Sept-2010-International

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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.