Protesters camped outside military headquarters in Khartoum hope Ramadan will bring renewed energy and recruits to their cause
"We are not worried about Ramadan. The day will pass just like Ibn Auf": A protester's sign refers to the former head of the ruling military council (MEE/Kaamil Ahmed) By Kaamil Ahmed- 6 May 2019
Long lines of worshippers gathered for the first of Ramadan’s nightly prayers outside the Sudanese military headquarters in Khartoum on Sunday, hoping the Muslim holy month can inject more energy into a sit-in protest that has now lasted a month.
Throughout the day signs declaring “Ramadan is most beautiful in the square” encouraged protesters to observe and break their fasts in the location where they began camping out on 6 April to demand the end of former President Omar al-Bashir’s rule and then, when he was toppled from power, the military council that replaced him.
The month’s natural focus on communities could strengthen the sit-in but the protest itself has had a unifying effect that will also make this a special Ramadan, Mohammed Hayder told MEE.
At Sudan's sit-in the revolution continues and art flourishes
“Here we have all of Sudan. People from the furthest areas of Sudan, from Nyala, from the north, everyone is here outside the military headquarters,” said the student, 23.
“We have our traditions, to eat together, to have musaharati (drummers) and to drink Helu Mur ("Bitter Sweet", a Sudanese drink commonly consumed during Ramadan) and apart from this we can have everyone here together in the streets.”
Tens of thousands poured into the protest site after sunset and children were treated with fresh juice poured in celebration as others shouted Ramadan greetings to passers-by.
A large air-conditioned tent was erected at the sit-in to provide relief for the protesters who are camping out at the site through the long days, where the temperature pushed 50 degrees Celsius over the weekend.
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a group which has been organising protests since they began in December and is now leading negotiations with the ruling military council, invited people to break their fasts and pray at the sit-in together.
“We also invite the sheikhs of the Sufi and religious brotherhoods and the symbols of art and theatre and sport and media and civil leaders and all spectrums of Sudanese people," it said.
The group has been under pressure recently because of their negotiations with the military and a proposal for the structure of a transitional joint civilian and military council which mentioned the military would have the right to participate in foreign wars - raising concerns about a continued role for Sudanese soldiers in Yemen, where the country is part of the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels.
They have since apologised “for the confusion” and have said their leaders will be joining the protesters to break their fasts at the sit-in.
'Harder than the revolution'
“Ramadan will be harder than the revolution, it will be a bigger challenge,” student Imad al-Din, 29, admitted.
“Here without water. We will have to be patient in the tents and not all of the tents are air-conditioned... but the people sitting here, we are willing to die like the martyrs [of the revolution].”
"Ramadan is better in the square" protesters announced, encouraging people to spend time at Khartoum's sit-in (MEE/Kaamil Ahmed)
It is traditional for families in a neighbourhood to break their fasts together on the streets at the end of the day, and now they can do it on a bigger scale at the sit-in, he said.
“Everyone here will drink from one cup, all of Sudan will sit together. My dream is for the most beautiful Ramadan here at the protest.”
Sitting on the side of the road outside the military headquarters, Hayder said he had been there since the beginning of the sit-in a month ago and was looking forward to more people joining them, to amplify the demands of the protesters.
Barricades made of stones, scrap furniture and overturned rubbish bins were set up by the protesters last week after the military council’s second-in-command Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as Hemeti, indicated it was losing patience with the sit-in and said it would not accept “chaos” from the protesters.
But Hayder said he is not worried now about the army trying to remove the protesters during Ramadan because the local soldiers are with them and because the protesters are determined to stay.
“The people are and will continue to be here,” he said.
“We’re here to realise our demands, which are well-known, that we want a civilian government, not a military government.”
Voting for the ANC in the hope that its leader can clean house is a leap of faith. Those who looted South Africa’s government won’t give up so easily.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (R) toasts with former President Jacob Zuma (C) and African National Congress (ANC) Secretary-General Ace Magashule (L) during the ANC's 107th anniversary celebrations in Durban on Jan. 12. RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
BYEUSEBIUS MCKAISER|
Many voters in South Africa and pundits acrosstheglobe are mistakenly overinvesting in Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) party ahead of this week’s national elections. Even the venerable Economist, which plastered its cover with a smiling, rainbow Ramaphosa and proclaimed him the leader best suited to “shun the populists and face down the mafia within his own party,” seems to have missed the point.
Ramaphosa does not merely face an uphill battle, as many of his supporters would concede. He faces a potentially insurmountable task in fighting to rebuild South Africa’s seriously damaged democratic institutions that were trampled during the ruinously corrupt years under the leadership of former President Jacob Zuma from 2009 to 2018, until Ramaphosa replaced him as party leader in late 2017 and as president early last year.
In fact, whoever wins on Wednesday faces the unenviable challenge of needing to rescue an economy on such a dangerously low growth path that South Africa’s familiar triple challenges of high unemployment, poverty, and inequality cannot be seriously dented if this low-growth trajectory continues.
The South African state, which is the trough from which looters within the halls of power have eaten gluttonously for at least the past decade, lacks the capacity to simply get back to the business of good governance the morning after the election results are announced.
During the Zuma years, the public protector at the time, Thuli Madonsela, found that the president himself had wrongly benefited from upgrades to his private home in Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal. Since then, through the leaks of emails connected to the powerful Gupta family’s influence-buying campaign, which reached the highest levels of the Zuma administration, a huge amount of data has come to light about the extent of corruption within the government, supplemented by the work of academics, researchers, investigative journalists, and civil society organizations.
The Guptas, who are Indian nationals, appear to have clearly benefited from a ruthless and calculated infiltration of state-owned enterprises such as the energy provider Eskom. Several government officials have been implicated in this web of bribery, which has come to be known locally as “state capture.” Even Ramaphosa has conceded that ANC officials played a role in enabling large-scale corruption. Unfortunately, it appears that the justice system and law enforcement apparatus themselves have been hollowed out, too, and as a result no major government figure has as yet been found guilty in a court of law. The sad truth is that Ramaphosa has no magic wand, even if his affable demeanor and dulcet speeches instill confidence and hope in audiences at home and abroad. Nevertheless, a majority of South Africans are likely to vote for the ANC on Wednesday in the hope that Ramaphosa will right the wrongs of his predecessor.
Given, however, that the ANC itself—not just Zuma—bears the blame for bringing the country to the brink of economic collapse, it is worth analyzing the dominant argument in favor of putting that same party in charge of the government for another five years despite its undeniable role in hobbling the country’s growth.
This argument—call it the rose-tinted Ramaphosa defense—runs as follows: None of the major opposition parties has compelling ideas to fix South Africa’s problems, and none of them has an internationally respected and technically skilled leader who is capable of reversing the effects of the Zuma years. Ramaphosa is enormously respected as a former trade union boss, skilled negotiator, successful businessman, and senior ANC official. He is also endowed with such sorely needed leadership traits as patience, strategic and tactical instincts, commitment to constitutionalism, and a decades-old yearning and readiness to serve his country. Indeed, he was already a presidential prospect back in the 1990s and even had the backing of Nelson Mandela.
Proponents of this view who are not sycophantic ANC supporters rightly recognize that the party is deeply divided between various factions. One of these factions features the party’s secretary-general, Ace Magashule, a man who could face the prospect of prosecution for corruption if the criminal justice system were fixed. There is a titanic struggle between his faction and Ramaphosa’s. These warring factions are still battling for control over the party and the government despite Zuma’s exit from the political arena. Even so, supporters of Ramaphosa respond to their own concession about the moral rot at the heart of the ANC by claiming that division within the party is, in fact, an additional reason to vote for the ANC.
Their hope is that if voters enthusiastically back a Ramaphosa-led ANC, the president would accumulate an enormous amount of indisputable legitimacy, derived from a convincing election victory, and that he could leverage that mandate to crowd out the looters who remain within the party’s upper echelons. If, however, the ANC wins by a small margin or ends up governing in a coalition, then the looters would be emboldened to try to oust Ramaphosa from the party leadership position. This would be the worst-case scenario for both the ANC and for the country, because it would lead to further corruption, erode the rule of law, and likely worsen the slow pace of service delivery that has outraged voters across the country—and that led the ANC to lose control of several of the country’s largest cities in the 2016 municipal elections.
The Ramaphosa supporters with rose-tinted glasses conclude that voters should vote for the ANC not because the party deserves to be rewarded for the looting of the Zuma years but as the most pragmatic way forward given that the opposition parties have failed to prove they are ready to deliver on the developmental promises that the ANC has only managed to patchily deliver over the first 25 years of democracy.
They accept that this week’s election is a contest between available choices rather than ideal ones and see Ramaphosa as the best choice on offer. This argument is coherent and seductive, but it is deeply flawed.
The first flaw is the belief that the looters inside the party will be frightened by a comprehensive popular mandate for Ramaphosa’s leadership in the general election. They won’t be. Zuma and his friends do not want to go to jail, and they do not want to give up their loot. Magashule appears to be the common denominator in most dodgy state tenders awarded in the Free State province during his premiership. Courts are likely to find that their corrupt acts were criminal.
It is already clear that they demonstrated zero regard for the rule of law and a society premised on the principle of constitutional supremacy. These looters, many of whom remain active inside the ANC’s national and provincial party structures, are not committed to democracy—and the hope that their consciences will be pricked by a show of popular electoral support for Ramaphosa is fanciful. If the thieves cared for democracy and good governance, they wouldn’t have stolen from state coffers in the first place.
There is a further difficulty that is peculiar to the South African political system. South Africans do not vote directly for the president; they vote for parties, and seats in Parliament are allocated through a system of proportional representation. The president is then elected by Parliament. Many ANC leaders who were found ethically wanting during the Zuma years, such as former Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, who was found to be “reckless” and “grossly negligent” by the Constitutional Court, are high on the ANC’s list of potential members of parliament and so may well be back in the chamber soon, despite Ramaphosa’s promise to “renew” the ANC. Political parties, in such a system, have enormous power in determining which party members get sent to Parliament and ultimately to the executive branch.
While the president has real executive power that is vested in the office of the presidency including the choice of cabinet ministers, the South African electoral and governance systems do not empower voters maximally. If a president is asked to step down by their party, that is the end of their role as both party leader and president of the country, as was the case for Zuma in 2018 as well as for Thabo Mbeki—the predecessor Zuma displaced as ANC leader in late 2007, before becoming president of the country in 2009.
The looters inside the ANC know this. This is why South Africa’s democratic health is so dependent on the internal dynamics of the ANC, as the investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh demonstrated in his riveting recent book, Gangster State. If you are a thief who can get yourself elected to a senior party position inside the ANC, you could easily rise from there to a senior role in government, allowing you to steal from taxpayers.
Myburgh’s book shows how Magashule, for example, used money and other resources to build patronage networks. He footed hotel and cell phone bills for impoverished party members, which allowed him to manipulate the branches of the ANC in his home province of the Free State and get delegates at elective conferences to vote for him. Whoever controls these internal structures of the ANC can ultimately end up with the keys to the government’s coffers.
And that is why even overwhelming popular support for Ramaphosa in the May 8 election will not dampen the determination of his foes to oppose him inside the party, because the party’s internal elective processes are not affected by the national elections. The looters can ignore the outcome of the elections and continue trying to manipulate and capture party structures. Supporters of Ramaphosa seem blind to these internal intricacies of the ANC.
Unless the electoral system is reformed in South Africa to allow for a mix of constituency-based voting and proportional representation, a big margin of victory for the ANC will not help a well-meaning president punish or sideline corrupt forces within the party. Ramaphosa’s individual leadership strengths are no match for the institutional realities and organizational weaknesses of an ANC that has become morally bankruptafter years of allowing unethical leaders to damage both the party and the government by turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.
South Africans have a tendency to yearn for political saviors. Given the country’s violent colonial and apartheid past, there is a collective psychological need to remain hopeful, in Mandela’s words, that the country will never again go back to the worst of the past. He was one such savior.
Mandela’s weaknesses were often smoothed over in the hope that he would lead the nascent democracy into a nirvana. That did not happen. Thabo Mbeki, his successor, was meant to be a technocratic economist whose aloofness could be tolerated if it brought the country economic justice.
That did not happen. And now, fatigued by a lost decade due to Zuma’s corruption, the electorate is prepared to overlook the pitfalls of a system that gives party bosses dangerous amounts of power and pin their deepest hopes on a Ramaphosa-led renewal of the ANC.
He may be the best leader on offer, but he can’t govern effectively if half his cabinet is corrupt.
The situation has indeed been complicated by two factors
by Dr. S. Chandrasekharan-2019-05-07
It is to the credit of Sheikh Hasina that despite intense pressure from interested groups, she has managed to keep the Rohingya issue as a bilateral one and any criticism so far has been managed internally. But with the overwhelming success of Hasina in the last General elections and an assured stability in administration for the next five years there are calls that Bangladesh should take a tougher stand as the issue has already been internationalized and more importantly the bilateral talks have stalled with no progress despite four meetings of the Joint Working Group with the last one meeting recently in the first week of this month at Naypyitaw.
A million refugees are in the camps here in Southern Bangladesh near Cox’s Bazaar with no prospect of their immediate return.
As one who has seen the situation in the refugee camps in southern Nepal some years ago, of the Bhutanese of Nepali origin who numbered about one hundred thousand, one can imagine the chaotic conditions in Rohingya camps where a million people are housed. In Nepal the refugees were well behaved innocent people and well-disciplined and yet there were problems galore. In the Rohingya camps, there is said to be total lawlessness and the camp officials are afraid to move around after sunset. The ARSA is said to have already infiltrated in many camps and there have been instances of human trafficking. Refugees have been found sneaking regularly into Mizoram and as far away as Malaysia. Even Chennai has a small Rohingya refugee community in Kelambakkam! In addition, there are the drug pushers and Yaba tablets are available in plenty and are being transported to other regions!
An article in the Daily Star of Dhaka has made out a very good case as to why Bangladesh should take a tougher stand on the Rohingya issue. A well- respected Professor Imtiaz Ahmed of International Development at Dhaka University has made out a cogent case for a tougher stand. The points made out are;
Bangladesh Government should change its approach on the Rohingya issue as repatriation is stalled and it has already proved its humanitarian responsibilities since 2017.
Bangladesh has tried to solve it bilaterally. It took the initiative in November 2017 for an amicable solution despite the crisis being an international one.
A tripartite agreement was also signed by the two countries in 2018 along with UN Refugee Agency and UNDP wherein the UN agencies were allowed to visit and assess the conditions in Rakhine State for the return of the refugees.
In UN’s assessment the conditions were not considered ‘ripe’ for return and the Rohingyas in the camps who had by now have formed into a trade union type of arrangement, also refused to return. There was a suggestion that the Rohingyan refugees should also be represented in the Joint Working Groups as they are the ones who are to take a final call for the return. But the refugees refused to be part of the group. It is doubtful whether even Myanmar would have agreed to such an arrangement!
A new element has entered into the dynamics of the Rohingya issue with fierce clashes between the Myanmar Army (Tatmadaw) and the Arakan Army in the last few months. It is likely to be a protracted one.
The Myanmar Government which had declared that it was ready to take back the refugees has not amended its laws either to guarantee citizenship to Rohingyas or provide them with other rights.
A section of the Myanmar Military is already facing accusations of genocide and some in the West like the European Union have already started imposing sanctions.
If Myanmar is sincere, it has to change its laws including the citizenship laws and recognize Rohingyas as an ethnic group and ensure other rights to them.
As it is, the Joint Working Group is only deceiving both the Rohingyas and the International Community
Perhaps both the countries could opt for a “two-track” diplomacy instead of formal talks.
The situation has indeed been complicated by two factors- one the presence of ARSA in the camps and two, the raging civil war in the Rakhine State where both the Government of Myanmar and the Tatmadaw have vowed to crush the Arakan Army. Unfortunately, the Arakan army is now well entrenched in Rakhine area though it continues with its training and recruitment in the Kachin Headquarters at Laiza. The Rakhines have a proud history, claiming a cultural continuity from 3000 BC to 1784 AD and the Arakan Army is popular with the people.
Left to themselves, Myanmar would not take back even a single Rohingya back and any international pressure would only throw them further into China’s lap. The Myanmar Army Chief in his three day(?) visit to China recently specifically thanked the Chinese authorities for protecting them from international sanctions! They cannot be fighting on one hand and at the same time prepare themselves for the orderly return of the Rohingya refugees. They are not ready as yet even with the laws to recognize them as an ethnic unit with rights to citizenship.
Track two meetings may go on but the Myanmar government should first get to come to terms with the Arakan Army and agree for a bilateral ceasefire for peace and stability in the region. Then and then only can anyone think of the Rohingya issue and for peaceful repatriation of the Rohingyan refugees.
All the major contenders in Wednesday’s elections in South Africa held their closing rallies last weekend, and some striking things were said. As usual, Julius ‘Juju’ Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF), won the prize for the most inflammatory statement.
Maybe he was more emotional than usual because his grandmother passed away last week, but at a huge rally in the Orlando stadium in Soweto on Sunday he actually urged the police to start killing politicians.
"Go and shoot the real criminals," Malema said, talking about the South African Police (SAP). "If you want to shoot, go to Luthuli House and shoot Ace Magashule. If you want to shoot, go to Parliament and shoot the house which is full of criminals. Police officers, it is like you do not know where the thugs are. Come to me. I have a list."
Ace Magashule, who has run the province called the Free State for a long time and is now also Secretary-General of the ruling African National Congress party (ANC), is indeed a thug. He is inexplicably wealthy, his critics in the Free State often have sudden and life-changing (or even life-ending) problems, and he probably does deserve to be shot by somebody. But preferably not by a member of the SAP.
As for shooting up parliament, this is a serious breach of political etiquette in most democratic countries. But the EFF crowd loved it, and Malema gets a free ride from the media and the police when he says this sort of thing. Everybody assumes that it’s just the way he talks. And the EFF will at least double its vote in this election – though that would still leave it with only a 14 or 15 percent share of the vote.
The bigger opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, still struggles to shed its old image as the party for well-meaning middle-class white people. The current leader, Mmusi Maimane, concentrated his fire on the ANC, which has been in power since the end of apartheid a quarter-century ago.
"They were once our liberators but today we need to be liberated from them," Maimane told the crowd. It’s a pretty widespread sentiment, because not nearly enough has changed for the better for black South Africans in the past 25 years.
Like Malema, Maimane’s main target was the corruption that ran wild under the ANC’s last leader (and president of the country for nine years), Jacob Zuma. But the party is not radical enough to attract many people who are looking for major change, and its vote will probably fall (to only 21 percent, according to the last opinion poll) in Wednesday’s election.
Which means that the ANC may be able to win just enough votes (49.5 percent in the last poll) to cling to power with a narrow majority. But it may also have to form a coalition for the first time, probably with one or more of the smaller parties (although Malema has said that the EFF is also willing to join a coalition). And maybe things will really change, and maybe they won’t.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is not corrupt – he doesn’t need to be, since he is already a billionaire – and he does get some credit with the public for finally ousting the execrable Zuma. But he still faces huge resistance to root-and-branch reform within the ANC, many of whose senior members are not ready to walk away from the trough yet.
His own dedication to reform is also in doubt. He promised to make campaign donations to political parties completely transparent, for example, and the law was actually passed – but he delayed signing it long enough to benefit from the famously opaque old rules one last time in this election.
This is billed as a ‘pivotal’ election when South Africa finally turns a corner of some sort, but there is no good reason to believe it. South African economic growth is arthritic, running at below 2 percent while other African countries like Kenya and Ethiopia rack up 6-8 percent annual growth.
True, South Africa is still a much richer country, but it doesn’t feel rich to the working poor and the 27 percent who are unemployed. That’s higher than it was in the last years of the apartheid era, and higher than it was even ten years ago, so it’s little wonder that many people feel something akin to despair.
More kids are in school now, but the quality of public education has fallen even further, and it was never high. Millions of (very modest) new houses have been built, but the housing shortage is just as bad as ever. Public health services are in disrepair, there are frequent power cuts, and even the climate seems to have turned against South Africa (although the water crisis in Cape Town is in remission).
Given all this, and the widespread perception that corruption is rotting the country, it is remarkable that South Africans still have faith that their votes can change things. But they do: in no national election since Nelson Mandela became president in 1994 has the turnout fallen below 73 percent.
As long as it stays up there, you can’t really say that the situation is hopeless. But sooner or later, optimism has to be rewarded with results.
Donald Trump arrives at an event to celebrate the anniversary of first lady Melania Trump’s ‘Be Best’ initiative in the Rose Garden at the White House. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
The New York Times obtains a decade of President Trump’s tax information and found that in that time, his businesses lost more than $1bn. The Times’ huge scoopcomes as Democrats and the Trump administration fight over the release of this very information.
The administration’s categorical refusal to release President Trump’s tax returns heightens the difficult question Democrats face, and raises the prospect of a nightmare scenario — both in political and substantive terms.
Democrats must now choose between continuing to pursue the returns through conventional channels, which carries some risk of failure, and getting serious about impeachment hearings, which would likely minimize that risk to the greatest extent possible.
If Democrats go with the first, it raises at least the possibility that they could squander months in court, only to fail to secure Trump’s returns at the end — at which point they’d decide it’s too late to pursue impeachment, because 2020 would be looming.
To be sure, there are many other reasons to initiate an impeachment inquiry, beyond overcoming resistance to releasing the returns. But this dispute throws the broader choice Democrats face into sharper relief.
The Treasury Department has declared that it will not release Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. This appears to violate the law, which says the returns of any individual “shall” be furnished upon request by tax-writing committees.
Democrats on Ways and Means now have two leading options, according to Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Democrats can subpoena the Treasury Department for the returns, or they can sue to force the department to comply with the law, or both, Rosenthal tells me.
But either of those two paths would likely require a lengthy court battle — one that Democrats might lose before the Supreme Court.
The legal case for getting the returns appears strong. In requesting Trump’s personal and business returns, Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), the chair of Ways and Means, argued that Congress needs them to scrutinize whether the IRS is enforcing tax laws against the president. Thus, Neal furnished a legislative rationale that the law doesn’t even appear to require.
Former Democratic presidential candidate calls for Congress to be "deliberate, fair and fearless."(Danielle Kunitz, Kate Woodsome, Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)
But that doesn’t mean the legal case for getting them is airtight. Rosenthal says that in either case, the Supreme Court could side with Trump, by arguing that Democrats “are applying the statute unconstitutionally.”
In this telling, the court would rule that Congress’ power to solicit tax returns is not unlimited, and cannot be applied for illegitimate purposes. The court could decide Democrats are “just rummaging through Trump’s returns to embarrass him and not for a legitimate legislative purpose, and that Neal’s explanation is a pretext,” Rosenthal told me.
Daniel Hemel, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, agrees. He told me the court could rule that the statute “can’t sweep more broadly than Congress’ constitutional authority,” which “doesn’t include the power to investigate except for legitimate legislative purposes.”
To be sure, Democrats could win this battle, both experts said, because they actually do have multiple legitimate purposes for getting the returns. But this is hardly guaranteed, particularly with this court. And it could take months or years.
The bottom line: A loss, coming next fall or later, is at least possible. And at that point, Democrats would likely be even more reluctant to launch impeachment hearings, with 2020 right around the corner.
This would constitute an epic, disastrous failure. Not getting Trump’s returns would allow him to get away with one of his most blatant acts of contempt for transparency, for the separation of powers and for the notion that basic accountability should apply to him at all.
And we simply don’t know how much corruption — from tax fraud to emoluments clause violations to compromising foreign financial entanglements — this might end up concealing from view.
Impeachment hearings could strengthen Democrats’ hand
The idea here is that, if Democrats were to initiate an impeachment inquiry, it would create a legislative purpose for compelling release of the returns that is basically unassailable — that legislative purpose being impeachment.
“I think Ways and Means’ argument is fundamentally solid,” Rosenthal said. But he added that if Democrats stressed that an impeachment inquiry were its purpose, “I don’t see how any information can be withheld — the Mueller report, tax returns, anything. This would make it airtight.” Other legal expertsagree.
It’s possible that Democrats might not even have to go this far. They could potentially state that they are soliciting information for the express legislative purpose of deciding whether to launch an impeachment inquiry, Rosenthal says.
That latter possibility needs more expert attention. But the bigger point here is that more forthrightly embracing an impeachment inquiry as a key rationale — immediately, or the question of whether to launch one — very well might strengthen Democrats’ hand.
This is the case not just on Trump’s tax returns, but also in other areas, as Rosenthal points out. That includes empowering Democrats to fight against efforts to conceal the unredacted Mueller report; and efforts to prevent former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who witnessed extensive obstruction of justice, from testifying, and possibly special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as well.
“Congress’ hand is strengthened across the board by acknowledging that the information is relevant to a possible impeachment inquiry,” Rosenthal tells me.
Jonathan Bernstein argues the contrary case: This is a contested view; Democrats might prevail on some fronts without impeachment; they can employ other tools.
It’s true this is a contested view. But that means it might prove correct, and the question still remains whether Democrats will at least try to use all the tools at their disposal, and what the dangers are in not doing this. The argument isn’t necessarily that Democrats must launch an inquiry right this second. But it must be put on the table clearly as a point toward which they are converging out of necessity, in response to Trump’s worsening abuses.
Democrats (and other impeachment skeptics) need to more forthrightly engage with the argument that the failure to do this could end up with Democratic oversight mostly being neutered, with no remaining options.
Yes, Democrats could then beat Trump in 2020. But what if they don’t, after having seen their oversight efforts largely blocked, and having failed to exercise all the powers they have at their disposal?
Several candidates who stood in Istanbul's mayoral election in March have withdrawn from next month's re-run in protest after Turkey's High Election Board (YSK) cancelled the result of the first vote on the grounds of alleged unlawful conduct.
The move came with Turkish opposition parties apparently consolidating behind Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who won the cancelled vote and has said he will stand again in the repeat contest in late June.
Imamoglu won the March election by just 14,000 votes, shaking the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) decades-long control of Turkey's biggest city, casting extra significance on the move by three other candidates who between them polled about 15,000 votes.
'The heart of the country': Why losing Istanbul is about more than politics for Erdogan
Zehra Karaoglu of the Turkey Communist Party (TKP), Ozge Akman of the Labourer Movement Party (EHP), and independent Aysel Tekerek said that they would withdraw their bids and support Imamoglu.
Muammer Aydin, who ran as mayoral candidate for the Democratic Left Party (DSP), signalled on Monday on Twitter that he would also pull out.
“The DSP won’t be silent against the unlawful [decisions] taken in the hands of YSK, and will do the necessary [thing] that befalls us. All our people should be sure about this,” he tweeted. Aydin received more than 30,000 votes.
Meanwhile, the Iyi party, which is allied with the CHP, said it had asked the YSK to review its decision.
The AKP's losses in local elections in Istanbul and in the capital, Ankara, among other places, represented the biggest electoral setback for the party since it emerged as Turkey's dominant political force in national elections in 2002.
Beyond its symbolic importance as Turkey's economic and cultural capital, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) is also critical due to its vast resources, including a $7.5bn budget and widespread employment opportunities.
Tarkan tweets support
In another indication that the momentum remains with the opposition, many of Turkey's most famous celebrities expressed support for Imamoglu on social media after he had called on his backers to speak out.
Tarkan, Turkey's most famous singer, tweeted his support. “I couldn’t sleep yesterday night. However the lights in the horizon were brighter than ever. I understand that #everythingwillbeverygood,” he wrote.
Thousands of tweets were sent with the hashtag, “#HerSeyCokGuzelOlacak”, a campaign slogan adopted by Imamoglu and his followers in the March elections. Since Monday night, the hashtag has been trending in Turkey.
Another significant figure to tweet in support of Imamoglu was Defne Samyeli, a former anchorwoman who was close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s family.
“The will of millions of people was ignored by [this] unconvincing, controversial and greatly audacious decision. There is not peace and serenity where the belief in justice has ended," she said.
AKP: Re-run good for democracy
The AKP, which on Tuesday confirmed former prime minister Binali Yildirim as its candidate, said that re-running the election was good for the people and for the stability of the country, and would strengthen democracy.
Addressing the AKP's parliamentary group, Erdogan said the YSK's decision would remove any doubt in people's minds about the election result.
“The vote difference between two candidates was about 23-25,000. Our objections changed the picture and showed that more than 15,000 people’s will was stolen. We had solid proofs for every objection we made,” he said.
Erdogan's challenger? Hope behind the man close to becoming Istanbul's new mayor
Erdogan also criticised the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) which said in a message that the decision to renew elections was concerning in an economic recession.
“Everyone should know their place. These kinds of statements won’t bring normalisation. On the contrary, they will cause disturbance,” Erdogan said.
The YSK said it had ordered a re-run after assessing claims that some officials running several polling stations in Istanbul were not public servants.
Under Turkish law, polling stations must be staffed by public servants whose job is to ensure that the election runs smoothly. The AKP had previously alleged that several polling station officials were private-sector employees.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the CHP, in a furious speech in the Turkish parliament, denounced the judges of the YSK as "gang members" who were working in the interests of the Turkish government.
“You are guilty before history. How are you going to look at the faces of your children? But I trust the nation. They will go to the polls on 23 June and will re-elect Imamoglu once again. He isn’t a CHP candidate anymore. He is the candidate that belongs to 16 million people in Istanbul,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Turkish lira continued to slide down against the US dollar on Tuesday. Uncertainty about the election result has seen the currency lose about three percent of its value since the beginning of May.
6 May 2019
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (R) toasts with former President Jacob Zuma (C) and African National Congress (ANC) Secretary-General Ace Magashule (L) during the ANC's 107th anniversary celebrations in Durban on Jan. 12. 
Donald Trump arrives at an event to celebrate the anniversary of first lady Melania Trump’s ‘Be Best’ initiative in the Rose Garden at the White House. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
