TORONTO: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party won Canada’s federal election on Monday, capping a stunning turnaround in fortunes fueled by US President Donald Trump’s annexation threats and trade war.
The Liberals are projected to win more of Parliament’s 343 seats than the Conservatives, though it wasn’t clear yet if they would win an outright majority, which would allow them to pass legislation without needing help.
The Liberals looked headed for a crushing defeat until the American president started attacking Canada’s economy and threatening its sovereignty, suggesting it should become the 51st state. Trump’s actions infuriated Canadians and stoked a surge in nationalism that helped the Liberals flip the election narrative and win a fourth-straight term in power.
The opposition Conservative Party’s leader, Pierre Poilievre, hoped to make the election a referendum on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose.
But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became the Liberal Party’s leader and prime minister.
Trump was even trolling Canada on election day, suggesting on social media that he was in fact on the ballot and repeating that Canada should become the 51st state — an assertion that Canadians find deeply insulting. He also erroneously claimed that the US subsidizes Canada, writing, “It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!”
Poilievre, who has been criticized for not taking a firmer stance against Trump, responded with a post of his own.
“President Trump, stay out of our election. The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box,” he posted hours before polls closed. “Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state.”
Until Trump won a second term and began threatening Canada’s economy and sovereignty, the Liberals looked headed for defeat. But Trump’s truculence has infuriated many Canadians, leading many to cancel US vacations, refuse to buy American goods and possibly even vote early. A record 7.3 million Canadians cast ballots before election day.
Trump’s attacks also put Poilievre and the opposition Conservative Party on the defensive and led to a surge in nationalism that helped the Liberals flip the election narrative.
“The Americans want to break us so they can own us,” Carney said recently, laying out what he saw as the election’s stakes. “Those aren’t just words. That’s what’s at risk.”
Election day came as the country grappled with the fallout from a deadly weekend attack at a Vancouver street fair that led to the suspension of campaigning for several hours. Police ruled out terrorism and said the suspect is a local man with a history of mental health issues.
Trump became the main issue
Poilievre and his wife walked hand-in-hand to vote in their district in the nation’s capital, Ottawa. “Get out to vote for a change,” he implored voters.
Sisters Laiqa and Mahira Shoaib said they did just that, with Laiqa, a 27-year-old health care worker, voting for the progressive New Democratic Party, and Mahira, a 25-year-old bank worker, backing the Conservatives.
The sisters, who immigrated from Pakistan a decade ago, said the economy has worsened and job opportunities have dried up under Liberal rule.
After the sisters voted at a community center in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Mahira Shoaib said she thinks Poilievre is best equipped to improve Canada’s finances.
“He is business-minded, and that’s what we need right now,” she said.
After Trump became the election’s central issue, Poilievre’s similarities to the bombastic American president might have cost him.
Reid Warren, a Toronto resident, said he voted Liberal because Poilievre “sounds like mini-Trump to me.” And he said Trump’s tariffs are a worry.
“Canadians coming together from, you know, all the shade being thrown from the States is great, but it’s definitely created some turmoil, that’s for sure,” he said.
“He appeals to the same sense of grievance,” Canadian historian Robert Bothwell said of the Conservative leader. “It’s like Trump standing there saying, ‘I am your retribution.’”
“The Liberals ought to pay him,” Bothwell added, referring to the American president. “Trump talking is not good for the Conservatives.”
Foreign policy hadn’t dominated a Canadian election as much since 1988 when, ironically, free trade with the United States was the prevailing issue.
Big challenges await the Liberals
Carney and the Liberals cleared a big hurdle in winning a fourth-straight term, but they have daunting tasks ahead.
In addition to the sweeping US tariffs on Canadian goods, Canada has been dealing with a cost-of-living crisis for some time. And more than 75 percent of its exports go to the US, so Trump’s tariffs threat and his desire to get North American automakers to move Canada’s production south could severely damage the Canadian economy.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals win an election upended by Trump
https://arab.news/9h7jc
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals win an election upended by Trump
- POTUS suggested on social media he was on the ballot, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state — an assertion that Canadians find deeply insulting
Mahmoud Khalil vows to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza after release from detention
Mahmoud Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport a day after leaving a federal immigration facility in Louisiana. A former Columbia University graduate student and symbol of President Donald Trump ‘s clampdown on campus protests, he vowed to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza.
“The US government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said. “This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.”
Joining Khalil at the airport, Ocasio-Cortez said his detention violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”
“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” she said.
“The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.”
Khalil, a 30-year-old legal resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, said he also will speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention center.
“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human,” he said.
Khalil was not accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. However the administration has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views it considers to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Khalil was released after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it was appealing Khalil’s release.
More than 50 Colombian soldiers held by residents in restive region: army
- In conflict addled regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces
- Those civilians are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organizations
BOGOTA: More than 50 Colombian soldiers were being held captive Sunday by residents of a guerrilla-controlled region in the southwest of the country, the army said.
A first platoon of soldiers was carrying out an operation in El Tambo, a municipality part of an area known as the Micay Canyon — a cocaine-producing enclave — when civilians detained them on Saturday.
On Sunday another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed toward El Plateado, another town in the region.
“As a result of both events, a total of four non-commissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty,” the army said.
In conflict-ridden regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces. They are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organizations.
General Federico Alberto Mejia said in a video that it was a “kidnapping” by guerrillas who had “infiltrated” the community.
The army has maintained that the farmers receive orders from the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), the main FARC dissident group that did not sign the 2016 peace agreement with the then government.
President Gustavo Petro on Sunday urged farmers to “stop believing in armed groups who obey foreigners,” referring to the guerrillas’ alleged ties to Mexican cartels.
“We want to spread peace, but freeing the soldiers, who are their own children, is imperative,” the leftist president wrote on social media platform X.
Petro has been trying for months to ensure that the Armed Forces gain access to the entire Micay Canyon.
In March, 28 police officers and a soldier were held captive by local residents in the same area. All were released two days later.
Colombia is experiencing its worst security crisis in the last decade. Petro attempted to negotiate peace with the EMC, but its main leader, known as “Ivan Mordisco,” abandoned the talks.
‘Highly undesirable’: Dutch host NATO during political crisis
THE HAGUE: For a small country like the Netherlands, organizing a NATO summit is a big endeavour at the best of times. The government collapsing three weeks beforehand has not exactly made life easier.
With whole districts and key roads blocked for weeks, and schools and businesses closed, the usually serene seaside city of The Hague has certainly felt the force of the impending summit.
To much grumbling, even some cycle lanes have been shut down, usually unthinkable in the land of bikes.
Dozens of trees have also been uprooted to make way for the temporary buildings housing the thousands of delegates and journalists attending the summit.
For the Netherlands, welcoming 32 world leaders including US President Donald Trump is quite simply the biggest event it has ever hosted in terms of security.
The country is deploying some 27,000 police officers, around half its total force.
And all of this while Dutch politics is still reeling from far-right leader Geert Wilders’s withdrawal from the government in a row over immigration.
The sudden departure of Wilders and his far-right Freedom Party brought down a shaky coalition, with fresh elections now slated for October 29.
“It is highly undesirable to host such an important summit when the government has fallen and new elections are expected,” Claes de Vreese, political communications professor at the University of Amsterdam, told AFP.
It borders on embarrassing, stormed outgoing foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, describing the withdrawal of Wilders three weeks before the summit as “scandalous.”
Fortunately, noted De Vreese, the Dutch parliament gave its green light to the defense spending increases at the center of the summit.
“This gives weight and legitimacy to the participation” of outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof at the summit, said the expert.
But as the government is a lame-duck administration, the next government will have to find the cash.
Speaking of cash, the estimated cost of the NATO summit is 183.4 million euros ($211 million), or just over one million euros per minute, according to Dutch daily AD.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has chopped back the leaders’ meeting to just two-and-a-half hours on Wednesday morning, reportedly to appease Trump, not known to love lengthy summits.
At least Rutte himself will feel at home.
The NATO boss is a born-and-bred “Hagenaar” (citizen of the Hague), still has a house in the city and is often seen at weekends on his bike or shopping at his local supermarket despite his move to Brussels.
And despite the government collapse complicating matters, it is really NATO taking on the bulk of the organization.
“We’re not hosting the summit, that’s the secretary general,” said Schoof.
“But the host country does play an important role. The whole world will be looking at the Netherlands,” Schoof told reporters.
Much of the attention will naturally be on Trump — although there is a question mark over his appearance given the US strikes on Iran.
It falls to Noordwijk, a peaceful coastal resort between Schiphol Airport and The Hague, to host the US president, who will stay in a sumptuous hotel overlooking the North Sea — if he turns up.
His route in has been completely blocked off since Sunday — like several others in the city.
Some frustrated citizens of The Hague have asked why the summit couldn’t be held in Veluwe, a national park with no one around — or even at the airport.
At an anti-NATO protest the weekend before the summit, Alfons Vryland, a 54-year-old teacher, noted the irony of holding a military alliance meeting in the self-styled City of Peace and Justice.
“I’m embarrassed that they’re here talking about war instead of peace in my country, in this city,” Vryland told AFP.
Jan van Zanen, the city’s amiable mayor, sought to reassure everyone, from the crisis-hit PM to the average Hagenaar.
“I know people think that I’m a magician as mayor of The Hague, but I couldn’t prevent the government collapsing,” he told AFP.
“The impact (of the government falling) is there, but where we can, we’ve limited it to the utmost,” he said.
“Yes, the Netherlands is ready.”
Japan Prime Minister Ishiba to skip NATO summit, source says
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is planning to cancel his attendance at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in the Hague, a source with direct knowledge said on Monday.
Broadcaster Fuji Television said Ishiba was canceling the trip because a planned meeting between NATO and a group of four Indo-Pacific nations (IP-4) would likely not take place, and because a meeting with US President Donald Trump was also unlikely.
South Korea and Australia, which along with the US and Japan make up the IP-4, have also said their leaders would not attend the NATO summit meeting.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will represent Japan, the source said, declining to be identified because the plan is not public.
Emaciated after 5 years in prison, Belarusian dissident Tsikhanouski vows to fight on
- Siarhei Tsikhanouski was sentenced to 19 years and six months on charges widely seen as politically motivated
VILNIUS: Siarhei Tsikhanouski is almost unrecognizable. Belarus’ key opposition figure, imprisoned in 2020 and unexpectedly released on Saturday, once weighed 135 kilograms (298 pounds) at 1.92 meters (nearly 6’4”) tall, but now is at just 79 kilos (174 pounds).
On Saturday, Tsikhnaouski was freed alongside 13 other prisoners and brought to Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania, where he was reunited with his wife, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and their children. Speaking to The Associated Press the day after, Tsikhanouski tries to smile and joke, but struggles to hold back heavy sighs recalling what he endured behind bars.
“This is definitely torture,” Tsikhanouski told The Associated Press in the first sit-down interview since his release. Prison officials “kept telling me: ‘You will be here not just for the 20 years we’ve already given you.’ We will convict you again,’” he said. “They told me that ‘You would never get out.’ And they kept repeating: ‘You will die here.’”
One of Belarus’s most prominent opposition figures, Tsikhanouski said he “almost forgot how to speak” during his years in solitary confinement. He was held in complete isolation, denied medical care, and given barely enough food.
“If you had seen me when they threw only two spoons of porridge onto my plate, two small spoons …” he said, adding that he couldn’t buy anything anything in the prison kiosk. “They would sometimes give me a little tube of toothpaste, a little piece of soap as charity. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn’t.”
A prominent voice of dissent
Now 46, Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger and activist, was freed just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Keith Kellogg became the highest-ranking US official in years to visit Belarus, Moscow’s close and dependent ally.
Tsikhanouski, known for his anti-Lukashenko slogan “stop the cockroach,” was arrested after announcing plans to challenge the strongman in the 2020 election and shortly before the campaign began. He was sentenced to 19 years and six months on charges widely seen as politically motivated. His wife ran in his stead, rallying crowds across the country. Official results handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as a sham.
Lukashenko has since tightened his grip, securing a seventh term in disputed January 2025 elections. Since mid-2024, his government has pardoned nearly 300 prisoners — including US citizens — in what analysts see as an attempt to mend ties with the West.
Tsikhanouski credited US President Donald Trump with aiding his release.
“I thank Donald Trump endlessly,” Tsikhanouski said. “They (the Belarusian authorities) want Trump to at least, a little bit, somewhere, to meet them halfway. They are ready to release them all. All of them!”
Many are still behind bars
Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets in the aftermath of the August 2020 vote. Thousands were detained, many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures either fled the country or were imprisoned.
At least 1,177 political prisoners remain in custody, according to Viasna, the oldest and most prominent human rights group in Belarus. Among them is Viasna’s founder, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.
Also behind bars are Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a close ally of Tsikhanouskaya and charismatic leader of that year’s mass protests.
A surprise release and an emotional reunion
Tsikhanouski called his release “a dream that’s still hard to believe.” On Saturday, he said, guards removed him from a KGB pretrial detention center, put a black bag over his head, and handcuffed him before transporting him in a minibus. He and other prisoners had no idea where they were going.
“To be honest, I still can’t believe it. I was afraid I’d wake up and everything would still be the same. I don’t believe it, I still don’t believe it,” he said, pausing frequently and wiping away tears.
Tsikhanouski’s children — his daughter, aged 9, and 15-year-old son — didn’t recognize him when they were reunited.
“We came in and my wife said to my daughter, ‘Your dad has arrived,’” he said, crying. “At first she couldn’t understand, and then she rushed in — she was crying, I was crying ... for a very long time. My son too! These are emotions that cannot be described.”
Tsikhanouski, who says his health has deteriorated behind bars, plans to undergo a medical examination in Lithuania. He says cold and hunger were “the main causes of illness” that affected nearly all political prisoners in Belarus, who were subjected to “especially harsh conditions.”
“There were skin diseases, and everyone had kidney problems from the cold — and no one really understood what was happening,” Tsikhanouski said. “Blood came out of my mouth, from my nose. Sometimes I had convulsions — but it was all because of the cold, that terrible cold when you sit in those punishment cells.”
“There is no medical care in prison — none at all, just so you know …” he said.
Tsikhanouski said conditions slightly improved after the February 2024 death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a prison colony.
“When Alexei Navalny died, I thought, that’ll probably be me soon … And then something changed. It was clear that someone at the top said, ‘Make sure he doesn’t die here. We don’t need that problem.’ It got just a bit softer ... At some point, word came down: Tsikhanouski must be kept alive, not killed.”
Pointing the finger at Putin
Tsikhanouski blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for propping up Lukashenko, both during the 2020 protests and to this day.
Russia supports Belarus’s economy with loans and subsidized oil and gas. In return, Belarus has allowed Moscow to use its territory to launch troops and weapons into Ukraine, and hosts Russian forces and nuclear weapons.
Tsikhanouski expressed strong support for Ukraine, calling the Kremlin a common evil for both countries.
“If it weren’t for Putin, we would already be living in a different country. Putin recognized Lukashenko’s victory in the election, he called black white. That is, he refused to see the falsifications,” Tsikhanouski said. “They help each other. Because of Putin, this illegal government is still in Belarus.”
Some analysts have speculated that by releasing the charismatic and energetic Tsikhanouski, Belarusian authorities may be trying to sow division within the opposition. But Tsikhanouski insists he has no intention of challenging his wife’s role as the internationally recognized head of the Belarusian opposition, and he calls for unity.
“Under no circumstances do I plan to criticize any Belarusians, condemn or complain about anyone,” he said.
Tsikhanouski says he will not stop fighting and wants to return to active work as both a political figure and a blogger. But he is skeptical that Lukashenko, now 70, will step down voluntarily, despite his age.
“I don’t know anymore — will he go or won’t he?” Tsikhanouski said. “Many people say nothing will change until he dies. But I’m still counting on democratic forces winning.”
