World

Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday suspended Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha from office while it considers a legal challenge that could see him thrown out months before an expected general election.

The court agreed unanimously to hear a case brought by opposition parties who argue Prayut has reached the end of his eight-year term limit as prime minister.

Judges also agreed by five votes to four to suspend Prayut from office until the case is decided, the court said in a statement.

“The court considered the petition and supporting documents and deems the facts according to the request indicate reasonable grounds to suspect that there is a case as requested,” the statement said.

“Thus, a majority vote (five against four) for (Prayut) to be suspended as prime minister, effective August 24, 2022, until the court issues a verdict.”

Prayut, who will continue in his role as defence minister, has 15 days to respond to the case against him.

Prawit Wongsuwan, one of Prayut’s deputies and another former army chief, will take over as caretaker prime minister while the case is decided.

“The current cabinet will continue its duty as normal because General Prayut has not been ousted from his post, only suspended from duty,” said Wissanu Krea-ngam, another deputy prime minister. 

Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of the opposition Move Forward Party which was among those that backed the petition, said the country needed fresh leadership.

“It is like rowing a boat round the bathtub, going from General Prayut to General Prawit,” Pita told reporters at parliament.

– Legal wrangle –

It is not the first time the Constitutional Court has played a role in Thai politics — it cancelled the results of general elections in 2006 and 2014.

The kingdom’s 2017 constitution bars the prime minister from serving more than eight years in total, and opposition parties say Prayut, who took power in a 2014 coup, has reached the limit.

Several hundred anti-government protesters rallied at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument on Tuesday ahead of the court ruling and further demonstrations are planned.

Anucha Burachaisri, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office, urged “all groups” to “respect the results of the court’s hearings and avoid criticising the performance of the court”.

Supporters of the 68-year-old leader argue that the clock on his rule began when the 2017 constitution was instituted, or even after the 2019 general election.

If the court follows this logic, Prayut could technically continue to serve until 2025 or 2027 — if he wins a general election which is due by March.

The former army chief came to power in a military coup that ousted Yingluck Shinawatra’s democratically elected government.

He headed the junta regime for five years and continued as prime minister after the 2019 national elections.

The stern, blunt-speaking Prayut has found himself increasingly out of favour with voters. A recent opinion poll found two-thirds of respondents wanted him to vacate office immediately.

Under Prayut’s watch, the kingdom registered its worst economic performance in 30 years and his government has also faced criticism over its handling of the pandemic.

Youth-led pro-democracy rallies in Bangkok in 2020 attracted tens of thousands of people at their peak, and a key demand of the movement was for Prayut to resign.

On Wednesday, police had placed shipping containers on some streets near government buildings in anticipation of fresh protests.

Angolans were casting ballots on Wednesday in what was expected to be the most competitive vote in their country’s democratic history, with incumbent president Joao Lourenco squaring up against charismatic opposition leader Adalberto Costa Junior.

The election has been overshadowed by Angola’s many woes — a struggling economy, inflation, poverty and drought, compounded by the death of a former strongman president.

The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the oil-rich nation for nearly five decades, is facing its most serious challenge since the first multiparty vote in 1992.

“It’s been 20 years of peace and we are still poor,” said Lindo, a 27-year-old electrician queueing up to vote in Nova Vida, a middle-class suburb of the capital Luanda.

“The people want change — the government doesn’t provide for people’s basic needs,” said Lindo, who gave only his first name. 

Eight political parties are running, but the real contest lies between the MPLA and its long-standing rival and ex-rebel movement the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Opinion polls suggest that support for the MPLA — which won 61 percent of the vote in 2017 elections — will dwindle, while the UNITA, which has entered an electoral pact with two other parties, will make gains. 

But UNITA’s inroads might not be enough to unseat Lourenco, 68, who succeeded veteran leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos five years ago.

“The margins will be closer than ever before… but the advantages of incumbency mean MPLA is still odds on to pip Costa (Junior),” said Eric Humphery-Smith, an analyst at London-based Verisk Maplecroft.

– Appeal to vote  –

The MPLA traditionally wields a grip over the electoral process and state media in Angola, but the opposition is urging supporters not to be intimidated.

“This is a historic day,” Costa Junior declared, after casting his ballot.

“It is important that this day be a celebration,” he said, urging “full turnout and for all ballots to be counted.”

Lourenco urged citizens to come out and vote because “in the end it’s all of us who will emerge winners and it is democracy that wins” he said after casting his ballot at Lusiada de Angola University in Luanda.

Opposition and civic groups have raised fears of voter tampering, and social media is rife with claims of dead people registered to vote.

Costa Junior, 60, is popular among young people — a significant and growing voting bloc — and has pledged to “eradicate poverty” and create jobs.

– Poverty and graft –

Lourenco, a Soviet-educated former general who had promised a new era for Angola when he was first elected, has trumpeted a list of achievements.

He is credited with making far-reaching reforms in one of southern Africa’s economic powerhouses. 

They include boosting transparency in the financial sector and efficiency in parastatal organisations, and promoting business-friendly policies to lure foreign investors. His government has managed to attract back global diamond miner De Beers, which had quit 10 years ago.

But little has changed for most of Angola’s 33 million people for whom life is a daily grind.

Angola is Africa’s second largest crude producer, but the oil bonanza also nurtured corruption and nepotism under dos Santos, who died in Spain last month.

The low-key, night-time repatriation of his remains in the final leg of campaigning has added a macabre touch to the election. 

Dos Santos will be buried on Sunday, which would have been his 80th birthday.

Analysts warn that any MPLA attempts to capitalise on the funeral could backfire, given widespread anger over his legacy among young people.

Some 14.7 million people are registered to vote at 13,200 polling stations across the vast southern African nation.

Angolans living overseas are for the first time able to cast ballots from abroad.

Results are expected within a few days. In past elections, results have been contested, in a process that can take several weeks.

An Indian billionaire close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to buy a broadcaster seen as the last major critical voice on television, stoking fears about media freedom in the world’s largest democracy.

Under Modi, India has slipped 10 places in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking to 150 out of 180, with critical reporters often finding themselves behind bars and hounded on social media by supporters of the ruling BJP.

Gautam Adani — Asia’s richest person, with interests ranging from Australian coal mines to India’s busiest ports — announced late Tuesday that his firm had indirectly acquired a 29-percent stake in NDTV and was bidding for a further 26 percent.

NDTV said that the move came “without any discussion” with the broadcaster, “or the consent of the NDTV founders”, journalist Radhika Roy and economist Prannoy Roy.

Its two channels, one in Hindi and one in English, stand out among India’s myriad rolling news broadcasters for inviting on critics of the government as well as their hard-hitting reporting.

It has already been hit by a slew of legal cases that its owners said were a result of its reporting.

On Wednesday morning an employee at NDTV told AFP that there was a “general sense of shock and disbelief” in the newsroom following the announcement.

“We only found out from other news agency flashes and channels about the takeover and then all hell broke loose,” the employee said, asking to remain anonymous.

“People are still trying to figure out what has happened and what will happen. There is a sense of uncertainty since it is only a matter of time till the new management comes in.”

Geeta Seshu, founder of the Free Speech Collective, an independent organisation that advocates press freedom, said that “the space for independent journalism has shrunk alarmingly over the last few years.”

“The few brave journalists who continue to put out information are also battling court cases, are lodged in jail for long periods without bail, attacked or silenced permanently,” Seshu told AFP.

– Self-made billionaire –

Seshu said that while NDTV has been “struggling” commercially for some time, “the manner of this takeover is shocking, given the naked display of economic and political muscle”.

The Adani group’s closeness to the government was “hardly a secret”, she added. 

Self-made billionaire Adani, 60, this year overtook fellow Indian Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s richest man, with a net worth of $139 billion according to Forbes, behind Jeff Bezos and ahead of Bill Gates.

Modi and Adani both come from the western state of Gujarat, and the latter’s conglomerate has expanded aggressively in recent years, including into new areas like airports and renewable energy.

But this growth into capital-intensive businesses has raised alarms, with Fitch Group’s CreditSights warning on Tuesday that the group was “deeply overleveraged”.

Ambani’s wealth and influence have also grown under Modi — he now owns more than 70 media outlets that are followed by at least 800 million Indians, according to Reporters Without Borders.

This includes a majority stake in Network18, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, which owns several leading broadcasters.

– ‘Oligarchs’ –

NDTV’s integrity has been a bright spot in a media landscape compromised by increasing corporate control, said P Sainath, the founder and editor of the grassroots reporting network People’s Archive of Rural India. 

“Under the circumstances and under the pressure they’ve worked in, they really stand out,” he said.

Hartosh Singh Bal, journalist at Caravan magazine — a rare critical voice among print media — said the takeover could bring the curtain down on “the only channel left that could be called partly independent”.

“The government influence on the media is growing. The control of what I call oligarchs — the Adanis and the Ambanis — is also growing and it will keep on growing,” he told AFP.

“This (takeover) means there is almost no independent media left and that shrinking space is extremely dangerous.”

Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan’s climate change minister said Wednesday, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

Heavy rain continued to pound much of Pakistan Wednesday, with authorities reporting more than a dozen deaths — including nine children — in the last 24 hours.

“It has been raining for a month now. There is nothing left,” a woman named Khanzadi told AFP in badly hit Jaffarabad, Balochistan province.

“We had only one goat, that too drowned in the flood… Now we have nothing with us and we are lying along the road and facing hunger.”

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said authorities would launch an appeal for international help once an assessment was complete.

“Given the scale of the disaster there is no question of the provinces, or even Islamabad, being able to cope with this magnitude of climate catastrophe on their own,” she told AFP. 

“Lives are at risk, thousands homeless. It is important that international partners mobilise assistance.”

Pakistan is eighth on a list of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch.

– From heatwave to flood –

Earlier this year much of the nation was in the grip of a heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad, Sindh province.

The city is now grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges.

In Sukkur, about 75 kilometres (50 miles) away, volunteers were using boats along the flooded streets of the city to distribute food and fresh water to people trapped in their homes. 

Zaheer Ahmad Babar, a senior met office official, told AFP that this year’s rains were the heaviest since 2010, when over 2,000 people died and more than two million were displaced by monsoon floods that covered nearly a fifth of the country.

Rainfall in Balochistan province was 430 percent higher than normal, he said, while Sindh was nearing 500 percent.

The town of Padidan in Sindh had received over a metre (39 inches) of rain since August 1, he added.

“It is a climate catastrophe of epic scale,” Rehman said, adding three million people had been affected.

The National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that nearly 125,000 homes had been destroyed and 288,000 more were damaged by the floods.

Some 700,000 livestock in Sindh and Balochistan had been killed, and nearly two million acres of farmland destroyed, officials added.

Nearly 3,000 kilometres of roads had also been damaged.

Japan’s prime minister on Wednesday called for a push to revive the country’s nuclear power industry in a bid to tackle soaring imported energy costs linked to the war in Ukraine.

Such a move could prove controversial, after the 2011 Fukushima disaster led to the suspension of many nuclear reactors over safety fears.

Like many countries, Japan — which is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050 — has faced a squeeze on its energy supplies since Russian forces entered Ukraine six months ago.

The nation has also sweltered through record-breaking temperatures this summer, with residents asked to conserve power wherever possible.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has vastly transformed the world’s energy landscape” and so “Japan needs to bear in mind potential crisis scenarios”, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at an energy policy meeting.

Japan should consider building next-generation nuclear reactors, he said, while the government will discuss bringing more nuclear plants online and extending the service life of reactors if safety can be guaranteed.

Kishida called for “concrete conclusions by the end of the year” on the topic, which remains a sensitive one after a deadly tsunami in March 2011 caused a meltdown at the Fukushima plant, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Eleven years on, 10 of Japan’s 33 nuclear reactors are back in action, although not all are operational year-round, and the country is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels.

The national nuclear safety watchdog has approved in principle the restart of seven more reactors, but those moves often face opposition from local communities.

– ‘All it takes’ –

“In addition to securing the operations of the 10 reactors that are already back online, the government will spearhead an effort to do all it takes to realise the restart” of the others whose safety has been approved, Kishida said.

The prime minister, who joined the meeting remotely after testing positive for Covid-19, also urged policymakers to consider “constructing next-generation nuclear reactors equipped with new safety mechanisms”.

Before the Fukushima disaster, around a third of Japan’s power generation came from nuclear sources, but in 2020 the figure was less than five percent.

Japan’s government has overhauled and strengthened nuclear safety standards, and wants nuclear power to account for 20 to 22 percent of electricity production by 2030, as part of efforts to reach carbon neutrality.

Tom O’Sullivan, a Tokyo-based energy consultant at Mathyos Advisory, said building next-generation reactors in Japan would be a “major step”, because “all the current reactors are conventional ones”.

Bringing more existing nuclear plants online will need to be approved by local governors, which could prove “politically challenging”, O’Sullivan told AFP.

“But again, there’s a different environment now after the Ukraine war,” he said. Polls in recent months also show that public opinion may be softening towards the use of nuclear power.

“I don’t think it’s just the electricity costs. It’s the reliance on Russia, for natural gas, oil and coal… the Japanese public have really woken up to that,” O’Sullivan said.

Japan has imposed sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine along with other G7 countries, and the government has pledged to try and reduce its energy dependence on Moscow.

The price of Japanese shares related to nuclear power surged in afternoon trade as local media reported the possible plans, with Tokyo Electric Power ending up 9.96 percent and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries jumping 6.85 percent.