MANILA: The leader of the Philippines’ House of Representatives announced his resignation Tuesday, ending a standoff with a rival speaker that has stalled the passage of next year’s budget, including funds for fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano made the announcement in a Facebook video message from his neighborhood while legislators were ratifying the election of his rival Rep. Lord Allan Velasco as speaker. Both are allies of President Rodrigo Duterte, who had brokered a power-sharing deal that went awry this week and set off the standoff.
Cayetano and his allied legislators mocked Velasco’s election Monday as speaker by his supporters in a sports club outside Congress. He said he was giving way to avoid damage to the 300-strong legislative chamber as a democratic institution.
“If we bastardize Congress, we’re also bastardizing our country,” Cayetano said in his video message.
Despite the easing of the impasse, Duterte called Cayetano and Velasco to a meeting at the presidential palace Tuesday, mainly to ensure the rapid passage of the proposed $90 billion budget, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said.
The military chief of staff, Gen. Gilbert Gapay, said the military has kept an eye on the House impasse. “We were just getting prepared in case it gets out of hand because sometimes during situations like this, many may take advantage,” Gapay said at a news conference.
Duterte brokered a power-sharing deal last year in which Cayetano would assume the speakership for 15 months until this month, to be followed by Velasco, who would serve as speaker for the remaining 21 months.
Cayetano recently offered to step down, but his camp said a majority of lawmakers voted to reject his resignation. After Cayetano steered the initial approval of the budget, his camp abruptly suspended congressional sessions, pre-empting Velasco’s assumption of the speakership under the power-sharing deal.
Several lawmakers protested that the suspension blocked them from scrutinizing the budget, including crucial appropriations for the Department of Health, which is spearheading efforts to contain coronavirus outbreaks.
With top police and military generals standing beside him, Duterte went on TV last week to warn that he would intercede if the House leadership crisis threatens the passage of the budget. He later called for a special session of the House starting Tuesday to ensure the budget’s approval.
Velasco’s allied legislators gathered Monday in a sports club to declare the House speakership vacant, then elected Velasco as his replacement.
Cayetano and his camp blasted the move as illegal and a travesty, initially insisting that he still had the support of majority of legislators. But he changed his mind and announced his resignation Tuesday, accusing his rivals of damaging doors and forcing their way to take over the House of Representatives.
Philippine Congress standoff ends as current speaker quits
https://arab.news/rw5bn
Philippine Congress standoff ends as current speaker quits
- Alan Peter Cayetano: Giving way to avoid damage to the 300-strong legislative chamber as a democratic institution
Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan, wife appeal graft convictions: lawyer
- Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month
- A special graft court found the pair guilty of ‘corruption and corrupt practices’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi on Monday appealed their convictions for graft, his lawyer said.
Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.
“We have filed appeals today and in the next few days it will go through clerical processes and then it will be fixed for a hearing,” Khan’s lawyer Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry said.
The papers were filed at the Islamabad High Court.
A special graft court found the pair guilty of “corruption and corrupt practices” over a welfare foundation they established together called the Al-Qadir Trust.
Khan, 72, has been held in custody since August 2023 charged in around 200 cases which he claims are politically motivated.
Kremlin says it has yet to hear from US about a possible Putin-Trump meeting
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday it had yet to receive any signals from the United States about arranging a possible meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, but remained ready to organize such an encounter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it appeared a “certain amount of time” was needed before a meeting between the two leaders could take place. He said Russia understood that Washington was still interested in organizing such a meeting.
Putin said on Friday that he and Trump should meet to talk about the Ukraine war and energy prices, issues that the US president has highlighted in the first days of his new administration.
India minister pledges to evict ‘illegal’ immigrants from capital
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest political ally has pledged to rid the capital of “illegal’ immigrants if his party wins looming elections, in a forceful appeal to his party’s Hindu constituency.
Interior minister Amit Shah said every unlawful migrant from neighboring Bangladesh would be expelled from New Delhi “within two years” if his party succeeded in next month’s provincial polls.
“The current state government is giving space to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas,” Shah told an audience of several thousand at Sunday’s rally.
“Change the government and we will rid Delhi of all illegals.”
India shares a porous border stretching thousands of kilometers with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and illegal migration from its eastern neighbor has been a hot-button political issue for decades.
There are no reliable estimates of the number of Bangladeshis living illegally in Delhi, a city to which millions have flocked in search of employment from elsewhere in India over recent decades.
Critics of Modi and Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Muslims to galvanize its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections.
Delhi, a sprawling megacity home to more than 30 million people, has been governed for most of the past decade by charismatic chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal rode to power as an anti-corruption crusader a decade ago and his profile has bestowed upon him the mantle of one of the chief rivals to Modi and Shah’s party.
His popularity has been burnished by extensive water and electricity subsidies for the capital’s millions of poorer residents.
But he spent several months behind bars last year on accusations his party took kickbacks in exchange for liquor licenses, along with several fellow party leaders.
Kejriwal denies wrongdoing and characterised the charges as a political witch-hunt by Modi’s government, and despite resigning as chief minister last year vowed to return to the office if his party won re-election.
The BJP has led a spirited campaign in its efforts to dislodge Kejriwal’s party ahead of the February 5 vote.
Modi is expected to make a pilgrimage to the ongoing Kumbh Mela, the biggest festival on the Hindu calendar, to bathe in the sacred Ganges river on the day of the Delhi assembly vote.
Results of the election will be published on February 8.
Ukraine’s Zelensky urges action against ‘evil’ on Auschwitz anniversary
- The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
- Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker
KYIV : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday said the world must unite against evil, in comments marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death.
The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 claiming that the government in Kyiv contained neo-Nazi elements and saying the country must be demilitarized.
Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker and said some countries are still trying to destroy entire nations.
“We must overcome the hatred that gives rise to abuse and murder. We must prevent forgetfulness,” he said, according to a statement from the presidency.
“And it is everyone’s mission to do everything possible to prevent evil from winning,” he added.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that Russia’s invasion “brought back to Ukrainian soil horrors that Europe has not seen since World War II.”
“Jewish communities of Ukraine are also suffering from constant Russian terror, in particular in the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, which have a population of over a million, and other localities,” it added.
The Holocaust decimated the Jewish community in Ukraine, which during World War II was part of the Soviet Union.
It was not the first massacre of Jewish people in Ukraine’s history, which had seen previous anti-Semitic pogroms.
Russia drone barrage sparks fire in western Ukraine
KYIV: A barrage of more than 100 Russian drones sparked a fire at an industrial facility in western Ukraine and damaged residential buildings in other regions, Ukrainian officials said Monday.
The Ukrainian airforce said Moscow had dispatched 104 drones, including attack drones, and that 57 of the unmanned aerial vehicles had been shot down.
Emergency services in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region said the strikes had resulted in two fires at an industrial facility, and that firefighters were working to extinguish one.
They did not specify the type of facility hit but said there were no casualties.
The airforce said there was damage in four Ukrainian regions including Kyiv, where AFP journalists heard drones flying overhead and air defense systems countering the attack.
