WELLINGTON: New Zealand went to the polls to choose the make-up of its fifty-second Parliament on Saturday, in a close-run race between the governing National Party and the opposition Labour Party.
Doors to the polling booths opened at 0900 local time, though a record number of voters had already cast their ballots in advance. Voting would end at 1900 and the country’s Electoral Commission would start releasing results half an hour later.
The center-left Labour Party, led by recently appointed 37-year-old leader Jacinda Ardern, was vying against incumbent National. The center-right governing party, led by 55-year-old Bill English, had been in power for almost a decade.
Around 986,000 ballots have already been cast, accounting for almost a third of the 3.2 million New Zealanders on the electoral rolls.
“Special votes,” which includes ballots from New Zealanders overseas and those who vote outside their home constituencies, will only be released on Oct. 7.
These could have a considerable impact on the outcome, given New Zealand’s large diaspora, and accounted for around 12 percent of the vote in the 2014 election.
New Zealand uses a German-style proportional representation system in which a party, or combination of parties, needs 61 of Parliament’s 120 members — usually about 48 percent of the vote — to form a government. This means that minor parties often play an influential role in determining which major party governs.
New Zealand polls open as record numbers of voters cast ballots in advance
New Zealand polls open as record numbers of voters cast ballots in advance
Philippine lawmakers start VP Duterte impeachment hearings
- The revived impeachment bid leans heavily on allegations that the younger Duterte misused public funds
MANILA: A Philippine congressional committee began impeachment hearings Monday that could dash Vice President Sara Duterte’s run for the country’s top job.
The daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who recently announced her candidacy for the 2028 presidential election, was impeached by the country’s House of Representatives last year only to see the Supreme Court toss the case out over procedural issues.
The revived impeachment bid leans heavily on allegations that the younger Duterte misused public funds while in office and will see the House justice committee debate three such complaints.
A fourth case was dropped by complainants who hoped to speed up the process.
Duterte also stands accused of making a death threat against her former ally and current President Ferdinand Marcos, with whom she is engaged in an explosive political feud.
Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment triggers a Senate trial. A guilty verdict would result in Duterte being barred from politics and sidelined from the 2028 presidential race.
The latest impeachment bid faces a changed environment with the vice president ahead in recent polls, analysts told AFP.
“The political context will be very different, especially now that Sara declared her candidacy,” University of the Philippines political science professor Jean Franco said.
“It’s definitely going to weigh on the minds of the members of the House of Representatives,” Franco said, adding that a vote for impeachment would effectively see a lawmaker’s career “marked for death.”
Anthony Lawrence Borja, an associate professor of political science at De La Salle University agreed saying: “It is ultimately a question of whether the patronage of the current administration outweighs their fear of Duterte’s condemnation.”
The same committee hearing the case against Duterte last month tossed out a pair of impeachment complaints against Marcos, ruling that allegations of corruption over a scandal involving bogus flood control projects lacked substance.
Michael Wesley Poa, spokesman for Duterte’s defense team, told AFP they were closely monitoring deliberations and trusted “the same standards” used in the Marcos hearing would be applied.
