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‘Long march’ helps Rahul Gandhi shed playboy image

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'Long march' helps Rahul Gandhi shed playboy image

 Five months spent traversing his country on foot helped the scion of India’s most famous dynasty shed his playboy image — but the road to reviving his dismal political fortunes will be a tougher journey.

Rahul Gandhi has for years struggled to challenge the electoral juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) holds a near-monopoly on power through nationalist appeals to the country’s Hindu majority.

Modi has revelled in casting his chief opponent, dubbed an “empty suit” in leaked US embassy cables from 2005, as an out-of-touch princeling more interested in luxury and self-indulgence than fighting to helm the world’s biggest democracy.

His Congress party, a once-mighty force with a proud role in ending British colonial rule 75 years ago, is now a shadow of its former self, plagued by infighting and defections.

But a decision to invoke one of India’s best-known protest traditions, flanked by ordinary people, has given him an air of authority that had so far eluded him in public life.

“Rightly or wrongly, the BJP’s campaign of him being an incompetent person was the dominant perception — he has managed to change that,” independent political analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Junior told AFP.

Since his long trek began on India’s southernmost tip last September, Gandhi has struck a chord with fiery speeches and affectionate interactions with the thousands of bystanders that have lined streets to watch his procession.

The campaign harkens back to the famous 1930 trek by Rahul’s unrelated namesake Mahatma Gandhi, whose march to protest a salt tax imposed by British rulers was a seminal moment in India’s independence struggle.

It has bypassed the country’s traditional media in an effort to reach the public directly, with an in-house social media apparatus and interviews with online influencers.

Footage of Gandhi on the roadshows him with a newly commanding posture, sporting an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard grown during the march and trailed by smiling children.

His 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) journey — not all by foot — concludes on Monday in the frosty Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, after months spent finessing both his common touch and a voter pitch capitalising on widespread economic insecurity.

“The job of the nation is to make sure that you feel protected,” he said this month, while sharing kebabs and playfully joking about his sweet tooth in a YouTube interview with a popular food blogger.

‘Unite India’

The “Bharat Jodo Yatra” (“Unite India March”) has fashioned Gandhi into a more credible heir to the legacy of his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, each one a former prime minister, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

But Gandhi has already steered Congress to two landslide election defeats against the seemingly unconquerable BJP, whose victory in next year’s national polls is almost universally considered a foregone conclusion by experts.

“He has managed to redefine his public image,” Rao said. “Whether it will translate into votes, I am not very sure.”

Congress was dominant during the first half-century after Indian independence but now governs in just three of India’s 28 states.

The party weathered a messy and public internal brawl last year over who would take office as its president after the resignation of Sonia Gandhi — Rahul’s mother, widowed when her husband Rajiv was assassinated in a suicide attack in 1991.

Several leaders of other opposition parties historically aligned with Congress spurned Rahul’s entreaties to join his countrywide trek, an uncharitable estimation of his prospects next year.

His exhortations of religious tolerance and India’s secular traditions have in the past failed to dent the BJP’s muscular advocacy for the Hindu majority at a time of rising intolerance against Muslims.

‘He had no choice’

But his decision to undertake the march also reflects his biggest hurdle: the enduring power of Prime Minister Modi, whose skill in cultivating a populist public image well outclasses his own.

“Rahul Gandhi himself has said that he had no choice but to go for the (march) in order to connect with people and report it through social media,” Zoya Hasan, an academic and political scientist based in New Delhi, told AFP.

Modi is the beneficiary of a media environment largely in thrall to the BJP’s agenda, with Indian press freedoms declining significantly since he took office in 2014, according to international watchdogs.

While the prime minister’s daily movements are reported on frantically by cable news broadcasters, Gandhi’s exploits have largely failed to feature unless they cast him in a negative light.

“Anything that undermines the opposition is prime news,” Hasan added.

“Anything that is positive which actually brings people together, as the Bharat Jodo Yatra is seeking to do, is not.”

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Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

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Rahul Gandhi: India's Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi 'thieves' remark

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been sentenced to two years in prison in a criminal defamation case.

Mr Gandhi was convicted by the court in Gujarat state for 2019 comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname during an election rally.

He will not go to jail immediately – he was granted bail for 30 days and will file an appeal against the conviction.

The Congress party MP was present in court for sentencing, which comes a year before general elections are due.

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Speaking at an election rally in Karnataka state in April 2019, ahead of the last general election, Mr Gandhi had said: “Why do all these thieves have Modi as their surname? Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi.”

Nirav Modi is a fugitive Indian diamond tycoon while Lalit Modi is a former chief of the Indian Premier League who has been banned for life by the country’s cricket board. Mr Gandhi argued that he had made the comment to highlight corruption and it was not directed against any community.

The case against him was filed on the basis of a complaint by Purnesh Modi, a lawmaker from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, who said that Mr Gandhi’s comments had defamed the entire Modi community.

But some have said they are puzzled by the order.

Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia tweeted that “references to a generic class of persons” – surnames in this case – are not “actionable unless an individual can show a direct reference to themselves”.

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“If a man says ‘all lawyers are thieves’, then I, as a lawyer, cannot file a case against him for defamation unless I can show its imputation aimed at me,” Mr Bhatia said.

India’s criminal defamation law is British-era legislation under which there can be a maximum prison sentence of two years, a fine or both.

Free speech advocates have often argued that the law goes against the principles of freedom and that it is is used by politicians to silence their critics.

In 2016, some top Indian politicians including Mr Gandhi filed legal pleas arguing for defamation to be decriminalised. But India’s Supreme Court upheld the validity of the law, saying that the “right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame the other”.

The Congress party tweeted that Mr Gandhi would appeal and said “we will fight and win”.

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Mr Gandhi has not commented publicly yet but has tweeted a quote in Hindi from India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi: “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God, and non-violence the means to get it.”

His lawyer, Kirit Panwala, told BBC Gujarati that Mr Gandhi had told the judge after the order that he had made the speech “in favour of democracy”.

He also said that their defence of Mr Gandhi was based on four points: “Firstly, Mr Gandhi is not a resident of Gujarat and so, before the complaint, an inquiry should be conducted. Secondly, there is no community named Modi. Thirdly, there is no association of people with Modi as their surname and lastly, there was no ill intention behind Mr Gandhi’s speech.”

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Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

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Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

Lebanese security forces on Wednesday fired tear gas at hundreds of protesters, mostly retired members of the security forces, who had gathered near government buildings in Beirut in anger at deteriorating economic conditions.

Crowds gathered in the streets of downtown Beirut between parliament and the government serail, carrying Lebanon’s tricolour or flags bearing the logos of security forces.

They were outraged at the deteriorating value of state pensions paid in the local currency. The pound has lost more than 98% of its value against the U.S. dollar since 2019.

“Our kids are hungry. We’re hungry,” said Mohamad el-Khateeb, a 59-year-old who had served in the army for 32 years.

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“We left the army with nothing. No healthcare, no welfare, our kids are out of school and prices are rising obscenely. What do you expect?” Khateeb told Reuters.

Some of the men tried to cross one of the checkpoints leading to a government building, prompting security forces to fire tear gas to keep them back, according to a Reuters witness.

Protesters dashed away from white clouds emanating from locations around the serail. One soldier was seen treating a young boy who was affected by the tear gas.

“If he fires on us, he’s firing on our rights and on his rights at the same time,” said army veteran Ahmad Mustafa, 60.

“He’s suffering just like me,” he told Reuters, clutching two of the tear gas canisters fired just moments earlier.

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There was no immediate statement from the Lebanese army.
Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in 2019 after decades of profligate spending and alleged corruption. Its onset prompted the most wide-ranging protests the country had seen in years, but they fizzled out and rallies have been sporadic since.

The country’s top financial and political leaders have allowed the crisis to fester, with the Lebanese pound hitting an all-time low of 140,000 to the U.S. dollar on Tuesday before an intervention by the country’s central bank.

Lebanon’s army troops and members of the security forces are receiving salary support in U.S. dollars from the United States and Qatar for the first time.

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Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

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Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

 At least four people were killed early on Wednesday in a Russian drone strike near Kyiv which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said showed Moscow was not interested in peace.

The State Emergency Service said on the Telegram messaging app that two dormitories and an educational facility in Rzhyshchiv, 40 miles (64 km) south of the capital, had been partially destroyed in the overnight attack.

Regional police chief Andrii Nebytov said 20 people had been taken to hospital and several were still missing following a series of explosions after 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) that killed four people.

A large part of the top floor of a five-storey dormitory building had been knocked out by the attack. Workers in white helmets and reflective jackets clambered through the rubble of another badly damaged building.

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“We see that the enemy has once again attacked civilian infrastructure (and) innocent people have died,” Nebytov wrote on Telegram, adding that one of the victims was an ambulance driver who had arrived to help.

State emergency officials said the search for survivors was continuing after attacks that the Ukrainian military said involved Iranian-made Shahed drones.

“Over 20 Iranian murderous drones, plus missiles, numerous shelling incidents, and that’s just in one last night of Russian terror against Ukraine,” Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.

“Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes.”

The Ukrainian military said it had shot down 16 of the 21 drones launched at Ukraine overnight from the north.

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Russia, which invaded Ukraine 13 months ago, did not immediately comment on the latest attacks.

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