Do French voters know how indescribably stupid some of the people they elected to the National Assembly can be? How could you not know that stuffing the ballot box would end up with more votes than voters? Good grief. Perhaps they should be investigating the national elections now.
French lawmakers cry foul after suspected
ballot-stuffing in National Assembly
French lawmakers called for an investigation on Friday amid suspicions of ballot-stuffing in a vote for deputy speakers in the National Assembly. A re-vote led to the election of deputies from the hard left to the centre right, but none from the far right.
Issued on:
A botched vote in France's newly elected parliament on Friday triggered allegations of ballot-stuffing, with politicians from the left and right pointing to possible fraud.
After two and a half hours of voting for the post of the National Assembly's deputy speakers, the ballot boxes were found to contain 10 envelopes more than the number of eligible voters.
Re-elected speaker Yael Braun-Pivet from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance party duly declared a re-run, prompting deputies to demand an investigation.
"Shame on those who committed this fraud," socialist lawmaker Jerome Guedi thundered in the chamber.
Vincent Jeanbrun, a senior figure in the right-wing Les Republicains party, said there was a "suspicion of ballot box-stuffing".
The claims sparked angry exchanges in the chamber, with centrist deputy Jean-Rene Cazeneuve bemoaning the scenes.
"I'm a bit saddened by the spectacle we're putting on," he told journalists.
In the end the six deputy speakers were elected after a new two-round vote.
The far-right National Rally (RN) party of Marine le Pen failed to keep its two outgoing candidates in their positions.
The posts eventually went to Nadege Abomangoli and Clemence Guette of the far-left France Unbowed, returning centre-right Horizons group deputy Naima Moutchou, Macron ally and outgoing industry minister Roland Lescure, as well as centre-right lawmakers Annie Genevard and Xavier Breton.
An inconclusive election early this month left France without any clear path to forming a new government, with seats in the 577-strong lower house divided between three similarly sized blocs.
A broad leftwing alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP), which unexpectedly topped the July 7 run-off but fell well short of an absolute majority, has more than 190 seats in the National Assembly.
That fractious grouping of Socialists, Communists, Greens and the France Unbowed wants to run the government but has yet to agree on a prospective candidate for prime minister.
Macron's camp has 164 lawmakers and the far-right RN 143.
The president called the snap election hoping to "clarify" France's political situation after the RN trounced his party in the European Parliament polls in early June.
Instead, the country faces the prospect of weeks, maybe months, without a government, while the competing political factions attempt to horse-trade their way to a majority.
(AFP)
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Protesters storm prison in Bangladesh,
death toll from anti-quota clashes tops 100
Student protesters in Bangladesh on Friday stormed a prison, freeing possibly hundreds of inmates, and staged rallies in the capital Dhaka despite a police ban on gatherings and a widespread internet shutdown. The death toll amid unrest this week topped 100 as protests continued against a quota system for state jobs.
Issued on:
Bangladeshi student protesters stormed a prison and freed hundreds of inmates Friday as police struggled to quell unrest, with huge rallies in the capital Dhaka despite a police ban on public gatherings.
This week's clashes have killed at least 105 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by hospitals, and emerged as a momentous challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's autocratic government after 15 years in office.
Student protesters stormed a jail in the central Bangladeshi district of Narsingdi and freed the inmates before setting the facility on fire, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"I don't know the number of inmates, but it would be in the hundreds," he added.
Dhaka's police force took the drastic step of banning all public gatherings for the day -- a first since protests began -- in an effort to forestall another day of violence.
"We've banned all rallies, processions and public gatherings in Dhaka today," police chief Habibur Rahman told AFP, adding the move was necessary to ensure "public safety".
That did not stop another round of confrontations between police and protesters around the sprawling megacity of 20 million people, despite an internet shutdown aimed at frustrating the organisation of rallies.
"Our protest will continue," Sarwar Tushar, who joined a march in the capital and sustained minor injuries when it was violently dispersed by police, told AFP.
"We want the immediate resignation of Sheikh Hasina. The government is responsible for the killings."
'Shocking and unacceptable'
At least 52 people were killed in the capital on Friday, according to a list drawn up by the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and seen by AFP.
Police fire was the cause of more than half of the deaths reported so far this week, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital staff.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the attacks on student protesters were "shocking and unacceptable".
"There must be impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations into these attacks, and those responsible held to account," he said in a statement.
The capital's police force earlier said protesters had on Thursday torched, vandalised and carried out "destructive activities" on numerous police and government offices.
Among them was the Dhaka headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which remains offline after hundreds of incensed students stormed the premises and set fire to a building.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP that officers had arrested Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, one of the top leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
"He faces hundreds of cases," Hossain said, without giving further details on the reasons for Ahmed's detention.
'Symbol of a system'
Near-daily marches this month have called for an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Hasina's government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Her administration this week ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police stepped up efforts to bring the deteriorating law and order situation under control.
"This is an eruption of the simmering discontent of a youth population built over years due to economic and political disenfranchisement," Ali Riaz, a politics professor at Illinois State University, told AFP.
"The job quotas became the symbol of a system which is rigged and stacked against them by the regime."
'Nation-scale' internet shutdown
Students say they are determined to press on with protests despite Hasina giving a national address earlier this week on the now-offline state broadcaster seeking to calm the unrest.
Nearly half of Bangladesh's 64 districts reported clashes on Thursday, broadcaster Independent Television reported.
The network said more than 700 people had been wounded throughout Thursday including 104 police officers and 30 journalists.
London-based watchdog NetBlocks said Friday that a "nation-scale" internet shutdown remained in effect a day after it was imposed.
"Metrics show connectivity flatlining at 10% of ordinary levels, raising concerns over public safety as little news flows in or out of the country," it wrote on social media platform X.
(AFP)
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State Department Destroyed Docs Tying It
to Afghanistan Terror Cash
This is criminal behavior.
Under Biden, the State Department has done everything possible to cover up its actions in Afghanistan. I have been writing about the ongoing struggle between State and the Afghanistan watchdog (SIGAR).
In June, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s office (SIGAR), dispatched letters to Secretary of State Blinken and Samantha Power complaining that the State Department and USAID were stonewalling its investigation of waste, corruption, and terror cash.
“Two SIGAR audits are also being hindered by a lack of cooperation from State and USAID. The first evaluates your agencies’ compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network,” the letter to Power complained.
At one point State was actively forbidding employees from cooperating with SIGAR while trying to close down the Afghanistan war watchdog. When that failed, State is just destroying documents, as SIGAR reveals in its latest report. (via Adam Kredo at Free Beacon.)
The Biden administration doesn’t know if millions of dollars in taxpayer funds sent to Afghanistan are falling into the Taliban’s hands because its terrorism vetting files are incomplete—or, in some instances, destroyed—a government audit found.
The State Department “initially refused to cooperate with this audit and destroyed the [Risk Analysis Management] vetting documents for unselected implementing partners in accordance with its records retention policy before we could examine them.”
The watchdog group ultimately determined that State’s DRL and INL bureaus “did not comply with federal document retention requirements because supporting documentation to demonstrate their compliance with State partner vetting requirements was missing from the bureaus’ award files.”
The State Department also “acknowledged that not all bureaus complied with document retention requirements” and that there are “gaps in compliance with federal and internal document retention requirements.”
DRL, for instance, was only able to produce proper vetting documents for “three of its seven awards, while the partner vetting documentation for four of its awards were missing from its contracting files,” according to the investigation.
This is criminal behavior that is not being treated as such and it’s being done to cover up even worse crimes. We know that under Biden, State continues directing massive amounts of money into terrorist territories, including over $2 billion into Afghanistan, while handing out special licenses to the nonprofits it funnels money through to deal with Islamic terrorists. And this will eventually get Americans killed.
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