Global News Podcast - Georgian PM rejects voter fraud claims as president calls mass rally

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Georgia's PM denies vote rigging claims in Saturday's election as the president blames Russian involvement. Also: ex-Bolivian leader Evo Morales says he was shot at, and where there's no sunlight for three months.

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. World of Secrets, Al-Faid, Predator at Harrods is back with a new episode following the latest developments in the investigation. Listen now by searching for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss and in the early hours of Monday, October 28th. These are our main stories. Georgia's election result prompts allegations of fraud, vote tampering and physical attacks. So did the governing Georgia Dream

Party really win? We are receiving severe judgment. Japan's Prime Minister admits to his party's crushing blow, its worst election result for many years. And the Iranian President Massoud Peseshkian, has said Tehran is not looking for war but will give an appropriate response to Israel's airstrikes. Also in this podcast, the former Bolivian leader Ivo Morales says he's narrowly escaped assassination. There were 14 shots, one to the driver's head. He arrived bleeding and got another shot that

hit his arm. Luckily none of them hit me. It's not how an election is supposed to be run. In Georgia there have been allegations of bribery and ballot box tampering, as well as those reports of physical violence being meted out on people trying to cast their vote. As we record this podcast, the official results of the weekend's contest are now pretty clear. The ruling Georgia Dream Party seems to have won about 54% of the vote. But three separate teams of election monitors say they witnessed significant violation of the rules. Antonio Lopez-Historis-White was head of the European Parliament's delegation.

In my particular case, I witnessed this in a polling station. Confusion, chaos. It was a case of ballot box stuffing and also the closing of that polling stations afterwards. Some of our members also saw some physical assault on observers attempting to report on violations, observer and media removal from polling stations, intimidation of voters inside and outside of polling stations and in some cases voting secrecy was not always ensured. Election monitors have not gone as far as saying that the election was stolen or the overall result falsified. Opposition parties however have shown no such forbearance. One described the outcome as a constitutional coup while another called for protests. Perhaps not surprisingly though the victorious

Georgia Dream Party insists the result stands. One of the party's senior members Nicola Samkaradze dismissed any concerns as marginal to the overall voter tally. There were 3,111 precincts. So if you take a closer look, 17 violations in 3,111 precincts is less than 0.1 percent. So these violations, even if they were violations, because this has not been confirmed yet by the CDC or by the law enforcement organs, they do not have any impact on the overall results of the elections. Despite these protestations, Georgia's president has now weighed in. Salome Sarabasvili has long been a thorn in the side of the country's ruling party, frequently taking a different line to the government, particularly on foreign

policy matters. Our correspondent in the Georgian capital, Rehan Demitri, told me about her latest intervention. President Salome Saraboshvili, she addressed Georgians from her palace, standing next to her were all the leaders of the opposition and she said that they all refused to recognize the outcome of Saturday's election. She used strong words and she said that recognizing the legitimacy of the parliamentary election would equal quote the recognition of Russia's entry, unquote, into Georgia. She accused Russia of interference, of tampering with the electronic system that was used for the first time, electronic voting machines, but no evidence was provided. It was just a strong call. She thanked all the supporters of the opposition for voting, as she said,

for Georgia's European future and urged people to come out to the streets on Monday evening to defend their votes. So strong words there from the Georgian president. What effect do you think that's going to have? Well, I think a lot of people who cast their ballots on Saturday in favor of the opposition parties, they have been waiting to hear from the opposition leaders what happens next. It has been relatively quiet, I would say, after the official results were announced by the Central Election Commission. And all the opposition leaders, they were kind of in consultations together and individually and finally the statement was made by

the president and the presence of all the opposition leaders standing there next to Salome Zurabishvili indicates now that she is in effect the leader of the opposition because people are uniting around her. Her current term will expire in mid-December and the plan is now to protest and to contest the outcome of Saturday's election. So calls for protest, what's the mood on the streets when you've talked to voters who presumably many of whom are angry about these allegations of voter fraud? Very quiet. People were processing the outcome and many were questioning how fair was the count. And I think now they've heard about this plan and we will see what happens next

and how many people will come out to the streets on Monday and how much appetite is there to protest and to start what looks like may turn into a lengthy struggle against the governing Georgian Dream Party. Rehan, Dimitri and Tbilisi. Japan's politicians are often accused of speaking rather elliptically, deploying euphemisms rather than telling it how it is. Not so the country's current Prime Minister. In the wake of his party's apparently terrible election result Shigeru Ishiba told state television, we are receiving severe judgment. That

certainly does look like being the case. The projected result shows the ruling Liberal Democrats will lose their majority. A serious shock in a country where they've been in power for almost the entire post-Second World War period. From Tokyo, Shaima Khalil reports. This election has been dramatic and unpredictable, which is highly unusual for Japan. The public have sent a strong message to the ruling party and punished it at the ballot box. Even according to the best estimates, the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been

in power almost continuously since 1955, has lost its single-party majority in the country's powerful lower house. The opposition, however, has made significant gains. Not enough to govern, but enough to hurt the LDP. This snap election follows a tumultuous couple of years for Japan's ruling party, which was rocked by scandals and internal conflicts. It was a political gamble that backfired. The LDP's corruption scandal saw dozens of its lawmakers being investigated for pocketing millions of dollars in proceeds from political fundraising events.

This while Japanese households have continued to struggle with inflation and a stagnant economy. These voters told the BBC they were most concerned about their personal finances. The prices have gone up. Now I pay 10,000 yen or 20,000 yen extra for the food per month. I'm not buying the same things I used to. I'm trying to save up, but it still costs more. The LDP has the slush fund issues, but the opposition also doesn't stand out. What a wretched state the ruling party is in. That is what I feel most.

Japan now faces an unusually chaotic political landscape in a region which is becoming increasingly unstable. Shima Khalil, as we heard there, the LDP has been dogged by allegations, corruption and funding irregularities. Dr John Nilsenwright is head of the Japan and Korea program at Cambridge University. He told Julia Marshall more about the impacts of these scandals on the party and its future. Well this has been a dramatic vote of no confidence in the government. The critical issue has been this question of political corruption and government competence. The Liberal Democratic Party under its previous prime minister, Prime Minister Kishida, became

embroiled over the course of the last year in a scandal involving illegal use of fundraising to support party insiders. The public, I think, took a very dismal view of Prime Minister Kishida's efforts to deal with that scandal, a scandal which led to the dismantling of the so-called factional system within the LDP, at least formally. And on the back of Kishida's declining popularity, the party decided to change leaders about three or four weeks ago, electing Mr. Ishiba, a former defense secretary as the new prime minister. And the expectation was that Mr.

Ishiba would regain, restore confidence in the LDP. He presented himself as something of a party outsider, but very quickly, having almost immediately announced the general election shortly after becoming the LDP president, he really backpedaled on some of his signature policy innovations and the party, I think, has been judged very critically by the electorate. We've seen this dramatic drop in the LDP support rate and very strong support for the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

So where do we go from here? Who is going to form the next government? We don't know because no party has a decisive position in the diet. We will have about, well, technically 30 days before Parliament has to reconvene and appoint a new government. It will really be, I think, a question of horse trading. The problem for the government and problem for Prime Minister Ishiba is his main coalition partner, Komeito, has also seen a sharp drop in its support. And he will

need to look to right of center parties like Ishin, which is a party that is very heavily concentrated in the Osaka region of Japan. But Ishin has made it very clear that it has no plans to join the government. So with that very clearly established public position, there will have to be a lot of backroom horse trading, I think, to see if either Ishiba can create a majority by reaching out to some of those opposition parties, or maybe he will have to govern as a minority government, in which case he will be a hostage to Fortune on a whole range of policy issues. He doesn't have enough support to decisively pass budget measures, which are critical. The government will lose support over committee positions.

It will be really a case of which of the main parties can actually create a viable coalition. Dr John Nelson Wright. India has long prided itself on its level of internet connectivity. Even in the most remote villages you'll find people hooked up online, usually by their mobile phones, buying, selling, conducting all kinds of commercial and personal business digitally. But the flip side of this is that people are vulnerable to online fraud. The latest scam is known as digital arrest and involves people

dressing up as police or tax officials to fool their targets into transferring cash. It's now such a serious problem that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has got involved warning people about the risk. Our South Asia regional editor Ambaras Anitharajan told me how the scam works. Some of these fraudsters they target especially elderly or people who are living alone by making a quick video call. They put up a very real situation like the backdrop. It will be like a police station or a tax office.

It's all in a studio setup and wearing a proper police uniform. So someone, an individual who's living alone in some part of Delhi or outside, they will be stunned, first of all shocked to get a phone call from police and they tell them don't move out of your house, don't contact anyone and you are under investigation. So after a prolonged conversation they tell them, okay if you transfer this much money we will try to solve problem, but you have to pay a fine. So this is what you call digital arrest and more and more cases are being reported in India.

Now the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been warning people about digital arrest. Why has he got involved? I mean, this would normally surely be a matter for the police or other crime authorities. Well, he does his monthly radio address. It's called Monkey Bath, where he talks to, directly addresses people of India on various issues. He talks on culture, politics, sometimes even sports. So this particular address, he's focusing more on this digital scam, digital arrest.

It shows how serious the problem is, because even though some people are willing to come forward to complain to police, there are many others who don't want to go to the police, shows how serious the problem is because even though some people are willing to come forward to complain to police, there are many others who don't want to go to the police fearing that it will cause embarrassment and they don't want to tell people they have lost money. And there are also cases of sex extortion on video calls. So some people even took their own lives fearing that it might embarrass the whole family, bring shame on the family. That's why the fact that he's speaking about it shows how serious the problem is.

India does have a very high rate of internet usage. It's considered a pretty digitally savvy nation. I guess some people will be surprised that so many people can fall for a trick like this. People are using mobile gadgets and then using more and more digital transactions, not only for bank transfers, paying bills to various other activities, but you also have to remember many of these data, they get stolen from various companies. And there are also people who can pay money to get these data. Like if you pay a certain amount of money, you will get like one million Indian national ID card numbers. So there are so many things going on. That

is where the awareness is lacking. The hackers are always one step ahead of the law enforcement authority. So that is again a challenge not only for India, for the rest of the world, how these cyber crimes can be avoided. Ambarasan Ethirajan. Plenty of city dwellers fantasise about giving it all up to go and live in the countryside. Rather, fewer of course ever actually take the plunge. But for those who one might refer to as country curious, there is a way to keep afoot in both camps, retaining a city job while becoming a part-time farmer.

It's a way of life developed in France. Hugh Schofield has been out meeting members of this new breed known as Les Slasheurs. So I'm picking the leaves, placing them on my hands and then cutting. This will all grow back. It's a very vigorous crop. I'm learning about the cultivation of watercress. Did you know it was brought to France from Russia by Napoleon? That's on the word of Matthew Chardon, now a naturalized Frenchman who's got a small

plot of land next to an essential spring for water about 40 miles south of Paris, where he's helping bring back what had once been a big rural employer here. Watercress is quite simple. There's no need for big tractors or big investments, you just need a pair of boots and a knife and you're off. But the point about Matthew is that growing and selling watercress is only one part of what he does. He's also a teacher of scientific English at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Rather cleverly, he's developed for himself a hybrid lifestyle, part urban, part rural.

Today, I'm at the university Mondays and Thursdays on the farm, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, harvesting and delivering. And the summer, we then produce our own seeds. We have to clean out all the beds and get the crop going again. So I'm here all summer. And it suits you, this kind of hybrid lifestyle, does it?

Yes, yeah. I get a lot of outdoors, so I'm quite happy to be sitting down on a Monday and a Thursday and to charge up my batteries and then I'm really happy to get back in the fields. When he started out in this double life a few years ago, Matthew didn't realize it, but he was actually part of a trend.

Of course, there's nothing new in city types wanting to go back to nature. But what's different now is the hybrid approach, the realization that it's now feasible and of course financially safer to become a farmer part time. People who do this here have taken on the name slasher couilleur. It's a play on French words with the slasher bit meaning someone who does more than one job, as in I'm a journalist slash farmer. There's an organization called Les Slasher Couillere, which runs training courses in Paris to help people who want to take the plunge.

The founder is Julien Moudet, a data engineer who realized during COVID, when he spent time at his grandparents farm in Normandy that he needed something else in his life. In a corporate environment, a lot of people are actually wondering like, why are they doing what they're doing? There's a lot of like people getting into like burnout, anxiety, just questioning the meaning of what they're doing, you know. And then when I was at the farm, that's not the question.

Like you know why you're doing what you're doing, because you're producing food for people, but you're doing this with conditions that are tough. There's a lot of risk, a lot of uncertainty. I just realized that those two worlds are facing crisis, and they are the solutions of each other. Farms need more hands to grow stuff from the earth, especially if we're to move to a less industrialised form of agriculture.

City-bound computer workers, purveyors of mere words and tabulations, face a crisis of redundancy and pointlessness. Why not bring the two worlds together? That's the idea that inspires the people here. That report by Hugh Schofield. Still to come? Are you one of those people who rushes to board an aeroplane before it's your turn? one airline has a new way to stop you. searching for world of secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has announced in an online video that he survived

an assassination attempt. Mr Morales claims two vehicles intercepted his car and fired gunshots. More details from Alexander Schlichter. Evo Morales claims his car was intercepted by two vehicles, after which shots were fired with a bullet passing centimetres from his head. There were 14 shots, one to the driver's head. He arrived bleeding and got another shot that hit his arm. Luckily, none of them hit me. Evo Marales blamed the alleged attack on Bolivia's current president Luis Arce, a former ally

turned political rival. A government minister denied security forces had undertaken any action against Mr Morales. A former coca grower, Evo Morales served as president for 13 years. He was highly popular until he tried to bypass the constitution to seek a fourth term. Alexander Schlichter. Iran insists it's not seeking war with Israel, but will make what it called an appropriate response to Israel's airstrikes. In the early hours of Saturday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first public comments on the attack, said they shouldn't be downplayed or exaggerated. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the airstrikes had achieved all of their objectives.

From Jerusalem, our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Asher reports. The full impact of Israel's attack on Iran is still being assessed. The Iranian leadership seems set on not being rushed into any quick response. It's asked for the UN Security Council to hold an emergency session on the incident. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that any action Tehran takes must be governed by what is in his country's best interests. country's best interests. They made a mistake. They, of course, exaggerated it. Their exaggeration is wrong. But note that downplaying it is also wrong. Saying no, there was nothing, it wasn't important. This is also wrong.

The message from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been that Israel did what it had to do with what he called precision and power. Many in Israel share that view, but even as Mr. Netanyahu spoke at a ceremony marking the anniversary in the Jewish calendar of the October 7 attacks, relatives of victims heckled him. Dear families, The memory of your loved ones, They shouted shame on you.

Despite recent military successes against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, anger in Israel over the plight of the remaining hostages in Gaza remains potent. A new diplomatic drive launched a few days ago to try to restart negotiations on their release and ceasefire is continuing, with the heads of Mossad and the CIA meeting in Qatar. Israel's defense minister Yoav Gallant has said that freeing the hostages will demand painful compromises. The Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has proposed a two-day truce in order to enable the release of four hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners. Sebastian Asha, as Israelis mourn their dead, so too do Palestinians.

Nearly 43,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past year, according to the Hamas authorities. This month, Israel's offensive has shifted to the north of Gaza. Buildings are being levelled, aid into the area has been blocked and civilians forced to flee. Many of them were already displaced from their homes. Among the recent attacks was an Israeli airstrike on a building in the town of Beit Lahir. Dozens were killed. Among them more than 20 relatives of the Palestinian poet, Masab

Abu Toha, who's based in the United States. He told my colleague Julian Marshall what had happened. What I know is that my wife's relatives have been staying in their houses in Bet Lahir. So about 30 people were staying in that house. At least 22 of them were killed, including my wife's uncle, his wife, three married daughters with their children, and also one of the other uncle's children, his wife, and three of his children. Yeah, what happened yesterday was a massacre against my wife's family, and also it was a massacre for other people because the airstrike not only targeted my wife's uncle's family, but also some other houses around them. The Israeli military said that they carried out, and I quote, a precise strike using precise

munitions against Hamas fighters in a building in Beit Lahiya. Yeah, this is what they always say. When they target schools, they say it's a precise and they kill 50 people. Last October, I lost 31 members of my extended family. And if you ask them, oh, it was a precise airstrike on targeting a Hamas fighter, whatever it was, how can you believe that this is a precise airstrike? Does every country has the right to say this when they kill civilians in Israel? I would like to see an evidence that there was a Hamas fighter and he was the target

of that airstrike. As far as you know, there were no Hamas fighters in the vicinity of this house that was targeted. Of course, no. I mean, if there was a Hamas, he wouldn't be hiding in a house. He would be, as you saw in the videos, they would be fighting the Israeli tanks. And even if there was a Hamas fighter, this is not a justification to kill their families. I mean, half of the people, I have a list of 22 names, more than half of them were children. How can you justify killing civilians

because there is a Hamas fighter? The building in which your relatives were reduced to rubble presumably, is there any search ongoing for survivors? What's happening right now is not only the act of targeting a building, it's also about blocking any ambulances or fire trucks from going to that area. People are not only killed or wounded but even they are not having the chance of being

rescued. I just saw a video of a relative of mine whose two sisters were killed in the airstrike and he was under the rubble, he sneaked under the rubble and there was someone was filming him and he was calling names Asma is someone alive and then he called another sister Jihan are you alive can someone hear me and yesterday someone from my family sent me a message I mean I'm based in the states right now and he said do you have any friends in the north do you have any American friends who have some access to any flashlights, maybe through the Red Cross or whatever? Because they wanted to search for the dead or the wounded under the rubble. It was night. It was about seven

or eight in the evening when the airstrike happened. Not only are they not allowed to live, but even to try and survive. What do you think the Israelis are trying to do in the far north of Gaza? Yeah, it's about occupying the whole of Palestine, not only after 1948, but they are after every single plot of land in Palestine. You know, Julian, you are seeing this in the West Bank. They are evicting Palestinians from their farms and from their houses, and they are occupying these places.

So why don't you understand that what they are doing in the Ghazrib is similar. But what they are doing is not only killing people, they're not only blocking ambulances and foot tracks. And by the way, Julian, the last time a drop of water and a foot track entered Gaza was 22 days ago. That was in the north of Gaza, yes? Exactly. I'm talking about north Gaza. So they are starving people there. I mean, it doesn't mean that they are not starving the whole of the Ghazrib, but they are starving so badly the people in North Gaza because they want them to go away. Mossad Abu Toha talking to Julian Marshall. The BBC contacted the Israeli military for a response to that interview. No one was available.

Many countries in the Northern Hemisphere, including the UK, turn their clocks back for daylight saving on Sunday, giving us brighter mornings, but also darker evenings. Well, if you're struggling with the lack of sunlight during this time of the year, spare a thought for the people of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago way up near the Arctic Circle. They've just entered their dark season where there's barely any daylight for three months.

Evelyn Lundr has been living there for six years and told us how she copes. On Friday, we had the last sunset and we won't have a sunrise until the 16th of February. I, myself, I try to just stay as normal, just do my daily routines. And I think that's the most important thing to stay sane during this season. Right now we can have some sort of daylight since the dark season just started, but from mid-November until the end of January, we have this thing that we call polar night. And during the polar night, the sun is always at least six degrees below the horizon, which makes it pitch black 24-7.

You have the dark season, but you have so many positive things with it. Like we have the northern lights and when the sun returns, we can go snowmobiling and we have this amazing untouched nature that is just so beautiful. So if you like to be outside and explore it's about what is a big playground for adults. Evelin Lundar. Here's a question I've often pondered. Why are people so keen to board an aeroplane quickly? Yes, some are hoping to find a good spot to stash their hand luggage but it often seems that everyone wants to be in their seat as soon as possible with their legs squashed, their elbows pulled in and quite possibly a screaming baby next to them.

And this rush is a problem for airlines. The staff try to get passengers to board in clear order but instead they all seem to pile in at once as if they're worried the plane might take off without them. Now however one airline thinks it's got a solution to this. Ella Bicknell has been investigating. So you've made it to the airport. You've checked in, got through security, passed through duty free to find your gate, and there it is. A big long queue of people also waiting to board the

plane. It's a frustration for passengers but also for airlines. Airplanes only make money when they're, well, in the air. So the quicker providers make the boarding process, reducing that turnaround time, the more revenue they can generate. In fact, a recent study from the University of Hamburg found that for every minute a plane is delayed, it can cost the airline as much as $250. If you're operating more than 6,800 flights a day, like American Airlines, that is a huge problem. So how do you speed up the process?

Do you let people board the plane at random or back to front? United Airlines encourages its passengers with window seats to board before others. However, the most common method is to board in groups, prioritizing first class and business class passengers. American Airlines have gone one step further. To stop what they call gate lice, that's passengers who cause delays by boarding before their designated group is called, they've introduced a new technology. If a passenger attempts to scan the ticket before their turn, an audible and potentially embarrassing alarm will be emitted. Staff will be alerted and passengers will be sent back in the queue.

So far, American Airlines have tested out the technology in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona, with plans to roll it out at Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C. They say the new system not only addresses the frustrations of passengers, but also enhances the overall travel experience. a special edition of the Global News podcast ahead of the UN's climate change conference which starts next month. We want you to send in your questions for our experts to answer. Anything climate related and what the world is doing to try to address the problem. We've already had lots of questions in, some from Brazil about how much pressure companies are under to meet their emissions

targets and several of you want to know three simple things we can do to reduce our own carbon footprint. Just send us a voice note with your question to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks very much. Nick Miles, if you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Chris Kazaris and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye. World of Secrets, Al-Fa'id Predator at Harrods is back with a new episode, following the

latest developments in the investigation. Listen now by searching for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.