Beijing has already poached some of Taiwan’s Pacific allies, convincing Solomon Islands and Kiribati to switch recognition in 2019 before Nauru did the same. Ahead of the election, Natano’s finance minister, Seve Paeniu, floated the idea of Tuvalu reviewing its Taiwan ties. Teo becomes prime minister exactly four weeks afterContinue Reading
FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu: Taiwan said it received assurances from Tuvalu’s new prime minister Monday (Feb 26) that ties were “everlasting”, scotching rumours that the Pacific island nation was poised to flip alliances to Beijing. Former attorney general Feleti Teo was named premier in a ceremony on Monday, a month after an electionContinue Reading
Russia has stepped up ties with North Korea and other countries hostile to the United States such as Iran since the start of the war with Ukraine – relations that are a source of concern to the West. The United States has accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artilleryContinue Reading
Pakistani politicians loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan will forge an alliance with a little-known political group, his party said Monday (Feb 19), after polls marred by allegations of manipulation returned no clear winner.
Candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the most seats in this month’s election but were effectively sidelined because they were forced to stand as independents.The army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) failed to secure a ruling majority but has forged a partnership with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and a handful of smaller parties to form the next government.
However, PTI still hopes to seek a majority by having its candidates join the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a registered political party whose chairman was the only one from the alliance of Islamic political and religious parties group to win a seat.
“We have reached a consensus that our provincial and national assembly candidates will join Sunni Ittehad Council,” PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan told a news conference. Successful PTI-backed candidates will send their applications to join the SIC this week to the Election Commission of Pakistan, which must approve the alliance.
If the commission signs off on them, the alliance could then be entitled to seats reserved for women and religious minorities that are allocated according to election results.
“After this alliance, PTI will be in a position to form a government in the provinces as well as in the centre,” Omar Ayub Khan, PTI’s candidate for prime minister, told the news conference, referring to the National Assembly.
There have been widespread allegations of vote-rigging and result manipulation after authorities switched off Pakistan’s mobile phone network on election day and the count took more than 24 hours.
A senior bureaucrat announced at a news conference on Saturday that he had helped rig the February 8 election and would hand himself in to police.”We converted the losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes in 13 national assembly seats,” said Liaqat Ali Chattha, commissioner of the garrison city of Rawalpindi where the powerful military has its headquarters.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a leading advocacy group, said after Chattha’s announcement that the “involvement of the state bureaucracy in rigging in Pakistan is beginning to be exposed”.
Imran Khan’s PTI held nationwide protests against the alleged rigging on Saturday (Feb 17).
A small number of supporters took to the streets in major urban centres, with the largest gathering of around 4,000 people in its stronghold northern city of Peshawar. Police detained senior party member Salman Akram Raja and around a dozen supporters in the central city of Lahore, where they surrounded the party headquarters, but said they had all been released by late afternoon.
Japan last year relaxed export controls on finished goods, allowing it to help fill gaps in defence equipment among Ukraine’s main suppliers of weapons such as the United States. Tokyo has also provided to Ukraine what it calls “non-lethal support” such as aircraft detecting systems and mobile power generators. LastContinue Reading
SYDNEY: Solomon Islands is expected to next week call a national election for April, with China security ties emerging as a key issue as political parties launch campaigns in the Pacific Islands nation. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China soon after the 2019 election thatContinue Reading
Guatemala is considering establishing official trade relations with China, the country’s foreign minister told Reuters on Monday ( Feb 5 ), though it intends to keep its current ties with Taiwan. As more nations support the second-largest economy in the world, China, which asserts politically ruled Taiwan as its place,Continue Reading
SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared on Tuesday ( Feb 6 ) that it was “outrage” that a Beijing court had suspended Yang Hengjun’s death sentence for espionage charges and vowed to keep working to secure his release. The verdict, which was delivered three years after a secret trial,Continue Reading
Since 2018, the Indonesian conflict has gotten much worse, with pro-independence fighters mounting stronger and more regular attacks, mainly because they have been able to acquire more advanced weapons. The foreign minister of New Zealand stated that a number of government organizations continued to collaborate closely with their Indian counterpartsContinue Reading
The US and Japanese navies held joint exercises in the Philippine Sea this week, in a show of force as tensions with China and North Korea rise. Washington and Beijing are at loggerheads over a raft of issues, from chips to tariffs, but both have been alarmed by the growingContinue Reading