India’s triumphant Hindu nationalists declared “a new era” in the world’s biggest democracy yesterday after leader Narendra Modi propelled them to a stunning win, promising to revitalize the sickly economy.
Preliminary results at the end of the marathon six-week election showed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Indian prime ministerial candidate Modi on track for the first parliamentary majority by a single party in 30 years.
Most of the poverty-wracked country’s 1.2 billion people have never witnessed such dominance having grown up in an era of fractious coalition politics. Modi, the 63-year-old son of a tea seller tainted by anti-Muslim riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, wrote on Twitter that “India has won. Good days are coming.”
The stunning results exceeded all forecasts. Firecrackers exploded at BJP offices around the country, sweets were handed out to celebrate and painted elephants paraded in front of party headquarters. The triumph redraws India’s political map, elevating the BJP to a pan-national power, handing Modi a huge mandate for change and heaping humiliation on the ruling Gandhi political dynasty.
The immediate change Modi will need to deliver is an improvement in the economy, which is growing at its slowest rate in a decade, and his commitment to the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda will be closely watched by India’s 150 million Muslims.
“It is dawn of a new era. The lotus has bloomed all over India now,” BJP President Rajnath Singh said, referring to the flower symbol of his party whose previous all-time high was 182 seats in 1999.
“I appeal to my workers that even in this historic victory they maintain discipline and calm, against any section or people,” he added, hinting at the fears of religious tensions.
Preliminary figures from the Election Commission showed the BJP winning more than the 272 seats required for a majority on its own in the 543-seat parliament, with victories by its allies taking it easily in excess of 330.
The Congress Party, the national secular force that has run India for all but 13 years since independence, was set to crash to its worst ever result after a decade in power.
“Modi promised the moon and stars to the people. People bought that dream,” senior Congress leader and spokesman Rajeev Shukla told reporters as preliminary results showed the party winning only 42 seats.
Outgoing Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said in January that Modi would be “disastrous for the country” after “presiding over the massacre of innocents,” called to congratulate him, his office said.
India’s Bombay Stock Exchange index surged more than 6 percent in the morning, but tapered its gains to close up 0.9 percent.
Investors and the wider public have rediscovered heady — many say unrealistic — optimism about the world’s second-most populous nation after years of frustration about weak leadership, rising food prices and corruption.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
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