Top officials in Iran say the upcoming US presidential election doesn’t matter, but nearly everyone else there seems to be holding their breath.
The race for the White House could mean another four years of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Or it could bring Joe Biden, who has raised the possibility of the US returning to Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
In the upper levels of Iran’s Islamic Republic, overseen by 81-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, anti-Americanism is as deeply entrenched as at any time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with Presidents from both parties seen as equally repugnant.
“America has a deep-rooted enmity against the Iranian nation and whether Trump is elected or Biden, it will not have any impact on the US main policy to strike the Iranian nation,” Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in September, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
However noticeably, Khamenei himself hasn’t commented on the election, even as public interest has soared. State-run radio rebroadcast a BBC Farsi-language service simulcast of the presidential debates live — even as Iran continues to target journalists for the British broadcaster.
That interest allegedly includes Iran’s security apparatus as well. US officials accuse the Islamic Republic of sending emails to voters seeking to intimidate them into voting for Trump. It may have been an attempt to link the President to apparent election interference in order to sow chaos, like Russia’s interference in America’s 2016 election. Tehran denies being involved.
The Iranian public is paying attention. The state-owned polling centre ISPA said this month that 55 per cent of people believe the outcome of the election will affect Iran “a lot.” Over half expected Trump would win, while a fifth said Biden. ISPA said it surveyed over 1,600 people by telephone, and did not provide a margin of error.
Trump’s re-election would mean the extension of his pressure campaign, including sanctions on Khamenei and other senior officials. Some of the sanctions are largely symbolic — Khamenei has only once travelled to America and doesn’t hold any US bank accounts — but others have devastated the economy and sent the local currency into freefall. As a hedge, Iranians have poured money into foreign currency, real estate, precious metals and the stock market — which hit a record high in August.
Trump on the campaign trail has hit on that and his decision to launch a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in January — a move that led Tehran to launch a retaliatory ballistic missile strike, wounding dozens of American troops.
To cheers, Trump has described the general, Qassem Soleimani, as “the world’s No. 1 terrorist,” likely due to his being blamed for the improvised explosive devices that maimed US troops in Iraq and for supporting Syria’s President Bashar Assad. Many Iranians revered Solemani for fighting against the Islamic State group and in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and millions flooded the streets for his funeral processions. “The first call I get when we win will be from the head of Iran, let’s make a deal. Their economy is crashing,” Trump told a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “They will call and I want them to do well, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Biden has left open the possibility of returning to the nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The other signatories — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have remained committed to the agreement and allowed a UN arms embargo to expire as part of the deal, despite a White House push to keep it in place.
After Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and restored crippling sanctions, Iran began publicly abandoning the agreement’s limits on enrichment. It now has at least 2,105 kilograms (2.32 tons) of low-enriched uranium, according to a September report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Experts typically say 1,050 kilograms (1.15 tons) of low-enriched uranium is enough material to be re-enriched for one nuclear weapon.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and still allows IAEA inspectors to monitor its atomic sites. But experts say the “breakout time” needed for Iran to build one nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so has dropped from one year under the deal to as little as three months.
Iran in the past also has threatened to abandon a nuclear nonproliferation treaty or expel international inspectors. It recently began construction at an underground nuclear site, likely building a new centrifuge assembly plant after a reported sabotage attack there earlier this year.
“‘America First’ has made America alone,” Biden said at a televised ABC town hall this month, playing on a longtime Trump slogan. “You have Iran closer to having enough nuclear material to build a bomb.”
What a return to the deal means, however, is in question. Biden’s campaign website says he would use “hard-nosed diplomacy and support from our allies to strengthen and extend it.” One criticism of the accord was its narrow focus on the nuclear programme, despite concerns by the U.S., Israel and its Gulf Arab allies over Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its presence in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
Iran maintains that its ballistic missile programme is vital for deterring potential attacks and non-negotiable. It is also unlikely to cease its military activities in Syria and Iraq, where it spent considerable blood and treasure in the war against the Islamic State group.
But ensuring the survival of the Islamic Republic, particularly amid the coronavirus pandemic, may require the same flexibility that saw Iran agree to negotiations with the US in the first place. Iran will hold a presidential election in June, but any decision to re-engage with Washington would have to be made by the supreme leader.
“Khamenei’s revolutionary path actually leads to America — that is, by seeking a stable, safe, and meticulously measured relationship with the United States, he believes he can guarantee the survival of both the regime and its revolutionary content and orientation,” wrote Mehdi Khalaji, a Qom-trained Shia theologian who is an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Tehran’s objective is therefore a scandalous paradox: Deal with America to remain anti-American.”
The hostility between the US and China is steadily increasing and this is bound to have an effect on the ruling Pakistani establishment
Pakistan is in the throes of turmoil right now. However, despite all the rallies and hue and cry created by the People’s Democratic Movement (PDM), it is unlikely to be of much consequence. For the uninitiated, the PDM was formed in September by the leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Fazal-ur-Rehman, but constitutes 11 parties, representing nearly the entire political spectrum of Pakistan. Significantly, the PDM has brought together the two mainstream but rival parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Bilawal Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) led by the exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but currently headed by his daughter Maryam.
No doubt Pakistan is facing a severe economic crisis because of which people are suffering. Prices of essential commodities like food and medicines have gone through the roof and there is mounting unemployment. However, despite these, the people of Pakistan are unlikely to give much support to the PDM as it is an unholy alliance of corrupt leaders. While Nawaz Sharif was mentioned in the Panama Papers, his daughter Maryam has been accused of having four huge flats in England by Prime Minister Imran Khan. Then there is Bilawal whose mother Benazir allegedly took huge amounts of money abroad and Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, the Rasputin of Pakistan and a rank opportunist, to name a few. These politicians have no real love for the people of Pakistan but are a disgruntled, motley lot having nothing in common. In fact earlier, for years they had been at each other’s throats but now they have united because they are out of power and not enjoying the loaves of office.
As anticipated, Nawaz Sharif’s attack from London in his online speech in the PDM rally in Gujranwala against General Bajwa and some other top military brass — probably thinking that this would divide the Pakistani Generals and provoke some to stage a coup against the Army chief — did not have any effect. An army, by its very nature, is different from a mob. It is a highly-disciplined organisation, with a hierarchy and chain of command. Each person on a lower rank unquestioningly carries out the orders of his superior. The army chief is at the top of this hierarchy and the corps commanders, even if they sometimes disagree with him, will ultimately carry out his orders. They know that breach of this discipline destroys an army, and therefore themselves. So there will be no coup in the Pakistan Army, whatever Nawaz Sharif may think. The Pakistan Army officers are fiercely protective of their Generals, both serving and retired, and will not tolerate their humiliation, because they know if this happens one day they, too, may meet a similar fate. In fact, it is probably because Nawaz Sharif started hounding General Musharraf that the Pakistan Army turned on him.
The essence of a State is its military and bureaucratic establishment. In Pakistan, the army is the real power, though it prefers to shield and screen itself behind the veneer of a civil Government, as that gives it power without responsibility. Imran Khan is clever enough to realise this, and as long as he keeps the army happy (which he is doing with great alacrity) he is safe. To think that a mob can fight and disperse an army, even if a hundred times smaller in number, is unrealistic and silly. It reminds one of Vendemiaire in Paris in October 1795, when 4,000 troops under Brigadier General Napoleon Bonaparte dispersed a mob numerically 10 times larger by “a whiff of grapeshot.” So all the PDM’s horses and all the PDM’s men cannot have any effect on the Pakistan ruling establishment, however many rallies they may hold. However, there is one factor which can have an effect, and it is this which needs to be considered.
Earlier, Pakistan was pro-US and was closely tied to it, economically and militarily. But now it has also become close to China, which has emerged as the second superpower in the world. China has closer proximity to Pakistan and has hugely invested in it. The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor has forged a strong link between the two countries. The Chinese are taking away huge amounts of raw materials from Balochistan. Gwadar Port has been given on a 40-year lease to China and Pakistani markets are full of cheap Chinese goods. So Pakistan, which earlier had only one master, now has two. It is well-known that the hostility between these two, the US and China, is steadily increasing, and this is bound to have an effect on the ruling Pakistani establishment, which may well be torn apart, one part siding with the US and the other with China.
Mere discontent among the Pakistani people, over rising prices, unemployment and so on, by itself is unlikely to cause an overthrow of the rulers. But if coupled with, and supported by one of the two masters mentioned above (which may feel threatened by the other’s ascendancy), this may well happen in the long run, caused by a fissure in Pakistan’s ruling establishment. Interesting times are ahead in our neighbouring nation.
(The writer is former Judge of the Supreme Court of India)
After yet another beheading in France, there is a hardening of positions between religion and secularism
The depiction of Prophet Mohammad has been a controversial issue in France for long as any kind of visual depiction related to him is forbidden in Islam. It is what prompted a terror attack in 2015 on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which printed his cartoons in the name of free speech. But given the 36 attacks carried out by a fringe minority of Muslims on French soil since 2012, the latest beheading of a Parisian teacher, who had used cartoons again in a civics class about freedom of expression, and the killing of a woman at Notre-Dame church in Nice, there is a raging debate now over the extent to which secularism can be stretched and not conflict with religiosity. Particularly in times where the clash of civilisations has never seemed sharper. Some liberals, who have been arguing that while the cartoon may have been in poor taste but was not illicit, are now wondering whether freedom of speech and values had been stretched too far. And whether the French should be careful about comments and expressions, which can be deemed as racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic, particularly when applied to a minority. However, the majority detest this pandering as compromising the nation’s foundational principles. Besides, France has had an uneasy relationship with settlers and migrants, one that has led to what it is now labelling as “Islamo-fascism.” In fact, in deeply divided times across the world, the freedom of speech and liberty of ideas are being increasingly challenged by what the fringe sees as offensive to their sensibilities. But the French continue to defend the art of satire over the art of accommodating the religious beliefs of others. In fact, just after Charlie Hebdo magazine published its cartoons of the Prophet, the then President, Jacques Chirac, had sounded a note of caution, saying, “Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided.” But no French politician since then has sounded a voice of reason with current President Emmanuel Macron going to the extent of saying that Catholics are “under threat.” That’s because post the scale of violence, the right to satire is being seen as emblematic of France’s status and ethos as a secular Republic that counters religious bias. And the fatwas are being seen as an attack on the French way of life, more hurtful than the pain of a religious sect or group.
In 1905, France adopted the laicite or secularism. This means the State can neither support nor stigmatise any religion. However, things changed after its traumatic defeat in Algeria with the State targetting the visibility of Islam on its turf. France became the first and only European country to ban the hijab in public schools in 2004. Few years down the line, it banned the wearing of niqab or face covering. Things have taken such a turn now that even human rights and civil society groups are collecting data on the rise of Islamophobia, something that a 1978 French law forbids. Macron’s infamous statement, “Fear will change sides”, and his claim that Islam as a religion is in crisis have not gone down well with several Middle Eastern countries that are boycotting French products. His idea of reforming Islam has been interpreted as provocative rather than well-meaning. Several activists argue the Government should instead invest more effort in addressing the marginalisation of French Muslims, often with ancestry in Africa and the Middle East, in the suburban ghettos of the country. They feel alienated and they suffer from high levels of unemployment and poor social housing. Rather than working on the root cause of the problem, the hardening of positions can only widen the existing faultlines and social rift. It might then just become impossible to defend who is tolerant or not.
They should not be left at the mercy of the Taliban and civil societies in all democracies should ensure that they have equal rights and freedom
As the world is pre-occupied with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and individual countries solve their respective specific problems, such as India with its confrontation with China, the fate of Afghan women has received little attention. No Government seems to be bothered by the fact that a political order in Afghanistan, shaped according to the Taliban’s dictates, may once again relegate them to virtual house arrest and deprive them of almost all freedoms, including the economic activity of their choice, and independent access to healthcare — as they were during the Taliban rule from 1994 to 2001.
In a report titled The Taliban’s War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan, Physicians for Human Rights, a respected human rights organisation based in the United States, presented a nightmarish picture of the condition of Afghan women under Taliban rule. It wrote: “The Taliban was the first faction laying claim to power in Afghanistan, which had targetted women for extreme repression and punished them brutally for infractions. To our knowledge, no other regime in the world had methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on the pain of physical punishment, from showing their faces, seeking medical care without a male escort or attending school.
“It is difficult to find another Government or would-be Government that has created such poverty by arbitrarily depriving half the population under its control of jobs, schooling, mobility and healthcare. Such restrictions are literally life-threatening to the women and their children.”
Lt-Gen Kamal Matinuddin (Retd) of the Pakistan Army wrote in Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994-97, “Girls are being denied education, women have been prevented from working. If they leave their house, they have to be covered from head to foot with a veil (burqa); besides being veiled, women have to be accompanied by a male relative when they venture out on the streets. Shopkeepers have been directed not to sell goods to unveiled women. Rickshaw drivers are not to pick up women passengers unless they are fully covered. Women caught violating these rules are imprisoned, as are the shopkeepers and rickshaw-drivers.”
Things began to change after the Taliban were booted out of power in 2001 by US-led coalition forces. As George R Allen and Wanda Felbab-Brown state in their paper, Fate of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan, which is a part of Brookings Institution’s 19A: Gender Equality Series, “The post-Taliban constitution in 2004 gave Afghan women all kinds of rights, and the post-Taliban political dispensation brought social and economic growth that significantly improved their socio-economic condition.” They further state that against fewer than 10 in 2003, the percentage of girls enrolled in primary schools rose to 33 in 2017. Registered female enrolment in secondary schools rose from six to 39 per cent in the same period. Three-and-a-half million Afghan girls were in school with 1,00,00 studying in universities. They further say, “By 2020, 21 per cent of Afghan civil servants were women (compared with almost none during the Taliban years), 16 per cent of them in senior management levels; and 27 per cent of Afghan members of Parliament were women.”
These gains are no doubt unevenly distributed. The beneficiaries have mainly been urban women. According to Allen and Felbab-Brown, in rural Afghanistan, where 76 per cent of Afghanistan’s women live, life has not changed much from the Taliban era, their formal legal empowerment notwithstanding. This goes particularly for Pashtun areas besides others where rural minority ethnic groups live. They have to get permission from men in their families to access health care, attend school and work. Many Afghan men are deeply conservative. Typically, families allow their girls to have a primary or secondary education — usually up to puberty — and then arrange their marriage. Even if the male guardian of a young woman permits her to attend a university, she may not be allowed to work after graduation. Also, rural women have to bear much of the brunt of the devastating conflict between the Taliban and Government forces and local militia. Loss of husbands, brothers and fathers to the fighting causes severe psychological trauma and fundamentally jeopardises their economic survival and ability to go about everyday life.
As a result, attitudes differ. While women in rural areas want peace — many of them even on the Taliban’s terms — urban women generally want the Government not to give in and accept a political order in which the Taliban can implement their retrograde gender and social agenda. Hence, the question: Are the Taliban prepared to moderate their stance and, if so, to what extent?
Borhan Osman and Anand Gopal write in Afghan Views on a Future State; (With an introduction by Barnett Rubin: NYU/Centre on International Cooperation), “a number of interviewees emphasised that Taliban redlines lie not with female education as such, but rather with co-ed or wholly secular education, which accords with views voiced even by Mullah Omar.” They said they did not object to women working or to the education of women in their country. However, what they objected to and prevented by force was if this work or education breached Islamic Shari’a. Nowadays, there were scores of schools, especially for girls in the area under the Islamic Emirate, and women performed jobs such as “teaching of girls and medicine for women.” They further said, “We encourage this and we call for it on condition that hospitals for females are segregated from hospitals for males, and on condition that the work conditions are in harmony with Islamic Shari’a, not to satisfy instincts, whims and lust. We do not care if the West or the world complain about us in this respect. All we want is to establish Islamic Shari’a in Afghanistan; we do not care who is satisfied and who is not satisfied.
“Similarly, several interviewees presently active in the movement said that an Islamic State should not only allow women to go to school, but it must encourage them; indeed, the State should use its resources toward this end. The condition for such education is that girls should observe the proper hijab and that there should be full segregation. There appears to be little change on the view of women’s right to work, however. Most interviewees accepted the need of women in the sectors of health and education, and in any Government department dealing with women and children. Beyond that, there appears to be little enthusiasm for the idea of women holding public office or working in businesses not dealing with females or children.”
What all this adds up to is a far cry from what Afghan women — at least those in urban areas — enjoy in terms of opportunities, rights and freedoms. Women in rural areas doubtless lag behind. They, however, legally have the right to the opportunities available in the cities and, a great deal of their distress will disappear when peace returns — a goal that seems distant but should not be abandoned. Besides, the most important question is whether what the Taliban means what they say or are peddling falsehoods aimed at persuading the Americans to take a less stringent line with them.
In an article titled The false inclusivity of the Taliban’s emirate (www.aljazeera.com), Mehdi J Hakimi writes, “Notwithstanding repeated claims that they support women’s rights, for instance, the Taliban has continued to attack girls’ schools. Also, women and young people, while comprising most of the country’s population, are conspicuously missing from the Taliban’s negotiating team. Moreover, despite Afghanistan’s rich pluralism and cultural mosaic, there is extremely little ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural and professional diversity within their ranks. This absence…tells us, through calibrated action rather than hollow rhetoric, who is actually welcome in the Taliban’s emirate.”
Referring to the “blatant inconsistency between the Taliban’s mantra of inclusion and praxis of exclusion, this early in the intra-Afghan talks,” and their reneging on their “counter-terrorism pledges to the United States by continuing to operate closely with al-Qaeda,” Hakimi concludes by writing that the Islamic emirate’s recurring duplicity “must serve as a reminder of the perils of hastily taking a leap of faith towards the Taliban. A lasting peace, after all, is possible only through a genuinely inclusive process — not through one masquerading as such.”
Clearly, there is no guarantee that the Taliban will implement even their currently professed stand on the opportunities and freedoms they would grant women — which themselves fall far short of what Afghan women enjoy now — when they are in power. Afghan women are in peril. Civil societies in all democracies must press on their Governments not to abandon them.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
Now the Azeri refugees will go home and 1,50,000 Armenians will have to seek new homes in Armenia proper
The month-old war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is so low on everybody else’s list of concerns that when Azerbaijan won the war, hardly anybody in the media elsewhere even noticed. Shortly after 8 am local time on October 26, Azeri troops gained control of the road through the Lachin Pass. That is the sole land route between Armenia proper and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside the borders of Azerbaijan that the whole war is about. A new road further to the north, offering a quicker link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, was opened in 2017, but it has been closed since October 1, shortly after the war started, “for the safety of civilians (i.e. because of shelling from Azerbaijani territory). Until October 26, the Lachin road was crowded with Armenian refugees fleeing west to safety and Armenian troops and military supplies heading east to the war.
Apart from one or two big strikes by Israeli-made LORA quasi ballistic missiles (hypersonic, 400-km. range, GPS and television terminal guidance), the road was fairly safe. But now there are Azerbaijani armoured vehicles across the Lachin road, and all of Nagorno-Karabakh is cut off: No more reinforcements, and more than half the Armenian civilian population of 1,46,000 people still there, trapped under constant shellfire and drone attacks. At least 2,000 people, most of them Armenians, have been killed in the fighting. The outcome of the war was inevitable once it became clear that Russia was not going to intervene militarily to help Armenia, despite the fact that both countries are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). Azerbaijan is clearly the aggressor in this round of fighting, but it is a CSTO member too, so Russia had to make a choice. Azerbaijan has three times Armenia’s population and a great deal of oil, and Armenia is of no great strategic value, so Russia restricted itself to mediating futile ceasefires. The Azeris signed each time, but they knew they were winning and they never stopped their advance.
The most recent (third) ceasefire was actually negotiated with the help of the US and was supposed to come into effect at 8 am on October 26, but the Azeris broke that one too. As usual, they blamed the Armenians for having broken it within five minutes of its coming into effect (that is, at 8.05 am) — but they tweeted their protest at 5 am, which rather undermined its plausibility. The Azeris did not commit to an all-out offensive until about 10 days ago, confining themselves to probing attacks and random shelling until they were certain that the Russians would stay out. Then they sent an armoured column west along the Iranian border through territory that had been emptied of its Azeri inhabitants in the 1994 war. The Armenians, outnumbered, overstretched and outgunned, did what they could, but by October 22, the Azeris had reached the Hakari River valley. There they turned right and headed north up the valley — and on the 26th they took Lachin. End of game.
It was a move that they would never have risked against a more mobile and better equipped enemy. The Hakari runs through the narrow strip of territory that separates Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia proper, so they had Armenian-held territory on both sides of them, and a 100-km supply line behind them that was overlooked by Armenian troops on the right-hand side all the way. Fortune favours the bold but it’s easier to be bold when you have total air superiority. Armenia has nothing to match Azerbaijan’s Turkish-built drones and Israeli-supplied missiles and massive firepower on the ground. So now Azerbaijan holds the Lachin Pass, and all that remains is for Armenia to negotiate the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to its legal Azeri rulers (probably minus its Armenian residents). That will be very painful for Armenians after a quarter-century of holding the territory but they have no way of taking it back. They were bound to lose it in the end unless they could more or less match Azerbaijan’s military spending, and they couldn’t; the Azeri military budget was at least five times bigger, maybe more.
Like the Balkan wars of the early 20th century, nobody is in the right in the various wars that have been waged in the Caucasus since the old Soviet Union collapsed. The ethnic groups were already numerous and hopelessly intertwined, and Soviet policy deliberately made the situation even more complex.
The Armenians drove over half a million Azeris out of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and large adjacent entirely Azeri provinces in the 1992-94 war. Now the Azeri refugees will go home and 1,50,000 Armenians will have to seek new homes in Armenia proper. With supply lines severed, civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh could be cut off from food, running water and heat during the forthcoming Caucus winter. Furthermore, they may be denied a route by which to flee to Armenia. The result could be a humanitarian disaster in which casualties of trapped civilians spike due to lack of food and medical supplies, exposure to cold, and non-stop artillery bombardment. None of it is fair but that’s how it still works in much of the world.
(Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work.’)
Thailand’s continuous cycle of protests over the past decades shows no signs of ending
The overall impression that many outsiders have of Thailand as an idyllic, sunshine-filled tourist destination, complete with beautiful beaches, pristine reefs and a vibrant nightlife, is far from the truth. Visitors over the past decades have often noticed protestors, usually identified by the colour of their shirts, who have championed various political goals, sometimes opposing the Government, sometimes supporting it and at other times standing up for the Thai monarchy and what not. Some protests became so volatile and violent that normal life and tourism, the lifeblood of Thailand, was impacted. However, the current movement for democracy has taken on a completely new hue because the protestors, who have no overall leader, are not only asking for the removal of the current military oligarchy that runs the country but are also demanding monarchical reforms. Thailand is famous for its lese majeste laws, yet there appears to be significant anger against the actions of the new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who succeeded his father late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2017.
Although the past 15 years have been defined by political protests, events took an unusual turn in August, when a few students at a rally aired unprecedented criticism of the monarchy. The speakers boldly criticised the wealth accumulated by King Vajiralongkorn, his influence and also the fact that he spends much of his time in Germany. Among their calls were a greater oversight of royal budgets and an end to the practice of endorsing military coups by Thai monarchs. Shorn of the significant tourist income, thanks to the Coronavirus — although Thailand and the rest of South-East Asia are exemplars in managing the pandemic — the protestors have gained a lot of support from the youth, many of whom are jobless. The willingness by the military to suspend any “threat” from political parties it feels will strip it of its importance is further fuelling the anger. Will the protestors succeed? That depends on how much change the old Siamese Kingdom is willing to accept. Some of the demands are rather strong but it is important that proper democracy is restored in Thailand and that the monarch deals with some of the issues raised by his subjects, many of which stem from the high levels of secrecy that surround the palace and stories about the colourful past life of the king.
In one stroke, Sharif has torn the traditional Pakistani cover of the ‘civilian govt’ and made the military directly accountable and responsible for the country’s fate
Mian Saheb is an unlikely Pakistani politician who has spent a career trying to be someone he really isn’t. When the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, was incarcerated in jail and was asked about his health, he had spouted Mirza Ghalib, “Unko dekhne sey jo aa jati hai muh par raunaq, woh samjhtey hai ke bemaar ka haal acha hai (On seeing her, my face lights up and she presumes that I’m much better now).” The portly Punjabi politician is the principal Opposition leader to the reigning Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, except that he is not based out of Pakistan (declared “absconder” of bail and currently in the United Kingdom) and is actually of Kashmiri ethnicity (paternal side from Anantnag and maternal side from Pulwama). Nevertheless, the thrice elected and the longest-serving PM is a trapeze artist who revels in managing contradictions. Sharif has now fired his most calculated salvo against the Pakistani “Deep State” or military.
In Pakistan’s stuttering democracy, the ubiquitous shadow of barrel-chested military men operating out of Rawalpindi headquarters is mentioned only in deferential whispers — addressed euphemistically as Farishtas (angels) or Khalai Maqlook (alien creatures), who usually manipulate from the background. And occasionally they step in formally, like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq or Pervez Musharraf. But the veteran of Pakistani intrigues has broken traditions of indirect allusions and brazenly name-called the Chief of Pakistan Army Staff, General Qamar Bajwa, along with the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to be the real movers and shakers of Imran Khan’s Government. In one stroke, Sharif has torn the traditional Pakistani cover of the “civilian government” and made the military directly accountable and responsible for the country’s ongoing and inevitable fate and predicament in the public imagination.
Sharif’s current democratic grandstanding notwithstanding, he himself is a product of the Pakistani military establishment and its machinations. While it is widely presumed that Sharif was born of the former military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq’s personal preference, it was actually another quintessentially slippery Pakistani General, Ghulam Gilani, to whom Mian Saheb owes his political initiation.
Lieutenant-General Ghulam Gilani’s colourful past had included taking a year-long sabbatical to fight in the Kashmir valley as an “irregular” (Indo-Pak war of 1947-48), fighting the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, serving as the Director-General of the notorious ISI, partaking in Zia-ul-Haq’s coup d’état, which was ironically code-named “Fair Play” and ill-advising Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto till his end to the gallows.
Later, General Zia appointed Lieutenant-General Ghulam Gilani as the Governor of the all-powerful Punjab province, where he deliberately plucked out an ostensibly safe, non-feudal and pliant industrialist, Nawaz Sharif, to be the Finance Minister of Punjab. The urbane, obliging and malleable Sharif soon wormed his way to be the Chief Minister in the dark and transformational days of Zia’s Shariaised Pakistan, even though Sharif was hardly a modicum of religious piety.
Though not really a Punjabi, feudal or a military man, Sharif was a player, manipulator and a survivor. Soon after Zia’s mysterious plane crash, he tactically aligned with religious parties, took ISI’s beneficence and split with a rival faction within Zia’s political party, Pakistan Muslim League (Pagara group) to later form Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML-N. Sharif’s then rival Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People’s Party) had earlier paid a more personal price of losing her father in the fight against the Pakistani Generals but Sharif was more conversant with the inner workings of the “Deep State.”
But even the wily Sharif has erred, miscalculated and underestimated the power of Pakistani Generals. Mian Saheb has had to deal with six Pakistani military chiefs (including appointing four of them personally) and has the dubious record of fractious relations with all, without exception. Sharif’s first appointee, General Waheed Kakar, had later pressurised him into resigning as the PM. By Sharif’s second term, he had inherited Benazir Bhutto’s appointee, General Jehangir Karamat, with whom Sharif differed and who he forced into a premature resignation. In hindsight, hardly-the-wiser, Sharif selected an ostensibly safe Mohajir, General Pervez Musharraf, who not only initiated Kargil on his own but also bumped off Sharif to Saudi Arabia after yet another coup d’état. In his third innings as the PM, Sharif had to tread carefully with the unpredictable General Pervez Kayani (appointed earlier by Sharif’s bête noire, Pervez Musharraf), who, too, extended his tenure unilaterally. Sharif’s third personal and unlikely (again superseding others) choice of General Raheel Sharif was to be no different with the “Army House” routinely calling all shots and defining the “red lines” for the Sharif dispensation.
General Raheel Sharif elicited embarrassing retractions (for example, post Ufa summit), policy flip flops and publicly lectured the civilian Government on corruption (for example, Panamagate). But it is the fourth personal choice of Sharif who is at the centre of the ensuing gambit, General Qamar Bajwa — who too superseded others and was supposedly apolitical and low profile. The Generals have historically got the better of Nawaz Sharif, because they consistently outwitted or bulldozed Mian Saheb by tactically propping his political rivals with no real ideological preferences, except for protecting their own institutional turf. The invaluable cover and protection to the Pakistani military was afforded by the façade of the civilian Government.
This time, Sharif has drawn blood, redrawn the battle lines and for once, boxed the military generals into a huddle. Unfortunately, for the Pakistani generals, the Imran Khan Government is failing desperately at all levels and the “Deep State” or the Pakistani military is unable to extricate itself from the “Titanic” portents.
The Pakistani public is increasingly restive, suspicious and convinced of the military ghosts at work. And the Generals cannot be saddled with the “failures” of the civilian Government as they delegitimise the institution that has thrived despite the humiliations of 1965, 1971 and Kargil. Sharif has punted on forcing the military establishment to pull the plug on the Imran Khan Government, as they have historically done, whenever in such situations. This time, Mian Saheb may just have outwitted the Generals?
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)
Trump’s economic benchmarks, like an increase in pension savings of the middle class and a booming stock market, might just save him
US President Donald Trump was warned about the possibility of a mysterious pneumonia-like virus outbreak in the country on January 28, during a discussion in the Oval Office of the White House, according to Bob Woodward, whose investigative reports in the past have played havoc with the lives of many presidents.
In his latest book Rage, which hit book shops across the world amid the pandemic, Woodward, who won two Pulitzer Prizes in his nearly half-a-century old career, says the callousness shown by Trump is likely to see his ouster in the November election.
He says that Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor (NSA), had warned the President about the catastrophe which was to strike the US shortly. “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” O’Brien had told Trump, according to Woodward.
“Trump’s head popped up. He asked the Intelligence briefer, Beth Sanner, several questions. She said China was worried, and the intelligence community was monitoring it, but it looked like this would not be anything nearly as serious as the deadly 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak,” Woodward writes in the prologue of the book.
Matt Pottinger, 46, Deputy NSA, who was present during the meeting, also agreed with the views of O’Brien. According to Pottinger, he had asked one of his contacts in China whether the pandemic reported from Wuhan province was as bad as the 2003 SARS outbreak. “Don’t think SARS 2003.Think influenza pandemic of 1918,” Pottinger’s Chinese contact had told him.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 had killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide with about 6,75,000 deaths in the US, writes Woodward.
He says Trump did impose certain restrictions on travellers from China, a move opposed by a number of his Cabinet members. “But his public attention was focussed on just about everything except the virus; the upcoming Super Bowl, the technological meltdown in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, his State of the Union address and most importantly, the impeachment trial in the Senate.
When the highly-infectious respiratory disease caused by the Novel Coronavirus, known as Covid-19, did come up in settings where he had an opportunity to reach a large number of Americans, Trump continued to reassure the public they faced little risk,” says Woodward in the 450-page book.
He says the President did not elaborate about the disease in his State of the Union address on February 4, which was watched by nearly 40 million Americans. Neither did he talk about the warning given by the NSA. “When I later asked the President about the warning from O’Brien, he said he didn’t recall it. And in an interview with Trump on March 19, six weeks before I learned of O’Brien’s and Pottinger’s warnings, the President said his statements in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberately designed to not draw attention to it,” writes Woodward. “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” the author quotes Trump as saying.
From the prologue, he goes on building a major chargesheet against Trump for his four-year-long acts of omission and commission. He has put Trump under a scanner and has completed a thorough analysis of the presidency under him. It took him 17 interviews with the President during the last four years to collate the materials with which he has built up this work. Also included in the book is how Rex Tillerson, the CEO of an oil giant, was appointed as his Secretary of State and Jim Mattis as the Defence Secretary, both resigning from their posts sooner than expected.
On February 7, when Woodward met Trump for the sixth interview of the series, the author asked the President what was the plan for the next eight to 10 months. “Just do well. Run the country well,” Trump replied. The author asked him to define what does he meant by “well.” “Look, when you are running a country, it’s full of surprises. There’s dynamite behind every door,” Trump had replied. The remaining 11 interviews convinced Woodward that the “dynamite behind the door” was Trump himself. “The oversized personality. The failure to organise. The lack of discipline. The lack of trust in others he had picked, in experts. The undermining or the attempted undermining of so many American institutions. The failure to be a calming, healing voice. The unwillingness to acknowledge error. The failure to do his homework…” the chargesheet goes on and on.
The day Trump inaugurated his presidency in 2016 saw widespread riots all over the US as one of the news channels reported. The run-up to the election to be held in November is full of news that he is in for a sure defeat. How nice it would have been had the world worked as per the whims and fancies of political commentators and the media.
At the conclusion of the interviews, Trump told Woodward in July that he would triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it. We will get to do another book. You’ll find I was right,” the author quotes the President as telling him.
Rage is Woodward’s 20th book. Maybe his 21st book could be one based on the re-election of Trump as things stand today.
Talking about the electoral system in the US and the forthcoming presidential election, Dr S Kalyanaraman, a one man think-tank based in Chennai, says, “Trump has achieved something phenomenal in the US economy. Pension savings of the middle class have more than trebled because of his handling of the economy. The stock market has boomed. So the electorate will think of its wallet and vote for Trump. Look at the State rallies. Trump is a phenomenon, remarkable ever since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Even the Black lives which matter will vote for Trump. Electoral college is only the pakkavaadyam; the real fat lady is the economy, stupid.”
“It is the economy, stupid!!!” This expression was coined by poll strategist James Carville during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Remember, Hillary Clinton lost in 2016? Most likely former US Vice-President Joe Biden will lose in 2020. However, I am yet to get an answer to the query why Hillary Clinton opted out of the presidential race and allowed Biden in.
(The writer is a senior journalist)
Proscribing on the basis of immorality, just because something might have offended an individual or community, has little to do with preserving the moral fibre of a nation
In 1973, an Urdu film, Insaan Aur Gadha, was suddenly ordered by the Government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to be taken off the screens, just weeks after it was released in cinemas in Pakistan. Directed by the late actor and director, Syed Kamal, the film was a satire on the condition of people in Pakistan. Popular actor and comedian Rangeela played the role of a donkey who had turned into a person after praying to God to transform him into a human being.
In a biting reflection on the state of affairs in Pakistan, after the donkey’s prayers are answered and he turns into a man, he soon realises that his existential purpose and sense of morality had more meaning, balance and clarity as an animal than as a person. Disappointed by humanity (or its lack thereof) he ends up asking God to turn him back into a donkey.
The reason the movie got taken down by the Government was a scene in which the donkey-turned-man addresses a large gathering of donkeys. He promises them that he would fight for their rights and against their cruel and unjust human masters. The late filmmaker, Mushtaq Gazdar, in his book Pakistani Cinema: 1947-1997, writes that the scene did not hide the fact that it was parodying Prime Minister Bhutto’s signature style of populist oratory. This was what had angered him. But his Government’s censor board shared this reservation only with the producers of the film. Publicly, the reason given for the ban was that the scene had ridiculed the masses by depicting them as a bunch of donkeys.
Even though the movie was eventually allowed to return to the cinemas, it is interesting to note the nature of the justification given by an offended Government for its removal from the country’s cinemas.
Recently, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) banned the popular Chinese app Tik Tok just days after Prime Minister Imran Khan lamented that it was promoting “immorality” in the country. However, in a tweet, the senior political commentator Najam Sethi insisted that the app was banned because many of its local content-makers were parodying and satirising Khan’s populist rhetoric, which is in stark contrast to his Government’s political and economic incompetencies.
The ploy of using moral or religious rationale and angles to ban a popular cultural product that has offended a sitting ruler’s inflated ego was not present in the country before the late 1970s. Had it been in use before that, the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime would not have hesitated to use it to ban Insaan Aur Gadha. Or for that matter, the Ayub Khan regime would have used it to outlaw 1959’s Jago Hua Savera.
Jago Hua Savera, scripted by the famous communist poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, is a story based on the struggles of a poor fishing village in former East Pakistan. Ayub saw it as commentary against his ambitious economic plans. But the reason given by the regime for banning it was that its content was “inflammatory” and that it could arouse hatred among East Pakistan’s Bengali majority against their West Pakistani brethren. In today’s Pakistan, Ayub could have simply banned it on the grounds of it being a communist film, and thus promoting atheistic ideas. In his 1967 book, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, the scholar Aziz Ahmad writes that the founders of Pakistan went out of their way to underline the fact that their idea of Islam was different to the one held by most ulema (Muslim scholars) and clerics. To the founders, their idea of Islam was inherently modern, rational, sophisticated and progressive, as opposed to the “reactionary” and myopic ideas of the faith propagated by the Islamists.
The State and various governments carried forth and further expanded this narrative till 1974. Therefore, till then, the notion of banning a cultural product on the basis of morality would have seemed contrary to this narrative or something that was the domain of unsophisticated mullahs.
However, things began to change rapidly after the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime handed the once-despised “forces of myopia” their greatest victory through the constitutional Second Amendment in 1974, which ousted the Ahmadiyya community from the fold of Islam.
Bhutto believed that he was ahead of the curve by noticing the rising interest in the Muslim world towards (albeit utopian) ideas of “Islamic rule.” The French political scientist, Oliver Roy, in his 1992 book, The Failure of Political Islam, agrees that indeed from the mid-1970s, polities in the Muslim world had begun to shift rightwards towards political Islam.
But Bhutto was giving himself too much credit for anticipating this shift, and, more so, for believing that he was monopolising it before the Islamic parties could. Because no matter how hard he tried, the Islamic parties understood the dynamics of this better than he did and were, therefore, more adept at exploiting its emotional and psychological appeal, as they did during their 1977 protest movement against the Bhutto regime.
The tactic of using the Islamic or morality card to proscribe a cultural product which, in reality, has only offended the ego of a ruler, earnestly began from 1977 onwards, with the coming to power of the reactionary Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship.
Before my father passed away in October 2009, he would often tell his friends the story of how, soon after the 1977 coup, when he was a reporter at a large Urdu daily, he was told that his name had been put by the dictatorship on a “blacklist” of “pro-Bhutto journalists.” This meant he could not write anything on politics. So, a few days before 1978’s Eid-ul-Aza — the day when Muslims sacrifice bulls, goats or camels — my father was allowed by the editor to do a completely apolitical piece on a makeshift market of sacrificial animals in Karachi’s Gizri area. He went there, completed his report and submitted it.
The next day he was told that the report had been removed by the Zia regime’s Information Ministry, which used to scan newspapers before they went into print. A member of the ministry told the editor that there was a whole paragraph in the report about how people were checking the front teeth of the sacrificial goats. The Ministry man then added that the writer was being “cheeky” by indirectly mocking Zia’s prominent front teeth. But the reason provided to my father was that the article was “ridiculing the holy tradition of animal sacrifice.”
The act of proscribing a cultural product on the basis of immorality just because it offends the bloated ego of an individual or that of a community has little or nothing to do with preserving the moral fibre of a nation.
The ban culture is all about feeling a sense of power, which feeds inflated egos, and the monomania of those who have an entirely illusionary understanding of the society they live in. Unlike those who go on a banning spree to avenge what they believe has offended them individually, the other lot actually believes they are fighting a holy war to save society.
The result is a suffocating environment, which stunts the growth of creativity, tolerance and of democratic values in a society. This is what is happening increasingly in Pakistan and around the world, especially where populist or Right-wing regimes are in power. This must be stopped at all cost before we all lose our freedom of speech, creativity, innovation and thought. That will be a downright tragedy of epic proportions.
(Courtesy: Dawn)
The FATF compliance is just about technical criteria and India must remember that it won’t impact Pakistan’s proxy war with it
Despite intense lobbying, Pakistan continues to be on the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global watchdog that tracks terror-funding States and can disqualify them from aid by World Bank and other global institutions. Even after the Paris-based body extended the deadline because of the pandemic, it found “strategic deficiencies” and non-compliance of six key markers in its 27-point action plan. These have to be addressed by February. But given Pakistan’s track record, it has rarely gone beyond token compliance. In August, it had imposed financial sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders, which included the mastermind behind the 26/11 Mumbai attack and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. However, it failed to take substantial action against Azhar and Hafiz Saeed. It may have booked Saeed’s charities through which he funded money but is yet to cap the money trail to listed terrorists or prosecute the financiers. Besides, their confinement doesn’t mean that they cannot inspire or raise new outfits under different names. And imprisonment is just a euphemism for protection and nurturing their safe havens. Besides, as India pointed out, the names of over 4,000 terrorists suddenly disappeared from its official list.
Nothing much seems to have changed since Pakistan was first put on the list in February 2012 with the FATF’s main concern being that the country did not have appropriate legislation to identify terror financing and to confiscate terrorist assets. This is the second time Islamabad is trying to wiggle out of the “grey list” and if it succeeds without guaranteeing it won’t continue harbouring and aiding terrorist organisations, the credibility of FATF will also be in question. For now, with its economy already in the doldrums, it has brought time to “repair the outstanding issues.” Besides, Pakistan’s all-weather friend China is trying to devise a workaround, arguing for a re-negotiation of the FATF brief itself, saying the grouping had no business to blacklist nations but should help them counter terrorist funding instead. India must realise that the shades of the FATF list mean nothing in terms of threat levels ever since the blacklist was diluted as a “call for action” and the “grey list” was downgraded to “other monitored jurisdictions.” It must remember that global penalties won’t impact Pakistan’s proxy war and it has to evolve its own dynamics about sponsored terror instead of focussing solely on isolating our neighbour diplomatically.
At a time when right-wing parties have a field day around the world, Jacinda Ardern has led the centre-left Labour Party to a historic victory. Considering her winning formula of compromise and consensus, the absolute majority might prove a challenge for her as she needs to take along the polar opposite groups: the affluent middle class and the poor
The recently concluded New Zealand parliamentary election has once again brought back Jacinda Ardern to power. The election was scheduled for September, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was postponed by a month. Since the introduction of the MMR in the 1996, the Labour Party has become the first ever party to form Government on its own, winning 64 seats out of total 120 in the House of Representatives. Looking at the results: Labour Party 64 seats (49.1%), National Party 35 seats (26.8%), ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) 10 seats (8%), Greens 10 seats (7.6%), NZ First (2.7%), but no seat, Maori Party 1 seat (1%) and others got 7.7 % (no seat), it is clear that the centre-Left Labour has recorded a landslide victory.
With this thumping victory, Ardern has spread the message of stability and certainty to the people of New Zealand.
Jacinda’s foray into politics is an interesting story. With her father being a police officer and mother a school cook, Jacinda had a ground experience of poverty that her country was facing. When she was 17, she was an active Labour Party worker. After completing her degree in Communication Studies in Politics and Public Relations, she started working for Helen Clarke, the then Prime Minister of the country. She also had the experience of working in the UK Cabinet Office when Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of the UK. By 2008, she was back to her country from London and became an MP of the Labour Party. One of her most controversial political moves was an attempt to introduce a Bill to support gay rights in her country. She even renounced the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in her early twenties as the Church’s views on gay rights clashed with hers. Thus, she is in favour of equal rights for the LGBTs.
“Jacinda Mania” has finally worked. She has been awarded an outright majority, with an approval rating of 55 per cent. The election was set behind an extraordinary background accompanying three pronged crises — the first being a terror attack, second the natural disaster, and third the global pandemic of Covid-19. She has been able to handle all the three issues much better than any other leader of the country. Her unequivocal stand not to defend the white man accused of the terror attack in the Chirstchurch area that killed 50 and wounded more than fifty in mid-March 2019 earned her admiration of the people.
The mass shooter Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white man driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments, was temporarily based in the country before the incident took place. In fact, an unsigned manifesto before the carnage on the Twitter and 8chan, an online messaging platform which has been used by anonymous accounts to share extremist messages and cheer on mass shooters, was posted in Tarrant’s name. The attack threatened the country, particularly the Muslim community. Throughout the entire crisis, Jacinda stuck to her stand that the white gunman was a terrorist and emphasised that he did not represent the people of New Zealand.
Second, when a volcanic eruption rocked the White Island or Whakaari, a small volcanic Isle in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty, on December 9, 2019, it shocked the nation as Covid-19 was already gripping the world around the same time. This was probably the worst case scenario for the islanders that killed more than 17 people. Jacinda joined a nation-wide mourning on this incident. The fact is that the White Island is a summit of a complex submarine volcano. As the island is regularly visited by tourists, the Government was extremely careful in taking the best of the post-volcanic disaster management measures.
Third, unlike many other countries, the Covid-19 handling was too early and followed by extremely hard actions by the Jacinda Government. Its success in controlling the virus has been widely described as “crushing the curve”. The island nation’s Covid strategy was based on speedy testing, contact tracing and isolation, while adhering to strict public health guidance norms across the country. Indeed, the country benefitted from being a high income and an island nation with an advanced health care system at its best. But the best part of the Government was that it called on its entire population to fight the menace as a “team of five million” to protect their families, friends and all the neighboring nations. And Jacinda has earned rare reputation and fame by taking such preventing measures to save her people from this health havoc.
Her charisma is well appreciated. On record, she has become a Labour leader just seven weeks before the 2017 parliamentary election that gave her a rare opportunity to grab power at Wellington with a coalition Government with the New Zealand First Party and the Greens Party, although she was able to score only second highest number of votes. But the country’s unique proportional representation system had helped her to form the Government with these two coalition partners. Very soon, she was branded as an anti-Trump liberal icon at a time when the international community witnessed a wave of rightist nationalist leaders around the world. Again she came into prominence for wearing a Maori cloak, known as “Korowai”, while meeting her monarch Queen Elizabeth-II in April 2018.
Jacinda’s popular slogan “be strong, be kind” has worked magic in this election. And she has become the third woman Prime Minister of the country. She has driven a positive message across. Considering her age, unlike the other Opposition leaders, she has long and bright future in New Zealand’s politics. But the critics and global political experts say that the absolute majority could be a problem for her, even as top Opposition leaders like Judith Collins of the National Party has accepted her defeat and she has vowed to play the role of a robust Opposition figure in Parliament.
Much more than this, people have also voted on two critical referendums; the first being the legalisation of euthanasia and the second, for using cannabis. The first will offer terminally ill patients to go for assisted dying. It is a binding vote and if more than 50 per cent voters say yes, this will be implemented soon. The second is related to the recreational use of cannabis making legal. This is not a binding vote which implies that even if more than 50 per cent people say yes, cannabis can’t be made legal on the basis of this referendum. The Jacinda Government has to bring a fresh Bill to legalise this. And finally when the results of both these referendums are expected on October 30, the decisions delivered by the voters will make a lot for the entire nation and especially for the widely popular Jacinda.
(The writer is an expert on international affairs)
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