标签： Oceania

Queensland’s political landscape has been left reeling after a tight and high-stakes by-election in the northern Brisbane seat of Stafford, where the state opposition Labor party has claimed a narrow victory despite a substantial swing toward the incumbent Liberal National Party (LNP) government.

The contest, triggered by the sudden passing of former member Jimmy Sullivan in April 2024, was widely framed as an early test of leadership for new Labor opposition leader Steven Miles, coming just months after Labor suffered a bruising defeat at the 2024 Queensland state election. Sullivan, a 44-year-old who had been sitting on the crossbench after expulsion from Labor’s caucus over personal scrutiny, died of non-suspicious causes at his Brisbane home earlier this year, vacating the seat that Labor has held almost continuously since 2015.

Latest official data from the Queensland Electoral Commission shows Labor candidate Luke Richmond holds a slim two-party-preferred lead of 51.2 per cent over LNP challenger Fiona Hammond, a former Brisbane City Councillor, who trails on 48.8 per cent. After all preferences are distributed, just over 700 votes separate the two front-running candidates. While the result still leaves Richmond ahead, the LNP secured a 4.1 per cent swing away from Labor in the historically safe Labor seat, which only fell to the LNP once before, during the party’s 2012 state landslide victory.

Despite the narrow margin, LNP Premier David Crisafulli publicly conceded defeat to a gathering of party supporters in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley on Saturday night. Acknowledging the result would leave the government “agonisingly short”, Crisafulli nonetheless celebrated the swing his party achieved, noting the outcome exceeded internal party expectations. “If you had said to me at the start of this that we will be here with a result like this, I think it is probably beyond all of our dreams,” he told attendees.

For Labor, however, the narrow win is being framed as a sign of growing momentum ahead of the 2028 state election. In a victory statement Saturday night, Miles drew clear battle lines for the next statewide poll, pointing to the massive grassroots campaign Labor ran to hold the seat. “We have seen that momentum right here on the ground in Stafford, and tonight has drawn the battle lines for the 2028 election,” Miles said. He went on to note that the campaign marked the largest grassroots organising effort in Queensland Labor history, with volunteers knocking on more than 34,000 doors and making more than 27,000 direct voter calls.

Miles also highlighted unusual context that benefited the LNP in the by-election, noting the party gained its modest swing after the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds on political advertising, and struck a deal with One Nation that saw the right-wing party avoid running a candidate and openly endorse Hammond. Miles also praised Hammond for running what he called a respectful campaign.

The seat of Stafford covers Brisbane’s inner-northern suburbs including Stafford, Chermside and Kedron, and has been held by Labor continuously since Anthony Lynham reclaimed it for the party in the 2015 state election. Sullivan succeeded Lynham as the member in 2020, before his expulsion from the Labor caucus and subsequent death earlier this year. While official formal declaration of the result is still pending, both major parties have already positioned the razor-thin outcome as a sign of shifting political tides in Queensland ahead of the next state poll.

In early January 2026, a lightning special forces raid by the United States in central Caracas stunned the world: Venezuela’s long-ruling leftist former president Nicolas Maduro was taken into custody alongside his wife Cilia Flores, and immediately extradited to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges. Four months on, the once-ubiquitous face of Maduro — which for years dominated Venezuelan public life, appearing on everything from nightly state television broadcasts and street murals to public construction signage and even children’s toys — is rapidly being erased from the national landscape.

The interim government led by former Chavismo figure Delcy Rodriguez, which took power following Maduro’s ouster, has overseen this gradual removal of Maduro’s image from public spaces as it pursues a dramatic geopolitical realignment with Washington. To mark its first 100 days in office, Rodriguez’s administration adopted the unapologetic slogan “The beginning of a new chapter” — a clear signal of its break with the Maduro era.

Under intense pressure from the United States, which has threatened further military intervention if its demands are not met, Rodriguez has prioritized sweeping policy changes aligned with U.S. interests: landmark reforms opening Venezuela’s lucrative hydrocarbon and mining sectors to foreign investment, alongside a broad amnesty program that has released hundreds of political opponents imprisoned under Maduro. She has also purged dozens of Maduro-appointed senior ministers from government, systematically weakening the former leader’s remaining ties to state institutions.

Eduardo Valero Castro, a professor of political science at Venezuela’s Central University, explained the deliberate nature of this shift. “We have seen how the figure of former president Nicolas Maduro has been gradually retired from public spaces,” he told AFP. “There is a new intentionality in Venezuelan politics, fully aligned with the new geopolitical alliance frameworks between Caracas and Washington.”

Rodriguez has pushed back hard against accusations of betraying her former mentor, who she insists she remained loyal to “until the last second.” Speaking at a public event in April, she dismissed her critics’ claims as petty and irrelevant. “Those who, out of pettiness, out of irrationality, say what they say about me, I’m going to tell them something: It’s irrelevant compared to what it means to defend Venezuela,” she said.

But the shift has exposed deep internal fractures within the Chavismo movement that Maduro led. Senior former Chavismo figures have openly condemned Rodriguez’s alignment with Washington. “I communicated this internally: we have become a lowly protectorate of the United States,” former pro-Maduro lawmaker Mario Silva wrote in an open letter to Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s powerful interior minister and one of Maduro’s closest remaining allies. “No pressure can justify collaborating with an aggressor,” Silva added.

Cabello, who remains in his post under the interim government, recently faced public criticism on his weekly television show over what critics called a “weak campaign” to secure Maduro’s release. He reaffirmed the movement’s official stance: “Our goal from the very beginning, our main objective, is for Cilia and Nicolas to come back.”

Silva’s public critique sparked fierce pushback from other Chavismo members, who deemed his comments out of line — a clear reflection of the growing rifts between hardline pro-Maduro factions and those who have accepted the new political order. Even among rank-and-file Chavismo supporters, many are frustrated that Maduro has largely disappeared from public discourse. At a recent march calling for an end to crippling U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, 64-year-old Chavista Ana Maria Pinto told AFP: “We want people to talk about him more, because that is not happening, he is not being taken into account.”

Alquimedes Rios, a leader of a Chavismo-affiliated community council, argued that activists have continued to organize to demand Maduro’s return from U.S. custody. “Our interim president Delcy Rodriguez continues negotiating, continues talking in order for our president Nicolas Maduro to return,” he said. “Have they not done enough? That could be, but we have been fighting to make that possible.”

For many ordinary Venezuelans, the reality of the situation is more nuanced. Juan Garcia, a 21-year-old fisherman from the coastal Sucre state, acknowledged the overwhelming challenges Rodriguez faces. “They’re acting through diplomacy, because we’re not going to bring him back through force,” he said.

Political analysts say the future of Maduro’s legacy will be tied directly to the success of Rodriguez’s economic agenda. Jesus Castillo-Molleda, a Venezuelan political scientist, noted that Maduro no longer represents a unifying force of stability for the fractured Chavismo movement. The movement, he argued, “is forced to accept this reality” of cooperating with Washington to survive. If Rodriguez can deliver sustained economic improvement for Venezuelans, Castillo-Molleda said, “Maduro will be forgotten more quickly.”

On a busy Saturday in central London that also hosted English football’s iconic FA Cup Final, dual large-scale demonstrations – one organized by high-profile far-right figure Tommy Robinson, and a counter-rally merging pro-Palestine activism and anti-fascism – drew tens of thousands of attendees, requiring one of the largest UK police deployments in recent memory.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service (Met) had prepared extensively for the dueling events, pre-positioning 4,000 officers supported by mounted units, canine teams, surveillance drones and helicopters to separate the rival crowds and prevent public disorder. The force estimates the entire security operation will cost £4.5 million (approximately $6 million), marking an unprecedented investment in protest policing for a domestic demonstration. In a new regulatory move, organizers have for the first time been held legally responsible for ensuring invited speakers do not violate UK hate speech legislation, with police announcing a strict zero-tolerance policy for any violence, harassment or hate speech.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a former football hooligan turned anti-Islam activist who has gained massive online traction in recent years, organized the event billed as the “Unite the Kingdom” march, which set off from Holborn in central London. Ahead of the rally, the UK government barred 11 foreign far-right agitators from entering the country to attend, including U.S.-based extremist Valentina Gomez, who authorities condemn for repeated inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric targeting Muslim communities. Early Saturday morning, officers arrested two men en route to Robinson’s rally who were wanted on suspicion of grievous bodily harm linked to a Birmingham incident where a man was hit by a vehicle; no further details have been released about that case.

Many attendees of Robinson’s rally framed the event as a patriotic gathering centered on British national culture, with multiple participants describing their presence as a stand against current UK immigration policies, which have drawn widespread public anger over the tens of thousands of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats each year. Natasha, a 44-year-old attendee draped in a Union Jack and wearing a Union Jack-patterned bucket hat, told reporters “it’s nice to be around my own culture,” calling the event patriotic and denying any racist intent. Justin, a 56-year-old from Essex who declined to share his last name, echoed that framing, confirming that immigration was a core issue driving attendance. This rally follows a September 2023 event organized by Robinson that drew up to 150,000 people to central London, a shocking turnout for the far-right that featured a video address from X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk. That event ended in clashes that injured dozens of police officers, pushing the far-right’s growing influence into the national spotlight.

Across the capital, the competing counter-demonstration combined three separate initiatives: a commemoration of Nakba Day, which marks the 1948 displacement of Palestinians during the founding of Israel; a pro-Palestine protest; and an anti-fascism rally organized by the group Stand Up to Racism. The Met projected an estimated 30,000 people would attend this combined event, which began in west London before marching toward central London. Simon Ralls, a 62-year-old attendee from Nottingham, explained his participation as a direct response to the growing confidence of far-right groups in the UK. “The right (wing) are emboldened — we’re here to try and counter that, make sure people aren’t ignorant,” he told reporters ahead of the march.

The dual demonstrations come amid heightened domestic security tensions in the UK. Just two weeks prior, the country’s terrorism threat level was raised to “severe” – the second-highest possible level – with security officials citing growing risks from both Islamist extremism and extreme right-wing terrorism. The events also follow a recent string of violent anti-Semitic attacks targeting London’s Jewish community, a wave of violence that some have linked to hostile rhetoric at pro-Palestine rallies across the country. To boost security, police are deploying live facial recognition technology for the first time ever at a UK protest, a move that has sparked debate over privacy and surveillance even as authorities defend it as a necessary public safety measure.

Adding to the strain on policing resources, the FA Cup Final – one of the biggest dates on the UK football calendar – kicked off at Wembley Stadium at 4 pm GMT, drawing tens of thousands of football fans to the capital just miles from the protest routes. Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke out a day before the demonstrations, issuing a strong warning that “anyone who sets out to wreak havoc on our streets, to intimidate or threaten anyone… can expect to face the full force of the law.” Starmer explicitly condemned organizers of Robinson’s rally, accusing them of “peddling hatred and division.” For his part, Robinson has urged attendees to avoid masks, excessive alcohol, and any disruptive behavior, calling on supporters to remain “peaceful and courteous.” Police have nonetheless voiced concerns about potential unrest from known football hooligan groups that have a history of supporting Robinson’s events.