Airport workers and train drivers take action to demand more pay to offset soaring inflation in the country.
Massive industrial action has paralysed air and rail travel across Germany as striking workers walked off the job to demand better pay to cope with the rising cost of living.
Thursday’s walkouts by the train drivers coincided with a strike by ground staff at national airline Lufthansa that led to mass flight cancellations at Germany’s busiest airports, including main hub Frankfurt.
The rail strike is due to last until Friday, Germany’s train union head Claus Weselsky said. “With this, we begin a so-called strike wave,” he told reporters.
Reporting from an empty Berlin Central Station, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said there were no subregional trains moving at all, with only a few cross-country ones still active.
“It’s a similar picture right around the country,” Kane said.
Overall, about 80 percent of all long-distance trains, as well as regional and commuter trains in the country, were cancelled, leading to traffic jams in the streets and employees struggling to arrive on time for work.
The simultaneous action is the latest in a recent series of strikes hitting Germany’s travel sector in the past year, a result of high inflation and worker shortages.
It comes as the economic institute DIW Berlin warned that the German economy was not picking up as quickly as expected, forecasting a recession at the start of the year.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to contract by 0.1 percent in the first quarter, according to DIW, after the economy shrank by 0.3 percent in the final three months of 2023. A technical recession is commonly defined as back-to-back quarters of contracting GDP.
The German train drivers’ union (GDL) demands that national train operator Deutsche Bahn reduce workers’ weekly hours from 38 to 35 hours at full pay to help offset lofty inflation and staff shortages.
The action comes after weeks-long talks between the two parties broke down last week. An earlier strike in late January, one of the longest in the state-owned company’s 30-year history, ended prematurely as an economic slowdown led to pressure on GDL to return to the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, Lufthansa is also locked in disputes with worker’s union Verdi over pay. The union is demanding a 12.5 percent increase in pay over a year for the airline’s staff, as well as a one-off 3,000 euros ($3,268) bonus.
Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, was forced to cancel scheduled departures due to the strike, which will last until Saturday morning.
“Fraport is asking all passengers starting their journey in Frankfurt not to come to the airport on March 7 and to contact their airline,” the airport’s operator said in a statement on Wednesday.
The ADV airport association warned that strikes in the aviation sector, which also took place in Hamburg and Duesseldorf, were damaging Germany’s reputation as a centre for business and tourism.
Passengers wait at Dusseldorf Airport amid the strike [Jana Rodenbusch/Reuters]
An Israeli tank crew “likely” opened machinegun fire on an identifiable group of journalists near the border with Lebanon who were also targetted by shelling, a new report has found.
The report on the October 13 attack, published on Thursday by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and commissioned by Reuters, found that a tank 1.34km (0.83 miles) away in Israel fired two 120mm rounds at the reporters with a heavy machinegun in a nearly two-minute onslaught.
One Reuters reporter was killed in the attack and six journalists were injured, including two from Al Jazeera.
Audio picked up by an Al Jazeera video camera at the scene showed the reporters also came under fire from 0.50 calibre rounds of the type used by the Browning machineguns that can be mounted on Israel’s Merkava tanks – likely from the same point as the tank, TNO revealed.
“It is considered a likely scenario that a Merkava tank, after firing two tank rounds, also used its machinegun against the location of the journalists,” TNO’s report said.
“The latter cannot be concluded with certainty as the direction and exact distance of [the machine gun] fire could not be established.”
The journalists were filming cross-border shelling from a distance in an open area on a hill near the Lebanese village of Alma ash-Shaab when they came under fire.
Al Jazeera cameraperson Elie Brakhia and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, and two other Reuters journalists were among the group.
The first shell killed Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, and severely wounded Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Christina Assi.
Calls for investigations
Israel’s military said it was investigating the attack but the results have not been made public.
The journalists were deliberately targeted, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in an earlier report, although it did not attribute responsibility to Israel.
“Two strikes in the same place in such a short space of time (just over 30 seconds), from the same direction, clearly indicate precise targeting,” RSF said, citing preliminary results of an investigation based on video footage and ballistic analysis.
Reacting to TNO’s report, Reuters’s editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni condemned the attack on the journalists in a statement and called for an Israeli investigation.
“We reiterate our calls on Israel to explain how this could have happened and to hold those responsible to account,” she said.
Ihtisham Hibatullah, Al Jazeera’s manager of international communications, also urged the Israeli government to disclose the findings of its own investigation, adding that the “incident strongly indicates intentional targeting, as confirmed by investigations, including by TNO”.
AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said: “If reports of sustained machine gun fire are confirmed, this would add more weight to the theory that this was a targeted and deliberate attack.”
Mounting attacks on the press
Israel’s war on Gaza is one of the deadliest on record for journalists, with more reporters killed in the first 10 weeks following October 7 than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The group said this week it had “found multiple kinds of incidents of journalists being targeted while carrying out their work in Israel and the two Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank”.
Al Jazeera cameraperson Samer Abudaqa was killed by an Israeli strike on December 15 while reporting at the Farhana school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. He was left to bleed to death as emergency workers were blocked by the Israeli military from reaching the site.
Wael Dahdouh, the network’s Gaza bureau chief who earlier lost his wife, son and daughter in a single attack, was also injured in the assault.
In January, an Israeli missile hit a vehicle carrying Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Wael Dahdouh in the western part of Khan Younis, killing him. Dahdouh was traveling with fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya who was also killed.
As of last month, at least 99 journalists – most of them Palestinian – have been killed since the start of the war on Gaza on October 7, according to the CPJ.
Israel has generated “famine-like conditions” in the Gaza Strip “while obstructing and undermining the humanitarian response”, according to a new report by humanitarian group Refugees International.
The group’s research in Egypt, Jordan and Israel revealed that Tel Aviv “consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza”.
The report was based on interviews with dozens of government officials, humanitarian workers, and NGO staff engaged in on-the-ground aid efforts from the three countries.
“Our research makes clear that conditions inside of Gaza are apocalyptic,” said the report released on Thursday.
“After five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter, and basic medicine. Famine-level hunger is already widespread and worsening.”
Failing to comply with ICJ ruling
Refugees International also said that Israel was “demonstrably failing to comply” with legally binding provisional measures ordered on January 26 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to facilitate the flow of aid and lessen humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
In its defence to the ICJ, Israel argued it has actively eliminated bottlenecks and improved the entrance and distribution of aid in Gaza.
The report revealed that Israeli authorities have “erected unnecessary hurdles, complicated logistical processes, and an unpredictable vetting system, rendering the inspection regime overwhelmingly burdensome with layers of bureaucracy and inspection and limited working hours”.
While Israel claimed that it expanded capacity for aid delivery to Gaza, the average number of trucks delivered in February actually fell by 50 percent compared with the previous month, according to United Nations data cited in the report.
Critical crossings like the northern Erez and Al-Muntar – known as Karni to Israelis – remain closed, impeding access to the north of Gaza.
The report said Israel failed to comply with the terms of a National Security Memorandum (NSM-20) issued in February by United States President Joe Biden’s administration that require countries receiving US security assistance to actively facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
Logistical issues
Refugees International found that logistical issues within Egypt and Jordan are limiting the distribution of life-saving assistance to people in Gaza.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, mainly intended for commercial deliveries, lacks the capacity to process the substantial amount of aid the Strip requires. Egyptian authorities have also sought to deter a large-scale humanitarian response in the northern Sinai, a military zone.
The report found that Egypt responded to Israel’s pressure to open its borders to Palestinian refugees by intensifying its oversight and regulation of access to the border area for aid agencies, as well as its monitoring of entry and exit of individuals to and from Gaza.
The charities delivering aid to Gaza from Jordan’s capital Amman told Refugees International that Israeli officials put in place “difficult obstacles” that did not exist before and have yet to provide clear standard operating procedures to Jordanian authorities.
New barriers, such as new inspection requirements, are also stalling aid at the Allenby Bridge crossing into Israel and the border crossing at Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom).
Calls for ceasefire
The report called on the warring parties in Gaza to “immediately agree to a mutual ceasefire and release of all hostages” as well as “adhere to international humanitarian law and refrain from any action that threatens the rights, safety, and dignity of both Palestinian and Israeli civilians”.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent weeks trying to broker an agreement in which Hamas would release Israeli captives in return for a six-week ceasefire, the release of some Palestinian prisoners and more aid to Gaza.
But three days of negotiations with Hamas this week over a ceasefire in Gaza have failed to achieve a breakthrough, less than a week before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – the informal deadline for a deal.
Refugees International also called for an end to attacks on civilians and infrastructure and for allowing the UN and aid agencies access to populations in need.
Among other recommendations, it said Israel must refrain from “a military offensive in Rafah, and other actions that could displace Palestinians further or otherwise worsen the humanitarian crisis”.
The Israeli military has been preparing for a long-threatened ground invasion in the southern Gaza border city of Rafah, where more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million population has been forcibly displaced.
At least 30,800 Palestinians have been killed and 72,198 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Throwing smoke bombs and lighting fires, thousands of angry farmers demonstrated in Warsaw against European Union regulations and cheap Ukraine imports, with police reporting that two officers had been injured and a dozen protesters arrested.
Some demonstrators on Wednesday tried to force their way past security railings onto parliament grounds, according to police. Farmers also organised tractor blockades on roads across the country.
Polish farmers have been blocking border crossings with Ukraine since last month to protest against what they say is unfair competition from goods entering from Ukraine.
Ukraine has seen its agriculture sector crippled by Russia’s invasion in 2022. Many of its major export routes through the Black Sea have been blocked and its farmland rendered unusable by warfare.
In a bid to help Kyiv economically, the EU in 2022 scrapped tariffs on Ukrainian goods transiting the 27-nation bloc by road.
But logistical problems mean a lot of the Ukrainian cereal exports destined for non-EU countries have accumulated in Poland, undercutting local producers.
The border blockades and grain dispute have strained ties between the neighbours, even as Poland has shown staunch support since the Russian invasion.
Farmers in several other European countries have also been protesting for weeks over these conditions.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week the government was mulling a temporary closure of the border with Ukraine for goods.
On Monday, he called on the EU to impose full sanctions on food and agricultural imports from Russia and Belarus – a proposal backed by Ukraine.
Tusk said EU-wide sanctions would make it possible to “more effectively protect the EU’s agricultural and food markets” and “fully open up the possibilities of exporting Ukrainian produce … to third countries”.
Tusk is to hold talks with Polish farmers on Saturday.
Who: Anthony Joshua vs Francis Ngannou What: Heavyweight boxing fight (10 rounds) When: Friday, March 8, 2024 at 23:00 GMT Where: Kingdom Arena, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Francis Ngannou believes his strong showing in his pro boxing debut against Tyson Fury has given him confidence ahead of his bout against British heavyweight Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia.
The former UFC heavyweight champion Ngannou will fight Joshua at Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena on Friday.
Ngannou made his debut in October, losing via split decision to WBC world champion Fury in a non-title bout.
The Cameroonian-French fighter almost delivered an upset when he dropped Fury to the canvas with a left hook in that fight.
“I feel confident enough, based on my training, the hard work that I put in,” Ngannou said in his pre-fight press conference on Wednesday.
“It (fight against Fury) was a good experience and it definitely guided me better to have proper training.
“Every space I have open, I am going to hit … I am not going to leave any stone unturned and any opportunity unexplored.”
Much of the pre-fight narrative is presuming a win for Joshua that would put him in line to fight Fury, provided Fury – the WBC champion – beats Oleksandr Usyk – the WBA, IBF and WBO champion – in their rearranged May 18 bout that will crown the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 2000.
Ngannou is ready to make more headlines in his fast-track bid to become a boxing champion so soon after dominating the UFC scene.
“I’ve exposed myself – the guy who is coming next time [Joshua] knows what to deal with,” Ngannou said after arriving in Riyadh.
“I’ve lost that element of surprise. So how can I surprise him again? What can I pull from my sleeve once again?”
Ngannou, who has a 17-3 mixed martial arts record with 12 victories by knockout, will once again be the underdog when he faces two-time world heavyweight champion Joshua, but the Briton said he would not make the mistake of underestimating his less-experienced opponent.
“He’s been boxing. His first dream was to be a boxer, which people forget. He was part of the Cameroonian team,” Joshua told reporters.
“I know what I am up against, I look at all of these small details. I spar, I do my film study, all that type of stuff.”
يومان فقط تفصلنا عن النزالات التاريخية العالمية في #KnockoutChaos 🥊🔥
Only two days separate us from the global historic fights in #KnockoutChaos 🥊🔥
— موسم الرياض | Riyadh Season (@RiyadhSeason) March 6, 2024
A rags to riches story
Ngannou once toiled in a sand mine, scavenged for food to avoid starvation and slept rough in a car park, so facing former two-time world heavyweight champion Joshua is just another stop on his rags to riches journey.
“I’ve had a lot of experience in life,” the softly-spoken Cameroon-born fighter said with characteristic understatement.
“I’ve built my fighting spirit as high as anyone else.”
Ngannou has crammed a lot into his 37 years.
The child of a single mother, he had to walk six miles to school and from the age of 10 he shovelled sand from open quarries, his meagre income helping to buy food and books.
“It was work meant for adults, but we didn’t have any options,” said Ngannou of his back-breaking labours which paid less than $2 a day.
“I didn’t like my life, I felt like I missed my childhood.”
In 2012, at the age of 26 and fired by dreams of becoming a professional boxer, Ngannou, now boasting a towering physique carved from his brutal work in the sand pits, made a break for Europe and a better life.
Crammed with others into the back of a pick-up truck, he crossed the unforgiving Sahara, travelled through Nigeria, Niger and Algeria before reaching Morocco.
Then, after half a dozen failed attempts, he finally made it over the Mediterranean to Spain where he was promptly jailed for two months for making an illegal crossing.
He took a train to Paris and lived in a car park before local boxing coach Didier Carmont found him a place to live and a gym in which to train.
Despite an early fascination with Mike Tyson, Ngannou graduated towards Mixed Martial Arts and in 2021 became the UFC world heavyweight champion.
Many scoffed when he opted to make his boxing debut against world champion Tyson Fury in the so-called “Battle of the Baddest” in October last year.
The doubters were silenced, however, when Ngannou sent Fury to the canvas in the third round before losing only on a controversial split decision.
However, Ngannou’s reputation and bank balance soared. He was paid $10m for his night’s work, a windfall which has helped the once shoeless Cameroonian buy a luxurious home in Las Vegas.
‘I can knock Joshua out’
On Friday, Ngannou will return to Riyadh to face 34-year-old Joshua whose career could take a big blow if he loses.
“Of course I can knock Joshua out,” said Ngannou. “I believe if I land on anyone, I will knock them out. The question is how to land. That’s the hardest thing.”
Joshua, a former unified WBO, WBA and IBF heavyweight champion, comes into the fight on the back of three successive wins.
Before that, however, he lost back-to-back fights with Oleksandr Usyk who will fight Fury for the undisputed heavyweight title in Saudi in May.
“This Friday it’s going to go down, so I can’t wait for the opportunity to show my skills and combat this person who thinks he can knock me out,” Joshua said of Ngannou.
“I believe I can knock him out. Definitely. I would love to knock him out and make a statement.
“He has to be ready for the shots which are coming his way because I’m a man who will be standing in front of him, bringing him a lot of hell.”
On Thursday, at least five people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a mosque in Jabalia al-Balad, northern Gaza.
A 15-year-old and a 72-year-old man have died in northern Gaza as a result of malnutrition and dehydration, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to remain in northern Gaza after Israel ordered the evacuation of the entire region, including Gaza City, in October. Many have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive.
The United Nations says one in six children below the age of two in the north suffers from acute malnutrition.
Calls to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip have grown louder as health officials report that 20 people in total have now died from malnutrition and dehydration.
Regional tensions and diplomacy
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi branded Israel’s war on Gaza a “tragedy for humanity and a disgrace for civilisation” and reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, said on Wednesday the bloc will examine whether Israel is complying with the human rights obligations stipulated in their trade deal.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said obstacles to a truce deal between Israel and Hamas were “not insurmountable” and that an agreement could still be reached before Ramadan.
A court in Canada’s Quebec province issued a temporary ban on pro-Palestinian protests within 50 metres of a synagogue and four other Jewish community buildings in the city of Montreal, according to media reports on Wednesday.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
Israeli forces continued raids across the occupied West Bank on Thursday, arresting at least nine people in the city of Tubas and the town of Tammun.
An Israeli settlement planning authority has pushed forward permits for 3,500 new illegal settlement housing units in the occupied West Bank. Settlements are considered illegal under international laws.
The visit comes ahead of India’s national election due by May, the first since the region lost its autonomy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will shortly hold a rally in the main city of Indian-administrated Kashmir, his first visit since the disputed region’s semi-autonomy was scrapped in 2019.
Modi’s government stripped the Muslim-majority territory of its special constitutional status, splitting the former state into two territories – Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir – directly ruled from New Delhi. Inherited protections on land and jobs given to the Indigenous residents were also removed.
The move, widely welcomed across India, angered many in the densely militarised territory. Rebels in the Himalayan region have waged a rebellion since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan, which controls a smaller part of the Kashmir region and, like India, claims it in full.
On Thursday, thousands of armed police and paramilitary forces in flak jackets were deployed, and new checkpoints were set up across Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city Srinagar, where the Hindu nationalist leader is scheduled to address a public gathering at about 2pm (08:30 GMT) local time.
The forces laid razor wire and erected checkpoints as they patrolled all the roads leading to the football stadium where Modi will speak. They randomly frisked residents and searched vehicles while navy commandos in motorboats patrolled the Jhelum river that snakes through the city.
Government employees are being herded at five am in sub zero temperatures into vehicles at Budgam bus stand ferrying them to the PM’s rally. Disheartening to see employees being forcibly mobilised to paint a pretty picture that all is well post 2019 & that people here are… pic.twitter.com/NJePtET2P9
“Various development works will also be dedicated to the nation,” Modi said in a statement on social media platform X ahead of the visit, including programmes “boosting the agro-economy” as well as tourism.
A government statement said Modi will also inaugurate infrastructure around the revered Muslim shrine of Hazratbal.
Thursday’s event is seen as part of Modi’s campaign ahead of national election scheduled in April and May, the first since the region lost its autonomy. The last election for the region’s legislative assembly was held in 2014.
Modi’s government claims New Delhi’s direct rule of Kashmir brought about a new era of “peace and development” in the region, but critics and many residents say it heralded a drastic curtailment of civil liberties and press freedom.
Most schools in the city are shut for the day, and the authorities have called on government employees to attend the rally.
Omar Abdullah, a former chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, accused the government of organising buses to bring in crowds to attend the rally, alleging that “almost none” would be attending willingly.
“Government employees are being herded at five am in sub-zero temperatures into vehicles … ferrying them to the PM’s rally,” Mehbooba Mufti, another former chief minister of the region, posted on X.
Islamabad, Pakistan — It is the latest setback for former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
On Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) declared that the PTI-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) could not claim allocated reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies.
PTI, unable to contest recent elections due to a ban on their electoral symbol, instructed its candidates to join the right-wing fringe religious party in order to extend their numerical strength in the National Assembly.
In its 22-page judgment issued on Monday, the five-member electoral body decided 4-1 that the SIC failed to submit a party list for reserved candidates before the ECP’s deadline of February 22, two weeks after the February 8 election.
Pakistan’s National Assembly has a total of 70 reserved seats which are distributed among parties based upon their performance in the general elections. Similarly, the four provincial assemblies have a combined total of 149 reserved seats that are similarly distributed.
A majority of these reserved seats have already been allocated — around 77 remain vacant, for now.
PTI has criticised the ECP judgement, calling it an attack on democracy.
“This is the last assault on the heart of democracy,” Senator Ali Zafar of PTI, and a senior party lawyer said during a speech in the Senate, the upper house of the assembly on Monday after the decision was announced.
The ECP’s decision opens the door for a prolonged legal battle, as PTI has announced it will challenge the decision in higher courts.
However, if the party fails to overturn it, it could further dent its position in the lower house of parliament, potentially allowing the ruling coalition to gain a two-thirds majority in the 336-member National Assembly.
What are reserved seats — and why do they matter?
Pakistan’s general elections for the National Assembly take place on 266 seats. But there are an additional 70 reserved seats (60 for women and 10 for minorities) which give the body a total size of 336 seats.
To achieve a simple majority to form a government, a total of 169 seats is required. However, a two-thirds majority — or 224 votes — is necessary to make any constitutional amendments.
Reserved seats are allocated only to political parties that win seats in the National Assembly, and the distribution is done based on their proportional representation after the general elections. Similarly, reserved seats are allocated in provincial assemblies based on the parties’ proportionate performances.
According to regulations, any political party contesting the polls must submit a list of their nominations for reserved seats prior to elections, as per the schedule given by the ECP. However, after the polls, if a party has over-performed and needs to submit additional names for reserved candidates, it has two weeks to do so.
Independents have three days after their win announcement to declare their affiliation with a party in the assembly.
The party they join gets a boost in the number of reserved seats it gets, commensurate with the number of independents that join it.
In the National Assembly, the ECP has already allocated at least 40 out of 60 seats to different political parties for their reserved quota for women. Similarly, seven out of 10 seats reserved for the minorities quota have already been allocated in the lower house of the parliament. The rest are currently vacant.
What happened in the current elections?
Forced to contest the recent general elections on February 8 without its party symbol – the cricket bat – due to violating election rules, PTI fielded candidates as independents.
Despite facing a nationwide crackdown for nearly two years, with its leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, imprisoned since August last year, and its candidates unable to campaign freely, PTI still emerged as the single largest bloc, with its candidates winning 93 seats.
While the party claimed widespread rigging across the country and alleged a “stolen mandate”, its rivals, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), managed to cobble together a ruling alliance, with 75 and 54 seats respectively, in coalition with other smaller parties.
Even though they won the most seats, the PTI leadership, under orders from Imran Khan, decided not to form a government with any of the major parties and instead joined hands with a fringe, right-wing religious party, the SIC, to claim reserved seats.
Complicating matters further was the fact that the SIC, despite being a registered political party, did not contest the general elections. Its leader, Sahibzada Hamid Raza, chose to contest independently, winning his seat from Faisalabad city in Punjab province.
What does the ECP verdict say?
In its verdict, the ECP stated that the SIC was not entitled to claim the quota for reserved seats due to a “violation of a mandatory provision of submitting a party list for reserved seats, which is a legal requirement”.
It also said that the currently vacant seats in the national assembly — 23 — “will not” remain vacant and will be distributed among other parties based on the elected seats they won.
The commission criticised the SIC by reminding them that they were given a specific timeframe to submit a list of nominations, which the party did not.
“Every political party, while making any decision regarding crucial steps concerning matters of the political party required under law, should be aware of the potential consequences they may face in the future,” the ECP wrote.
What are the consequences of the ECP decision?
On March 3, Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) was elected the country’s new prime minister by the National Assembly, securing 201 votes. Omar Ayub Khan, the PTI leader backed by the SIC, managed to secure 92 votes.
The biggest beneficiary of the ECP decision will be Sharif’s PMLN, along with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which won the most number of seats in the general elections, with 75, 54 and 17 respectively.
In case PTI’s legal challenge fails to bring them any relief, it is a certainty that the ruling coalition will cross the magic figure of 224, which is required to achieve a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
However, if PTI manages to get the ECP decision reversed, it can expect to get 23 further seats in the National Assembly, in addition to extra seats in other provincial assemblies where they have done well. That might limit the governing coalition to just below the two-thirds mark.
What does the legal fraternity think, and what’s next?
The ECP decision has been widely criticised by lawyers, with many calling the order a “farce” or even “unconstitutional”.
Constitutional expert Asad Rahim says the ECP verdict aligns with its previous decisions that, he alleged, have disenfranchised the people of Pakistan.
“There are precedents expressly barring the minor technicalities on the basis of which the ECP barred the largest party,” the Lahore-based lawyer told Al Jazeera. “However, an even greater subversion of the democratic mandate is its division of the remaining seats among the smaller parties.”
Another legal expert, Rida Hosain, also questioned the decision to distribute the unallocated seats to other, smaller parties. She argued that no legal or constitutional provision permitted this “absurd” distribution.
“The entire framework of the Constitution and law dictates that a political party should receive reserved seats through a system of proportional representation. It is entirely undemocratic for other political parties to get a share of reserved seats beyond their proportional strength of general seats in the National Assembly,” Hosain told Al Jazeera.
Islamabad-based lawyer Salaar Khan also noted that the ECP decision lacks any “convincing justification” for allocating the unallocated seats to other parties.
“However, the impact may well be granting the coalition government a full two-thirds majority in the National Assembly,” he told Al Jazeera.
On the other hand, lawyer Mian Dawood argued that the SIC was clearly at fault for failing to submit their list within the deadline.
“This is the first instance where a political party like the SIC has not submitted its list for reserved seats as required by law, yet now demands them on grounds of morality and the law of necessity,” Dawood told Al Jazeera.
Abdul Moiz Jaferii, a constitutional expert and lawyer, viewed the ECP verdict as another “technical knockout” suffered by PTI.
“The PTI perhaps themselves opened the door to this by not standing their ground with the ECP regarding their own reserved seat lists and maintaining that they are still a political party, albeit without a symbol,” he told Al Jazeera.
Lawyers also expressed pessimism regarding PTI receiving any favourable verdict from the superior courts.
“The PTI seems to have decided to challenge the decision before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court’s narrow interpretation of election laws is, of course, what landed the PTI here to begin with,” lawyer Khan said, referring to the Supreme Court verdict in January this year upholding the ECP decision to strip the party of its cricket bat symbol.
Speaking at a rare press conference in Beijing, Wang Yi calls for peace talks to bring two-year-old Ukraine conflict to an end.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said China sees itself as a “force for peace” in the world, even as it pursues deeper ties with Russia despite Moscow’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
“In the face of complex turmoil in the international environment, China will persist in being a force for peace, a force for stability, and a force for progress in the world,” Wang told reporters at a press conference in Beijing on the sidelines of the country’s annual meeting of its parliament.
Wang, who spoke in Mandarin, was also asked about China’s relationship with Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The two countries announced a “no limits” partnership shortly before the invasion, as Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing, and visiting Moscow last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed a “new era” of cooperation.
The foreign minister said Beijing and Moscow’s closer relationship was a “strategic choice”, noting that bilateral trade had reached a record $240bn in 2023.
“New opportunities” lay ahead, he added, portraying the two countries’ ties as a “new paradigm” in the relations between big powers.
“Major countries should not seek conflict and the Cold War should not be allowed to come back,” Wang said.
China has positioned itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine war, and on the first anniversary of the conflict, released a 12-point peace plan calling for a ceasefire and talks between the two parties.
On Thursday, Wang insisted that Beijing maintained an “objective and impartial position” on Ukraine and called again for peace talks, noting that peace envoy Li Hui was currently in the region.
“A conflict, when prolonged, tends to deteriorate and escalate and could lead to an even bigger crisis,” Wang said.
Latest comments come as US and South Korea hold joint military exercises involving thousands of troops.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered heightened readiness for war after inspecting troops at a major military operations base in the country’s west.
The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) did not reveal the location of the base in its report on Thursday.
The North Korean leader said the military must “dynamically usher in a new heyday of intensifying the war preparations in line with the requirements of the prevailing situation”, according to KCNA.
“Our army should … steadily intensify the actual war drills aimed at rapidly improving its combat capabilities for perfect war preparedness,” he added.
Kim’s visit took place as forces from the United States and South Korea continued their annual Freedom Shield large-scale military exercises.
The drills, expected to involve 48 field exercises including missile interception drills, bombing, air assault and live-firing, began on Monday with twice the number of troops participating compared with last year.
KCNA did not say whether Kim discussed the US-South Korean drills with the troops he met with [KCNA via Reuters]
North Korea has long condemned military drills by the US and South Korea, claiming they are rehearsals for an invasion, and has conducted weapons tests in response to previous exercises.
On Monday, KCNA quoted an unnamed spokesperson for North Korea’s Ministry of Defence urging Seoul and Washington to cease their “reckless” and “frantic war drills”.
The US and South Korea “will be made to pay a dear price for their false choice”, the spokesperson added.
In Thursday’s report, KCNA did not mention whether Kim directly referred to the Freedom Shield drills.
It said the troops at the base were conducting manoeuvres under conditions simulating actual war.
North Korea has continued to carry out missile tests this year as it modernises its military.
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