Month: July 2024

LONDON — Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister with his Labour Party set to win a massive majority in a parliamentary election, an exit poll on Thursday indicated, while Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are forecast to suffer historic losses.

The poll showed Labour would win 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament and a majority of 170, ending 14 years of Conservative-led government.

Sunak’s party was forecast to only take 131 seats, down from 346 when parliament was dissolved and the worst electoral performance in its history. Voters punished the party for a cost-of-living crisis and years of instability and in-fighting that have seen five prime ministers since 2016.

“Britain’s future was on the ballot at this election. And, if we are successful tonight, Labour will get to work immediately with our first steps for change,” Pat McFadden, Labour’s campaign coordinator said in statement.

The centrist Liberal Democrats were predicted to capture 61 seats while Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK was forecast to win 13.

While the forecast for Reform was far better than expected, the overall outcome suggests the disenchanted British public appears to have shifted support to the center-left, unlike in France where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party made historic gains in an election last Sunday.

It was not just the Conservatives whose vote was predicted to have collapsed. The pro-independence Scottish National Party was forecast to win only 10 seats, its worst showing since 2010, after a period of turmoil which has seen two leaders quit in little over a year, a police investigation into the party’s finances and splits on a range of policies.

In the last six U.K. elections, only one exit poll has got the outcome wrong: In 2015 the poll predicted a hung parliament when in fact the Conservatives won a majority. Official results will follow over the next hours.

Sunak stunned Westminster and many in his own party by calling the election earlier than he needed to in May with the Conservatives trailing Labour by some 20 points in opinion polls.

He had hoped that the gap would narrow as had traditionally been the case in British elections, but the deficit has failed to budge in a fairly disastrous campaign.

It started badly with Sunak getting drenched as he stood in the rain outside Downing Street and announced the vote, before aides and Conservative candidates became caught up in a gambling scandal over suspicious bets placed on the date of the election.

Sunak’s early departure from D-Day commemorative events in France to do a TV interview angered veterans, and even those within his own party said it raised questions about his political acumen.

If the exit poll proves right, it represents an incredible turnaround for Starmer and Labour, which critics and supporters said was facing an existential crisis just three years ago when it lost a parliamentary seat on a 16% swing to the Conservatives, an almost unique win for a governing party.

But a series of scandals — most notably revelations of parties in Downing Street during COVID lockdowns — undermined then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and by November 2021 the Conservative poll lead, which had been higher than at any time during Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in government, was gone.

Liz Truss’ disastrous six-week premiership, which followed Johnson being forced out at the end of 2022, cemented the decline, and Sunak was unable to make any dent in Labour’s now commanding poll lead

While polls have suggested that there is no great enthusiasm for Labour leader Starmer, his simple message that it was time for change appears to have resonated with voters.

However, the predicted Labour result would not quite match the record level achieved by the party under Tony Blair in 1997 when the party captured 418 seats with a majority of 179.
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PARIS — Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as three candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.

Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, or RN, secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone’s second-largest economy.

The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening, when the election’s results will be announced.

Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem,” he told France 2 TV.

Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team when they were out putting up campaign posters.

While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.

An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.

Separately, the 77-year-old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble, in southeastern France, was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesperson for President Emmanuel Macron.

Veran denounced a “completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign.”

Meanwhile, a poll on Wednesday suggested efforts by mainstream parties to block the far right from reaching an absolute majority might work.

The Harris Interactive poll for Challenges magazine showed the anti-immigration RN and its allies would get 190 to 220 seats in the 577-strong assembly, while the center-right Republicans, or LR, would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group.

The poll was published after more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, in a process known as the “republican front.”

However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters will go along with these efforts to block the RN.
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London — Britain voted Thursday in a general election widely expected to hand the opposition Labour party a landslide win and end nearly a decade-and-a-half of Conservative rule. 

The first national ballot since Boris Johnson won the Tories a decisive victory in 2019 follows Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s surprise call to hold it six months earlier than required. 

His gamble looks set to backfire spectacularly, with polls throughout the six-week campaign — and for the last two years — pointing to a heavy defeat for his right-wing party. 

That would almost certainly put Labour leader Keir Starmer, 61, in Downing Street, as leader of the largest party in parliament. 

Centre-left Labour is projected to win its first general election since 2005 by historic proportions, with a flurry of election-eve polls all forecasting its biggest-ever victory. 

But Starmer was taking nothing for granted as he urged voters not to stay at home. “Britain’s future is on the ballot,” he said. “But change will only happen if you vote for it.” 

Voting began at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) in more than 40,000 polling stations across the country, from church halls, community centers and schools to more unusual venues such as pubs and even a ship. 

Sunak was among the early birds, casting his ballot at his Richmond and Northallerton constituency in Yorkshire, northern England. Starmer voted around two hours later in his north London seat. 

“I just moved back from Australia and I’ve got the feeling that everything has turned wrong in this country and a lot of people are not satisfied,” said Ianthe Jacob, a 32-year-old writer, after voting in Hackney, east London. 

In Saint Albans, north of London, 22-year-old student Judith told AFP: “I don’t really trust any of them but will vote. A lot of my friends feel the same.” 

Voting closes at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT). Broadcasters then announce exit polls, which typically provide an accurate picture of how the main parties have performed. 

Results from the UK’s 650 constituencies trickle in overnight, with the winning party expected to hit 326 seats — the threshold for a parliamentary majority — as dawn breaks Friday.  

Polls suggest voters will punish the Tories after 14 years of often chaotic rule and could oust a string of government ministers. 
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HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM — Analysts cite an effort to strengthen Vietnam’s South China Sea territorial claims as a key reason Hanoi welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, despite potential fallout from links to Moscow in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

They also say Russian investment in offshore oil and gas reserves off Vietnam’s coast in the South China shows Hanoi strengthening its territorial claims.

Vietnam and Russia signed 11 agreements during the visit. They included, according to the Kremlin, granting an investment license for a hydrocarbon block off Vietnam’s southeastern coast to Zarubezhneft, a state-owned Russian oil and gas firm with a history of joint ventures with Vietnam.

Ian Storey, senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute, told VOA that Vietnam wants to expand its oil and gas operations with Russia inside its exclusive economic zone for two reasons.

“First, the resources in the fields being worked by Vietsovpetro [a Russian-Vietnamese oil and gas joint venture] are running low and it’s time to start operations in new blocks,” Storey wrote over email on June 25, referring to an existing oil partnership.

“Second,” he wrote, “Vietnam wants to internationalize the energy projects in its EEZ because it adds legitimacy to its jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea.”

Storey added that although there have been reports of Hanoi making an arms purchase by using funds from the joint oil enterprise Rusvietpetro, it is unlikely that the leaders settled plans for a weapons sale during the visit.

“While there have been reports that Russia is considering providing loans to Vietnam to buy military hardware using the profits from their joint venture in Siberia, it is unclear whether the two sides have reached a final agreement,” Storey wrote. The New York Times reported on a leaked March 2023 document from Vietnam’s Finance Ministry that outlined plans for Hanoi to purchase Russian weapons using loans from Rusvietpetro.

“The absence of Russian Defence Minister [Andrei] Belousov from Putin’s entourage to Vietnam suggests they have not,” he wrote.

Protecting disputed waters

Although Vietnamese territory stretches 370 kilometers off its coast according to international law, China claims the vast majority of the South China Sea with its disputed so-called nine-dash line delineating its claims in the sea.

Ray Powell, director of the Sea Light Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, wrote over WhatsApp on June 27 that the block licensed to Zarubezhneft “appears to be inside” the nine-dash line.

Nguyen The Phuong, a maritime security expert and Ph.D. candidate at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told VOA during a call on June 26 that the key takeaway from Putin’s visit is Hanoi’s intention to secure its territorial integrity.

“Vietnam wants Russia to have more presence in the South China Sea because, different from the United States or Western countries, the presence of Russia will not infuriate China,” Phuong said. “It could somehow prevent China from going overboard, from being overly aggressive.”

Alexander Vuving, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, said it is important for Hanoi to maintain strong ties with Moscow after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Ukraine war is pushing Russia closer to China, and that is the Vietnamese nightmare,” Vuving said during a Zoom call with VOA on June 27, noting that Moscow is Hanoi’s leading partner to counter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

“From Vietnam’s perspective, they need Russia,” he said.

Vietnam is attempting to diversify its military equipment away from Russia, which has been its primary supplier, and it is not clear whether the two sides agreed on an arms sale during this visit. Nevertheless, Russia remains Hanoi’s top option to update its aging military arsenal, Vuving said.

“[Vietnam] is still trying to buy arms from Russia for many reasons,” he said. “The price is not so high like some other alternative sources but there’s also the question of the issue of trust – Vietnam would trust Russia,” Vuving said.

That trust comes from a long history of support from the former Soviet Union and later Russia, Nguyen Hong Hai, senior lecturer at Hanoi’s Vinuniversity, told VOA. Along with military aid to support Vietnam’s fights for independence, the Soviet Union and Russia helped to bring the country out of poverty and most of Vietnam’s top leaders trained there, Hai said.

“For the generation who lived during that period of time, they still have very fond memories of the Soviet Union’s and Russian assistance to Vietnam,” Hai said June 25 by Zoom.

Some see dangers

Even with the historic connection, some point to the dangers of welcoming Putin after the invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s visits to China and North Korea.

“This trip was made right after Putin visited [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un. The two most brutal dictators in East Asia,” Tran Anh Quan, a Ho Chi Minh City-based social activist wrote to VOA in Vietnamese over Telegram.

“If Putin can link up with Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and To Lam, it will form an alliance of tyrants of the world’s major dictatorial states,” Quan said, referring to former public security minister To Lam, who became president in May.

Quan said he has not seen much response from the Vietnamese public to Putin’s Hanoi visit.

He said many are afraid to speak out in the current political environment and the public is more focused on the case of Thich Minh Tue – a monk who is not part of a state-sanctioned Buddhist group and became famous for walking barefoot across the country before he was detained by police in early June.

“Vietnam is increasingly suppressing critical voices, so people dare to speak out less than before,” Quan said.

Zachary Abuza, Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, also noted the negative image Putin’s visit casts, adding that Russia’s war on Ukraine highlights the degradation of international laws, crucial to Vietnam, given its territorial tensions with neighboring China.

“The optics of it are terrible,” he told VOA on June 17. “This is the leader who is trying to upend the international rules-based order and change borders through the use of force. … The legal rationale that Russia and Putin have come up with for the invasion of Ukraine is really dangerous for Vietnam.”

Still, Hai said that although Vietnam and Ukraine are two small nations neighboring larger powers, it is too simplistic to compare the relationships between Vietnam and China with Ukraine and Russia.

“[Vietnam] has coexisted with China for over 4,000 years and understands its neighbor well,” he said, while noting the countries continue to have territorial disputes and had a border war in 1979.

“Since normalizing relations in 1991, the two countries have managed their relationship effectively,’’ Hai said. ‘’Both nations aim to avoid conflict.”

Further, he added that Hanoi does not “take sides” with Russia, and when leaders express their debt to the Soviet Union, that includes its former republic, Ukraine.

“In the joint statement between Vietnam and Russia during the Putin visit … Vietnam was very careful to show it does not side with Russia,” Hai said.
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NATO will roll out “concrete ways” to accelerate Ukraine’s eventual membership in the Atlantic alliance during a summit next week in Washington. The summit will also address top security concerns amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching has the story, narrated by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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washington — Russian courts last month issued arrest warrants for three journalists who are in exile, in a move that analysts say is designed to harass critics outside the country’s borders.

A Moscow court on June 17 ordered the arrests of Ekaterina Fomina and Roman Anin on charges of spreading what the Kremlin views as false information about the Russian military.

In a separate case on June 27, a court issued an arrest warrant for Farida Kurbangaleyeva on charges of justifying terrorism and spreading what Moscow views as false information about the Russian military.

Kurbangaleyeva has reported for Russian and international channels and runs a YouTube channel where she interviews Ukrainian and Russian politicians, according to reports.

The case involving Fomina stems from a 2022 documentary she worked on at the investigative outlet IStories, which Anin founded. In the documentary, a Russian soldier confessed to killing a Ukrainian civilian.

“If you’re openly speaking against the current Russian regime, you can’t be safe anywhere,” Fomina told VOA. “We can’t say that we can continue our normal life.”

Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has stepped up repressive tactics against journalists inside and outside the country, say watchdogs. And while arrests in absentia are less severe than other forms of harassment that Moscow is accused of carrying out, like poisoning and surveillance, experts say they’re still a cog in the transnational repression machine.

Such warrants serve to both intimidate exiled journalists and signal to Russia’s domestic audience that criticism is not tolerated, according to Grady Vaughan of Freedom House in Washington.

“It does send the message that just because this person left Russia doesn’t mean we forgot about them,” Vaughn told VOA.

Russia is among at least 26 governments that have targeted journalists and critics overseas over the past decade, according to a 2023 report by Freedom House.

Karol Luczka, who covers Eastern Europe at the International Press Institute, believes the practice may be part of an effort “to satisfy on-paper internal management demands for a certain amount of repressed journalists, activists and other dissenting figures within a given time frame.”

Luczka mentioned that on Friday evenings, for example, Russia’s Ministry of Justice typically adds four or five names — often including a journalist — to the country’s list of so-called “foreign agents.”

Arrest warrants can also “contribute to discrediting journalists among [Russia’s] own population,” said Luczka, who is based in Vienna.

Russia’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Earlier this year, Fomina spoke with VOA about the psychological toll of starting over in new cities and the legal threats that she has faced for more than six months.

The Russian journalist has lived in Europe since 2022 but she won’t publicly say where she’s based out of fear that Russian authorities may surveil her.

One of the hardest realizations for Fomina is that the arrest warrant will pose limitations on where she can safely travel — and report from — over concerns that certain governments could extradite her to Russia.

“I used to be an independent journalist, very flexible, very mobile, ready to fly in one hour if something happened,” she said. “Now, I’m really limited, and I can’t go to many countries.”

Fomina, who now works at the exiled Russian outlet TV Rain, said she’s concerned that the action might make it harder for her to find sources in Russia who are willing to speak with her.

She expects that a court will eventually try and convict her in absentia. Despite that, she remains undeterred.

“I truly believe that we can’t be silent,” she said. “I’m standing on my values.”

 
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paris — France on Wednesday expelled an Iranian suspected of influence peddling on behalf of Tehran and having links to the Revolutionary Guard’s ideological army, his lawyer and Iranian officials said.

The deportation of Bashir Biazar, reportedly a former senior figure in state television in Iran, frustrated Paris-based activists who last month filed a torture complaint against him.

Biazar had been held in administrative detention since the beginning of June and was subject to a deportation order from the French interior ministry.

Mohammad Mahdi Rahimi, the head of public relations for the office of the Iranian president, wrote on X that Biazar “has been released and is on his way back to his homeland.”

He said Biazar had been “illegally arrested and imprisoned in France a few weeks ago.”

But a representative of the French interior ministry, speaking at a hearing earlier Wednesday, said Biazar was an “agent of influence, an agitator who promotes the views of the Islamic Republic of Iran and, more worryingly, harasses opponents of the regime.”

The representative accused Biazar of filming journalists from Iranian opposition media in September in front of the Iranian consulate in Paris after an arson attack on the building.

French authorities also accused him of posting messages on social networks in connection with the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza in which he denounced “Zionist dogs.”

During the hearing, his lawyer Rachid Lemoudaa said that the expulsion order was based on assumptions and that his client’s comments fell within the scope of “freedom of expression.”

“I have never been made aware of any threat whatsoever” posed by Biazar, he added.

Biazar has been described by the London-based Iran International television channel as a former official for Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

Iranian state media have described him as a “cultural figure.”

The case has emerged at a time of heightened tensions between Paris and Tehran, with three French citizens, described by France as “state hostages,” still imprisoned in Iran.

A fourth French detainee, Louis Arnaud, held in Iran since September 2022, was suddenly released last month.

Activist group Iran Justice and victims of human rights violations filed the torture complaint against Biazar last month in Paris.

It accuses Biazar of complicity in torture because of his past work with IRIB, describing him as a former director of production there.

The complaint referred to the regular broadcasts by Iranian state television of statements by, and even interviews with, Iranian or foreign prisoners, which activists regard as forced confessions.

“It is incomprehensible … that no legal proceedings have been initiated” against Biazar, Chirinne Ardakani, the Paris-based lawyer behind the complaint, told AFP.

She said there were “serious indications” implicating Biazar “in the production, recording and broadcasting of forced confessions obtained clearly under torture.”

“Nothing is clear in this case,” she added.

The French citizens still held in Iran are Cecile Kohler, a teacher, and her partner Jacques Paris, detained since May 2022, and another man identified only as Olivier.

Kohler appeared on Iranian television in October 2022 giving comments activists said amounted to a forced confession.

Amnesty International describes Kohler as “arbitrarily detained … amidst mounting evidence Iran’s authorities are holding her hostage to compel specific action[s] by French authorities.”
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Turkey’s bid to join the BRICS trading group is likely a topic discussed between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the bid has Erdogan playing a delicate balancing act in his relations with both Washington and Moscow.
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