Political parties vie to win crucial Punjab polls

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Supporters of Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) waving the party flags. Punjab province is traditionally the strong hold of (PML-N). (REUTERS)
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Workers preparing banners for the Pakistan People s Party (PPP) in Lahore. (Photo by Online)
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Workers print panaflex of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf at Royal Park in Lahore. (Photo by Online)
Updated 29 September 2018
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Political parties vie to win crucial Punjab polls

  • Punjab always supported Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to form government in the Center
  • Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)aims for 15-20 seats in Punjab for a safe bet in polls

LAHORE: Pakistan’s major political parties including Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), are focusing on winning maximum seats in Punjab.

It is commonly held that any political force emerging strong in Punjab has a better shot at forming government in the Center.
Punjab has the highest number of general seats in the National Assembly allocated to different provinces, 141 out of 272, even after losing seven seats in the recent population census.
Moreover, the three seats of Capital Territory of Islamabad are traditionally counted in Punjab as the party with a majority in Punjab usually secures these seats.
“Governing Punjab means ruling two thirds of Pakistan,” political analyst Salim Bokhari told Arab News.
“Since 1970 it has been Punjab that produced rulers — Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and the Sharifs. They all were able to form governments in the Center when they won a majority in Punjab,” he added.
While the PPP has lost its way in Punjab in recent years, the party’s efforts to restructure before the polls still lacks luster. Analysts forecast that while the PPP is not in a strong position to win a majority of the votes in Punjab, the party would aim for at least 15 to 20 seats.
“The party is trying to win 20 National Assembly seats to get good share in the Center,” political analyst Chaudhry Khadim Hussain told Arab News.
The PPP is relying on its veterans from Punjab to “reduce the influence of PML-N,” said Hussain.
The outgoing ruling party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has the incumbency factor to give it an edge in Punjab. 
The party leadership has been damaged by the Panama Papers court case. Many of its candidates and senior leaders have also been disqualified by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) over misdeclaring assets. Former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi – a veteran PML-N leader – faced a similar battle but challenged his disqualification in the court after which a decision was awarded in his favor.
The political landscape of the province of Punjab can be divided into three parts: Upper Punjab (Potohar), Central Punjab and the South Punjab. 
The Potohar area of Rawalpindi Division is a mainly urban area that always has a PML-N majority.
South Punjab has two administrative divisions — Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan – and has had a split mandate in the past, but in the last two elections, the South Punjab constituencies favored PML-N.
PML-N faced defection of many of its candidates in South Punjab, which the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf cashed in on.
PTI has pitched 285 candidates for the 297 total seats in Punjab, the highest for any political party, with PML-N fielding 238 candidates for the general seats.
The Central Punjab is the biggest part of Punjab with five divisions: Faisalabad, Lahore, Sargodha, Gujrat Gujranwala and Sahiwal, and 82 seats. In these areas, the PML-N has always won most seats in the past.
However, with the emergence of Tehrik Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) – a Barelvi religious-politico group pitching its candidates in Punjab – and groups such as Milli Muslim League (MML) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) fielding candidates in the province, the PML-N is bound to lose a fair chunk of rightwing voters.
“The PML-N had 307 members in the house of 371 in the last tenure of Punjab Assembly. The forces opposing the PML-N are concentrating on the center and efforts are being made to defeat the party on national assembly seats,” said political analyst Salman Ghani.
“The PML-N considers if it won one third seats fewer than in the last elections, it will still be in position to form government in Punjab,” he added.
PTI, on the other hand, has adopted a three-pronged strategy to win the maximum number of seats in Punjab: vow the electables, target Shabaz Sharif’s development projects, and highlight Nawaz Sharif’s alleged corruption in the Panama Papers affair.
“The PTI believes it cannot not form government in the center until it gets majority in Punjab,” said Salman.
“They are reaching to the masses to highlight the [alleged] corruption of Sharif brothers. To PTI, winning in Punjab means ruling the country, and for that the party is going all out to give PML-N a tough competition,” he said.


Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

Updated 52 min 29 sec ago
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Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

  • A police investigation found 665 people had been held in cells on his property since 2010

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Supreme Court jailed a former government official accused of human trafficking for four years, reversing a lower court decision to acquit him after people were found in cages in his palm oil plantation.
Condemned internationally and at home, the senior official in the provincial government in North Sumatra, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, had been accused of human trafficking, torture, forced labor, and slavery.
Prosecutors launched an appeal after a lower court acquitted him of the charges in July.
Indonesia’s Supreme Court said he would serve four years in jail, without specifying reasons, in a ruling dated Nov. 15 and seen on the court’s website on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court and prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters has sought comment from Terbit’s lawyer.
The macabre case came to light in 2022, when a police corruption investigation into Terbit found people detained in cages on his property, drawing condemnation from rights groups.
A police investigation found 665 people had been held in cells on his property since 2010, court documents showed.
Terbit, who was jailed for nine years for corruption in 2022, had previously claimed the detained individuals were participating in a drug rehabilitation program.
Prosecutors said they had been tortured and forced to work on his plantation. Six had died in captivity, Indonesia’s rights body found.


Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

Updated 26 November 2024
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Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani protesters demanding the release of ex-prime minister Imran Khan on Tuesday killed four members of the nation’s security forces, the government said, as the crowds defied police and closed in on the capital’s center.
More than ten thousand protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in central Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, AFP journalists saw, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the government enclave they aim to occupy.
Khan was barred from standing in February elections that were marred by allegations of rigging, sidelined by dozens of legal cases that he claims were confected to prevent his comeback.
But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has defied a government crackdown with regular rallies. Tuesday’s is the largest in the capital since Khan was jailed in August 2023.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “miscreants” involved in the march had killed four members of the paramilitary Rangers force on a city highway leading toward the government sector.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the men had been “run over by a vehicle.”
“These disruptive elements do not seek revolution but bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “This is not a peaceful protest, it is extremism.”
The government said Monday that one police officer had also been killed and nine more were critically wounded by demonstrators who set out toward Islamabad on Sunday.


The capital has been locked down since late Saturday, with mobile Internet sporadically cut and more than 20,000 police flooding the streets, many armed with riot shields and batons.
The government has accused protesters of attempting to derail a state visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrived for a three-day visit on Monday.
Last week, the Islamabad city administration announced a two-month ban on public gatherings.
But PTI convoys traveled from their power base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the most populous province of Punjab, hauling aside roadblocks of stacked shipping containers.
“We are deeply frustrated with the government, they do not know how to function,” 56-year-old protester Kalat Khan told AFP on Monday. “The treatment we are receiving is unjust and cruel.”
The government cited “security concerns” for the mobile Internet outages, while Islamabad’s schools and universities were also ordered shut on Monday and Tuesday.
“Those who will come here will be arrested,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters late Monday at D-Chowk, the public square outside Islamabad’s government buildings that PTI aims to occupy.
PTI’s chief demand is the release of Khan, the 72-year-old charismatic former cricket star who served as premier from 2018 to 2022 and is the lodestar of their party.
They are also protesting alleged tampering in the February polls and a recent government-backed constitutional amendment giving it more power over the courts, where Khan is tangled in dozens of cases.


Sharif’s government has come under increasing criticism for deploying heavy-handed measures to quash PTI’s protests.
“It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents,” read one opinion piece in the English-language Dawn newspaper published Monday.
“This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said “blocking access to the capital, with motorway and highway closures across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has effectively penalized ordinary citizens.”
The US State Department appealed for protesters to refrain from violence, while also urging authorities to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order.”
Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote after falling out with the kingmaking military establishment, which analysts say engineers the rise and fall of Pakistan’s politicians.
But as opposition leader, he led an unprecedented campaign of defiance, with PTI street protests boiling over into unrest that the government cited as the reason for its crackdown.
PTI won more seats than any other party in this year’s election but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to military influence shut them out of power.


Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

MOSCOW: Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.


China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

Updated 26 November 2024
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China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

  • The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait

BEIJING: China’s military said on Tuesday it deployed naval and air forces to monitor and warn a US Navy patrol aircraft that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denouncing the United States for trying to “mislead” the international community.
Around once a month, US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China — missions that always anger Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.
The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait “in international airspace,” adding that the flight demonstrated the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” it said in a statement.
China’s military criticized the flight as “public hype,” adding that it monitored the US aircraft throughout its transit and “effectively” responded to the situation.
“The relevant remarks by the US distort legal principles, confuse public opinion and mislead international perceptions,” the military’s Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to stop distorting and hyping up and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.”
In April, China’s military said it sent fighter jets to monitor and warn a US Navy Poseidon in the Taiwan Strait, a mission that took place just hours after a call between the Chinese and US defense chiefs. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)


Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

Updated 26 November 2024
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Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

KYIV: Russia staged a record number of drone attacks overnight over Ukraine, damaging buildings and “critical infrastructure” in several regions, the air force said Tuesday.
“During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the figure at 188.