Tag Archives: Elections

Venezuelan opposition pins hopes on elections as protests falter

FILE PHOTO: Opposition supporters clash with riot security forces while rallying against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello/FIle Photo

By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s opposition is shifting its focus to forthcoming state elections as protests aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro have subsided following the installation of an all-powerful, pro-government legislative body.

Four months of violent demonstrations in which at least 125 people were killed have all but stopped due to fatigue among protesters and disillusionment at seeing the ruling Socialist Party cement vast powers despite the concerted opposition push.

Most opposition leaders say October’s elections for governors in all the country’s 23 states now represent the best means to keep pressuring Maduro, providing a chance to win some of the governorships at stake and an opportunity for a protest vote to demonstrate the president’s unpopularity.

The opposition, which boycotted the elections for the Constituent Assembly, accused electoral authorities of inflating turn-out figures for the July 30 vote.

There are few options available for adversaries of Maduro, who maintains control over the OPEC nation despite widespread public anger about triple-digit inflation and chronic shortages of basic goods.

“Venezuelans are fighting against a continued rupture of the constitutional order,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who is governor of Miranda state but who is not running in next month’s election and who is barred from holding public office once his term expires.

Nevertheless he urged Venezuelans to vote in the elections.

“If you abstain, then it’s more difficult to bring about the political change that all Venezuelans want,” Capriles told reporters. Capriles has called his own barring from office – because of alleged irregularities in managing public funds – a Socialist Party move to sideline him.

Governorships provide little in the way of a platform to directly challenge Maduro. But they are coveted by politicians because they offer launching pads for political careers and the possibility to channel state resources toward political allies.

The opposition’s participation in next month’s poll ensures it will have witnesses at voting stations and at the election council headquarters. Opposition coalition leaders say that should allow them to quickly identify any attempt to alter results.

However, some who spent months on the streets with the encouragement of opposition leaders, especially young members of a self-styled “Resistance” movement, feel betrayed.

They say turning attention so quickly to the election legitimizes what they view as Maduro’s authoritarianism and insults the memory of slain protesters. They also see a contradiction with the opposition’s decision to boycott July’s vote for the Constituent Assembly.

Maduro pushed for the creation of the assembly, which is meant to rewrite the constitution but which has no formal check on its powers, saying it would restore stability to a country in turmoil over the widespread anti-government protests.

It has broadly supplanted the Congress, which the opposition won control of in a 2015 landslide vote.

Small opposition party Vente Venezuela and its founder Maria Corina Machado, who has a high profile in the media but limited influence, broke with the opposition’s Democratic Unity coalition over its decision to join next month’s vote.

CANDIDATES TO BE BARRED?

The main opposition parties have nominated candidates and opinion polls show that in a free and fair vote they would likely take a majority, compared to just three governorships they won in 2012.

But the Socialist Party-controlled Constituent Assembly may bar some of them from running or from holding office if they win.

Last week, the assembly said it would seek the prosecution of opposition leaders for treason for attempting to block international financing for Maduro’s government and for allegedly seeking a military intervention against him.

Government leaders say the end of the protests is evidence the Constituent Assembly has brought peace to the country. They add that the opposition’s decision to register candidates is a sign they believe in the electoral system despite their complaints of fraud.

“The Constituent Assembly has calmed the country,” said assembly president Delcy Rodriguez. “As soon as it was inaugurated, Venezuela returned to tranquility.”

Maduro says the country is a victim of an “economic war” by the opposition, and insists the assembly is a symbol of Venezuela’s vibrant democracy.

The opposition took to the streets in late March to protest a Supreme Court ruling that briefly allowed it to assume the powers of Congress, and maintained near daily rallies until the end of July.

By then, street mobilizations were in decline and what had initially been massive marches steadily gave way to violent clashes between security forces and small groups of hooded demonstrators throwing rocks and at times vandalizing property.

Recent opposition rallies have attracted only a few hundred people.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on top ruling Socialist Party officials, in some cases for their participation in the Constituent Assembly, while the European Union and most Latin American nations condemned the body.

Maduro has acquired the reputation as a dictator around the world, said opposition leader Freddy Guevara in an interview in August broadcast on the Internet, adding that street protests were crucial in shifting public opinion.

“I’m convinced that we have to confront the dictatorship in any situation that we can,” said Guevara.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Frances Kerry)

Eleven dead in Kenya as post-election riots flare

Anti riot policemen clash with protesters supporting opposition leader Raila Odinga in Mathare, in Nairobi, Kenya August 12, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

By Katharine Houreld and Maggie Fick

NAIROBI/KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) – Kenyan police killed at least 11 people in a crackdown on protests as anger at the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta erupted in the western city of Kisumu and slums ringing the capital, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.

The bodies of nine young men shot dead overnight in Nairobi’s Mathare slum had been brought to the city morgue, a security official told Reuters. The men were killed during police anti-looting operations, the official added.

Separately, a young girl in Mathare was killed by police firing “sporadic shots”, a witness said. The run-down neighborhood is loyal to 72-year-old opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose party rejected Tuesday’s vote as a “charade”.

A Reuters reporter in Kisumu, center of post-election ethnic violence a decade ago in which 1,200 people died nationwide, said tear gas and live rounds were fired. One man had been killed, a government official said.

The unrest erupted moments after Kenya’s election commission announced late on Friday that Kenyatta, 55, had secured a second five-year term in office, despite opposition allegations that the tally was a fraud.

Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i said the trouble was localized and blamed it on “criminal elements” rather than legitimate political protest.

Odinga’s NASA coalition provided no evidence for its rejection of the result. Kenya’s main monitoring group, ELOG, said on Saturday its tally matched the official outcome, undermining NASA’s allegations of fraud.

In addition to the deaths, Kisumu’s main hospital was treating four people for gunshot wounds and six who had been beaten by Kenyan police, its records showed.

One man, 28-year-old Moses Oduor, was inside his home in the impoverished district of Obunga when police conducting house-to-house raids dragged him out of his bedroom and beat him with clubs.

“He was not out fighting them. He was rescued by my sister who lives next to him. She came outside screaming at the police, asking why they are beating people,” his brother, Charles Ochieng said, speaking on behalf of a dazed Oduor.

More shooting was heard outside the hospital on Saturday morning. In Nairobi, armed police units backed by water cannon moved through the rubble-strewn streets of Kibera, another pro-Odinga slum.

“CRIMINAL ELEMENTS”

Interior minister Matiang’i defended the police against accusations of brutality.

“Let us be honest – there are no demonstrations happening,” he told reporters.

“Individuals or gangs that are looting shops, that want to endanger lives, that are breaking into people’s businesses – those are not demonstrators. They are criminals. And we expect police to deal with criminals how criminals should be dealt with.”

As with previous votes in 2007 and 2013, this year’s elections have exposed the underlying ethnic tensions in the nation of 45 million, the economic engine of East Africa and the region’s main trading hub.

In particular, Odinga’s Luo tribe, who hail from the west, had hoped an Odinga presidency would have broken the Kikuyu and Kalenjin dominance of central government since independence in 1963. Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president, is a Kikuyu.

Even before the declaration, Odinga’s NASA coalition had rejected the outcome, saying the election commission’s systems had been hacked, the count was irregular and foreign observers who gave the poll a clean bill of health were biased.

NASA provided no evidence for any of its accusations but singled out former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and former South African president Thabo Mbeki – who both led teams of election observers – for criticism.

Top Odinga lieutenant James Orengo said NASA would not challenge the results in court – as Odinga did when he lost in 2013 – but hinted at mass action by praising the history of Kenyans in standing up to previous “stolen” elections.

“Going to court is not an option. We have been there before,” Orengo told reporters.

In addition to the thumbs-up from foreign monitors, Kenya’s ELOG domestic observation group, which had 8,300 agents on the ground, published a parallel vote tally on Saturday that conformed with the official results.

ELOG’s projected outcome put Kenyatta on 54 percent with a 1.9 percent error margin – compared to an official tally of 54.3 percent.

“We did not find anything deliberately manipulated,” ELOG chairwoman Regina Opondo said.

(Additional reporting by Humphrey Mulalo and Linda Muriki; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Adrian Croft)

Supreme Court to hear major case on political boundaries

FILE PHOTO - A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., November 15, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether the U.S. Constitution limits how far lawmakers can go to redraw voting districts to favor one political party over another in a case that could have huge consequences for American elections.

The high court has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps on the grounds of racial discrimination, as it did on May 22 when it found that Republican legislators in North Carolina had drawn two electoral districts to diminish the statewide political clout of black voters.

But the justices have not thrown out state electoral maps drawn simply to give one party an advantage over another.

The justices will take up Wisconsin’s appeal of a lower court ruling last November that state Republican lawmakers violated the Constitution when they created state legislative districts with the partisan aim of hobbling Democrats in legislative races. The case will be one of the biggest heard by the Supreme Court during its term that begins in October.

The case involves a long-standing practice known as gerrymandering, a term meaning manipulating electoral boundaries for an unfair political advantage. The lower court ruled that the Republican-led legislature’s redrawing of state legislative districts in 2011 amounted to “an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.”

A panel of three federal judges in Madison ruled 2-1 that the way the Republicans redrew the districts violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection under the law and free speech by undercutting the ability of Democratic voters to turn their votes into seats in Wisconsin’s legislature.

In a possible sign of deep ideological divisions among the nine justices over the issue, the court’s conservative majority granted Wisconsin’s request, despite opposition from the four liberal justices, to put on hold the lower court’s order requiring the state to redraw its electoral maps by Nov. 1.

That means Wisconsin will not need to put in place a new electoral map while the justices consider the matter.

A Supreme Court ruling faulting the Wisconsin redistricting plan could have far-reaching consequences for the redrawing of electoral districts due after the 2020 U.S. census. State and federal legislative district boundaries are reconfigured every decade after the census so that each one holds about same number of people, but are sometimes draw in a way that packs voters who tend to favor a particular party into certain districts so as to diminish their statewide voting power.

Wisconsin Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel welcomed the justices’ decision to hear the state’s appeal and called the state’s redistricting process “entirely lawful and constitutional.”

The case in the short term could affect congressional maps in about half a dozen states and legislative maps in about 10 states, before having major implications for the post-2020 redistricting, according to the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

‘POLITICS GOING HAYWIRE’

“Wisconsin’s gerrymander was one of the most aggressive of the decade, locking in a large and implausibly stable majority for Republicans in what is otherwise a battleground state,” said Brennan Center redistricting expert Thomas Wolf. “It’s a symptom of politics going haywire and something that we increasingly see when one party has sole control of the redistricting process.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s liberals in major cases, could cast the decisive vote. Kennedy, writing in a 2004 case, indicated he may be open to the idea that racial gerrymanders could violate the Constitution. Though a “workable standard” defining it did not exist, he suggested one might emerge in a future case.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking improper actions at the state level to suppress the turnout of minority voters and others who tend to support Democrats and maximize the number of party members in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans call their actions lawful.

Republicans control the U.S. Congress. They also have majorities in an all-time high of 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, according to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

After winning control of the state legislature in 2010, Wisconsin Republicans redrew the statewide electoral map.

They were able to amplify Republican voting power, gaining more seats than their percentage of the statewide vote would suggest. In 2012, Republicans received about 49 percent of the vote but won 60 of the 99 state Assembly seats. In 2014, the party garnered 52 percent of the vote and 63 Assembly seats.

A dozen Wisconsin Democratic Party voters in 2015 sued state election officials, saying the redistricting divided Democratic voters in some areas and packed them in others to dilute their electoral clout and benefit Republican candidates.

The lower court found that redistricting efforts are unlawful partisan gerrymandering when they seek to entrench the party in power, and have no other legitimate justification.

The state argues recent election results favoring Republicans were “a reflection of Wisconsin’s natural political geography,” with Democrats concentrated in urban areas like Milwaukee and Madison.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

Patriotic Russians may have staged cyber attacks on own initiative: Putin

A hooded man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that patriotic Russian hackers may have staged cyber attacks against countries that had strained relations with Moscow on their own initiative, but said the Russian state had never been involved in such hacking.

Putin, speaking to international media at an economic forum in St Petersburg, was answering a question about allegations Moscow might try to interfere in this year’s German elections.

Moscow’s attitude toward cyber crime is under intense scrutiny after U.S. intelligence officials alleged that Russian hackers had tried to help Republican Donald Trump win the White House, something Russia has flatly denied.

“If they (hackers) are patriotically-minded, they start to make their own contribution to what they believe is the good fight against those who speak badly about Russia. Is that possible? Theoretically it is possible,” said Putin.

Likening hackers to free-spirited artists acting according to their moods, he said cyber attacks could be made to look like they had come from Russia when they had not.

Putin also said he was personally convinced that hackers could not materially alter election campaigns in Europe, America or elsewhere.

“On a state level we haven’t been involved in this (hacking), we aren’t planning to be involved in it. Quite the opposite, we are trying to combat it inside our country,” said Putin.

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

France’s Victorious Macron reminded of huge and immediate challenges

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande (R) reaches out to touch President-elect Emmanuel Macron, as they attend a ceremony to mark the end of World War II at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France,

By Michel Rose and John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron was confronted on Monday with pressing reminders of the challenges facing him as France’s next president, even as allies and some former rivals signaled their willingness to work closely with him.

The centrist’s victory over far-rightist Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s election came as a huge relief to European Union allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.

“He carries the hopes of millions of French people, and of many people in Germany and the whole of Europe,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin.

“He ran a courageous pro-European campaign, stands for openness to the world and is committed decisively to a social market economy,” the EU’s most powerful leader added, congratulating Macron on his “spectacular” election success.

But even while pledging to help France tackle unemployment, she rejected suggestions Germany should do more to support Europe’s economy by importing more from its partners to bring down its big trade surplus.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put it bluntly: “With France, we have a particular problem … The French spend too much money and they spend too much in the wrong places. This will not work over time,” Juncker said in Berlin.

The euro fell from six-month highs against the dollar on confirmation of Macron’s widely expected victory by a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent, as investors took profit on a roughly 3 percent gain for the currency since he won the first round two weeks ago.

France’s economic malaise, especially high unemployment, had undermined the popularity of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande to the point where he decided not even to run as a candidate.

“This year, I wanted Emmanuel Macron to be here with me so that a torch could be passed on,” said Hollande, who appeared with Macron at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe to commemorate Victory in Europe Day and the surrender of Nazi forces on May 8, 1945 at the end of World War Two.

Elsewhere in Paris, hundreds of people, led by the powerful CGT trade union, marched in protest against Macron’s planned labor reforms.

PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY

On assuming office next Sunday as France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, the 39-year-old faces the immediate challenge of securing a majority in next month’s parliamentary election in order to have a realistic chance of implementing his plans for lower state spending, higher investment and reform of the tax, labor and pension systems.

With the two mainstream parties – the conservative Republicans and the left-wing Socialists – both failing to reach the presidential runoff, his chances of winning a majority that supports his election pledges will depend on him widening his centrist base.

The Socialists are torn between the radical left of their defeated candidate Benoit Hamon and the more centrist, pro-business branch led by former premier Manuel Valls.

On Monday, key members of the centrist arm of The Republicans appeared ready to work with Macron despite the party hierarchy calling for unity to oppose the new president and calling those that were wavering “traitors”.

“I can work in a government majority,” said Bruno Le Maire, a senior Republicans party official, who had been an aide of presidential candidate Francois Fillon.

“The situation is too serious for sectarianism and to be partisan.”

Le Pen, 48, defiantly claimed the mantle of France’s main opposition in calling on “all patriots to join us” in constituting a “new political force”.

Her tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander, Andrew Callus, Bate Felix, Adrian Croft, Leigh Thomas, Tim Hepher, Gus Trompiz; Writing by Richard Balmforth and John Irish; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Ralph Boulton)

Iran reformists to back Rouhani re-election, though some voters grow cool

FILE PHOTO: Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi (L) meets with pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi in Tehran October 12, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran’s main pro-reform opposition leaders plan to speak out from their confinement under house arrest this month to publicly back President Hassan Rouhani for re-election, aides say, helping win over voters disillusioned with the slow pace of change.

Rouhani was elected in a landslide in 2013 on promises to ease Iran’s international isolation and open up society. He is standing for a second term against five other candidates, mostly prominent hardliners, on May 19, with a run-off a week later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of votes cast in the first round.

In his first term, Rouhani expended his political capital pushing through a landmark agreement with global powers to limit Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of international financial sanctions.

But even his supporters acknowledge he has made comparatively little progress on his domestic agenda, after promising that Iranians should enjoy the same rights as other people around the world.

Some reformist critics say he neglected the cause of curbing the powers of the security forces and rolling back restrictions that govern how Iranians dress, behave, speak and assemble.

Nevertheless, Iran’s two leading champions of the reform movement, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karoubi, will urge voters to back him, a spokesman said.

“The two leaders, like in previous elections, will support the candidate backed by the pro-reform faction,” said Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand, the Paris-based spokesman for the two men.

Another source close to the opposition leaders said “Mousavi and Karoubi will announce their support for Rouhani a few days before the May 19 vote.”

Rouhani has already won the backing of former President Mohammad Khatami, considered the spiritual leader of the reformists, who declared his support on his website on Tuesday. Iranian newspapers and broadcasters are banned from publishing the former president’s image or mentioning his name.

Many reformist voters will look for guidance to Mousavi and Karoubi, who both stood for president in 2009 when opposition to the disputed victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to Iran’s biggest mass demonstrations since its 1979 revolution.

Both men have been held under house arrest for six years, although neither has been convicted of a crime. Their pronouncements from their confinement are eagerly followed by reformists online.

Maryam Zare, a 19-year-old in Tehran who would be voting for president for the first time, said she would vote only if she heard a call to do so from Karoubi and Mousavi.

“I will vote for whoever they support,” she said.

Others said they would back Rouhani, but only reluctantly.

“He is part of the establishment. We have to vote for the lesser of evils,” said music teacher Morad Behmanesh in the central city of Yazd. “What happened to Rouhani’s promises of releasing the two opposition leaders from house arrest?”

PRIORITIES

Under Iran’s governing system, the elected president’s powers are limited, circumscribed by the authority of the supreme leader, a position held since 1989 by hardline cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During Rouhani’s first term, the president won Khamenei’s cautious backing for his nuclear deal. But persuading the leader to accept social change may be a more difficult task.

Some of Rouhani’s allies say he will now be able to make more progress on his domestic agenda if he wins a clear, fresh mandate for another four-year term, which would prove to the hardliners that the public wants change.

“Iranians want to be free and live freely. They are not against the Islamic Republic. People will continue to fight for their rights,” a senior official in Rouhani’s government said on condition of anonymity.

But international rights groups and activists in Iran say there were few, if any, moves to bring about greater political and social freedoms during Rouhani’s first term. Dozens of activists, journalists, bloggers and artists were jailed on political grounds.

Rouhani often suggests that he has no control over such arrests, carried out by the mostly hardline judiciary and the Revolutionary Guards, a powerful military force.

“I have lost my hope over Rouhani’s ability to reform the country. His main focus has been economy, not improving civil rights,” said Reza, 28, a reformist who was jailed briefly after the 2009 election and asked that his surname not be published for security reasons.

The president has had some success on promises to loosen Internet restrictions, but access to social media remains officially blocked, although Rouhani, Khamenei and other officials have their own Twitter accounts.

Human Rights Watch said last year that Rouhani had failed to deliver on his promise of greater respect for civil and political rights. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in 2015 said that more journalists were in jail in Iran than any country other than China and Egypt.

The total number of political prisoners held in Iranian jails has not been disclosed. About a dozen people who also hold other nationalities have been jailed for what rights groups consider political offences.

“Whoever wins Iran’s presidential election should prioritize improving the country’s dismal human rights situation,” said Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch.

“Iran has maintained the highest per capita execution rate in the world for years … it put 530 people to death last year, many for drug offences and a number of them minors.”

Rouhani benefits because reformist voters have no other choice on the ballot, where candidates are vetted by a hardline body.

Reformist voters will have to judge him in the context of what is possible under the system, said Saeed Leylaz, a prominent economist imprisoned under Ahmadinejad for criticising economic policy, who is now close to Rouhani’s government.

“Rouhani’s failure to fully deliver his promises on social reforms will impact the vote … but Iranians are well aware of his limitations and his achievements.”

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Peter Graff)

Iranians must give Rouhani second term to make good on nuclear deal: Vice President

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inspects the honour guard during a welcoming ceremony upon his arrival at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia March 27, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

By Alissa de Carbonnel

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s president must get a second term to secure the economic benefits that he promised would result from a diplomatic thaw with the West, Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar said ahead of a May 19 election.

Hassan Rouhani’s hardline challengers for the presidency, some of whom are close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, say he traded away too much in a 2015 deal with world powers that limited Iran’s nuclear work but failed to deliver sufficient rewards.

In a rare interview with a trio of foreign reporters at an EU-Iran business forum on Sunday, Ebtekar, one of Iran’s 12 vice presidents, said voters should not give up on Rouhani.

“He needs more time … He has to be given a chance to be able to continue his program,” said Ebtekar, one of Iran’s most prominent women politicians.

“Rouhani has done a lot to overcome some of the hurdles that the investors find when they are coming,” she said in a nod to concerns over red tape and opaque rules voiced by foreign companies that Iran hopes to attract.

As a young woman, Ebtekar was the face of the radical students who occupied the U.S. Embassy and held its staff hostage for 444 days at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Known as “Mary”, she spoke in calm, fluent English to the world’s media, putting the hostage-takers’ side of the incident that remains a painful memory for the United States and is one of the reasons Washington considers the Islamic Republic a pariah state.

At 56, she is now firmly in the reformist camp, endorsing Rouhani’s vision of a freer society and diplomatic detente after the lifting of sanctions under the deal he engineered.

If hardliners describe the nuclear deal as a limited engagement with the West on a single issue, Ebtekar sees it as the beginning of a new era of international engagement to realize what she says are the hopes of Iran’s younger generation to end its long isolation.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

“There is a lot being done which is creating a lot of hope and optimism but at the same time the expectations for the nuclear deal are still very high,” said Ebtekar, her smiling face framed by a traditional black chador over a turquoise scarf.

With unilateral U.S. sanctions still in place, Ebtekar said voters understood that it was not Rouhani’s fault that the nuclear deal had yet to improve their daily lives.

“They understand that mostly the problem is coming from outside. Our government has done its share … now it is up to our partners in the deal to do their share as well.

“This opening up will create a better atmosphere, and I hope that they will – particularly countries like the United States – will stand up to their commitments,” Ebtekar said.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s scepticism over Rouhani’s detente policy is echoed by his strongest challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric seen as a possible future supreme leader, who says Iran has no need of foreign help.

Ebtekar, however, said the election is Rouhani’s to lose, pointing to parliamentary polls in which the conservatives lost ground. The alliance of moderates and reformists that helped carry him to power in 2013, she said, “gives him a very strong position.”

Ebtekar rejected the view of Western and Gulf Arab states that Iran is an aggressor in the Middle East, saying it has peaceful intentions but also had the right to defend itself from foreign threats.

Iran’s backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah and alleged support for Yemen’s Houthi fighters has put it at odds with the United States and regional rival Saudi Arabia.

“We are looking forward to play our role to promote peace and also security in the region,” Ebtekar said.

“But it’s natural for the people living in this region to defend themselves, it’s very natural for Lebanon to defend itself, Syria, the Palestinians. So defense is another issue.”

(Additional reporting Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Venezuela opposition blocks streets to protest Maduro’s power shakeup

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during his weekly broadcast "Los Domingos con Maduro" (The Sundays with Maduro) in Caracas, Venezuela. Miraflores Palace/via REUTERS

By Alexandra Ulmer

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s opposition was blocking streets on Tuesday to decry unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro’s decision to create a new super-body known as a “constituent assembly,” a move they say is a veiled attempt to cling to power by avoiding elections.

After a month of near-daily protests demanding early general elections, Maduro on Monday announced a new popular assembly with the ability to rewrite the constitution.

His government says that the opposition is promoting street violence and refusing dialogue, so it has no choice but to shake up Venezuela’s power structure to bring peace to the oil producer.

Maduro’s foes counter that Maduro, a former bus driver they say has turned into a dictator, is in fact planning to staff the new assembly with supporters and avoid elections he would likely lose amid a crushing recession and raging inflation.

Regional elections slated for last year have yet to be called and a presidential election is due for next year.

When asked about elections in an interview on state television Tuesday, the Socialist Party official in charge of the constituent assembly said the electoral schedule would be respected but also suggested the current political turmoil was working against setting a quick date.

‘NO NORMALITY’

“One of the aims of the constituent assembly is to seek the conditions of stability to be able to go to those electoral processes,” said Elias Jaua.

“Those conditions of normality do not exist,” he added, citing protests and institutional clashes between the opposition-led National Assembly and authorities.

Maduro’s critics fear the new body will further sideline the current opposition-led legislature and pave the way for undemocratic changes to the constitution, furthering what they say has been a lurch into dictatorship.

The controversial decision will likely swell anti-government protests, already the biggest since 2014, as they seek to end the socialists’ 18-year rule started under late leader Hugo Chavez.

“This is not a constituent assembly, it’s the dissolution of the republic,” said opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara. “A message to Chavismo: It’s time to unite to save Venezuela from Maduro.”

Since anti-Maduro unrest began in early April, some 29 people have been killed, more than 400 people have been injured and hundreds more arrested.

Some road blocks were already being set up in the capital Caracas early on Tuesday, with lawmakers posting photos of people waving flags in the rain, and the opposition was set to march again on Wednesday.

While many details remain unclear about the constituent assembly, Maduro said political parties would not participate and that only up to half of its 500 members would be elected.

“According to the government, it would have all powers,” said Jose Ignacio Hernandez, law professor at Venezuela’s Catholic University. “It could dissolve the National Assembly, name a new electoral council, dismiss governors, and dismiss mayors.”

(Additonal reporting by Diego Ore and Andrew Cawthorne; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Monitors criticize Turkey referendum; Erdogan denounces ‘crusader mentality’

Supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan celebrate in Istanbul.

By Gulsen Solaker and Daren Butler

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A defiant Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan denounced the West’s “crusader mentality” on Monday after European monitors criticized a referendum to grant him sweeping new powers, which he won with a narrow victory laying bare the nation’s divisions.

Supporters thronged the streets honking horns and waving flags, while opponents banged pots and pans in protest in their homes into the early morning. The main opposition party rejected the result and called for the vote to be annulled.

Election authorities said preliminary results showed 51.4 percent of voters had backed the biggest overhaul of Turkish politics since the founding of the modern republic.

Erdogan says concentrating power in the hands of the president is vital to prevent instability. But the narrowness of his victory could have the opposite effect: adding to volatility in a country that has lately survived an attempted coup, attacks by Islamists, a Kurdish insurgency, civil unrest and war across its Syrian border.

The result laid bare the deep divide between the urban middle classes who see their future as part of a European mainstream, and the pious rural poor who favor Erdogan’s strong hand. Erdogan made clear his intention to steer the country away from Europe, announcing plans to seek to restore the death penalty, which would effectively end Turkey’s decades-long quest to join the EU.

“The crusader mentality in the West and its servants at home have attacked us,” he told flag-waving supporters on arrival in the capital Ankara where he was due to chair a cabinet meeting, in response to the monitors’ assessment.

In the bluntest criticism of a Turkish election by European monitors in memory, a mission of observers from the 47-member Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights body, said the referendum was an uneven contest. Support for a “Yes” vote dominated campaign coverage, and the arrests of journalists and closure of media outlets prevented other views from being heard, the monitors said.

“In general, the referendum did not live up to Council of Europe standards. The legal framework was inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic process,” said Cezar Florin Preda, head of the delegation.

While the monitors had no information of actual fraud, a last-minute decision by electoral authorities to allow unstamped ballots to be counted undermined an important safeguard and contradicted electoral law, they said.

DIVISIONS

The bitter campaigning and narrow “Yes” vote exposed deep divisions in Turkey, with the country’s three main cities and mainly Kurdish southeast likely to have voted “No”. Official results are due to be announced in the next 12 days.

Erdogan, a populist with a background in once-banned Islamist parties, has ruled since 2003 with no real rival, while his country emerged as one of the fastest-growing industrial powers in both Europe and the Middle East.

He has also been at the center of global affairs, commanding NATO’s second-biggest military on the border of Middle East war zones, taking in millions of Syrian refugees and controlling their further flow into Europe.

Critics accuse him of steering Turkey towards one-man rule. The two largest opposition parties both challenged Sunday’s referendum, saying it was deeply flawed.

The pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party said it presented complaints about unstamped ballots affecting 3 million voters, more than twice the margin of Erdogan’s victory.

The main secularist opposition People’s Republican Party said it was still unclear how many votes were affected.

“This is why the only decision that will end debate about the legitimacy (of the vote) and ease the people’s legal concerns is the annulment of this election,” deputy party chairman Bulent Tezcan said.

Tezcan said he would if necessary go to Turkey’s constitutional court – one of the institutions that Erdogan would gain firm control over under the constitutional changes, through the appointment of its members.

“ERDOGAN’S RESPONSIBILITY”

The president survived a coup attempt last year and responded with a crackdown, jailing 47,000 people and sacking or suspending more than 120,000 from government jobs such as schoolteachers, soldiers, police, judges or other professionals.

The changes could keep him in power until 2029 or beyond, making him easily the most important figure in Turkish history since state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk built a modern nation from the ashes of the Ottoman empire after World War One.

Germany, host to some 4 million Turks, said it was up to Erdogan himself to heal the rifts that the vote had exposed.

“The tight referendum result shows how deeply divided Turkish society is, and that means a big responsibility for the Turkish leadership and for President Erdogan personally,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in a joint statement.

Relations with Europe were strained during the referendum campaign when Germany and the Netherlands barred Turkish ministers from holding rallies. Erdogan provoked a stern German response by comparing those limits to the actions of the Nazis.

Thousands of Erdogan supporters waved flags and blasted horns into the early hours on Monday in celebration of a man who they say has transformed the quality of life for millions of pious Turks marginalized for decades by the secular elite.

There were scattered protests against the result, but these were more sporadic. In some affluent, secular neighborhoods, opponents stayed indoors, banging pots and pans, a sign of dissent that became widespread during anti-Erdogan protests in 2013, when the police crushed demonstrations against him.

The result triggered a two percent rally in the Turkish lira from its close last week.

Under the changes, most of which will only come into effect after the next elections due in 2019, the president will appoint the cabinet and an undefined number of vice-presidents, and be able to select and remove senior civil servants without parliamentary approval.

There has been some speculation that Erdogan could call new elections so that his new powers could take effect right away. However, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek told Reuters there was no such plan, and the elections would still be held in 2019.

Erdogan served as prime minister from 2003 until 2014, when rules were changed to hold direct elections for the office of president, previously a ceremonial role elected by parliament. Since becoming the first directly elected president, he has set about making the post more important, along the lines of the executive presidencies of France, Russia or the United States.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux in Istanbul and Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler, David Dolan and Dominic Evans; Editing by Peter Graff)

Venezuela’s Maduro jeered by crowd as unrest grows

Demonstrators clash with riot police while ralling against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas,

By Maria Ramirez and Alexandra Ulmer

SAN FELIX, Venezuela/CARACAS (Reuters) – Angry Venezuelans threw objects at President Nicolas Maduro during a rally on Tuesday, as protests mount against the unpopular leftist leader amid a brutal economic crisis and what critics say is his lurch into dictatorship.

State television footage showed a crowd mobbing the vehicle that Maduro was standing on as he waved goodbye at the end of a military event in San Felix, in the south-eastern state of Bolivar. Amid the commotion, people threw objects at Maduro, who was wearing a traditional Venezuelan suit and a yellow-blue-red presidential sash, while his bodyguards scrambled.

The state broadcaster then halted transmission.

In a separate video shared on social media, voices yelling “Damn you!” were heard as the vehicle apparently transporting Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, tried to make its way through the crowd.

Five males, aged 15, 17, 18, 19 and 20, were arrested for throwing “sharp objects” against Maduro’s vehicle, according to a report by a local National Guard division seen by Reuters on Tuesday night.

Further details were not immediately available. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for information, although Socialist Party officials tweeted that Maduro had been received by a cheering crowd in San Felix.

However, the opposition, which has been protesting in the last two weeks to demand early elections, pounced on the incident as evidence that Maduro is deeply despised amid food shortages and spiraling inflation.

“The DICTATOR only needs to leave Miraflores (presidential palace) to see how the people repudiate him!” opposition lawmaker Francisco Sucre, from the state of Bolivar, said on Twitter amid a flurry of commentary on social media.

“They cannot give a standing ovation to the man responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in our history!” Sucre added.

The incident drew immediate parallels with last year, when authorities briefly rounded up more than 30 people on Margarita island for heckling Maduro, a rare sight given that the president’s appearances typically are carefully choreographed and show only cheering supporters wearing red shirts.

Videos published by activists at the time showed scores of people banging pots and pans and jeering Maduro during a visit to inspect state housing projects. Authorities later accused opponents of “manipulating” videos.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (2nd L) in San Felix, Venezuela

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (2nd L) in San Felix, Venezuela April 11, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

TWO DEATHS

Venezuela’s opposition on Tuesday pilloried what it says is repression during anti-Maduro protests after authorities confirmed a second death in unrest in the last week.

The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that a 20-year old man had been fatally shot in the neck on Monday night at a protest in the city of Valencia. Opposition lawmakers said the man, Daniel Queliz, was killed by security forces while he was protesting.

His death comes on the heels of the killing of 19-year-old Jairo Ortiz on the outskirts of Caracas on Thursday in the area of an opposition protest. A police officer has been arrested.

After years of protesting with little results, street action had ebbed until a Supreme Court decision in late March to assume the functions of the opposition-led congress sparked outcry, with condemnation at home and abroad.

The court quickly overturned the most controversial part of its decision. News that the national comptroller on Friday had banned high-profile opposition leader Henrique Capriles from office for 15 years drew broad criticism, too.

Venezuelans have been suffering food and medicine shortages for months, leading many to skip meals or go without crucial treatment.

Opposition leaders announced another round of protests in Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities for Thursday, saying scattered demonstrations would stretch security forces thin.

Maduro says that under a veneer of pacifism, the opposition is actually encouraging violent protests in a bid to topple his government.

State officials via social media have shown images and videos of demonstrators vandalizing public property and throwing rocks at police.

“Who is taking responsibility for damage to public property and persons?” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said on Twitter, posting pictures of demonstrators kicking police officers and breaking into an office of the Supreme Court. “What is their agenda? Terrorism, chaos, death?”

Most of the protesters are peaceful and say street action is their only option after authorities last year blocked a recall referendum to remove Maduro. Local elections, due last year, have yet to be called.

Still, many Venezuelans are pessimistic that street protests will yield any change, while others abstain out of fear of violence or because they are too busy searching for food.

(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Diego Ore; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler)