Latest news with #coalition
Bloomberg
11 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Thailand's $115 Billion Budget Clears First Parliamentary Hurdle
Thailand's lower house of parliament backed a 3.78 trillion baht ($115 billion) annual budget as Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra's multi-party coalition buried differences to support the spending plan. The budget bill for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 was supported by 322 lawmakers in its first reading in the 500-member House of Representatives on Saturday. A total of 158 lawmakers voted against it following a four-day debate.
Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The first cracks in the Coalition: ‘Some Independents you would not bring lion-hunting with you'
In December, when Government-formation talks were under way, a Fianna Fáil TD stopped for a chat on the steps of Leinster House. At that time there was still a possibility that Labour might be willing to make a deal. This Fianna Fáil TD clearly preferred that option. 'My gut instinct is to be supported by a bloc,' he mused. 'Labour is a bloc. The Independents have been trying to create one but the reason they are Independent is they have no whip. I worry about a shock.' READ MORE At that moment, an Independent TD appeared on the plinth before him. He nodded at the TD and remarked quietly. 'Some Independents you would not bring lion-hunting with you under any circumstances.' When Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and his Fine Gael counterpart began formation talks in earnest, one of their primary goals was to create a coalition with a working majority and that would be robust enough to last the full five-year term of the 34th Dáil. In the end they settled for a deal with the Healy-Rae brothers and a group of nine regional Independents TDs, whose chief negotiator was the controversial Tipperary North TD Michael Lowry . When the deal was brokered, Lowry used a by now infamous phrase, vowing support 'through thick and thin'. As has been shown over the past 30 years, most coalitions have some degree of intrinsic brittleness. In the first week of government in 2020, a Green Party TD (Neasa Hourigan) voted against a Government Bill on residential tenancies, and a newly appointed minister of State (Joe O'Brien) abstained. [ Barry Heneghan moves Dáil seat away from Michael Lowry to emphasise his 'independent' status Opens in new window ] Finian McGrath was a left-leaning Independent TD who supported the Fianna Fáil/Green coalition in 2007. When the economy starting hitting the buffers, and austerity measures were introduced, McGrath was frequently baited by the Opposition, who accused him of jettisoning his principles. When a harsh and punitive budget was announced on October 2008, McGrath withdrew his support. Intriguingly, McGrath, who retired from the Dáil in 2020, has acted as a mentor and adviser to Barry Heneghan , the 27-year-old TD representing Dublin Bay North. Heneghan is one of four Government-supporting Independents who does not have a ministerial role: Lowry, Gillian Toole , and Danny Healy-Rae are the others. On Wednesday night, Heneghan voted against the Coalition in favour of the Sinn Féin Bill that would have prevented the Central Bank approving a prospectus that allows Israel to sell bonds in the EU. So did his colleague Toole. Her vote took many people by surprise, as she has not been prominent in that group. The vote was 87 to 75 in favour of the government, still a comfortable margin. [ Independents Barry Heneghan, Gillian Toole vote against Coalition and in favour of Sinn Féin's pro-Palestine Bill Opens in new window ] Was this a once-off? Or was it a straw in the wind? Are we seeing the first flecks of rust in the superstructure? Toole said she had voted that way because of a lack of a detailed briefing from Government. For his part, Heneghan said: 'This is about standing up for international law and basic human rights.' Heneghan has learned over the past six months that when you are a freshman left-leaning TD supporting a centrist Government, there is no such thing as a shallow end. On the issue of Gaza in particular, he was harangued from the Opposition benches, and faced a social media pile-on when he pledged support for the Occupied Territories Bill but voted with the Government against a Sinn Féin motion on the Bill in March. McGrath went public to defend his protege, saying Heneghan would not 'bottle it' on the Bill when all the technical and legal flaws were resolved. 'Unlike many others he is not afraid to make tough decisions and step up,' he said. Heneghan on Thursday indicated that his inexperience told against him for that vote in March. In a sense the vote this week was him standing on his own two feet. Heneghan argues his commitment is to support the programme, financial measures, votes of confidence but there are other issues on which he can vote according to his conscience. Is this twin-track approach consistent and durable? He says it is. One of the five Independents with a ministerial office, Seán Canney, admits that a vote against the Government can cause problems but that this is not on a core issue. 'It's just that Barry and Gillian had a particular issue with this,' he says. 'It's not the case that they are gone, or anything like that. He adds a note of caution: 'It would not want to happen too often.' [ Records show what Independent TDs backing the Government want for their constituencies Opens in new window ] When you speak to Ministers from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael you are immediately struck by a notable sense of fatalism about future Independent defections. A Fine Gael Minister, speaking privately, points to what could be coming down the tracks, and some really tough decisions that might be necessary. 'If our people are voting against the Government on this, you can imagine how they will vote when it's something really unpopular,' says the Minister. A Fianna Fáil Minister, who does not wish to be named, says it is inevitable that the Government will shed numbers. 'It does not take a genius to figure out that the TDs who do not have ministerial gigs will be the flakiest,' he says. That said, nobody in Government is unduly concerned. None can foresee the current majority of 17 falling to single figures, even if a lion-hunting expedition becomes necessary.
Bloomberg
19 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Malaysian Minister's Party Switch Bid to Test Ruling Coalition
Malaysia's Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz said he is switching political parties, in a move set to test the relationship between two of the partners in the nation's ruling coalition. Zafrul, 51, is leaving the United Malays National Organization to become a member of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's People's Justice Party.
Times
a day ago
- Business
- Times
Macron calls on Europe and Asia to ‘unite against bullies'
President Macron has called on the countries in Europe and Asia to build a 'new coalition of independence' united in refusing to choose between the United States and China. In a rebuke seemingly directed as much to President Trump as President Xi, Macron issued a 'call to action' to reject coercion, greed, bullying and 'negative passions', warning that a failure to resolve crises in Ukraine and Gaza would be 'a killer for our credibility' of the rich countries of the world. 'The main risk today is the risk of division of the world, and a division between the two superpowers, and the instruction given to all the others: 'You have to choose your side,'' he said at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a gathering of defence ministers and experts in Singapore. 'If we do so, we will kill the global order, and we will destroy methodically all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace.' Macron said that the war in Ukraine had direct implications for east Asia, and that a victory for President Putin would embolden Xi to take military action against Taiwan or the islands occupied by southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea. In a clear reproach to Trump, he criticised the idea of 'equidistance between Ukraine and Russia and the [idea] that this is a European conflict and that we are … spending too much energy, too much time, and creating too much pain for the rest of the world'. He told the gathering: 'This is a total mistake, because if we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction, without any constraint, without any reaction of the global order … what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happened in the Philippines?' He added: 'What is at stake in Ukraine is our common credibility to be sure that we are still able to preserve territorial integrity and sovereignty of people.' The annual Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the British think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies, frequently includes exchanges of criticism between the US and Chinese defence ministers. Before Trump's re-election, leaders of western European countries could reliably have been expected to line up behind the US. It is a sign of the huge changes that have occurred in the past six months that a French president now speaks of the US and China with almost equal wariness. • Fraser Nelson: Europe may be looking to China but Britain shouldn't 'France is a friend and an ally of the United States … and we do co-operate, even if sometimes we disagree and compete, with China,' Macron said. 'We want to co-operate, but we don't want to be instructed on a daily basis what is allowed and what is not allowed, and how our lives will change because of the decision of a single person.' Macron was explicit in his wish to convene a third bloc dedicated to 'strategic autonomy', bringing together Nato governments and Asian countries as diverse as Vietnam and Indonesia, both of which he visited before his arrival in Singapore. He concluded his speech with a 'call for action for Europe and Asia to work together on a coalition of independence. A coalition of countries that won't be enrolled and won't be bullied. And finally, a coalition of countries determined not to yield to the whims of the greed of others, but to chart a peaceful way to bring balance in trouble and to affirm negative passions can be opposed.' Like Britain, France in recent years has sent military forces, including aircraft carriers, to east Asia in an assertion of the region's strategic importance. Macron said he had formerly been cautious about 'being enrolled in someone else's strategic rivalry', but that the deployment of North Korean troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine in a European war had changed the situation. He said: 'If China doesn't want Nato being involved in southeast Asia or in Asia, they should prevent clearly [North Korea from being] engaged on the European soil.' On Saturday morning Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, will speak from the same stage. China's defence minister, Dong Jun, will not attend, however, sending in his place a relatively junior admiral from China's National Defence University.
CNA
a day ago
- General
- CNA
Shangri-La Dialogue: France's Macron calls for new coalition between Europe, Indo-Pacific
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a new coalition between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. He said this "coalition of independents" will not become collateral victims in the superpowers' war with each other. Mr Macron was delivering the keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, addressing defence chiefs and senior officials from all around the world. Tan Qiuyi reports.
