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Scott Morrison says Australian citizens in Ukraine should leave the country as soon as possible as the situation there is increasingly dangerous, the Guardian reported.

“Our advice is clear, this is a dangerous situation ... you should seek to make your way out of Ukraine,” the Australian prime minister said in Sydney on Saturday.

He said the federal government had begun warning Australians in the troubled eastern European nation to “put themselves in a position of safety” late last year.

“We have continued that well into last month and it has been a clear message for some time now that Australians in Ukraine should be seeking to get out of the country.”

The prime minister said the government’s advice was “very clear”.

His comments come after the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who left Australia on Saturday, said Russia could invade Ukraine at any time and the US and other countries urged their citizens to leave.

Following talks as part of the Quad strategic partnership, Blinken said the US would maintain its dual-track approach to Russia and the forces it has amassed at the border “unprovoked”.

That strategy involved the US keeping diplomatic dialogue open, while also building deterrences and defences if Russia chooses to invade.

“[We’ve been] making it clear to Russia that if it chooses the path of renewed aggression, it will face massive consequences,” Blinken said on Friday.

An estimated 4,000 foreign fighters, including Australians, have joined Ukraine’s militias and regular armed forces. Numbers are likely to increase if Russia invades.

Blinken said what happens in Ukraine matters in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, in an apparent reference to China.

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“What’s at stake is not simply, as important as it is, Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Its sovereignty, its independence,” he said.

“But very basic principles that have been hard fought for after two world wars, and a cold war: undergirded security, peace and prosperity for countries around the world.

“Principles like one country can’t simply change the borders of another by force. Principles like one country can’t simply dictate to another its choices, its policies, with whom it will associate.

“If we allow those principles to be challenged with impunity, even if it’s half a world away, that will have an impact here as well. Others are watching. Others are looking to all of us to see how we respond.”

In Friday’s Quad meeting with counterparts from the US, India and Japan, the Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said she reiterated her “very deep concerns” about the presence of Russia’s military on the Ukrainian border.

“We will continue to support our allies and partners to deter this sort of aggression and to raise the costs of this kind of behaviour.”

The meeting came a week after China’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin of Russia signed a joint statement calling on the west to “abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war”, as the two leaders showcased their warming relationship in Beijing at the start of the Winter Olympics.

This so-called “no limits” agreement was one of the developments discussed at Friday’s meeting of the Quad foreign ministers.

Payne said Russia and China’s agreement was “concerning because it doesn’t represent a global order that squares with those ambitions for freedom and openness and sovereignty and the protection of territorial integrity”.

She said rules and norms were “under pressure, in particular from authoritarian regimes”.

“Australia, in our actions, works to support a world order that favours freedom – where rules, not power and coercion, resolve disputes,” she said.

Payne reiterated Australia’s “strong support for Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity” and signalled Australia was ready to join an international sanctions packagetargeted at Russia.

Earlier, Morrison met with the visiting foreign ministers and said he appreciated their support as Australia weathered“coercion and pressure” from China.

“We live in a very fragile, fragmented and contested world, and that is no more accentuated than here in our Indo-Pacific,” Morrison told the earlier meeting.

A meeting of the top leaders of three major political parties held at the Prime Minister's official residence in Baluwatar to forge consensus on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) ended inconclusively on Saturday.

Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur held the meeting with CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Nepal this afternoon.

During the meeting, the leaders discussed tabling MCC in the Parliament.

PM's press advisor Govinda Pariyar said that the next meeting will be held this evening.

Prime Minister Deuba is in favour of endorsing the MCC compact at the earliest while Dahal and Nepal against ratifying the compact in the existing form.

“In the initial days, the patriarchal society was reluctant to accept our leadership, an attitude that greatly dismayed and discouraged me,” says Sanju Kumari Chaudhari, deputy-mayor of Kohalpur municipality in the mid-western district of Banke. Many underestimated her, arguing women could not take up such a big responsibility.

But five years on, Chaudhari appears buoyant. “With the confidence I have gained, now I am capable of taking up the responsibility of mayor,” she says.

As their tenure draws to a close, ApEx talked to more than half a dozen local women leaders to learn of their experiences. Their experiences were varied but all of them spoke of having to battle patriarchy, with the society still reluctant to accept women leaders.

Says Menuka Kafle, vice-chairperson, National Association of Rural Municipalities of Nepal, women representatives are often questioned on their competence and knowledge.

“But in the past five years women leaders have proven themselves, in many cases performing better than their male counterparts,” says Kafle.

Gita Adhikari, deputy mayor of Damak municipality in the eastern district of Jhapa, also singles out the patriarchal mindset as the prominent challenge women leaders faced in the past five years.

They were also crippled by lack of experience, lack of clarity about their work, and in many places, denial of basic facilities such as vehicles for easy movement.

They gradually overcame such barriers as various organizations reached out to them with training and orientation programs.

Lack of education was another stumbling block for many women representatives. A study carried out by Asia Foundation in 2019 showed that the majority of women leaders had only basic education.

Only 12 percent of the surveyed women representatives were illiterate; another 22 percent were barely literate i.e. they could do basic reading and writing. The report emphasized the need for capacity building and a supportive environment for women in local bodies.

The 2017 elections were a watershed in women’s representation in politics and state mechanisms. A record 41 percent were elected in local governments.

Of the total 35,041 local representatives, 20,689 were male, and 14,352 female. Still, male chairs made for an overwhelming majority: of 6,473 ward chairs, there are only 62 women.

The parties mostly picked male candidates for mayoral posts and female candidates for deputy mayors in order to honor the constitutional position that one among the two should be female.

At the ward level, the Local Level Electoral Act 2017 has reserved two seats in each of the nearly 7,000 ward committees for women, one of whom has to be a Dalit.

Altogether 6,567 Dalit women were represented across the country but there was a lack of Dalit candidates in 175 wards. Over the past five years, an overwhelming number of women have served as deputies and members of the ward committees.

In 753 local governments, seven women are mayors and 11 are chairs of rural municipalities. In the first part of this series (see ‘A case of clashes egos, unclear roles’), we investigated efforts to minimize the role of women deputy mayors and legal bias against empowering deputies.

Some deputy mayors complain about not being allowed to exercise their legal rights. “I did not face such problems given my sound academic background,” says Adhikari. “But most other women representatives did.”

Adhikari, however, does not believe deputies don’t have any executive rights. “There is a lot of scope if women can be assertive. In many places, women’s handling of covid was greatly appreciated. Moreover, there is more transparency and less corruption in places with women at the helm,” she adds.

Says Meena Poudel, a political analyst, women who have served in local governments have mixed feelings about their roles. Some are encouraged and ready to take on bigger leadership roles while others are fed up by the many obstacles. “Along with giving women more space, the political parties are also obliged to create an environment for them to perform their duties.”

Political parties are still hesitant to allow local women leaders from contesting for chiefs of municipalities and rural municipalities. They reckon women do not have sufficient resources, particularly money, to win elections.

“The experience of the past five years shows that women can both win elections and perform their duties well,” says Chaudhari. “So the political parties have no excuse not to give women more leadership opportunities.”

Women’s presence in local governments has yielded some positive results. “They have tended to raise issues of gender violence and women’s health and education, which tend to be ignored by male representatives,” says Poudel.

Similarly, women have not resisted from taking austerity measures, cutting spending in non-productive sectors.

Women find it easier to share their problems with elected women representatives. They also find it easier to work on women-led social initiatives, which in turn has increased their social participation.

In the next local elections, women leaders are sure to press for more women candidates even as parties remain reluctant to go beyond the minimum constitutional limit of 33 percent.

One of the vital roles played by women in the past five years is as chairs of vice-chair-led judicial commissions, which are mandated to settle small disputes at local level. A study by the Municipal Association in 2021 suggests that women leaders are good at dispute-resolution through reconciliation.

Historically, women have had a poor presence in local bodies. In the 2010 municipal elections, Sadhana Devi Pradhan won the elections of Kathmandu municipal. In the first elections of local bodies held in 1991 after the restoration of democracy in 1990, only one percent of women were elected, a threshold that reached 21 percent in 1994 elections after the fielding of 20 percent women candidates was made legally mandatory. The number of female representatives is increasing in governance too.

Female representatives are earning public trust

Binod Poudel

Using data from citizen surveys (conducted by Kathmandu University, Interdisciplinary Analysts, and the Asia Foundation) and politicians’ surveys (conducted by Yale University, London School of Economics, Nepal Administrative Staff College and Governance Lab), we are beginning to better understand the functioning of local representatives. With respect to deputy mayors, two findings have already emerged.

First, deputy mayors are earning the trust of their constituents. Back in 2018, when local representatives had just assumed office, citizens had seen mayors more favorably than deputy mayors. But that is not the case now. This is consistent with India’s experience, where citizens have come to support local female politicians after seeing them perform.

Second, there seems to be an alignment of policy priorities between citizens and deputy mayors. While the alignment is not perfect, it is certainly not worse than the alignment of priorities between citizens and mayors.

In a survey last year, the majority of deputy mayors we interviewed expressed their intention to run for mayors in the next local elections. (The remaining forty percent had yet to make up their mind.) This kind of confidence among deputy mayors would have been unlikely had they not done well in office.

Poudel is a Kathmandu-based researcher on local bodies

Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian Covid-19 test when he arrived to see Vladimir Putin this week, and was therefore kept at a distance from the Russian leader, two sources in Macron’s entourage told Reuters, the Guardian reported.

Observers were struck by images of Macron and Putin sitting at opposite ends of 4-metre-long (13 ft) table to discuss the Ukraine crisis on Monday, with some diplomats and others suggesting Putin might have wanted to send a diplomatic message.

But the two sources, who have knowledge of the French president’s health protocol, told Reuters Macron had been given a choice: either he accepted a PCR test done by the Russian authorities and was allowed to get close to Putin, or he refused and had to abide by more stringent social distancing.

“We knew very well that meant no handshake and that long table. But we could not accept that they get their hands on the president’s DNA,” one of the sources told Reuters, referring to security concerns if the French leader was tested by Russian doctors.

A Kremlin spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message from Reuters seeking comment.

The second source in Macron’s entourage confirmed Macron declined to take a Russian PCR test. The source said Macron instead took a French PCR test before departure and an antigen test done by his own doctor once in Russia.

“The Russians told us Putin needed to be kept in a strict health bubble,” the second source said.

On Thursday, three days after Macron and Putin had their socially distanced meeting, the Russian leader received Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The two men shook hands, and sat close to each other, divided only by a small coffee table.