News

The Iranian presidency’s legal advisors have published the first draft of the Charter of Citizen Rights, as promised earlier by President Hassan Rohani.

The President’s Office reports that the charter was prepared with “input from universities, seminaries, thinkers and scholars across the country” and was published together along with the 100-day report of the government.

With only a few months to go before the country goes to the polls, political parties are now engaged in talks with one another, strengthening ties in the hope of securing the best possible outcome from the national ballot box.

Gun Gun Heryanto, a political analyst at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, said on Tuesday that all parties were currently considering their options.

“Political elites are looking to find common ground in the hope of finding agreements in the future,” he said.

The Golkar Party will need to work hard to consolidate internally if its chairman and presidential candidate, Aburizal Bakrie, is to score a victory in next year’s election, commentators say.

“Golkar is experienced in winning legislative elections, but is always vulnerable when it comes to presidential elections,” Gun Gun Heryanto, a political communications lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, said on Tuesday.

“In the reform era, divisions within Golkar in the run-up to presidential elections have long been an issue.

Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo has again topped a poll of prospective presidential candidates, despite there being no move by his party to officially nominate him for the nation’s highest office.

In a survey by Australia-based Roy Morgan Research, Joko was chosen by 37 percent of respondents, followed by Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) co-founder and chief patron Prabowo Subianto, who was favored by 15 percent.

DUBAI/KUWAIT CITY, Nov 25, (RTRS): Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been quietly reining in their clerics on concerns that preachers could use their influence to stir up trouble and inflame sectarian divisions at a time of high tension over the crises in Syria and Egypt. Authorities in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to a powerful conservative clergy, have declined to respond to local media reports in recent months which said nearly 20 clerics had been sacked or suspended.

Indonesian voters appear to welcome the notion of an Islamic party coalition ahead of next year’s presidential election, a new survey found, despite some Islamic parties’ own reluctance to the proposal.

The National Survey Institute (LSN) said its latest poll found that 45.6 percent of respondents favored, in principle, a coalition of Islamic parties, while 23.7 percent disagreed. The remainder were undecided or had no opinion.  The survey was conducted from Oct. 20 through 30, from 1,240 eligible voters across Indonesia’s 34 provinces.

Mauritanians have voted in general and local elections - the first since a military coup five years ago.

The party of leader Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, the Union for the Republic, is expected to retain power.

However, the poll was boycotted by almost all the radical opposition parties. They have described it as an "electoral masquerade".

The main Islamist party, Tewassoul, took part, but in what it described as a struggle against a "dictatorship".

Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity in Bosnia, has said it would be the best for Bosnia and Herzegovina to split it into two.

Speaking in Belgrade on Wednesday to law students, he said that Republika Srpska already has all the elements of a state in terms of the number of citizens, its size, competences and independent relations to other countries. 

“It would be best if Republika Srpska was a state”, Dodik said, adding: “It will happen one day, we just have to have patience.”

Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat are in discussions over a possible "global settlement" on 19 election petition appeals that are pending at the Federal Court for determination.

Global settlement refers to an agreement between the parties after they address or compromise on the matter accordingly.

Barisan's lawyer Datuk Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin said the political parties were in discussions whether the matter could be resolved amicably.