Photo source: BBC By Naveed Qazi, Editor Globe Upfront It was being said that the 2022 presidential election win of Marcos Jr., son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was the most eventful since the 1986 People Power Revolution. It brought back dynastical democracy after the twenty-one-year rule of Marcos Sr., an era that was regarded in Philippine history as one of the darkest periods. Historical memories were relived as another Marcos came into power. In the past, the Marcos family, known for its human rights abuses and corruption bankrupted the country and made it the ‘sick man of Asia’. There was a systematic revisionist campaign orchestrated by Marcos’s team, using different social media platforms. These efforts, it was believed in the regional press, took more than a decade in making. After the election win, the political understandings of common Filipinos came to the fore. According to an Oped by Michael Keel in Nikkei Asia: ‘The Marcos family's return to the preside...

  Photo source: Lowly Institute By Naveed Qazi, Globe Upfront The new prime minister of Malaysia has been touted by some sections of the Malaysian and Western press as having the potential to usher Malaysia into a new direction. They believe that his election also gives a crucial chance for the nation to heal the social and political fabric, but the reality is that most of the notable leaders in Malaysia have not been clean slates. Even long-time serving prime minister, Najib Razak was indicted in 2022 for a twelve-year prison sentence for abuse of power, and money laundering related to 1MDB state fund. A US attorney general once described the embezzlement of billions of dollars from 1MDB as ‘kleptocracy at its worst.’ Starting as a fiery student activist, and then becoming an establishment insider, Anwar was the man who took the country out of the Asian financial crises. He was perceived as a national leader since 1997 but was sacked by his nemesis turned mentor, Mahathir Mohammed...

  Photo source: Washington Post By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront In Brazil, people believe that Lula has done a comeback of the century after winning the 2022 election. And he did that with a narrow margin and vowed to change the nation.   He had high approval ratings despite the notorious bribing charges in a vast corruption scheme in 2017. But this charge was refused by him and the Brazilian left. In 2021, Brazil’s supreme court overturned his conviction, decreeing that his right to a free trial had been compromised. This cleared him to run for president again, where he campaigned around rebuilding public services, addressing inequality, and bringing down energy prices and inflation. He believed that his victory was nothing more than a referendum on democracy itself.   His win  brings back to the fore a  coalition of Brazil’s large and disproportionately black class of the labouring poor  who gave him the most support. It also included  w...

  Photo source: Gulf News By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Israel and Lebanon are still technically at war, but an American-mediated deal for their maritime operations has been reached permanently. It aims to cease the future conflict. The deal was struck days before the Israeli election in October 2022. The debate regarding it had been highly politicised, with some questioning its motives and timing. The deal was signed in restrained ceremonies in the respective countries. The occasion provided a rare occasion of harmony, but it also showed some limitations, as the Lebanese government believes that it is far less momentous than agreements reached between Israel and three Arab states in 2020, or Israel’s earlier peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. It signals that Lebanon is certainly a bit conservative and realistic about it. But, in Israel, the deal, in general, is regarded as a historic achievement that will bring prosperity, and stability, or as a fall of Hezbollah’s thr...

  Photo source: India Today By Naveed Qazi, Editor, Globe Upfront Rishi Sunak became prime minister of the United Kingdom in October 2022 amid a serious political disorder. He has been UK’s third prime minister in less than seven weeks’ time. But nevertheless, as he is the first prime minister of colour in the United Kingdom, several political analysts thought that his win as prime minister is their Barack Obama moment. It made former cabinet minister, Sajid Javid remark: ‘Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy on Earth and proud of this historic achievement.’ Although Pankaj Mishra in an adverse criticism in his Guardian Oped called him just an upper caste Hindu who is against alcohol and beef eating, and that now snotty-nosed racists like him will try to present themselves as ‘purveyors of racial diversity.’ Sunak’s fate took a turn when he tried to replace Boris Johnson but he came narrowly behind Liz Truss in the summer of 2022. As Truss staged two embarrassing bu...

  Photo source: The Economist By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront After the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurd, who died in a coma, with skull injuries on a ventilator, for ‘inappropriate dress’ by the moral police in September, 2022,  the intellectual assertions of George Orwell become fitting for Iran’s new protest movement. He believed that revolutions didn’t come by chance, but by reason and that revolutionaries of the past become new tyrants, only to be toppled again. Iran’s foundations as a theocracy seem wobbling because this is not the first time in recent memory that Iranians are at odds with their leaders. In 2009, millions of adults took to the street over alleged fraud in the presidential election. It was called the Green Movement, which was largely urban and middle class. At that time, they rallied around two losing candidates, waved massive banners demanding democracy, and women wore headscarves, sashes, and paint in a vivid shade of green. As a cou...

  Photo source: The Economist By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront To find a solution for discontent among the masses, Chile embarked on a risky and courageous path, to rewrite the constitution in order to face myriad challenges. Quite lately, they did in October 2020, but it sadly has been rejected by the masses. It is mainly because maximum of the Chilean voters identify themselves as centrist. Its failure was something extraordinary, as rarely in the modern world has the public rebuffed a constitution-replacement project. It was also a pointer to watchers that Chile, at this moment in time, rejects a plurinational state, as autonomy would have been provided to its indigenous groups. If the constitution would have been drafted, it would have resulted in one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. According to a Foreign Policy Oped by Catherine Osborne, it would have paved the way for stronger protections for indigenous Chileans, empowered labour unions, given enviro...

  Photo source: Times of Israel By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Giorgia Meloni is the first female prime minister Italy ever had, after swearing office with a coalition in October 2022. Unapologetically intense, she is also known as a political charmer in known circles. As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she and her militant coterie had nicknames like Frodo and Hobbit, and they revered Lord of the Rings, and other works by British writer, J.R.R Tolkien. They also visited schools in character and huddled at the sounding of the horn of Boromir for cultural chats. She attended ‘Hobbit Camp’ and sang along with the extremist folk band Compagnia dell'Anello, or Fellowship of the Ring. At 19, she told a French Television that Mussolini was a great leader, and that he did everything right for the country. But, after being part of the national alliance in 2006, she changed her perception and believed that ‘dictators’ do make mistakes, and that Mussolini...

  Photo source: Middle East Eye By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront In late August 2022, Muqtada al Sadr went on Twitter to announce his resignation from politics. Sometime before, when Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al Haeri, whose followers contain a large number of Sadrists, had resigned as well, he had asked the Shia population to obey Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. For some watchers, this was seen as an attempt to weaken the Sadrist movement in Iraq. After Sadr’s tweet, thousands of his followers stormed the Iraqi capital Green Zone, the Republican palace, and key government buildings in Baghdad. Since then, the Iraqi capital has witnessed strong intra Shia-confrontations, between Sadr’s supporters and variety of armed groups loyal to different factions, within the Shia Coordination Framework, a pro-Iran set of parties. Hundreds have been injured and tens killed. To save his reputation, Sadr apologised to the Iraqi people for the bloodshed. As per an Oped by Hussein Ibish,...

  Photo source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Jordan has recently intensified its warnings against Iranian militias along its northern frontier, accusing Tehran of facilitating drug trafficking through drones and other methods. Officials in Amman argue that Iranian‑affiliated groups have expanded their influence in southern Syria, shifting the balance of power in the area. Al Jazeera reported that Jordanian authorities see narcotics smuggling as not only a criminal enterprise but also a geopolitical weapon, with militias using the trade to fund operations. These warnings are not new. Since Tehran intervened in the Syrian war in 2014 to support President Bashar al‑Assad, Jordan has been wary of being drawn into the conflict. By late 2021, drug smuggling had escalated and become increasingly violent. In January 2022, a Jordanian army officer was killed and three personnel injured when smugglers opened fire on an outpost along the border, according to Reuters. The ...

Photo source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Freetown in Sierra Leone exploded into violence in August 2022 due to persistent economic hardships, and a government failure in ameliorating the impact of rising costs. As clashes broke out, most of the dwellers of Freetown stayed indoors. People believed it was a sudden explosion of violence, as many government buildings and private property were destroyed. Due to this, government forces patrolled the streets, and a tense, eerie calm returned with ordinary life gradually returning. But, due to the intensity of the protests common people were shocked. Apart from Freetown, the protests had been also concentrated in the opposition's northern heartland. Female protestors had too joined the political protestors, and it added to the mayhem. It was unclear who was behind the destruction, but Freetown’s mayor, Yvonne Aki Sawyerr, an opponent to the current government, revealed in a statement in August 2022 that the city coun...

  Photo source: The Guardian By Naveed Qazi |  Editor, Globe Upfront Forde Inquiry Report has exposed factionalism within the British Labour Party, during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure. This was made public in July 2022, after an earlier leaked internal report. The new report was originally intended to be published by the end of 2020 but it faced difficulties because of continuing legal battles within the party, and its publication was repeatedly delayed. The report confirms a disturbing picture as the party’s democratic socialism was pitted against rightist bureaucracy. The party even committed to maintaining the neoliberal priorities of New Labour set by former leader Tony Blair. Many of the party staff saw one of their main aims in finding reasons to expel Corbyn supporters, in what they termed as ‘trot busting’ and ‘trot hunting’ exercises. It is believed that some party staff members exhibited ‘deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory attitudes’ towards ...

  Photo source: Al Mayadeen By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront In July 2022, China Daily reported that US military tankers had carried thousands of litres of crude oil from Syria’s north‑eastern province of Hasakah into the semi‑autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The Chinese paper accused Washington of ‘bandit behaviour’, claiming that ‘stealing oil is their profession’. China’s foreign ministry issued a statement urging the United States to respect Syria’s sovereignty, lift unilateral sanctions, and ‘stop plundering Syria’s national resources’. Syria’s official news agency SANA echoed these accusations. In August 2022, it reported that 144 tankers laden with Syrian oil crossed into Iraq via the al‑Mahmoudiya border, only days after another convoy of 60 vehicles passed through the al‑Waleed crossing. SANA described these transfers as violations of international law, portraying US forces as occupiers. The Pentagon, however, has consistently maintained that its deploym...

  Photo source: The New Arab By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Tunisia began its new era of a march towards autocracy when Kais Saied passed a referendum which was met with a low turnout in July 2022. It was something unexpected after he had installed a new female prime minister giving hope to Tunisians for a vibrant democracy.  The new constitution includes changes to shift back power to the presidency, away from parliament, which Saied’s supporters see as a centre full of political bickering and government paralysis. His mandated charter would replace a 2014 constitution that was a hard-won compromise between Islamist-leaning and secular forces. There was no minimum participation rate requirement for the referendum. Hence, the newly drafted constitution will become the law. Tunisian political analyst and author Amine Snoussi made comparisons of this referendum with some other recent referendums in other countries where attendance was far higher, such as Uruguay in 2022,...