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      Parenting: A ‘Wonderful and Challenging Adventure’

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      More from our inbox:Aligning Election Calendars to Increase TurnoutNatural Gas ExportsEmbracing the Semicolon Illustration by Frank Augugliaro/The New York Times. Photographs by Getty Images/iStockphotoTo the Editor:I was moved by “I Wrote Jokes About How Parenting Stinks. Then I Had a Kid,” by Karen Kicak (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 25).I have marveled at my child and couldn’t bring myself to complain about night waking or tantrums. I stayed quiet at birthday parties when parents lamented missing out on adult time and said they wanted to get away from their children. I felt so proud of my daughter and wanted to be around her all the time, yet I learned to push that part down.Ms. Kicak is right that when we downplay our parenting skills and our child’s greatness we rob ourselves of joy.Our self-effacing language may be an attempt to cover up how proud we actually are of our kids. We may also be preemptively self-critical to avoid feeling judged by other parents.These insecurities are getting in the way of celebrating together, and Ms. Kicak reminds us what we need to hear, that we’re “doing great.” She calls us to nudge the pendulum back so we can balance the real challenges of parenting with its tender and fleeting glow.Maybe we could connect more deeply if we allowed ourselves to communicate the parts of ourselves that love being a parent, too. I hope we can, before our little ones grow up.Elaine EllisSan FranciscoThe writer is a school social worker.To the Editor:Many thanks to Karen Kicak for her essay about parenting and positivity. When I was in sleep-deprived chaos with two small children, my neighbor, a public school art teacher and artist, asked how I was doing. I replied, “Surviving,” and she replied, “Ah, well, I think you are thriving.” That kind comment made me look at all the good things going on and made a world of difference.I too make only positive comments to parents. Thank you again for reminding people that kind and reassuring words go a long way in helping parents feel confident and supported by their community.Angel D’AndreaCincinnatiTo the Editor:I appreciate Karen Kicak’s piece about our culture’s overemphasis on the negatives of being a parent. It goes along with the focus on children’s “bad behaviors,” as people define them, which parents use to shame and ridicule their kids, even though they are still developing into who they will become. As if children are bad people all the time.Life is good and bad, easy and hard. So is motherhood. Why not note the deepest joys of this remarkable, intimate relationship alongside recognition of how hard it can be? We owe that to mothers. Admiring the love and care and pleasures and new identities that motherhood offers does not have to negate how hard it can get at times.I tell parents, “Enjoy this wonderful and challenging adventure of parenthood.” It is both of those things.Tovah P. KleinNew YorkThe writer is the director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and the author of “How Toddlers Thrive.”Aligning Election Calendars to Increase Turnout Carl Iwasaki/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “A New Law Will Help Bolster Voting in New York,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 27):For every one person who votes in the mayoral general election, two vote in the presidential election. That’s a statistic that should concern anyone who cares about our local democracy.Last month, New York took a big step toward addressing this when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation moving some local elections to even-numbered years. Aligning local races with federal or statewide races that typically see higher voter turnout will increase voter participation, diversify our electorate and save taxpayer dollars.Los Angeles held its first election in an even-numbered year in November 2022 and saw voter turnout nearly double. Other cities that have made the move have seen similar turnout gains. Research shows that this reform helps narrow participation gaps, particularly among young voters and in communities of color.Unfortunately, the New York State Legislature cannot shift all elections on its own, but lawmakers have committed to passing more comprehensive legislation through a constitutional amendment that moves local elections to even years across the entire state. That would include municipal elections in New York City.Good government groups must continue to advocate this reform, which would create an elections calendar that better serves voters and strengthens our local democracy.Betsy GotbaumNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of Citizens Union and a former New York City public advocate.Natural Gas ExportsA Venture Global liquefied natural gas facility on the Calcasieu Ship Channel in Cameron, La. The company wants to build a new export terminal at the site.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Decision on Natural Gas Project Will Test Biden’s Energy Policy” (front page, Dec. 27):The Biden administration has a choice to make on climate policy: achieve its policy goal or continue to rubber-stamp gas export terminals. Rarely in politics is a choice so straightforward. In this case, it is.It’s simple. The fossil fuel industry is marketing liquefied natural gas (L.N.G.) as “natural.” It’s a “transition fuel,” they say. It’s not. It’s mostly methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. The gas may emit less smoke and particulate matter than coal, but exporting it causes more greenhouse gas emissions.One of the latest reports on U.S. gas exports by Jeremy Symons says that “current U.S. L.N.G. exports are sufficient to meet Europe’s L.N.G. needs.” So why approve more plants? In the same report, it’s also revealed that if the administration approves all of the industry’s proposed terminals, U.S.-sourced L.N.G. emissions would be larger than the greenhouse gas emissions from the European Union.How can we add another emitter of greenhouse gases — one that would be a bigger contributor than Europe! — and meet the administration’s climate goals? We can’t.It’s time to embrace science, stop listening to the industry’s marketers and say “no, thank you!” to more gas.Russel HonoréBaton Rouge, La.The writer is the founder and head of the Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.Embracing the Semicolon Ben WisemanTo the Editor:Re “Our Semicolons, Ourselves,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion, Dec. 25):I feel like Frank Bruni when he writes about how he prattles on “about dangling participles and the like.” My students must also “hear a sad evangelist for a silly religion.”In more than three decades as a writing professor, I require my students to read my seven-page mini-stylebook, “Candy Schulman’s Crash Course in Style.” My mentor used to chastise me in red capital letters in the margins of my essays. “Between You and I?” he’d write; finally, I metamorphosed from “I” to “me.”Notice the semicolon I just used? I love them, like Abraham Lincoln, who respected this “useful little chap.”Kurt Vonnegut, however, felt differently. “Do not use semicolons,” he said. They represent “absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”Until the day I retire, I will continue to teach my students that proper writing is not texting — where capitalization, punctuation and attention to spelling are discouraged.As colleges de-emphasize the humanities, I’ll still be preaching from the whiteboard of my classroom, drawing colons and semicolons to differentiate them, optimistically conveying my joy for proper grammar. Between you and me, I’m keeping the faith.Candy SchulmanNew YorkThe writer is a part-time associate writing professor at The New School. More

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      Bangladesh Votes in Election Marred by Crackdown and Boycotts

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      With the opposition in jail or off the ballots, the prime minister for the past 15 years is expected to maintain her grip on power in what appeared to be a low-turnout vote.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh was nearly guaranteed a fourth consecutive term in office as voting ended on Sunday in a low-turnout election that has been marred by a widespread crackdown on the opposition.Security remained tight across the country of 170 million people as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition, which has boycotted the election as unfair, pushed for a nationwide strike. The situation had remained tense in the days leading up to the vote, with episodes of violence — including arson on a train in Dhaka that killed four people, and the torching of more than a dozen polling stations — reported from across the country.Ms. Hasina, 76, who cast her vote in Dhaka, the capital, soon after polls opened at 8 a.m. local time, urged people to come out in large numbers.On the campaign trail, she has called for political stability and continuity, often by mentioning the country’s violent history of coups and counter-coups, including one that killed her father, Bangladesh’s founding leader, in the 1970s. She has highlighted her efforts to champion economic development, and her secular party’s resistance to the rise of Islamist militancy, as reasons the voters should and will give her another term.“We have struggled a lot for this voting right: jail, oppression, grenades, bombs,” Ms. Hasina told reporters after casting her vote. “This election will be free and fair.”Police officers patrolling in Dhaka on Sunday, as security remained tight across the country.Monirul Alam/EPA, via ShutterstockBut with the results foretold, and the election largely a one-sided affair, there appeared to be little excitement on the streets about the vote.“I didn’t go to vote in my hometown because what difference would my vote make?” said Mominul Islam, a rickshaw puller in Dhaka.Visits to polling centers in Dhaka showed voting was slow. Members of the governing party, the Awami League, milled around outside the voting centers, but voters merely trickled in. Local news media reported instances of the governing party members lining up their supporters when cameras and foreign election observers reached a polling station, only for the people to disperse afterward.At 3 p.m. local time, voter turnout stood around 27 percent, Kazi Habibul Awal, Bangladesh’s chief election commissioner, told reporters. After the polls closed an hour later, Mr. Awal said at a news conference that “we can assure that at least 40 percent of the votes were cast” and that the exact turnout would be clearer after counting ended.With the main opposition boycotting, the competition — still tense, and in many constituencies marked by violence — is largely between members of Ms. Hasina’s own party.While Ms. Hasina’s officials tried to play down the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s boycott of the vote, pointing to smaller parties still participating, her moves in the final stretch of the campaign made clear that she was worried about the vote’s legitimacy. She instructed her party to prop up what became known as dummy candidates — members of the Awami League contesting as independent candidates against their own party’s official candidates.It was an effort to not only create a semblance of a contest, but to also shore up voter turnout that could give the election some legitimacy, analysts said.But with power so centralized, and so much economic and political fortune at stake in a ticket to Parliament, the result has been bitter interparty fights in many of the constituencies, including violent clashes. In at least two constituencies, Awami League candidates have pointed fingers at opponents from their own party for deaths of their supporters.Voters at a polling center on Sunday in Dhaka.Monirul Alam/EPA, via Shutterstock“The ruling party had been trying for a long time to break up the main opposition party, the B.N.P., and bring some of their people to their side. This would have shown that there was some kind of participation from different parties, especially the B.N.P., in the election,” said Ali Riaz, a political scientist and professor at Illinois State University, using an abbreviation for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. “When they were not very successful in this, they had to choose this path.”Mr. Riaz said the way that the election had played out made clear that Bangladesh was no longer “an effective multiparty system.”“I am saying effective because there may be offices with signboards, but there will be no effective opposition,” Mr. Riaz said. “Not on paper, but in practice Bangladesh will become a one-party state.”After winning a competitive election held under a neutral caretaker government in 2009, Ms. Hasina has set out to turn Bangladesh into a one-party state, analysts and critics say. She changed the Constitution to make illegal the practice of holding elections under neutral administration, and won two additional terms — in 2014 and 2018 — in votes marked by opposition boycotts and irregularities.Ms. Hasina first moved to crush the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, effectively banning its political work and prosecuting several of its senior leaders for violence and treason during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. More recently, her efforts have focused on the B.N.P., the main opposition party, which has by now been so gutted that it retains little mobilizing capacity. Its leaders who are not already in jail are bogged down with endless court appointments.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh on her way on Sunday to cast her vote in Dhaka. She is nearly guaranteed a fourth consecutive term in office.Altaf Qadri/Associated PressDuring much of the past 15 years, Ms. Hasina’s second time in power after a five-year term ending in 2001, an economic success story took attention away from her autocratic turn.On the back of investments in the garment industry, Bangladesh experienced such impressive growth that average income levels at one point surpassed India’s. The country also saw major improvements in education, health, female participation in the labor force and preparedness against climate disasters.She has also played a difficult balancing act in a tough neighborhood, where both China and India are vying for influence. Ms. Hasina has managed to keep India and China on her side.As Western pressures increased on her government over human rights abuses, including the crackdown on opposition and the enforced disappearances by Bangladesh’s elite security agencies, both Beijing and New Delhi have come to her defense. India, in particular, has been using its growing diplomatic weight to urge the United States and other Western nations to take it easy on Ms. Hasina, diplomats in New Delhi and Dhaka said.As Ms. Hasina prepared to seek a fourth consecutive term, the sheen was coming off the economic success story, with the population struggling with rising prices. While she might be able to control a decimated opposition through her control of security agencies and the judiciary, the task will become much more difficult if public anger continues over rising prices and she fails to check the economy’s downward spiral.Counting votes after the polls closed on Sunday in Munshiganj, outside Dhaka.Altaf Qadri/Associated PressThe successive blows of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which pushed up fuel and food prices, have exposed Bangladesh’s overreliance on one industry. The country’s foreign reserves have been shrinking, forcing it to seek emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund.Opposition leaders tried to leverage public anger over the economy, holding their first major rallies in years, prompting Ms. Hasina to intensify the crackdown. The B.N.P. says more than 20,000 of its members have been arrested since its last major rally in October, which faced police batons and tear gas.“They are playing with the ambition of the country to be a democratic state,” Nazrul Islam Khan, a leader of the B.N.P., said on the eve of the vote. “We will continue the movement until the government falls.” More

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      Playing for Time, U.K. Leader Sets Up Chance of U.S. Election Overlap

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      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signaled that voters will go to the polls in the fall, around the time that the United States will be in the midst of its own pivotal vote.When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this week that he was not likely to call a general election in Britain before the second half of the year, he was trying to douse fevered speculation that he might go to the voters as early as May. But in doing so, he set up another tantalizing prospect: that Britain and the United States could hold elections within days or weeks of each other this fall.The last time parliamentary and presidential elections coincided was in 1964, when Britain’s Labour Party ousted the long-governing Conservatives in October, and less than a month later, a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, swept aside a challenge from a right-wing Republican insurgent. The parallels to today are not lost on the excitable denizens of Britain’s political class.“It’s the stuff of gossip around London dinner tables already,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to Washington who is now a member of the House of Lords. For all the Côte du Rhône-fueled analysis, Mr. Darroch conceded, “it’s hard to reach any kind of conclusion about what it means.”That doesn’t mean political soothsayers, amateur and professional, aren’t giving it a go. Some argue that a victory by the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, over President Biden — or even the prospect of one — would be so alarming that it would scare voters in Britain into sticking with Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party, as a bid for predictability and continuity in an uncertain world.A supporter of Donald J. Trump laying out signs on Tuesday before an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesOthers argue that the Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, could win over voters by reminding them of the ideological kinship between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Britain. Mr. Trump praised Mr. Sunak last fall for saying he wanted to water down some of Britain’s ambitious climate goals. “I always knew Sunak was smart,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social account.Still others pooh-pooh the suggestion that British voters would make decisions at the ballot box based on the political direction of another country, even one as close and influential as the United States. Britain’s election, analysts say, is likely to be decided by domestic concerns like the cost-of-living crisis, home-mortgage rates, immigration and the dilapidated state of the National Health Service.And yet, even the skeptics of any direct effect acknowledge that near-simultaneous elections could cause ripples on both sides of the pond, given how Britain and the United States often seem to operate under the same political weather system. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 is often viewed as a canary in the coal mine for Mr. Trump’s victory the following November.Already, the campaigns in both countries are beginning to echo each other, with fiery debates about immigration; the integrity — or otherwise — of political leaders; and social and cultural quarrels, from racial justice to the rights of transgender people. Those themes will be amplified as they reverberate across the ocean, with the American election forming a supersized backdrop to the British campaign.“The U.S. election will receive a huge amount of attention in the run-up to the U.K. election,” said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University. “If the Tories run a culture-war campaign, and people are being fed a diet of wall-to-wall populism because of Trump, that could backfire on them.”Some argue that if the elections coincide, Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, could win over voters by reminding them of the similarities between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesProfessor Ansell identified another risk in the political synchronicity: it could magnify the damage of a disinformation campaign waged by a hostile foreign power, such as the efforts by Russian agents in Britain before the Brexit vote, and in the United States before the 2016 presidential election. “It’s a two-for-one,” he said, noting that both countries remain divided and vulnerable to such manipulation.On Thursday, Mr. Starmer appealed to Britons to move past the fury and divisiveness of the Brexit debates, promising “a politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives.” That was reminiscent of Mr. Biden’s call in his 2021 inaugural address to “join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who studied at Oxford and has advised Conservative Party officials, said he warned the Tories not to turn their campaign into a culture war. “It will get you votes, but it will destroy the electorate in the process,” he said he told them, pointing out that a campaign against “woke” issues had not helped Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dislodge Mr. Trump.Mr. Sunak has vacillated in recent months between a hard-edge and more centrist approach as his party has struggled to get traction with voters. It currently lags Labour by 20 percentage points in most polls. While general elections are frequently held in the spring, Mr. Sunak appears to be playing for time in the hope that his fortunes will improve. That has drawn criticism from Mr. Starmer, who accused him of “squatting” in 10 Downing Street.“I’ve got lots that I want to get on with,” Mr. Sunak told reporters Thursday. He could wait until next January to hold a vote, though analysts say that was unlikely, since campaigning over the Christmas holiday would likely alienate voters and discourage party activists from canvassing door to door.Counting votes in Bath, England, during the U.K.’s last general election in 2019.Ian Walton/ReutersWith summer out for the same reason, Mr. Sunak’s most likely options are October or November (Americans will vote on Nov. 5). There are arguments for choosing either month, including that party conferences are traditionally held in early October.In October 1964, the Conservative government, led by Alec Douglas-Home, narrowly lost to Labour, led by Harold Wilson. Like Mr. Douglas-Home, Mr. Sunak is presiding over a party in power for more than 13 years. The following month, President Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, the hard-right Republican senator from Arizona, who had declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”Sixty years ago, the Atlantic was a greater divide than it is today, and the links between trans-Atlantic elections more tenuous than they are now. Mr. Trump, armed with a social media account and a penchant for lines even more provocative than Mr. Goldwater’s, could easily roil the British campaign, analysts said.And a Trump victory, they added, would pose a devilish challenge to either future British leader. While Mr. Trump treated Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, as an ideological twin, he fell out bitterly with Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, and there was little reason, they said, to hope for less drama in a second Trump term.The biggest pre-election danger — much more likely for Mr. Sunak than for Mr. Starmer, given their politics — is that Mr. Trump will make a formal endorsement, either while he is the Republican nominee or newly elected as president, said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.“Given how negatively most Brits feel toward Trump,” Professor Bale said, “such an endorsement is unlikely to play well for whichever of the two is unlucky enough to find favor with him.” More

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      Election Will Further Test Bangladesh’s Ailing Democracy

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      Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to roll to a fourth consecutive term as the gutted opposition boycotts what it calls an unfair election.There is little doubt that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will seize a fourth consecutive term when Bangladesh goes to the polls on Sunday. The bigger question is what will remain of the country’s democracy.The main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has been crushed and left with little mobilizing capacity. Its leaders who are not already in jail are bogged down with endless court appointments or are in hiding with the police on their tail. Ms. Hasina’s Awami League, in power since 2009, has cleared the way for a race so one-sided that the party urged its own contestants to prop up dummy candidates so it does not look as if they won unchallenged.The B.N.P. has boycotted the vote, after Ms. Hasina rejected its demand that she step aside during the campaign period so the election could be held under a neutral administration. Even as Bangladesh has appeared to be finding a path to prosperity and shedding a legacy of coups and assassinations, the uncontested election shows how politics in this country of 170 million remains hostage to decades of bad blood between the two major parties.The possibility of violence hangs in the air. The opposition’s effort to protest the vote, with repeated calls for nationwide strikes and civil disobedience, has been met with an intensified crackdown. More than 20,000 B.N.P. members and leaders have been arrested since the party’s last major rally, in October, according to party leaders and lawyers.Diplomats in Dhaka said they had received reports of appalling conditions inside overcrowded prisons. At least nine opposition leaders and members have died in jail since the Oct. 28 crackdown, according to human rights organizations and reports in local news media.As the B.N.P. has issued another call for a national strike, this one on the eve of the election, security has been increased, with the army deployed in the capital, Dhaka, and other regions.Bangladeshi soldiers were deployed on streets as part of enhanced security measures ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections.Mahmud Hossain Opu/Associated Press“There is a risk of increased violence after the polls, from both sides,” said Pierre Prakash, the Asia director for the International Crisis Group. “If the B.N.P. feels the largely nonviolent strategy it deployed in the run-up to the 2024 election has failed, leaders could come under pressure to revert to the more overt violence of the past.”And if the B.N.P. does resort to widespread violence, Mr. Prakash said, it will be walking right into a trap. Ms. Hasina’s party has been laying the groundwork for an even wider crackdown as it pushes a narrative that the opposition is filled with “terrorists” and “killers.”During Ms. Hasina’s 15-year rule, her second stint in power, the country has been a paradox of sorts.As investments in the garment export industry began paying off, the economy experienced such impressive growth that average income levels at one point surpassed India’s. Bangladesh has also shown major strides in other development areas, from education and health to female participation in the labor force and preparedness against climate disasters.But all along, critics say, Ms. Hasina, 76, has tried to turn the country into a one-party state. From the security agencies to the courts, she has captured government institutions and unleashed them onto anyone who does not fall in line.In the latest example, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was given a six-month jail sentence in what he has described as a political vendetta. Mr. Yunus is out on bail and appealing the verdict in a case that government officials say is not political and involves violations of labor laws.Ms. Hasina’s drive to dismantle the B.N.P. often appears to be a personal campaign of vengeance.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressing a campaign rally in December.-/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor most of the time since Bangladesh’s creation in 1971 — when it separated from Pakistan after a bloody campaign of cultural oppression against Bengalis — the country has been ruled by the two parties.The Awami League was the party of Ms. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence leader and founding president. After he set out on a campaign to centralize power, he was killed in a military coup that also left much of his young family dead.The B.N.P. was formed by Gen. Ziaur Rahman, the army chief who rose to power after a bloody phase of coups and counter-coups in the wake of Sheikh Mujib’s assassination. Mr. Zia, as he was known, was also later killed in a military coup.While Ms. Hasina sees the B.N.P. as the creation of the same military cadre that protected her father’s killers, her drive to destroy the party is even more personal, her aides say. When the B.N.P., led by Mr. Zia’s widow, Khaleda Zia, was in power in the early 2000s, one of Ms. Hasina’s rallies as an opposition leader was attacked by dozens of grenades. She survived a close call, but more than 20 of her party’s leaders and supporters were killed.Over the past couple of years, Ms. Hasina’s crackdown has become particularly severe as the sheen from the story of economic progress has worn off.The successive blows of the pandemic and the Ukraine war, which pushed up fuel and food prices, have shrunk Bangladesh’s foreign reserves to dangerous lows. The crisis has exposed not only Bangladesh’s overreliance on the garment industry, but also what Western diplomats in Dhaka say are kleptocratic practices hidden beneath the country’s economic growth.The ruling elite, diplomats say, tap into banks and the nation’s riches with little accountability. With about 60 percent of Parliament made up of businesspeople, economic interests and political power have become deeply intertwined, impeding economic reform, analysts say.The opposition tried to capitalize on public anger over rising prices, holding its first large rallies in years. But its momentum was short-lived, as the government’s crackdown deepened.Supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka in July.Atul Loke for The New York TimesThe B.N.P. says its demand for an election under a neutral caretaker was nothing new — Ms. Hasina called for the same when she was in the opposition, and she came to power in an election administered by a caretaker government. Bangladesh’s institutions are so vulnerable to abuse by the ruling party that no opposition has won election when the vote was not held under a caretaker.But Ms. Hasina considers the B.N.P.’s demand to be a violation of the constitution — because, after she came to power, she amended the charter to declare the practice illegal and a disruption to the democratic cycle.Seeking to avoid a repeat of the 2014 vote, in which Ms. Hasina’s party won more than half of the seats uncontested, the Awami League has been pointing to the smaller parties that are still contesting this year’s election. But analysts say the party has engineered a new token opposition. Some of these candidates made clear on campaign posters where they stood: “Supported by the Awami League.”The B.N.P.’s leader, Ms. Zia, a former prime minister, remains under house arrest. Her son, the party’s acting chairman, is in exile in London. Much of the party’s leadership is in jail.In the weeks leading up to Sunday’s vote, the party’s visibility was largely reduced to virtual news conferences by Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, one of the few senior B.N.P. leaders not in jail.Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the senior joint secretary general of the B.N.P., in his party office in June. Atul Loke for The New York TimesMr. Rizvi himself faces 180 court cases, and for months at a time he remained locked up in his office, sleeping in a small corner bed, as he risked arrest if he ventured out. He walks with a cane because of a bullet wound he received while protesting a military dictator in the late 1980s.“We and other like-minded parties have boycotted this election,” Mr. Rizvi said in a virtual news conference on Thursday, announcing a new strike to begin on Saturday. “The political parties and the people of the country have already understood that this election is going to be a rehearsal of the anarchy of Awami League. It’s going to be a one-sided election.”Obaidul Quader, general secretary of the Awami League, said it regretted the main opposition’s absence.“Had B.N.P. been there,” he added, “the election would have been more competitive.” More

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      Should Trump Be on the Ballot? And Other 2024 Sticky Wickets

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIs Donald Trump an insurrectionist who should be barred from the ballot? On this episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss who should get to decide if the former president can try to return to the White House. Plus, the hosts lay out what other stories are on their 2024 political bingo cards.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Hill Street Studios/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“The Antidemocratic Quest to Save Democracy From Trump,” by Ross Douthat in The New York TimesDecember 2023 Times/Siena poll“The 2023 High School Yearbook of American Politics,” by Michelle Cottle in The Times“Trump’s 2024 Playbook,” episode of “The Daily” from The Times“The World Should Fear 2024,” by Aris Roussinos in UnHerdThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Experts See a Message in Chinese Balloons Flying Over Taiwan

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      Some analysts see the objects as a calculatedly ambiguous reminder to voters that Beijing is watching.A surge in sightings of balloons from China flying over Taiwan has drawn the attention of the island’s military and struck some experts as a calculatedly ambiguous warning to voters weeks before its presidential election.Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has reported occasional sightings of balloons floating from China since last month, and a surge in recent days, according to the ministry’s daily tally of Chinese military activities near the island. Official Taiwanese accounts about balloons were previously very sporadic.The recent balloons have mostly stayed off Taiwan’s coast. On Monday, however, one flew across the island, according to the ministry’s descriptions of their paths. Of four spotted on Tuesday, three flew over Taiwan, and two passed through to the island’s east side, facing the Pacific Ocean. Another flew over the island on Wednesday.The Taiwanese reports also noted some of the balloons’ proximity to the island’s military bases. Of the four reported on Tuesday, three were first detected 120 to 184 miles from the Ching Chuan Kang Air Base in the city of Taichung. Taiwan’s defense ministry declined to specify how close to the base they may have flown.The balloons do not appear to pose an immediate military menace to Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 23 million people that Beijing says is its territory. Taiwan’s defense ministry last month indicated that the balloons seemed to be for collecting data about the atmosphere, but it has declined to give details about the ones detected this week.“The Ministry of National Defense is closely monitoring and tracking them, responding appropriately, and is also assessing and analyzing their drift patterns,” Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, a spokesman for the ministry, said on Thursday in response to questions about the balloons.Taiwan has, so far at least, experienced none of the alarm that gripped many Americans last year when a hulking Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon floated across the United States. China denied that the balloon was for spying, but Washington did not buy that line, and the dispute soured relations for many months.A surveillance balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in 2023. China denied that the balloon was for spying, but Washington did not buy that line.Randall Hill/ReutersTaiwanese people are used to Chinese military flights near the island, and news of the balloons has generally been met with calm, if not indifference.The balloon flights may, nonetheless, be part of the “gray zone” tactics that China uses to warn Taiwan of its military strength and options, without tipping into baldfaced confrontation. The timing of the balloon flights, close to Taiwan’s election, was telling, said Ko Yong-Sen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank in Taipei funded by Taiwan’s defense ministry. Mr. Ko has analyzed the pattern of recent sightings.“It’s more an intimidating effect in what happens to be a quite sensitive time, with we in Taiwan holding our election on Jan. 13,” Mr. Ko said in an interview. China, he said, “may want to tone it down. People say that it has recklessly used major weapons like planes and ships for harassment, so it’s shifted to balloons that can be used for a certain kind of lower-intensity intimidation and harassment.”In the election, Taiwanese voters will choose a president and legislature, and Beijing has made no secret of wanting the governing Democratic Progressive Party to lose power. The party opposes Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, and has asserted Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood. Decades ago, the party endorsed independence for Taiwan but now says it accepts the more ambiguous status quo of democratic self-determination.Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, has been leading in most polls up to Wednesday. But Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Nationalist Party, which favors closer ties with China, has trailed Mr. Lai by only a few percentage points in some recent surveys, and the Nationalists may emerge as the biggest party in the legislature, ending the Democratic Progressive Party’s majority.When asked late last month about the initial reports of balloons near Taiwan, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, Wu Qian, did not confirm or deny any flights, but suggested that, as Taiwan was a part of China, any dispute over balloons crossing the median line between the two sides was moot. He also accused the Democratic Progressive Party of whipping up the issue “to swindle votes.”In 1996, China’s attempt to use missile tests and menacing military drills to shape Taiwan’s presidential election failed, and this time, Beijing has not rolled out any major military exercises in the weeks before the vote. The balloons may augur a more fiery response from China’s leaders if they dislike the election result, said Ben Lewis, a military analyst based in Washington who maintains a daily data record of Chinese military activities around Taiwan.“I think the number of overflights, and, even more, their timing, is still an escalation in the P.R.C.’s activities,” Mr. Lewis said by email, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “If nothing else, I’m taking this as a warning that the P.R.C.’s response to the election will likely be impossible to predict.”The latest sightings were almost certainly not the first time that balloons from China floated over Taiwan, Mr. Lewis said. The Taiwanese defense ministry began regularly reporting Chinese military flights near the island in 2020, and their numbers have grown year by year and now include drones. After a Chinese weather balloon was found last year on a small island controlled by Taiwan, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that most of the balloons swept in around the Taiwan Strait from December to February when, it noted, the “prevailing wind direction” helped them along.Mr. Ko, the Taiwanese defense expert, said that he worried more about what the Chinese military could do with more concerted use of high-altitude balloons over the island, like the one spotted over the United States last year, which could augment data collection using satellites and radar.“The intelligence gathering from Taiwan would be even more serious,” he said. “This is something we’ve been concerned about, and it would be more troublesome.” More

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      Attack on Opposition Leader Raises Alarms in Divided South Korea

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      The attack on Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost the 2022 presidential vote, came amid a deepening political divide and increasingly extreme discourse in South Korea.Lee Jae-myung, South Korea’s opposition party leader, was attacked by a man who wearing a blue paper crown. In footage from Korean media, the attacker’s image has been blurred.@barunsori/YouTube via ReutersThe man accused of stabbing Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, in the neck had been stalking him in recent weeks, including attending a political event where Mr. Lee was present on Dec. 13, apparently captured on video there wearing a blue paper crown, the police say.At a rally on Tuesday, a man wearing a similar paper crown and carrying a message supporting Mr. Lee and his party was also carrying something else: a knife with a five-inch blade and a plastic handle wrapped with duct tape.The attack, the worst against a South Korean politician in nearly two decades, seriously wounded Mr. Lee, who officials said was recovering in an intensive care unit at Seoul National University on Wednesday after surgery. And it deeply shocked a country that values hard-won years of relative peace after an era of political and military violence before establishing democracy in the 1990s.The opposition leader Lee Jae-myung after being attacked in Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday. Officials said he was recovering in Seoul after surgery.Yonhap, via ReutersThe police said that the suspect, a 66-year-old real estate agent named Kim Jin-seong, had admitted an intent to kill Mr. Lee. Armed with a court-issued warrant, the police confiscated Mr. Kim’s mobile phone and raided his home and office in Asan, south of Seoul, on Wednesday, as they tried to piece together what might have motivated that attack.With details still scarce, public debate and news editorials were expressing a growing concern about South Korea’s deepening political polarization and the hatred and extremism it has seemed to inspire, as well as the challenges it posed to the country’s young democracy.“The opposition leader falls under a knife of ‘politics of hatred,’” read a headline from the Chosun Ilbo, the country’s leading conservative daily.Officials said that little was known about Mr. Kim’s personal life or political and other background except that he was a former government official who had been operating a real estate agency in Asan since 2012. Police found no previous records of crime, drug use or psychiatric trouble, and said he was sober at the time of the attack on Mr. Lee. His neighbors said they had little interaction with him.One neighbor remembered him as a kind and hard-working “gentleman” who kept his office open every day, even on weekends, but who didn’t speak with him about politics and lived alone in an apartment.“He’s not someone who’d do such a thing,” said Park Min-joon, who runs a building management company. “I couldn’t believe it.”Investigators from the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency on Wednesday raiding the office of the suspect in the attack.Yonhap/EPA, via ShutterstockThe deep and bitter rivalry between Mr. Lee and President Yoon Suk Yeol has been center stage in South Korea’s political polarization since 2022, when Mr. Lee lost to Mr. Yoon with the thinnest margin of any free presidential election in South Korea. Instead of retiring from politics, as some presidential candidates have after defeats, Mr. Lee ran for — and won — a parliamentary seat, as well as chairmanship of the opposition Democratic Party.Under Mr. Yoon, state prosecutors have launched a series of investigations against Mr. Lee and tried to arrest him on various corruption and other criminal charges. Mr. Yoon has also refused to grant Mr. Lee one-on-one meetings that South Korean presidents had often offered opposition leaders to seek political compromises. Instead, he has repeatedly characterized his political opponents as “anti-state forces” or “corrupt cartels.”For his part, Mr. Lee accused Mr. Yoon of deploying state law-enforcement forces to intimidate his enemies. His party has refused to endorse many of Mr. Yoon’s appointees to the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. Political commentators likened the relationship between Mr. Yoon and Mr. Lee to “gladiators’ politics.”“The two have been on a collision course for two years,” said Park Sung-min, head of MIN Consulting, a political consultancy. “President Yoon has been accused of not recognizing Lee Jae-myung as an opposition leader but rather as a criminal suspect. I don’t think his attitude will likely change following the knife attack against Lee.”The last major attack on a domestic political leader happened in 2006, when Park Geun-hye, then an opposition leader, was slashed in the face with a box cutter. But the attack was seen largely as an isolated outburst of anger by an ex-convict who complained of mistreatment by the law enforcement system. (Ms. Park went on to win the 2012 presidential election.)Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of the Grand National Party, was attacked by a man with a box cutter during a campaign for local elections in Seoul in 2006. In 2012, she won the presidential election.Cbs Nocutnews, via Associated PressBut in recent years, politicians have been increasingly exposed to hatred in the public sphere, as political polarization deepened. In a survey sponsored by the newspaper Hankyoreh in December, more than 50 percent of respondents said they felt the political divide worsening. In another survey in December, commissioned by the Chosun Ilbo, four out of every 10 respondents said they found it uncomfortable to share meals or drinks with people who didn’t share their political views.South Koreans had an early inkling of the current problem. During the presidential election campaign in 2022, Song Young-gil, an opposition leader, was attacked by a bludgeon-wielding man in his 70s, who subsequently killed himself in jail.Jin Jeong-hwa, a YouTuber whose channel openly supports Mr. Lee and who live-streamed the knife attack on Tuesday, said he could feel the increasing political tension and hatred everyday. Once, when he visited a conservative town in central South Korea, people who recognized him tried to chase him out, threatening him with knives and sickles.“You see a lot of anger, vilification, character assassination and demonizing,” Mr. Jin said. “I am not sure whether rational debate on issues and ideologies is possible anymore.”Rep. Kwon Chil-seung, center, a senior spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party, gives an update on Mr. Lee’s condition in Seoul on Wednesday.Yonhap/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Wednesday, Mr. Yoon wished Mr. Lee a quick recovery, calling attacks against politicians “an enemy of free democracy.” His government ordered beefed-up public security for politicians.But analysts saw little chance of political polarization easing anytime soon as the rival parties geared up for parliamentary elections in April. Social media, especially YouTube, has become so influential as a channel of spreading news and shaping public opinion that politicians said they found themselves beholden to populist demands from activist YouTubers who were widely accused of stoking fear and hatred.Both Mr. Yoon and Mr. Lee have fervent online supporters who often resort to whipping up insults, conspiracy theories and even thinly veiled death threats against their foes.“Hate has become a daily norm” in South Korean politics, said Mr. Park, the head of MIN Consulting. “Politicians must face the reality that similar things can happen again,” he said, referring to the knife attack against Mr. Lee. More

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      Congo’s President Declared Victor in Election Marred by Delays and Protests

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      The Central African nation’s vote drew accusations of fraud, but the elections commissioner declared that the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, had won.The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, was declared the winner on Sunday of the December presidential vote in an election marred by severe logistical problems, protests and calls for its annulment from several opposition candidates.Mr. Tshisekedi won more than 13 million votes, or 73 percent of the total ballots cast, said Denis Kadima, the head of the country’s electoral commission. Just over 18 million people, out of the 44 million registered to vote, cast ballots, Mr. Kadima said. The provisional results will now be sent to the nation’s Constitutional Court for confirmation.The announcement was a critical moment in an election dogged by acute problems, some because of Congo’s vast size, and many fear the outcome could plunge the Central African nation into a new round of political turmoil and even violent unrest that has followed other electoral contests in recent years.The results of the election matter not only to Congo’s 100 million people, who are suffering after decades of conflict and poor governance, but also to Western countries that consider Congo a critical part of their efforts to stem climate change and make a transition to green energy.Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a key element in the electric vehicle industry, and has the second-largest rainforest, which absorbs vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide. But for many in Congo, a decades-old, corruption-ridden system of political patronage is seen as the best way to distribute the spoils of that natural wealth — which may explain why the presidential race was so hotly contested.Electoral commission officials and polling agents gathered to count ballots at a Congolese polling center on Dec. 20 in North Kivu Province.Arlette Bashizi/ReutersOn Dec. 23, five opposition leaders accused the country’s electoral commission of “massive fraud,” called on the head of the commission to resign and said the entire vote should be annulled. Four days later, opposition leaders held a demonstration in the capital, Kinshasa, to protest what they called a “sham” election. Security forces surrounded the offices of Martin Fayulu, one of the opposition candidates, and lobbed tear gas at protesters there, according to his spokesman and videos shared on social media.Opposition leaders, including Moïse Katumbi, a business tycoon who is President Tshisekedi’s closest rival, condemned the actions of security forces and promised more marches nationwide.Mr. Katumbi got three million votes, or about 18 percent of the ballots counted, the election commission said. Mr. Fayulu garnered just over 960,000 votes. Most of the other two dozen presidential candidates, including the Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, got less than 1 percent of the vote.“The unfortunate competitors must accept the democratic game,” Mr. Kadima, the election chief, said on Sunday. “As a people, we must keep in mind the existence and stability of the Democratic Republic of Congo matters much more than an elected position,” he said, adding, “Let’s not weaken our country.”But his comments are unlikely to assuage opposition leaders, who on Sunday called on their supporters to protest the results. They also said a new election commission should be formed and a fresh vote held.“We categorically reject the sham elections” and their results, nine of the opposition presidential candidates said in a joint statement.President Felix Tshisekedi, who on Sunday was declared the winner, after voting in Kinshasa last week.Guerchom Ndebo for The New York TimesMr. Tshisekedi, the incumbent and longstanding favorite to win, has repeatedly insisted that the election, which cost more than $1.25 billion to run, was fair and good enough given the challenges.Logistical chaos marred the election long before the first votes were cast on Dec. 20. For weeks, election officials had rushed to get materials to 75,000 polling stations across a country the size of Western Europe and with few paved roads in the middle of the rainy season.Yet just 70 percent of polling stations were open on Election Day, the election commission said, prompting it to extend the voting into a second day. Opposition leaders denounced the extension, claiming that it would facilitate fraud. It also drew criticism from the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, which enjoy broad public support across Congolese society and which run a network of electoral observers; the churches said the move violated the country’s electoral laws and was unconstitutional.Voting even continued until Dec. 22 in remote areas, including parts of Kwango and Kasai Provinces, the Rev. Rigobert Minani, a prominent Catholic campaigner, said in a text message.The election commission acknowledged the delays but insisted that extending the vote did not undermine its legitimacy.Checking names on the electoral roll at a polling station in Kinshasa on the first day of voting.Guerchom Ndebo for The New York TimesMr. Tshisekedi, who came to power in 2019 in hotly disputed circumstances, had hoped this election would be an easy victory.Unofficial tallies in the previous contest compiled by Catholic and other observers found that Mr. Fayulu, a former oil executive, had probably won three times as many votes as Mr. Tshisekedi. But after several weeks of political turmoil, Mr. Tshisekedi struck a power-sharing deal with the departing president, Joseph Kabila, who had led for 18 years.That deal crumbled within a year, and since then Mr. Tshisekedi has effectively consolidated his power, gaining popular support by providing free primary education to millions of Congolese children. But he has not delivered on two key promises: to bring peace to eastern Congo, where conflict has raged since 1996, and to tackle the country’s notorious reputation for corruption.Instead, political opponents charge, Mr. Tshisekedi and his extended family have acquired considerable wealth during his time in power.Supporters of Mr. Tshisekedi celebrating on Sunday in Kinshasa.Chris Milosi/EPA, via ShutterstockThe United States played a crucial role after Congo’s last election, in December 2018, when it blessed the controversial power-sharing deal between Mr. Tshisekedi and Mr. Kabila. This time, American officials have been at pains to stress that they are not taking sides.In a statement on Dec. 22, the United States Embassy in Kinshasa noted the logistical problems with the voting and called on Congolese leaders to “exercise restraint” and to peacefully resolve any electoral disputes that may follow.Without naming any candidate, Mr. Kadima, the election chief, on Sunday criticized candidates he said had used vandalism, intimidation, corruption and violence to cheat and win. The final results are now slated for early January, and once confirmed by the court, a presidential swearing-in is expected by the month’s end.“We were tenacious,” Mr. Kadima said of the election process.Emma Bubola More