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    Hard Questions if Biden’s Approval Doesn’t Follow Economy’s Rise

    This is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.President Biden promoting domestic chip manufacturing.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDoesn’t it feel as if everything’s breaking President Biden’s way lately?His chief rival — whom Mr. Biden already beat in 2020 and whom Democrats, in a sense, beat again in the midterms — is facing criminal indictments and yet currently finds himself cruising to the nomination anyway.The economy — which teetered on the edge of recession for two years with inflation rising and real wages declining — seems as if it might be on track for a soft landing, with inflation falling, real wages rising and the stock market recovering.The backlash against “woke” — a topic Republicans seemed most keen on exploiting in the Biden era — appears to have receded significantly, whether because Donald J. Trump has taken up much of the oxygen; conservatives have overreached; or progressives have reined in their excesses and fallen back to defense after conservatives went on offense.It’s probably too soon to expect these recent developments to lift Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, which remain mired in the low 40s. But if these trends persist, many of the explanations for Mr. Biden’s low approval will quickly become less credible. If his numbers don’t start to move over the next several months — with the wind seemingly at his back — it will quickly begin to raise more serious questions about his standing heading into the 2024 election.To this point in his presidency, it has been fairly easy to attribute his low ratings to economic conditions. Yes, unemployment was low and growth remained steady. But inflation surged, real incomes dropped, stocks fell into a bear market, a recession seemed imminent, and voters could see the signs of a struggling economy everywhere, including supply chain shortages and onerous interest rates.It’s fair to question whether economic conditions have actually been as bad as voters say, but it’s also fair to acknowledge these kinds of conditions can yield a pessimistic electorate. Two bouts of inflation that are reminiscent of today’s post-pandemic economy — the postwar economies of 1920 and 1946 — were catastrophic for the party in power, even as unemployment remained low by the standards of the era.Historically, it can feel as if almost every major political upheaval comes with inflation, whether it’s the Great Unrest in Britain, the Red Summer in the U.S. or even the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany. If high bread prices can be argued to have helped cause the French Revolution, it’s easy to accept that 9 percent inflation (at its peak in June 2022) could hurt Mr. Biden’s approval ratings by five or 10 percentage points.But if inflation has been what’s holding Mr. Biden back, it’s hard to say it should hold him back for too much longer. Annual inflation fell to 3 percent last month, and real incomes have finally started to rise. The stock market — one of the most visible and consequential measures of the economy for millions of Americans — has increased around 15 percent over the last six months. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index surged 13 percent in July, reaching the highest level since September 2021 — the first full month Mr. Biden’s approval ratings were beneath 50 percent.There’s another factor that ought to help Mr. Biden’s approval rating: the onset of a new phase of the Republican primary campaign, including debates. As the Republican candidates become more prominent in American life, voters may start judging Mr. Biden against the alternatives, not just in isolation. Some of the Democratic-leaning voters who currently disapprove of Mr. Biden might begin to look at the Biden presidency in a different light.Perhaps in part for these reasons, this is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were clearly on the upswing at this stage of the election cycle — though both were still beneath 50 percent — as voters began to see and feel an improving economy.We will see in the months ahead whether Mr. Biden’s ratings begin to increase. I wouldn’t expect it to happen quickly: Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton’s ratings increased by less than a point per month between roughly this time and their re-election. Barack Obama’s ratings increased at a similar, if slightly slower, pace from his post-debt-ceiling-crisis nadir a little later in the year.But even if it is not quick, I would expect Mr. Biden’s ratings to begin to increase if these conditions remain in place. Today’s era may be polarized, but there are plenty of persuadable and even Democratic-leaning voters — who disapprove of his performance — available to return to his side.If the economy keeps improving and yet his ratings remain stagnant in the months ahead, it will gradually begin to raise hard questions about the real source of his weakness — including the possibility that his age, by feeding the perception of a feeble president, prevents voters from seeing him as effective, whatever his actual record. More

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    Britain’s By-elections: So Far, a Win and a Defeat for the Tories

    The governing Conservative Party lost in one electoral district but avoided defeat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson’s former seat. A third contest was still to be decided.Britain’s governing Conservative Party suffered a crushing defeat in the contest for what had been considered one of its safer seats in Parliament, but avoided losing another district as results came in early Friday in three by-elections, a critical test of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s popularity.The small, centrist Liberal Democrats party won in Somerton and Frome, in the southwest of England, overturning a big majority. In an emphatic victory, the Liberal Democrats received 21,187 votes against the Conservatives’ 10,790.But there was better news for Mr. Sunak in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in the northwestern fringes of London, where his Conservatives narrowly held on against the main opposition Labour Party in the district that had been represented by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.A third, critical contest — in Selby and Ainsty, in Yorkshire in the north of England — was still to be decided.For Mr. Sunak, the by-elections were an anxious foretaste of the general election that he must call by January 2025.Uxbridge and South Ruislip is the sort of seat that Labour has needed to win to prove that it is credibly closing in on power. Its failure to do so was attributed by the victorious Conservative candidate to public anger toward the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Labour member, for his plans to extend a costly ultralow emission zone across all of London’s boroughs, including Uxbridge.While the result could raise questions about Labour’s ability to win the next general election, the scale of the defeat in Somerton and Frome will most likely alarm Conservative lawmakers who are under pressure in some of the party’s heartland districts in the south of England.With Britain besieged by high inflation, a stagnating economy and widespread labor unrest, his Conservatives face a real threat of being thrown out of power for the first time in 14 years.While Britain shares some of these economic woes with other countries in the wake of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Conservatives amplified the problems through policy missteps and political turmoil that peaked in the brief, stormy tenure of Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss.She proposed sweeping but unfunded tax cuts that alarmed the financial markets and triggered her own downfall after on 44 days in office. Mr. Sunak shelved Ms. Truss’s trickle-down agenda and restored Britain’s fiscal stability. But her legacy has been a poisoned chalice for Mr. Sunak and his Tory compatriots with much of the British electorate.“The Liz Truss episode really dented their reputation for economic competence, and that will be very hard to win back,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “It’s going to be very difficult.”So convincing is the Labour Party’s lead in opinion polls that some analysts predicted in advance that Mr. Sunak would become the first prime minister to lose three so-called by-elections in one day since 1968.But the narrow victory for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip averted that prospect. There, when all votes were counted, the final tally was 13,965 for Steve Tuckwell of the Conservative Party, and 13,470 for Labour’s Danny Beales.By-elections take place when a seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant between general elections. This time around, the contests were also a reminder of the toxic legacy of another of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Mr. Johnson.Mr. Johnson resigned his seat in the district of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, on the western fringe of London, after lawmakers ruled that he lied to Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties held in Downing Street during the pandemic.Voters in Selby and Ainsty in northern England were selecting a replacement for one of Mr. Johnson’s closest allies, Nigel Adams, who quit after not being given a seat in the House of Lords, as he had expected.The contest in Somerton and Frome, a rural district in southwestern England, took place because another Conservative lawmaker, David Warburton, gave up his seat after admitting he had taken cocaine.“This is probably the closing of a chapter of the story of Boris Johnson’s impact on British politics,” said Robert Hayward, a polling expert who also serves as a Conservative member of the House of Lords. But he added, “Whether it’s the closing of the whole book is another matter.”Because the voting took place in very different parts of England, it provided an unusual snapshot of public opinion ahead of the general election. It also captured several trends that have run through British politics since the last general election in 2019, when Mr. Johnson’s Conservative won a landslide victory.In Selby and Ainsty, a Tory stronghold, Labour hoped to show that it has regained the trust of voters in the north and middle of England — regions it once dominated but where it lost out to the Tories in the 2019 election.The vote in Somerton and Frome was a test of the Conservative Party’s fortunes in its heartland areas of southern England, known as the “blue wall” — after the party’s campaign colors. It has been under pressure in the region from a revival of the smaller, centrist, Liberal Democrats.The Liberal Democrats have benefited from some voters, who are opposed to the Conservatives, casting their ballots strategically for whoever seems best placed to defeat the Tory candidate.Recent British elections have featured talk of a grand political realignment, with candidates emphasizing values and cultural issues. But analysts said these by-elections have been dominated by the cost-of-living crisis — kitchen-table concerns that hurt the Conservatives after more than a decade in power. More

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    As Sunak Makes His Case to Britons, the Economy Could Undermine It

    Britain’s Conservative government faces a morass of problems, some new, others longstanding, that are stymying Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes to hold onto power by selling himself as the repairman for a broken Britain. On Wednesday, he got a faint sign that the repair work was gaining traction: the government announced that Britain’s inflation rate in June was 7.9 percent, a decline from the previous month.But the rate is still higher than that of Britain’s European neighbors and more than twice that of the United States. And it is just one of a morass of economic problems — from spiraling debt to labor shortages to sputtering growth — that are stymying Mr. Sunak as he makes the case that his Conservative Party, in government for the past 13 years, deserves to stay there after an election that he must call by January 2025.The Conservatives will face an early test of their political fortunes on Thursday, with three by-elections, special elections to fill seats in Parliament vacated by Tory lawmakers. The party is girding itself for a long day.“They’re running out of runway,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “These by-elections are likely to be a referendum on the government, and they could lose all three.”Shoppers in London last month. Britain’s annual inflation rate is higher than that of its European neighbors and twice that of United States.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer who once worked at Goldman Sachs, has cultivated a reputation as a technocrat and problem solver. He has thrown off the supply-side ideological experimentation of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and the have-your-cake-and-eat-it style of her predecessor, Boris Johnson.But Mr. Sunak’s return to fiscal prudence has yet to reinvigorate Britain’s growth. On the contrary, inflation is forcing the Bank of England to hike interest rates aggressively to avert a wage-price spiral. The tight-money policy threatens to tip the economy, already stagnant, into recession. And it is inflicting pain on millions of Britons who face soaring rents and higher rates on their mortgages.Inflation, economists agree, is likely to continue to drop in the next six months, perhaps even enough to meet Mr. Sunak’s goal of halving the rate to 5.2 percent by year-end. But Britain’s other problems — anemic growth, low productivity, a labor shortage, and a crumbling National Health Service — are not likely to be fixed in time for him to claim a full turnaround before he faces the voters.“Low productivity and low growth make economic policy challenging,” said Mahmood Pradhan, head of global macro economics at Amundi, an asset manager. “It reduces fiscal space. It’s a very tight straitjacket to be in.”With deteriorating public finances, Mr. Sunak can neither spend heavily to raise wages for striking doctors or railway workers, nor can he offer tax cuts to voters. As things stand, he is already at risk of missing another of his five pledges: to reduce national debt. Government debt has risen to more 100 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since 1961, according to the latest data.Striking junior doctors outside Queens Hospital in Rumford in March.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesFor two years, the government has frozen the income brackets for personal income taxes rather than raising them with inflation, driving up the effective rates. As a result, Mr. Sunak finds himself in an awkward paradox: a free-market Conservative heading into an election with a government that is imposing the greatest tax burden on the electorate since World War II.Critics argue he has no one to blame but himself. Mr. Sunak supported the fiscal austerity of the Conservative-led government of David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, which hurt Britain’s productivity and hollowed out its public services. And he championed Brexit, which cut into its trade with the European Union, scared off investment and worsened its labor shortage.“He’s quite rare in being directly associated with both Cameron-Osborne austerity and Johnsonian hard Brexit,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at Kings College London. “Many other senior Tories could plausibly claim that they didn’t really buy into one or the other. Not Sunak.”This week’s by-elections attest to Mr. Sunak’s predicament. One seat belonged to Mr. Johnson, who resigned from Parliament after a committee recommended suspending him for misleading lawmakers about his attendance at parties during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. Another was held by an ally of Mr. Johnson, who also quit, and the third by a lawmaker who resigned after allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct.While Mr. Johnson’s soiled legacy and Conservative Party scandals will play a role in these races, analysts say the cost-of-living crisis will be the dominant theme. Few governments, Professor Bale noted, win elections when real wages are eroding, as they are in Britain. In the latest polls, the opposition Labour Party leads the Conservatives by close to 20 percentage points.The specter of a sweeping defeat has put Mr. Sunak under pressure from Tory backbenchers to offer voters relief in the form of tax cuts or help in paying their mortgages. The most analysts expect, however, is for him to promise a reduction in income taxes next spring, to be deferred until after the election.As Mr. Sunak likes to remind people, not all of Britain’s problems are unique or self-inflicted. Like many other countries, it suffered from supply bottlenecks after pandemic lockdowns ended, from rising food prices and from the lingering impact of soaring energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine.Yet Britain’s core inflation rate — which excludes volatile energy and food prices and is a gauge for domestic price pressures — has remained high at 6.9 percent, compared to 4.8 percent in the United States and 5.4 percent in the eurozone.“That does suggest these inflation dynamics have become more embedded than they have in other countries,” said Kristin Forbes, a professor of management and global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee.Britain, she said, had the misfortune of being hit by both the energy spike, like its neighbors in Europe, and strong domestic inflationary pressures because of a tight labor market, like the United States.Commuters cross London Bridge last week. Unlike most countries, Britain still has more people out of the labor force than before the pandemic.Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock“The U.K. was facing a more difficult challenge than the other countries, in the sense it was really hit by a confluence of shocks that were greater than the individual shocks hitting other countries,” Professor Forbes said.But there are other problems that are distinctively British. Unlike most countries, Britain still has more people out of the labor force than before the pandemic. A majority say they can’t work because of long-term illnesses, a problem exacerbated by the crisis in the N.H.S. With so many job vacancies, wages are rising rapidly, which further fuels inflation.Mr. Sunak has offered to increase public sector wages by 5 percent to 7 percent to end strikes that have closed Britain’s schools and crippled the health service. But that has yet to quell the labor unrest.Britain has so far avoided a recession, surprising some economists. But its resilience could crack, as people curtail spending to pay their rising mortgage bills. Already, about 4.5 million households have had to swallow rate increases since the Bank of England started raising interest rates in December 2021. The rest, another 4 million, will be affected by higher rates by the end of 2026.As with other Western leaders, Mr. Sunak’s fortunes may be largely out of his hands. Last month, the Bank of England, stung by the virulence of inflation, unexpectedly raised interest rates by half a percent, to 5 percent. Traders are betting that rates will climb further still, to about 5.8 percent by the end of the year — implying several more rate increases that would mean higher financing costs for businesses and households and hurt economic growth even more.“The more tightening we see, the risk of recession rises,” said Mr. Pradhan, who served as a deputy director of the International Monetary Fund. “It wouldn’t take very much to tip the U.K. economy into recession.” More

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    Sierra Leone’s President Bio Wins Re-election

    The main opposition candidate has rejected the results, and election observers have raised concerns over the lack of transparency during the vote count.President Julius Maada Bio won re-election in the West African nation of Sierra Leone on Tuesday, a result rejected by his main opponent and questioned by some observers who cited a lack of transparency in the vote tallying.Mr. Bio took 56 percent of the vote, according to the country’s electoral commission, just clearing the threshold of 55 percent required to avoid the runoff that most analysts had predicted. Samura Kamara, the leading opposition candidate, finished second with 41 percent of the vote.Mr. Bio was quickly sworn in — just an hour after the official results were announced. His supporters thronged the streets of Freetown, the capital, wearing green T-shirts, his party’s color, and chanting his name.Mr. Kamara, in a tweet, called the results “NOT credible” and “a frontal attack on our fledgling democracy,” but did not say how he might respond.The election, held on Saturday, was a rematch of the 2018 contest, in which Mr. Bio defeated Mr. Kamara, an economist and former government minister, by a tight margin.But Sierra Leone finds itself in a more dire situation than five years ago, grappling with record levels of inflation and unemployment and some of the highest levels of food insecurity in West Africa.Mr. Bio, 59, called on Sierra Leoneans to give him five more years to pursue an education initiative that has sent an additional one million children to school. But he has also been accused of overseeing violent repression of protests, including last summer when more than two dozen people died in demonstrations against rising prices.President Bio casting his vote in Freetown on Saturday.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio is a former military officer who took part in two coups during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s. He briefly ruled the country in 1996 as the head of a military junta, but handed power to an elected president months later.Claiming victory on Tuesday, Mr. Bio wrote on Twitter: “Though our tongues, tribes and political persuasions might differ, we are united in our desire to see the land that we love, Sierra Leone, prosper.”Voter turnout appeared to be high at around 77 percent, according to the electoral commission. Over 3.3 million voters had registered to vote in the nation of 8.4 million, most of them under age 35.“Participation is usually very high because young people want change,” said Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean writer who is critical of Mr. Bio’s government. “That is, until they realize that nothing is going to change.”The voting on Saturday was mostly peaceful, but tensions rose on Sunday when security forces surrounded the headquarters of Mr. Kamara’s party, the All People’s Congress, as supporters were celebrating local results. (The vote on Saturday was also for local and parliamentary officials.)The police fired tear gas and a woman was shot dead. Party officials have accused security forces of firing live rounds, which the head of the Sierra Leonean police has denied.On Monday, both Mr. Kamara’s and Mr. Bio’s parties had predicted a victory, raising fears of further tensions when the final results were released. As of Tuesday evening, most of Sierra Leone remained calm.But international election observers have voiced concerns about the lack of transparency during the counting process.National Election Watch, an independent monitoring body, had said earlier on Tuesday that no candidate would win 55 percent of the vote in the first round, based on the data it had collected and which it said matched provisional results released by the country’s electoral commission on Monday.According to the official results, however, more than 1.56 million people voted for Mr. Bio — slightly above the 55 percent threshold.Election observers from the Carter Center noted several voting irregularities, including broken seals and open ballot boxes that should have been closed, said Cameron R. Hume, a former U.S. ambassador and the head of the center’s observation mission.“The voting went pretty well — people showed up, they wanted to vote and they wanted their voice to be heard,” Mr. Hume said in a telephone interview from Freetown.But that couldn’t be said of the count of ballots, Mr. Hume added. “There’s a lot of questions left on the table.”Soldiers patrolling in Freetown on Monday.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJoseph Johnson More

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    5 Takeaways From the Greek Election

    Voters seemed to embrace Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s approach to the economy and tough stance on migration, and were less concerned about revelations of spying on the opposition.Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party who has presided over a period of economic stability and tough anti-migration policies in Greece, was sworn in on Monday for a second term as prime minister after a landslide victory that gave him a clear mandate for the next four years.The result made clear that Greeks, who endured a decade-long financial crisis, were much less concerned with scandals, including accusations of the authorities’ spying on their own people, or disasters such as the fatal shipwreck of a boat carrying hundreds of migrants, than they were with Mr. Mitsotakis’s pledges to keep the country on the road of economic and political stability.Mr. Mitsotakis, a supporter of Ukraine who has maintained good relations with the European Union, has also vowed to stand up to pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who also recently won re-election. Here are some of the lessons from the results in Greece.Tough migration policies are good politicsGreece, led by Mr. Mitsotakis, has done the European Union’s unpleasant work of blocking migrants from reaching the continent with hard-line policies and reception centers that critics equate to prisons. Voters appeared to reward him for the significant reduction of arrivals in the country since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.Revelations that the Greek Coast Guard has been illegally pushing back migrants by land and sea, and, more recently, questions about the Greek authorities’ fatal decision not to immediately come to the assistance of a ship this month that ultimately sank, killing hundreds off the coast, have infuriated migrant advocates.Survivors of the migrant ship that sank off the coast of Greece this month waited to be transported to a refugee camp in Kalamata, in the south of the country. Eirini Vourloumis for The New York TimesBut not Greek voters.On the campaign trail, Mr. Mitsotakis noted that the number of migrant arrivals was down 90 percent, from more than a million nearly a decade ago, and Greeks appeared more than willing to stomach the harsh tactics he employed.They apparently supported the patrols of the Aegean Sea and the extension of a European Union-subsidized fence along the country’s northern land border with Turkey, which Mr. Mitsotakis had linked to national defense. Mr. Erdogan, the Turkish leader, had sought to exert pressure and wrest concessions from the European Union by allowing migrants to cross the borders.One opinion poll last week showed that seven in 10 Greeks were in favor of the fence, which the previous conservative administration had pledged to extend by some 22 miles, to about 87 miles, by the end of this year.Spying isn’t a deal breakerSpying on an opposition politician does not generally go over well in Western democracies. So when it was revealed last August that Greece’s state intelligence service had been monitoring a prominent opposition leader, and subsequently journalists and others, analysts anticipated political fallout for Mr. Mitsotakis.When use of the spyware Predator was found on some of the same devices, it seemed likely to explode into a full-blown scandal. Instead, Greek voters mostly shrugged.Nikos Androulakis, the head of the socialist Pasok party, speaking last a week at an election rally in Athens. Alkis Konstantinidis/ReutersThe surveillance of Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the socialist Pasok party, and of several others, was never directly linked to Mr. Mitsotakis, who had assumed greater authority of the intelligence service but repeatedly denied any knowledge of the monitoring. Heads rolled. Close advisers to Mr. Mitsotakis, including his nephew, fell on swords. And the scandal blew over.The reaction was endlessly frustrating for the leftist Syriza party, which sought to exploit the apparent espionage in part by trying, and failing, to to form an alliance of grievance with Mr. Androulakis and his Pasok party.In the end, the spying claims ranked close to the bottom of voters’ concerns in opinion polls, while the economy, Greek-Turkish relations and concerns about the health care system topped the list.It’s the economy, stupidWhat Greeks did care about, and significantly more than anything else, was the economy and stability. After a decade-long financial crisis that erupted in 2010, Mr. Mitsotakis persuaded Greeks that the country had made enormous strides under his watch and that he deserved another four years to finish the job.He had some good data to point to. Growth in Greece is twice the eurozone average. Wages and pensions have increased. Foreign investors have returned. Greek bonds, long at junk status, are now expected to be restored to investment grade, which will lower borrowing costs.A market in Athens in June.Byron Smith for The New York TimesGreeks preferred this path of stability rather than returning to Syriza, the party that was in power when Greece nearly crashed out of the eurozone in 2015.Speaking as preliminary results came in on Sunday night, Mr. Mitsotakis said he aimed to achieve more in a second term, to “transform” Greece and build a country with “more prosperity and more justice for all.”Deep economic problems, including rising costs and questions of inequality, remain, but Mr. Mitsotakis convinced the vast majority of Greeks that the way to address them was to keep on his conservative government’s path.The right wing rises in southern EuropeThe end of the last decade was marked by intense anxiety in the European establishment about populist and nationalist parties eroding the European Union from within. Although that fear has mostly passed for now, conservatives are making significant inroads in the bloc’s southern flank.In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party is firmly in control, although many of the worst fears of liberals have not come to fruition. In Spain, polls suggest that elections next month could bring the conservative People’s Party to power, most likely with the hard-right party Vox as a coalition partner, an alliance that until recently seemed out of the question.Supporters of Mr. Mitsotakis celebrated outside New Democracy headquarters in Athens after his victory on Sunday.Yorgos Karahalis/Associated PressAnd now in Greece, the landslide victory of Mr. Mitsotakis gives him a freer hand to impose his economic vision. But it also allows him to continue his crackdown on migrant arrivals, a policy that is detested by rights groups but is appreciated in Brussels, a reflection of just how much the status quo has shifted to the right on the issue.Exhaustion with migration is surely an important driver of the shift, but so is an overall reassertion of national identities, if not outright nationalism, after years of campaigning against meddling by the European Union.A Mitsotakis dynasty?The return of Mr. Mitsotakis to power is not just a personal victory — it also elevates his family to something approaching dynasty status in Greek politics.His father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, governed as a reformer as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 but left office as a divisive figure in a volatile period for Greek politics.His sister, Dora Bakoyannis, was mayor of Athens and a former foreign minister, and her son, Kostas Bakoyannis, is currently the capital’s mayor. Another nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, was Mr. Mitsotakis’s point man for the state intelligence service but quit in the wake of the surveillance scandal.Kostas Bakoyannis, the prime minister’s nephew and mayor of Athens, is part of what appears to be something resembling a political dynasty.Eirini Vourloumis for The New York TimesThe opposition sought to portray Mr. Mitsotakis as an arrogant, autocratic and out-of-touch elitist who was both a beneficiary and perpetrator of nepotism, but that did not seem to resonate with voters.“I will be the prime minister of all Greeks,” Mr. Mitsotakis said on Sunday night after preliminary results rolled in. “I will remain committed to my national duty without tolerating any arrogant or conceited behavior.”A new political landscapeNew Democracy took easily the biggest portion of the vote, with 40.5 percent, compared with 17.8 percent for Syriza in second. That allowed Mr. Mitsotakis to portray the victory as evidence that his party was the only dominant force in a now fragmented political landscape.“The strongest center-right party in Europe,” he said on Sunday night. But the marginalized far right had a good day, too, with a little-known nationalist party, Spartans, recording a surprisingly strong showing and comfortably crossing the 3 percent threshold for representation in Parliament, winning 4.6 percent of the vote.Spartans, backed by a jailed leader of the defunct neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, joined two other hard-right parties to claim 34 seats. More

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    Sierra Leone’s Election: What to Know and Latest News

    In Saturday’s vote, President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term to pursue an ambitious if unfulfilled education initiative, while the country is facing a crippling economic crisis.Since he became president of the small West African nation of Sierra Leone in 2018, Julius Maada Bio has dedicated 22 percent of the country’s budget to education, a policy that has sent an additional one million children to school and received attention from international backers.As Sierra Leoneans voted on Saturday for their next president — some lining up at polling stations hours before they were scheduled to open — Mr. Bio made that education initiative a key argument for voters to give him a second five-year term.But many voters have more urgent concerns than an education policy that has often fallen short: soaring inflation, youth unemployment, daily power cuts and relentless heat waves worsened by climate change.Across the country on Saturday, many polling stations remained closed because electoral materials or officials were missing.“Some of us have been here since 3 a.m. and still voting hasn’t started,” Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean writer, wrote on Instagram shortly before midday. “We don’t really understand what is going on.”New shade covers the Congo Market in Freetown, where relentless heat waves are making life increasingly difficult.Yagazie Emezi for The New York TimesWhat is at stake in the election?Sierra Leone, home to 8.4 million people and one of the world’s poorest countries, has gained attention for its new education policy, which if it succeeds, could inspire other countries in Africa and beyond.But economic matters top most voters’ concerns: The war in Ukraine has driven up fuel and food prices, including for rice, fish and gas.Year-on-year inflation is above 43 percent, the highest level in two decades. The national currency, the Leone, has had the worst depreciation in sub-Saharan Africa.“When Sierra Leoneans think they’ve reached the bottom, it gets worse,” said Cyril Jengo, an economist based in Freetown, the capital.The leading candidates say they plan to address the cost-of-living crisis, but Sierra Leone’s entire economy would need a revamp, analysts say, as it mostly relies on imports and is frequently hit by crises: the Ebola epidemic a decade ago, the coronavirus pandemic and now the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine.Who are the candidates?Out of 13 candidates, two have a credible chance of winning: Mr. Bio, the current president, and Samura Kamara, a former government minister.The election is a rematch: Mr. Bio was elected in 2018 after beating Mr. Kamara by a tight margin.Mr. Bio, 59, a former military officer who participated in two coups during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, briefly ruled the country in 1996 as the head of a military junta. He handed power to a democratically elected president a few months later and went to study in the United States. He returned to Sierra Leone, and ran for president in 2018.President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio has vowed to provide free health care to all children going to school, and to promote food self-sufficiency.Mr. Kamara, 72, is an economist who served as minister of finance and then foreign affairs when his party was in power in the 2010s.He has made broad promises about economic development, opportunities for youth and the fight against climate change.In 2021, Mr. Kamara was charged with embezzlement in a case tied to the renovation of Sierra Leone’s consulate in New York while he was foreign minister. Mr. Kamara’s supporters say the case, which is being heard by the Supreme Court, is politically motivated to discredit him. The case was adjourned so that he could run, but a ruling is expected in July.Samura Kamara is challenging Mr. Bio again after narrowly losing in 2018.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat is the president’s record?Through its education reform, Mr. Bio’s government has sought to ban school fees and recruited thousands of new teachers. More than 3.1 million children are now officially in school, up from under two million in 2018.But many parents still have to pay school fees, and teachers complain that they have not received the salary increase they were promised.Girls on their way to school in Freetown. Mr. Bio has dedicated 22 percent of Sierra Leone’s budget to education.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio’s government has also adopted a land-rights policy aimed at protecting local communities against foreign companies seeking to exploit their land. And a new gender-equality policy requires employers to hire women to at least 30 percent of their positions — a minimum that the current government has not reached.But Mr. Bio has also been criticized for muzzling civil society groups and responding with violence to demonstrations last summer, resulting in more than 25 deaths. And his promises to address the economic crisis and develop agriculture sound hollow to many.“The poverty is endemic and deepening,” said Jimmy Kandeh, a Sierra Leonean professor emeritus of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “Whether the politics will deliver a change, I don’t think there’s much hope in that.”When, where and how do people vote?Some 3.4 million people are registered to vote on Saturday in Sierra Leone’s five administrative areas. They will also elect their members of Parliament, mayor or local chiefs, and local councilors.Observers from the African Union, the West African economic bloc known as ECOWAS, the European Union and the Carter Center are monitoring the vote. There is no electronic voting.What do polls predict, and when are results expected?Polls have Mr. Bio as the favorite. Many of the country’s 3.4 million voters vote along regional and ethnic allegiances.Presidential candidates must get 55 percent of the vote to win in the first round, and a runoff is likely, according to Mr. Kandeh. Results are expected to be announced by the electoral commission the following week. A runoff would be organized two weeks later.For the first time, polling officials will send results to a database run by the electoral commission via a dedicated app. Nigeria tested a similar method for the presidential election in February, but the process was plagued with problems, and the results were delayed.Joseph Johnson contributed research. More

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    Greek Youths, Shaped by Debt Crisis, Plan to Vote for Stability

    Many children of Greece’s traumatic years of economic collapse have opted for pragmatism over radicalism and say they will back a conservative on Sunday.Days before this Sunday’s election in Greece, three young women with piercings and ironic T-shirts who sat outside a hipster coffee shop in an Athens neighborhood best known as a hub of anarchist fervor said they wanted stability.“Money is important — you can’t live without money,” said Mara Katsitou, 22, a student who grew up during the country’s disastrous financial crisis and one day hoped to open a pharmacy. “There’s nothing that matters to someone more than the economy.”As a result, she said, she would cast her vote for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, the square, conservative prime minister who graduated from Harvard, who is fond of riding his bike and who, polls suggest, will win convincingly on Sunday in a second national election. With Mr. Mitsotakis — who is also the son of a former prime minister — Ms. Katsitou said, she had “definitely a better chance.” About a third of young voters like her feel the same, polls indicate.After spending impressionable years amid so much panic, desperation and humiliation during the decade-long financial crisis that erupted in 2010 — and which collapsed the Greek economy — many of Greece’s depression-era children have grown up to say they have no interest in ever turning back.In many quarters, youthful radicalism has given way to unexpected pragmatism, a yearning for prosperity and a steady hand, and an inclination to overlook or at least mute outrage over any number of scandals that have dogged Mr. Mitsotakis.Young Greeks have expressed no interest in going back to the realities of the 2010s. At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in three Greeks were jobless, and many struggled to buy food and pay bills.Byron Smith for The New York TimesIn recent days, a shipwreck that killed possibly more than 600 migrants has raised new questions about the Mitsotakis government’s hard-line measures to curb arrivals of migrants. The wiretapping of an opposition leader by the state’s intelligence service and Mr. Mitsotakis’s consolidation of Greek media has prompted concerns about the erosion of democratic norms. A train crash that killed 57 people in February revealed the shabby state of key Greek infrastructure, for which he apologized.But for Greeks, including an increasing number of younger Greeks, polls show that all of those issues pale in comparison to the country’s economic stability and fortunes.Mr. Mitsotakis’s government has spurred growth at twice the eurozone average by cutting taxes and debt, and by increasing digitization, minimum wages and pensions. Big multinational corporations are investing in the country. Tourism is skyrocketing. The country is paying back creditors ahead of schedule, increasing the chances of rating agencies lifting Greece’s bonds out of junk status.“It’s all about jobs, about, you know, raising disposable income and bringing in a lot of investment and about growing the economy much faster,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in a recent interview. “This was always my bet, and I think that we delivered, if you look at the numbers.”A bus stop with a campaign poster for Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis this month in Athens.Byron Smith for The New York TimesGreece’s 2010 debt crisis was a searing national catastrophe. Humiliating bailouts connected to seemingly endless austerity measures slashed household incomes by a third and sent unemployment skyrocketing as hundreds of thousands of businesses collapsed.At the peak of the crisis, in 2013, nearly one in three Greeks were jobless, and many were disheartened after years of violent protests, in which demonstrators clashed with the police in the streets of Athens and other cities in clouds of tear gas. Scenes of the most desperate people trawling through bins for food — once unheard-of — shocked the majority of Greeks who struggled to make ends meet.“We still have a deep sort of legacy of 10 years of a crisis,” Mr. Mitsotakis acknowledged in the interview. “Not many people appreciated how painful the crisis was — we lost 25 percent of our” gross domestic product.Mr. Mitsotakis, the standard-bearer for the New Democracy party, has won over a sizable share of the generation that grew up in that time, increasing his support among voters aged 17 to 24 by three points, to 33 percent.Just as telling, support among young voters for his leftist opponent, former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Syriza party, has collapsed, falling to 24 percent from 38 percent since the 2019 elections, when Mr. Mitsotakis defeated him.In an initial election in May, Mr. Mitsotakis’s party thrashed Syriza by 20 points, but it was not enough of a majority to lead a one-party government. Instead of cobbling together a coalition, Mr. Mitsotakis opted for another election. With a new, more favorable election law that gives a bonus of seats to the leading vote-getter, he now hopes to win a landslide victory that will allow him to govern alone.Overall, Mr. Tsipras is trailing Mr. Mitsotakis by more than 20 points.Support for Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the left-wing Syriza party, among young voters has fallen since he was defeated by Mr. Mitsotakis in the 2019 elections.Byron Smith for The New York TimesThat is despite his efforts to depict Mr. Mitsotakis as an undemocratic, arrogant and unaccountable strongman who he says has overseen a “massive redistribution of wealth from the many to the few” in his four years in power.Not all young voters, of course, are behind Mr. Mitsotakis. Many complain that the prosperity that is supposed to kick-start their lives is making things so costly that they cannot move out of their homes.Not all of the economic indicators are good, either. Greece still has the European Union’s highest national debt, and it is the second-poorest nation in the European Union, after Bulgaria. Tax evasion is still common.Mr. Tsipras has tried to convince young voters that, in fact, he, not Mr. Mitsotakis, is not only the true agent of change, but also of stability. He has promised financial relief, including better health benefits, though it remains unclear how those would be funded.“We’ll fight so that hope for justice and prosperity for all is not lost in this country, for a fair society and prosperity for everyone,” Mr. Tsipras said this week at a campaign event in the western city of Patra.Some voters, suffering under rising prices and exponentially increasing rents, support him.“The crisis isn’t over; it’s still here,” said Grigoris Varsamis, 46, who said his record shop’s electric bills were through the roof and that he would vote for Mr. Tsipras.An information booth for former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras this month in Athens.Byron Smith for The New York TimesBut there is little doubt that Mr. Tsipras, a former Communist firebrand who governed in the latter years of the financial crisis, has been tainted by a lasting association with the pain of that era.In 2015, under his leadership, Greeks voted to reject Europe’s draconian aid package, and Greece was nearly ejected from the eurozone. Social unrest returned and talk of “Grexit,” referring to Greece exiting the eurozone, mounted. Many young Greeks who grew up during that time feel scarred by the Syriza experience.Grigoris Kikis, 26, an award-winning chef at the restaurant Upon in Athens, remembers that the financial crisis coincided with his trying to break into the world of restaurants as a 13-year-old volunteering in kitchens after school.As restaurants closed and his father fretted about paying his workers, the chefs around him worried about the budgets for produce, meat, plates and glasses. When they wanted to try out a new dish, they could afford to test it only once.Today, Mr. Kikis runs a popular bistro in Athens with a 300-label wine list, in-house coffee-roasting machines and an eclectic menu with plates tried 25 times before they make the cut.“The restaurant is full every day,” he said, explaining that he would vote for Mr. Mitsotakis to keep it that way. “Many people my age care most about the economy. They say there is more opportunity and higher salaries, and maybe people will come from abroad and want to work in Greece because things changed for the better.”Grigoris Kikis, a chef in Athens, said people his age felt strongly about the future of their country’s economy.Byron Smith for The New York TimesThe same is true for Nikos Therapos, 29, a sustainability consultant. When he was 16, he said, the drastic cutting of the public budgets cost his mother, a kindergarten teacher, her job. His father’s company, in the hard-hit construction industry, shrank, too.“I remember very clearly about not being so optimistic about my professional career,” he said.In 2015, when he was studying business in Brussels, Greece was embroiled in intense political and social upheaval, and, Mr. Therapos recalled, his fellow students shunned him in working groups.“I was regarded as the lazy Greek, even though they didn’t know anything about me,” he said. “It was really unfair for me and my generation.”But in the past four years, Mr. Therapos said, there had been a change.“I cannot say we are back to normality for the simple reason that I have never known normality,” he said. But for the first time, he said, he felt “confident in our future.”Many of his more leftist friends had also shifted to Mr. Mitsotakis, Mr. Therapos said, because they want a “stable and sustainable economic system.”Unsurprisingly, Mr. Mitsotakis agreed.“At the end of the day,” he said, “Greece is no longer a problem for the eurozone. I think this offers a lot of people relief.” More

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    Modi’s Visits Abroad Help to Build His Image in India

    For an audience in India, the prime minister is linking his diplomatic reception abroad, and himself, to the country’s growing importance on the world stage.His grip on the levers of national power secure, his hold on India’s domestic imagination cemented, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has increasingly turned to advancing himself on a new horizon: the global stage.With a packed diplomatic calendar that includes India’s hosting of the Group of 20 summit later this year, Mr. Modi is building an image going into his re-election campaign as a leader who can win respect and investment for his vast nation. The state visit accorded to Mr. Modi in Washington, which ends on Friday, is perhaps the biggest prize yet in that quest.“It’s not just about a fairer bargain abroad,” said Ashok Malik, a former government adviser who is the India chair at the Asia Group, a consulting firm. “It’s also that ‘my investments in key foreign policy relations are actually helping to build the Indian economy and therefore create opportunities for Indians at home and strengthen India overall.’”At home, Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party has continued to sideline institutions that were once important checks on the government. It has persisted in its vilification of the country’s 200 million Muslims, even as Mr. Modi used an exceedingly rare news conference in Washington to claim that there was no discrimination against anyone in India.But abroad, world leaders eager to court an ascendant India have offered little pushback. And often, they have given Mr. Modi invaluable fodder for an information campaign that shapes perceptions of him among many Indian voters who are ecstatic to see their country’s importance affirmed.Eid-al Fitr prayers in Chennai, India, in April. Mr. Modi used a news conference in Washington to claim that there was no discrimination against anyone in India, including the country’s huge Muslim minority.Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via ShutterstockWhen Mr. Modi traveled to Australia last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese referred to him as “the boss” in front of an arena in Sydney packed with about 20,000 people. Mr. Modi then returned to New Delhi to a large crowd gathered for his welcome at 6 in the morning, telling supporters that the grand welcome for him abroad was about India, not him.On Friday, as Mr. Modi was wrapping up his meetings in the United States before arriving in Egypt for another grand greeting, his political party and the large sections of the broadcast media friendly to him reveled in the reception he had gotten from President Biden and other American leaders.The red carpet in Washington played perfectly into one of Mr. Modi’s talents: He can build a media campaign out of virtually anything, projecting himself as the only leader who can expand India’s economy and usher a nation coming into its own to new heights.While opposition leaders back home were holding their largest gathering yet, hoping to find a formula for uniting to challenge the prime minister in elections early next year, Mr. Modi was reaching for the world.Social media was flooded with montage videos, set to regal background music, of Mr. Modi making a grand entrance into the House of Representatives for his address to a joint session of Congress. The speech, after which several lawmakers sought Mr. Modi’s autograph, made him one of only a very small number of world leaders to have addressed that body twice.Another video online kept count of the number of times Mr. Modi received applause or standing ovations during his speech. A third cut to dramatic images of Mr. Modi contrasting him with the dynastic leaders who came before him, advancing a constant narrative that he represents a subversion of the old elite that long ruled India.“History tells us that powerful people come from powerful places. History was wrong,” a deep voice intones in the video. “Powerful people make places powerful.”Congress offers a standing ovation for Mr. Modi’s speech on Capitol Hill on Thursday.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesMr. Modi’s next major opportunity to appear as a global statesman will come in September when India welcomes the Group of 20 leaders, a summit meeting he has framed to his support base as his bringing the world to India.His government has turned promotion for the meeting into a roadshow, hosting hundreds of G20 events, so many that foreign diplomats in New Delhi quietly complain about travel fatigue. Cities and towns across India are decked out with billboards bearing the G20 logo — which cleverly incorporates the lotus, a symbol both of India and his Bharatiya Janata Party — and pictures of Mr. Modi.In promoting the G20 presidency, Mr. Modi has taken to frequently describing India, the world’s most populous nation, as the “mother of democracy.” Abroad, however, he has pursued a transactional brand of diplomacy built not on practicing democratic values, but on what best serves Indian economic and security interests, and what elevates India in the world.The image of “a rising India, a new India being seen more seriously abroad” helps Mr. Modi politically, Mr. Malik said. But Mr. Modi is also investing heavily in U.S. relations with an eye toward how they could help an Indian economy that is struggling to create enough jobs for its huge young population and that must put up a fight against an aggressive China next door.“Addressing China is not just about soldiers and weapons at the border, it’s also about building economic alternatives to what China offers,” Mr. Malik said.Supporters of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party cheer during a rally in Bengaluru, India, last month.Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe list of agreements between the United States and India, announced at the end of a bilateral meeting at the White House, was long, covering defense, space and a wide range of technological cooperation.Defense cooperation, in particular — including deals on Indian manufacturing of General Electric jet engines and purchasing Predator military drones — received a major boost after what had been a history of reluctance and bureaucratic hurdles on both sides. Dr. Tara Kartha, a former senior official in India’s security council who dealt with U.S. on defense, said the agreement on aircraft engines was “an affirmation of trust” that would help the military partnership beyond the smaller steps of the past two decades.“Each country is trying to get past its bureaucratic constrains,” she said. “Until the bureaucracy can catch up, there will be frustrations.”Among ordinary Indians on the streets of New Delhi, opinions of Mr. Modi’s diplomatic efforts were divided.Vijay Yadav, a 26-year-old taxi driver, said Mr. Modi’s outreach abroad could not cover for how India’s economy was struggling to create enough jobs.“I saw on Instagram a news feed which was constantly touting Mr. Modi’s trip to America as if no other Indian leader had been there before,” he said. “Firstly, he must get down to solving the problems of his own countrymen before he goes abroad to project himself as a hero.”Nidhi Garg, 41, who has inherited a vegetable and fruit shop from her father, said her heart swelled each time she saw Mr. Modi representing India abroad.“Today, wherever you see, the name of our nation is being taken,” she said. “The first thing that comes to anyone’s mind when they mention the word India, they immediately connect it to Prime Minister Modi.”Suhasini Raj More