Tunisia sees 26 candidates for lively presidential election

September 13, 2019

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia is holding a presidential election this weekend and among the 26 contenders are a jailed media tycoon, two prime ministers and a little-known Islamist with a big voter base.

The first-round election Sunday is seen as key to securing the North African nation's young democracy as it struggles with economic troubles and Islamic extremism. Accusations of smear campaigns and corruption have been tossed around ahead of the election, which is being held to replace Tunisia's democratically elected leader, who died in office in July.

With so many candidates, there's no clear front-runner, although Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, jailed media magnate Nabil Karoui and Abdelfattah Mourou of the moderate Islamist party Ennahdha are getting attention.

It's only the second democratic presidential election that Tunisia has held since its "jasmine revolution" in 2011 unleashed the Arab Spring protests.

Tunisia prepares for president's funeral, new elections

July 26, 2019

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia is inviting world leaders to attend the funeral for its president who died in office and preparing a new election to replace him. The next election was originally set for Nov. 17, but is being rescheduled after President Beji Caid Essebsi died in office Thursday at 92.

Tunisia's first democratically elected leader, Essebsi won the presidency after Tunisia's 2011 Arab Spring uprising. The electoral commission proposed holding the first round of a presidential vote Sept. 15, and is meeting Friday to confirm the date.

A national funeral ceremony for Essebsi is being held Saturday, and Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said several foreign leaders are expected to attend, without listing them. The White House expressed condolences for Essebsi, as did the U.N. and countries around the world.

Duterte's allies dominate Senate race, shut out opposition

May 22, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president's allies won a majority of the 12 Senate seats at stake in the midterm elections, official results showed Wednesday, while the opposition's shutout heralds a stronger grip on power by a leader accused of massive human rights violations.

Elections officials proclaimed the winners after finishing the official count of the May 13 elections overnight. The tally had been delayed by glitches in automated counting machines. President Rodrigo Duterte backed eight winning aspirants to half of the seats in the 24-member Senate, including his former national police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, who enforced the president's crackdown on illegal drugs in a campaign that left thousands of suspects dead and drew international condemnation.

Last week's vote has been seen as a gauge of public support for Duterte, who is midway through the single six-year term Philippine presidents are allowed under the constitution. His anti-drug crackdown, unorthodox leadership style, combative and sexist joke-laden outbursts, and contentious embrace of China have been the hallmarks of his presidency.

"Do I look like a rubberstamp?" Senator-elect Bong Go, a longtime Duterte aide, replied when reporters asked him about concerns that the new Senate would be beholden to Duterte. But he stressed he would back the president's war against criminality, corruption and illegal drugs and would support a bill to reimpose the death penalty for heinous crimes and drug trafficking. Go said Duterte has not given any illegal orders to him or anyone he supervised.

Duterte's three children also won races for mayor, vice mayor and a congressional seat representing their southern home region of Davao city. Voters also decided congressional, gubernatorial, mayoral and city and township races. Nearly 75 percent of more than 63 million registered Filipinos cast their votes in a strong turnout.

Analysts say many Filipinos seem more open to authoritarianism due to failures of past liberal leaders. Such a mindset has helped the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos make a political comeback, the latest example being his daughter, Imee Marcos, one of the winning Senate candidates who was endorsed by Duterte.

The president has aimed for stronger leverage in the traditionally more independent Senate to bolster his legislative agenda. That includes the return of the death penalty, lowering the age for criminal liability below the current 15, and revising the 1987 constitution primarily to allow a shift to a federal form of government, a proposal some critics fear may be a cover to remove term limits.

During the campaign, Go said he felt Filipinos were not ready yet to support a shift to a federal form of government partly because of a lack of adequate information campaign about its benefits. "It's a longshot and it'll be difficult for us to work for the approval of federalism at this time," Go said.

"My no. 1 agenda is the reimposition of the death penalty for drug trafficking," dela Rosa said in a separate news conference, adding the drug menace remains troubling despite Duterte's crackdown. The handful of opposition senators whose seats were not up for election and the independents who won office last week could potentially offset the strong majority Duterte's allies hold in the new upper chamber. At least seven senators are needed to block amendments to the constitution, which was passed with safeguards against dictatorship in 1987, a year after Marcos was ousted by an army-backed "people power" revolt.

Opposition aspirants, who were set back by a lack of funding and other campaign issues, considered the Senate the last bastion of checks and balances in the Philippine national government given the solid dominance of Duterte's loyalists in the lower House of Representatives.

Unofficial tally shows Duterte allies winning big in polls

May 14, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — President Rodrigo Duterte's allies appeared to have overwhelming leads in elections for the Philippine Senate, one of the opposition's last bulwarks against a brash populist leader accused of massive human rights violations.

Preliminary results comprising 94 percent of returns from Monday's midterm elections showed at least eight candidates endorsed by Duterte were leading the races for 12 seats in the 24-member Senate. Official Commission on Election results are expected to be declared in about a week.

Those leading include Duterte's former national police chief Ronald dela Rosa, who enforced the president's crackdown on illegal drugs, a campaign that's left thousands of suspects dead and drawn international condemnation.

Monday's vote is seen as a gauge of public support for Duterte, who is midway through the single six-year term Philippine presidents are allowed under the constitution. His deadly anti-drug crackdown, unorthodox leadership style, combative and sexist joke-laden outbursts, and contentious embrace of China have been the hallmarks of his presidency.

Duterte's three children were also expected to win the races for mayor, vice mayor and a congressional seat representing their southern home region of Davao city. The 74-year-old maverick leader first carved a reputation as an extra-tough mayor, who hunted drug addicts and criminals on a Harley Davidson motorcycle and carried the nickname, Duterte Harry, after the gunslinging Clint Eastwood film character.

"Undoubtedly, the Duterte magic spelled the difference," presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a news conference. "The overwhelming majority of the electorate have responded to the call of the president to support those whom he said would help pass laws supportive of his goal to uplift the masses of our people and give them comfortable lives."

Manila-based analyst Ronald Holmes, however, said that except for dela Rosa and Duterte's longtime aide, Bong Go, who entered politics for the first time without their own established bases of support, other leading administration senatorial contenders earned votes based on their own political track records.

The flipside of Duterte's perceived endorsment strength was the weakness of the opposition ticket and its campaign, said Holmes, who heads Pulse Asia, an independent pollster that predicted the dominance of Duterte's senatorial bets.

Another analyst, Richard Heydarian, said many Filipinos seem more open to authoritarianism due to failures of past liberal leaders from long-established political clans. Such a mindset has helped the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos make a political comeback, the latest through the senatorial bid of one of his daughters, Imee Marcos, who was endorsed by Duterte and whose vote tally in the unofficial results indicated a victory.

Duterte, who has shown little tolerance for critics specially those who question his anti-drug campaign, aimed for stronger leverage in the traditionally more independent Senate to bolster his legislative agenda.

That includes the return of the death penalty, lowering the age for criminal liability below the current 15 years old, and revising the country's 1987 constitution primarily to allow a shift to a federal form of government, a proposal some critics fear may be a cover to remove term limits.

Last year, opposition senators moved to block proposed bills they feared would undermine civil liberties. The handful of incumbent opposition senators whose seats were not up for election could potentially get backing from leading independent aspirants to veto Duterte's emerging majority in the upper chamber. At least seven senators are needed to block any proposal by Duterte's camp to revise the country's constitution, which was passed with anti-dictatorial safeguards in 1987, a year after Marcos was ousted by an army-backed "people power" revolt.

"While we expect dissent to continue, we hope that that same be demonstrated with fairness and within the bounds of the law, as well as with deference to the leaders duly chosen by the electorate," Panelo said.

Aside from the drug killings, Duterte's gutter language and what nationalists say is a policy of appeasement toward China that may undermine Philippine territorial claims in the South China Sea have also been the cause of protests and criticism.

Opposition aspirants consider the Senate the last bastion of checks and balances given the solid dominance of Duterte's loyalists in the lower House of Representatives. Voters in Monday's elections made their choices for 18,000 congressional and local posts, including 81 governors, 1,634 mayors and more than 13,500 city and town councilors in 81 provinces. The elections were relatively untroubled, despite pockets of violence in southern Mindanao region, which is under martial law as government forces hunt down Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.

Duterte allies seek to dominate Philippine midterm polls

May 12, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's name is not on the ballot, but Monday's midterm elections are seen as a crucial referendum on his rise to power with a brutal crackdown on illegal drugs, unorthodox style and contentious embrace of China.

Nearly 62 million Filipinos have registered to choose among 43,500 candidates vying for about 18,000 congressional and local posts in one of Asia's most rambunctious democracies. The most crucial race is for 12 seats in the 24-member Senate, which Duterte wants to fill with allies to bolster his legislative agenda. That includes the return of the death penalty, lowering the age for criminal liability of child offenders and revising the country's 1987 constitution primarily to allow a shift to a federal form of government, a proposal some critics fear may be a cover to remove term limits.

Opposition aspirants consider the Senate the last bastion of checks and balances given the solid dominance of Duterte's loyalists in the lower House of Representatives. Last year, opposition senators moved to block proposed bills they feared would undermine civil liberties.

Duterte's politics and key programs, including his drive against illegal drugs that has left more than 5,200 mostly urban poor suspects dead, have been scrutinized on the campaign trail and defended by close allies running for the Senate, led by his former national Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa, who first enforced the crackdown when the president took office in mid-2016.

Aside from the drug killings, Duterte's gutter language and what nationalists say is a policy of appeasement toward China that may undermine Philippine territorial claims in the South China Sea, have also been hounded by protests and criticism.

"This is very much a referendum on his three years of very disruptive yet very popular presidency," Manila-based analyst Richard Heydarian said. "Are we going to affirm or are we going to reject the 2016 elections? Was that an aberration and historical accident that we have to fix, or is this actually the beginning of the kind of new era or new normal?"

A May 3-6 survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia showed 11 of Duterte-backed senatorial candidates and four other aspirants in the winning circle, including only one from the opposition. The survey of 1,800 respondents had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Duterte himself remains hugely popular, topping ratings surveys with about 70 percent approval. While the election survey strongly indicated a favorable outcome for Duterte, there was a probability that the result could still change given the considerable number of undecided voters and narrow leads of some candidates.

Divided, cash-strapped and without a unified leader, opposition aspirants are fighting an uphill battle to capture the few number of Senate seats they need to stymie any hostile legislation. Many Filipinos seem more open to authoritarianism due to past failures of liberal leaders, Heydarian said. Such a mindset has helped the family of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos to make a political comeback.

Among many dirt-poor Filipinos, however, the concern is day-to-day survival. "Martial law is scary but we're more afraid of dying in hunger," Arturo Veles, a jobless father of six, told The Associated Press.

Wiping away tears, Veles spoke outside his family's shanty in the humid squalor atop Smokey Mountain, a long-closed dumpsite in Manila's Tondo slum that remains a symbol of the country's appalling poverty. His asthma-stricken wife, Agnes, said that not one congressional candidate had treaded the fly-strewn and trash-littered path to their cluster of crumbling huts, probably because of the smell and filth.

Arturo Veles said the poor always suffer the most, indicating he and his wife would not vote for administration candidates. "They only see the poor, those using and selling drugs. That's the only thing they see, not the depth of our poverty."

Village guard Jose Mondejar, who lives in a Tondo community heavily festooned with elections streamers and posters, said Duterte's anti-crime campaign has reduced daytime robberies by drug addicts of passing cargo trucks by about 70 percent in his neighborhood.

"Criminals once even opened fire on our village hall because we were cracking down on them," he said. "Now you can walk around here without being pestered. Duterte's campaign has worked."

Spain repeats election as Catalan crisis boosts far right

November 08, 2019

MADRID (AP) — Spain is holding its fourth general election in as many years — and the second this year — amid voter distrust and a renewed Catalan independence bid that has bolstered the far right. The latest polls in Spanish media hint at a close finish between the blocs on the right and left, suggesting that Sunday's vote — amid increasing fragmentation and polarization — won't help dispel the country's political stalemate.

Pedro Sánchez's Socialists appeared poised to again win the most seats in Parliament but fewer even than they won in April, when the interim prime minister was unable to get the support of his left-wing rivals to keep his party in power.

Repeated elections make it even harder to win over voters, said political analyst Pablo Simón, a professor at Carlos III University. "The public opinion is angry at the electoral repeat, with record levels of discontent toward the political class and great pessimism over how the economy will perform next year," he said.

The incumbent is up against five other men for the job as prime minister. In recent days, he has tried to lure undecided and centrist voters by saying he will focus his next term on economic issues and by toughening his stand on Catalan separatists.

He has, for example, promised to bring back prison terms for those who hold banned referendums for independence, overturning a previous Socialist position. "If we want a strong government against precariousness and blockade, a progressive government against the extreme right, and a moderate government against the extremists, here is the Socialist party," Sánchez said Friday, wrapping up an eight-day campaign in Barcelona.

The Catalan capital has been hit by a wave of mass protests, at times violent, after nine leaders of the wealthy region's separatist movement were sentenced to prison for an attempt to break away from Spain two years ago.

The turbulence has fueled support in the rest of Spain for Sánchez's opposition — the conservative Popular Party and the far-right Vox, whose leader ended the campaign calling for voters to support his "patriotic alternative" to oust the Socialist leader.

Even if Sánchez succeeds in rallying support from the anti-austerity United We Can and its new splinter, More Country, a Socialist cabinet likely will need either the backing of small regional parties or for the right-wing opposition to abstain.

The eurozone's No. 4 economy has been functioning without a stable government since mid-2018, when Sánchez ousted the graft-tainted conservatives in a parliamentary confidence vote. The center-left minority government then crumbled in less than a year after losing the parliamentary support of regionalist parties.

Sánchez's Socialists went from 85 to 123 seats in the late April election. But he needed support from an absolute majority, or 176 of 350 lawmakers, and a falling out with United We Can leader Pablo Iglesias left him without enough votes.

The latest polls show both of those left-wing parties could lose ground. The Popular Party, meanwhile, is recovering after losing more than half of its parliamentary representation in April, falling to 66 seats. Polls show the conservatives could win more seats in this election. But leader Pablo Casado's chances to form government are lower than Sánchez's, given that the party's natural ally, the center-right Citizens, isn't expected to do well.

"We cannot divide efforts, we cannot fragment all the momentum of change that Spain has," Casado said before some 3,000 followers gathered for the final rally at the Madrid bullring. But the party benefiting most so far from the Catalan crisis has been Vox, with its mix of Spanish nationalism and populism.

In addition to calling for deposing Catalonia of its self-government powers and outlawing regional separatist parties, Vox has stepped up its anti-immigration rhetoric. The party has released campaign videos linking migrants with criminality, and its leaders have held rallies outside centers where authorities care for unaccompanied teenage migrants.

Vox won 24 seats in April, less than what polls had predicted but still an unprecedented victory for the far right, which had been on the fringes of the political mainstream since the end of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship in 1975. This time, surveys predict Vox will win at least 40 seats in the Congress of Deputies.

The party now supports minority coalition governments of the Popular Party and Citizens in the regions of Madrid, Andalusia and Murcia, and its support was key for many other local governments, said Bonnie Field, a professor on Global Studies at Bentley University.

"If the right parties pulled out a surprise victory on Sunday, this arrangement would certainly be on the table," Field said. Turnout is expected to be low in Sunday's election, something that generally has benefited right-wing parties. But she noted that the Socialists succeeded in mobilizing voters in April by stirring the "fear of the radical right and the possibility of a right-wing government that depended on them."

"We'll have to see if that works again," she added.

Keir Starmer picked to lead UK Labor amid virus crisis

April 04, 2020

LONDON (AP) — Lawyer and lawmaker Keir Starmer was elected leader of Britain's main opposition Labor Party on Saturday by a decisive margin, after a contest thrown into turmoil by the coronavirus outbreak.

A special conference to announce the winner was scrapped when the nation went into lockdown, and the news came in a press release accompanied by a pre-recorded acceptance speech. Starmer, 57, comes from Labor's center-left wing, and his election marks a shift from the more strongly socialist course set by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.

Starmer acknowledged that he was becoming leader of the opposition “at a moment like none other in our lifetime” and promised to “engage constructively" with the Conservative government to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The party said Starmer won on the first round of voting with 56.2% of all the votes cast, well ahead of rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy. Angela Rayner was chosen as deputy leader in a vote of Labor’s half a million members.

A former U.K. chief prosecutor named after Labor Party co-founder Keir Hardie, Starmer faces the challenge of reuniting a party deeply divided over the policies and legacy of Corbyn. The outgoing leader was elected party chief in 2015 on a wave of grassroots enthusiasm, and took Labor sharply to the left, proposing the nationalization of major industries and a huge increase in public spending.

Corbyn also faced allegations that he had allowed anti-Semitism to fester in the party. He is a longtime supporter of the Palestinians and critic of Israel. Starmer said “anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party."

“On behalf of the Labor Party, I am sorry, and I will tear out this poison by its roots,” he said. Corbyn drew thousands of new activists to the party, but lost two successive elections in 2017 and 2019. In December’s election, Labor suffered its worst result since 1935, as the Conservatives won in working-class areas that had voted Labour for decades.

Labor has now been out of office for a decade that has brought the country three Conservative prime ministers — David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Starmer said the party had “a mountain to climb” before it could return to government.

His election was welcomed by Labor moderates such as London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who said he was “delighted.” But the Corbyn-supporting grassroots group Momentum said it would hold Starmer to account. It said “his mandate is to build on Jeremy’s transformative vision.”

Starmer has been the party’s spokesman on Brexit, the issue that has consumed British politics for four years. But the country’s departure from the European Union, which became official Jan. 31, has been pushed into the background by the pandemic sweeping the globe.

Like many other countries, Britain is in effective lockdown, with schools, bars, restaurants and many businesses shut to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus. A Dec. 31 deadline set by the government to forge a new relationship with the EU on trade and a host of other issues looks increasingly hard to meet.

The rules of politics have been upended. Many policies that Conservatives dismissed as socialist follies have been introduced, if only temporarily, by Johnson’s government in an effort to keep people and businesses afloat until the pandemic is over. The government is handing out cash to small businesses and made many more people eligible for welfare benefits.

Meanwhile, Parliament is currently on an extended recess, and it is unclear when lawmakers will return. Starmer faces a delicate challenge: How to hold the government to account during a national emergency while also supporting the fight against the virus.

Johnson announced Saturday that he was inviting leaders of opposition parties to a briefing with him and the government’s top medical and scientific advisers on the fight against COVID-19. “As party leaders, we have a duty to work together at this time of national emergency,” Johnson wrote.

Starmer said he would not engage in “opposition for opposition's sake” but would criticize the government when necessary. “We will shine a torch on critical issues and where we see mistakes or faltering government or things not happening as quickly as they should we’ll challenge that and call that out," he said.