التصنيف: estaql

The third Republican debate of the 2024 United States presidential race came and went this week with a whimper.

The New York Times dismissed the event as “the undercard that underwhelmed”. The Washington Post cast it as “a lower-tier competition”. And The New Yorker brushed it aside as “an incredible waste of time for any but the most masochistic of Republican viewers”.

What prompted the withering criticism was the seeming insignificance of a debate without the Republican Party’s heaviest hitter, former President Donald Trump.

Now one year into his 2024 reelection campaign, Trump remains far and away the party frontrunner, trouncing his Republican rivals in seemingly every poll. Confident in his lead, he has skipped every Republican debate so far this election season.

Experts say this creates a novel dynamic: one where Trump is acting more like an incumbent than a candidate trying to unseat a sitting president.

“What’s unusual about this is there’s a former president, not a sitting president, who is dominating the field and skipping debates,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute and author of the book Primary Politics.

Above the fray

Traditionally, in the US, the incumbent’s party never holds primary debates, even if other candidates from the same party enter the fray.

That is the case with current President Joe Biden. Though he faces Democratic challenges from long-shot candidates like Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, he will not have to confront them on the debate stage.

The decision is largely a practical one. Incumbents have name recognition and a track record of success at the ballot box — and public spats within a party could dent the prospect of a repeat victory.

Where primary debates come in handy, however, is in establishing a frontrunner among challengers from the opposing party. But Trump, with his commanding grip on the Republican base, has eschewed mixing in with the rest of the Republican field.

Lynn Vavreck, an American politics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, indicated that choice was strategic.

“If he were to go to the debates, he would be reinforcing the idea that, in some way, these people are the same as him,” she told Al Jazeera.

A signature tactic

Vavreck pointed out that Trump was relying on some of the same tactics he used when he himself was an incumbent in 2020.

Trump has a long history of undercutting opponents through counter-programming, a technique common in the television industry. It involves drawing viewers away from a given event by offering competing attractions.

A former TV star himself, Trump made heavy use of counter-programming when he was seeking reelection while in office.

At the time, a broad field of Democrats were vying to unseat him, and Trump invested heavily in YouTube ads set to coincide with their first primary debate. One expert at the time told the publication Vox that he anticipated Trump’s ads would generate twice the viewership.

“It’s very on-brand for him. He likes to be the star of the show,” Vavreck said of Trump’s counter-programming playbook. “One way to make sure you get attention is to do something totally different.”

Trump has continued to use counter-programming against his own party’s debate schedule. On Wednesday, while the third Republican debate unfolded on stage in Miami, Florida, Trump was a mere 20 minutes away in the Cuban American stronghold of Hialeah, holding a rally.

“The last debate was the lowest-rated debate in the history of politics,” Trump said in his speech. “So, therefore, do you think we did the right thing by not participating?” The crowd responded with cheers.

Sowing doubt over 2020 loss

Vavreck added that Trump’s status as a former president gives him much of the same stature and sway as an incumbent — and that puts his rivals in a “tough spot”.

“They’re trying to navigate this unusual situation,” she said.

Little has dimmed Trump’s leadership over the Republican Party, despite his bitter defeat in 2020, a loss that rendered him only the 10th single-term president to not win reelection.

Trump has maintained — falsely — that the race was “stolen” from him through voter fraud. And though he faces 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases, he has reframed his legal woes as evidence of a Democratic conspiracy, an argument that has galvanised his base.

“Within his own party, Trump remains strong, and right now, nobody else is anywhere close,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy. “Trump so far has been impervious to the indictments he’s faced.”

A September poll from Malloy’s firm showed 62 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supporting Trump, up from 57 percent support in August.

Malloy said there are currently no Republican contenders that could overtake Trump. Even household names like former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis remain distant prospects, more or less tied for second place.

“We’ve watched DeSantis go down pretty dramatically, Nikki Haley closing in on DeSantis,” Malloy explained. But, he added, none of that changes the fact that “at the moment, Trump is the prohibitive favourite”.

Potential for a primary shakeup?

Still, at Wednesday’s debate, the five leading Republican contenders behind Trump took modest jabs at the former president, hoping to chip away at his lead.

“I think he was the right president at the right time,” Haley, a former member of Trump’s administration, said from the primetime stage. “I don’t think he’s the right president now.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis said Trump should appear at the debates: “He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance.”

Primary debates have been a US tradition since 1948. But even with Trump boycotting the debates, the experts Al Jazeera spoke to said the primary races themselves could yield unexpected outcomes. They decide who ultimately receives the party nomination.

“If somebody gets in second place, it’s very possible that the second-place winner could turn out to be someone who challenges him all the way down the road,” Primary Politics author Kamarck said.

She pointed out that the better-known candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton, ended up being left in the dust by dark horse Barack Obama.

Vavreck, the politics professor, said the upcoming primary races — starting in January with the Iowa caucus — may create an opening for one of Trump’s Republican rivals.

“If any one of those other candidates does significantly better than they’re expected to, history tells us — the data from the past tells us — that they will pick up momentum and it could become a contest,” Vavreck said.

But even she acknowledged that, for now, Trump’s grip on the party nomination seems ironclad. “It still seems highly unlikely that Trump doesn’t come out ahead in the end.”

Warsaw, Poland – Thousands are expected to join a nationalistic march in Poland’s capital Warsaw on Saturday, in what organisers describe as the “largest patriotic demonstration in Europe”.

In recent years, the annual Independence March has attracted up to 250,000 participants.

But this year, experts and participants expect a lower turnout, amid internal splits between leaders of the rally and after the Confederation Party, which is traditionally allied with the event, suffered a spectacular electoral defeat last month.

First organised in 2010 to commemorate Poland’s Independence Day, the march usually attracts right-wing, conservative and neo-fascist groups from across Europe and the United States.

It traditionally takes place against the backdrop of racist, xenophobic and anti-liberal chants.

Saturday’s march will begin at 2pm local time.

“It seems that the march will be much smaller and less visible,” Przemyslaw Witkowski, adjunct professor at Collegium Civitas and a researcher of political extremism, told Al Jazeera. “There is also a smaller number of people who signed up for the so-called March Guard – a group of volunteers operating, protecting, and controlling the event.”

But at the same time, smaller numbers could see more “radical” and violent forces at play, he said.

“Once there is a new, more left-wing government in place, we will face a much greater tension, which we might be able to feel even this year when the march still has a status of an annual event,” Witkowski said. “This decision might be reversed next year, and once the march is faced with registration issues, we can surely expect more violence.”

This year’s slogan, “Poland has not yet perished”, refers to the opening lyrics of the national anthem, which are then followed by “as long as we live”.

The song, written in 1797 when Poland was off the world’s map, was meant to raise the morale of the Polish Legions fighting alongside Napoleon in Italy. It conveyed the message that despite lacking a state of its own, the Polish nation had endured a struggle for independence.

Poland’s situation could not be more different from the one described in the song.

However, many on the political right believe that the results of the recent parliamentary election, in which the coalition of the liberal Civic Platform, conservative Third Way, and left-wing Lewica came out as winners, will lead to the gradual erosion of the country’s independence.

Traditionally pro-European and advocating for stronger European integration, liberal political forces are viewed with increased suspicion by the right including the Confederation Party, which was widely expected to score between 12-14 percent of the vote. It ended up with 8.6 percent.

“We can expect – with a high probability – a change in EU treaties, which will affect Poland’s sovereignty and Poland’s independence in the international arena, and in particular within the [European Union],” Bartosz Malewski, head of the Independence March association, told reporters in October.

“This slogan also expresses our position on the need to emphasise sovereignty and the threat to sovereignty.”

Other march participants agree.

Grzegorz Cwik, from the nationalist Niklot association, told Al Jazeera, said he fears the “federalisation of the European Union, cuts of military spending, and dismantling of social programmes”.

So far, the winning coalition has not built a government, but the recent election results are not the only challenges faced by the march organisers.

The former head of the Independence March association, Robert Bakiewicz, over the years moved closer towards Law and Justice, the former ruling nationalist party, and was widely seen as using the event for his own political gains.

Many march-goers also accused him of making the demonstration too mainstream and of fighting against radical nationalists, who in fact are the event’s founders.

“I think that for the past few years, the march’s formula was unfortunately more picnic-like, and hooligans, for example, stopped attending it,” Cwik said.

Eventually, a dispute between Bakiewicz and the march’s leadership close to Confederation’s circles led to a public exchange of accusations and the removal of Bakiewicz from his post.

Bakiewicz was also accused of keeping passwords to the Independence March’s social media accounts, effectively blocking the new leadership’s access to well-followed fan pages.

It is unlikely that he will show up at the march.

A man who spent 35 years behind bars in the US after being wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl has been freed from prison thanks to a DNA breakthrough.

Louis Wright, now aged 65, had lived near the child’s home in Albion, Michigan, at the time of the attack in 1988 and an off-duty officer reported seeing him about five hours before the incident.

That year, Mr Wright was sentenced to 25-50 years for various sexual assault charges, and 6-15 years for breaking and entering.

Earlier this year, however, the Michigan Department of the Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit was told that items from the case were found by the Albion Department of Public Safety.

The items were sent for testing and came back with “foreign male DNA”.

As a result of this, Mr Wright was excluded as the perpetrator, resulting in his charges being set aside, officials said.

On 18 January 1988, a perpetrator broke into the girl’s home while she was asleep and forced her into the living room where he assaulted her.

Later that day, Mr Wright voluntarily went to the local police department.

Officers said he confessed, though the interview was not recorded and he did not sign a confession, according to the Cooley Law School Innocence Project which represents Mr Wright.

But the girl was never asked to take part in any identification process, or identify anyone in court.

Mr Wright pleaded no contest to the charges – which is treated as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes.

He then tried to withdraw his plea and claimed he was innocent.

Over decades in prison, Mr Wright has consistently maintained his innocence and it is unclear why he pleaded no contest in the first place.

Prosecutor David Gilbert said the case is being reopened.

“There is no justice without truth. It applies to everyone,” he said.

Mr Wright could be eligible for a $1.75m (£1.43m) payout under a state law that grants $50,000 (£40,900) for each year spent in prison for a conviction overturned based on new evidence.

The father of Liverpool star Luis Diaz has revealed details of his captivity – and said he intends to keep living in Colombia despite his ordeal.

Luis Manuel Diaz was released on Thursday after spending 12 days in the hands of guerrillas.

During a press conference, the 58-year-old said his kidnappers had advised him to remain calm.

He said he had “almost 12 days without sleep” and had to endure “a lot of quite difficult horseback riding, lots of mountains, rain”.

“Even though the treatment was good, I didn’t feel very comfortable,” he said.

He and his wife were abducted by armed men on motorcycles at a petrol station in the town of Barrancas, near Colombia’s border with Venezuela on 28 October.

The 26-year-old footballer’s mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued within hours by police after roadblocks were set up.

“My aspirations are to continue in my town because I have my entire family in my town,” Mr Diaz said.

“The government has given me impressively strong and great support. I trust and have faith that it will provide me security to be in Barrancas.”

During his captivity special forces were deployed to search for Mr Diaz – with air and land patrols trawling a mountain range that straddles both Colombia and Venezuela.

Officials said they could not rule out the possibility that he had been smuggled over the border – meaning he would have been out of reach of Colombian police.

A reward of $48,000 (£39,000) had been offered for information leading police to the hostage.

The Liverpool winger had pleaded with his father’s captors to release him – and said he and his brothers were in a “desperate” situation.

Mr Diaz was eventually released by guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN), according to the Colombian FA.

The capture stoked criticism of ongoing peace talks between the ELN and the government of leftist President Gustavo Petro, who is trying to put an end to Colombia’s six-decade internal conflict that has left more than 450,000 dead.

The government and the ELN began a six-month ceasefire in August.

Israel says more than 100,000 Palestinians have moved from the north to the south of Gaza in the last two days.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled northern Gaza on foot as Israeli forces push deeper into dense urban neighbourhoods and attack hospitals where residents have been sheltering.

Gaza City has been the focus of Israel’s ground offensive, with fierce battles and air raids reported on Friday in densely populated areas.

A spokesperson for the Israeli army said on Friday more than 100,000 Palestinians have moved from the north to the south of Gaza in the last two days.

A never-ending stream of people including many children, the wounded, and the elderly were seen moving south, mostly on foot, carrying only small backpacks and essential belongings.

Israel has repeatedly targeted and attacked civilians who are making their way to the south.

“The fighting in the urban areas of the Gaza Strip has reached critical levels, as the Israeli occupation forces are pushing forward and deeper,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Khan Younis.

“Now the Israeli troops are stationed in Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood, in Al-Shati refugee camp and even in the eastern areas of Gaza as they are trying to infiltrate more into the central and to main centres of Gaza City. They are only one kilometre [0.6 miles] away from Al-Shifa Hospital.”

The UN’s humanitarian office said on Friday it is unable to deliver aid trucks to the north of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people still reside.

“If there is a hell on earth, it is the north of Gaza,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva.

Also on Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, called for an investigation into what he called Israel’s use of “high-impact explosive weapons” in Gaza. He said the use of such weapons was causing indiscriminate destruction in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The UN said earlier this week that at least 1.5 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes since the war began.

More than 11,000 Palestinians, including 4,506 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel started pounding the enclave in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack that Israel says left more than 1,400 dead, mostly civilians.