BRUSSELS: Irish and Czech voters picked up the baton in the EU’s marathon elections Friday, some driven by concerns about migration and others bent on countering the anti-immigrant far right.
Both countries were voting in advance of Sunday’s main election day when most of the European Union’s 27 nations — including powerhouses Germany and France — will vote to elect the bloc’s next parliament.
Surveys point to election gains for anti-immigrant populists across the EU, and day one on Thursday saw a strong showing, though no knockout blow, for the Dutch far right.
Ireland’s 37-year-old prime minister Simon Harris voted near his home in Delgany, a village south of Dublin, before hitting the road to canvass for both local and EU elections.
Keith O’Reilly, a 41 year-old IT worker, said that he admired Harris’s “energy” but that his vote would not be going to the premier’s center-right Fine Gael.
“They’re getting so many things wrong, the migration issue for one thing,” he told AFP.
With around 20 percent of Ireland’s population born outside the country and record levels of asylum seekers, many candidates are running on an anti-immigration platform — one of the reasons that drove Trevor Gardiner to vote.
“The rise of the far right jumping on immigration is really, really scary for us,” said the 42-year-old finance worker, “because it’s happening not just in mainland Europe but here in Ireland too.”
Emily, a 21-year-old first-time voter who declined to give her full name, likewise said she “worried” about the far right’s rise.
“I think the others need to get their act together,” she said. “It’s incredible the type of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become normalized here.”
The EU vote comes at a time of geopolitical upheaval almost two and a half years into Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The far right is looking to tap into grievances among the bloc’s 370 million eligible voters, fatigued by a succession of crises from the Covid pandemic to the fallout of Moscow’s invasion.
The contest in the Netherlands was seen as a bellwether for its strength — and exit polls showed gains for the Freedom Party (PVV) of firebrand Geert Wilders, in second place.
But the Dutch result was tighter than expected, with a Green-left alliance set for first place, and could spell hope for centrists battling to maintain their majority.
That was the early assessment of Eurasia Group’s managing director Mujtaba Rahman, who predicted “the center will largely hold” even if the far right takes a quarter of the EU’s 720 parliament seats.
“There’ll be lots of noise over next few days about the far right surge in EU. The reality is more boring,” Rahman wrote on X.
The other country voting Friday was the Czech Republic, where politicians face widespread apathy to the EU vote: the country had the second-lowest turnout last time around in 2019, at 28.72 percent.
Polls put the centrist ANO movement of billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis in the lead.
At an elementary school in southern Prague, voters cast their ballots while children played nearby, many relishing the opportunity to stop and chat with neighbors.
Marek Cerveny, a 45-year-old teacher and tour guide who voted accompanied by his daughter, said he “definitely” saw EU decisions “reflected in our lives“: “What we can buy, how easily we can travel, how well we can live here.”
Others like Vera Zazvorkova, a 72-year-old economist, said she was voting for change, wanting fewer EU rules on the environment and tougher curbs on migration.
“The ‘Green Deal’ should change, that is, it should be restricted a lot, and the immigration policy should change too,” she said.
The prospect of a rightward lurch has rattled the parliament’s main groupings, the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and the leftist Socialists and Democrats.
They still look set to be the two biggest blocs but current European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, of the EPP, may need support from part of the far right to secure a second term.
With an eye on the horse-trading that may be needed, von der Leyen has been courting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party.
Over the weekend, scrutiny will shift to the EU’s bigger economies as they open polling stations.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is predicted to come out on top in France, as is Meloni’s party in Italy — which votes Saturday — and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s far-right Fidesz.
In Germany, the extreme-right AfD is polling second, behind the opposition conservatives.
Irish, Czechs cast EU votes with immigration front of mind
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Irish, Czechs cast EU votes with immigration front of mind
- Both countries voting in advance of Sunday’s main election day
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
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
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
- 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
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.
