THE president of Indonesia Joko Widodo has said authorities have the situation in Jakarta under control after six people died in riots by supporters of his rival in last month’s presidential election.
The clashes began on Tuesday night when supporters of former general Prabowo Subianto tried to force their way into the offices of the election supervisory agency and have continued since then.
More than two dozen vehicles were burned as rioters took over neighbourhoods in central Jakarta, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police who responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.
Flanked by the military chief, Widodo said: “I will work together with anyone to advance this country, but I will not tolerate anyone who disrupts the security, democratic processes and unity of our beloved nation.”
Subianto has refused to accept the official results of the April 17 election and instead declared himself the winner.
The Election Commission said Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, had won 55.5% of the vote, securing the moderate technocrat a second term.
Subianto, an elite figure from a wealthy family connected to former dictator Suharto, also lost to Widodo in 2014.
ONE of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died aged 48.
The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after an illness, Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust said.
Wainaina, who won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, was a key figure in the artistic community who promoted local authors.
Wainaina also helped to create tolerance for the LGBT community by coming out publicly in 2014 as gay in Kenya, a country where laws still criminalise homosexual behaviour. He published a candid essay online to mark his 43rd birthday.
“All people have dignity. There’s nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit,” he said in 2014. “There is nobody who is a beast or an animal, right? Everyone, we, we homosexuals, are people and we need our oxygen to breathe.”
PARTY leaders in Ukraine have rebelled against the new president’s decision to disband parliament and ignored his call to amend the election law.
Parliamentary leaders met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and had publicly backed his plans to hold early elections under new rules.
But in a surprising turnaround, parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy told MPs that Zelenskiy’s decree to call snap elections runs against the law.
Parliament also declined to even discuss Zelenskiy’s amendments aimed at making elections more transparent.
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