OTTAWA: Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday called early elections for April 28, pledging to defeat Donald Trump’s drive to annex the United States’s huge northern neighbor.
Carney, a former central banker, was chosen by Canada’s centrist Liberal Party to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, but he has never faced the country’s broader electorate.
That will now change as Carney brought parliamentary elections forward several months from October, and he made it clear that the barrage of threats coming from the US president will be the crux of his campaign.
“I’ve just requested that the governor general dissolve parliament and call an election for April 28. She has agreed,” Carney said in a speech to the nation, referring to King Charles III’s representative in Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth.
Trump “wants to break us, so America can own us. We will not let that happen,” Carney said.
In power for a decade, the Liberal government had slid into deep unpopularity, but Carney will be hoping to ride a wave of Canadian patriotism to a new majority.
Trump has riled his northern neighbor by repeatedly dismissing its sovereignty and borders as artificial, and urging it to join the United States as the 51st state.
The ominous remarks have been accompanied by Trump’s swirling trade war, with the imposition of tariffs on imports from Canada, which could severely damage its economy.
“In this time of crisis, the government needs a strong and clear mandate,” Carney told supporters on Thursday in a speech in the western city of Edmonton.
'Closely watched election'
Domestic issues such as the cost of living and immigration usually dominate Canadian elections, but this time around, one key topic tops the list: who can best handle Trump.
The president’s open hostility toward his northern neighbor — a NATO ally and historically one of his country’s closest partners — has upended the Canadian political landscape.
Trudeau, who had been in power since 2015, was deeply unpopular when he announced he was stepping down, with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives seen as election favorites just weeks ago.
But the polls have narrowed spectacularly in Carney’s favor since he took over the Liberals, and now analysts are calling this race, overshadowed by Trump, too close to call.
“Many consider this to be an existential election, unprecedented,” Felix Mathieu, a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg, told AFP.
“It is impossible at this stage to make predictions, but this will be a closely watched election with a voter turnout that should be on the rise.”
Poilievre, 45, is a career politician, first elected when he was only 25. A veteran tough-talking campaigner, he has sometimes been tagged as a libertarian and a populist.
Carney, 60, has spent his career outside of electoral politics. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs and went on to lead Canada’s central bank, and then the Bank of England.
Smaller opposition parties could suffer if Canadians seek to give a large mandate to one of the big two, to strengthen their hand against Trump.
As for the US leader, he professes not to care, while pushing ahead with plans to further strengthen tariffs against Canada and other major trading partners on April 2.
“I don’t care who wins up there,” Trump said this week.
“But just a little while ago, before I got involved and totally changed the election, which I don’t care about [...] the Conservative was leading by 35 points.”
Under threat from Trump, Canada calls snap elections for April 28
https://arab.news/672rj
Under threat from Trump, Canada calls snap elections for April 28
- Prime Minister Mark Carney brought parliamentary elections forward several months from October
- The barrage of threats coming from the US president will be the crux of his election campaign
Youth voters take center stage in Bangladesh election after student-led regime change
- About 45% of Bangladeshis eligible to vote in Thursday’s election are aged 18-33
- Election follows 18 months of reforms after the end of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule
DHAKA: When he goes to the polls on Thursday, Atikur Rahman Toha will vote for the first time, believing that this election can bring democratic change to Bangladesh.
A philosophy student at Dhaka University, Toha was already eligible to vote in the 2024 poll but, like many others, he opted out.
“I didn’t feel motivated to even go to vote,” he said. “That was a truly one-sided election. The election system was fully corrupted. That’s why I felt demotivated. But this time I am truly excited to exercise my voting rights for the first time.”
The January 2024 vote was widely criticized by both domestic and international observers and marred by a crackdown on the opposition and allegations of voter fraud.
But the victory of the Awami League of ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was short-lived, as a few months later the government was ousted by a student-led uprising, which ended the 15-year rule of Bangladesh’s longest-serving leader.
The interim administration, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, took control in August 2024 and prepared a series of reforms to restructure the country’s political and institutional framework and organize the upcoming vote.
About 127.7 million Bangladeshis are eligible to cast their ballots, according to Election Commission data, with nearly a third of them, or 40.4 million, aged 18-29. Another 16.9 million are 30-33, making it a youth–dominated poll, with the voters hopeful the outcome will help continue the momentum of the 2024 student-led uprising.
“We haven’t yet fully transitioned into a democratic process. And there is no fully stable situation in the country,” Toha said. “After the election we truly hope that the situation will change.”
For Rawnak Jahan Rakamoni, also a Dhaka University student, who is graduating in information science, voting this time meant that her voice would count.
“We are feeling that we are heard, we will be heard, our opinion will matter,” she said.
“I think it is a very important moment for our country, because after many years of controversial elections, people are finally getting a chance to exercise their voting rights and people are hoping that this election will be more meaningful and credible. This should be a fair election.”
But despite the much wider representation than before, the upcoming vote will not be entirely inclusive in the absence of the Awami League, which still retains a significant foothold.
The Election Commission last year barred Hasina’s party from contesting the next national elections, after the government banned Awami League’s activities citing national security threats and a war crimes investigation against the party’s top leadership.
The UN Human Rights Office has estimated that between July 15 and Aug. 5, 2024 the former government and its security and intelligence apparatus, together with “violent elements” linked to the Awami League, “engaged systematically in serious human rights violations and abuses in a coordinated effort to suppress the protest movement.”
It estimated that at least 1,400 people were killed during the protests, with the majority shot dead from military rifles.
Rezwan Ahmed Rifat, a law student, wanted the new government to “ensure justice for the victims of the July (uprising), enforced disappearances, and other forms of torture” carried out by the previous regime.
The two main parties out of the 51 contesting Thursday’s vote are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat, which in 2013 was banned from political participation by Hasina’s government, heads an 11-party alliance, including the National Citizen Party formed by student leaders from the 2024 movement.
“I see this election as a turning point of our country’s democratic journey … It’s not just a normal election,” said Falguni Ahmed, a psychology student who will head to the polls convinced that no matter who wins, it will result in the “democratic accountability” of the next government.
Ahmed added: “People are not voting only for their leaders; they are also voting for the restoration of democratic credibility. That’s why this election is very different.”
