The rise and fall of India's AAP

Just a few months ago, India’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept to power in the Delhi State election with an unprecedented 67 of the 70 seats.

The party and its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, were heralded for halting the previously unstoppable juggernaut of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Observers claimed they were the coming force in the nation’s politics.

Instead, it quickly became clear the AAP, founded just three years ago, was a disaster waiting to happen.

Disagreements among the party’s leaders, papered over during the election campaign, emerged within weeks of the stunning victory.

nfighting, allegations of corruption, and counter-claims led to a number of prominent members being expelled. Then Minster of Law Jitendra Tomar was involved in charges that his legal qualifications were fakes.

Attempts by the party leadership to close ranks behind Tomar backfired when police produced clear evidence that his certificates were forgeries.

dengue fever outbreak in the capital was mismanaged to the point where the poor were being turned away from hospital because they could not pay for treatment — hardly a good look for a Government whose very name translates as the Common Man’s Party.

Worst was to come when two children died after being refused treatment at several hospitals and the distraught parents of one committed suicide.

Now the former Law Minister in an earlier short-lived AAP minority government in Delhi, Somnath Bharti, is on the run after his wife brought charges that he had assaulted her on a number of occasions and had tried to murder her.  

After being told by the Delhi High Court that he could not expect bail while the case against him proceeds, Bharti went underground and is nowhere to be found.

Tired of the constant waves of bad publicity, Kejriwal demanded that Bharti give himself up and cooperate with police, so far to no effect.

Battered AAP supporters say the problems lie with the political inexperience of most of its members and that things will get better. However, most commentators are in agreement that the fledgling party’s reputation has been damaged to the point where no repair is possible.

  

Fear grips Delhi as fever spreads

The Indian capital of New Delhi is currently gripped with fear over a virulent outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease dengue fever — and apart from a lot of finger- pointing and attempts to shift the blame, authorities seem powerless in the face of the crisis.

Official reports state there have been nearly 1900 cases and five deaths in the National Capital Region, but the figure is almost certain to be higher as many families decide to treat victims at home rather than take them to over-stretched public hospitals or to private facilities where they have to pay.

Almost all Government-run hospitals are struggling to cope, with television images showing three patients sharing beds.

The Delhi State Government is now waving the big stick at the city’s private hospitals, warning them they will forfeit their licences if they turn patients away because they cannot pay.

This follows a scandal when two young boys died of the disease after being turned away by a number of private hospitals. The parents of one of them then committed suicide.

As the blame-game steps up, the State Government is being accused of cutting back on health expenditure. There have been calls for the Federal Government to step in with additional assistance.

Health experts says the dengue outbreak – the worst for five years – has exposed the inadequacy of the public health system with the number of hospital beds not keeping pace with the rising population.

Delhi is better served than most areas with 2.7 beds for every 1000 people, but that is only just over half the ratio recommended by the World Health Organisation.  

And the worst may still be to come with incidences of the disease unlikely to peak for another month at the end of the monsoon season.

Dengue fever is endemic in India and at the moment can only be contained by the elimination of the mosquitos that carry the virus. India is involved in a global effort to find a vaccine that can directly attack the virus, so far without success. 

 

 

 

 

Refugees a lifeline for ageing West

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and German Chancellor Angela Merkel find themselves at different ends of the argument when it comes to dealing with the greatest movement of people since World War II – perhaps even since Genghis Khan spread his terror throughout Eurasia in the 13^th Century.

While Mr Abbott did not actually say that stopping the asylum-seeker boats was helping Australia to a sustainable surplus, as the headline of his interview with Leigh Sales suggests, it is clear that he regards any influx as a detriment to the economy and a drain on national resources.

Ms Merkel is of a completely opposite opinion. Among European Union leaders she stands along with her commitment to take a massive 800,000 refugees from the throngs currently making their weary and often dangerous way into the continent — that’s nearly one per cent of Germany’s total population.

But while she is being hailed by refugee supporters and humanitarian agencies across the globe, there is method in her generosity from which all Western leaders should take note.

For a start, the Chancellor is not alone in welcoming the refugees to Germany. Business leaders say they are needed to fill jobs and to boost the economy, and they have very good reasons for making those statements.

Germany desperately needs an injection of young people – particularly if they have skills that can quickly be translated into the domestic workforce. The nation is ageing and its generous pensions system is buckling under the strain. With one of the world’s lowest birth rates, it is facing a contracting labour force with more taking out than are putting in.

In winning the 2013 election, Ms Merkel promised to find a solution to the demographic problem during her term. She had absolutely no chance of doing so until this year’s refugee surge from the Middle East dropped a solution right into her lap.

At the same time she gains international prestige by offering compassion and dignity to the displaced masses, by stressing it is Germany’s obligation to take in people fleeing the horrors of war. A win-win situation? Well, not quite.

Ms Merkel still has to deal with virulent opposition from the far right — opposition which has resulted in sporadic violence towards refugees already in the country. But in this case it seems she is ready to face her opponents down.

She did not mince her words in a recent speech when she said the experiences of 2015 were going to change Germany forever, but she also asserted the country was strong enough and ready enough to cope with those changes.

She also had words for those who oppose her Government’s refugee policies: “There will be no tolerance towards those who question the dignity of others.”

Asked to elaborate the Chancellor said there would no dialogue, no concessions to the far right. “The key is not to show even the slightest bit of understanding. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies their stance.”

In saying this Ms Merkel shows a determination to keep the anti-refugee lobby on the fringe of the debate. This is in direct contrast to Australia where those who oppose asylum seekers are given at least equal time, in Parliament and in the media, with those who welcome them.

In contrast to Ms Merkel, Mr Abbott stresses only the cost to Australia of refugees – and of course keeping them under guard in offshore detention is expensive. Germany minimises the cost of camps by releasing refugees into the community as soon as their needs have been assessed.

However, it is prepared to spend billions on language training, upskilling and reskilling the people it has taken in. It appears that the majority of Germans are with Ms Merkel in seeing this as an essential investment in the nation’s future.

Yes, it will mean change, but change has been the one constant throughout human history. Past generations have coped with it. Should we expect to be any different?  

 

Lawlessness threat to Nauru refugees

The New Zealand Government’s decision to suspend aid to Nauru’s justice system further highlights the deteriorating situation in the small Pacific Island nation. If not yet a failed State it is certainly a State where the rule of law is being repeatedly ignored to the point where it is lapsing into totalitarianism.

New Zealand’s decision, announced by the country’s Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, should ring alarm bells in Canberra where the Government is responsible for close to 1,000 refugees currently held there.

Mr McCully said the decision was taken to suspend the $1.1 million annual aid package because he feared his country would be seen “as part of the problem rather than part of the solution”. The clear implication being that he did not want New Zealand to continue to prop up an administration that was increasingly ignoring the rule of law.

And indeed there have been numerous examples of a Nauruan Government out of control and making war on those who dare to oppose it.

It began with the arrest and deportation of Nauru’s Chief Magistrate, Peter Law just as he was preparing an inquiry into the suspicious death of the Justice Minister’s wife, followed by the cancellation of the visa of the Chief Justice, Geoffrey Eames while he was out of the country.

Since then five Opposition MPs have been suspended from Parliament; journalists visiting the island have been told they must pay an $8,000 non-refundable fee; the Police Commissioner has been sacked after he launched an inquiry into bribry allegations involving the President and the Minister for Justice, and access to the social media site Facebook has been shut off.

Despite the inability of journalists to report freely, news has leaked out of beatings, rapes and general unrest involving the refugees, some of them children. Last month the Refugee Action Coalition highlighted the case of a female asylum-seeker from Iran who it says has been held in isolation since being sexually assaulted in May.

The Australian Government has repeatedly said that asylum-seekers who try to come to Australia by means other than its own processing system will never be settled there. Even so, it still bears responsibility for those it has sent to offshore detention.

As the Chair of the New Zealand Law Society’s Rule of Law Committee, Austin Forbes, pointed out in an interview with the ABC, Nauruan MPs are being held in prison without charge, legal representation has been denied: “We had to do something”.

The New Zealand Government has made it clear it regards Nauru as a country where the rule of law cannot be guaranteed. It is now over to Canberra to take up its moral and legal obligation to ensure the absolute safety of the men, women and children it has sent there. 

 

 

 

 

 

Education leads in Australia-India ties

The visit of an Australian delegation to India to discuss increased collaboration in education was a welcome, if long overdue, recognition of the potential benefits links with the world’s second-largest nation has for Australia’s economy.

While Australian politicians talk endlessly of the need for ever-deeper relations with China, India has been repeatedly overlooked. A recent list of priority languages taught in ACT schools listed Hindi below German and Spanish and on a par with Latin.

Moves to supply India with uranium consistently result in objections from the anti-nuclear lobby on the grounds that as India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the material could be diverted to the country’s weapons program.

The failure of these activists to accept Indian undertakings that this will not be the case is insulting, bordering on racism.

Similarly, opposition to the Carmichael Coalmine in Central Queensland, meant to supply India’s burgeoning energy needs, may have a solid environmental basis, but this has not been properly explained to New Delhi where many senior officials see it as just another slight from Canberra.

It can only be hoped that the education initiative, led by Minister for Education Christopher Pyne, has gone some way to repairing the damage. Presiding at a meeting of the Australia India Education Council in New Delhi, Mr Pyne and the Indian Minister for Human Resources, Smriti Irani both stressed the significant role that education had to play in the bilateral relationship.

The Council agreed on a joint feasibility study to examine the establishment of a grouping of higher education institutions aimed at encouraging greater student mobility as well as language and cultural studies by Australians in India.

New facilities at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay-Monash Research Academy in Mumbai were officially opened, and retired cricketer Adam Gilchrist was appointed as Australia’s inaugural ambassador to India on education.

It can only be hoped this is just the beginning of a general recognition of India’s importance as a trading partner for Australia and that initiatives in the education sector will spread to other areas of the two nations’ economies.

 

 

 

 

Nationalist surge among Taiwan’s youth

Recent street demonstrations in Taiwan are highlighting the growing gulf between the Government and what the people, especially young people, are thinking.

The protesters were against revisions to classroom textbooks they say are an attempt to brainwash students into accepting the inevitability of eventual reunification of the island State with the People’s Republic of China under the One China Two Systems policy.

The issue has thrown the question of relations with China into the forefront of political debate in the lead-up to Taiwan’s presidential election in January 2016.

The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) Government favours closer ties with the mainland, while fudging on the issue of how the process of reunification might take place.  

The Opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) stresses the differences between Taiwan and China and seeks to promote a Taiwanese identity. It skirts the question of Taiwan’s status by saying as it is de facto independent, a formal declaration of independence is unnecessary.

This outrages Beijing which regards Taiwan as a renegade province which must eventually submit to its authority, by force if necessary.

While the KMT holds office, the fiction of progress towards reunification can be maintained, but that could hardly be the case with the increasing likelihood of a DPP victory.

For the first time in the nation’s history both major parties have chosen female candidates with the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hung Hsiu-chu, lining up against the DPP’s Tsai lng-wen.

China has regularly denounced the DPP as “splittist”, a term it often uses against people or organisations that advocate greater automony or independence from the central government. In the face of this, DPP leaders often modify their positions on independence as elections near.

But this is increasingly not the case with the young people taking part in the latest round of protests. "We are Taiwan. China is China," Liu Tzuhao, 18, said, voicing the views of her fellow demonstrators.

Another said the textbooks did not reflect a Taiwanese view of history. “It is just Beijing propaganda,” he said.

“One country cannot have two versions of history.”

Later the Education Ministry appeared to back down, saying it was up to individual teachers whether they used the new textbooks or not.

That is unlikely to satisfy opponents of the One China Two Systems policy in the lead-up to the January poll.  

 

 

 

In defence of Sir Edward Heath

I was shocked to hear over the radio that former British Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath was the subject of child sex abuse allegations. My shock turned to anger when I discovered the flimsy web of so-called evidence, hearsay and downright malicious gossip on which these allegations have been made.

 

Let me make one point straight away. I admire Heath. I regard him as one of the most honest, straightforward and decent Prime Ministers to have occupied 10 Downing Street in modern times. I applaud his greatest achievement in taking the United Kingdom into what became the European Union.

 

Those who now campaign for the country to leave the EU are living in a fool’s paradise which, if they have their way, will see the UK quickly sink to the status of a third world banana republic – but that is an argument for another day.

 

I met Sir Edward on two occasions. During the 1970 UK election I was part of what is now called the ‘media scrum’ that followed him on the campaign trail. I remember once when we got him to pose under a street sign that stated ‘Turn Right One Way Only’. The picture went national and he thought it was a great joke.

 

The second time, almost 30 years later, occurred when I was in the UK on an assignment and he happened to be giving an address at a university near where I was staying. I called his office and asked if I could interview him after his speech for a ‘Lion in Winter’-type’ feature. The reply came back agreeing as long as I bought a bottle of good scotch to the meeting. This was duly presented and mostly consumed during a convivial and successful evening.

 

I do not claim to have been his friend or even to know him well, but those who do — even those who actively disliked him — have with almost one voice expressed both incredulity at the accusations,  and suspicion at the way Wiltshire Police  and other police forces have jumped into the media on the basis of so little concrete evidence.

 

Who, for instance, is this “retired senior policeman” who claims that more than two decades ago the prosecution of a person accused of child sex abuse was halted by powerful political figures because that person threaten to expose Heath as a paedophile? Perhaps it is time for this former officer to leave his comfortable anonymity and have his claims tested under questioning.

 

The fact is that in the 1990s Sir Edward was neither powerful himself nor with friends of any great political influence. He was a lonely backbencher, ostracised by most of his own party for his constant criticisms of his successor, Margaret Thatcher. There would have been many people in authority at the time who would have rejoiced at this final disgrace.

 

Wiltshire Police then made the call for anyone who had been a victim of Heath’s misdeeds to come forward, and of course they did in legions — those who believe they have been wronged by the establishment and see a means of getting back; those who want their 15 minutes of fame and those who believe there might be a quid in it somewhere.

 

One newspaper ran the story of a 65-year-old man who claimed as a boy he had been picked up by a “toff” in August, 1961 who, three years later, he recognised from a newspaper picture as Heath. The man said he had been taken to Heath’s flat in Park Lane and had sex with him there.

 

Anyone who has read Heath’s very detailed autobiography The  Course of My Life, will realise that in that month he was out of the country  in the run-up to then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s ultimately unsuccessful bid to join the Common Market . Anyway, Heath never had a flat in Park Lane.

 

Another astonishing accusation comes from a woman who says that when Heath gave an outing on his yacht, Morning Cloud, to some youths from  a boys’ home in the Channel Islands, she “counted 11 on and only 10 came off”. Perhaps the yacht’s crew, many of whom are still around, will give evidence that Sir Edward had sex with one of the boys and then dumped him over the side. Such nonsense should be treated with the contempt it deserves.   

 

It is true that Heath kept his personal life very much to himself, but a careful reading of The Course of My Life does provide some small chinks in the armour with which he surrounds this subject.  When at Oxford in the 1930s he speaks briefly of an idyllic summer’s day foursome spent with a fellow undergraduate and two women “who both lost their lives in the war”.

 

There are also indications of a female friend in the 1940s who he saw on occasions before and after he was demobbed following distinguished wartime service in the Royal Artillery. It was a hectic time for him as he sought to earn a living as a civilian while trying to find himself a suitable parliamentary seat in which to stand for the Conservatives in the 1950 election. 

 

He notes that the woman eventually wrote to him to say she was getting married. Reading between the lines it is obvious this dismayed him, but after a formal letter of congratulation he never got in touch again although “many years later I learnt that she had had a very happy marriage”.

 

He never married, and perhaps this makes him an easy target for the slurs against him. As a former Conservative MP, Michael Brown, stated in a newspaper article a few days ago: “In the current febrile atmosphere, when it seems to be automatically assumed that nearly every dead politician of his era was a paedophile, it is inevitable that these police inquiries must now take their inconclusive course.”

 

Dead men cannot defend themselves; dead men cannot sue for defamation. Even, as I believe, there is not a shred of credible evidence to link Sir Edward to these allegations; even if they are eventually revealed to be a tissue of fabrications, it will be for this that he is remembered, especially by those who did not live through his times.

 

Why now? Why has this surfaced more than a decade after his death? There is one explanation which disgusts me, but considering the levels to which the profession of politics has fallen, I must consider.

 

Before the end of 2017 a referendum is to take place on whether Britain should remain in the European Union. Polls have suggested a close outcome, but with those in favour of continued membership holding a slight lead.

 

How would it affect voting intentions if Sir Edward Heath, the passionate European, the architect of Britain’s membership, were to be disgraced?

 

Could it have come to this?