News in Brief
Polls: Erdogan lags opposition by more than 10 points
REUTERS – New polls show the Turkish opposition’s presidential candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leading against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by more than 10 percentage points ahead of elections on May 14 seen by many as the most consequential vote in Türkiye’s history.
The polls also show the opposition bloc, called the Nation Alliance, leading the parliamentary race, at least six points ahead of Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) and its allies. Erdogan faces the biggest challenge to his 20-year rule after the erosion of his popularity during a cost-of-living crisis.
Tunisia’s parliament convenes
for first time
since 2021
AP – Tunisia’s new parliament convened Monday, the first time the country has had a functioning legislature since the president had the previous parliament sealed off by the army in 2021.
The main opposition coalition declared it won’t recognize the new parliament, whose members were chosen in December and January in elections boycotted by the president’s opponents and ignored by the masses. Just 11% of voters cast ballots.
Rohingya camps fire ‘planned sabotage’: Bangladesh panel
Al Jazeera – A fire that left thousands of Rohingya refugees homeless in Bangladesh camps was a “planned act of sabotage”, says a panel investigating the blaze.
Nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities, including hospitals and learning centres, were destroyed in the fire on March 5, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter, officials said.
More than a million Rohingya live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.