UN calls for action as Syrian government air strikes kill dozens in northwest

At least 27 people were killed in attacks on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports

Pro-government troops have intensified their bombardment of northwestern Syria (AFP/File photo)

By MEE and agencies-28 May 2019

A United Nations official has called for "concrete action", as Syrian government air strikes killed at least 27 people in the country's rebel-held northwest, according to a pro-opposition war monitor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 children were among the more than two dozen civilians killed in air strikes on Tuesday, which hit several towns in Idlib province and the countryside of neighbouring Aleppo.

The attacks come as pro-government troops intensified their recent bombardments of the country's northwestern region, which is mostly under the control of al-Qaeda-linked Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

"Can't this council take any concrete action when attacks on schools and hospitals have become a war tactic that no longer sparks outrage?" said Ursula Mueller, the UN's assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, in a briefing to the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

"Is there nothing to be said or done when indiscriminate barrel bombs are dropped in civilian areas?" Mueller continued.

'Panic and fear': Children among dead as Syrian jets bomb Ariha

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"Millions of battered and beleaguered children, women and men cannot wait for another Geneva round [of negotiations] to succeed. They need protection - and your action - now."

Of the people killed on Tuesday, nine were struck on a busy street in the village of Kafr Halab, on the western edge of Aleppo province, AFP news agency reported.

David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian office told the agency that a hospital in the Idlib town of Kafranbel was also bombed.

"The facility is reportedly out of service due to severe structural damage," he told AFP.

"It was a strong attack," Swanson added. "The generators and even my car caught fire."

The United States on Tuesday issued a warning against the Syrian and Russian air strikes in northern Syria.

"Indiscriminate attacks on civilians and public infrastructure such as schools, markets and hospitals is a reckless escalation of the conflict and is unacceptable," said State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus.

Increase in bombings

Tuesday's strikes follow two days of increased government bombings in the area, which have killed 52 people, according to the UK-based Observatory.

Since late April, Syrian and Russian forces have focused efforts mostly on southern parts of Idlib province and adjacent parts of Hama and Latakia, where HTS and other armed groups maintain control.

Syrian state media outlets say that the escalation is intended to target "terrorist groups" present in the region.

Syrian government increases deadly air strikes in northwest, seizes small town

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In September 2018, Turkey and Russia reached a ceasefire deal that maintained relative peace between the government and rebel groups in the region for several months.

But over the past weeks, the Syrian government and Russia have renewed their attacks on Idlib in what opposition activists call a violation of last year's agreement.

The violence has left 834 people dead since 30 April, the Observatory said in a report released earlier this week.

Anti-government activists accuse Damascus of targeting civilians.

A government air strike killed "11 civilians, including six children and four women" in the village of Ariha on Monday, according to "White Helmets" first responders in the town.

"Attacks on a civilian neighbourhood were launched near the popular market during noon prayers," activist Fares Zine al-Abidine told Middle East Eye after the attack on Ariha.

"Panic and fear took hold of the city and the smell of gunpowder and blood rose from the blast site as fears of a second attack grew."

New satellite images also showed fields, orchards and olive groves burning in northwest Syria, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Plumes of dark smoke could be seen in the photos, taken by satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe Inc, in the countryside around al-Habeet village in Idlib and the small town of Kafr Nabouda in Hama, the news agency said.

Reuters reported that the before and after images, collected at the start and end of last week, show patches of scorched earth, fields blackened by fire, and clusters of destroyed buildings.

Some of the fires appeared to be still burning on Tuesday, Reuters said.

Narendra Modi’s Remaking of Indian politics could well be replicated in Sri Lanka

It was advertised as a battle for India’s soul. Anti-incumbency fervour was said to be rampant. A previous rout of the BJP in a series of state elections a few months back was thought to be a precursor of something big to happen. Even a recession, no matter how remote for an economy growing at a not optimum, but still decent 7 per cent, was warned. Unemployment numbers, highest since the 70s was supposed to be a deal-breaker. Low crop prices were thought to have added to an already over-pouring of grassroots grievances.  

28 May 2019 

All that made India’s chattering classes and foreign observers assume that the Modi juggernaut was finally brought under check. Commentators were routing for a weak coalition government, a bane in India’s economic and political life since the end of Congress dominance in the late 80s.  

Then, cometh the election; the Indians voted with both hands to Narendra Modi and the BJP, which went to better its previous record in 2014. BJP obtained 303 seats in Loksabha, India’s lower house and with its constituent parties is set to dominate over 350 seats in 543 seats in Lok Sabha.  

When the BJP single-handedly surpassed magic 272 number, the simple majority in Lakbaha in 2014, it was viewed as a one of stunt. Now it has bettered on its previous feat. The last time, a political party single-handedly won back to back majorities in Lok Sabha was in 1984. ( The Congress won that time).  

However, then India - insulated, stagnated, opportunity less – is a world’s apart from India that voted for BJP during the last month in a marathon election. It is a confident world power; the fastest growing large economy, with a booming middle class. It is an emerging power that the West think as the only long term balancer of roaring China.  

BJP’s sweeping across the Indian electorate, baring its Southern belt, also implies a remaking of Indian politics. Since the independence, well until the late 60s, it was the Indian National Congress that dominated the electoral map. In the decades since then, until 1989, the Congress’s dominance began to wane, though it still held on to power, with the help of regional allies.  

BJP’s campaign and its leading functionaries were accused of demonizing Muslims and feeding into, and from Hindutva chauvinism

During that period, the regional parties, often based on cast and linguistic interests, strengthened their hold. That led to more often than not to weak coalition governments. Indian politics became fragmented and regionalized. Small political parties with a limited regional focus tend to influence domestic and foreign policy. Competing interests within motley coalition governments resulted in a period of policy paralysis. Things got worse lately courtesy the complex working relationship between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Leader Sonia Gandhi, who pulled the strings from behind.  

BJP’s landslide in 2014 brought an end to decades of political fragmentation and regionalization. Later its sweep in state elections implied that the electorate is shifting towards the Centre. Then the Congress and regional allies sprung a surprise in several backs to back state elections. To make matters worse, economic indicators turned out to be less than ideal. Political commentators bet on that India was returning to its old form. The regionalization of national politics was to make a comeback.  

The election2019 took everyone by surprise. Regional parties performed poorly. In Uttara Pradesh, India’s largest state, the two regional rivals who banded together to defeat the BJP could not make a dent. ( BJP won 62 seats out of 80 seats there) Communists were routed. Rahul Gandhi himself lost his ancestral Amethi seat, though he won somewhere else.  
BJP’s election sweep effectively signals a paradigm shift in Indian politics. Regionalization has been reversed and a process of centralization that began five years back is being consolidated. Despite economic woes and unfulfilled economy reforms, Indians have assumed Modi is better equipped to fix these problems than any other available alternative. Thus, a vote to BJP became more of a vote to Modi. A de facto presidentialization of Indian politics is in the making. Strong centralized leadership and immediate political capital of the election win, if properly used, would make easy to implement much needed and long-delayed reforms in labour, land, state banks and SOEs.  

However, Mr Modi’s electoral landslide did not happen in a saintly backdrop. BJP’s campaign and its leading functionaries were accused of demonizing Muslims and feeding into, and from Hindutva chauvinism.  

However, the vast swathe of the electorate was willing to overlook the peripheral ugliness in favour of a promise of greater prosperity and economic development.  

The redoubling of Modi juggernaut also implies the growing public disenchantment with the liberal elites. Disenchantment revolves around their primary failure to transform the promise for economic prosperity into reality. Rightwing nationalism is feeding on that liberal failure.  

This is a phenomenon unfolding in many parts of the world, in Europe, Donald Trump’s America, Brazil, Argentina, and South Asia itself.  

Sheik Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, who is reigning over an economy growing at 8 per cent over a decade is the other torchbearer in the region of this transformation.  
This is bound to happen in Sri Lanka. The popular discontent is exacerbated by the perception over that the government had failed to prevent the Easter Sunday Bombing. However, permissive conditions that led to an incoming ethno-nationalistic backlash is in the making over years. Five years long inertia in the economy, which has grown only marginally over the last five years had a major delegitimizing effect. The economic impact of the bombing would make things worse, and people angrier.  

It is no brainer who will be the beneficiary of rising popular discontent and the preference for a strong government. In the absence of liberal personalities to address existential economic and security challenges, Sri Lankan voters could well settle for a strongman.  

Five- six months before the presidential election is not long enough to reverse the trend. However, commonsensical approach to challenges may help mitigate it. Though economic inertial cannot be wished away all of a sudden, it is still worth a try. On the other hand, leave aside the pretence, a populist right-wing nationalist take over of political power is not altogether bad, if the new leaders could kick start economy and double down on infrastructure development. Many Sri Lankan voters would fall for that dispassionate choice.  

Follow @Rangajayasuriya on Twitter  

India: Modi The Vote Puller

Modi wiped out all others in most States except in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra. How did Modi become post-independent India’s most charismatic vote puller?

by Kusal Perera-28 May 2019

 

Many interpretations and analyses on the “Modi phenomenon” have already flooded the public domain after 2019 Lok Sabha elections concluded in India. For Indians Modi’s explosive return would have different meanings than to her neighbours. For Sri Lanka, it would be as much the same as all that for the Indians with SL elections only 06 months ahead.

 

Phased out Indian Lok Sabha elections with over 67 percent of the 900 million registered voters going to polls with 15 million “first time voters”, proved the BJP theme

 

slogan "Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar" (Modi once more) was more than valid. In alliance with Shiv Sena, AIADMK, Janata Dal and with 17 other tiny regional parties, forming the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), BJP won a phenomenal 303 seats for itself while the NDA totalled around 354 seats in the 543 seat Lok Sabha. BJP polled over 38 percent of the total votes polled.

 

Comparisons with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections show BJP as a “Modi phenomenon” has gained greater dominance in all sectors of the Indian population and in most States, across caste and class. In 2014 elections the BJP polled 17.7 percent from Scheduled Caste (SC) votes and have increased that almost twofold polling 34.3 percent this election. BJP polled 38.2 percent from Scheduled Tribes (ST) in 2014 and increased it to 42.2 percent this time. From the poorest 20 percent of the population BJP polled 31.9 percent in 2014 and increased that to 39.2 this election. From the richest top 20 percent, the BJP increased from 27.8 in 2014 to 33.1 percent. Considered the rich urban middleclass, the second 20 percent from the top, also voted more with BJP increasing from 27.7 percent in 2014 to 33.0 percent. On the rural-urban divide too, the BJP increased its number of constituencies from 190 in 2014 to 207 this election in rural India and from 53 to 58 in semi urban India, while maintaining the same 40 urban seats.

 

Where the BJP lost or was comparatively reduced was in Constituencies with high Muslim concentrations of over and above 30 percent. While that was obvious or was close to what should be obvious, everything else in this Modi victory is not “obvious”. Seen steadfastly gaining ground as lead campaigner of the Indian Congress Party led alliance, Rahul Gandhi was firing on “false promises” by Modi and accusing him “Modi ne loota hai” (Modi has looted), but lost his seat Amethi in UP, the ancestral constituency of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Firebrand student leader from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Kanhaiya Kumar who was charged for sedition in 2016, contested as CPI candidate for Begusarai once known as “Leningrad” of Bihar. He emerged as the star campaigner backed by high profile personalities like Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar and Swara Bhaskar. A seat, Kanhaiya Kumar was expected to win, but lost to BJP hard line Hindutva Candidate Giriraj Singh by a huge margin of over 422,000 votes.

 

Modi wiped out all others in most States except in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra. How did Modi become post independent India’s most charismatic vote puller? India’s “independence movement” led by Gandhi, Nehru and the likes of Ali Jinnah, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajagopalachari, Lal Bahadhur Shashtri to name just a few, was turned into an inclusive national dialogue with respected and popular literati like Rabindranath Tagore, Subramania Bharathi, Muhammad Iqbal, Chattopadhyay, feminist campaigners like Sarojini Naidu and Begum Rokeya, champions of social justice like Ambedkar providing an extremely broad and diverse platform. Politics of the “independence movement” thus came to be sealed as both secular and inclusive. Post independent India led by the Congress Party with Jawaharlal Nehru, and a Constitution which identified and accepted regional diversity on “linguistic differences” carried with it a democratic, secular and an inclusive social psyche.

 

What gave way for the Modi phenomenon was the fact he accepted “linguistic diversity” but turned “religious diversity” into a “religious divide”. In democratic, nationalist and secular India constituted as a “Republic” did not accept “religious diversity” as a political factor in its independence movement though Hindu reformist and revivalist movements were alive. By 1925 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s “Hindu Nationalism” was given organisational form as “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh” (RSS) by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar a physician in Maharashtra. By 1946 Ali Jinnah added another dimension to religious politics demanding a separate State on the basis of Islam as a religion. Proscription of RSS first after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, thereafter during Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule during 1975 to 1977 and then for its role in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 gave legitimacy to RSS as a Hindu nationalist campaigner, while Jinnah’s political move in creating Pakistan, East and West of India, provided RSS with undue advantage of peddling Hindu ideology as “anti Islam”.

 

Yet for more than 02 decades time wasn’t right for Bharathiya Jana Sangh (BJS) formed in 1951 to be accepted as an “alternate” to secular politics of the Congress. BJS came to be recognised post 1977 after secular democratic politics of Congress went into crisis with poverty and economic stagnation. Contradicting its own “democratic” tradition, PM Indira Gandhi clamped down “Emergency Rule” in 1975. With a crisis around, RSS had begun militant activism with the early formation of affiliates like the “Vishva Hindu Parishad” (VHP) that later led to the formation of the BJP and also far more extreme new groups like Abhinav Bharath, Shiv Sena, asserting themselves aggressively in Hindu society. Emergence of the BJP with RSS backing thus became an alternative to secular politics of Nehru-Gandhi Congress with a Hindutva ideology tied to free market economics. After many electoral upsets, the RSS and BJP worked towards a strong Hindu voter base with an “anti Muslim flavour” that was being created outside political parties. There wer e violent attacks on Muslim communities like in Gujarat, Malegaon, Samjhauta train bombing, Ajmer Dargha blast and in Hyderabad the Mecca Masjid bombing.

 

The RSS by then had groomed its successor to Vajpayee in Narendra Modi who was publicly accused as responsible for the massacre of Muslim people in Gujarat, one year after he became the Chief Minister. Spate of attacks on Muslim people and on Mosques hardened Hindutva politics that by 2013 qualified Narendra Modi to be declared the BJP prime ministerial candidate. Modi’s 2014 election campaign therefore was basically a challenge to democratic secularism of Congress on a Hindutva nationalist platform within the free market economy.

 

BJP with Modi was heavily funded in their electoral campaign by the Corporates. That clearly indicated the Hindu Corporate lobby too wanted a Neo liberal leader of their own. Their election campaign was more about “development” showcasing the “Gujarat model” under Modi as the most vibrant alternative to Congress politics. Election campaign was a two-tiered campaign with RSS and its affiliates working on the ground ensuring a large Hindu turn out at polls, while the BJP and Modi downplayed their Hindutva image at national level. Modi’s efforts in making him look secular and a determined “development Guru” against “corruption” attracted the Urban middle class that came out on streets with Anna Hazare, against mega corruption of the Congress government.

 

The explosive comeback of Modi at this 2019 elections, should therefore be assessed on two different aspects of “politics in governance”. One, politics of his image building as a strong Hindu leader, and two, his politics in economic policy focussing the urban and rural middle class with populist offers to the poor. In the first two years as PM after the 2014 elections, Modi worked towards centralising the otherwise devolved State power. He had a bill passed in Lok Sabha to have more power in appointing Judges and reducing that of the judiciary. In his first year itself Modi took advantage of accusations and allegations against the policy designing apex body “Planning Commission” for inefficiency and lack innovative development programmes, to replace it with his own; National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) – Aayog. This in effect reduced horizontal accountability in developing policy and space for State governments to negotiate with the Central government despite promises for “co-operative federalism”. His appointments to high posts too were aimed at more centralised power around him. He thus gave himself greater ability to stand above executive power of the government.

 

Government economic policy could thus be implemented without a Lok Sabha “nod” and they became “Modi policy” more than BJP government policy. His heavy stress on social media in emerging as a strong national leader, thus appealed to youth and the urban middle class. This creation of a strong leader in Modi, was backed by bringing RSS into active mainstream politics and allowing Hindutva goons to go about lynching, attacking, vandalising Muslim life with impunity. His image with greatly centralised executive power was thus moulded within brutalised “Hinduism” of RSS as a political force and not within religious “fundamentalism”.

 

A strong leader at the Centre, who could manage and sustain an economic growth, was seen as the most formidable alternative to Rahul Gandhi and his Congress when April 2019 elections were approaching. Inability of Congress politics to challenge inequality, social injustice and anti Muslim violence backed by the Modi rule within a truly democratic development alternative left Modi with his Hindutva majoritarianism as the dominant factor in current Indian politics. A free market economy Modi sustained with a 7.0 percent growth rate as the fastest growing economy, tied the growing middleclass with Modi rule. Thus, while anti Muslim violence was moving around with impunity, there was no social questioning, how 01 percent of the richest in India under Modi could accumulate 73 percent of the wealth created in 2017. How 67 million people who are the bottom half of the poorest in India was left with only 01 percent increase in wealth. There is also no social debate on how 09 billionaires till year 2000, galloped to 101 in 2017 and now to 119 billionaires, just 05 years with Modi. It is said, a minimum wage worker in rural India would take 941 years to reach the income of a top executive in a leading apparel sector company in India. (Oxfam - https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it/india-extreme-inequality-numbers)

 

Summing up this socio economic crisis, Professor Himanshu of JNU is on record saying, “What is particularly worrying in India’s case is that economic inequality is being added to a society that is already fractured along the lines of caste, religion, region and gender.” Yet when they are not brought to mainstream politics as major issues by Opposition political parties, when urban middleclass and social intelligentsia goes without demanding serious answers, Modi gains social and media space to run his own Hindutva agenda. Over the past years, everything negative and brutal including corruption was brushed with a new and an aggressive “Hindutva” fragrance breathed into society to project Modi as the nationalist leader for India to emerge as a world power. Nationalist image for a super power was lacking in Rahul and his Conservative politics, while Modi used recent conflicts with China and Pakistan to his advantage. He gave them the spin on his election platforms to project him as the patriotic Hindutva leader who dictated terms for the benefit of India.

 

In a nutshell, despite all orthodox challenges to his economic policy, Modi proved he could manage the free market economy for the benefit of the Hindutva majority and keep India safe and growing, with violence against Muslims, savagely widening inequality and crying social injustice all ignored and covered up by an aggressively dominant Hindutva campaign to poll 38 percent of the Indian vote that gave him a disproportionately large comeback that makes him a political legend in post independent history of India.

 

This same majoritarianism is more than apparent in Sri Lanka. Recent violent and brutal Easter Sunday attacks on 03 Catholic churches and 03 super luxury hotels in Colombo by a small extremist group that does not seem to have much training and expertise. It was more like self-hypnotised few Islamic extremists walking in wearing back-packs with explosives to explode themselves. But these brutal attacks were immediately turned into anti Muslim politics with violent attacks on innocent Muslim people far away from where the extremists exploded themselves. They are now being justified with unbelievable anti Muslim stories, the mainstream political leaderships don’t dissociate from. The RSS, the VHP and the like have similar anti Muslim violent outfits, patronised by mainstream politics. Fumbling of the economy and mis-governance by the present UNP allows the main Rajapaksa opposition to go one step beyond Modi, with the advantage of challenging a fractured and a feeble government. President Sirisena is making a valiant bid to be relevant within the now emerging anti Muslim, Sinhala Buddhist politics. The ground is being readied for elections that would take the same campaign trail, which brought back Modi with unexpected and uncalculated margins that none ever thought was possible other then Modi and his extreme Hindutva politics.

 

In months to come, with all indications of dressing up Modi like, the slogan here could also be "Phir Ek Baar Mahinda Sarkar" (Mahinda once more). The “Lotus bud” voters can then sing praise "Chalo Ek Baar Phir Ham Mahinda Sarkar Banate Hai / Garv Ke Sath Desh Ko Age Badhate Hain/ Phir se Kamal Khilate Hai (lets elect Mahinda government again, let’s move the country ahead with pride, let's help lotus bloom again)".

 

That being the irony we are faced with.

Canada's Liberal Party insiders see Carney as possible Trudeau successor - Toronto Star

FILE PHOTO: Bank of England Governor Mark Carney speaks during an Inflation Report Press Conference at the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain May 2, 2019. Matt Dunham/Pool via REUTERS

MAY 28, 2019

(Reuters) - A portion of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party is looking at Bank of England Governor Mark Carney as a possible successor to its current leader Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Toronto Star reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.

Carney’s current term ends in January 2020.

In a recent conference call, a group of party insiders discussed Trudeau’s diminished political prospects and how they could provide an early opportunity for Carney to succeed him, the report said. It did not detail how Carney - a former Bank of Canada governor – would be able to replace Trudeau.

According to one of the participants in the call, the group is assuming it will be difficult for Trudeau to win more than 140 seats in a federal election set for October, much less than the 170 required for a majority, the Toronto Star said.

Trudeau’s office declined to a Reuters request for comment.

Trudeau and the Liberals are mired in accusations of interference in a corporate corruption case that triggered the resignations of two cabinet members - the prime minister’s top adviser and the head of the federal civil service.

Polls by Nanos Research and Ipsos put the official opposition Conservatives ahead of the Liberals but not by enough to guarantee they could form a stable government.

Would Labour win an election if it backed remain?

 By Georgina Lee-28 May 2019

Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to push for a second referendum on Brexit, and even to campaign to remain in the European Union.

Senior voices in Labour are making almost directly-contradicting predictions about what would happen if it adopts a pro-remain stance. Some prophesy electoral oblivion while others say it’s the only way to topple the Conservatives.

So who’s right? Of course, there’s no certainty about any of this — the only poll that really matters is election day itself, whenever that arrives — but let’s take a look at the evidence we do have.

How are the parties doing?

Figures out today from Electoral Calculus predict that as it stands, Labour could expect to lose eight seats in a general election compared to its 2017 total.

It’s touch-and-go who would be the largest party, but both Conservatives and Labour would be “about 70 seats short of a majority”.

That calculation is based on “recent national polls in detail for both European and Westminster elections” and accounts for the fact that some voters defected to “pro- and anti-Brexit parties to make a short-term protest” in the European elections.

It looks pretty grim for both the current government and the official opposition.

Could enticing Lib Dem voters be the answer?

The founder of Electoral Calculus, Martin Baxter, told FactCheck that a 5 per cent swing from Lib Dems to Labour would see Labour gain 47 seats compared to the number it won 2017 election.

In that scenario, Labour would become the largest party in parliament and just 17 seats shy of an overall majority. Jeremy Corbyn would almost certainly be Prime Minister, either with a coalition partner or as head of a minority government.

This begs the question: how could Labour woo the Lib Dems?

Some 22 per cent of Labour voters switched to the Lib Dems in the European elections, according to polling published today by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft. A further 17 per cent opted for the Greens — another party associated with remain.

As FactCheck reported yesterday, people pick parties for a range of reasons. But it’s hard to escape the fact that the Liberal Democrats are, for the most part, considered a pro-remain outfit. So backing a second referendum and adopting an anti-Brexit stance seems an obvious way for Labour to win over Lib Dems.

Backing Remain is also likely to shore up Labour’s existing base.

FactCheck has seen a report by the Labour-affiliated TSSA union from February 2019 which found that 60 per cent of Labour voters said they’d be more likely to vote Labour if the party was committed to opposing Brexit. Some 28 per cent said it would make no difference, and just 12 per cent said they’d be less likely.

The data is now a few months old, but we note that nearly all of the TSSA predictions on how a pro-Brexit third party might fare were borne out in Thursday’s European elections.

Wouldn’t Labour leavers ditch the party?

The TSSA report, which also used polling by YouGov, offers evidence that Labour Leave voters care less about Brexit than other Leavers.

It found that just 36 per cent of Labour Leave voters list Brexit as one of the top three issues facing themselves and their families (compared to 60 per cent of Conservative Brexiteers).

Only 66 per cent of Labour voters who backed Leave in 2016 say they would do so again in a second referendum, the report finds. Some 16 per cent say they’d now vote Remain, while 13 per cent say they don’t know.

All of this suggests that Labour Leavers are less committed to leaving the EU than Brexiteers in other parties — and therefore less likely to desert Labour if it adopts a pro-Remain stance.

FactCheck verdict

We don’t have a crystal ball, and polls are notoriously difficult to get right. But the evidence available suggests that Labour would benefit from adopting a pro-remain stance at a general election.

The Electoral Calculus site predicts that with just a 5 per cent swing from the Lib Dems, Labour could make a net gain of 47 seats and become the largest party in the Commons — enough to put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.

From what we’ve seen, backing remain is unlikely to drive out significant numbers of Labour leave voters, who tend to put Brexit lower on their list of priorities than pro-Brexit supporters of other parties. Just 12 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2017 say they’d be less likely to do so again if the party backs remain.

Childhood, disrupted: Venezuela is in danger of losing a generation

Two kids climb through a hole in the wall of the San Alberto Hurtado school in the Caracas neighborhood of La Vega. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

By Arelis R. Hernández andMariana Zuñiga-May 28 at 6:00 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela — To be a child in Venezuela today is dangerous.

Here in the capital on any given afternoon, emaciated teens pick through rotting garbage for food. Children have been abandoned to extended family or orphanages by parents who can no longer afford to keep them. Newborns have been discarded in dumpsters.

Poverty isn’t new here. The distribution of wealth in this oil-rich nation has always been unequal — a reason the socialist leader Hugo Chávez rose to power two decades ago. But years into Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis, the government systems that once coordinated services for the poor have collapsed, and children have been among those hit the hardest. Consider some numbers:

In seven of the largest states, more than half of children under 5 suffer from malnutrition, according to the relief agency Caritas Venezuela.

An estimated 840,000 children have lost at least one parent to emigration, the child advocacy group Cecodap reports.

School attendance has fallen by half in the past two years, according to Fe y Alegria, a network of Jesuit schools that serve the nation’s poorest neighborhoods.

Infant mortality spiked to 11,466 deaths in 2016, a 30 percent increase from the year before, the Ministry of Health reported in 2017. The health minister who published that information was fired days after its release; the government hasn’t provided data on children’s health since.

That’s on top of the conditions that are devastating much of Venezuela’s population: Hyperinflation and joblessness, power outages and shortages of medicine, food and water. The United Nations estimates that 3.7 million people have fled the country.

While the government is paralyzed by mismanagement, corruption and political stalemate, social workers, teachers and advocates say children are losing their childhood to uncertainty, anxiety and fear, robbing them of healthy development and threatening long-term harm to the nation.

“We have a broken country that is sacrificing its future,” says Abel Saraiba, a psychologist with Cecodap.

[Venezuela’s opposition, government pursue talks to resolve crisis; U.S. is skeptical]

Under the government’s centralized child welfare system, social workers once managed cases and directed services through school programs, family courts and orphanages. But that safety net has tattered. Nelson Villasmil, a government social worker in Caracas, says thousands of cases in the judicial system have been waiting for resolution for years.

Each day, Villasmil says, he receives 15 to 20 parents struggling to figure out what do with their kids because they’re emigrating.

“I often ask myself if I’m doing enough to protect children,” he said. “The answer is no. Because I can’t. This is the worst time to be a child in Venezuela.”

The Venezuelan government did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Nonprofits — Caritas, Fe y Alegria, the Red Cross and others — are trying to fill the gaps: Providing meals for children, helping parents lay out care instructions for the children they leave behind when they migrate, seeking donations from Venezuelans abroad to equip schools with water filters and basic supplies.

Private orphanages are full, holding children for longer than is recommended and scrambling for money to provide psychological services to street children.

Milagros Parada is a lanky teenager with a lot on her mind. The 14-year-old, who used to own plenty of shoes, has skipped school some days because she had nothing to wear on her feet. She goes weeks without eating meat. She’s forgotten what a cup of cold water tastes like.

A girl at San Alberto Hurtado. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

Milagros Parada skipped a stretch of school this year because she didn’t have shoes. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

 Her family — her mother and six siblings, living in the west Caracas barrio of La Vega — was never rich. But they never went without. There was always money for food and for school supplies and uniforms. Now those basics are out of reach.

So Milagros worries. Sometimes she loses sleep, thinking about all the things she has lost and all the things her mother needs and all the ways Milagros wants to help and all the ways she can’t.

“Sometimes I think my mom is going to have a heart attack or her head is going to explode,” she says. “I’ve never seen my mother like this.”

Why, Milagros asks of no one in particular, can’t she have a drink of cold water before bed? What will it mean for her education that class ends two hours early because the teacher left the country? Why doesn’t she get a snack after school anymore, or meat for dinner?

The answers are always unsatisfying.

“I want Venezuela to be like it was,” she says.

[Inside the secret plot to turn senior Venezuelan officials against Maduro]

At an orphanage on the other side of Caracas, a 4-year-old cups her great-grandmother’s shriveled face in her plump little hands and pecks her with kisses.

“Take me home with you,” she implores.

Gabriela Román endures this farewell twice a week at Las Villas de Los Chiquiticos orphanage, where she has surrendered her three great-granddaughters.

Their mother left for Colombia last year. Then their father went after her. They have not been heard from since.

Román, who survives on a meager government pension, can barely afford to feed herself.

Chronic malnutrition is now widespread. The food that is available is unaffordable for many families.

Children “don’t know when they’re going to eat, and they get the sense, growing up, that no matter what they do, they’re not going to make it,” said psychologist Ninoska Zambrano, who works with the nonprofit that runs the orphanage. Organizers now offer food to more than 500 vulnerable families in the slums of Caracas.

A girl with her kite at the San Alberto Hurtado school. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

Carlos Trapani, Cecodap’s director, speaks of the child who was convinced his father didn’t love him anymore because instead of receiving two arepas — white corn cakes — at breakfast, he received one.

“The trust between the child and adult is broken when basic things aren’t provided,” said Nathalie Abuchaibe, the orphanage’s director.

Román, 75, takes a bus from her home in the Caracas slum of Petare to spend 90 minutes playing and talking with her great-granddaughters. She lovingly wipes from their faces the fibrous remains of a mango that cost so much she probably won’t eat that day.

“I don’t sleep well without them,” Román said. “If this wasn’t happening, those girls would not be here.”

She barely has the strength to place the three girls — ages 4, 3 and 18 months — into a miniature, battery-powered car that looks like a Cadillac Escalade. The batteries are shot, so she exerts all her energy pushing the play vehicle slowly across the orphanage’s courtyard as the girls squeal. Then, unable to steer, they hit a brick wall.

It’s time for Román to go.

On the other side of Caracas in the more affluent neighborhoods of the Chacao district, Alejandro, 15, and his two siblings arise early from the pieces of cardboard they sleep on to pick through garbage for something to eat. They call it recycling.

Alejandro left his home in Petare years ago. Soon, his 12- and 11-year-old sisters joined him in begging.

“This is a wounded generation, and we have failed them,” Trapani said.

[Guaidó says opposition overestimated military support for uprising]

The Rev. Alfredo Infante says the crisis is robbing the children in his parish of their childhoods. 

Schools were dying. Poverty corroded families. And the children’s prayers contorted. They went from asking for divine intervention on school tests to pleading with the saints to ensure that food would grace their tables at dinnertime.

Yaneth Moraima is principal of the Manuel Aguirre school in Petare, which serves 916 students from grades one through 12.

“They’ve stopped playing, stopped being themselves, to stand in lines for food, water and to stay home to take over adult responsibilities,” she said.

Dozens of teachers have left. Moraima still opens the school to give children an escape. The Red Cross helps supply food.

“They don’t return for an education, they come for a meal,” she said. “It’s getting harder to serve the children. They fight more often. Their lives are steeped in anxiety.”

The same is true in Infante’s barrio. One day deep in prayer, the Jesuit priest remembered the film “Life Is Beautiful.”

“That movie was all about a father trying to protect his son from the horrors of the Holocaust through play,” he said. “I wondered if I could do the same.”

Children play in the schoolyard at San Alberto Hurtado. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

Flor Fuentes comforts her son on the soccer field. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

Infante opens up a school as a crisis-free zone, where for a few hours each day, children get to pretend Venezuela hasn’t changed. Milagros — the 14-year-old — runs barefoot behind a soccer ball on a dusty basketball court, towering over malnourished prepubescent boys.

“Here, we don’t talk about politics,” she said. “Here, I am free.”

Volunteers from the barrio serve meals, paint faces, umpire kickball games and help the little ones fashion kites out of plastic bags and sticks. It’s the one place where children don’t have to hear or talk about the “situation.”

“This is their oxygen,” said Flor Fuentes, 33, a special-education teacher who volunteers with Infante’s recreation program. “They know we start at 9 in the morning, but sometimes the kids are here as early as 7 a.m.”

Plans are in place to show “Life Is Beautiful” to parents to teach them not to transmit their anguish to the children. Infante and Moraima are working with other nonprofits in Caracas to train families to withstand the crisis emotionally.

Gioconda Iguaro, 36, brings her daughter to jump and scream and socialize. It’s a distraction for the 9-year-old, but it also relieves stress for the mother. Iguaro tries to hide Venezuela’s woes from her daughter, but the girl knows.

“My daughter complains and asks me questions like, ‘Mami, why don’t we have a car anymore?’ Or, ‘Why do we no longer eat cookies?’ Sometimes I explode and yell at her. There have been so many times that I’ve had to apologize.”

“It’s tough to be a mother in Venezuela. You want to give your kids the best, but you can’t.”

A mural in the school. (Andrea Hernandez for The Washington Post)

How European Politics Is Fracturing

Sunday’s vote shows that mainstream centrist parties are losing their traditional constituencies as voters hunger for new voices.

Two workers paint the European Union flag on the side of a building in Paris on May 23. JOEL SAGETAFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY ROBBIE GRAMER

| MAY 28, 2019, 8:42 AM
BREMEN, Germany—The middle-aged man in the bright pink sweatshirt held the microphone up to his mouth, looked over the mostly gray-haired audience, and began rapping about Europe. “Europa ist die Antwort! Europa ist die Antwort!” he shouted between rapid-fire verses. (Europe is the answer! Europe is the answer!)

It was the warm-up act for an all-star cast of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was desperately trying to court the youth vote in Bremen ahead of contentious state elections. But the smattering of tepid applause he received from the crowd of several hundred mostly older onlookers, skilled as he was, foreshadowed what was to come.

The Bremen elections coincided with the separate European parliamentary elections that took place on Sunday. Both resulted in serious setbacks for the Social Democrats, but they weren’t alone in their sorrows. Beyond Bremen and across Europe, many top centrist parties lost big or barely clung to power, while smaller parties representing the far-right, environmentalists, and free market liberals made significant gains.

“The trend is that the traditional political constituencies are just falling away in Europe,” said Sudha David-Wilp, an expert on European politics with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. And in many ways Bremen—an economically struggling industrial city in Germany’s northwest—is a microcosm for the fracturing of Europe’s political landscape amid a wave of social upheaval and political change.

The European elections saw gains for smaller parties as the two big-tent centrist parties failed to reach a majority for the first time.Collectively, pro-European forces won out, albeit spread across a smattering of political factions. Far-right parties placed first over centrist ones in France and Italy, while support for Green parties surged to second or third place in Germany, France, Ireland, and Finland.

 

Many European voters struggle to understand how the Parliament fits into the European Union’s complex structure, but it plays an important role. It approves the EU’s massive budget and top positions and influences EU policies on trade agreements, environmental policies, and economic regulations—all issues that could be harder to tackle with a more fractured Parliament.

Bremen, the smallest of Germany’s 16 regional states, is a historic bastion of support for the SPD. “Bremen is not one of the strongholds, Bremen is the stronghold of the Social Democrats,” Udo Bullmann, a balding and smiley SPD member of the European Parliament, told Foreign Policy at the rally. Bruised and battered from a slow decline in support over decades, the SPD badly needed a win there. But in the end, it didn’t come.

For the first time in more than 70 years, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) overtook the SPD in Bremen, a historic blow to what was once one of Europe’s strongest and most stable centrist parties.

The lukewarm reception given the Bremen rapper, rallying the crowd for heavy hitters like SPD leader Andrea Nahles, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, and German Finance Minister Olaf Schulz, was only the latest sign that traditional centrist parties can no longer deliver the message many voters want to hear.

The decline of these parties has prompted endless rounds of political soul-searching and clumsy attempts to court new and younger voters. Few parties, not least the SPD, have figured out how to reverse their decline.

While Bremen was a clear-cut blow to the SPD, it’s more difficult to divine more straightforward conclusions from the EU elections—the world’s second-largest exercise in democracy after India’s elections, with more than 400 million eligible voters in 28 EU countries.

Voter turnout increased in nearly all EU countries but to just over 50 percent overall. The two big-tent centrist parties—the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which includes Germany’s SPD—barely clung to power, and no parties emerged with a decisive mandate. Far-right parties across Europe gained votes, most notably in France and Italy, but not as many votes as many expected. The environmentally focused Green parties surged in Western European countries, particularly in Germany, but hardly made a dent in the east and south. The center-left parties in Spain and the Netherlands had strong showings, even as the SPD faced historic losses.

One SPD politician, a member of Germany’s national parliament, offered a frank assessment of the problems his and other mainstream parties face, whether in the Bremen or EU elections: They have fewer young and charismatic leaders to replace older party hands, who seem reluctant to leave the stage. Traditional voting bases like trade unions are waning as manufacturing jobs die out, giving way to a more digitalized and service-based economy. Many voters seem fed up by how grand coalitions made up of center-right and center-left parties muddled through political crises, from the eurozone financial crisis to the influx of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa to addressing climate change.

Nearly all parties across Europe save for the far-right ones put forward get-out-the-vote campaigns centered on pro-EU platforms. (After the messy and drawn-out Brexit saga in the United Kingdom, even far-right parties have tamped down their push to exit the EU.) Many of the smaller parties ran on platforms of change and fresh ideas.

Svenja Hahn, a 29-year-old European Parliament candidate for the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Germany’s smaller liberal free market party, suggested the long-standing duopoly of center-right and center-left coalitions was growing stale, giving the FDP a window of opportunity. She hoped the rise of smaller pro-European parties would “bring some fresh winds” to the system.

All the while, far-right parties are taking root in Brussels, Berlin, and other European capitals with sizable minorities. Corina Stratulat, a senior policy analyst at the Brussels-based think tank European Policy Centre, believes that far-right parties are here to stay as long as centrist parties struggle to find ways to win back disaffected voters.

“They try to fill in a gap that has been widening between citizens and elites, and we haven’t closed that gap,” she said. “We don’t even know if it’s possible to close that gap.”

Their impact on the European Parliament is difficult to predict. In the past, the hodgepodge of smaller far-right parties has either failed to form lasting and coherent voting blocs or simply not tried.
In the European elections, with 751 seats, provisional results show that the EPP is expected to keep its plurality with 177 seats, while losing 40 seats. The S&D is expected to keep 149 of its 186 seats, while the Greens will grow from 52 to 69 seats and the free market liberal group ALDE will grow from 68 to 107 seats. Collectively, the patchwork of far-right and anti-EU parties, including the United Kingdom’s Brexit Party, will comprise about a quarter of the Parliament.

In Germany, the SPD’s losses in the European elections were particularly painful: Provisional results show it received only 15.8 percent of the vote—almost half of what it got in the 2014 EU parliamentary vote—which translates into 16 seats in the European Parliament. The Greens received 20.5 percent of the vote, giving it 21 seats, while the CDU and its sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, received 28.9 percent of the vote—down more than 6 percent from 2014—giving it 29 seats.

The CDU is also struggling as its longtime leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, prepares to retire. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Merkel’s successor as CDU leader, has landed herself in hot water after suggesting debates on regulations about online political discussions during elections, drawing accusations of pushing censorship. The comments came after a German YouTube star posted a video criticizing the CDU that went viral.

Many SPD members blame their party’s waning popularity on coalition governments with the CDU, an on-and-off trend for decades. The system has led Germany to forge stable governments that broker pragmatic compromises, but the SPD’s partnership with the CDU has muddled its platform, making it difficult for voters to distinguish where the center-right stops and the center-left begins.

“There’s been a struggle on the left to define what it is doing, what its platform is,” said Jannes, a lanky and energetic 20-year-old SPD supporter, who donned a blue hoodie with the EU flag on it. One of the few young people in the crowd in Bremen, Jannes was hopeful the SPD could return to its roots and begin replenishing its stock of loyal voters with younger people. “I am hoping [the SPD] can continue to change,” he said.

For now, many centrist politicians in Germany have at least diagnosed the problem, even as they struggle to find a cure.

Bullmann, between mingling with the crowd in Bremen for handshakes and selfies, struck an upbeat tone for the SPD and its traditional platform of strengthening social safety nets and defending the working class. But he appeared to acknowledge the deeply rooted problems.

“We will … try step by step to rebuild trust, to come forward with progressive policies so we can convince again our supporters that this is the right choice,” he said. “You cannot inherit your majorities anymore. You have to win them again.”

Reporting was conducted with travel and accommodation support from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung).