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      In Argentina, a Far-Right Candidate Rises and the Peso Plunges

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      Javier Milei has become the favorite in Argentina’s election this month by pledging to dollarize the economy. In response, the Argentine peso is crashing.Javier Milei is still just a candidate to be president of Argentina. But he is already single-handedly delivering one of Latin America’s biggest economies a financial shock.The value of Argentina’s currency is plummeting under criticism by Mr. Milei, a hard-right libertarian who has become the leading presidential candidate by promising to replace the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar.On Monday, Mr. Milei continued his attacks on the peso by discouraging Argentines from holding any investments in the currency. “The peso is the currency issued by the Argentine politician and therefore is worth less than excrement,” he said on a popular radio show. “That trash is not even good as manure.”The peso’s unofficial rate, which reflects the market’s valuation of the currency and drives prices in Argentina, fell nearly 7 percent on Monday alone, reducing its value by about 15 percent over a week.At that unofficial rate, $1 bought 945 pesos as of Tuesday morning. Before Mr. Milei won a primary election on Aug. 14, $1 bought 660 pesos. In April 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the figure was 80 pesos.The escalating crisis prompted Argentina’s Central Bank, which Mr. Milei has promised to shutter, to issue an extraordinary statement on Monday afternoon that “Argentina maintains a liquid and solvent financial system” and that it backs Argentine bank deposits.Mr. Milei, an eccentric economist who wants to upend the country’s government and financial system, is the front-runner in Argentina’s presidential election on Oct. 22, though the race, polls suggest, could still go to a November runoff.His ascent has dominated the national conversation and accelerated the peso’s decline.The morning after Mr. Milei surprised the nation by finishing first in presidential primaries in August, market pressures forced the government to devalue the peso by 20 percent.Supporters of Mr. Milei during a campaign rally last month in San Martín, Argentina.Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Milei’s comments are causing “a spike in inflation or an eventual banking problem, which is what he is encouraging,” said Marina Dal Poggetto, an Argentine economist and former analyst at Argentina’s Central Bank. “What you are seeing is the beginning of a run that may or may not stop. We have to see what happens on October 22. Milei still hasn’t won.”Mr. Milei has embraced comparisons to Donald J. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former far-right president, and has made headlines for his denials of the role of humans in climate change, his harsh criticisms of the pope and his aims to ban abortion and legalize sales of human organs.But the centerpiece of his campaign has been his sometimes professorial lectures on economic policy designed to persuade voters that he alone can fix Argentina’s soaring inflation.The country is in the midst of one of its worst financial crises in decades, with annual inflation now topping 120 percent and prices at many stores and restaurants changing weekly, if not faster.Sergio Massa, Argentina’s finance minister and Mr. Milei’s principal opponent, accused Mr. Milei on Monday of deliberately trying to destabilize Argentina’s currency to wreak havoc ahead of the vote. “In order to gain one more vote, he is gouging people’s savings,” said Mr. Massa, a center-left politician from the party that has led the country for 16 of the past 20 years.At an event with business leaders last week, Mr. Milei said that the lower the value of the peso, the easier it would be to dollarize Argentina.If elected president, Mr. Milei is likely to face major challenges in accomplishing his proposals. Mr. Milei has said that he will likely need a $40 billion infusion of dollars to switch Argentina’s official currency, though it is unclear he would get that much money. Argentina is already struggling to pay its $44 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund.Sergio Massa, Argentina’s finance minister and Mr. Milei’s principal opponent, has accused Mr. Milei of deliberately trying to destabilize Argentina’s currency.Agustin Marcarian/ReutersMr. Milei has also said that Argentina’s Congress would have to approve many of his proposals, which include deep cuts to government spending, the elimination of many taxes and privatizing all of the nation’s state companies.His nascent Liberty Advances political party would likely control a small share of the seats in Congress, forcing him to forge alliances with other parties that he has labeled criminal.Argentina has struggled with high inflation for decades, including a bout of hyperinflation in the 1980s when customers were rushing to buy items before clerks wielding price guns could make another round of increases. But spiking prices, driven by the weak currency, have roared back over the past two years.Some of Argentina’s problems have been driven by global economic factors, like the pandemic and the Ukraine war, but much of it, economists say, is because the government has overspent to pay for free or deeply subsidized universities, health care, energy and public transportation. To finance all that, Argentina has often printed more pesos.The result has been an increasing lack of confidence in the currency, which has forced the government to create more than a dozen separate exchange rates for the peso, because its own official rate no longer reflects the market’s valuation.The new rates include one for tourists, one for soybean exporters and one for Argentines who were traveling to Qatar to watch their national football team win the 2022 World Cup. The so-called Blue Dollar is the most important parallel rate — set by a small group of financial companies and listed live on television news programs — and is how most Argentines transfer their pesos to dollars on the underground market.On Tuesday, seeking to assuage some market fears, the government consolidated several of those rates into a new rate that at least one accountant called the Election Dollar.Natalie Alcoba More

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      Liberia Presidential Election: What to Know as George Weah Runs Again

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      George Weah, a former soccer superstar, is running for re-election amid doubts over his ability to tackle rampant corruption and fears of post-election violence.A former soccer superstar won the presidential election in the West African nation of Liberia in 2017 by promising to fix the country’s economy, build more roads and address endemic graft.But six years later, the aura that surrounds President George Weah has faded, a result of criticism that he has spent too much time abroad and failed to sufficiently tackle corruption.Now, as voters in Liberia head to the polls on Tuesday in an election to determine whether to re-elect him or, as one of his main opponents said, give him a red card, Mr. Weah’s prospects are uncertain.The presidential election in the coastal country of 5.5 million is another test for the future of representative rule in West Africa. Mutinous soldiers have seized power in several countries in the region in recent years, presidents have clung to power in contravention of their countries’ constitutions, and elections elsewhere have been tainted by irregularities.Last month, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced visa restrictions for people “undermining democracy in Liberia” by encouraging violence or seeking to rig the election. Mr. Blinken didn’t specify who was affected by the restrictions, or how many people were targeted.Three people died in clashes during the campaign, and at Mr. Weah’s final rally on Sunday on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, the police dispersed crowds with tear gas as supporters and opposition members threw stones at each other.Some 2.4 million people are eligible to vote. Preliminary tallies are expected within days, and official results later this month. If no candidate secures more than 50 percent of the votes, a runoff will take place in November.Who is George Weah?Mr. Weah, 57, who grew up in the slums of Monrovia, ran in 2017, leveraging his status as a former soccer star who played in some for Europe’s top clubs. He remains the only African player to receive the Ballon d’Or, an award for the world’s top player soccer player, which he won in 1995.How has he done in power?At a bustling mobile phone repair shop in downtown Monrovia on Monday, voters debated whether Mr. Weah deserved a second term.“He’s doing well: he’s bringing development, he’s building roads, he pays exam fees for people going to school,” said Sandra Giddings, who sells cleaning products to offices, listing the main achievements cited by Mr. Weah’s camp.Sitting next to her while waiting for his phone to be repaired, Abisha Louah, an I.T. engineer, held the opposite view. “We have not really seen the tangibles,” he said, speaking of a lack of job opportunities for young Liberians and failure to tackle corruption.What are the biggest concerns?Mr. Weah has been criticized by his opponents for spending too much time outside the country. He was gone for nearly two months last year, partly to watch his son Timothy play for the United States at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.In 2022, the United States Treasury imposed sanctions on three Liberian officials for corruption, including Mr. Weah’s chief of staff. Mr. Weah promised an investigation but has not followed through. He has not been personally accused of corruption.Liberia’s economy remains fragile, still reeling from a 14-year civil war that ended in 2003 and left 250,000 people dead, and an Ebola epidemic between 2013 and 2016 that killed thousands more.The country relies heavily on iron ore exports and agriculture, but more than 80 percent of Liberians are food insecure, according to the World Bank, and as in neighboring countries, staple prices have soared over the past two years.So who’s challenging him?Mr. Weah is facing 19 other candidates, but there is really only one main challenger: Joseph Boakai, a veteran of Liberian politics who served as vice-president from 2006 to 2018 and who came second in the last election.But Mr. Boakai, who is 78, has been criticized for the alliance he has made with a senator, Prince Johnson, a former warlord who has threatened a popular revolt if he believes the election has been manipulated.What happens next?Liberian elections usually are decided with a runoff, but the two main contenders, Mr. Weah and Mr. Boakai, have predicted that they would win in the first round, raising fears of riots and violence.“The ruling party might not be willing to accept defeat as they have a sense of entitlement to a full 12-year rule,” Ibrahim Al-bakri Nyei, the director of a Monrovia-based research center, said about Mr. Weah’s party’s hope to secure another six-year term.“And the opposition think that it is their time, that they are entitled to return to power,” he added.For many Liberians, responsibility will ultimately fall on Mr. Weah’s governing party and the leading opposition party to hold a peaceful contest.“They need to calm down their supporters,” Isaac Siaker, a 42-year-old wholesale drinks seller, said on Tuesday as he was about to vote in Monrovia. 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      Poland’s Ruling Party Uses Germany as Boogeyman as Tough Election Looms

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      Poland’s Law and Justice party is using Germany as a punching bag to rally its base for the election on Oct. 15, a tactic driven by the country’s de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.Amid rising alarm this summer in Poland and the Baltic States over a possible military attack from the east, the Polish Embassy in Lithuania requested an urgent meeting with the head of Germany’s diplomatic mission. Polish embassies in other European countries made similar requests.What the Polish diplomats wanted to talk about, however, was not the risk of an assault from Belarus or the war in Ukraine, but a less pressing matter: a demand that Germany cough up more than a trillion dollars to cover damage done by the Nazis during World War II.The issue of reparations, which was settled decades ago, is a personal fixation of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the Polish governing party, Law and Justice. Last weekend, rallying supporters ahead of a critical general election next Sunday, he told a party convention that it was not only about the money, but also a “matter of dignity.”Demands that Germany pay Poland $1.3 trillion — the exact figure keeps changing — first surfaced several years ago, but they have flared with new intensity as Mr. Kaczynski looks for ways to secure his party a third consecutive term. Attacking Germany and its supposed hold on the leader of the opposition has become his main tool for mobilizing voters.Recent opinion polls put Law and Justice slightly ahead of its main rival, Civic Coalition, which groups center-right forces and progressives upset by the current government’s hard lines against abortion and minority rights. But neither of the front-runners is likely to win enough seats in Parliament to form a government on its own. Which side can do that will depend on the performances of smaller parties, including a far-right outfit opposed to helping Ukraine and a leftist coalition.Posters demanding that Germany pay reparations to Poland for crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II are seen in 2021 in Warsaw.Czarek Sokolowski/Associated PressLaw and Justice’s use of Germany to rile up its nationalist base in a tight race reflects the extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence of Mr. Kaczynski, 74. He dictates Polish policy on most matters of state even though he holds only one government post, deputy prime minister, a position that he assumed in June and that carries little formal power.“He always had an obsession about Germany,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, who served as defense minister in an earlier government headed by Mr. Kaczynski. “There is no chance of getting any money, but this is a good way to excite voters,” he added.Mr. Kaczynski “is a virtuoso at playing on fear, on what is worst in us as a nation,” Mr. Sikorski said.The influence of Mr. Kaczynski is so great that “he is No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 in this country,” said Bartlomiej Rajchert, a political strategist who worked closely with Law and Justice on its successful 2005 presidential election campaign for Mr. Kaczynski’s twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in 2010.The office of Mr. Rajchert’s consulting company, GDS, is next to Mr. Kaczynski’s on the second floor of a dingy, Communist-era building in the center of Warsaw that also houses Law and Justice headquarters. When Mr. Kaczynski is in town, Mr. Rajchert said, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, regularly visits him, as do other key government officials, apparently to receive instructions.“This is where important decisions get taken,” Mr. Rajchert said, pointing to Mr. Kaczynski’s office next door.Stanislaw Kostrzewski, Law and Justice’s longtime former treasurer, described Mr. Kaczynski as “a highly intelligent person” who “obviously doesn’t believe” the elaborate conspiracy theories featuring Germany that are being pumped out ahead of Election Day by a state broadcasting system controlled by the governing party.“It is all such nonsense, but it works,” Mr. Kostrzewski said. “I feel bad as a Pole because of the stupidity of my nation.”Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition Civic Coalition party, last Sunday at an anti-government march in Warsaw. Mr. Tusk, according to Mr. Kaczynski, is not only a political rival, but a national traitor intent on selling his country out to German — and Russian — interests.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBashing Germans not only stokes grievances left by World War II, when Poland lost around six million people, but also helps turn boring political arguments over taxation rates and the age of retirement, currently 65, into an exciting moral drama.In that telling, Law and Justice’s main opponent, the Civic Coalition’s leader, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister, figures as a German lap dog who, in Mr. Kaczynski’s description, is the “personification of pure evil” who must be “morally exterminated.”Mr. Tusk, according to Mr. Kaczynski, is a national traitor intent on selling his country out to German — and also Russian — interests.Mr. Kaczynski recently starred in an anti-German election ad on television that features him taking a phone call from a Polish-speaking man with a comically thick German accent playing Berlin’s ambassador in Warsaw.The ambassador, with Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” blaring in the background, informs Mr. Kaczynski imperiously that the German chancellor wants him to raise Poland’s retirement age back to what it was — 67 — when Mr. Tusk was Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014. Mr. Kaczynski sternly tells the ambassador that Warsaw no longer takes orders from Berlin. “Mr. Tusk is no longer here and these customs are gone,” he says.Casting Germany as a malevolent force in cahoots with Mr. Tusk helps justify the governing party’s long-running feuds over the rule of law and other issues with the European Union, which Mr. Kaczynski has described as a German-led “Fourth Reich.” Before returning to Polish politics in 2019, Mr. Tusk served as president of the European Council, the European bloc’s principal power center.Mr. Kostrzewski, the former party treasurer, said that Mr. Kaczynski had never cared about money or luxury — his car is a humble Skoda — and that his only real passion had always been politics, which took on a cold, deeply cynical edge after his brother’s death.Left alone in command of Law and Justice and free of his brother’s moderating influence, Mr. Kaczynski, Mr. Kostrzewski said, stacked the party and the government it formed after winning a 2015 election with “people who only tell him what he wants to hear” and who serve his “Machiavellian vision of executing power.”Mr. Kaczynski with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland, left, and Mariusz Blaszczak, the country’s defense minister, in August at the Law and Justice party’s headquarters in Warsaw.Radek Pietruszka/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski — an opposition member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the legislature’s foreign affairs committee, whose father was an Auschwitz survivor and Poland’s foreign minister after the end of Communist rule — Law and Justice’s crude pre-election antics mean that “we have no foreign policy anymore, only foreign affairs for domestic use.”Mr. Kaczynski, he said, “thinks that whatever damage he does by being fanatically anti-German does not matter so long as it helps mobilize core voters.”For weeks now, state television has peppered news broadcasts with a recording of two single words — “für Deutschland” or “for Germany” — uttered by Mr. Tusk during a 2021 speech in German that thanked Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party for its role in healing Europe’s divisions at the end of the Cold War.The two words — a tiny and misleading fragment of what Mr. Tusk said — have become Exhibit A in Law and Justice’s case against the opposition leader as a German stooge.Aimed at rallying a party base that is mostly older, rural and often resentful of foreigners, the barrage of anti-German messaging has stunned and appalled Germans invested in postwar reconciliation and Poles who want to see their country as a serious player.At a security conference this past week in Warsaw — an event that was meant to spotlight Poland as Europe’s “new center of gravity” because of the war in Ukraine — politicians and experts from Poland and Germany bewailed the damage done to Poland’s image and European solidarity by Law and Justice’s pre-election stunts.A monument in Warsaw honoring the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. In the view of many Poles, Polish suffering in World War II has often been ignored by outsiders.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn an interview, Knut Abraham, a member of the German Parliament and a former diplomat in Warsaw, described Law and Justice’s demonization of Germany and Mr. Tusk as “not only nonsense, but insane,” accusing the Polish governing party of shredding hard-won postwar reconciliation for electoral gain. Last year, Mr. Abraham accompanied the leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union to Mr. Kaczynski’s office in Warsaw. The Polish party leader, he recalled, was civil, even charming, but peppered the conversation with historical references to slights against Poland. He is a “hard-core Polish nationalist” with a keen eye for political advantage, Mr. Abraham said.And no issue is easier to exploit at election time than the wounds of World War II, in which Polish suffering, in the view of many Poles, has been often ignored by outsiders focused on the Holocaust, a big part of which took place in Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.Pawel Poncyliusz, who served as Mr. Kaczynski’s press officer before jumping to the opposition, said his former boss had a genuine interest in history but had harnessed the horrors endured by Poland in the past to serve his political ambitions.A lifelong bachelor who lives alone in the same modest Warsaw house he shared with his mother until her death a decade ago, Mr. Kaczynski, he said, “does not need women, money or holidays in Asia” but desperately needs to win and hold power.“In his head, he has unified himself with Poland,” Mr. Poncyliusz added. “Everything that is good for him is good for Poland. Everything that is against him is against Poland.”Anatol Magdziarz More

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      UK’s Labour Holds Party Conference After a Big Win

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      Just ask Britain’s opposition Labour party.Only a month ago, some Labour Party officials were fretting about the risks of fighting a parliamentary election in Scotland days before the party’s annual conference.What if the party underperformed, just before its leader, Keir Starmer, had to make one of the most important speeches of his career?In the end, the opposite happened.Labour exceeded its own expectations, trouncing the Scottish National Party in the district of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, outside Glasgow.It now seems the timing could not have been better. The victory not only promised to energize the gathering in Liverpool, but it also offered a road map for how Britain’s main opposition party could defeat the Conservatives and regain power after 13 years.“One thing is now clear,” Labour’s triumphant candidate, Michael Shanks, said to a cheering crowd on Friday. “There’s no part of this country where Labour can’t win. Labour can kick the Tories out of Downing Street next year and deliver the change that people want and this country so badly needs.”That is a message that Labour’s leaders will push relentlessly over the next three days, and it captures a paradox at the heart of British politics: Labour, the party of change, is seeking to lock in its current trajectory, while the Conservatives, the incumbents lagging in the polls, are desperate to shake up the political landscape.That dynamic helps explain why the Conservative leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, scrapped part of a costly high-speed rail project — one long supported by both parties — and is restyling himself as a disrupter. “Be in no doubt,” he told his party conference last week in Manchester, “it is time for a change, and we are it.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain on Wednesday at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. He has tried to position himself as a “change candidate,” even as his party has held power for 13 years.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Mr. Starmer, the goal is less far-fetched, if still challenging, according to analysts: He needs to give voters good reasons to vote for his party, rather than simply against the unpopular Conservatives.“Keir Starmer has done a lot of things faster than he expected,” said Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to a previous Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. “His task now is to make the sale to the public, which doesn’t really know him.”That will most likely involve Mr. Starmer reiterating the five missions that he set for the party in February, focused on economic growth, clean energy, the National Health Service, crime reduction and expansion of opportunity.A few of these missions sound not unlike the goals Mr. Sunak has set. And if Labour wins power, it will face the same funding squeeze that has shackled the Conservatives. But Mr. Starmer at least is not hobbled by his party’s record in government. Polls suggest that serial scandals under one of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Boris Johnson, and the misbegotten tax policies of another, Liz Truss, have lingered in voters’ minds.“People don’t like the Tories — they’re prepared to vote for Labour,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, who is attending the conference as a delegate. “But there is a sense that Labour has to give those voters something.”One thing Labour does not want to give them is the drama that spiced up the Conservative conference, with its attention-grabbing speeches by Ms. Truss and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, both of whom appeared to be vying for the future of the party even as Mr. Sunak tried to assert his control.At a pre-conference briefing for delegates, Mr. Fielding said, Labour officials warned them to avoid unguarded late-night conversations with journalists. “This is not a place to debate policy,” he said, paraphrasing the party’s message. “This is not a time for disagreement. This is a time for nailing the lead Labour has.”In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, Mr. Starmer ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though Mr. Starmer’s party is far ahead of the Conservatives.Hannah McKay/ReutersMr. Starmer will no doubt gladly discuss the by-election. Labour won back the seat from the Scottish National Party, which had held it since 2019, with a resounding 58.6 percent of the vote, an increase of 24.1 percentage points over its last election, while the S.N.P. scored 27.6 percent, a decline of 16.6 points.“You couldn’t have had better walk-up to the conference,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of public policy at the University of Glasgow. “The scale of the victory is more than they could have hoped for.”Professor McEwen cautioned that by-elections, with their low voter turnouts and strong anti-incumbent bias, do not automatically translate into similar gains in general elections. But she said the Labour Party had run an effective, disciplined campaign in Rutherglen — one it could rerun in districts across Scotland, where the S.N.P., like the Conservatives, is battling acute voter fatigue.Were Labour to replicate its success throughout Scotland, it could pick up 42 seats, according to John Curtice, a professor and pollster at the University of Strathclyde. (It currently has only two.) That would restore the party to a level of dominance that it has not had since 2014, when the S.N.P., riding a wave of support for Scottish independence, emerged as a dominant political force.Such a gain could help Labour amass a clear majority in Parliament, even if — as Professor Curtice said was likely — the party’s nearly 20-point advantage over the Tories tightens somewhat in the coming months.If the S.N.P. maintained its current number of seats, Labour would need to beat the Tories by 12 percentage points just to eke out a single-seat majority in Westminster, according to Professor Curtice. But for every 12 seats that Labour wins in Scotland, it could give up two percentage points to the Tories and still gain a majority.Labour still faces challenges, political analysts said. Mr. Starmer, a former public prosecutor, is not nearly as charismatic a figure as Mr. Blair was in 1997. In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, he ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though his party is far ahead of the Conservatives.As prime minister, Mr. Sunak retains an ability to set the agenda. After Mr. Sunak announced the suspension of the rail project, called High Speed 2, Mr. Starmer acknowledged that Labour would have to honor it. “I can’t stand here and commit to reversing that decision,” Mr. Starmer told the BBC. “They’ve taken a wrecking ball to it.”But on Friday, the Labour leader was not looking over his shoulder at the Tories. In a jubilant detour to Scotland, on his way to Liverpool, he sounded very much like a politician who could see a clear path to 10 Downing Street.“You blew the doors off,” Mr. Starmer told a victory rally. “Because we’ve changed, we are now the party of the change here in Scotland. We’re the party of change in Britain, the party of change right across the whole country.” More

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      Australia Sees ‘Trump Style’ Misinformation in ‘Voice’ Campaign

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      The reverberations from election conspiracy theories, until recently the domain of political fringes, could be acute, as witnessed by the United States and Brazil.The ballots should, according to the official instructions, be marked with a “yes” or a “no.” A clear and legible “y” or “n” is also likely to be counted. So is a checkmark, for affirmative, but an “X” is considered too ambiguous by the authorities and does not count as a “no” vote.This is how Australians have voted in constitutional referendums for decades. But as the debate over this month’s Aboriginal “Voice” referendum has become increasingly antagonistic and polarized, the process has come under attack.For the first time, in as long as experts can remember, the leader of a mainstream political party in the country has cast doubt on the integrity of an electoral process. Conspiracy theories of a rigged election, the likes of which have led to the storming of government buildings in the United States and Brazil, have rippled from the far right of the political fringes, raising alarm. Election officials have fought back but faced vitriol on social media.A ballot for postal voting in the referendum.James D. Morgan/Getty Images“We may look back at the Voice referendum as a turning point for when election lies and conspiracies went mainstream in Australia,” said Kurt Sengul, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies far-right populism. The current debate in the country, he added, was “the first significant Trump style misinformation and disinformation campaign we’ve seen in recent political history,” referring to former President Donald J. Trump.And even though Australia is not at immediate risk of experiencing the kind of election denial seen in the United States, Mr. Sengul added, “That does not bode well for Australian democracy.”The referendum, on whether to set up a body to advise Parliament on Aboriginal issues, has bitterly divided Australia and given rise to a slew of baseless claims on social media, including that the advisory body could seize property or land, or residents would be required to pay rent to Indigenous people if the referendum passed.A rally opposing the “Voice” referendum was held last month in Sydney.David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCaught in the turbulence is the matter of why a checkmark on a ballot counts as a vote while an “X” does not.Longstanding legislation requires officials to count votes as long as the voters’ intent is clear, even if they do not follow the instructions on the ballot paper. Legal advice over the decades has confirmed that an “X,” which many people use on forms and documents to indicate a “yes,” does not show clear intent.However, some pundits and politicians have suggested that the variance is unfair. The leader of the conservative opposition party, Peter Dutton, said that he did not want “a process that’s rigged.”Mr. Dutton did not respond to requests for comment. Fair Australia, which is leading the opposition to the referendum said in a statement: “We understand the rules in relation to formality but believe they give an unfair advantage to the ‘Yes’ campaign. The responsibility for any erosion in trust lies with those who made the unfair rules, not with those who call them out.”A rally in support of the Voice in Melbourne last month.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnlike in the United States, where national elections are run by a patchwork of state and local officials, in Australia, they are administered by one independent agency, the Australian Electoral Commission, which enjoys broad trust and support and is widely praised by analysts.The agency aims to make voting, which is compulsory in Australia, as accessible as possible. During federal elections, mobile voting stations are taken to remote Indigenous communities using helicopters, four-wheel-drive vehicles and even boats.“The AEC is the gold standard for how you should run elections,” said Bruce Wolpe, who has written a book called “Trump’s Australia.” He added that when Australians go to the polls, “they know their vote will be counted accurately and they’ll abide by the results, and that’s a big deal for how this democracy works in contrast to the U.S.”The commission moved quickly to counter inaccurate claims about the referendum, responding to posts on social media, sending officials to TV and radio shows, and condemning much of the commentary around the issue as “factually incorrect.”In addition to dealing with the issue of check and “X” marks, during this referendum campaign, the commission has debunked suggestions that ballot papers would not be securely stored, pushed back against claims that the referendum would not go ahead and sparred with users who flushed information booklets down toilets, sometimes responding to hundreds of social media comments a day.But even as officials have become more assertive in fighting disinformation, their task is only getting harder.For several years now, experts have watched the political polarization and spread of voting fraud conspiracies in the United States and worried that such rhetoric would leech into Australia’s domestic politics because of the two countries’ close ties.“It is an ongoing concern that we’re seeing groups draw inspiration from U.S. politics that is highly polarized and attempt to export those tactics here,” said Josh Roose, a political sociologist at Deakin University in Melbourne.Tom Rogers, the electoral commissioner, said that after Australia’s 2019 federal election, he “really started to worry about what we were seeing globally.” His agency realized it wasn’t enough to simply run elections fairly and well.“You’ve got to tell people what you’re doing,” he said.Tom Rogers, the Australian electoral commissioner, with the agency’s executive leadership team.Australian Electoral CommissionThe commission started running digital literacy campaigns to educate voters about fake news, working with social media companies and countering incorrect claims about the electoral process online.Its strategy came to national attention during last year’s federal election, when its tongue-in-cheek humor — including beseeching voters not to draw an “eggplant emoji” on their ballot papers — drew both acclaim and criticism. On social media, the agency tries to respond to as many comments as possible — even ones that may seem outlandish, said Evan Ekin-Smyth, who leads that effort.“We take an approach of: Unless you’re going to engage in something that’s deliberately false, deliberately bad faith, we’ll give a response,” he said. “Why not? We’re there to provide fact-based information about the process that we run. No matter how crazy a theory might seem, some people believe it.”However, the agency dialed back the humor for the referendum because it was experiencing new levels of attacks on social media, including, for the first time, threats of physical harm, Mr. Rogers said.Mr. Ekin-Smyth admitted that the agency’s strategy probably would not change the minds of everyone determined to believe conspiracy theories, but he hoped that by injecting accurate, factual information into the discussion, the commission could help stop these theories from spreading further.“Does it feel like we’re pushing a boulder up a hill? Sort of, sometimes,” he said. But “if we’re keeping that boulder from rolling down the hill, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?” More

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      In Argentina, the U.S. Dollar Could Soon Become King

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      Americans complain that inflation has eroded the value of their money, but the U.S. dollar looks lovely to the people of Argentina, where consumer prices rose 124 percent in August from a year earlier. The threat of hyperinflation has become a central issue in the presidential election on Oct. 22, which The Times has described as “a new test of the strength of the far right around the world.” The leading candidate in the race, which could go to a November runoff, is a radical libertarian who promises to bring rising prices under control by getting rid of the peso and fully dollarizing the Argentine economy.Buena idea, o mala?I’ll get to the pros and cons of dollarization in a minute, but first a few words on why Argentines would even consider such a drastic step. Argentina is blessed with abundant natural resources. Early in the 20th century, it was richer than Germany or France. “Until the 1930s, the French used the phrase ‘riche comme un Argentin’ to describe the foolishly rich,” the economists Edward L. Glaeser, Rafael Di Tella and Lucas Llach wrote in the Latin American Economic Review in 2018.But Argentina’s economy has been stunted by disastrous economic policies and chronic political instability. There were periods of military rule, hyperinflation, defaults on external debt, protectionism and under-industrialization. Argentina has been a democracy since 1983 but successive governments, whether left- or right-leaning, haven’t managed to match neighbors such as Chile, Uruguay and Brazil in bringing down inflation and stabilizing finances.That record of failure is written on the currency. Since 1970, Argentina has burned through several currencies: the peso ley, the peso argentino, the austral and now the peso convertible. Today there is no single exchange rate with the dollar that all residents can use. As colorfully explained recently in The Buenos Aires Herald, there is the official, or “wholesale,” exchange rate, for international trade; the savers’ exchange rate, which is supposedly for savers but is not widely accessible; and the “blue” dollar, which is essentially the black-market rate. Foreign tourists can buy pesos at yet another rate, the M.E.P., short for Mercado Electrónico de Pagos. There are even temporary exchange rates, such as the Vaca Muerta rate, which is named after where it was announced last month (not because it’s for buying or selling dead cows).Javier Milei, who leads the polls in the presidential race, wants to chuck the whole rickety system, abolish the central bank and adopt the U.S. dollar, as three smaller Latin American countries — Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama — have already done.Milei, it’s important to say, has extreme and I would argue insupportable stands on a number of issues. He wants to drastically cut taxes and spending, as The Times wrote, “including by charging people to use the public health care system; closing or privatizing all state-owned enterprises; and eliminating the health, education and environment ministries.” He is an economist and a member of the legislature who has large dogs named Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas and Murray Rothbard.But let’s separate the message from the messenger and look at the dollarization proposal on its merits. The biggest plus is that it would most likely get rid of Argentina’s high inflation overnight. The money available for spending inside Argentina would be only the dollars that the country already has in reserves or manages to acquire by, say, running trade surpluses with the United States or borrowing. The general price level can’t rise if there is no increase in the supply of dollars, unless the velocity of circulation increases. As Milton Friedman (the economist, not the dog) once said, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”Dollarizing the economy is like locking oneself in handcuffs and then throwing away the key. It’s an act of desperation when nothing else works.And like most acts of desperation, dollarization has big drawbacks. By switching to dollars, Argentina would effectively adopt the monetary policy of the United States, thus losing the ability to raise or lower interest rates to suit local conditions. It would lose the profit known as seigniorage that comes from printing money. And dollarization wouldn’t solve the structural problems that have caused high inflation, such as government overspending, as Guillermo Ortiz, a former governor of Mexico’s central bank, told reporters in September.This week I interviewed Iván Werning, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who grew up in Argentina and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there before getting a doctorate at the University of Chicago. With two graduate students who are fellow Argentines, he has written two recent papers about dollarization, which he calls a “dangerous delusion,” and has wrestled with opponents on X, formerly Twitter.Werning isn’t persuaded that dollarization really would tie the government’s hands. In an email to me, he pointed out that Argentina tried once before to link to the dollar, through currency board “convertibility,” but abandoned the program in 2002. “Argentina could reissue the peso in short order, in a manner similar to how its provinces have issued government pesos in the past to pay for bills,” he wrote. Ecuador, he said, has found “creative accounting ways” to loosen the constraint of its dollarization, such as having the central bank finance the treasury.The Argentine government doesn’t have enough dollars to replace all of its pesos at current exchange rates, even at the unofficial “blue” rate, Werning told me by phone. There are rich people with lots of dollars squirreled away abroad, but that doesn’t help the ordinary Argentine, he said. So in his view, if the conversion were done today, there could be an extreme shortage of money in the economy, which would most likely cause a deep recession because prices and wages would not adjust smoothly to the dollar scarcity. Postponing the conversion could make matters worse, by triggering an anticipatory burst of inflation, he added.The problem could be solved if Argentina were able to raise more dollars, but in that case it probably wouldn’t need to dollarize in the first place, he said.Understandably frustrated by years of dysfunction, the Argentine people are looking for a quick fix for inflation, Werning told me. But the quick fix would have bad consequences in the long term, he said. He prefers more conventional solutions such as bringing government budgets closer into balance. On that score, he is slightly hopeful.“Today there’s a lot more consensus” about the need to reduce spending, Werning said. The message is coming not just from Milei, the extreme libertarian, but also from Patricia Bullrich, a center-right candidate who served in the cabinet of Mauricio Macri. Even Sergio Massa, a candidate who is the economy minister in the current, center-left government of Albert Fernandez, has talked about cutting spending, although “his actions do not match his words,” Werning said. Whether any of the candidates would be as resolute in office, when anti-austerity protests begin, is another question. But Werning said, “If ever there was a chance” for righting Argentina’s finances, “it might be now.”The Readers WriteDonald Trump and his lawyers persist in re-arguing points and generally annoying the judge because they hope to elicit an intemperate response that could be read as bias. I am a trial lawyer, and I have seen this happen. Because this is a bench trial, a mistrial would take a real circus breaking out. But they may be able to argue on appeal that Trump was denied a fair trial.James M. MillerSarasota, Fla.Your opinion on the “fix” for our budget problem is spot on, but lawmakers’ concern about job security exceeds their willingness to do the best job for the country. And so we languish with incidental actions that appear helpful but don’t make the real change we need.Kathy CrosbyGrand Rapids, Mich.Quote of the Day“America is ungovernable; those who have served the revolution have plowed the sea.”— Simón Bolívar, South American revolutionary leader, in 1830, as quoted by Sheldon Liss and Peggy Liss in “Man, State, and Society in Latin American History” (1972) More

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      Scottish By-election Result: Labour Beats S.N.P. in Key Parliamentary Vote

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      The opposition party took back a parliamentary seat from the Scottish National Party, in a win that observers said showed a path to power in next year’s general election.Britain’s opposition Labour Party won back a parliamentary seat in Scotland on Friday by a thumping margin, after a closely watched race that had been viewed as a barometer of the party’s national appeal before a general election next year.In a dramatic swing of votes, Labour unseated the Scottish National Party from the Rutherglen and Hamilton West district, a cluster of towns outside Glasgow that had been held by the S.N.P. since 2019. Voters triggered the by-election by recalling the party’s representative, Margaret Ferrier, after she violated lockdown restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.The result was striking evidence of a Labour revival in Scotland. But the broader significance is for the party’s looming national contest with the governing Conservative Party. Analysts said the victory suggested that Labour could make significant inroads against the Scottish National Party next year, which could give it the margin to amass a clear majority in Parliament over the Tories.Though a Labour victory was expected, its scale was not. The wide margin gives a welcome shot of momentum to the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, two days before his party gathers in Liverpool for its annual conference. It will add to the sense that Labour, with a nearly 20-point advantage over the Conservatives in national polls, is a government in waiting.It also dramatizes the collapsing fortunes of the Scottish nationalists, for many years a hugely powerful force in Scottish politics, led by the charismatic Nicola Sturgeon. Her sudden resignation in February plunged the party into division, and within months it was hit by a financial scandal that undermined voter confidence.Labour had been left with only a single seat in Scotland after its bruising defeat in the 2019 general election, while the surging S.N.P. picked up 48 seats. Even before Thursday’s vote, polls had suggested that Labour could grab back as many as half of those seats in the next election, which would give it a valuable cushion, even if its lead over the Conservatives narrows nationally.When all the votes were tallied early on Friday morning, the district elected the Labour candidate, Michael Shanks, over the Scottish nationalist candidate, Katy Loudon, by a margin of 9,446. The seat had traded hands between the parties several times since it was created in 2005; Ms. Ferrier had held a margin of only 5,230 people.Labour won 58.6 percent of the vote, an increase of 24.1 percentage points over its last election, while the S.N.P. drew 27.6 percent, a decline of 16.6 percentage points. The Conservatives won only 3.9 percent, a decline of 11.1 points, while 11 other candidates split the remainder of the vote.Speaking to cheering supporters, Mr. Shanks said the results sent an unmistakable message that “it’s time for change,” adding, “There’s not a part of this country where Labour can’t win.”Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, characterized it as a “seismic” victory in an interview with the BBC. “Scottish politics has fundamentally changed,” he said.If Labour were to perform as well in every constituency in Scotland as it did in Rutherglen, it could win more than 40 seats in a general election and re-establish itself as the dominant party in Scotland, John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde and a leading pollster, told the BBC.“This is a remarkably good result for the Labour Party,” he said.Turnout for by-elections is typically lower than in general elections, but the 37 percent turnout in this vote was a particularly steep decline from 2019. Analysts attributed that to a combination of heavy rain and a requirement for voter ID — a first in a Scottish election — which officials said may have resulted in some people being turned away from polling places.But the low turnout did not hamper Labour, which had poured resources into the race. Mr. Starmer and other Labour leaders campaigned aggressively in the district, emphasizing Mr. Shanks’s roots in the community, where he is a teacher.The result is a stinging setback for Humza Yousaf, who replaced Ms. Sturgeon as Scottish National Party leader and first minister of Scotland, and who campaigned energetically on behalf of Ms. Loudon, a former teacher and respected local council member.For all the euphoria among Labour officials, some observers said the result was as much a reflection of disgust with Ms. Ferrier’s behavior, and fatigue with the S.N.P. more broadly amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, as it was of excitement about Mr. Shanks and Labour.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Elizabeth Clark, 68, a retired nurse in Rutherglen, said last month.Still, as polls closed at 10 p.m. on Thursday, Jackie Baillie, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party, was confident. “It is clear for all to see,” she said, “that Scottish Labour is once more a serious force in Scottish politics.” More

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      A Wartime Election in Ukraine? It’s a Political Hot Potato.

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      In normal circumstances, Ukraine’s president would face voters next spring. Analysts say a wartime election is unlikely, but the prospect is causing some anxiety in Kyiv.It might seem like a huge distraction at the height of a full-scale war, not to mention a logistical nightmare: holding a presidential election as Russian missiles fly into the Ukrainian capital and artillery assaults reduce whole towns to ruins.But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has not ruled it out. His five-year term ends in several months, and if not for the war, he would be preparing to either step down or campaign for a second term.Analysts consider the possibility of wartime balloting a long shot, and under martial law, elections in Ukraine are suspended. Still, there is talk among Kyiv’s political class that Mr. Zelensky might seek a vote, with far-reaching implications for his government, the war and political opponents, who worry he will lock in a new term in an environment when competitive elections are all but impossible.The debate over an election comes against the backdrop of mounting pressure on Ukraine to show to Western donors Ukraine’s good governance credentials, which Mr. Zelensky has touted. Opponents say a one-sided wartime election could weaken that effort.A petition opposing such an election has drawn signatures from 114 prominent Ukrainian civil society activists.A new electoral mandate could strengthen Mr. Zelensky’s hand in any decision about whether to commit to an extended fight, or insulate him if eventual settlement talks with Russia dent his popularity and hurt his chances of re-election later.Mr. Zelensky has said he favors elections, but only if international monitors can certify them as free, fair and inclusive, and he has outlined multiple obstacles to holding a vote. Political opponents have been more categorical in rejecting elections, which before the Russian invasion were scheduled for March and April next year, saying the war was creating too much turmoil to properly conduct a vote.Serhiy Prytula, who runs a charity in support of the war effort, ranks high among the most respected leaders in the country.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times“The first step is victory; the second step is everything else,” including a revival of domestic politics in Ukraine, said Serhiy Prytula, an opposition figure and the director of a charity assisting the military. Opinion surveys regularly rank him in the top three most respected leaders in the country, along with Mr. Zelensky and the commander of the military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny.Mr. Prytula, a former comedic actor, had set up an exploratory committee to run for Parliament before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, following the path from show business to politics taken by Mr. Zelensky, who had played a president in a television series before winning the presidency in 2019. For now, Mr. Prytula has halted all political activity during the war. The Biden administration and European governments supporting Ukraine militarily have not weighed in publicly on an election. But the idea garnered wider attention when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said the country should go ahead with a vote despite the war.“You must also do two things at the same time,” Mr. Graham said on a visit to Kyiv in August. “I want this country to have free and fair elections, even when it’s under attack.”To hold elections, Ukraine would have to lift, at least temporarily, martial law in the case of a vote for Parliament or amend the law in the case of a vote for president. In a photo provided by the Ukrainian government, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, center, attended a ceremony in July. He is seen as a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections.Agence France-Presse, via Ukrainian Presidential Press ServiceMr. Zelensky has cited as a major obstacle the need to ensure that Ukrainians living under Russian occupation can vote without retribution. “We are ready,” he told a conference in Kyiv last month. “It’s not a question of democracy. This is exclusively an issue of security.”The Ukrainian leader has said online voting might be a solution.Among the states of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine is the country with the largest population to have succeeded in transferring power democratically. Its criminal justice system has been riddled with corruption, and the privatization of state property has been mismanaged, but elections had been consistently deemed free and fair by international monitors. Ukrainians have elected six presidents since gaining independence in 1991.“Ukraine’s commitment to democracy is not in question, and being forced to postpone elections due to war doesn’t change this,” said Peter Erben, the Ukraine director of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a pro-democracy group funded by Western governments. Ukrainian politics have revolved around parties formed by prominent personalities rather than policy positions. There is Fatherland, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the most prominent woman in Ukrainian politics; the Punch, led by Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former boxer; the Voice, led by Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, a rock star; and Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, named for a TV show.Senator Lindsey Graham visited Kyiv in May. He returned in August and spoke about potential elections.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMilitary veterans are widely expected to play an outsize role in Ukrainian politics when elections resume, as voters and as candidates who could challenge the current political class.Holding an election before the war ends could lock in seats for parties in Parliament now, including Mr. Zelensky’s, while soldiers are still serving in the military and unable to run for office.“A scheduled election isn’t necessary for our democracy,” said Olha Aivazovska, the director of OPORA, a Ukrainian civil society group that monitors elections. There is no means now for refugees, frontline soldiers and residents of occupied territory to vote, she said.An election in “the hot phase of the war” would almost certainly undermine, not reinforce, Mr. Zelensky’s legitimacy, she said.Even those who favor an election cite concerns about a potential consolidation of power. Oleg Soskin, an economist and adviser to a former Ukrainian president, has called for elections despite the war, warning that Mr. Zelensky could otherwise usurp authority under martial law. But that is an outlying view in Kyiv. The debate about a potential election represents some re-emergence of familiar political clashes in a Ukrainian government long marked by infighting and vendettas. Most of Mr. Zelensky’s political opponents have refrained from being overly critical of him during the war, but they say a vote now would be unfair.Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, center, and his brother Vladimir Klitschko, left, visiting a residential area after shelling in 2022.Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock“I understand the government wants to maintain its position while ratings are high,” said Dmytro Razumkov, a former chairman of Parliament in the political opposition. Mr. Zelensky’s chances of victory, he said, “will almost certainly be lower after the end of the war.”An election now would only weaken Ukraine as politicians campaigned, competing with and criticizing one another, said Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament from the opposition European Solidarity party. He has advocated for Mr. Zelensky to form a national unity government that would include members of the opposition.“It jeopardizes the unity of society,” he added.Public opinion surveys have consistently suggested that a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections could be the commander of his army, General Zaluzhny. As a serving military officer, he is barred from participating in an election during the war.Dmytro Razumkov, former chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, in his office on Wednesday.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesMr. Zelensky still consistently leads in surveys of leaders whom Ukrainians trust. A recent poll by United Ukraine, a nonpartisan research group, showed 91 percent of Ukrainians trusted Mr. Zelensky, 87 percent trusted General Zaluzhny, and 81 percent trusted Mr. Prytula.Polls have also shown high support for Mr. Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv; Vitaly Kim, the head of the civil military administration in the southern region of Mykolaiv; and Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council.Mr. Prytula’s charity has boosted his national stature during the war. It draws donations from millions of Ukrainians to provide drones, body armor, rifle scopes and other supplies to the army at a time when activities supporting the army are immensely popular domestically.Mr. Prytula said he was focused solely on keeping Ukrainians united behind the war effort. Holding an election now, he said, would be pointless because Mr. Zelensky would all but certainly win.“He is No. 1,” he said. “Our society supports him.”Maria Varenikova More