DHAKA, 20 November 2022, (TON): A 55-member parliamentary delegation from Assam including 35 MLAs arrived in Dhaka on an official visit.

Iqbalur Rahim MP, whip of Bangladesh National Parliament, received the delegation at a city hotel.

Biswajit Daimary, speaker of the Assam Legislative Assembly, will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

He assumed office on May 21, 2021. He is an Indian politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

DHAKA, 20 November 2022, (TON): Bangladesh and Cyprus have agreed to extend cooperation between the two countries on public safety.

According to a message received in Dhaka “Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan and Cyprus Interior Minister Nicos Nouris expressed their optimism regarding this when they held a meeting at Taj Palace in New Delhi.”

Khan was in the Indian capital for taking part in a two-day ministerial conference on "No Money for Terrors."

Home ministers of about 20 countries including Russia, France, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore also joined the conference.

DHAKA, 20 November 2022, (TON): Bangladesh and the Gulf Cooperation Council have signed a memorandum of understanding in Bahrain on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue.

Under this MoU, both sides will hold regular consultations for political, economic, cultural, people-to-people contact, climate change, agriculture, food security, and environmental protection cooperation.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah Al-Hajraf signed the MoU.

Before that, the foreign minister and the GCC secretary general had a meeting.

By Rudra Raj Koirala, TON Nepal

It is a fact that Nepal’s elections suffer from an absence of fresh ideas. For an election to truly be responsible, it must signify the voice of the marginalized people at every stage in the political parties, the candidates, and their philosophies. In Nepal, this remains a major barrier to democratic development. Consider the political landscape since the 2017 elections, in which alliances between political factions have become a new standard for Nepali politics. This year, the alliance between the CPN-Maoist Centre and Nepali Congress is contesting the election against the alliance led by the CPN-UML.

Currently, these alliances don’t make ideological sagacity. The Maoist Centre inclines strongly left, whereas the Nepali Congress is Centre-left. They characterize different segments of the Nepali political range which shows that these Partnerships between political factions are presently encouraged by opportunism rather than by principles. These alliances, especially at the top tier, change interparty dynamics into a game of unions which fiercely weaken the democratic and electoral process in Nepal.

It is true that such coalitions left Nepal susceptible to external sway. As it has been assumed that China's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) played a part in the 2017 alliance between the CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre. As Nepal is growing in geographic, strategic, and economic prominence to major powers, this potential consequence of interparty alliances cannot be overlooked. China is already excavating ties through Confucius Institutes and the China People’s Armed Police; the US is similarly endeavoring to use the Millennium Challenge Corporation and State Partnership Programme to sign Nepal onto its larger Indo-Pacific strategy. For this, Nepal needs a government that represents its constituents to fairly adopt a balanced relation between the competing sides in Indo-specific.

Third, conceptual integrity is also hindered by a lack of inclusive representation at the candidate level. For the upcoming general elections, only 9.33 percent of the total candidates for the House of Representatives under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system are women. For the Provincial Assembly election, this number shrinks to 8.59 percent. The ruling coalitions led by the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML have nominated just 25 women as candidates under the FPTP system. There is only one candidate from the LGBTIQ+ community. They are fewer opportunities to have the issues addressed of relegated communities and structural inequalities will remain without adequate representation among candidates from the marginalized communities in Nepal.

Nepal’s current methods of checking representation are also largely ineffectual. It is evident from the fact, that the political leaders have openly preferred their relatives when submitting closed lists a system announced to ensure better representation across castes, classes, and communities than through the FPTP system. It is essential to create these avenues for inclusion to upgrade the living standards of marginalized communities.

In view of the overlooking the ideology in Nepal’s elections, it isn’t surprising that voters have grown fed-up. This vicious cycle in the party’s manifestos, which were recently released in the win the election. These manifestos, which once notable political factions on the basis of ideas, have now become a numbers game, with parties announcing competing economic projections for issues such as job creation and social security benefits. 

With parties predicting double-digit growth rates that dwarf all realistic expectations, the manifesto process has become less about promoting the ideology and more about repeated rhetoric. If parties announced at least a roadmap for the results that they expect to achieve Nepal could once again foster the kind of political discourse that allows for informed, accountable voting.

At last, Nepal’s next government could extend voter accessibility to groups that offer unique perspectives. Millions of Nepali migrant workers which have been estimated to be as many as 3.5 million while eligible to vote, have no provisions allowing them to do so, disenfranchising them politically. While their remittances power nearly a quarter of Nepal’s GDP, their voices are not being signified in governance. In addition to providing them basic citizenship rights, allowing absentee voting for migrants would inject a new perspective that does not currently play a role in Nepali politics.

Migrant workers have largely worked in the developed world contributing to Nepal at large. If Nepal continues to lose the voice and vote of Migrant workers. Then the election results will increase the similarity, producing the same alliances, and the same contenders with a lack of fresh ideas.

KYIV, 19 November 2022, (TON): Ukraine said Friday that almost half of its power infrastructure was in need of repair after weeks of Russian attacks that have disrupted electricity supplies to millions as temperatures plunge.

Russia meanwhile accused Kyiv’s forces of executing a group of its soldiers who were surrendering to Ukraine in what Moscow described as a “massacre” that amounted to a war crime.

The assessment by Prime Minister Denys Shmygal of the widespread damage to Ukraine’s grid comes after weeks of sustained Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Shmygal said “on November 15 alone, Russia fired about 100 missiles at Ukrainian cities. Nearly half of our energy system has been disabled.”

BRUSSELS, 19 November 2022, (TON): NATO said Friday that two Russian fighter aircraft had conducted an unsafe and unprofessional approach toward alliance naval ships on routine operations in the Baltic Sea.

NATO’s maritime command said the jets flew over “the force at an altitude of 300 feet (91 meters) and a distance of 80 yards” after the Russian pilots failed to respond to communications.

A statement said “NATO deemed the interaction unsafe and unprofessional since it was conducted in a known danger area, which was activated for air defense training, and due to the aircraft altitude and proximity.”

“The interaction increased the risk of miscalculations, mistakes, and accidents.”

TEHRAN, 19 November 2022, (TON): The UN nuclear watchdog is aware of all of Iran’s activities, the head of country’s atomic energy organization said, a day after the atomic agency’s Board of Governors demanded explanation for traces of uranium at three undeclared sites.

The resolution, which was drafted on Thursday by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, said it was essential and urgent that Iran explain the origin of the uranium particles and more generally give the International Atomic Energy Agency all the answers it requires.

“Iran has not done and will not do anything that the agency is not aware of,” Mohammad Eslami, chief of Iran’s atomic energy organization was quoted as saying by the semi-official ILNA news agency.

WASHINGTON, 19 November 2022, (TON): The US Justice Department named a former war crimes investigator as a special counsel to oversee criminal probes into Donald Trump, three days after the former president announced a new White House run in 2024.

Trump who claims to be the target of a witch-hunt slammed the dramatic move as unfair and the worst politicization of justice in our country.

The White House strongly denied any political interference, but the unprecedented special counsel investigation of a former president and current presidential candidate sets the stage for a drawn-out legal battle.

DHAKA, 19 November 2022, (TON): Bangladesh and the Gulf Cooperation Council have signed a memorandum of understanding in Bahrain on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue.

Under this MoU, both sides will hold regular consultations for political, economic, cultural, people-to-people contact, climate change, agriculture, food security, and environmental protection cooperation.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah Al-Hajraf signed the MoU.

Before that, the foreign minister and the GCC secretary general had a meeting.

DHAKA, 19 November 2022, (TON): Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming has said “Bangladesh and his country are working together to deepen their financial cooperation.”

He said "China is positively considering some financial cooperation with Bangladesh in one way or another.”

The ambassador said he had in-depth discussions with the finance minister of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Bank governor recently.

Ambassador Li said "during those meetings, we reached some consensus that we really should take some measures, including but not limited to currency swap arrangement and the clearance of trade with the Chinese yuan or Renminbi.”