From the snowbound Chinese border to holy Ganges towns, Indians yesterday began voting in a month-long general election with signs an unstable coalition may emerge in the middle of an economic slowdown.
The ruling Congress party-led coalition appears to lead against an alliance headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but both may need the support of a host of smaller and unpredictable regional parties to win office.
The fear among investors is that the world’s largest democratic exercise involving 714 million voters and hundreds of parties will lead to the rise of a “Third Front” government of communist and regional groups.
The uncertain vote comes as a once-booming India reels from a crunch that has cost millions of jobs. It has ignited fears of political limbo just as India balances needs to help millions of poor with worries over its biggest fiscal gap in two decades.
The government yesterday deployed hundreds of thousands of police to protect more than 140 million people who can vote in polls that cover some of India’s poorest states hit by a four-decade old Maoist rebel insurgency.
Some election officials rode elephants to remote polling stations near the Myanmar border. Other ballots were brought by two-day sea trips to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The outcome of the five-stage election will be known on May 16. India’s elections are notoriously hard to predict and polls have been wrong in the past. Exit polls are banned.
A clear win by either of the two main parties could see a rally on India’s markets, but the emergence of a weak coalition of regional and communist parties could see stocks fall by as much as 30 percent, market watchers say.
“There are widespread apprehensions that the verdict of May 16 will be hideously fractured and will inevitably lead to another election in a year or two,” Ashok Malik wrote in the Hindustan Times.
In Varanasi, the northern holy town on the Ganges River known for its Hindu gurus, many voters arrived on bicycles and bullock carts to cast electronic votes.
Voters pressed buttons with pictorial symbols of each party, after their fingers were marked with ink to avoid fraud.
“Nowadays there are so many small parties, previously there used to be only one or two big parties,” said Mohammed Mustaquim, waiting to vote in Varanasi. “This makes choosing difficult.”
Ancient caste, religious and ethnic ties will play a huge role in the vote as well as national problems like the slowdown, security fears and local issues from the building of a village water pump to problems of wild elephants trampling on villagers.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s center-left Congress party is wooing voters with populist measures such as food subsidies in a country were hundreds of millions of people live below the poverty line.
Singh is Congress’ official candidate. But Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old scion of India’s most powerful family dynasty, has become one of Congress’s main election cards, criss-crossing the nation in helicopter.
Highlighting India’s internal security woes, states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand voted yesterday in the face of stepped-up Maoist attacks on security forces. The rebels warned they would cut off the hands of those who dare vote.
Nine police protecting polls were killed by Maoist rebels in Jharkhand and Bihar states. Dozens of people have been killed in attacks in the past week.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS