Turkey: Erdogan wins another term as President

Chairman of Turkey's Supreme Election Council (YSK) announced that the incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been re-elected as the country's leader.

Yener said that Erdogan won Turkey's presidency over opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the second-round runoff vote.

He pointed out that Erdogan won the race with 52.14%, while Kilicdaroglu got 47.86% of the votes after counting 99.43% of the votes.

In a speech in Istanbul late Sunday, President Erdogan said Turkey’s 85 million-strong citizens are the winners in the national elections that concluded today.

More than 64.1 million people were registered to vote, including over 1.92 million who earlier cast their ballots at overseas polling stations.

Nearly 192,000 ballot boxes were set up for voters across Turkey.

On May 14, no candidate won the required 50% in the first round, triggering Sunday’s runoff, although Erdogan took the lead with 49.52%.​​​​​​

On that day, Erdogan’s People’s Alliance also won a majority in parliament.

 

 

Singapore: Countdown for Presidential Election

Amid global uncertainty and domestic anxiety over the cost of living, the next president of Singapore must be a unifying figure in whom Singaporeans have confidence. The job of the head of state has not changed much over the years, but people have come to expect more.

Observers say the election, which is called on a regular six-year cycle, will likely be held close to the deadline in September 2023, after the National Day celebrations – and after the National Day Rally speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, usually in the second half of August.

This would be a time when issues and challenges confronting Singapore, as well as a sense of national identity and unity, would be at the forefront of people’s minds.

Dr Gillian Koh, deputy director of research at the Institute of Policy Studies, said that the conditions today are similar to those in 2011. 

Then, people felt that the world had seen an end to the “long boom” post-World War II and markets were anticipating another crisis in the United States and Europe which could affect Asia.

She noted that at the time, the candidate who eventually became president – former deputy prime minister Tony Tan Keng Yam – said he envisaged that the Government would make contingency plans, and gave the assurance that he would protect the national reserves with great care.

Similarly today, Singapore and the world face a tangled web of challenges – from US-China rivalry and the Russia-Ukraine war to disruptions to the global trade order – that PM Lee laid out in his speech during the debate on the President’s Address in April.

Hence, the upcoming election will involve choosing a candidate with experience, and who has a calming and steady temperament in crises, said Dr Koh.

National University of Singapore (NUS) sociologist Tan Ern Ser said it is not the president’s responsibility to directly address problems such as the economy and inflation, or geopolitical challenges, as these are the responsibilities of the prime minister and his Cabinet.

Instead, he said, the president should rally Singaporeans to stay socially cohesive and resilient amid external or internal threats, while keeping an eye on how the reserves are being used.

He added that the president could also use the prestige and symbolic power of the presidency to champion worthy causes that would enhance the well-being and unity of Singaporeans.

Dr Leong Chan-Hoong, head of policy development, evaluation and data analytics at research consultancy Kantar Public, said that in a politically divided world, the next president should also ideally have good working knowledge of foreign policy and international relations.

By design, the president has no executive, policymaking role. This remains the prerogative of the elected government that commands the majority in Parliament. 

Does it mean, therefore, that the president’s role is simply rubber-stamping? 

President Halimah Yacob’s tenure has shown otherwise, said political analyst and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) associate lecturer Felix Tan.

He said there has been some evolution in the “soft power aspect” of the role, with the President showing that she can still be involved in engaging with Singaporeans and championing certain social causes.

For example, she has spoken up on violence against women and the need to ensure a broader and more open meritocracy for all Singaporeans.

Courtesy: The Straits Times

Iranian President issues stern warning to Israel

Iranian President Ayatollah Seyed Ebrahim Raisi has issued a strong warning against any Israeli move to harm Iran, making sure that his country is aware of Israel’s possible plans to take the battle into Iran. 

The timing and the venue from which the warning was issued could not be more meaningful. President Raisi made the remarks during a military parade held on the occasion of the Iranian Army Day. Flanked by Army generals in an elevated stand, Raisi told parading troops that Iran will respond to any Israeli aggression against Iran in Israel’s depth. 

Underlining that Iran will never start a war, but will face any aggression with a remorseful and decisive response; President Raisi announced the high readiness of the country's military forces and the high intelligence elite of these forces in the face of regional and international developments.

He asserted that the slightest movement of the enemy will not be hidden from the sharp eyes of Iran’s armed forces, noting, “The Zionist regime (Israel) that is seeking to normalize relations with some regional countries must know that the slightest move it makes will not be hidden from the sharp eyes and intelligence of the Armed Forces and intelligent forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Stressing that any movement of the Zionist regime against Iran will lead to a decisive response from the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Raisi warned the leaders of the regime, “Beware that the great and formidable power of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will not leave you as you are for a second.”

This is the highest-level warning after the Iranian missile strike in March against a “Mossad headquarters” in Erbil, northern Iraq, which was reportedly a response to a previously announced Israeli drone attack in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah.

Iran’s Al-Alam news television said the missile attack, launched by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), came in response to a recent Israeli drone attack in the Mahidasht region in western Iran.

Little is known about the Mahidasht strike but it apparently marked a significant stage in what Israelis call the “Octopus doctrine,” which happens to be a brainchild of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.  

The doctrine means that Israel should take the battle to Iran instead of fighting Iran’s allies across the West Asia region. Bennett outlined the doctrine at the Herzliya Conference in May 2018 when he was education minister. 

“While we’re shedding blood fighting their tentacles, the octopus’s head is lounging in its chair enjoying itself,” he said of Iran, adding that it was time for Israel “to aim at the head of the octopus and not its tentacles.”

Bennett reiterated the doctrine when he became defense minister, saying in February 2020 that “when the tentacles of the octopus strike you, do not fight only against the tentacle, but suffocate its head, likewise with Iran.”

But Bennett has largely failed in carrying out his doctrine due to Iran’s vigilance. Israel was unable to mount a significant attack inside Iran. And the Mahidasht attack was so minor in its effect that Israel was unwilling to highlight it at the media level just as it does with the attacks that it does not claim responsibility for. 

Anyway, Iran seems more vigilant than ever vis-a-vis Israel’s moves. Iran has long said it is watching all the steps Israel makes in the region whether through its new allies or directly. And has the will to respond to any aggressive move, as Raisi said.

Crisis in Belarus and role being played by Russia, European Union and United States

After the presidential election in Belarus on August 9, 2020, mass demonstrations broke out spontaneously throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets protesting against widespread election fraud. 

These protests soon met with sustained, brutal suppression. The masses were eventually driven from the streets, yet the resistance against the Belarusian dictatorship persists to this day.

It is clear that Alyaksandr Lukashenka lost the popular legitimacy he had enjoyed for many, if not most, of the last 26 years. Why did this Belarusian revolution fail to succeed? The responses of Russia, the European Union, and the United States to the 2020–21 protest movement had a decisive impact on the pro-democracy uprising in Belarus and will continue to be crucial for how the situation in Belarus unfolds in the future.

The 2020–21 Belarusian protest movement to date can be divided into three main phases: violent repressions; temporary cease-fire; and regime retaliation. The next phase of the Belarusian crisis will be one of power transition. This transition will likely happen after the constitutional referendum scheduled for February 27, 2022. The current draft of the new Belarusian constitution proposes several crucial changes for the political system in Belarus.

First, the amendments aim to weaken the powers of the Belarusian parliament and to strengthen the role of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly (ABPA). This body which under the present constitution does not have governing status would be endowed with wide-ranging powers and would consist of 1,200 delegates loyal to the regime. The ABPA would have the power to approve Belarus’s foreign and security policy, propose changes to the constitution, draft laws, select judges of the top courts, and have other functions. The acting president would automatically become a member of the ABPA and potentially serve as its chair, if elected by the other delegates. By strengthening the powers of the ABPA, Lukashenka is trying to create an alternative center of power which would allow him to stay in the Belarusian political arena even if he decides to step down as a president.

Second, the constitutional amendments envisage the president’s immunity from prosecution and prohibit anyone who temporarily left the country in the last 20 years from running for presidency. This provision directly targets members of Belarusian political opposition who were forced to live into exile to avoid repressions. This amendment deprives the Belarusian opposition of the opportunity to challenge the ruling regime directly inside Belarus, and provides additional guarantees for the safety of Lukashenka and his entourage. 

Finally, the new constitutional provisions also grant the president immunity from prosecution and introduce a limit of two five-year presidential terms in office. However, since these restrictions would only apply going forward, Lukashenka could potentially stay in power until 2035.

Lukashenka has not yet declared whether he will step down after the referendum. The current political instability in the region, including the January protests in Kazakhstan and the escalating tensions between Russian and Ukraine, increase the chances that Lukashenka will stay in power after the referendum.

In either case, the West will not cease pressure on the Belarusian regime and will continue to support those fighting for democratic reforms there. For its part, Russia will continue to use the vulnerability of Lukashenka and his close entourage to increase its political, economic, and military presence in Belarus.

Russia, the EU and the US have all played an important role in the evolution of the 2020–21 Belarusian post-electoral crises. The Belarusian mass protests failed to succeed in August 2020, thanks both to Russia’s significant support of the Lukashenka regime and a lack of quick and comprehensive response from the EU and the US.

However, the Ryanair incident in May 2021 catalyzed increased Western action against the Lukashenka regime. It resulted in greater coordination between the EU and the US and led to the passage of several packages of targeted sanctions. Hard sanctions are likely to continue to serve as the baseline policy towards the Lukashenka regime in the near future for the EU and the US, while Russia will likely continue exerting its influence in pursuit of greater political, economic, and military integration with Belarus.  Lukashenka’s regime has a potential to maintain political control in the country in the short-term perspective. However, in the long run it will have to face the irreversible transformations happening in the Belarusian society and step on a path of political transition.

Chinese President’s most audacious geopolitical bet

A head-spinning series of seemingly disparate moves over recent months add up to nothing less than a generational wager that Chinese President, Xi Jinping  can produce the world’s dominant power for the foreseeable future by doubling down on his state-controlled economy, party-disciplined society, nationalistic propaganda, and far-reaching global influence campaigns.

With each week, Xi raises the stakes further, from narrowing seemingly mundane personal freedoms like karaoke bars or a teenager’s permitted time for online gaming to three hours weekly to the multi million US dollar investor hit from his increased controls on China’s biggest technology companies and their foreign listings.  

It is only in the context of Xi’s increased repressions at home and expanded ambitions abroad that one can fully understand Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision this week to enter a new defense pact, which he called “a forever agreement,” with the United States and the United Kingdom.

Much of the news focus was either on the eight nuclear-powered submarines that Australia would deploy or the spiraling French outrage that their own deal to sell diesel submarines to Australia was undermined by what French officials called a “betrayal” and a “stab in the back” from close allies. France went so far as to recall its ambassador to the United States for the first time in the history of the NATO alliance.

All that noise should not distract from the more significant message of the ground-breaking agreement. Prime Minister Morrison saw more strategic advantage and military capability from the US-UK alignment in a rapidly shifting Indo-Pacific atmosphere, replacing his previous stance of trying to balance US and Chinese interests.

“The relatively benign environment we’ve enjoyed for many decades in our region is behind us,” Morrison said on Thursday. “We have entered a new era with challenges for Australia and our partners.”

For China, that new era has many faces: a rapid rollback of economic liberalization, a crackdown on individual freedoms, an escalation of global influence efforts and military buildup, all in advance of the 20th national party congress in October 2022, where Xi hopes to seal his place in history and his continued rule.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the world’s leading China experts, points to Xi’s “bewildering array” of economic policy decisions in a recent speech as president of the Asia Society.

They started last October with the shocking suspension of Alibaba financial affiliate Ant Group’s planned initial public offering in Hong Kong and Shanghai, clearly aimed at Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. Then in April, Chinese regulators imposed a $3 billion fine on Alibaba for “monopolistic behavior.”

In July, China’s cyber regulator removed ride-hailing giant Didi from app stores, while an investigative unit launched an examination of the company’s compliance with Chinese data-security laws.

Then this month, China’s Transport Ministry regulators summoned senior executives from Didi, Meituan and nine other ride-hailing companies, ordering them to “rectify” their digital misconduct. The Chinese state then took an equity stake in ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and in Weibo, the micro-blogging platform.

Xi was ready to accept the estimated US$1.1 trillion cost in shareholder value wiped from China’s top six technology stocks alone between February and August. That doesn’t factor in further losses among the education, transportation, food delivery, entertainment and video gaming industries.

Less noticed have been a dizzying array of regulatory actions and policy moves whose sum purpose appears to be strengthening state control over, well, just about everything. 

“The best way to summarize it,” says Rudd, “is that Xi Jinping has decided that, in the overall balance between the roles of the state and the market in China, it is in the interests of the Party to pivot toward the state.” Xi is determined to transform modern China into a global great power, “but a great power in which the Chinese Communist Party nonetheless retains complete control.”

That means growing controls as well over the freedoms of its 1.4 billion citizens.

Xi has acted, for example, to restrict the video gaming of school-aged children to three hours a week, and he has banned private tutoring. Chinese regulators have ordered broadcasters to encourage masculinity and remove “sissy men,” or niang pao, from the airwaves. Regulators banned “American Idol”-style competitions and removed from the internet any mention of one of China’s wealthiest actresses, Zhao Wei.

“The orders have been sudden, dramatic and often baffling,” wrote Lily Kuo in the Washington Post. Jude Blanchette of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says, “This is not a sector-by-sector rectification; this is an entire economic, industry and structural rectification.”

At the same time, President Xi has launched a push to share the virtues and successes of the Chinese authoritarian model with the rest of the world. 

“Beijing seeks less to impose a Marxist-Leninist ideology on foreign societies than to legitimate and promote its own authoritarian system,” Charles Edel and David Shullman, the recently appointed director of the Atlantic Council’s new China Global Hub, wrote in “Foreign Affairs.” “The CCP doesn’t seek ideological conformity but rather power, security, and global influence for China and for itself.”

The authors detail China’s global efforts to not remake the world in its image, but rather “to make the world friendlier to its interests — and more welcoming to the rise of authoritarianism in general.”

Those measures include “spreading propaganda, expanding information operations, consolidating economic influence, and meddling in foreign political systems” with the ultimate goal of “hollowing out democratic institutions and norms within and between countries,” Edel and Shullman write.

Within President Xi’s bold bet lie two opportunities for the US and its allies.

The first is that Xi, by overreaching in his controls at home, will undo just the sorts of economic and societal liberalization China needs to succeed. At the same time, the world’s democracies, like Australia, are growing more willing to seek a common cause to address Beijing.

In the end, however, Xi’s concerted moves require an equally concerted response from the world’s democracies. The French-US crisis following the Australian defense deal this week provides just one example of how difficult that will be to achieve and sustain.

Isaac Herzog sworn in as President of Israel

Isaac Herzog was formally sworn in as the 11th President of Israel on Wednesday at the Knesset, replacing Reuven Rivlin. Herzog was sworn in using the same Bible used to swear in his father, Chaim Herzog, sixth President of Israel. The Bible belonged to the new president’s grandmother, Sarah.

Upon accepting the presidency, Herzog pledged to “lower the tone, reduce the flames, and calm things down” in Israel, despite the many divides in the Jewish, democratic state.

“I will set out to complete the task every morning to be the president for all,” Herzog said. “In normal times, this task would almost sound naive. Unfortunately, however, these are not normal times. These are days when statesmanship has been swept away by polarization; days in which the unifying ethos and the shared values are more fragile than ever.”

Herzog noted the two-and-a-half years of stormy election campaigns that followed one another, in what he called an unprecedented political crisis in the State of Israel.

“It has been a crisis which, as the history of modern times teaches us, has managed in the past to destroy nations that were much more ancient and established than the young State of Israel, which is only 73 years old,” he said.

Herzog said he would “embark on a journey between the lines of the rifts and breaks of Israeli society” and “aim to be a unifier amid the differences, the bridge between the tears.”

In his final speech to the Knesset, Rivlin broke out in tears and warned Herzog that nothing in Israel can be taken for granted. Herzog thanked Rivlin for his years of service in his address.

“You knew how to make your love of this country infectious for its sons and daughters,” Herzog told Rivlin. “You represented Israel with great respect in the family of nations, including during the last month of your tenure. You painfully identified the breaking points in Israeli society. You placed a mirror before us, even if its reflection was not always pleasing for all of us.”

Herzog wished the new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett success.

“There are many complex arguments in Israel that focus on internal elements,” he said. “This is the beauty of Israeli democracy. I am confident that this entire body wants you to succeed. May it be the success of the entire State of Israel.”

But Herzog also made a point of wishing well to the opposition, under Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom he ran unsuccessfully for prime minister.

“There is no democracy without opposition,” Herzog said. “Political realities called me to serve in the position you are now in a number of times. This time, it has fallen on your shoulders. I am confident that you will fulfill your service to the people from the opposition in a statesmanlike, responsible and relevant manner.”

Prospects of US joining JCPOA getting bleaker

According to an AP report, Biden administration officials are insisting that the election of a hard-liner as Iran’s president won’t affect reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. But, there are signs that prospects of concluding a deal are getting bleaker.

Optimism that a deal was imminent faded as the talks ended on Sunday without tangible indications of significant progress. On Monday, in his first public comments since the vote, incoming Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi rejected a key Biden goal of expanding on the nuclear deal if negotiators are able to salvage the old one.

Raisi is likely to raise the Iran’s demands for sanctions relief in return for Iranian compliance with the deal, as he himself is already subject to US human rights penalties.

“I don’t envy the Biden team,” said Karim Sadjapour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has advised multiple US administrations on Iran. “I think the administration now has a heightened sense of urgency to revise the deal before Raisi and a new hard-line team is inaugurated.”

President Joe Biden and his team have made the US return to the deal one of their top foreign policy priorities. The deal was one of President Barack Obama’s signature achievements; one that aides now serving in the Biden administration had helped negotiate and that Donald Trump repudiated and tried to dismantle as president.

Despite Raisi’s impending presidency, Biden administration officials insist prospects for reaching an agreement are unaltered. They argue that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who signed off the 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will make the final decision, regardless of who is president.

“The president’s view and our view is that the decision leader is the supreme leader,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. “That was the case before the election; it’s the case today; it will be the case probably moving forward.”

“Iran will have, we expect, the same supreme leader in August as it will have today, as it had before the elections, as it had in 2015 when the JCPOA was consummated for the first time,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

But hopes for substantial progress fizzled last week ahead of the Iranian election amid a flurry of speculation about the impact of the vote on the indirect talks between Iran and the US in Vienna. Diplomats and others familiar with the talks had thought the last round, the sixth, could produce at least a tangible result even if it fell short of a full deal.

Now, that round has ended and a seventh round has yet to be scheduled as Raisi, Iran’s conservative judiciary chief, brandished an absolute rejection of anything more than Iran’s bare minimum compliance with the 2015 agreement in exchange for a lifting all of US sanctions.

In his public comments Monday, Raisi brushed aside US calls for Iran to agree to follow-on discussions on expanding the initial nuclear deal to include its ballistic missile program and its support for regional groups that the US designates terrorist organizations.

“It’s nonnegotiable,” Raisi said’

Iran experts agree it will be a tough, if not impossible, for Biden to get Iran to go beyond the nuclear agreement.

“I’m very skeptical that once we’ve lifted the sanctions to get them to return they’ll feel any incentive to come back and negotiate more concessions,” Sadjapour said. “And, if we coerce them with sanctions to come back to the table, they’ll argue that we’ve abrogated our end of the nuclear deal again.”

Critics of the nuclear deal maintain that the administration has already given away too much in exchange for too little by signaling its desire to repudiate Trump’s repudiation of the nuclear deal. And, they say that even if Iran agrees to some sort of additional talks, the pledge will be meaningless.

“It was pretty obvious that the Iranians were never going to negotiate in good faith beyond the JCPOA,” said Rich Goldberg, a Trump administration National Security Council official who has espoused a hard line on Iran.

“But now, even if the administration gets some sort of face-saving language from the Iranians about future talks, Raisi has already said they’re not interested. The jig is up,” he said. “You can’t come back to a skeptical Congress, allies and deal opponents and say the promise means anything it means when Raisi has already said it doesn’t.”

But administration officials are adamant that as good as the nuclear deal is, it is insufficient and must be improved on.

“We do see a return to compliance as necessary but insufficient, but we also do see a return to compliance as enabling us to take on those other issues diplomatically,” Price said, adding that the point had been made clear to the Iranians “in no uncertain terms.”

An additional complication is that Raisi will become the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the US government even before entering office, in part over his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary — a situation that could complicate state visits and speeches at international forums such as the United Nations.

Psaki and Price both said that the US will continue to hold Raisi accountable for human rights violations for which he was sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018 and set about a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that included re-instating all the sanctions eased under the agreement along with adding a host of new ones.

Can India take credit of Maldives election as President UN General Assembly?

This time, President of United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has to be elected from the Asia-Pacific region. In the election, held on 7th June 2021, Abdullah Shahid, Foreign Minister of Maldives defeated his only rival, the former Afghan Foreign Minister, Dr. Zalmani Rassoul, by a wide margin, 143 to 48, in a total of 191 votes, with no abstentions. 

Afghanistan had held the post as back as in 1966-67.

The election of Shahid as the 76th President of UNGA could not have come at a more opportune time for the island nation. It must be a moment of glory for Maldives as its foreign minister wins the position of UNGA President. Shahid brings with him vast and varied experience as the Foreign Minister under two regimes— Presidents Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (2007-08) and now under President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, since 2018.

On his election India was prompt in taking credit saying, ‘from a larger neighborhood perspective, election of Shahid and elevation of Maldives in the international arena is a silent acknowledgement of the deployment of India’s soft power at the UN without being an all-important P-5 veto power, as yet. It is this kind of support that neighbors expect from India, given their own inherent inadequacies in terms of size’.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar was amongst the first to congratulate his counterpart Shahid. “Heartiest felicitations to Foreign Minister of Maldives Abdulla Shahid on his election as President for 76th UN General Assembly,” wrote Jaishankar in a twitter post. “This is a testimony as much to his own stature as to the standing of Maldives. We look forward to working with him to strengthen multilateralism and its much-needed reforms,” he said further.

India claims also to be the first nation to endorse Shahid’s candidacy as early as November last year. In Maldives on an official visit, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla publicly reiterated the “commitment made by our External Affairs Minister earlier during the Virtual Meeting with Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid that India will support his candidature”. Secretary Shringla also said that with his “vast diplomatic experience and leadership qualities, Foreign Minister Shahid has the best credentials to preside over the General Assembly in these tumultuous times”.

But, it is on record that India-Maldives bilateral relations suffered recent setbacks despite months of multilateral cooperation on multiple developmental projects in the archipelago, under the Solih stewardship. The avoidable controversy over the Indian decision on tourism development, amongst others, in the remote island territory of Lakshadweep, is one irritant.