On July 7, Indonesians will go to the polls in an election which will have important implications for the whole of South-East Asia, and Australia. The presidential election follows legislative elections which took place last April. In those elections, no party secured a majority of seats in the People’s Representative Council, but the largest groupings…
The national elections in the world’s largest democracy, India, have concluded with the defeat of the Congress Party and a decisive victory for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is led by Narendra Modi, the charismatic former chief minister of the state of Gujarat in India’s north-west, which has enjoyed rapid economic…
While Australians were preoccupied with the Budget, the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced legislation in the Senate to recognise same-sex “marriages” contracted overseas. The significance of the South Australian senator’s bill is that it seeks to reverse a 2004 amendment to the Commonwealth Marriage Act 1961, which defined marriage as the union of a man…
The recently-completed election for president of Ukraine, in which a pro-independence candidate, Petro Poroshenko, won a decisive majority in the first round, may pave the way for an end to the separatist strife which has threatened to tear the country apart. Although not well known outside Ukraine, Mr Poroshenko has been a prominent businessman and…
