest of local political leaders and a months-long telecommunications blackout to forestall expected protests.

Modi’s government says its canceling of Kashmir’s special status has brought “peace and development”, and it has consistently claimed the move was supported by Kashmiris.

But his party has not fielded any candidates in the Kashmir valley for the first time since 1996, and experts say the BJP would have been roundly defeated if it had.

“They would lose, simple as that,” political analyst and historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP last week.

For voters, the election was “a referendum in order to voice their disagreement” with the Modi government’s actions in Kashmir, he added.

The BJP has appealed to voters to instead support smaller and newly created parties that have publicly aligned with Modi’s policies.

But voters looked set to back one of two established Kashmiri political parties calling for the Modi government’s changes to be reversed.

Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, whose National Conference party is campaigning for the restoration of Kashmir’s special status, said his allies had urged voters to make their feelings known.

“The point of view that we want people to send out is that what happened… is not acceptable to them,” he told AFP.

Before the changes in 2019, permanent residents in the Muslim-majority territory had enjoyed land and jobs protections.

In rural districts outside Srinagar, the region’s biggest city, army soldiers patrolled roads in convoys of bulletproof vehicles.

Several polling booths around the constituency had more than two dozen paramilitary troops guarding voter queues.

Nearly one billion voters 

India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.

More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in India’s election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.

Voter turnout elsewhere in India has so far declined significantly from 2019 to around 66 percent, according to election commission figures.

Analysts have blamed widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.

India’s weather bureau has forecast more hot spells in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.

A Turkish official later said Erdogan had “misspoke” and meant that Gazans more generally were being treated in Turkiye.

“If you call Hamas a ‘terrorist organisation,’ this would sadden us,” Erdogan said at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Ankara after Mitsotakis had referred to Hamas as such.

“We don’t deem Hamas a terrorist organisation… More than 1,000 members of Hamas are under treatment in hospitals across our country,” Erdogan said.

A Turkish official said that Erdogan had meant to refer to Palestinians from Hamas-run Gaza in general, rather than Hamas members.

“President Erdogan misspoke, he meant 1,000 Gazans are under treatment, not Hamas members,” a Turkish official said.

This news agency could not immediately determine the background of those being treated in Turkey, but in November Ankara said it was evacuating dozens of wounded or sick Gazans, mostly cancer patients, and their companions following Israel’s offensive in Gaza.