Two of Indian origin in Assange’s seven to run for Australian senate

Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, on Thursday officially launched his Australian political party, through networking site Skype.

Assange, currently holed up in the Ecuador embassy in London with cops waiting to pounce on him if he emerges, has put up six candidates besides himself for the Australian senate in national elections to be held later this year. Two of his candidates are of Indian origin.

Assange will contest in absentia from Victoria. He has gone so far as to suggest that he can govern the country while living abroad.

The 42-year-old Assange took refuge in Ecuadorian embassy in London last year when he faced deportation to Sweden on sexual assault charges pending against him there.

His two Indian-origin candidates for Australia's upper house are academician Binoy Kampmark, who was born in Malaysia but has West Bengal roots, and Suresh Rajan, originally from Kerala.

According to party spokesperson Samantha Cross, Assange has stressed that the party "would keep the politicians honest".

"He talked about wanting to be back in Australia to take up his seat. He was hopeful that that would occur," she said.

The Wikileaks founder also announced that one of party's first actions would be to demand that full details of the government's asylum seeker arrangement with Papua New Guinea be made public.

In a telephone interview with The New York Times, Assange said he had every confidence in his ability to run a campaign from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

"It's not unlike running the WikiLeaks organisation," he said. "We have people on every continent. We have to deal with over a dozen legal cases at once.

''However, it's nice to be politically engaged in my home country," he added.

"My plans are to essentially parachute in a crack troop of investigative journalists into the Senate and to do what we have done with WikiLeaks, in holding banks and government and intelligence agencies to account," Assange said.

Assange, an Australian computer hacker, rose to prominence as an activist for government transparency and a critic of United States foreign policy under the then president George W Bush.

Apart from the charges in Sweden, which he has denied, he is also highly wanted in the US for what the authorities there call reckless release of classified information that has harmed American interests and put lives in danger.

US Vice President Joseph Biden has referred to him as a "high-tech terrorist".

Under Australian law, Assange would have to take his seat within one year of being elected, although the Senate could technically grant him an extension if he is unable to physically take his seat.

The British government has stated its intention to arrest him if he leaves the Ecuadorian Embassy, which presents a unique set of logistical obstacles should he win the election.

"There is, of course, some possibility that the Australian Senate would permit remote involvement - it's never been done before, but it is theoretically possible," he said. "But in any event we have candidates available to hold the seat until such time as I am available to take it."

If elected, he said, his party would work to advance a platform of "transparency, justice and accountability."

Publicity stunt?
Even critics who have admired him in the past are worried that this is just a stunt by Assange to bring himself back in the limelight.

''If his aim is to be taken seriously, a Skype-dependent pitch to represent Victoria in absentia is not the way to go about it. Rather, he should stop skulking in no-man's-land, go to Stockholm and face the charges against him,'' suggested an opinion in London's The Independent.

And, of course, risk being handed over to the US.