Category World News

The governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, has endorsed Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a staunch pro-Palestinian advocate who has campaigned for a more equitable allocation of the city’s resources, for mayor ahead of a closely watched November election in the financial capital of the United States.

Writing in The New York Times, the state leader said on Sunday she made her decision after “frank conversations” with her fellow Democrat, who resoundingly won the support of the party’s voters in a primary election in May.

“In our conversations, I heard a leader who shares my commitment to a New York where children can grow up safe in their neighbourhoods and where opportunity is within reach for every family,” Hochul wrote in the city-based newspaper.

“I heard a leader who is focused on making New York City affordable — a goal I enthusiastically support,” Hochul added.

Mamdani, a 33-year-old left-wing politician who has promised to make buses free and freeze rents for subsidised tenants, won 56.4 percent of votes among registered Democrats in the primary race, easily beating former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Yet Cuomo, a pro-Israel candidate who joined a team of lawyers defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against war crimes allegations in Gaza, has taken the unusual move of choosing to stay in the race, reflecting a continued divide within the Democratic Party.

While recent polls suggest Mamdani has a 22-point lead among New York voters, some prominent New York Democrats have appeared hesitant to back him, including US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres, and, until recently, Hochul — though the governor had been more positive in comments about Mamdani than the others.

Speaking in Iowa on Saturday, Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen criticised his Democratic colleagues for failing to endorse Mamdani, accusing them of the “kind of spineless politics” that “people are sick of”.

“They need to get behind him, and get behind him now,” Van Hollen said.

Mamdani, who has campaigned alongside independent Senator Bernie Sanders and progressive Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal in recent days, has received fewer endorsements from centrist Democrats like Hochul, less than two months out from the November 4 general election.

Thanking the governor for her announcement on Sunday, Mamdani acknowledged Hochul’s “support in unifying our party” as well as her “focus on making New York affordable”.

He also praised “her resolve in standing up to Trump”.

Trump has also weighed in on the race, saying Mamdani being “up by 20” in a recent poll shows there is a “rebellion against bad candidates … they’re tired of it”.

“I’m not looking at the polls too carefully, but it would look like he is going to win, and that is a rebellion,” Trump told “Fox and Friends” on Fox News on Friday, describing Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, as “my little communist mayor”.

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Mamdani with 45 percent support among likely voters, and a comfortable 22-point lead over his closest rival, Cuomo, with 23 percent.

Repeat Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, who cofounded the Guardian Angels to combat “violence and crime” on the New York subway in the 1970s, is polling at 15 percent, according to the Quinnipiac poll, while embattled incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent candidate, has just 12 percent support.

Trump has dismissed Sliwa as a candidate, describing the Republican candidate known for his trademark red beret as “not exactly prime time”.

Kathmandu, Nepal – As Nepal burned on Thursday after two days of deadly unrest that ousted a government accused of corruption, thousands of young people gathered in a heated debate to decide their nation’s next leader.

To them, the country’s mainstream politicians across the major parties were discredited: 14 governments representing three parties have taken turns at governing since 2008, when Nepal adopted a new constitution after abolishing its monarchy.

But in the wake of a brutal crackdown on protesters by security forces that killed at least 72 people, their trust in the country’s political system itself had been shattered. They wanted to select a consensus leader who would steer the country of 30 million people out of chaos and take steps towards stamping out corruption and nepotism. Just not in the way countries usually pick their heads.

So, they chose Nepal’s next leader in a manner unprecedented for any electoral democracy – through a virtual poll on Discord, a United States-based free messaging platform mainly used by online gamers.

The online huddle was organised by Hami Nepal, a Gen Z group behind the protest with more than 160,000 members.

Hami Nepal ran a channel on the platform called Youth Against Corruption, where a fiery debate on the country’s future brought together more than 10,000 people, including many from the Nepali diaspora. As more people tried to log in and failed, a mirrored livestream was held on YouTube to allow about 6,000 more people to see the debate.

After hours of debate that included difficult questions for protest leaders and attempts at reaching out to potential prime minister candidates in real time, the participants chose former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki to lead Nepal. The 73-year-old took the oath of office as the country’s interim prime minister on Friday.

But Nepal’s transition is only beginning, say analysts, and the approach protesters took to choose the country’s leader only underscores how a chaotic new experiment in democracy appears to be under way, with rewards as well as risks.

‘Trying to figure it out together’

The Discord debate was a revolutionary counter to the traditional practice of politicians choosing leaders behind closed doors, which had displayed little transparency, say supporters of the Discord approach.

Discord enables users to connect through texts, voice calls, video calls and media sharing. It also allows communication through direct messages or within community spaces known as servers. It was one of the platforms banned by the government earlier this month alongside two dozen other popular applications, including Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

The ban, protesters said, was the last straw that spiralled into a nationwide movement against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s government. The demonstrators accused it of being unrepresentative of young people, as well as of widespread corruption and nepotism.

Tens of thousands of young protesters hit the streets on Tuesday, torching government buildings, including the parliament and residences of top politicians, and forcing Oli to resign. On Friday, President Ramchandra Paudel dissolved parliament and called for a general election in March.

By then, Nepal’s Gen Z protesters had turned to Discord to decide who should lead their nation until March. The social media ban was lifted after the killings earlier in the week.

Virtual polls on mobile screens allowed participants to nominate their interim leader in real time, marking a radical experiment in digital democracy.

“People were learning as they went,” said 25-year-old law graduate Regina Basnet, a protester who had then joined the Discord debate. “Many of us didn’t know what it meant to dissolve parliament or form an interim government. But we were asking questions, getting answers from experts, and trying to figure it out together.”

The discussion revolved around a wide range of issues Nepal must battle now, including jobs, police and university reforms, as well as the state of government healthcare, as the moderators urged the participants to focus on the main question before them: the next leader.

Five names were shortlisted for the final voting: Harka Sampang, a social activist and mayor of the eastern city of Dharan; Mahabir Pun, a popular social activist running the National Innovation Centre; Sagar Dhakal, an independent politician who ran against the powerful Nepali Congress leader, Sher Bahadur Deuba, in 2022; advocate Rastra Bimochan Timalsina, also known as Random Nepali on his YouTube channel, who has been advising the Gen Z protesters; and Karki.

Karki, who emerged as the winner of the poll, had campaigned for an independent judiciary during her brief tenure as chief justice from 2016 to 2017. In 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a serving minister for corruption. In 2017, the government unsuccessfully tried to impeach her as chief justice after she rejected its choice for police chief.

That history added to her credentials in the eyes of the Discord voters.

“The situation that I have come in, I have not wished to come here. My name was brought from the streets,” she said in an address to the nation after assuming office. “We will not stay here more than six months in any situation. We will complete our responsibilities and pledge to hand over to the next parliament and ministers.”

Many people who took part in the Discord debate also suggested Balen Shah, the popular rapper-turned-mayor of Kathmandu, as their choice for interim prime minister. The Hami Nepal moderators informed the participants they could not reach Shah, who later posted his endorsement of Karki on social media.

Many in Nepal believe Shah could be a frontrunner for the prime minister’s post in the March 5 elections.

‘Much more egalitarian’

Aayush Bashyal, who was part of the Discord discussions, told Al Jazeera he witnessed a “spectrum of understanding, and it was all ‘trial and error’”.

“Some people would come and belittle the ideas, which would paralyse the conversation. However, it was absolutely the need of the moment, and was an impromptu common ground to bring as many voices as possible,” he said.

Bashyal said some in the Discord forum also called for a restoration of Nepal’s monarchy, which was abolished in 2006 after a decade-long rebellion by left-wing forces in the country.

“There was also a pro-monarchy Discord group going on side by side. Sometimes, people would share the screenshots from their chats,” the 27-year-old student of public administration at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University told Al Jazeera. He branded the pro-monarchy group as “infiltrators”.

In the same forum, some Gen Z participants even questioned the legitimacy of the protest leaders. “You made the agenda, but we don’t know you. How we can trust you is also another issue,” one participant said.

Other issues that came up during the deliberations included investigating the killings of protesters and cracking down on corruption.

‘This is the future’

Pranaya Rana, a journalist who sends out the popular Kalam Weekly newsletter to more than 4,300 subscribers, said that using Discord made sense for a Gen Z-led movement, but that it also came with challenges.

“It is much more egalitarian than a physical forum that many might not have access to. Since it is virtual and anonymous, people can also say what they want to without fear of retaliation,” he told Al Jazeera. “But there are also challenges, in that anyone could easily manipulate users by infiltration, and using multiple accounts to sway opinions and votes.”

Aware of how misinformation, fake news and rumours could derail such movements, the Gen Z leaders also launched a sub-room called “fact checks” on their Discord discussion page.

Among the things they debunked was a photo showing protest leader Sudan Gurung, the chief negotiator for the formation of the interim government, with Arzu Rana Deuba, the ousted foreign minister. The picture was falsely claimed to have been taken a week before, when it was actually from an event that had happened six months earlier. Gurung had met the minister to demand justice for a Nepali student who had died by suicide after he was allegedly harassed at an engineering college in neighbouring India’s Odisha state.

There were also rumours that Gurung was not a Nepali citizen, but from Darjeeling, a hill town in eastern India. A copy of his Nepali citizenship card was released in the Discord discussion room and on social media.

The Gen Z organisers also debunked claims that former King Gyanendra had met the protesters. It was found that an old video of Nepal’s last monarch interacting with youngsters was being shared on social media.

It was also discovered that multiple social media handles and profiles claiming to be the “official” youth movement had contributed to some confusion on the ground. On Thursday night, a Gen Z leader was even seen calling a Nepal military officer on the phone, warning him against potential royal interference in the formation of the next government.

Rana, the journalist, said the protest leaders made good use of technology, “something that Gen Z is best at”.

“This is the future. We can either remain in the days of giving speeches on stages with mics or get used to talking freely on online platforms,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Gen Z is naive, but that’s to be expected. They are young, but they have shown a willingness to learn, and that’s the important part.”

Anticorruption activist and the former president of Transparency International Nepal, Padmini Pradhanang, urged Gen Z protest leaders to work on what the previous governments “miserably failed at – integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance”.

“These young people have only experienced kleptocracy. They have never seen true democracy or good governance,” she said.

But law graduate Basnet is not sure.

“At first, it was a peaceful protest. The mood was celebratory. But the state-ordered carnage later was traumatising… The uprising and burning of private and public properties was scary, and then, with people participating in a discussion on social media to form the government has only added to the confusion,” she told Al Jazeera.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has dismissed criticism from the United States over the conviction of the country’s former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, on coup charges, and slammed Washington’s sweeping tariffs as “misguided” and “illogical”.

The comments, published in an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday, came as Bolsonaro made his first public appearance since last week’s conviction for a hospital visit.

In his essay, Lula said he wanted to establish “an open and frank dialogue” with US President Donald Trump over his administration’s decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian products in the wake of Bolsonaro’s trial.

He noted that the US has a trade surplus with Brazil, accumulating a surplus of $410bn in trade over the past 15 years, making it “clear that the motivation of the White House is political”.

The tariffs, Lula wrote, are aimed at seeking “impunity” for Bolsanaro, whom he accused of orchestrating the riots in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, when the former leader’s supporters stormed the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and the Congress in protest over his election defeat the previous year.

The events in the Brazilian capital echoed the storming of the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021, after he insisted for months, without evidence, that there had been widespread fraud during the election he lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

Lula described Bolsonaro’s actions as “an effort to subvert the popular will at the ballot box” and said he was proud of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s “historic decision” on Thursday to sentence the former president to 27 years and three months in prison.

“This was not a ‘witch hunt’,” he wrote.

Instead, it “safeguards” Brazil’s institutions and the democratic rule of law, he added.

Brazil’s democracy ‘not on table’

Lula’s op-ed comes after Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, threatened more action against Brazil over Bolsonaro’s conviction. In addition to the tariffs, the US has so far sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has overseen Bolsonaro’s trial, and revoked visas for most of the high court’s justices.

For his part, Trump, who has repeatedly labelled the judicial proceedings a “witch-hunt”, has said he was “surprised” by the ruling. The US president, who also had faced criminal charges over the Capitol attack before they were withdrawn following his re-election, likened the trial against Bolsonaro to the legal actions against him.

“It’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn’t get away with it,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, describing the former leader as a “good president” and a “good man”.

In his op-ed, Lula said the US’s decision to turn its back on a relationship of more than 200 years means that “everyone loses” and said the two countries should continue to work together in areas where they have common goals.

But he said Brazil’s democracy was non-negotiable.

“President Trump, we remain open to negotiating anything that can bring mutual benefits. But Brazil’s democracy and sovereignty are not on the table,” he wrote.

Economists in Brazil estimate that Trump’s tariffs would hurt the country’s economy, including through the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, but not derail it, given its strong trade ties with other countries such as China. The blow has further been softened when the US granted hundreds of exceptions, including on aircraft parts and orange juice.

US consumers, too, are paying more for products imported from Brazil, including coffee, which has already seen recent price rises due to droughts.

In Brasilia, meanwhile, Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest, left his home to undergo a medical procedure to remove several skin lesions.

His doctor, Claudio Birolini, told reporters that the former president had eight skin lesions removed and sent for biopsies.

He added that Bolsonaro, who has had multiple operations in recent years due to complications from a 2018 stabbing in his stomach, was “quite weak” and had developed slight anaemia, “probably due to poor nutrition over the last month”.

Dozens of supporters gathered outside the hospital to cheer on the former leader, waving Brazilian flags and shouting, “Amnesty now!”.

The chant is in reference to the push of Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress to grant the former president some kind of amnesty.

“We’re here to provide spiritual and psychological support,” Deuselis Filho, 46, told the Associated Press news agency.

Thursday’s sentence does not mean that Bolsonaro will immediately go to prison.

The court panel now has up to 60 days to publish the ruling. Once it does, Bolsonaro’s lawyers have five days to file motions for clarification.