分类： politics

The Electoral Commission of Zambia announced a nationwide suspension of presidential and parliamentary vote counting on Friday, just one day after the country held its general election, following widespread reports of election-related violence across multiple districts. The copper-rich southern African nation, which has been grappling with deep-seated economic hardship that dominated the election campaign, now faces an unexpected delay in finalizing official results that were originally scheduled for release by Monday.

Fourteen candidates contested the presidency, with incumbent Hakainde Hichilema, who has held office since 2021, facing off against main opposition challenger Brian Mundubile, a 55-year-old former minister from the previous Patriotic Front administration. Brown Kasaro, Zambia’s chief electoral officer, explained the abrupt suspension, noting that the violence has specifically targeted election workers, and in several cases, perpetrators have stolen marked ballots from sealed ballot boxes. Kasaro added that the electoral commission will re-evaluate the suspension within a 24-hour window to determine next steps for resuming the counting process.

Even before official results could be tabulated, both leading candidates made competing claims about the outcome of the vote. Mundubile, who ran under the banner of the newly formed National Restoration Party for Unity and Progress (NRPUP) backed by a coalition of opposition groups, declared an outright first-round victory on Friday. “We have won this election both at presidential level and majority seats in parliament,” Mundubile stated, adding that his campaign views the ongoing delay to the transparent announcement and verification of presidential results with grave concern. For his part, Hichilema said his campaign team has received encouraging early voting trends, and took to social media to urge all Zambian citizens to “remain peaceful, patient and patriotic as we await the official outcome from those entrusted with managing the vote.”

Alongside the presidential race, Zambian voters also cast ballots for 226 parliamentary seats, and counting for that contest has also been suspended. Around 8.7 million voters were registered to participate in this election cycle.

The election comes against a backdrop of both Zambia’s long democratic history and growing concerns over political space. Zambia has a proud track record of peaceful democratic power transfers, with every change of the presidency since the return of multi-party politics in 1991 achieved through free and fair elections. However, the Hichilema administration has faced increased international scrutiny over claims that it has narrowed space for political dissent, even as it pursues commitments to robust economic recovery. On the eve of voting, Zambia’s Human Rights Commission announced it was “actively monitoring arrests and detentions involving political candidates, supporters, journalists and other actors” to prevent election-related rights abuses.

In pre-election security operations, Zambian interior ministry confirmed that security forces had already arrested multiple suspects accused of plotting to interfere with the electoral process. While authorities did not disclose the total number of arrests, they confirmed three former senior government officials are in custody, charged with providing technical services aimed at disrupting the electoral system. A 56-year-old Kenyan national was also detained in connection with the plot. Additionally, three other individuals, including a former provincial minister, were found in possession of more than 7.3 million kwacha (approximately $388,000) in unaccounted funds and have been summoned to assist with ongoing investigations.

Economically, Zambia remains one of the world’s richest countries in mineral reserves, holding abundant deposits of not just copper but also cobalt, nickel and manganese, yet it continues to face persistent systemic challenges including widespread poverty, chronic unemployment, and skyrocketing food prices. According to World Bank data, more than 70 percent of Zambia’s 22 million population survives on less than three U.S. dollars per day. The previous administration under late former president Edgar Lungu left the country in sovereign default after years of unsustainable heavy borrowing. Since taking office, Hichilema’s government has secured a landmark international debt restructuring deal, restored a suspended International Monetary Fund lending program, and returned the country to positive economic growth, earning broad praise from global lenders and international investors. Hichilema, a 64-year-old former business tycoon who won the presidency on his sixth electoral attempt, campaigned on a platform of continued job creation and an ambitious national infrastructure expansion drive to secure a second and final five-year term. Mundubile entered the presidential race only in May, a late entry that injected significant uncertainty into a contest that long been viewed as likely to end in an incumbent victory, as his party draws its core support from the ranks of the former ruling Patriotic Front.

For 63-year-old veteran Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin, exile in Paris was never part of the plan. Speaking to Agence France-Presse from a suburban Paris hotel, the one-time Kremlin insider-turned-peace advocate says he remained in Russia as long as he possibly could, carefully navigating shifting unwritten rules around dissent until even his mild criticism of Moscow’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine crossed an uncrossable line.

Once a little-known token figure in Russia’s liberal opposition, Nadezhdin carried deep ties to the current Russian leadership: he has met President Vladimir Putin in person, sharing tea on multiple occasions shortly after Putin rose to power 25 years ago. He previously collaborated with Sergei Kiriyenko, now one of Putin’s most influential senior advisors, and spent years appearing on state-aligned Russian political television programming. Following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, the Kremlin erased even the smallest hints of domestic political pluralism, outlawing all public criticism of the war and forcing leading government critics into exile, prison, or an early grave.

Nadezhdin initially believed he could avoid repression by sticking to the state’s evolving rules. But his public calls for a negotiated peace and measured criticism of what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” — now in its third year — made him a target. In 2024, he launched a long-shot bid for the Russian presidency, quickly becoming a rallying point for widespread hidden anti-war sentiment, with viral images of long lines of his supporters circulating across the globe. The Kremlin ultimately blocked his candidacy.

By July this year, Nadezhdin learned that any further challenge to the Kremlin could result in a lengthy prison sentence. When he attempted to register for September’s tightly controlled parliamentary elections, authorities labeled him a “foreign agent” — a designation widely used to silence dissenting voices. Citing his pre-existing heart condition, Nadezhdin said he feared he would not survive incarceration, so just days after receiving a summons for official questioning, he slipped out of Russia via Kazakhstan, leaving his elderly parents and children behind. Within days of his escape, Russia’s only registered anti-war party, Yabloko, was also blocked from contesting the September polls.

Nadezhdin says his campaign before it was shut down revealed extraordinary pent-up demand for political change and an end to the war. “I met with hundreds, perhaps thousands of young Russians. They all say they want peace, and they all want a return to normal life,” he explained. “That is why they did not let me or Yabloko run. Putin is convinced that the entire country supports him and that victory for the Russian military is just around the corner.”

His comments echo growing visible impacts of the war inside Russia itself, as Ukraine escalates drone strikes on Russian energy and logistics infrastructure to bring the conflict home to ordinary citizens and disrupt Moscow’s war economy. “Every day Ukrainian drones fly over Russian territory and people die — even children,” Nadezhdin said. “There are gasoline shortages, internet outages, and prices keep climbing. If you walk through any cemetery in a Russian city, you will see immediately how many young men have been killed.”

While independent polling on public opinion in Russia is heavily constrained by strict censorship laws, recent data from the Levada Center — Russia’s last major independent pollster, itself labeled a foreign agent by Moscow — shows 62 percent of Russian respondents support immediate peace talks with Ukraine, compared to just 28 percent who back continuing the military campaign. Nadezhdin added that even many members of Russia’s ruling elite are privately frustrated with the war, but fear repression too much to speak out. “They all toe the official line, and they tell me: ‘Boris, you understand. One wrong step, and we are ruined,’” he said.

Observers note that while Putin’s public approval has declined from its peaks, his hold on political power remains unchallenged. But Nadezhdin argues that further escalation of the conflict will continue to erode public support over time. “After three years of war, Russian voters understand very well the real human and economic cost of these so-called great victories,” he said.

Nadezhdin, a trained physicist who previously served in Russia’s parliament and 1990s federal government, says he has no regrets about his past cooperation with Russian authorities. “I would have made a good European politician,” he joked. “A European politician knows how to seek compromise, find common ground, read the public mood and adapt.”

Though he has received offers of assistance from diplomats in multiple countries, Nadezhdin chose to settle temporarily in France. The father of four still has no clear long-term plans: he does not know where he will live, how he will support himself, or when he will be able to return to Russia. He remains hesitant to force his family to uproot their lives to join him in exile. “I don’t have a clear plan for the coming weeks or months,” he said. “But I will keep working until I can go home to Russia again.”

In a widely watched UK parliamentary by-election that captured national attention for its unusual cast of candidates and political context, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage secured a decisive victory in Clacton on Friday, while surprise high-performing joke candidate Count Binface declared an unexpected moral victory for his campaign.

The contest, which drew a historic 34 candidates — resulting in ballot papers nearly one meter long, one of the longest in British electoral history — was triggered by Farage’s resignation from the seat he had held since the 2024 general election. The hard-right politician stepped down amid an ongoing parliamentary watchdog investigation into allegations of undeclared financial gifts, a move that Britain’s major mainstream parties, including the incumbent Labour government, dismissed as a political stunt and opted not to contest.

When official results were announced, Farage, founder of Reform UK, took a commanding 63 percent of the vote in the eastern English coastal constituency, a strong showing that confirmed pre-election predictions of his victory. Even before vote counting concluded, Farage declared victory at a rally for supporters in Essex, broadcast live on social platform X, telling cheering backers: “The verdict is in and it is a convincing and overwhelming win.” He declined to attend the official count venue, citing an Essex Police warning of a planned organized campaign to disrupt the electoral process. Local election officials later confirmed the vote proceeded safely and securely with police support.

Farage framed the by-election as a battle between Clacton voters and the national political establishment, casting the financial investigation against him as a coordinated stitch-up to remove him from office. The parliamentary standards probe is examining a reported £5 million ($6.7 million) donation to Reform UK from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, with Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice denying any wrongdoing in failing to declare the gift. London’s Metropolitan Police also launched a separate investigation last year into party donations ahead of the 2024 general election.

While Farage’s landslide was widely expected, the performance of Count Binface — the satirical alter ego of comedian Jon Harvey, who campaigns wearing a rubbish bin on his head and styles himself as an intergalactic space warrior from the fictional planet Sigma IX — far outstripped analyst predictions. Binface secured 9,455 votes, equal to 27 percent of the total vote share, turning the contest into a two-horse race after major parties bowed out.

Speaking early Friday from the count venue at Clacton Leisure Centre, Binface claimed a moral victory, noting that with major mainstream parties declining to field a candidate, it fell to fringe candidates to offer voters an opposition choice. “If the other parties choose not to stand, somebody has to stand up and be the opposition. And so it’s my humble duty to actually be His Majesty’s official opposition,” he said, adding that he respected the result if voters chose to return Farage as their member of parliament.

Voter turnout for the by-election hit approximately 44 percent, down from 59 percent in the 2024 national general election, a drop that is typical for off-cycle by-elections in the UK. Many voters in the seaside resort constituency expressed apathy toward the contest, with even some Reform UK campaign volunteers describing the election as unnecessary and ridiculous. “It’s all to make Nigel Farage look like an idiot, basically. But he doesn’t look like an idiot to me or his supporters,” local campaigner Jane Embleton told AFP ahead of the vote.

Political analysts have characterized the by-election result as having limited wider ramifications for national British politics. Farage’s Reform UK led national opinion polls for 18 months before slipping in recent surveys, but the Clacton seat has long been a stronghold for pro-Brexit, right-wing politics, having backed Brexit by a large margin in the 2016 referendum.

Stijn van Kessel, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP: “This by-election was ultimately of limited consequence. Farage successfully managed to mobilise supporters in a constituency where he is popular. But the result does not reflect Reform’s support across the country.”

Stuart Fox, senior politics lecturer at the University of Exeter, noted that Farage’s return to parliament will now allow the parliamentary standards investigation to resume, potentially putting Farage back in the spotlight and forcing another by-election in the near future. “Now he’s back in Parliament, the standards commissioner will resume the investigation,” Fox said. “He could easily be forced to face another by-election in a matter of weeks.”

A once-powerful figure in Australia’s construction union movement has landed back in police custody, marking the third time in 12 months he has faced criminal charges linked to alleged threats against the administrators of his former organization. John Setka, 61, who stepped down as national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) just six months ago, was arrested early Friday at his residential address in Melbourne’s inner-western suburb of Footscray, Victoria Police confirmed in an official statement.

Law enforcement alleges Setka sent harassing and insulting messages via an online communication channel this Monday. Following his arrest, he has been formally charged with four criminal offences: two counts of improper use of a telecommunications device — one for menacing conduct and one for offensive conduct — plus two additional charges of committing an indictable offence while released on bail. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance on this latest round of charges at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court later Friday afternoon.

Setka’s departure from his decades-long leadership role at the CFMEU in July 2024 came amid mounting pressure, when he announced his resignation blaming “ongoing false allegations” that organized crime groups had infiltrated the union under his watch. This latest arrest is not an isolated incident: Taskforce Hawk detectives, the specialized police unit investigating the allegations, first took Setka into custody in November 2023, when he was hit with seven counts of using telecommunications to menace, harass and offend. He faced a second set of charges including improper use of a carriage service for harassment in February 2025. Setka has repeatedly maintained his innocence and has publicly stated he will fight all charges in court. In a prior claim earlier this year, Setka himself alleged he had been the target of death threats related to the ongoing investigations.

A senior opposition lawmaker in Australia has walked back a controversial remark that sparked fierce backlash, after he appeared to confirm that his party’s planned overhaul of national building rules would force low-income Australians to accept lower-quality housing.

Senator Andrew Bragg, the Liberal Party’s shadow housing spokesperson, launched the Coalition’s new housing affordability plan at Canberra’s National Press Club this Wednesday. The centerpiece of the proposal is a dramatic reduction of Australia’s National Construction Code, cutting the document down from roughly 2,000 pages to just 80 pages, with the stated goal of slashing building costs to unlock more affordable home construction across the country.

The following day, during an interview on ABC Radio National, host Sally Sara asked Senator Bragg whether the plan would mean low-income households would have to accept substandard housing to access an affordable property. In his on-air response, Bragg plainly stated “yes, definitely,” adding that Australian voters needed to be honest about the necessary trade-offs to resolve the country’s ongoing housing affordability crisis.

He went on to frame the proposal as a practical response to record low housing supply, arguing that securing a roof over one’s head was a more urgent priority than extra non-essential features, referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to contextualize his point.

But just one day later, Senator Bragg issued a public correction across his social media channels, claiming he had misheard Sara’s original question and had never intended to back the claim that the Coalition’s new code would produce substandard housing. “I did not intend to agree that houses complying with the Basic Australian Standard (the Coalition’s reduced code) would be ‘substandard’. They wouldn’t be,” he said in the statement.

Bragg clarified that homes built under the revised code would meet strict safety standards, retaining all core basic amenities including insulation, plumbing and sewerage. He added that the framework had received strong support from Australia’s construction industry, with all non-essential features—such as mandatory accessibility ramps, flat shower flooring and reinforced walls—set to become optional add-ons rather than required builds. “The house won’t be gold plated but it won’t fall apart. It will be safe,” he said in his original press club address.

The policy pitch comes as the Liberal-National opposition ramps up pressure on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government over its housing performance, two years into the federal government’s landmark National Housing Accord. The ambitious bipartisan plan targets the construction of 1.2 million new well-located homes by mid-2029, but official updates have repeatedly shown the project is falling well behind its delivery targets. In his speech, Bragg argued that current overly restrictive building rules have made low-cost home construction effectively illegal in Australia, and the Coalition’s streamlined code would cut construction costs to boost supply.

But the proposal has already drawn sharp criticism from affordable housing advocacy groups. Maiy Azize, spokesperson for leading advocacy organization Everybody’s Home, accused the Coalition of pushing changes that would only benefit private developers, allowing them to increase profit margins by building unlivable, low-quality homes during a national housing crisis. “Everyone deserves a safe, decent and affordable home. It’s where people sleep, study, raise their families and build their lives,” Azize said.

A dramatic shift in Washington’s strategic priorities for the ongoing conflict with Iran has been laid bare by top US officials, who confirmed Thursday that taming soaring domestic gasoline prices has replaced curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as the White House’s top goal. The announcement underscores how Iran’s closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz has reshaped the conflict, handing Tehran a powerful bargaining chip amid growing political and military strain on the Biden-administration? No — the Trump administration, which launched the war alongside Israel in late February.

Speaking in an interview with Fox News, Vice President JD Vance made clear that the long-stated core objective of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — which President Donald Trump repeatedly framed as his primary justification for launching the conflict — has now been pushed to second place. “That’s goal number one — keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country,” Vance said. “And then obviously goal number two is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.” His comments cement the new reality that the conflict now revolves entirely around control of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global oil supplies that remained open before the US-Israel offensive began.

In retaliation for the invasion, Iran has effectively shut down the strait, cutting off a major artery of global energy trade and sending US gasoline prices skyrocketing. The move has put Trump in an increasingly precarious position: his approval rating has plummeted amid broad public opposition to the war, and November’s midterm congressional elections are just months away. Congressional Republicans, who currently hold narrow control of both chambers, fear that voter anger over soaring energy costs and the unpopular war will cost them their majority in November.

Vance, who has been one of the most skeptical voices within the Trump administration regarding the February offensive, said that the administration’s shifting focus reflects its need to address immediate economic pain for American households. “Sometimes we’re focused on the energy piece of it because we want Americans to be able to afford the price of oil and gas. Sometimes we’re obviously focused on the military… on the nuclear program,” he added.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reinforced the administration’s new approach Thursday, announcing that harsh new economic sanctions targeting Iran are set to roll out next week, as Washington doubles down on economic pressure to force Tehran to back down. Bessent threatened to subject Iran to economic isolation “like the world has never seen before” as part of the new measures. The announcement comes amid a sharp pivot from Trump, who just days ago claimed a deal to reopen the strait was imminent. Now, the White House has paused formal diplomatic negotiations, betting that mounting economic hardship in Iran — where inflation has surged and government revenues have collapsed amid the closure of oil exports — will force Tehran to concede to US demands.

“We are low-keying it,” Trump told Axios Sunday. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”

A second major factor constraining Trump’s options is growing depletion of US military stockpiles. Multiple reports indicate that the US military has burned through billions of dollars worth of advanced high-tech missiles and other precision weapons in the first months of the war, leaving arsenals depleted and limiting the administration’s ability to resume large-scale offensive operations against Iran. Trump has repeatedly stated he would only hold off on new large-scale attacks if Tehran quickly agrees to reopen the strait.

So far, however, Iran has shown no willingness to compromise on its own terms. Tehran has laid out a set of preconditions for reopening the Strait that the Trump administration is widely expected to reject: a full end to hostilities across all fronts, the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, the removal of all long-running sanctions on Iran, the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, and payment of compensation for wartime damage to Iranian infrastructure. These demands mirror the terms of a tentative memorandum of understanding reached between the two sides in June, which collapsed shortly after it was signed when fighting resumed. The draft June deal also included a provision to establish a $300 billion international reconstruction fund to help repair damage to Iran’s economy and infrastructure.