Sunday, November 25, 2007
He had rejected plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, one of the Bush administration’s staunchest allies, suffered a humiliating election defeat Saturday at the hands of an opposition leader who has vowed to pull troops out of Iraq.
Labor leader Kevin Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, has also promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, leaving the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.
Howard, who reshaped his country’s image abroad with unwavering support for the war in Iraq, dominated Australian politics for more than a decade but failed to read the signs that voters had grown tired of his rule.
Adding to the sting of his party’s decisive defeat, official results showed Howard was likely to lose his parliamentary seat altogether. Only one other sitting prime minister has lost his district in the 106-year history of Australia’s federal government.
Rudd, 50, has promised to pull Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq in a phased withdrawal and to quickly sign Kyoto. Howard had rejected withdrawal plans for Australia’s troops in Iraq, and refused to ratify the pact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward,” Rudd said in a victory speech before hundreds of cheering supporters in his home state of Queensland. “To plan for the future, to prepare for the future, to embrace the future and together as Australians to unite and write a new page in our nation’s history.”
Howard, 68, had stayed on to fight for a fifth term in office despite months of negative opinion poll numbers and appeals from some colleagues to quit. He took the blame for his government’s defeat.
“I accept full responsibility for the Liberal Party campaign, and I therefore accept full responsibility for the coalition’s defeat in this election campaign,” Howard said in his concession speech in Sydney.
He said it appeared “very likely” he would lose his seat in Parliament to former television journalist Maxine McKew.
Rudd’s Labor Party had more than 53 percent of the vote with more than 75 percent of ballots counted, compared to 46.8 percent for Howard’s coalition, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.
An Australian Broadcasting Corp. analysis showed that Labor would get at least 81 places in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament — a clear majority.