The activist at the heart of unprecedented anti-corruption protests that have backed India’s government against a wall struck a deal yesterday allowing him to leave jail and stage a public fast.
Tens of thousands of Indians in cities across the country have taken to the streets in recent days in a sudden and unexpected national outpouring of anger over the blight of official graft on their daily lives.
The protests have been inspired by 74-year-old Anna Hazare, a veteran activist whose populist campaign to strengthen a new anti-corruption law has shaken India’s coalition government.
Photo: AFP
It has been particularly damaging for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been criticized for misjudging the national mood after a succession of multi-million-dollar scandals that have implicated top government officials.
Hazare was arrested on Tuesday morning as he prepared to begin a “fast unto death” in a New Delhi public park to push for amendments to the anti-graft bill recently introduced in parliament.
In the face of mounting protests, police ordered his release, but Hazare refused to leave Delhi’s Tihar jail until the authorities lifted restrictions limiting his planned fast to three days.
After lengthy negotiations a compromise was reached in the early hours of yesterday morning, allowing Hazare to fast with his supporters for 15 days at Ramlila Maidan, an open venue in Delhi used for political rallies and festivals.
“The police offered seven days, he wanted it for one month, so in the course of the negotiations we agreed on 15 days,” said Aswathi Muralidharan, a spokeswoman for Hazare’s India Against Corruption campaign.
Hazare, who has refused to eat since his arrest, had hoped to take his hunger strike public yesterday afternoon, but problems with preparing the venue postponed his departure from jail by a day.
Ramlila Maidan has a capacity of around 25,000 people.
In scenes not witnessed in the capital for decades, about 25,000 people marched through the heart of the city on Wednesday in a spontaneous display of anger at the endemic levels of official corruption in India.
Schoolchildren, office workers, retired government officers, army men and even a group of eunuchs were among those who rallied at the India Gate monument.
That and similar demonstrations in other cities piled pressure on Singh’s government, which was clearly blindsided by the scale of the protests.
In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Singh had condemned Hazare’s hunger-strike plans as a “totally misconceived” attempt to subvert parliament and blackmail legislators into amending the new anti-corruption bill.
“The question is who drafts the law and who makes the law,” Singh said, adding that legislation was the “sole prerogative” of lawmakers.
However, the argument was largely lost in the public backlash against the culture of bribery that requires backhanders for everything from business permits to birth certificates and school admissions.
India was placed 87th out of 178 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index last year, which orders countries according to “the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians,” from cleanest to most corrupt.
“Every person who is here is a victim of corruption,” said retired government official Srinivas Krishnan, who was among the marchers on Wednesday.
Arvind Kejriwal, a senior member of Hazare’s campaign, said the protest would gather momentum now that the public hunger strike was to proceed.
“If we keep going, we have every expectation that the government will have to bow before the people,” he said.
Hazare’s espousal of fasting to protest, coupled with his trademark white cotton cap and spectacles, have led to comparisons with his own professed hero, independence icon Mahatma Gandhi.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to