MAPUTO: Voting was underway in Mozambique in a tense general election highly likely to deliver victory for the ruling party, Frelimo, which has governed the southern African nation since 1975.
Poverty is the major concern for Mozambique’s 35 million people, half of whom are registered to vote, along with an Islamist insurgency in the north that has forced thousands to flee their homes and halted multi-billion-dollar gas projects.
The favorite among four candidates vying to replace President Filipe Nyusi, as he steps down after serving two terms, is Daniel Chapo, 47, a lawyer viewed as a safe choice for business and a fresh face for the long-ruling party.
Accompanied by his wife, Chapo was among the first to cast his vote in a school in the coastal city of Inhambane.
“I want to say thank you to the people of Mozambique for this opportunity we have today,” he told reporters.
Chapo faces off against Venancio Mondlane, a charismatic independent candidate who draws huge crowds, former rebel commander Ossufo Momade, and a small opposition party leader, Lutero Simango.
Among those who braved early morning rain to queue to cast their votes in Maputo, the capital, was 22-year-old student Augusto Ndeve Pais.
“I feel hopeful ... People my age are worried about the future of our country, so I think they will vote,” Pais said, declining to say for whom he was voting.
Counting will start after the polls close at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), but official results can take up to two weeks.
Frelimo first allowed elections in 1994 and has since been accused of rigging them, charges it denies. A rebel force turned opposition party, Renamo, usually comes a distant second place.
“This election is different because we have new actors ... (but) Frelimo has a big probability to win,” said analyst Dercio Alfazema.
A disputed outcome would probably trigger protests similar to those which broke out after Frelimo swept last year’s municipal elections and which were forcefully suppressed.
But many also feel the elections will change little.
Keila Sitoe, 28, voted with her 21-year-old sister in Maputo. Both, who said they hope for change but do not expect it, declined to reveal their picks.
“We don’t feel the energy. We are young and things are difficult,” said Sitoe, who is also a student.
In the city’s middle-class neighborhood of Malhangalene, where Mondlane lives, voter Rosa Tembe, a 72-year-old widow, hoped for peace in the country’s northern Cabo Delgado province.
“We will ask the person who wins to end the conflict in Cabo Delgado because our grandsons are dying... and we don’t want this to happen anymore,” she said.
Mozambique votes in election likely to keep ruling party in power
https://arab.news/2qak9
Mozambique votes in election likely to keep ruling party in power
- Poverty is the major concern for Mozambique’s 35 million people, half of whom are registered to vote
- Counting will start after the polls close but official results can take up to two weeks
Three Kosovo Serbs on trial over ‘secession plot’ attack
The group is accused of ambushing Kosovo police in the border village of Banjska in a September 2023 attack
PRISTINA: Three Kosovo Serbs went on trial on Wednesday over an armed incursion a court heard was part of a plot to seize Serb-majority northern Kosovo and unite it with Serbia.
Forty-two others are also being sought over a deadly standoff between Kosovo authorities and Serb gunmen last year, with the court in Pristina yet to decide whether to try them in absentia.
The trial comes amid mounting tension between Serbia and its former breakaway province, which declared independence in 2008.
The group is accused of ambushing Kosovo police in the border village of Banjska in a September 2023 attack that left one police officer and three attackers dead.
Prosecutor Naim Abazi told the court that the three were accused of “preparing and committing terrorist acts.”
“Acting according to a well-organized plan, they tried to secede the northern part of Kosovo — the Serbian-majority municipality — and unite it with Serbia,” Abazi said.
The three accused, who were escorted in handcuffs by heavily-armed police into the courtroom packed with reporters, were arrested during the shootout at the Banjska monastery near the border. Forty two others are still at large and believed to be in Serbia.
According to the 158-page indictment seen by AFP, Kosovo anti-terrorist units broke up the attack, forcing the group to retreat into Serbia, where it had come from.
It also alleged that Kosovo Serb businessman Milan Radoicic, who has been accused of amassing wealth through criminal and political connections, had plotted with the Serbian state to seize northern Kosovo.
The indictment also accused Serbia of giving help and weapons to the businessman’s group.
It said Radoicic had admitted to judicial authorities in Belgrade that he led the commando squad that ambushed the police patrol.
The court decided Wednesday to proceed with the trial of the three and to consider trying the 42 others in absentia later.
Animosity between Albanian-majority Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s led to a NATO intervention.
A sizeable ethnic Serbian minority lives in Kosovo, although the precise numbers are unclear as Serbs have boycotted every census since independence.
For months, Kosovo authorities have overseen legal maneuvers to dismantle the parallel system of social services and political offices backed by Serbia to serve Kosovo’s Serbs.
Kosovo has also effectively outlawed the Serbian dinar, closed banks that relied on the currency and shuttered post offices where Serbian pension payments could be cashed.
French minister ups ante in Eiffel Tower Olympic rings row
- At the end of last month, workers removed the 30-ton steel rings that were first installed in June between the first and second floors of the tower
PARIS: A row over the Olympics logo becoming a longterm feature of the Eiffel Tower has taken a fresh turn with a French government minister bidding to take de facto control over the monument away from the city of Paris.
The popular landmark sported giant Olympic rings during this summer’s Olympics and Paralympics. The capital’s mayor Anne Hidalgo — encouraged by the popular success of the Games — said a version of the decoration should adorn the tower until the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
But that proposal has polarized opinion in the French capital and at the highest level of state. Already, it has been severely criticized by descendants of the tower’s designer Gustave Eiffel, as well as conservation groups.
At the end of last month, workers removed the 30-ton steel rings that were first installed in June between the first and second floors of the tower.
Hidalgo has campaigned for lighter, less prominent, versions of the originals to be installed in their place.
But even this toned-down proposal is too much for skeptics, some of whom are also bitter political enemies of Hidalgo. The Socialist mayor has riled opponents with ambitious pro-cycling and anti-car projects, as well as a recent decision to cut the speed limit on Paris’s ring road, the Peripherique.
One of her most prominent critics is right-wing politician, Rachida Dati, who as leader of the opposition in Paris city hall has often locked horns with Hidalgo. Having failed in a previous bid, she is expected to run for mayor again in 2026 at the next municipal election.
Dati was last month reappointed Culture Minister in Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government, a position that gives her much influence over listed buildings and their protection.
On Tuesday, she announced that she had asked for the Eiffel Tower to become part of the state’s top heritage list.
If granted, that would, de facto, wrest control over work done on the tower from the city and her rival Hidalgo, placing it in the hands of the central government.
Dati told the daily Le Parisien that the tower’s current status as an ordinary listed monument was no longer sufficient. Only its inclusion on the French state’s top heritage list, reserved for sites of national importance, would offer “true protection,” she argued.
Any work done on a building or monument with full heritage status requires the approval of the regional prefect, who answers to the government, or other state-run agencies.
Should Hidalgo refuse Dati’s request that the tower be added to the state’s top heritage list, Dati said she would make the change “by force.”
Asked about the initiative Tuesday, Hidalgo said the Eiffel Tower was already “very, very well protected.”
Dati’s remarks also caused anger at SETE, the company running the Eiffel Tower, which is majority-owned by the city of Paris.
SETE president Jean-Francois Martins told AFP that the culture minister was entitled to ask for heritage status if a site was endangered. “But that’s not the case for the Eiffel Tower,” he said.
The company was embarking on the tower’s “most ambitious ever” paint job, had renovated lifts and improved accessibility, he added.
Martins accused Dati of using the Eiffel Tower “to further her political aims.”
Meanwhile, some opposition members of Paris’s municipal council have suggested displaying the Olympics logo elsewhere in the capital.
After months of gloom and self-doubt in the run-up to the start of the Olympics on July 26, Parisians threw themselves into the spirit of the Games, which have been hailed as a resounding success.
Hidalgo, in power since 2014, also wants to retain other symbols of the event such as the cauldron placed in front of the Louvre museum, and the statues of illustrious women placed in the river Seine during the opening ceremony.
Bolivia joins South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel
THE HAGUE: Bolivia has joined South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that alleges the Israeli Gaza offensive breaches the UN Genocide Convention, the court said on Wednesday.
The South American country is the latest of several nations, including Colombia, Libya, Spain and Mexico, adding their weight to the case against Israel, which vehemently denies the accusations.
Bolivia already announced in November it was severing diplomatic ties over what it described as the “disproportionate” attacks on Gaza by Israel.
At the time, Israel slammed the move as “a surrender to terrorism.”
In a January 26 ruling that made headlines around the world, the ICJ told Israel to do everything possible to prevent acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza.
The court has also ordered Israel to ensure “unimpeded access” to UN-mandated investigators to look into allegations of genocide.
South Africa has returned several times to the ICJ, arguing that the dire humanitarian situation in the territory compels the court to issue further fresh emergency measures.
In its submission to the court made public on Wednesday, Bolivia argued: “Israel’s genocidal war continues, and the Court’s orders remain dead letters to Israel.”
While ICJ rulings are legally binding, the court has no concrete means to enforce them.
In a separate ruling in July, the ICJ issued an “advisory opinion” that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was “unlawful” and should end as soon as possible.
Israel’s Gaza campaign has killed at least 42,010 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The UN has described the figures as reliable.
The offensive was prompted by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel has intensified strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since September 23, leaving more than 1,150 people dead, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
EU opens ‘air bridge’ to fly aid to Lebanon
- The European Commission said three initial flights were scheduled to carry supplies from Italy and Dubai to Lebanon
BRUSSELS: The European Union said Wednesday it had launched a “humanitarian air bridge” to fly aid to Lebanon as fighting rages between Israel and Hezbollah.
The European Commission said three initial flights were scheduled to carry supplies from Italy and Dubai to the conflict-wracked country, with the first arriving in Beirut on Friday.
“The EU stands by the people affected by the crisis in Lebanon,” commission president Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.
“From blankets to shelter kits and medicines. More will come.”
The EU last week said it was ramping up spending on humanitarian assistance to Lebanon by 30 million euros ($33 million) in response to the unfolding violence.
Israel has intensified strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since September 23, leaving more than 1,150 people dead and forcing more than a million to flee.
Hezbollah fired projectiles into Israel Wednesday and said it foiled ground incursions, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon could face destruction like Gaza.
Brussels said that it was already coordinating deliveries of aid to Lebanon from member states Belgium, France, Poland, Slovakia and Spain since last week.
Jailed leader of a prominent election watchdog is on trial in Russia
- The case against him is part of the monthslong crackdown on Kremlin critics that the government ratcheted up after sending troops into Ukraine
MOSCOW: A jailed leader of a prominent independent election monitoring group in Russia appeared in court on Wednesday as his trial continued on charges of organizing the work of an “undesirable” organization.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia’s leading election watchdog Golos, faces up to six years in prison if convicted. He has rejected the charges as politically motivated. The case against him is part of the monthslong crackdown on Kremlin critics and rights activists that the government ratcheted up after sending troops into Ukraine.
Golos is an independent watchdog that monitors for and exposes violations in every major election in Russia. It was founded in 2000 and has since played a key role in independent monitoring of elections in Russia. Over the years, it has faced mounting pressure from the authorities. In 2013, the group was designated as a “foreign agent” — a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations. Three years later, it was liquidated as a non-governmental organization by Russia’s Justice Ministry.
Golos has continued to operate without registering as an NGO, exposing violations in various elections, and in 2021 it was added to a new registry of “foreign agents,” created by the Justice Ministry for groups that are not registered as a legal entity in Russia.
It has not been designated as “undesirable” — a label that under a 2015 law makes involvement with such organizations a criminal offense. But it was once a member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, a group that was declared “undesirable” in Russia in 2021.
Independent journalists, critics, activists and opposition figures in Russia have come under increasing pressure from the government in recent years that intensified significantly amid the conflict in Ukraine. Multiple independent news outlets and rights groups have been shut down, labeled as “foreign agents” or outlawed as “undesirable.” Hundreds of activists and critics of the Kremlin have faced criminal charges.
