Georgian President Zourabichvili calls for protests
after ruling party wins disputed election
Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili Sunday said she did not recognize the results of the country’s parliamentary vote and said Georgia was the victim of a “Russian special operation” which was aimed at taking away the country’s European future.
Bulgaria's centre-right GERB party leads in snap elections,
falls short of majority
Bulgaria’s conservative GERB party, led by ex-premier Boyko Borisov, claimed around 25 percent of votes in the country's seventh election in four years, early results show. Analysts warn of persistent uncertainty due to lack of a clear majority, leaving Bulgaria's political future unresolved amid ongoing deadlock.
The conservative party of former premier Boyko Borisov came first in Bulgaria's seventh general election in less than four years on Sunday, according to early results, but analysts warned that the lack of a majority meant lingering uncertainty.
Borisov's GERB party won about 25 percent of the vote, according to projections published by polling institutes with 80 percent of votes counted.
The reformist coalition PP-DB and the pro-Russia ultra-nationalist Vazrazhdane party were in a close race for second place, gaining around 13 percent to 15 percent of the ballots.
"We are again waiting at the same bus stop to see whether GERB and PP-DB will reach an agreement" to isolate the far-right Vazrazhdane, said analyst Andrey Raichev on television.
The European Union's poorest member country has been at a political standstill since 2021 after massive anti-corruption protests in 2020 triggered the downfall of one Borisov-led cabinet.
Six votes since then have failed to yield a stable government.
Late Sunday, Borisov pledged to work on forming another government, adding he was willing to "compromise" despite securing a "categorical victory", but excluded working with the far right.
GERB will likely struggle to find partners to govern in the extremely fragmented parliament, where eight parties are expected to be represented.
'Without outside interference'
Compared to the last election, voter turnout slightly increased to 38 percent. At a vote in June, turnout plummeted to just 34 percent – the lowest since the end of communism.
According to a recent opinion poll, about 60 percent of Bulgarians surveyed said the political deadlock was "extremely alarming".
"We're fed up, that's for sure," said Aneliya Ivanova ahead of the vote, echoing rising voter apathy.
"We're tired of being stuck in a carousel that goes round and round, and every time it's the same result," the 33-year-old IT worker told AFP.
The political impasse – which is unprecedented since 1989 – has also favoured the Vazrazhdane party.
"Bulgaria must remain an independent country, without outside interference," the group's president Kostadin Kostadinov said, referring to the EU and the United States.
Vazrazhdane appears to have gained influence since proposing a law banning LGBTQ "propaganda" that was passed by parliament in August.
The legislation was inspired by a similar law in Russia. Even though Bulgaria is a NATO member, many citizens remain strongly pro-Russian.
Undecided White House race
According to analyst Raichev, Borisov will wait for the result of the November US presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris before forming a government.
"Borisov will feel much more comfortable if Trump becomes president," he added.
The election of Republican Trump and his "leniency towards corruption" could prompt GERB to form a minority cabinet with tacit backing from former tycoon Delyan Peevski, who is the target of US and British sanctions, said analyst Dobromir Zhivkov, director of the Market Links institute.
The 44-year-old lawmaker has created a breakaway faction within the Turkish minority MRF party, which took fourth place Sunday with around 10 percent of the vote.
Amid fears of electoral fraud, public prosecutors launched hundreds of investigations ahead of the vote. More than 70 people suspected of vote-buying were arrested.
Prolonged political instability has put key anti-corruption reforms as well as the country's energy transition on hold, jeopardising the payout of European funds.
Bulgaria's goals of joining the eurozone and the free movement Schengen area via land have also slipped further away.
A further burden to the country is the cost of organising seven elections amounting to several hundred million euros.
(AFP)
Japan's ruling party fails to win majority
in snap election
Japan's ruling party did not win a majority in parliament after voters cast their ballots on Sunday, dealing a blow to new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Voters have been left disillusioned by Japan's high cost of living and political scandals that helped topple previous premier Fumio Kishida.
Japan's scandal-hit ruling party fell short of a majority for the first time since 2009 in snap elections on Sunday, media projections showed, in a blow to new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Worse still, it was touch and go whether Ishiba's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) could secure a parliamentary majority with its long-term coalition partner, the Komeito party.
"We are receiving severe judgement," Ishiba told national broadcaster NHK late Sunday.
Voters "expressed their strong desire for the LDP to do some reflection and become a party that will act in line with the people's will," he said.
Former defence minister Ishiba, 67, called the election after being narrowly selected last month to lead the LDP, which has governed Japan for almost all of the past 70 years.
But voters in the world's fourth-largest economy have been rankled by rising prices and the fallout from a party slush fund scandal that helped sink previous premier Fumio Kishida.
Footage from the LDP headquarters after the polls closed on Sunday showed gloomy faces as the projections based on exit polls said Ishiba's justice and agriculture ministers were likely to lose their seats.
Ishiba, a self-confessed security policy geek who likes making model planes, had said his target in the election was for the coalition to win a majority.
Missing this goal would seriously undermine his position in the LDP and mean finding other coalition partners or leading a minority government.
"If we are unable to obtain a majority as a result of severe public judgement, we will ask as many people as possible to cooperate with us," the LDP's election chief Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters.
Worst in 15 years
In Japan's last general election in 2021, the LDP won a majority in its own right, with 259 seats in parliament's powerful lower house. Komeito had 32.
On Sunday, national broadcaster NHK projected that the LDP would win between 153 and 219 seats -- short of the 233 needed for a majority in the 465-seat parliament.
If confirmed by official results, the LDP losing its majority would be the worst result since it lost power 15 years ago before being brought back in a 2012 landslide by late former premier Shinzo Abe.
Together with Komeito, which is projected 21 to 35 seats, the coalition would hold between 174 and 254 seats, according to NHK.
Projections from the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri dailies suggested the coalition would lose its majority. The Asahi projected the LDP would win 185 seats and that the coalition would manage only 210.
Opinion polls before the election had suggested that in many districts, LDP candidates were neck-and-neck with those from the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), the second-biggest in parliament, led by popular former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda.
Projections on Sunday suggested that the CDP had made considerable gains, with NHK indicating it could win between 128 and 191 seats -- up from 96.
"The LDP's politics is all about quickly implementing policies for those who give them loads of cash," 67-year-old Noda told his supporters on Saturday.
Noda said on Sunday night he would hold "sincere talks with various parties".
"Our basic philosophy is that the LDP-Komeito administration cannot continue," Noda told Fuji-TV.
Ishiba has pledged to revitalise depressed rural regions and to address the "quiet emergency" of Japan's falling population through family-friendly measures such as flexible working hours.
But he has rowed back his position on issues including allowing married couples to take separate surnames. He also named only two women as ministers in his cabinet.
He has backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, although he has cautioned it would "not happen overnight".
Noda's stance "is sort of similar to the LDP's. He is basically a conservative," Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, told AFP before the election.
"The CDP or Noda can be an alternative to the LDP. Many voters think so."
(AFP)
Over half of Dutch pleased with
government's asylum plans
Over half (57 percent) of Dutch voters are happy with the package of measures the government presented to reduce the number of people seeking asylum in the Netherlands.
Among voters for the coalition parties, three-quarters are happy with the plans. But only 43 percent of Netherlands residents think the government will manage to actually implement the measures, RTL Nieuws reports after surveying 15,000 members of its news panel.
Last week the government came to a compromise on asylum. PVV leader Geert Wilders gave up on his cherished wish to declare an asylum crisis, and the coalition parties and Cabinet agreed on taking a series of far-reaching measures. These include scrapping the Asylum Distribution Law before the end of the year, no longer obliging municipalities to find housing for refugees, limiting refugee residency permits to three years, deporting convicted asylum seekers, declaring parts of Syria as “safe,” and building extra cells for rejected asylum seekers awaiting deportation.
According to RTL researcher Gijs Rademaker, voters appreciate the sharp course that the Cabinet is taking. Many of the measures get broad support, but there are concerns about their feasibility.
For example, 89 percent of voters support the plan to declare asylum seekers who are convicted of a crime as “undesirable” and deport them, but only 52 percent consider it legally feasible. And 61 percent think it’s a good idea to lock up asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies as they await deportation, but only 35 percent think it will actually happen.
Coalition voters, in particular, support the government’s course. “That it is prepared to seek out the extreme limits of what is possible and allowed within the current legislation,” Rademaker said. “But at the same time, the VVD and NSC voters have serious doubts about the feasibility of some plans. BBB and PVV voters do not want to see those difficulties, or, from their perspective, they see through them. They think: we will change the system.”
Wilders’ having to abandon his asylum crisis caused a slight blow to his voters’ confidence in him. Early last month, 95 percent of PVV voters had confidence in their leader, now it’s 90 percent. “It is still high compared to other party leaders, but still a dent,” Rademaker said. “We have not seen such a low figure for Wilders since the election.”
Voters for the VVD, NSC, and BBB all believe that it is mainly the PVV that left its mark on the Cabinet policy in recent weeks. Many PVV voters feel differently, saying that the NSC held the reigns.
A recent survey by Hart van Nederland showed that many coalition voters regretted their votes. 73 percent of NSC voters now wish they had voted for someone else. The same is true for 52 percent of BBB voters, 48 percent of VVD voters, and 42 percent of PVV voters.
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