Vladimir Putin is set to secure another six-year term as Russian leader this weekend in a vote the Kremlin says will show society is fully behind his assault on Ukraine.
In power as president or prime minister since the final day of 1999, Putin has quashed all forms of opposition and dissent, exerting a level of domestic control that ensures the result is in no doubt.
Victory in the March 15-17 contest will allow him to stay in the Kremlin until at least 2030, longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century.
The poll comes at a time of high confidence for the former KGB agent.
Russia’s troops in Ukraine have chalked up their first battlefield gains in months.
And Putin’s most strident critic, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison colony last month.
Though Putin is blasted as a pariah in the West, the Kremlin says the vote will show that Russians at home are unified behind him and his offensive.
“He has no rivals at the moment and cannot have any,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last year.
“Nobody can realistically compete with him,” he said.
‘Important elections’
Despite the ceremonial undertones, the Kremlin takes the electoral process seriously.
Moscow has poured resources into a campaign designed to whip up enthusiasm for Putin.
The president has toured the country and was filmed flying in the cockpit of a supersonic nuclear bomber, burnishing his tough-guy credentials.
“These elections are very important for the Kremlin,” Chatham House fellow Nikolai Petrov told AFP.
“It is needed to demonstrate that Russians overwhelmingly support Putin” during the military offensive, he said.
The Kremlin is aiming to secure a higher level of support for Putin than in his previous four election wins.
In 2018, official results showed he got 77.5 percent of the vote.
Even with no real competition, that contest was marred by widespread accusations of ballot-stuffing, fraud and forced voting.
This year Putin will officially face three other contenders — Kremlin-approved candidates designed to give a facade of competition.
Anti-Putin politician Boris Nadezhdin was blocked from standing after tens of thousands of Russians backed his surprise bid to run on a pro-peace message.
‘No doubt’
The Kremlin had previously allowed a liberal candidate to run in what analysts once called Russia’s “managed democracy”.
Now the term they use is “autocracy” — or “totalitarian”.
Ballots will also be cast in the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claimed to have annexed in 2022, as well as the Crimean peninsula, seized in 2014.
Moscow is no longer worried about trying to present the vote as a legitimate democratic exercise to the West, or even Russian society, Petrov said.
“The most important thing… is that political elites should not have any doubts that Putin is really supported by the vast majority of Russians,” he said.
Less than a year after an aborted mutiny by mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin will want to show possible rivals and successors that Putin is secure on his throne.
From exile and behind bars, Russia’s remaining opposition figures still hope they can spoil the procession.
They want anti-Putin Russians to form huge queues outside polling stations on the final day of voting.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, says the show of dissent could spook Putin.
The Kremlin appears unfazed.
“We will hold the kind of elections that our people need,” Peskov said earlier this month, dismissing those who describe the vote as neither free nor fair.
“We won’t tolerate any criticism of our democracy. Our democracy is the best.”
AFP
Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña has been impeached and placed under house arrest.
Peña was arrested on Friday minutes after lawmakers, including from his own party, voted to remove him from office due to a crisis triggered by the collapse of Ueno Bank earlier this week.
He had offered to step down on Thursday, but the move to impeach him and charge him with misconduct rather than accept his resignation meant he was stripped of his lifetime Senate seat and the immunity granted to ex-presidents.
Peña, who until last year held shares in the company that owned the bank, has denied any wrongdoing.
The demise of the digital bank has left more than half of Paraguay’s population without access to their savings after it was seized by Paraguay’s central bank.
An estimated three million depositors remain unable to access their savings and pensions prompting widespread protests particularly in the capital, Asunción.
The impeachment charges that led to Peña’s removal alleged he had conflicts of interest, manipulated regulatory oversight, diverted pension funds, and participated in an institutional cover-up involving the central bank.
Peña is due to be questioned today (Saturday) over allegations of breach of trust, influence peddling, and misappropriation of funds, prosecutor Silvia Margarita Gonzalez Vester said.
Peña’s impeachment passed with 44 out of 45 senators voting in favour of it. One lawmaker was absent.
Afterwards, senate president Basilio Núñez said Peña was found guilty of “dereliction of duty”.
Paraguay’s Vice-President Pedro Alliana was then sworn in as interim President.
“Compatriots who are now going through a difficult time as a result of the financial collapse will be fully compensated,” said Alliana, who will serve as President until 2028.
Pedro Alliana takes the oath of office as interim President
Senator Rafael Filizzola said: “We are facing the biggest corruption scandal in our democratic history – a tremendous blow to the state, to private citizens, and to the country’s credibility and image.”
Analysts say Peña is likely to now be prosecuted over the bank’s collapse.
His defence lawyer Ricardo Preda described the allegations as a “reckless accusation” that was “irresponsible and opportunistic”.
In an address to the nation on Thursday, Peña said that he was sorry and that “it was never my intention to betray the trust you placed in me”.
A Kenyan court has sentenced the leader of a doomsday cult, Paul Mackenzie, to 200 years in prison for murdering 191 people, all but one of them children.
Alongside 27 others, Mackenzie was found guilty of the murders for instructing members of his cult to starve their children to death so they could “meet Jesus”.
Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie bore the “primary criminal culpability” for ordering his followers to fast to death, in one of Kenya’s deadliest episodes of religious extremism.
“The sentence is appropriate and just, to send an unmistakable message that such atrocities warrant the maximum penalties allowed by law,” the judge added.
The self-styled pastor was arrested in 2023 after the discovery of more than 400 bodies in shallow graves in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast. The sprawling investigation into the cases shocked Kenya and drew international attention.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors in the court in Mombasa had argued for the death penalty for Mackenzie because of the gravity of the crimes. Capital punishment has not been carried out in Kenya since 1987.
The prosecutors also cited what they described as Mackenzie’s lack of remorse for the crimes. They requested life sentences for his co-accused.
Before the hearing began on Friday morning, Francis Wanje, who lost eight relatives in Shakahola forest, including two grandchildren, told the BBC’s Newsday programme that he was “hoping for… a sentence which will match his [Mackenzie’s] deeds in the forest”.
Mackenzie and the co-accused have formally pleaded for mercy and asked for leniency from the court.
Before their conviction on 19 October, they had all pleaded not guilty and repeatedly insisted that nobody was forced to die.
Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”, Justice Diana Mochache said as she delivered her eight-hour judgement last month.
Those who opposed Mackenzie’s teachings were beaten to death.
One of his co-accused said he had told his followers that anyone who “resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows”.
Burials inside the forest where the cult was based were called “weddings” and those who died “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus” the judge said.
The judge found that the deaths arose from an organised system, including religious teachings and directives that compelled followers to follow the deadly fasting.
Post-mortem results showed the cause of deaths to be starvation for most victims, while others died from suffocation, strangulation or head injuries.
The cause of death could not be determined for some, with their bodies having decomposed, while others died soon after their rescue as they were so emaciated.
Comedian Russell Brand, once one of Britain’s most high-profile broadcasters and star of several Hollywood movies, faces a lengthy jail term after being convicted in a London court on Thursday of raping a woman and sexually assaulting three more.
Prosecutors said Brand, the former husband of US pop singer Katy Perry, was obsessed with sex and used women to satisfy his own desires. One victim said he treated her “like an animal”.
Funny and charming when he wanted to be, but also ruthless, calculating and manipulative, the 51-year-old, who starred in “Get Him to the Greek” and “Arthur”, was interested only in getting what he wanted from women, prosecutors told jurors at Southwark Crown Court.
“The evidence showed Brand to be a calculated sexual predator, using his growing fame and power to create situations in which he could pursue women sexually, regardless of what they wanted,” senior Crown prosecutor David Roberts said outside court.
Brand now faces jail and potentially further action as police said he was still under investigation for two other alleged rapes, one involving a then 16-year-old girl.
BRAND DENIED THE CHARGES
Brand, known for his loquacious manner and flamboyant appearance, had denied all the charges and ever having non-consensual sex, saying the incidents, which dated back more than 20 years, had either been consensual, reinvented or re-imagined.
He acknowledged in evidence he had dedicated a lot of his life to “reckless philandering and idiocy” but said sexual consent was fundamental.
But, following a four-week trial, the jury found him guilty of rape and three sexual assaults committed between 2004 and 2009. He was acquitted of two other rape charges and an attempted indecent assault.
Judge Joel Bennathan said Brand, who was refused bail, would be sentenced on Monday and faced a lengthy prison term.
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