Women to march ahead in politics

The Political Parties Law stipulates that 30 percent of the House of Representatives and the People's Representative Council should be female. But the reality is that only 11.27 percent of the House's 550 members are women.

In the regions, women face challenges in becoming legislative candidates and sometimes have difficulties voting independently.

"Patriarchy is like a plague in our pesantren (Islamic boarding school). Many female voters are forced to vote for the candidates whom their teachers, who mostly are males, have instructed them to. If they vote otherwise, the teachers won't acknowledge them as students and this scares the voters," said Rukayah Maksum, a member of the Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy (KPI) in the East Java town Bondowoso.

"To make things worse, political parties usually take turns at pesantren during the election campaign while exploiting the culture for their own political gains," she said during the KPI's national political consolidation assembly here Wednesday.

Sri Wahyuningsih, an academic and KPI member from Malang, East Java, lamented the general apathy of women in her province, particularly toward getting involved in politics.

"It's really not easy asking around for women who would be interested in becoming legislative candidates. There is a great deal of shyness and second-guessing among the women, not to mention funding concerns," she said.

Another KPI member, Alfianda, who hails from Cirebon, West Java, said many male members of local political parties denied the applicability of the 2008 Political Parties Law in provinces, regencies and municipalities.

"They claimed the 30 percent quota was only applicable on the national scale. Whereas in the provinces and regencies, proportional representation is still the rule of the game," she said. "Obviously, politicians and legislatures in the regions feel threatened by the possible increase of women's participation in politics."

A central figure in the drafting of the law, Tyas Indyah Iskandar of Golkar Party, said the main opposition she received when lobbying for the 30 percent quota to apply across the board was that party executives in the capital and regions alike had in fact come from small and local political parties.

"There were representatives who literally begged us to compromise by limiting the application of the article so as to not hurt the performance of local parties," she said.

Pak channel airs photos of two suspects

A Pakistani TV news channel today aired photographs of two men, which it said were involved in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto after an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday.
One of the two grainy photos – which Dawn News channel said were clicked by an amateur photographer – showed a youth wearing sunglasses aiming a pistol at Bhutto’s back while she waved through the sun-roof of her bulletproof vehicle to her supporters.
The other picture, apparently taken before the shooting, showed the same youth standing next to another man, who had a white cloth wrapped around his face. Dawn News described the second man as the “suspected suicide bomber”

Sharif meets Zardari, pays tributes to Bhutto

Former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif today visited the grave of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and offered condolences to her husband Asif Ali Zardari and son Bilawal.
Sharif, who was accompanied by a 40-member delegation of his PML-N party, laid a floral wreath at Bhutto’s grave at her family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh in the southern Sindh province.

Shaukat Aziz not to contest elections

Former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Saturday that he would not contest next elections due on January 8.
“I will stay in politics as an ordinary member of the PML and serve the country,” Aziz told reporters. He said though he had received offers to contest from party leaders of eight constituencies, he opted to stay out of the fray.

Us says it has right to kidnap British citizens

The United States has told Britain that it has the right to “kidnap” British citizens if they are suspected of crimes in America – and this can be done without using formal extradition procedures.

A senior lawyer for the US Government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under the US law as the country’s Supreme Court has sanctioned it, The Sunday Times reported.

“It’s acceptable under the American law to kidnap people if they’re wanted for offences in America. The US does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared….If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse – it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860’s” Alun Jones told the UK court.

The statement came when one of the Court of Appeal judges asked Jones, representing the US government about its treatment of the nephew of Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club.

Gavin Tollman became the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005. The Tollmans are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax evasion.

In 2005, Gavin Tollman, the head of Trafalgar Tours, a holiday company, had arrived in Toronto by plane when he was arrested by Canadian immigration authorities.

An American prosecutor, who had tried and failed to extradite him from Britain, persuaded the Canadian officials to detain him. Tollman was escorted in handcuffs from the aircraft in Toronto, taken to prison and held for 10 days.

Hand-picked SC clears Mush election

A supreme court hand-picked by General Pervez Musharraf swiftly dismissed legal challenges to his continued rule on Monday, paving the way for him to serve another five-year term – this time solely as a civilian president. Welcoming the ruling, a Musharraf aide said it kept the General on track to quit the army by the end of November.

Labour sweeps general election in Australia

Promising a major policy change on Iraq and climate issues, the Labour party today swept to power in Australia, beating the coalition led by conservative Prime Minister John Howard, which had ruled the country for 11 years.

“A few minutes ago I telephoned Rudd and congratulated him and the Australian Labour Party on a very emphatic victory,” Howard said in a nationally televised concession speech.

:”I accept full responsibility for the Liberal party campaign, and I therefore accept full responsibility for the coalition’s defeat in this election campaign the leader said.

Voters turned to Labour party leader Kevin Rudd’s pitch of fresh leadership and new ideas over Howard’s record of economic management and unprecedented years of growth under his government.

The historic victory has put Rudd into the company of Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke as Labour’s only modern leaders to take government from opposition.

Exit polls has consistently put the Labour party ahead since Rudd took the reins from Kim Beazley last December.