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Geopolitics

Voters In France, Greece, Serbia Send Bitter Message For Europe

François Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency, with a final tally of 51.6%, against 48.38%. Change was also in the air in elections in Greece and Serbia.

Europe is changing: both French and Greeks voters made that clear Sunday night, with the same wind of change possibly blowing towards Serbia, which also held the first round of its presidential election.

In France, Socialist candidate François Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency, with 51.6% of the votes, against 48.38%. But according to Le Monde, the clock is already ticking for Hollande, who is taking on the burden of not just France's economic crisis, but a "sick Europe." Calls have been made for Hollande to meet Angela Merkel as soon as he takes office, to tackle with the current financial crisis, notably the continued crisis with Greek debt.

Greece also voted on Sunday in Parliamentary elections, punishing the country's leading parties. Neither left-leaning PASOK nor center-right New Democracy succeeded in winning a majority of the Parliamentary seats. Most troubling, a Neo-Nazi group also entered Parliament, which some see as a backlash against austerity measures, CNN reports from Athens. A new coalition government should be formed with a third party, which could upend the entire political system.

In Serbia, President Boris Tadic arrived first in the opening round of the presidential election, with 26.8% of the votes on Sunday. But he was far from winning the absolute majority as his main opponent, Tomislav Nikolic, won 25.6% of the votes. The second round will be held on May 20.

Both results made it clear that a prompt reflection on Europe's future had to be held.

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Geopolitics

The Trudeau-Modi Row Reveals Growing Right-Wing Bent Of India's Diaspora

Western governments will not be oblivious to the growing right-wing activism among the diaspora and the efforts of the BJP and Narendra Modi's government to harness that energy for political support and stave off criticism of India.

The Trudeau-Modi Row Reveals Growing Right-Wing Bent Of India's Diaspora

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in New Delhi on Sept. 9

Sushil Aaron

-Analysis-

NEW DELHICanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has brought Narendra Modi’s exuberant post-G20 atmospherics to a halt by alleging in parliament that agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian national, in June this year.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said. The Canadian foreign ministry subsequently expelled an Indian diplomat, who was identified as the head of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, in Canada. [On Thursday, India retaliated through its visa processing center in Canada, which suspended services until further notice over “operational reasons.”]

Trudeau’s announcement was immediately picked up by the international media and generated quite a ripple across social media. This is big because the Canadians have accused the Indian government – not any private vigilante group or organisation – of murder in a foreign land.

Trudeau and Canadian state services seem to have taken this as seriously as the UK did when the Russian émigré Alexander Litvinenko was killed, allegedly on orders of the Kremlin. It is extraordinarily rare for a Western democracy to expel a diplomat from another democracy on these grounds.

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