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Indonesia: 40 political parties register for 2024 General Election

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Indonesia: 40 political parties register for 2024 General Election hinh anh 1 Forty Indonesian political parties have registered to participate in 2024 General Election (Source: indonesia.postsen.com)

Jakarta (VNA) – The General Elections Commission of Indonesia (KPU) has announced that 40 out of the 43 national parties that have Political Party Information System (Sipol) accounts had registered to participate in the 2024 General Election, as the registration period ended on August 14.

KPU Commissioner August Mellaz said that the Peace and Prosperity Renewal Party, the Indonesian Student Party, and the People’s Party have not registered until the deadline at 23:59 on August 14.

According to him, as many as 24 parties have declared their documents complete, while the other 16 parties’ files are still being examined by the KPU and their status will be announced on August 15.

Indonesia will organise the general election on February 14, 2024, while the local election of Governors, and Heads of Districts will take place in November 2024./.

VNA

Tories risk losing next election unless we unite behind Liz Truss, say two former chairmen

by www.telegraph.co.uk Leave a Comment

Tories must unite behind Liz Truss as leader or risk losing the next election, two former party chairmen have warned.

In a joint article for The Telegraph, James Cleverly, the Education Secretary, and Brandon Lewis, who quit as Northern Ireland Secretary in July, said the Foreign Secretary was a “unifier” whose backers represented a range of traditions and beliefs across the party.

They said all the evidence – including opinion polls – also showed that she was the candidate best placed to beat Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer at the next election not only across the country but in the red wall seats that helped Boris Johnson secure a 80-strong majority.

But, after one of the most fractious and ill-tempered leadership contests in recent political history, the pair warned: “Before we are able to do anything, to deliver for our constituents or win an election, we must unite.

“The electorate will – quite rightly – give short shrift to a party preoccupied with internal disputes. We are asking our fellow Conservative Party members to join us in uniting behind Liz Truss, to deliver for our country and win a historic fifth term in office.”

The opinion polls have been putting Ms Truss as much as 30 points ahead among the estimated 180,000 Tory members who will decide the next leader of the Conservative Party and next prime minister, due to be announced on September 5.

It was suggested on Sunday that eight out of 10 votes had already been cast by members, which would benefit the Foreign Secretary as she was hot favourite to win when the ballot papers started landing on doormats.

The two former party chairmen acknowledged that progress on levelling up would be critical in determining whether the Tories will win the next general election.

But they said Ms Truss’s low tax, low regulation investment zones would attract business and investment to regions that have previously missed out.

In an apparent dig at her rival Rishi Sunak’s leaked comments about diverting money away from “deprived urban areas,” they said: “Levelling up is as much about those southern and rural seats outside of London’s orbit as it is about towns in the north and across the UK.

“Liz’s plan is not about pitting one area against another but delivering growth for our whole country, so we as a party can go into the next election with confidence in every constituency.”

Cast into the political wilderness

Tory infighting has become increasingly brutal since Ms Truss and Mr Sunak secured their places on the final ballot four weeks ago.

Team Sunak launched a website last week dedicated to attacking Ms Truss’s policies and a series of bitter briefings. This culminated in a press release on Wednesday accusing her of “serious moral and political misjudgement” over the cost of living crisis.

Allies of the Foreign Secretary told the Mail on Sunday that Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, would be cast into the political wilderness for the “utter venom” and “hatred” displayed in a newspaper article describing her fiscal plans as an “electoral suicide note”.

The campaign has also seen Sunak and Truss supporters involved in vitriolic social media spats, with Tory MPs accusing each other of “total b——s” and “hypocrisy”. Johnny Mercer, the veterans’ minister, labelled the “puerile nature” of the leadership contest “embarrassing”.

During the first television debate, Mr Sunak interrupted Ms Truss some 25 times and accused her of “unconservative and unfunded” plans to cut taxes.

For her part, Ms Truss has branded Mr Sunak’s policies “Gordon Brown economics” and claimed they would “crash the economy” if introduced.

“If Rishi has got this great plan for growth, why haven’t we seen it in his last two-and-a-half years [at] the Treasury?”

So scathing were the televised debates that Labour made no fewer than half a dozen attack ads which use the candidates’ own barbs at each other against the Tories.

Kenya’s William Ruto Declared President-elect in Disputed Vote Outcome

by www.news18.com Leave a Comment

William Ruto was Monday declared the victor of Kenya’s hard-fought presidential poll, but the outcome sparked a split in the election commission and some violent protests in his defeated rival’s strongholds. Ruto won with 50.49 percent of the vote on August 9, narrowly ahead of Raila Odinga on 48.85 percent, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Wafula Chebukati announced after an anxious days-long wait for results.

With tensions running high after the disputed outcome, the 55-year-old president-elect vowed to work with “all leaders”. “There is no room for vengeance,” said Ruto. “I am acutely aware that our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck.”

AFP correspondents reported that police fired live rounds as protests erupted in a Nairobi slum that is an Odinga stronghold.

Police also fired tear gas in his lakeside bastion of Kisumu where demonstrators threw stones and erected roadblocks with large chunks of rock. “We were cheated,” Isaac Onyango, 24, said on a street sealed off by two large bonfires and broken rock.

“The government must listen to us. They must redo the election. Raila Odinga must be president. We will keep protesting until the Kenyan Supreme Court listens to us.”

The dispute is likely to further damage the reputation of the IEBC after it had faced stinging criticism over its handling of the 2017 election which was annulled by the country’s top court in a historic first for Africa.

‘Intimidation and harassment’

Four out of seven IEBC commissioners rejected the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, with vice chair Juliana Cherera describing the process as “opaque”.

But Chebukati, who was also in charge of the IEBC in 2017, insisted he had carried out his duties according to the law of the land despite facing “intimidation and harassment”.

The dispute will test Kenya’s stability after previous elections in the East African political and economic powerhouse were blighted by claims of rigging and vicious bouts of deadly violence.

The country of about 50 million people is already struggling with soaring prices, a crippling drought, endemic corruption and growing disenchantment with the political elite.

It was first time lucky for the incumbent deputy president, a shadowy rags-to-riches businessman who had characterised the vote as a battle between ordinary “hustlers” and the “dynasties” who have dominated Kenya since independence from Britain in 1963.

He will succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta, 60, the son of Kenya’s first post-independence leader, who has served two terms and under the constitution was not allowed to run again. Ruto had been promised Kenyatta’s backing for the top job only to see his boss throw his support behind former foe Odinga, leaving him out in the cold.

It was a bitter blow for 77-year-old Odinga, who has failed in his fifth attempt at the top job despite having the weight of the ruling party machinery behind him.

He has yet to make any comment on the result, but his running mate Martha Karua said on Twitter: “It is not over till it is over”.

Disenchantment

With memories of previous post-poll violence still fresh, both Odinga and Ruto had pledged to accept the outcome of a free and fair election, and air their grievances in court rather than on the streets.

Polling day had passed off generally peacefully. But power transfers are fraught in Kenya, and how Odinga handles defeat will be anxiously watched by the country’s foreign partners.

No presidential ballot has gone uncontested in Kenya since 2002, and a Supreme Court challenge by Odinga is seen as almost certain.

If there is no court petition, Ruto will take the oath of office in two weeks’ time, becoming Kenya’s fifth president since independence.

Kenya’s months-long campaign saw vitriolic mudslinging on the hustings and widespread disinformation swirling on social media.

While polling day was largely peaceful, turnout was historically low at around 65 percent of the 22 million registered voters, with disillusionment over corruption by power-hungry elites prompting many Kenyans to stay home.

Disenchantment was particularly high among young Kenyans, who make up three-quarters of the population of 50 million.

Next moves

Any challenge to results must be made within seven days to the Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body. The court has a 14-day deadline to issue a ruling, and if it orders an annulment, a new vote must be held within 60 days.

In August 2017, the Supreme Court annulled the election after Odinga rejected the results that gave Kenyatta victory, with dozens of people killed by police in the protests that followed.

Kenyatta went on to win the re-run two months later after an opposition boycott.

The worst electoral violence in Kenya’s history occurred after a disputed vote in 2007, when more than 1,100 people were killed in bloodletting between rival tribes.

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Kenya’s Ruto declared president-elect after last-minute chaos

by www.abc.net.au Leave a Comment

Kenya’s elections chief has declared Deputy President William Ruto the winner of a tight presidential race.

Key points:

  • Mr Ruto’s rival Raila Odinga alleges unspecified “electoral offences” were committed
  • His campaign has seven days to file a challenge in court
  • The Supreme Court will have 14 days to rule

But some senior election officials disowned the result, fuelling fears of widespread violence like that seen after previous disputed polls.

The outcome was a triumph for a candidate who shook up the East African nation’s politics by appealing to struggling Kenyans’ economic concerns instead of their ethnic allegiances.

Mr Ruto received about 50.5 per cent of the vote to nearly 49 per cent for five-time contender Raila Odinga in last Tuesday’s ballloting, commission chairman Wafula Chebukati said.

But just before the declaration, four of the seven electoral commissioners told reporters they could not support the “opaque nature” of the final steps, without giving details.

Screams and scuffles broke out in the auditorium, the lectern was tossed from the stage, and police rushed in to restore order as a choir continued to sing.

Minutes later, commission chairman Mr Chebukati announced the official results and said the two commissioners who stayed behind with him had been injured.

Mr Odinga’s campaign alleged that unspecified “electoral offences” were committed and that a winner was illegally declared without a quorum of commissioners.

“It is not over until it is over,” Mr Odinga’s running mate, Martha Karua, a former justice minister, tweeted.

Crowds of people across Kenya exploded in jubilation in some places, and in anger in others.

Mr Odinga’s supporters shouted “No Raila, no peace!” and burned tyres in the crowded Nairobi neighbourhood of Kibera as night fell. Religious leaders pleaded for calm.

Mr Odinga’s campaign has seven days to file a challenge in court, extending the uncertainty in Kenya, a country of 56 million people that is seen as crucial to regional stability.

The Supreme Court will have 14 days to rule.

This is likely to be the final run for Mr Odinga, a 77-year-old longtime opposition figure who had the backing of outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Mr Kenyatta fell out with his deputy, Mr Ruto, years ago.

Ruto dismisses divisions as ‘sideshow’

Mr Ruto told reporters that the divisions among the electoral commissioners were just a “sideshow” and “pose no threat at all to the legality of the declaration”.

“What happened this evening is an unfortunate situation, I think an attempt by our competitors to roll back what we have achieved as a country,” Mr Ruto said.

He praised an election that for many Kenyans represented a leap forward in transparency and peace, largely free from ethnic divisions that in the past played out with deadly results.

In his acceptance speech, Mr Ruto promised a “transparent, open, democratic government” and said people who had acted against his campaign “have nothing to fear. … There is no room for vengeance”.

Those were important vows from a man once mentored by former president Daniel Arap Moi, who ran Kenya as a repressive one-party state for almost a decade.

The 55-year-old Mr Ruto portrayed himself during the campaign as a brash outsider, playing up his chicken-selling days from childhood.

He told voters the election was a contest between “hustlers” from modest backgrounds and the “dynasties” of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga, whose fathers were Kenya’s first president and vice president.

The message was popular among many Kenyans struggling with rising prices, few job opportunities and widespread corruption.

“These are people who don’t even know the price of bread. They don’t know the price of anything,” Ruto supporter Francis Irungu said of the political elite.

Mr Odinga, famous for his years-long detention during his fight for multi-party democracy decades ago and for supporting Kenya’s groundbreaking 2010 constitution, appeared to many Kenyans this time as part of the establishment.

Despite the last-minute chaos, the electoral commission improved its transparency in this election, practically inviting Kenyans to do the tallying themselves by posting online the more than 46,000 results forms from around the country.

Tallies published by media organisations and others that took up the challenge echoed Monday’s results.

As the people waited almost a week for the official announcement, both Mr Odinga and Mr Ruto appealed for peace.

Following the 2007 election, more than 1,000 people were killed after Mr Odinga claimed victory had been stolen from him.

Mr Ruto, then Mr Odinga’s ally, was indicted by the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity charges over his role in the violence, but the case was closed amid allegations of witness intimidation.

The country’s 2017 election results were overturned by the high court because of irregularities, a first in Africa. Mr Odinga boycotted the new vote, which was won by Mr Kenyatta.

Kenyans hoped to see calm prevail this time.

“Leaders are there to come and go,” Richard Osiolo, a resident of the western Nyanza region, said over the weekend.

“I should stay alive and see you lead, bad or good, and then I have another chance to choose another leader.”

AP/ABC

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Kenyans ‘praying for peace’ as day of hotly contested election arrives

by www.abc.net.au Leave a Comment

Millions of voters will go to the polls in Kenya today in an election expected to be a close race between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his rival Raila Odinga.

Key points:

  • President promises development and unity
  • Opposition part raises concerns about integrity of electoral processes
  • The 2007 election led to 1,000 deaths and 660,000 people being were forced from their homes

More than 180,000 police have been deployed across the country amid fears of election violence and rigging.

The contest has been building for months.

Mr Kenyatta, 55, is seeking a second term in office promising development and unity.

“There is no need for us to fight because of politics, we must love each other like Kenyans,” he said.

“Your neighbour is your brother and sister, regardless of where they come from, let us cast our votes, go back home and continue living as we have always done before. As I have said, Kenya will still be there after elections.”

Opposition candidate Raila Odinga is hoping to break the electoral drought, after failing to win the presidency in 2007 and 2013.

His coalition, the National Super Alliance (NASA) is confident of victory but it has doubts about the Electoral Commission’s ability to deliver a proper result.

“We are saying that the law says Kenyans must cast their ballots through the electronic voting system which is called EVID, Electronic Voter Identification Devices, and we have said that if that system does not work, this vote cannot go on,” he said.

The campaign has been overshadowed by fears of violence and vote rigging.

The 2007 election led to horrific bloodshed. More than 1,000 people were killed and more than 660,000 were forced from their homes.

In response, more than 180,000 police will be deployed across Kenya for today’s poll.

Electoral officials, along with local and foreign observers will keep watch over the voting and counting. Tensions are already high.

Ten days ago, the manager of the electoral commission’s electronic voting system was found murdered. The motive for the killing is unknown.

Benji Ndolo, a political analyst and lobbyist said the biggest danger in this election was tribalism exploding into violence.

“The political ideology or political philosophy in Kenya is built upon, I call it nothingness,” he said.

“It’s built around tribes, ethnic mobilisation. It’s very backward, it’s very outdated. It needs to change.”

Kenya has more than 40 tribes and the divisions between some groups run deep.

Mr Ndolo said some Kenyans feel more allegiance to their tribe than their nation.

“More and more people feel they are not invested in the country, they have nothing to gain from the system, that also has an impact on the propensity, the probability, the potential for people to feel that we are aggrieved, so we are going to burn the country down,” he said.

Election day fears after child, husband lost in 2007 violence

Pamela Aoko, 26, knows the cost all too well.

She was hit by a stray bullet during the 2007 violence, while she was inside her shack in the slum of Kibera.

She was not only injured, she also lost her unborn child.

“I was seated on this chair, then I was hit. I saw blood. I miscarried,” she said.

Five days later, Pamela’s husband was shot and killed in the election violence, as he tried to visit her in hospital.

“I am praying for peace,” she said.

Many Kenyans are also hoping today’s election will be peaceful, free and fair.

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