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Howard faces a tough poll

SINGAPORE: Australia goes to the polls on Saturday, with long-serving Prime Minister John Howard facing a tough challenge from Kevin Rudd, who has promised “new leadership” for the country’s rightful place in the global order of the 21st century.

Mr. Howard’s answer is that he can continue to provide “the right leadership” to keep the buoyant Australian economy on course. And, in his view, Australia can hope to stay on the right side of emerging history, on the strength of his policies of a steadfast alliance with the U.S. and new linkages with China, Japan, and other Asian powers like India.

However, Mr. Rudd, with no long-term experience as the leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) itself, has remained a clear front-runner throughout the campaign.

This has evoked comparisons with the dramatic rise of Tony Blair, another Labour leader, on the British political scene over a decade ago.

An opinion poll on Friday placed Mr. Howard’s Liberal-National Coalition at 48 per cent, against the ALP’s 52 per cent, roughly mirroring, in the reverse order, their shares of the actual vote in the last general election in 2004.

By election-eve, Mr. Howard managed to narrow a one-time huge gap, prompting the pollsters to recall his “come-back” political instincts and flair for the tough challenges. Mr. Rudd has consistently sought to debunk on two counts Mr. Howard’s record of presiding over a robust Australian economy, measured in terms of macro-level growth and “record low unemployment figures.”

The “household economies” were under “siege” on account of Mr. Howard’s industrial relations policies.

So runs the opposition argument, buttressed by a poser about the economic outlook after a possible end of the “mining boom,” currently said to be propelled exclusively by the demands from China and India.

Race relations, too, figured as an issue and, while the case of the Indian doctor, Mohammed Haneef, was mentioned, there was no great debate on these matters.

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