World News
Merkel Say’s No Vote puts Greece’s Eurozone Future in Doubt
German chancellor Angela Merkel says it is up to Greece to secure its place in euro
BERLIN – German chancellor Angela Merkel insisted it was up to Greece to spell out how it will safeguard its place in the euro following the clear rejection in Sunday’s referendum of reforms and austerity demanded by creditors.
“With regard to yesterday’s decision by Greek citizens the preconditions for entering into negotiations over a new aid programme do not currently exist,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman of Ms Merkel, even though the door for talks was “always open”.
“Greece is a member of the euro. It is up to Greece and its government to act so that this can remain the case,” he added. “It depends now on what proposals the Greek government puts on the table.”
Prime minister Alexis Tsipras votes at a polling station in Athens, calling on Greeks to take their ‘destiny into their own hands’
Berlin’s tough stance is echoed by most eurozone leaders who are deeply reluctant to take the initiative to prop up Greece’s teetering financial system and secure its euro membership.
But France and, to a lesser degree, Italy have sent more accommodating signals. Ms Merkel is travelling to plot her response in conjunction with her French counterpart François Hollande. They are expected to make a joint statement on Monday evening.
The comments from Berlin came as markets reacted relatively calmly to the No vote in Sunday’s referendum pending a decision by the European Central Bank on whether to provide more emergency loans to Greek banks.
The euro was down 0.7 per cent on the day, to $1.1032, well above the overnight dip to $1.0974.
Yanis Varoufakis leaves a polling station after casting his ballot. He has subsequently resigned as finance minister even after the country voted No
There are signs of contagion, albeit mild, in the eurozone “peripheral” bond sector, with 10-year Italian and Spanish yields up 9 basis points to 2.33 per cent and 10bp to 2.32 per cent respectively.
The FTSE Eurofirst 300, the pan-European stock index, was well off its lows but still down 0.7 per cent.
Athens sent a conciliatory signal to its eurozone partners earlier on Monday by removing the abrasive Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister.
In a blog called “Minister No More!”, the game theorist turned politician said Alexis Tsipras, Greek prime minister, had wanted him to step down to make it easier to deal with creditors, particularly in the eurogroup of finance ministers.
People celebrate in Athens after exit polls indicate a No vote
Greek voters had backed the government’s call to reject a compromise with international creditors, raising serious doubts about Greece’s ability to remain inside the eurozone. The No camp won 61.3 per cent of the vote and was victorious in every region of the country.
Eurozone officials have long complained about what they viewed as Mr Varoufakis’s corrosive effect on bailout negotiations, but Mr Tsipras’s jettisoning of him may have come too late for other eurozone governments.
The referendum result risks plunging Greece deeper into turmoil as it tries to prevent the collapse of a financial system that is rapidly running out of cash.
The combative Mr Varoufakis wrote in his blog that soon after the referendum results he was “made aware of a certain preference by some eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my . . . ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the ministry of finance today.”
No campaigners gather in Syntagma Square, Athens, the day before the referendum
“I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum. And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.”
Eurozone officials have argued in recent weeks that although Mr Varoufakis was sidelined from direct talks in April he would undermine the more moderate elements in Mr Tsipras’s inner circle every time the two sides narrowed their differences.
Among those who will not be lamenting the departure of Mr Varoufakis is Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian economist and writer who has served as the country’s finance minister since October.
“He made things difficult for himself and his fellow ministers both by his behaviour and what he said. To say that it wasn’t nice to hear him more or less saying that his fellow ministers were terrorists is of course an understatement,” Mr Van Overtveldt told Belgian radio on Monday morning.
Officials said Mr Varoufakis’s demand that no new bailout agreement would be signed without debt relief — something some of his Greek counterparts were prepared to concede on as long as it was part of talks on a new, third bailout — made closing a deal to release €7.2bn in aid nearly impossible.
For months, many eurozone leaders saw Mr Tsipras as the more pragmatic and reasonable of the two and attempted to short-circuit Mr Varoufakis’s influence by dealing directly with the prime minister.
Supporters of the Yes campaign attend a rally at the Olympic stadium in Athens
But in recent weeks, those same officials have come to view Mr Tsipras as equally intractable — or at least captive to the hardline elements of his governing Syriza party that surround him, making a deal all but impossible with or without Mr Varoufakis.
Stephanie Flanders, chief market strategist for Europe at JPMorgan Asset Management, said: “With this No vote we have moved firmly on to the Grexit side of the decision tree, with a messy Greek exit now more likely than not.”
Rania Antonopoulos, Greek employment minister, said the two sides had 48 hours to resolve the crisis, and that a Greek exit from the eurozone would be “the worst possible outcome”.
While Berlin has been uncompromising towards Athens in the wake of the vote, Paris has been anxious to keep the door open to renewed talks.
On Monday Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi also struck a softer tone, saying on Facebook: “Greece [is] a country that is in an extremely difficult economic and social condition. Tomorrow’s meeting [of eurozone ministers] will have to show a definitive and permanent solution to this emergency.”
Greek banks are fast running out of cash even with capital controls and are unlikely to reopen this week unless the ECB governing council approves an increase in emergency loans.
The ECB may decide it needs the eurozone to guarantee Greek debt if it is to continue supplying emergency loans, as it did in 2012, a decision that would have to be taken by leaders.
Exit polls in France showed that Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party made huge gains to win the first round of election on Sunday. However, the final outcome will depend on how people trade votes in the days before next week’s run-off.
Exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay, and Elabe showed that the RN got about 34% of the vote. This was a big loss for President Emmanuel Macron, who called the early election after his party lost badly in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.
The National Rally (RN) easily won more votes than its opponents on the left and center, including Macron’s Together group, whose bloc was predicted to get 20.5% to 23% of the vote. Exit polls showed that the New Popular Front (NFP), a hastily put together left-wing alliance, would get about 29% of the vote.
The results of the exit polls matched what people said in polls before the election, which made Le Pen’s fans very happy. But they didn’t say for sure if the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Rally (RN) will be able to “cohabit” with the pro-EU Macron in a government after the runoff election next Sunday.
Voters in France Angry at Macron
Many French people have looked down on the National Rally (RN) for a long time, but now it is closer to power than it has ever been. A party known for racism and antisemitism has tried to clean up its image, and it has worked. Voters are angry at Macron, the high cost of living, and rising concerns about immigration.
Fans of Marine Le Pen waved French flags and sang the Marseillaise in the northern French district of Henin-Beaumont. The crowd cheered as Le Pen said, “The French have shown they are ready to turn the page on a power that is disrespectful and destructive.”
The National Rally’s chances of taking power next week will rest on what political deals its opponents make in the next few days. Right-wing and left-wing parties used to work together to keep the National Rally (RN) out of power, but the “republican front,” which refers to this group, is less stable than ever.
If no candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates and anyone else with 12.5% of the registered voters immediately move on to the second round. The district goes to the person who gets the most votes in the runoff.
France is likely to have a record number of three-way runoffs because so many people voted on Sunday. Experts say that these are much better for the National Rally (RN) than two-way games. Almost right away on Sunday night, the horse trade began.
Macron asked people to support candidates who are “clearly republican and democratic.” Based on what he has said recently, this would rule out candidates from the National Rally (RN) and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party. Leaders on the far left and the center left both asked their third-placed candidates to drop out.
Minority government
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of France Unbowed, said, “Our rule is simple and clear: not a single more vote for the National Rally.” But the center-right Republicans party, which split before the vote when some of its members joined the RN, didn’t say anything.
The president of the RN party, Jordan Bardella, who is 28 years old, said he was ready to be prime minister if his party gets a majority of seats. He has said he won’t try to make a minority government, and neither Macron nor the communist NFP will work with him.
“I will be a “cohabitation” Prime Minister, respectful of the constitution and of the office of President of the Republic, but uncompromising about the policies we will implement,” he said.
A few thousand anti-RN protesters met in Paris’s Republique square on Sunday night for a rally of the leftist alliance. The mood was gloomy.
Niya Khaldi, a 33-year-old teacher, said that the RN’s good results made her feel “disgust, sadness, and fear.”
“This is not how I normally act,” she said. “I think I came to reassure myself, to not feel alone.”
Election Runoff
The result on Sunday didn’t have much of an effect on the market. In early Asia-Pacific trade, the euro gained about 0.23%. Fiona Cincotta, a senior markets expert at City Index in London, said she was glad the outcome “didn’t come as a surprise.”
“Le Pen had a slightly smaller margin than some of the polls had pointed to, which may have helped the euro a little bit higher on the open,” she noted. “Now everyone is waiting for July 7 to see if the second round supports a clear majority or not. So it does feel like we’re on the edge of something.”
Some pollsters thought the RN would win the most seats in the National Assembly, but Elabe was the only one who thought the party would win all 289 seats in the run-off. Seat projections made after the first round of voting are often very wrong, and this race is no exception.
On Sunday night, Reuters reported there were no final results for the whole country yet, but they were due in the next few hours. In France, exit polls have usually been very accurate.
Voter turnout was high compared to previous parliamentary elections. This shows how passionate people are about politics after Macron made the shocking and politically risky decision to call a vote in parliament.
Mathieu Gallard, research head at Ipsos France, said that at 1500 GMT, nearly 60% of voters had turned out, up from 39.42% two years earlier. This was the highest comparable turnout since the 1986 legislative vote. It wasn’t clear when the official number of people who voted would be changed.
(CTN News) – Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Masood Khan, has urged Washington to provide Pakistan with sophisticated small arms and communication equipment to ensure the success of Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, a newly approved counter-terrorism initiative in the country.
The federal government recently approved the reinvigorated national counter-terrorism drive, which comprises three components: doctrinal, societal, and operational.
Ambassador Khan noted that work on the first two phases has already begun, with the third phase set to be implemented soon.
Addressing US policymakers, scholars, and corporate leaders at the Wilson Center in Washington, Khan emphasized the importance of strong security links, enhanced intelligence cooperation, and the resumption of sales of advanced military platforms between Pakistan and the US.
He argued that this is crucial for regional security and countering the rising tide of terrorism, which also threatens the interests of the US and its allies.
“Pakistan has launched Azm-i-Istehkam […] to oppose and dismantle terrorist networks. For that, we need sophisticated small arms and communication equipment,” said Ambassador Khan.
Pakistan–United States relations
The ambassador observed that the prospects of Pakistan-United States relations were bright, stating that the two countries “share values, our security and economic interests are interwoven, and it is the aspiration of our two peoples that strengthens our ties.”
He invited US investors and businesses to explore Pakistan’s potential in terms of demographic dividend, technological advancements, and market opportunities.
Khan also suggested that the US should consider Pakistan as a partner in its diplomatic efforts in Kabul and collaborate on counterterrorism and the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
He stressed that the bilateral relationship should be based on ground realities and not be hindered by a few issues.
“We should not base our engagement on the incongruity of expectations.
Our ties should be anchored in ground realities, even as we aim for stronger security and economic partnerships. Secondly, one or two issues should not hold the entire relationship hostage,” said the ambassador.
China has reassured Taiwanese citizens that they can visit the mainland “without the slightest worry”, despite Taiwan raising its travel alert to the second-highest level in response to Beijing’s new judicial guidelines targeting supporters of Taiwanese independence.
Last week, China published guidelines that could impose the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving “diehard” advocates of Taiwanese independence.
In response, Taiwan’s government urged the public to avoid “unnecessary travel” to mainland China and Hong Kong, and raised its travel warning to the “orange” level.
However, Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for a Chinese body overseeing Taiwan affairs, stated that the new directives are “aimed solely at the very small number of supporters of ‘Taiwan independence’, who are engaged in malicious acts and utterances”.
She emphasized that “the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots involved in cross-strait exchanges and cooperation do not need to have the slightest worry when they come to or leave mainland China”.
“They can arrive in high spirits and leave fully satisfied with their stay,” Zhu added.
What’s Behind The China-Taiwan Tensions?
The tensions stem from the longstanding dispute over Taiwan’s status. Mainland China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to bring the democratic island under its control, while Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.
Beijing has not conducted top-level communications with Taipei since 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen became Taiwan’s leader. China has since branded her successor, President Lai Ching-te, a “dangerous separatist”.
“The DPP authorities have fabricated excuses to deceive the people on the island and incite confrontation and opposition,” Zhu said in her statement.
Despite the political tensions, many Taiwanese continue to travel to mainland China for work, study, or business.
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