Subterms
The Republican primary is a three-way dead heat between Charles W. Herbster, a businessman backed by former President Donald J. Trump; Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent supported by outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts; and Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who appeals to the party’s moderate wing. The race has been roiled by allegations that […] More
Young voters who had rallied around Leni Robredo during the presidential race gathered to voice their frustration with preliminary results showing her overwhelming defeat.MANILA — Angry young voters gathered in the Philippines on Tuesday to protest against Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the former dictator, who clinched a landslide victory this week in one of the most divisive presidential elections in the country’s recent history.Multiple election observers said they had received thousands of reports of election-related anomalies since the vote on Monday. Malfunctioning voting machines were one of the biggest concerns, with VoteReportPH, an election watchdog, saying the breakdowns had “severely impaired this electoral process.”On Tuesday, Leni Robredo, Mr. Marcos’s closest rival in the race and the country’s current vice president, said that her team was looking into reports of voter fraud. But every opinion poll before the election had predicted that Mr. Marcos would win by a huge margin, and his lead by Tuesday was so overwhelming that reports of fraud and malfunctioning machines were unlikely to sway the result.Mr. Marcos, known by his childhood nickname, “Bongbong,” had racked up nearly 31 million votes by 4:30 p.m., according to a preliminary tally. That was more than double the number of votes that Ms. Robredo had, giving Mr. Marcos the biggest margin of victory in more than three decades. Voter turnout was around 80 percent, an election official said Tuesday.During his campaign, Mr. Marcos appealed to a public disillusioned with democracy in the Philippines, a country of 110 million and the oldest democracy in Southeast Asia. Yet for many Filipinos, the Marcos family name remains a byword for excess and greed, and a painful reminder of the atrocities committed by the father.Riot police were deployed in Manila on Tuesday to protect election commissioners. The vote this week was one of the most divisive presidential elections in modern Philippine history.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesMr. Marcos’s 92-year-old mother, Imelda Marcos, was sentenced to up to 11 years in 2018 for creating private foundations to hide her unexplained wealth, but remains free. She posted bail, and her case is under appeal by the Supreme Court. Critics fear Mr. Marcos could use the presidency to scrap that case and other outstanding cases against the family.Dozens of mostly young voters gathered in a park across from the elections commission building on Tuesday morning to protest the election results and Mr. Marcos, chanting, “Thief, thief, thief!” and “Put Imelda in jail.” Riot police stood watch over the demonstrations.Paula Santos, a doctor in training, confronted the officers: “Personally, I am scared,” she told them. “I am turning 27 and I am scared for our future, especially now that I’m an adult. When I was young, I did not care about politics. But now I am having goose bumps because of fear.”In the months leading up to the election, hundreds of thousands of Ms. Robredo’s young supporters had campaigned door to door, seeking to fight an online disinformation campaign that portrayed the violent Marcos regime as a “golden age” in the country’s history.Ms. Santos told the officers that she had supported the younger Mr. Marcos when he ran against Ms. Robredo for the vice presidency in 2016 “because of the beautifully crafted posts and infographics I saw on YouTube.” “But then I saw other accounts, I did my research,” she said. “Knowing the truth is now in your own hands.”“We’re not here to rewrite history,” she added. “We’re here to learn from it.”In an interview later, Ms. Santos said that she and her 17-year-old sister cried on election night. Both of them had campaigned for Ms. Robredo. “I was expecting a close fight,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be such a big gap between numbers. It was hard to believe.”Members of the Catholic church praying in front of the elections comission building in Manila on Tuesday. Jes Aznar for The New York TimesAcross the country, many voters shared in her disbelief.Recrimination and regret prevailed among some Filipinos as they considered the possibility of another Marcos as president, 36 years after millions of their countrymen ousted the Marcos family for looting billions of dollars from the treasury.Robert Reyes, a Roman Catholic priest who spent every Wednesday for the past 11 weeks outside the elections commission building demanding a clean vote, said the Catholic Church had failed to “denounce evil.” The Catholic church, which has outsize influence in the Philippines, played a crucial role in overthrowing the Marcos dictatorship during the 1986 “People Power” uprising.“Hopefully this will wake up the church,” Father Reyes said. “Because what moral authority does the son of a dictator who has not returned what his father has stolen have? What authority does he have to govern a country whose people were plundered by his father?”Ms. Robredo has stopped short of formally conceding the race. On Tuesday, she told her supporters to accept “whatever the final result will be.”“I do not consider this a loss because we have achieved many things this election season,” she said, speaking during a Catholic Mass in Bicol Region, where she is from.She has hinted at a bigger role for her broad-based movement, which she said “will not die at the close of counting.”Vote counting could continue through the end of the week. By Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Marcos had yet to deliver a victory speech. But in a statement, Victor Rodriguez, Mr. Marcos’s spokesman, said his “unassailable lead” meant that “the Filipino people have spoken decisively.”“To those who voted for Bongbong, and those who did not, it is his promise to be a president for all Filipinos,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “To the world, he says: Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions.”Demonstrators faced off with riot police officers in Manila on Tuesday.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesSara Duterte, the daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte and Mr. Marcos’s running mate, had garnered 31.5 million votes by Tuesday, more than triple the votes of Senator Francis Pangilinan, who ran as vice president in support of Ms. Robredo.Mr. Duterte has been accused of rolling back democratic institutions during his six years as president. Opponents have warned that the alliance between the Marcoses and the Dutertes could usher in a new era of autocracy in the Philippines.Mr. Marcos and Ms. Duterte are expected to take office on June 30.As the protests continued outside the elections commission building on Tuesday, demonstrators held up signs that said, “Never again,” and “Fight Marcos, reject Duterte.”Maria Socorro Naguit, 72, a freelance writer at the protest, said she was 22 when the Marcos regime, during a crackdown on the press, shut down the magazine she worked for. “I’m here because it’s too much, you know?” Ms. Socorro Naguit said. “Honestly, I cannot countenance the return of the Marcoses.”Watching the results come in on Monday night, Ms. Socorro Naguit said her first reaction was letting out curse words. “And I thought of the republic. Oh my god,” she said.For Mirus Ponon, a first-time voter in Manila, Election Day was marked by excitement. The 20-year-old university student and civil rights activist stood in line for five hours to cast his vote for Ms. Robredo.The euphoria didn’t last long. Several hours later, he was crying.“You could see it coming from a standpoint of the structured propaganda and the machinery of the Marcoses,” he said. “But it’s something that makes you so depressed, as someone who loves the country. You want to continue to fight, yet the country and its people fail you.”Camille Elemia More
MANILA — Election violence erupted in the Philippines over the weekend and on Monday after a shooting between two groups linked to rivals for mayor left four people dead, and a grenade attack wounded nine others.The shooting occurred on Sunday in the northern province of Ilocos Sur. Separately, local police in the southern town of Maguindanao said five rounds of grenades were fired in a municipal hall, prompting an exchange of gunfire with the police. In Lanao del Sur, videos on social media showed people storming a voting center to destroy ballots and machines. An election official said the government was investigating the episode.Violence is common during elections in the Philippines, where the government has deployed 270,000 police and military personnel on Monday to thwart such attacks.Tight security was apparent at elementary schools converted into polling stations, and there were reports of broken voting machines and of some voters having difficulty locating their names on voter registration rolls. At a news conference, Marlon Casquejo, an election official, said the government had counted 143 defective machines across the country. He said these were mostly “isolated incidents,” and blamed old equipment for the problem.Later in the day, George Garcia, the election commissioner, said more than 1,800 voting machines had malfunctioned and that there were 1,100 backup machines nationwide.Analysts and election observers have described the race between Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo, the vice president, as an existential battle for the soul of the country, with consequences that could not be overstated.Chester Cabalza, the founder of the Manila-based research institute International Development and Security Cooperation, said that voting was not only about the next president, but about “choosing between good governance in a transparent government or a continuity of leadership tainted with lies and revised history.”Carl Merencillo, a voter in Manila who works at a construction firm, brought his wife and two young daughters to Ms. Robredo’s last campaign rally in Manila’s financial district on Saturday. By midmorning on Monday, he cast his vote for “hope,” he said.“Definitely this was for the kids. This was one way, really, for me to ensure that the future will be brighter for the kids and their generation,” Mr. Merencillo said.It took between 45 minutes and an hour for voters to cast their ballots in one precinct outside Manila, as the line snaked about a mile under the searing tropical sun. Officials tried to enforce social distancing rules to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but voters were packed cheek by jowl at many polling places.Apart from the top job, thousands of local officials, town mayors and senators are also up for election in the Philippines. There are more than 65 million registered voters in the country — a record — and election officers said that polling stations would be open until 7 p.m. More
John Lee, who won a rubber-stamp leadership election on Sunday, will implement the next stage of China’s agenda for the former British colony.HONG KONG — John Lee “will make Hong Kongers and international investors feel relaxed, at ease and full of confidence,” a pro-Beijing newspaper declared. He will help the city “start anew to achieve greater glories,” the state-run China Daily wrote, in one of a series of articles praising him. His rise to the top leadership position is “a concentrated embodiment of public opinion,” said China’s official arm in Hong Kong, though only 1,424 members of a government-vetted committee voted for him on Sunday, in an uncontested race controlled by Beijing.Having officially become the next chief executive, Mr. Lee is now Beijing’s man, a security-minded official who can be relied on to follow orders and keep Hong Kong in line.His political agenda is the next chapter in China’s vision for the former British colony, set in motion by the sweeping national security law imposed two years ago, which quashed dissent in a city once known for its vibrant civil society and freewheeling press.Mr. Lee, a top architect of the crackdown on the antigovernment protests that roiled Hong Kong in 2019, inherits a city that has been tamed and cowed, with Beijing’s most outspoken critics behind bars or in exile. Unlike his predecessor, he will encounter little resistance to a legislative slate that prioritizes social stability and bureaucratic loyalty, the ideals of China’s ruling Communist Party.Police officers on Sunday outside Hong Kong’s convention center, where the election committee met to vote.Isaac Lawrence for The New York TimesBut he will also face a city embattled by the coronavirus and some of the world’s toughest pandemic restrictions. The economy is shrinking, unemployment is rising and growing numbers of people are leaving the city, imperiling Hong Kong’s status as a global financial center.Mr. Lee waved and bowed to applauding voters on Sunday after being declared the winner. “Having restored order from chaos, it is high time that Hong Kong starts a new chapter of development, a chapter that will be geared toward greater prosperity for all,” he said.Since Hong Kong was reclaimed by China in 1997, Beijing has always let it be known who it wants in the top job, though it did so more subtly in the past.Jiang Zemin, China’s then-leader, gave his tacit support to Tung Chee-hwa, the first chief executive, by singling him out for a long handshake at a 1996 meeting in Beijing. In 2012, the Central Liaison Office, which officially represents the Chinese government in Hong Kong, quietly told electors to pick Leung Chun-ying, the eventual winner.When Mr. Lee announced his intention to run, he noted that he first needed Beijing’s permission to step down as chief secretary, the city’s No. 2 job. It was a simple matter of procedure, but also a public declaration of who was calling the shots.A Covid-19 testing station outside a Hong Kong building under lockdown in March. The city has been battered by the virus and by tough pandemic restrictions.Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York TimesMr. Lee’s ascension was all but assured a month ago when his predecessor, Carrie Lam, said she would not seek a second term and Beijing approved his candidacy. Nobody else garnered enough nominations to make the ballot.The process has always been tightly controlled, but China removed any veneer of competition or opposition this time. Between new electoral rules and the national security law, the pro-democracy camp was effectively neutered. As chief secretary, Mr. Lee led a panel that vetted the election committee members for loyalty last year. On Sunday, 1,416 members of them voted for Mr. Lee, with just eight opposed. He will be sworn in on July 1, the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China.“Beijing has completely stacked the election committee with its loyalists and further twisted the process into a meaningless competition,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “Even in Iran, there is more of a contest for the head of government.”Mr. Lee’s pedigree reinforces Beijing’s intentions in Hong Kong. After joining the police as a probationary inspector at 19, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the security secretary in 2017.Empty seats in a Hong Kong classroom in September. Residents have been leaving the city.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesMr. Lee will be the first former police officer to assume Hong Kong’s top job in more than a century, and security remains a priority for him. He plans to push through a package of new laws on treason, secession, sedition and subversion, known collectively as Article 23. The laws are required by Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, but its leaders have never managed to pass them. The government tried in 2003, only to retreat after hundreds of thousands of people protested.This time, Mr. Lee won’t face similar opposition.News outlets, unions, political parties and human rights groups have closed under government pressure and national security investigations. Dozens of pro-democracy politicians and activists are in custody awaiting trial on national security charges.“In order to deal with future national security risks, it is urgent to complete the legislation of Article 23, and the legislation must be a ‘tiger with teeth,’” the state-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper said last month.Mr. Lee helped to lead the crackdown on the protests that roiled Hong Kong in 2019.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesMr. Lee has been a staunch advocate of security legislation. He told the United Nations Human Rights Council in March that the 2020 security law had “restored peace and stability” by ending the “violence, destruction and chaos” of the protests.He also wants to root out critics in Hong Kong’s civil service, which has been under attack from pro-Beijing politicians since some government employees joined the 2019 demonstrations. Beijing loyalists have also accused the bureaucracy of resisting efforts to carry out mainland-style coronavirus controls, including lockdowns and mandatory testing.As chief secretary, Mr. Lee expanded a requirement for public office holders to take fealty pledges similar to those required for bureaucrats on the mainland. And he headed a committee to vet candidates for elected office, to ensure that they were sufficiently loyal (the same panel that vetted his future voters).“We need to make sure the civil service will faithfully implement the policies of the government,” said Lau Siu-kai, an adviser to Beijing on Hong Kong policy. Dozens of pro-democracy activists and politicians still await trial in Hong Kong on national security charges.Kin Cheung/Associated PressMr. Lee has also embraced the idea, popular among mainland Chinese officials, that a lack of housing and economic opportunities helped ignite the protests of 2019.Last month, he toured a crowded Hong Kong housing block. Pledging to create more public housing, he described the bleak conditions there, mentioning a mother and two children who lived in a 150-square-foot apartment “with cockroaches that sometimes climb in through the water pipes.”“Their greatest wish is to be allocated public housing as soon as possible to improve their living environment,” he said. The waiting time for public housing is the longest it has been in two decades.The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the challenges Mr. Lee will soon face in one of the world’s most expensive and unequal cities.Life came to a standstill this year as the Omicron variant infected more than a million residents and engulfed hospitals. Officials turned to the “zero Covid” strategy, shutting down bars, gyms and schools and reducing restaurant hours. The city’s working class has been hit hard by such measures, which have left the service industry reeling. A shuttered Hong Kong restaurant in February. Pandemic restrictions have hit the service industry hard.Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York TimesThe coronavirus policies, which have largely isolated Hong Kong, have also prompted a reassessment of the city by international companies. Business leaders say they are struggling to hire and keep executives in Hong Kong. A growing number of companies have relocated, while others have temporarily moved top executives to cities like Singapore.“This was the city of opportunity; everyone wanted to come here,” said Eugenia Bae, a headhunter for international banks and financial firms. “Now it is no longer a popular city anymore.”Mr. Lee, who is largely unknown to the business community, has promised to restore Hong Kong’s status as a thriving global hub. He has also said he would strengthen its financial ties with mainland China.“We have the hope and the expectation that the next leadership will lead Hong Kong out of the pandemic and back on track,” said Frederik Gollob, chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.Mr. Lee has said he will push for more public housing in Hong Kong.Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York TimesFelix Chung, a former lawmaker, met with Mr. Lee in early 2019, when the future chief executive was drafting a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China and other places — legislation that would soon trigger the citywide protests.At the time, many business leaders took issue with the bill’s scope, worrying that it would make them vulnerable to charges on the mainland, where a corruption crackdown was underway. When China first opened up its economy, Mr. Chung said, many businesses operated in legally dubious ways.After several meetings, Mr. Lee agreed to remove 9 of the 46 categories of crimes originally cited in the bill, largely easing the business leaders’ concerns. Whether Mr. Lee will be so willing to negotiate as chief executive is unclear, Mr. Chung said. “We cannot use our past experience to analyze the present situation because a lot of decisions are being made by Beijing,” he said.Tiffany May contributed reporting.A bridge linking Hong Kong to mainland China. The city of Shenzhen is in the background. Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times More
Election results reflected the demoralization of unionist voters, the disarray of their leaders and an electorate with new priorities — much of which can be traced to Brexit.LONDON — Six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, no part of the United Kingdom has felt the sting in the tail more than Northern Ireland, where Brexit laid the groundwork for Sinn Fein’s remarkable rise in legislative elections this week.With more than half of the votes counted on Saturday, Sinn Fein, the main Irish nationalist party, was closing in on victory, racking up 21 seats, the most of any party in the territory. The Democratic Unionist Party, which represents those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, slipped to second place, with 19 seats.Though Brexit was not on the ballot, it cast a long shadow over the campaign, particularly for the D.U.P., the flagship unionist party that has been at the helm of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government since it was created by the Good Friday peace agreement nearly a quarter-century ago.Brexit’s legacy rippled through local elections across the British Isles: In London, where anti-Brexit voters turned Conservative Party bastions over to the Labour Party, and in the “red wall,” England’s pro-Brexit rust belt regions, where the Conservatives held off Labour. But in Northern Ireland, Brexit’s effect was decisive.For all of the history of Sinn Fein’s victory — the first for a party that calls for a united Ireland and has vestigial ties to the Irish Republican Army — the election results are less a breakthrough for Irish nationalism than a marker of the demoralization of unionist voters, the disarray of their leaders, and an electorate that put more of a priority on economic issues than sectarian struggles.Much of that can be traced to Brexit.A Sinn Fein election poster in Belfast next to a mural expressing support for a united Ireland.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“Coming to terms with the loss of supremacy is an awful lot for unionism to process,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. “But the unionists really managed to shoot themselves in the foot.”The D.U.P. struggled to hold together voters who are divided and angry over the North’s altered status — it is the only member of the United Kingdom that shares a border with the Republic of Ireland, a member of the European Union.That hybrid status has complicated life in many ways, most notably in necessitating a complex trading arrangement, the Northern Ireland Protocol, which imposes border checks on goods flowing to Northern Ireland from mainland Britain. Many unionists complain that it has driven a wedge between them and the rest of the United Kingdom by effectively creating a border in the Irish Sea.The D.U.P. endorsed the protocol, only to turn against it later and pull out of the last Northern Ireland government in protest. Unionist voters punished it for that U-turn, with some voting for a more hard-line unionist party and others turning to a nonsectarian centrist party, the Alliance, which also scored major gains.The success of the Alliance, political analysts said, suggests that Northern Ireland may be moving beyond the sectarian furies of the past and a binary division between unionists and nationalists.Loyalists protested against the Northern Ireland Protocol, a measure that imposes border checks on goods flowing to Northern Ireland from mainland Britain, in Portadown last year.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesEven Sinn Fein, which for decades was associated with the bloodstained struggle for Irish unity, said little about the topic during the campaign, keeping the focus on bread-and-butter issues like jobs, the cost of living and the overburdened health care system.With the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday accord approaching, some analysts said it was time to revisit the North’s political structure.The agreement ended decades of sectarian strife by, among other things, creating an open border on the island. But it also balanced political power between the nationalists and unionists, at a time when the predominantly Protestant unionists were the majority and the predominantly Catholic nationalists were a restive minority.Demographic trends have changed that: The faster-growing Catholic population is poised to overtake the Protestants. While the link between religion and political identification is not automatic — there are some Catholics who favor staying in the United Kingdom — the trends favored the nationalists, even before Brexit.As the largest party, Sinn Fein will have the right to name a first minister, the symbolic top official in the government. But the final seat count between nationalists and unionists is likely to be close, since the two other unionist parties won a handful of seats, and the one other party that designates itself as nationalist, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, performed poorly.A deli in Belfast last year. Its manager said the shop was buying more supplies from the European Union, because of difficulties in bringing goods from mainland Britain.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesAs the runner-up, the D.U.P. is entitled to name a deputy first minister, who functions as a de facto equal. Even so, it has not committed to taking part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister. And it has threatened to boycott until the protocol is scrapped, a position that draws scant support beyond its hard-core base.“There’s fragmentation within parties that are trying to reflect a more secular Northern Ireland,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “That fits uncomfortably with the architects of the peace agreement. There’s no dominant group now. We’re all minorities.”In this more complex landscape, Professor Hayward said, Sinn Fein was likely to govern much as it campaigned, by focusing on competent management and sound policies rather than mobilizing an urgent campaign for Irish unity.Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein leader in Northern Ireland who is set to be designated as the first minister, hailed what she called “the election of a generation.” But she said little about Irish unity. Sinn Fein’s overall leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said this week that she could foresee a referendum on Irish unification within a decade, and possibly “within a five-year time frame.”Mary Lou McDonald, center left, the president of Sinn Fein, speaking with potential voters and stall owners in April at St. George’s Market on a campaign visit in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesFor the unionists, the path out of the wilderness is harder to chart. Professor Hayward said the D.U.P. faced a difficult choice in whether to take part in the next government.If it refuses, it would be violating the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. It would also risk further alienating voters, particularly “soft unionists,” who have little patience for continued paralysis in the government.But if it joins the next government, that brings its own perils. The D.U.P. swung to the right during the campaign to fend off a challenge from the more hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice party. It has made its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol an article of faith.“There may be serious talks now about unionist unity, but there will be no government unless the protocol goes,” said David Campbell, chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents a group of pro-union paramilitary groups that vehemently oppose the protocol.That puts the D.U.P.’s future out of its hands, since the decision to overhaul the protocol lies with the British government. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signaled that he is open to doing that — especially if it would facilitate a new Northern Ireland government — but he must weigh other considerations.The Good Friday Agreement established the open border line, which runs along the top of Cuilcagh Mountain, dividing the two Irelands.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesOverturning the protocol would raise tensions with the European Union and even risk igniting a trade war, a stark prospect at a time when Britain already faces soaring inflation and warnings that its economy might fall into recession later this year.It would also antagonize the United States, which has warned Mr. Johnson not to do anything that would jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement.“The Biden administration has made it very clear that the protocol is not a threat to the Good Friday Agreement,” said Bobby McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to Britain. “It actually helps support the Good Friday Agreement. That will act as a sort of constraint on Johnson.” More
“Rarely has our world and our country confronted such a combination of challenges,” Mr. Macron said, promising to govern France more inclusively.PARIS — Beneath the chandeliers of the Elysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron was inaugurated on Saturday for a second five-year term as president of France, vowing to lead more inclusively and to “act first to avoid any escalation following the Russian aggression in Ukraine.”In a sober speech lasting less than ten minutes, remarkably short for a leader given to prolixity in his first term, Mr. Macron seemed determined to project a new humility and a break from a sometimes abrasive style. “Rarely has our world and our country confronted such a combination of challenges,” he said.Mr. Macron, 44, held off the far-right nationalist leader Marine Le Pen to win re-election two weeks ago with 58.55 percent of the vote. It was a more decisive victory than polls had suggested but it also left no doubt of the anger and social fracture he will now confront.Where other countries had ceded to “nationalist temptation and nostalgia for the past,” and to ideologies “we thought left behind in the last century,” France had chosen “a republican and European project, a project of independence in a destabilized world,” Mr. Macron said.In a sober speech lasting less than ten minutes, Mr. Macron projected a new humility and a break from a sometimes abrasive style.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe has spent a lot of time in recent months attempting to address that instability, provoked above all by Russia’s war in Ukraine. His overtures have borne little fruit. Still, Mr. Macron made clear that he would fight so that “democracy and courage prevail” in the struggle for a “a new European peace and a new autonomy on our continent.”The president is an ardent proponent of greater “strategic autonomy,” sovereignty and independence for Europe, which he sees as a precondition for relevancy in the 21st century. This quest has brought some friction with the United States, largely overcome during the war in Ukraine, even if Mr. Macron seems to have more faith in negotiating with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than President Biden has.Understand France’s Presidential ElectionThe reelection of Emmanuel Macron on April 24 marked the end of a presidential campaign that pitted his promise for stability against extremist views.Presidential Election: Mr. Macron triumphed over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, after a campaign where his promise of stability prevailed. Growing Disillusionment: The election was marked by record levels of abstention, a sign of people’s frustration with the political establishment. Signs of Trouble: Despite Mr. Macron’s victory, the low turnout and Ms. Le Pen’s strong showing offered warning signs for Western democracies. Political Parties: France’s mainstream left and right-wing parties used to have it all, but fared poorly in the presidential election. What went wrong?Mr. Macron gave his trademark wink to his wife Brigitte, 69, as he arrived in the reception hall of the presidential palace, where about 500 people, including former Presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, were gathered.Laurent Fabius, the president of the Constitutional Council, formally announced the results of the election. A general presented Mr. Macron with the elaborate necklace of Grandmaster of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.Guests came from all walks of life, ranging from the military to the theater. But in a sign of the distance France has to travel in its quest for greater political diversity, the attendees included a lot of white men in dark blue suits and ties, the near universal uniform of the products of the country’s elite schools.At the ceremony, Mr. Macron received the necklace of a Grandmaster of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.Pool photo by Gonzalo FuentesThe president then went out to the gardens, where he listened to a 21-gun salute fired from the Invalides on the other side of the Seine. No drive down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées followed, in line with the ceremony for the last re-elected president, Jacques Chirac, two decades ago.Mr. Macron will travel to Strasbourg on Monday to celebrate “Europe Day,” commemorating the end of World War II in Europe, which in contrast to Mr. Putin’s May 9 “Victory Day” is dedicated to the concept of peace through unity on the Continent.Addressing the European Parliament, Mr. Macron will set out plans for the 27-nation European Union to become an effective, credible and cohesive power. He will then travel to Berlin that evening to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a sign of the paramount importance of Franco-German relations.Sometimes referred to as the “president of the rich” because of the free-market reforms that initiated his presidency (and despite the state’s “whatever-it-takes” support for furloughed workers during the pandemic), Mr. Macron promised a “new method” of governing, symbolized by renaming his centrist party “Renaissance.”Dismissing the idea that his election was a prolongation of his first term, Mr. Macron said “a new people, different from five years ago, has entrusted a new president with a new mandate.”He vowed to govern in conjunction with labor unions and all representatives of the cultural, economic, social and political worlds. This would stand in contrast to the top-down presidential style he favored in his first term that often seemed to turn Parliament into a sideshow. The institutions of the Fifth Republic, as favored by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, tilt heavily toward presidential authority.Mr. Macron greeted two of his presidential predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy, center, and François Hollande.Pool photo by Gonzalo FuentesMs. Le Pen’s strong showing revealed a country angry over falling purchasing power, rising inflation, high gasoline prices, and a sense, in blighted urban projects and ill-served rural areas, of abandonment. Mr. Macron was slow to wake up to this reality and now appears determined to make amends. He has promised several measures, including indexing pensions to inflation beginning this summer, to demonstrate his commitment.However, Mr. Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 65 from 62, albeit in gradual stages, appears almost certain to provoke social unrest in a country where the left is proposing that people be allowed to retire at 60.“Let us act to make our country a great ecological power through a radical transformation of our means of production, of our way of traveling, of our lives,” Mr. Macron declared. During his first term, his approach to leading France toward a post-carbon economy was often hesitant, infuriating the left.This month, left-wing forces struck a deal to unite for next month’s parliamentary election under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left politician who came just short of beating out Ms. Le Pen for a spot in the presidential election runoff. Mr. Mélenchon has made no secret of his ambition to become prime minister, and Mr. Macron no secret of his doubts about this prospect.The bloc — including Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Greens — represents an unusual feat for France’s chronically fractured left and a new challenge to Mr. Macron. He will be weakened if he cannot renew his current clear majority in Parliament.A crowd from all walks of life, ranging from the military to the theater, at the Elysée Palace.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe creation of the new Renaissance Party and an agreement announced on Friday with small centrist parties constituted Mr. Macron’s initial answer to this changed political reality.Mr. Macron’s first major political decision will likely be the choice of a new prime minister to replace Jean Castex, the incumbent. The president is said to favor the appointment of a woman to lead the government into the legislative elections.However, he will not make the decision until after his second term formally begins on next Saturday, after the first term expires at midnight.Constant Méheut More
But the British leader appeared to have survived the storm — for now at least — as the head of the opposition Labour Party came under scrutiny for violating lockdown rules himself.LONDON — Embroiled in a sprawling scandal over parties in Downing Street that broke lockdown rules, Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, suffered a succession of setbacks on Friday in local elections as voters across the country abandoned his Conservative Party.But by the end of the day, Mr. Johnson appeared to have survived the storm — for now at least — and to have turned the tables on the opposition Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, who on Friday learned that the police will investigate whether he, too, broke lockdown laws.That news grabbed headlines, taking the gloss off election results that had been good — but not spectacular — for Labour while boosting smaller, centrist Liberal Democrats.With most of the votes counted in England, the Conservatives had lost more than 280 races to elect “councillors” — representatives in municipalities — in what Mr. Johnson acknowledged had been a “tough night in some parts of the country.”The results were closely watched because, after Mr. Johnson was fined for breaking lockdown rules, some of his fellow Conservatives had been considering pressing for a no-confidence vote that could evict him from Downing Street.Although his party avoided the type of electoral meltdown that might have propelled that threat to Mr. Johnson’s future, the results were nevertheless unnerving for a governing party that is confronting strong economic headwinds.London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, right, celebrates Labour’s victory Friday in Wandsworth — traditionally a Conservative borough.Hannah Mckay/ReutersAdding to the party’s troubles, the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, was on track to emerge as the largest party in Northern Ireland after legislative elections, a seismic political shift that could kindle hopes for Irish unity but also sow unrest in a territory where delicate power-sharing arrangements have kept the peace for two decades.The Conservatives’ losses of two boroughs in London — Westminster, which has been held by the party since its creation almost 60 years ago, and Wandsworth — were serious symbolic blows.“Waking up to catastrophic results for the party in London,” Gavin Barwell, who was chief of staff to the former prime minister, Theresa May, wrote on Twitter.These flagship councils were held by Conservatives even when Tony Blair swept to power in a landslide election victory for Labour in 1997, and when the Conservatives imposed austerity measures after 2010 and under Ms. May, he noted. “Losing them should be a wake up call for the Conservative Party,” Mr. Barwell wrote.There was more bad news for the party in Scotland, where Conservatives suffered losses and a BBC analysis suggested that results projected nationally would give Labour 35 percent of the vote, Conservatives 30 percent and the Liberal Democrats 19 percent.With 124 of 146 councils in England having declared their results, the Conservatives had shed more than 280 seats, which meant they lost control of several boroughs. Labour gained around 60 council seats, fewer than the Liberal Democrats, who gained more than 150. The Greens, another smaller party, also made advances, winning around 50 seats.The setback to the Conservatives comes as Britain’s economic picture is deteriorating, putting the financial squeeze on Britons. Growth in Britain is expected to be the lowest in the G7 next year and domestic energy bills are soaring just as the government has been raising taxes. On Thursday, the Bank of England raised interest rates while warning that inflation could hit 10 percent. With voters in a restive mood, a good performance by the centrist Liberal Democrats and the smaller Greens was another warning for Mr. Johnson. The risk for him is that Labour’s advances in big cities could be coming as Liberal Democrats or Greens make gains in parts of the south of England that are traditional Conservative heartlands.Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, celebrating election results in Glasgow on Friday.Russell Cheyne/ReutersBut Labour’s progress outside London was mixed, and most analysts were skeptical of Mr. Starmer’s claims that the results marked a “massive turning point” for his party.Labour’s challenge is to win back the so-called “red wall” regions in the north and middle of the country that it once dominated but which switched en masse to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election.James Johnson, who was in charge of polling for Ms. May, wrote on Twitter that the results did not herald a dramatic recovery for the Labour Party “but they do show Labour doing as well in the Red Wall as they did when they last held the Red Wall — and that should worry Conservatives.” In Wandsworth in London, some voters expressed anger at Mr. Johnson’s lockdown scandals as they went to vote.“I would have always identified myself as Conservative, but this vote today was a vote to show that I don’t agree with the government,” said Marcel Aramburo, 62, who has lived in the area for decades.While he said he was happy with the way local issues have been handled under the Conservative council, he felt it was time to vote Labour after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Conservatives.“I am unhappy with the people running this country,” he said. “Everything that comes out of their mouths is a lie.”Yet Mr. Starmer, who has seized on Mr. Johnson’s difficulties over the Downing Street parties, now has a problem of his own with the news that the police will once again investigate allegations that he broke lockdown rules himself.Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, celebrating election results in Carlisle on Friday.Scott Heppell/ReutersA finding that Mr. Starmer broke the law would put the Labour leader under intense pressure to quit, given that he has called for Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the exchequer, to resign for briefly attending an illicit gathering in Downing Street to celebrate Mr. Johnson’s birthday. Mr. Starmer has been even more scathing about Mr. Johnson’s leadership after news of the Downing Street parties broke.The allegations against Mr. Starmer center on a gathering in April last year at which he was pictured drinking beer with other party members during a campaign visit to Durham. That has led tabloid newspapers to call the case “beergate.”The police had already looked into the case and decided to take no action but, on Friday, they issued a statement saying that in light of “significant new evidence” they were now investigating possible breaches of coronavirus rules.But in recent days, Labour has come under pressure after it admitted that, despite earlier denials, the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was also at the gathering in Durham.Megan Specia More
LONDON — Northern Ireland was carved out of the Irish Republic a century ago to protect the rights of its predominantly Protestant, pro-British population. But on Friday, the largest Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, was on the cusp of being declared the territory’s largest party, a political watershed in a land long torn by sectarian violence.With much of the vote in legislative elections counted on Friday evening, Sinn Fein was on track to win the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a distinction that will allow it to name the first minister in the government.The significance of the election lies less in political privileges than hard-fought history: A nationalist party at the helm in Northern Ireland will kindle new hopes for Irish unity, but it could also sow a return to unrest between Catholics and Protestants in a territory where delicate power-sharing arrangements have kept the peace for more than two decades.It is a remarkable coming-of-age for a party that many still associate with paramilitary violence.“For nationalists who have lived in Northern Ireland for decades, to see Sinn Fein as the largest party is an emotional moment,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. “The very idea of leading a government in Northern Ireland would once have been repugnant to it.”Across the United Kingdom, local election results on Friday were handing some setbacks to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in what was widely seen as a test of the damage to him and his Conservative Party from a swirling scandal over lockdown-breaking parties at Downing Street.But it was in Northern Ireland where the results were carrying the most sweeping potential for change.Sinn Fein’s victory has deeply unsettled the unionists, who have declined to say they will take part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister. That could lead to a breakdown of Northern Ireland’s parliament, known as Stormont, and paralysis in the government. Some even fear a flare-up of the violence between Catholics and Protestants that the peace accord ended after the 30-year guerrilla war known as the Troubles.Sinn Fein made its electoral gains with a campaign that emphasized kitchen-table issues like the rising cost of living and health care, and that played down its totemic commitment to uniting the North and South of Ireland — a vestige of its ties to the Irish Republican Army.The shift will push the Democratic Unionist Party, which favors Northern Ireland’s present status as a part of the United Kingdom, into second place for the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which created the system under which unionists and nationalists share power.Among the other likely big winners in the election was the Alliance, a centrist party that aligns with neither the nationalists nor the unionists. Analysts said the party’s candidates had drawn votes away from “soft unionists,” suggesting that the sectarian conflicts of the past are less resonant, particularly with younger voters, than everyday concerns like housing, jobs and health care.“A plurality of voters in Northern Ireland say they are not nationalist or unionist,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “Now there seems to be momentum behind that view.”“The overriding point Sinn Fein is making is, ‘We want to be in government,’” Professor Hayward said. “That is welcomed by people who are fed up by the dysfunction of the government.”In so-called first-preference votes, which were reported on Friday evening, Sinn Fein won 250,388 votes, the Democratic Unionist Party won 184,002, and the Alliance won 116,681. Under the territory’s complicated voting system, candidates with the largest number of votes automatically win seats in the assembly.But voters can express additional preferences, and seats are allocated according to the parties’ share of votes. That means that the final number of seats won by Sinn Fein and other parties will not be clear until Saturday.For all the symbolism, the victory was as much about disarray in the unionist movement as the rise of the nationalists. Unionists have been divided and demoralized since Brexit, largely because the Democratic Unionist Party signed off on the British government’s negotiation of a hybrid trade status for Northern Ireland, known as the protocol.The arrangement, which imposes border checks on goods flowing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland, has triggered a backlash among unionist voters, many of whom complain that it has driven a wedge between them and the rest of the United Kingdom. The British government, eager to mollify the unionists, is weighing legislation that would throw out parts of the trade protocol. But it has yet to act.Such a move would ratchet up tensions with the European Union and possibly even spill into a trade war. It would also antagonize the United States, which has warned Britain not to take steps that could jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement — a pact negotiated under the auspices of the Clinton administration.President Biden, who frequently talks about his Irish roots and staunchly opposed Brexit, has raised Northern Ireland’s status in meetings with Mr. Johnson. He has also asked his staff to reiterate his concerns about the issue to British officials.While unionists point to the trade protocol as the source of their problems, analysts said that Brexit, which a majority of voters in Northern Ireland opposed, was at the root of the divisions within the movement.“It’s Brexit that’s casting a shadow over Northern Ireland,” said Bobby McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to Britain. “It’s not the protocol, which is actually an attempt to solve the problems caused by Brexit.”An aggressive new push for Irish unity could also threaten the peace. Sinn Fein officials play down the prospect of that, noting that it is up to the British government to decide whether to schedule a referendum asking people in Northern Ireland if they want to remain in the United Kingdom or unite with the Republic of Ireland.A majority of people in the South would also have to vote in favor of unity, something that experts say is also likely to take years. Sinn Fein has increased its support in the Irish Republic as well, with a similar appeal to voters on bread-and-butter issues like housing prices. It is now Ireland’s main opposition party and stands a chance of being in the government after elections scheduled for 2025.“Sinn Fein is now in the unique position — that it is an all-Ireland party,” Professor Ferriter said. “But if it is to be successful, given that its fundamental objective remains Irish unity, it has to give momentum to that effort.”For all its evolution into a mainstream party, analysts say Sinn Fein still bears traces of its militant roots. It remains highly centralized, with little of the internal debate or dissent that characterize other parties.In the United States, where many in the Irish diaspora embrace the nationalist cause, the party’s supporters took out ads before St. Patrick’s Day in The New York Times and other newspapers that promised “Irish unity in our time.” More
