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HANOI (Reuters) – Stand-up comedian Nguyen Cong Vuong wants to shake up Vietnam’s notoriously dull politics, and says images of lawmakers snoozing in televised debates is no laughing matter.

It’s a view shared by Mai Khoi, a sassy, pink-haired singer who says politics should not be the exclusive domain of the ruling Communist Party.

They are not political activists but among an unprecedented number of ordinary Vietnamese who want to run as independents in a parliamentary election to unseat the war veterans and greying bureaucrats they say are out of touch with a young, fast-changing country.

“I want to change perceptions of politics, bring some youth and energy to the National Assembly,” said Vuong, 34, a well-known TV comedian and performance artist.

“It’s our push for democracy. We don’t want to see people sleeping in parliament. They should realise its better for the country to bring some new faces and fresh ideas.”

But that is easier said than done when the Communist Party controls the 500-seat, rubber-stamp legislature and a small minority of non-party lawmakers are endorsed by state institutions.

The party also decides who gets on the ballot papers.

Some 100 people in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have registered as self-nominated candidates for the May election, generating support on Facebook and a level of public interest about politics seldom seen in Vietnam.

Their chosen path is unorthodox and contentious, shunning the traditional route of joining the 4.5 million member Communist Party, which is largely considered unfashionable by a swelling young population.

GAGA OVER POLITICS

Often dubbed Vietnam’s version of Lady Gaga, Mai Khoi, 32, has courted controversy with her provocative on-stage attire and lyrics, which include the word “orgasm”.

She wants to address social issues in parliament, like same-sex marriages, and said being an independent means not being shackled by the Communist Party’s strict rules and traditions.

“Many people are surprised and wonder why a singer like me wants to join the National Assembly,” she told Reuters.

“Everyone should care about politics. It affects all of our lives … The NA allows more chances to speak up.”

Talk of political plurality is taboo in Vietnam, even more so as the party’s legitimacy is increasingly challenged by the public’s insatiable appetite for social media.

Asked by Reuters for his views on everyday people seeking election, retired lawmaker and social science professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet said it was “not suitable” for him to comment.

Some potential candidates are causing a stir, however, with 20 activists, bloggers and protesters running disciplined campaigns to test the sincerity of the party’s promises of inclusively.

The five-yearly election is the only national poll the public votes in. What has raised eyebrows is that in Vietnam’s two biggest cities, there are more self-nominated applicants than ones backed by the party or state bodies.

The party now has the tricky task of deciding how open it is prepared to be.

Some independents say they’re experiencing friction.

Vuong is angered by media articles accusing him of being a proxy for anti-government groups, while Mai Khoi said her application had hit a snag over paperwork, which she insisted was in order.

The Hanoi election committee on Thursday said unsavoury elements were trying to influence the poll, saying some applicants were backed or funded by “domestic and foreign reactionary forces”.

That aside, the committee’s propaganda chief Nguyen Van Phong hailed the process as a success.

“It shows that the democratic spirit has prevailed,” state media quoted him saying. “People want to contribute to society.”

(Reporting by Martin Petty; Additional reporting by My Pham and Mai Nguyen; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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DAYTON, Ohio (Reuters) – Secret Service officers rushed on stage to protect U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump during a disturbance at a rally on Saturday, a day after rowdy protests shut down his event in Chicago.

Trump briefly ducked at the podium and four Secret Service members scrambled to surround him after a man charged the stage at Dayton International Airport in Ohio.

Officers then grabbed the man, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, before he was able to reach the stage and hauled him away.

“I was ready. I don’t know if I would have done well but I would have been out there fighting, folks,” Trump told a rally later in the day. He said the man “was looking to do harm.”

The incident further increased tension after Trump’s Chicago rally was scrapped amid chaotic scenes on Friday.

Trump’s Republican rivals hurled scorn at the New York billionaire, saying he helped create the nervous atmosphere that is now sweeping the race for the White House with his fiery rhetoric.

Trump blamed supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for the incidents in Chicago, where scuffles broke out between protesters and backers of the real estate magnate. He called the U.S. senator from Vermont “our communist friend.”

The scenes in Chicago followed a series of recent incidents of violence at Trump rallies, in which protesters and journalists have been punched, tackled and hustled out of venues, raising concerns about degrading security leading into the Nov. 8 election.

“All of a sudden a planned attack just came out of nowhere,” Trump said in Dayton, describing the events in Chicago. He called the protest leaders there “professional people”.

Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont, hit back.

“As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar. Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests.”

President Barack Obama told a fundraising event in Dallas  that political leaders “should be trying to bring us together and not turning us against one another.”

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton drew criticism for releasing an initial statement that did not mention Trump by name and tied violent campaign events to a shooting in a South Carolina black church last year that left 9 people dead.

While campaigning in St. Louis, Missouri, on Saturday, Clinton criticized Trump directly for “ugly, divisive rhetoric” that encourages aggression and violence.

CRUCIAL PRIMARIES

The months-long Republican race may be coming to a head at nominating contests on Tuesday where Trump is seeking victories that might give him an almost insurmountable lead for the nomination.

Primaries in Florida and Ohio will be particularly important since they are winner-take-all states, where all Republican delegates are given to the winner of the popular vote instead of being awarded proportionally.

It will be a make-or-break day for Republican candidates John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who both must win their home states to forge a credible path forward.

Trump has drawn fervent support as well as criticism for his calls to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to impose a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

His rallies often attract small groups of protesters, but Friday’s was the first at which there may have been as many protesters as supporters.

At an event in Kansas City on Saturday, Trump urged police to arrest people who disrupt his events.

“They’ll have to explain to Mom and Dad why they have a police record and why they can’t get a job. And you know what? I’m going to start pressing charges against all these people and then we won’t have a problem,” he said to cheers.

Outside the rally, police broke up confrontations between Trump supporters and protesters who shouted, “Shut it down!”

Police on horseback and riot gear briefly moved into a crowd of protesters and officers used what appeared to be pepper spray against demonstrators for a few seconds.

Rubio, who according to the New York Times slightly edged out Kasich on Saturday to win the Washington D.C. primary with 37 percent of the vote, bemoaned the state of the presidential race during an event in Florida, saying it had “become reality television.”

“Last night in Chicago, we saw images that make America look like a Third World country,” Rubio said, reminding supporters the stakes on Tuesday are high.

Kasich told journalists before a campaign event in Cincinnati, Ohio, that Trump had created a “toxic environment.”

Republican candidate U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called the Chicago incidents “sad.”

Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer said that the tension on display at Trump’s events are a proxy for what is going on in the electorate writ large.

“People have strong reactions to Donald Trump,” Geer said. “They are playing out in the voting booth and they are also playing out at these events.”

Geer said the Chicago cancellation would likely embolden Trump’s supporters – an idea floated by Trump in several television interviews.

Clinton picked up four delegates in the Northern Mariana Islands’ Democratic primary on Saturday, to Sanders’ two.

On the Republican side, Cruz won around two-thirds of the votes in Wyoming’s Republican nominating contest but because of the state’s unusual rules it is not clear how many Wyoming delegates will go his way at the Republican Convention in July.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Idrees Ali and Amanda Becker in Washington.; Editing by Alistair Bell and Sandra Maler)

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By Jeff Mason and Alana Wise

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz  released tax returns for several years on Saturday in an effort to pressure billionaire front-runner Donald Trump to follow suit.

Rubio, whose financial decisions earlier in his life have come under scrutiny, paid $78,917 (£56,914) in taxes on $335,561 in gross income in 2014, along with his wife, Jeanette.

Cruz paid $389,124 in taxes on $1.2 million income in 2014 along with his wife, Heidi, who is employed by Goldman Sachs and currently on leave from the bank.

Rubio and Cruz, both first-term U.S. senators, trail Trump in national polls and are fighting to stop the political novice from locking up the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election after big wins in South Carolina and Nevada.

The real estate developer has said he will not release his returns until a routine audit has been completed.

“If Donald is embarrassed about his tax returns, it’s up to the voters to assess the facts. It’s time to stop delaying and come clean with the American people,” Cruz said in a statement.

Rubio released his last five years of federal returns on Saturday, while Cruz submitted four years.

Rubio said Trump, who has promoted his success as a businessman as one of his key qualifications for the presidency, may not be as wealthy as he suggests.

“I think part of it is he’s not as rich as he says he is,” Rubio said while campaigning in Georgia.

Rubio and his wife have only one debt: the mortgage on their house, the campaign said, seeking to emphasize that the senator had moved past previous financial woes.

Rubio often refers to the nearly $150,000 in student loan debt he incurred by the time he graduated from law school, paid off with proceeds made from his 2012 autobiography.

He also faced questions for struggling for several months in 2008 to pay the mortgage on his $384,000 South Florida home, despite a $300,000 salary from his job at a Miami law firm.

Rubio also drew scrutiny for liquidating a retirement account to cover expenses, such as home repairs and school fees. That was reflected in $68,241 of income as part of his 2014 return.

During his 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, which followed his stint as a Florida state lawmaker from 2005-2006, Rubio had to defend his use of a Republican Party-issued American Express credit card for more than $7,200 personal expenses, which he later paid back.

Trump has accused Rubio of living beyond his means.

Rubio’s adjusted gross income in 2010 was $183,826 in 2010. It spiked to $929,439 in 2012, when his book “An American Son: A Memoir” was published.

“There is no doubt the Rubio family has come a long way from the days when their largest monthly expense was a check to (student loan provider) Sallie Mae and checks were sent in the mail to pay bills with the hope the payment did not arrive before the next paycheck was deposited into their account,” Rubio’s campaign said.

Cruz’s wealth, with $1.2 million in combined income with his wife in 2014, placed them well above the $423,000 threshold of the top 1 percent of earners in Texas, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Alana Wise; Editing by Leslie Adler and Mary Milliken)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s political rhetoric is “racist,” and evocative of Adolf Hitler, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told reporters at an event in Mexico City on Saturday.

“This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration,” Calderon said. “He is acting and speaking out against immigrants that have a different skin colour than he does, it is frankly racist and [he is] exploiting feelings like Hitler did in his time,” Calderon said.

Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border and has said he will make Mexicans pay for a wall on the border.

Felipe Calderon was president of Mexico from 2006-12.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Calderon’s predecessor, also compared Trump to Hitler in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

“He reminds me of Hitler,” Fox told Cooper on Friday.

(Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein and Luis Rojas, editing by G Crosse)

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By Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland

LAS VEGAS/COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rolled to victory on Saturday in South Carolina in a contest that saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush drop out, while Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton beat back a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders in Nevada.

The victories by Trump and Clinton solidified their positions as the front-runners to win their parties’ respective presidential nominations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Bush suffered a distant fourth place finish in the Republican contest and announced he had suspended his campaign, ending his dream of becoming a third Bush president after his father and brother.

“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision,” an emotional Bush said in Columbia. He finished far out of the running in each of the first three states.

By winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and holding leads in the 11 states that vote on March 1, Trump was arguably on track to win the nomination, an outcome that seemed astounding to contemplate when he got into the race last summer.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to be derailed at this point,” said Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to former Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.

Trump, 69, was declared the victor about an hour after polls closed in South Carolina.

“Let’s put this thing away,” Trump said in his victory speech in Spartanburg.

Trump was as feisty and anti-establishment as ever, denouncing TV pundits for saying that if his remaining opponents consolidated around one Trump alternative, there would be enough anti-Trump votes to beat him.

“These geniuses,” he said. “They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also. You don’t just add them together.”

He easily defeated Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who were in a close fight for second place and the right to declare themselves the anti-Trump alternative.

With 73 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Trump had 33.1 percent, followed by Rubio with 22.3 percent and Cruz with 21.7 percent.

It was Trump’s second victory in a row, an outcome that frightens establishment Republicans but thrills the “throw-the-bums-out” conservative base of the party that has long been fed up with Washington.

The bellicose New York billionaire had created some last-minute drama in South Carolina after Pope Francis said on Thursday his views on U.S. immigration were “not Christian.” Trump initially called Francis “disgraceful,” but later called him “a wonderful guy.”

Trump, who has also advocated a ban on Muslim immigrants to counter domestic terror threats, stirred fresh controversy on Friday when he told a crowd about a U.S. general who was said to have dipped bullets in pigs’ blood to kill Muslim prisoners a century ago.

After South Carolina, the Republican presidential campaign is about to rapidly pick up steam in March when dozens of states hold nominating contests. Another candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, is concentrating on midwestern and northern states in the state-by-state contest to pick nominees for the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton’s victory in the Nevada Democratic caucuses, meanwhile, could help calm Democratic Party worries about the strength of her campaign.

Her win denied Sanders the breakthrough win he had sought in a state with a heavy minority population, but his ability to close a one-time double-digit polling lead for Clinton suggests the Democratic nominating race will be long and hard fought.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was leading with 52.5 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 47.4 percent. Vote counting was delayed in Nevada by heavy turnout.

Clinton’s victory buoyed worried supporters and gave her fresh momentum as she heads into the next contest in South Carolina on Feb. 27, where polls show her with a double-digit lead largely as a result of heavy support from black voters.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” she told cheering supporters at a victory rally in Las Vegas. “This is your campaign.”

Sanders vowed to fight on and set his sights on the 11 states that vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 1. He predicted that when Democrats gather for their nominating convention in Philadelphia in July, “We are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.”

“The wind is at our banks,” he said. “We have the momentum.”

After routing Clinton in New Hampshire and finishing a strong second in Iowa, states with nearly all-white populations, Sanders had hoped to prove in Nevada that he could win over black and Hispanic voters and compete nationally as the race moves to states with more diverse populations.

But entrance polling in Nevada showed he badly lost among black voters, by 76 percent to 22 percent, a bad omen for South Carolina and other southern states with big black populations. He did win among Hispanics by 53 percent to 45 percent.

Clinton’s campaign has argued she would assert control of the Democratic race once it moved to more diverse states with black and Hispanic populations who have traditionally backed Clinton and have been slow to warm to Sanders.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland; Writing by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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By Charles Lammam
and Ben Eisen
The Fraser Institute

VANCOUVER, Troy Media: Each year the Fraser Institute measures and ranks the performance of Canada’s premiers in terms of how well they managed provincial finances while in office. Premiers who managed spending more prudently, balanced the books and paid down debt, and reduced and maintained competitive tax rates, rank higher. This year, Premier Christy Clark ranked first overall, essentially tied with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard for the best record, followed closely by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

Let’s start with what Clark has done well over the period she is evaluated (2011/12 to 2014/15).

Clark managed the growth in government spending more prudently compared to her counterparts. During her tenure, she increased program spending by an average annual rate of 2.1 per cent, just enough to keep pace with the combined rate of inflation and population growth.

BC Premier Christy Clark’s biggest weakness with respect to fiscal policy is in the area of taxation

Importantly, the rate of government spending growth under Clark’s tenure was less than the rate of economic growth (3.7 per cent). As a result, the size of B.C.’s government – measured as spending relative to the provincial economy – decreased, meaning the provincial government now plays a less prominent role in B.C.’s economy.

Another bright spot for Clark is that her government has consistently balanced the books. In recent years, several provinces have consistently run budget deficits while B.C. has posted surpluses. In fact, Clark is one of only two premiers (along with Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall) to maintain a small budget surplus, on average, while in office.

Despite finishing on top, Premier Clark’s record has weaknesses. For example, despite avoiding annual budget deficits, Clark has allowed government debt to grow under her watch – by almost $7 billion. This is mainly the result of substantial capital spending by the B.C. government being financed by debt. As a percentage of the economy, the provincial debt burden has grown from 15.7 per cent to 16.4 per cent.

But Clark’s biggest weakness with respect to fiscal policy is in the area of taxation. Two problems stand out.

First, she increased B.C.’s general corporate income tax rate from 10 to 11 per cent, making the province less competitive for investment compared to other jurisdictions. And this increase came on top of reinstating the economically damaging Provincial Sales Tax, which taxes the business inputs used by entrepreneurs and raises the cost of investment.

Second, Clark presided over, and has so far failed to reform, a relatively complicated personal income tax system with five separate tax brackets – the second most among her provincial counterparts. She also enacted a temporary increase in the top income tax bracket for two years that was ultimately eliminated in the 2016 tax year.

In order to build on the strong elements of B.C.’s fiscal policy framework, and to make the province’s tax system more competitive, the Clark government should reverse the recent corporate income tax rate hike and implement a plan to offset the marked increase in the cost of business investment associated with the re-introduction of the PST, especially since almost all of B.C.’s competitors have moved to a value-added tax like the now-abolished HST.

On personal income taxes, simplifying the system by reducing the number of tax brackets and the existing top rate would give B.C. a key competitive advantage over other jurisdictions.
All told, Premier Clark’s record on fiscal policy is positive. There is still, however, room for improvement.

Charles Lammam is director of fiscal studies and Ben Eisen is associate director of provincial prosperity studies at the Fraser Institute. The study, Measuring the Fiscal Performance of Canada’s Premiers, is available at www.fraserinstitute.org.

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