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Gillard manages to retain power in Australia elections
On
September 7, 2010, ending weeks of political uncertainty, Australia�s first
woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard staked claim to form a new government after
two king-maker independent MPs extended support to her Labour party, giving it a
wafer-thin one-seat majority in the first hung Parliament in nearly 70 years.
Labour now controls 76 seats in Parliament�s 150-member House of
Representatives, with the opposition Coalition of Liberal party leader Tony
Abbott having 74 seats.
Gillard said her minority government would be held to higher standards of
accountability as a result of the deal struck with the independents. She added
that her government will spend $9.9 billion on development projects as part of
the deal with the rural independents.
Political crisis in Nepal continues
On
September 26, 2010, Nepal's Constituent Assembly failed for the eighth time,
during the past four months, to elect a new Prime Minister. The deadlock
continues, partly because other mainstream parties do not trust the single,
largest party, Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), because it continues
to put its faith in one-party rule and continues to threaten it would resume
armed struggle.
The last 20 years have seen Nepal move from a Hindu kingdom to a democratic and
secular republic. The 239 year old monarchy was cast aside in 2006 and people
voted for a Constituent Assembly and an interim government in 2008. Maoists
emerged as the largest single party but fell short of a majority.
In the 601-member House, two seats are vacant and if the Speaker and the Deputy
Speaker are excluded, it has an effective strength of 597 members. The break-up
is as follows : Unified CPN (Maoists): 237, Nepali Congress: 114, UML: 108, four
Madhes based parties: 82, smaller parties & others: 56.
Unified CPN (Maoist) continues to say it has no faith in parliamentary
democracy, believes in one-party rule and insists on absorbing its underground
militia into the Nepalese Army. It also tried to take arbitrary decisions and
sought the removal of the President and the Army Chief. Other parties are not
sure it would change its spots.
The Constituent Assembly has failed to finalise the Constitution as mandated.
The Assembly extended its own life by one year to complete the task. But
differences persist. In the absence of a consensus between parties, there is a
caretaker government with few powers.
Having failed to sack the then Army Chief over the integration of the armed
Maoist guerrillas, Prachanda resigned as Prime Minoster and Maoists pulled out
of the government in 2009; then they forced the next government headed by Madhav
Kumar Nepal of UML to also quit.
China-Japan spat
China
suspended high-level exchanges with Japan on September 19, 2010, and promised
tough counter-measures after a Japanese court extended the detention of a
Chinese captain whose trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard ships.
The spat between Asia�s two largest economies has flared since Japan arrested
the captain, accusing him of deliberately striking a patrol ship and obstructing
public officers near uninhabited islets in the East China Sea.
Beijing viewed the detention as illegal and invalid.
UN convention on terrorism moves a step forward
Rocked by a wave of audacious terrorist attacks in the last two years, Pakistan
has finally realised the futility of opposing the proposed Comprehensive
Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) just because India was in the
forefront of initiating it at the United Nations in 1996.
Pakistan, along with some other Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
countries, had led the campaign against the proposed convention on various
grounds. It had argued that self-determination should be outside the purview of
the convention. It had also insisted that international humanitarian laws should
be taken into account while finalising the text of the convention. Both these
objections were seen as aimed at embarrassing India on Jammu and Kashmir since
Islamabad has been demanding the right to self-determination for Kashmiris and
seeking international intervention on the issue.
The opposition to the convention had also come from the US and Israel with the
latter insisting that acting against terrorists indulging in killing innocent
people be brought under its purview.
The global treaty seeks to criminalise all forms of international terrorism and
deny terrorists, their financers and supporters access of funds, arms and safe
havens.
The situation has considerably changed with just a handful of countries still
not convinced why they should back it. �Most countries are now in favour of the
early adoption of the convention but there is a small number of holdouts, may be
10 to 15�efforts are on to convince them also to support it so that a strong
message goes out to all terrorist organisations that the international community
is united and determined to jointly fight the menace of terrorism.
Indians freed from Malay traffickers
Not less than 24 Indian men who were
discovered bound up in a residence in a Malaysian boondocks were successfully
freed from the arrest and two Pakistani men supposedly engaged in a human
trafficking guild were detained with immediate effect. �Inquiries into the
matter exposed that those people, age-old amid 20 and 30, were from Uttar
Pradesh. If the reports of the media are to be trusted, the victims landed on to
the capital�s intl. airport four months back, afore getting picked by the
accused people who were apparently looking for workers in an industrial unit in
Johor,� he said. He further stated that the two men promised the Indian workers
appealing wages as the bait. It is once again proved that Malaysia is a magnet
for wide spread drug peddling and human trafficking. Unemployed workforce
looking out for jobs is brought for added transfers to other Southeast Asian
countries and to Australia.
Indian to lead FIDE
Indians have already proved their metal in
various sports at the international level. Tennis, Cricket, Shooting, Boxing and
also Chess. After Vishwanathan Anand, another lot of Indians are about to
triumph on the World Chess Podium. D.V. Sundar has been elected has the
President of the world body for the sport of chess, FIDE at Russia. Apart from
that, the president for the Asian Continent was Mr. Dongre and Commonwealth
Chess Federation President was revealed in the name of Mr. B.S. Chahuhan, a
press statement by the All India Chess Federation revealed.
Make way for the new breed
The new world power calendar for 2010 has once
again predicted that New Delhi�s dominance in the world will see acceleration by
2025. Among the able coalition, the country has been placed at the fourth
position afterwards the US, China and the European Union. �The Global Governance
2025� was together brought out by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) of the
US and the European Union�s Institutes for Security Studies (EUISS). In the
current year, the US leads the lot of able countries/regions, cumulatively for
about 22 percent of the worldwide supremacy. The US is chased by China at 12
percent, European Union at 16 percent and India at eight percent. India comes
next to Japan, Russia and Brazil with beneath than 5 percent apiece. Following
these global statistics, by 2025 the ability of the US, EU, Japan and Russia
will cut down although that of China, India and Brazil will boost but this surge
will see the positions unchanged. By 2025, the United States of America will
continue to be the most dominating nation, but it will be possessing just a bit
above 18 percent of the global authority. The US will be carefully trailed by
China with 16 percent, European Union with 14 percent and India with 10 percent
looking to overleap.
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AKHAND PRATAP SINGH
