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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

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      In Poland, Supporters of Opposition March in Warsaw Ahead of Key Election

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      The fate of democracy and aid for Ukraine undergird the October vote, which will decide whether the governing Law and Justice party secures an unprecedented third term in a row.Huge crowds marched through Poland’s capital, Warsaw, on Sunday, converging around a giant flag commemorating a 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, as opponents of the governing party sought to rally voters for a critical general election that they see as the last chance to save the country’s hard-won democratic freedoms.The Warsaw city government, which is controlled by the opposition, put the crowd at a million people at its peak. But state-controlled television, which mostly ignored the event, instead broadcasting a pre-election convention by the governing Law and Justice party, estimated fewer than 100,000 had turned out, citing police sources.The march was the biggest display of antigovernment sentiment since Poland’s Solidarity trade union movement rallied against communism in the 1980s. It set the stage for the final stretch of an increasingly nasty election campaign. Poland, bitterly polarized on everything from relations with the rest of Europe to abortion rights, will hold a general election on Oct. 15 that will decide whether the conservative Law and Justice party secures an unprecedented third term in a row in government.In a speech peppered with references to Poland’s past struggles for liberty, Donald Tusk, the main opposition leader, appealed for patriots to cast out a right-wing nationalist government that he said was pitting Poles against Poles, defiling the legacy of national heroes who had resisted foreign occupation.He promised to end what he called “the Polish-Polish war” stoked by the governing party’s denunciation as traitors Poles who deviate from traditional Catholic values or look to the European Union for help against discrimination and government meddling in the judiciary.“Change for the better is inevitable,” he said.Billed as “the march of a million hearts,” the event featured Polish and E.U. flags, as well as a few American ones waved by Poles with family in the United States. Before leading a huge crowd in singing the Polish national anthem, which starts with the words “Poland has not yet perished,” Mr. Tusk said the opening line “has never had such a strong and authentic ring as it does today.”Seeking to reclaim patriotism from Law and Justice, which presents itself as a protector of Polish values and sovereignty against E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels and accuses Mr. Tusk of being a stooge for Germany or Russia or at times both countries, the opposition leader said: “They are not Poland. We are Poland!”Donald Tusk, the leader of opposition Civic Coalition, attended the march in Warsaw on Sunday.Omar Marques/Getty ImagesSpeaking to his own supporters at a pre-election party convention in the southern city of Katowice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice’s chairman and Poland’s de facto leader, mocked Mr. Tusk as “such an idiot” whose victory would lead to the country’s enslavement by foreign powers.He claimed that Mr. Tusk’s term as prime minister, from 2007 to 2014, had made “Poland subordinate to external forces,” especially Germany and Russia. Law and Justice, he said, needed “mobilization, faith, determination and work” to “ensure that Tusk’s system does not return to Poland.”Recent opinion polls give Law and Justice around 38 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Mr. Tusk’s Civic Coalition, an alliance of centrist and center-left forces, with smaller left and far-right parties trailing far behind. The gap narrowed sharply over the summer, but after a full-throated media campaign demonizing Mr. Tusk and his supporters as enemies of the Roman Catholic Church, Law and Justice picked up support, particularly in areas that rely on the party-controlled state broadcasting system.No single party is expected to win a majority in the vote, and the shape of the next government will depend on which of the front-runners — Law and Justice or Civic Coalition — can find allies to form a coalition.As Mr. Tusk spoke to supporters in Warsaw, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, addressed the Law and Justice convention in southern Poland, hammering the party’s favorite theme that the opposition serves German and Russian interests.“Tusk was their handmaiden,” he claimed, referring to energy deals struck between Berlin and Moscow while Mr. Tusk was Poland’s prime minister before taking a job in Brussels as president of the European Council — another strike against him, in the governing party’s view.Worried about competition from Konfederacja, a far-right group that has been vocal about reducing Poland’s assistance to Ukraine, Law and Justice has sent mixed messages in recent weeks about its policy toward Kyiv. It has insisted that it would not do anything to reduce the flow of weapons to fight Russia’s invading forces, while suggesting recently that it might do just that.Less than two weeks ago, Mr. Morawiecki told a national broadcaster that Poland was “no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons.” Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, later walked back Mr. Morawiecki’s remarks, clearly made for electoral reasons but still unsettling for Poland’s foreign partners.Desperate to hang on to voters in rural areas, an important base of support, Law and Justice has vowed to halt the import of cheap Ukrainian grain and protect Polish farmers from the damage this has caused to their income. The grain was meant to just transit through Poland, but some of it was siphoned off for sale on the domestic market.Pre-election promises by the Polish government, along with those of Slovakia and Hungary, to halt all deliveries of Ukrainian grain did not stop the leader of a Polish farm lobbying group, Agrounia, from speaking on Sunday in support of the opposition.Law and Justice’s pre-election shifts and maneuvers have confused and annoyed fellow European countries that previously viewed Poland as a solid anchor of the West’s support for Ukraine, particularly those like Germany that Warsaw has repeatedly chided for not being steadfast enough in helping Kyiv.Janusz Michalak, 71, a retired logistics manager who joined the march with his wife, Alicija, said he had lived through communism and worried that Law and Justice — through cynical maneuvers to win support, the tight control of state broadcasting and the demonization of its political foes — want “us silent under their boot like the communists did.”“If we don’t change this government, democracy dies in Poland,” he added.Anatol Magdziarz More

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      Slovakia Appears Set to Join the Putin Sympathizers After Election

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      The front-runner in the parliamentary vote has pledged “not to send a single cartridge” to neighboring Ukraine, a sign of the flagging European support for a victim of Russian aggression.The victory of Robert Fico, a former prime minister who took a pro-Russian campaign stance, in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections is a further sign of eroding support for Ukraine in the West as the war drags on and the front line remains largely static.Slovakia is a small country with historical Russian sympathies, and the nature of the coalition government Mr. Fico will seek to form is unclear. He may lean more toward pragmatism, as Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has done since her election last year. Still, the shift in Slovakia is stark: It was the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine.The election results come as disquiet over the billions of dollars in military aid that the West has provided to Ukraine over the past 19 months has grown more acute in the United States and the European Union, with demands increasing for the money to go to domestic priorities instead.House Republicans declined to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in Washington last month, and tensions between Kyiv and the White House over Ukrainian military strategy have surfaced. In Central Europe, once the core of fierce anti-Russian sentiment among fearful frontline states that endured decades of harsh communist rule as reluctant members of the Soviet bloc, the war is now viewed with greater nuance.Mr. Fico’s victory, taking about 23 percent of the vote on a platform that included stopping all arms shipments to Ukraine and placing blame for the war equally on the West and Kyiv, is a case in point.He laced social conservatism, nationalism, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rhetoric and promises of generous welfare handouts in what proved to be an effective anti-liberal agenda, especially in small towns and rural areas.“The wear and tear from the war is more palpable in Central Europe than Western Europe for now,” said Jacques Rupnik, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris and an expert on the region. “Slovakia demonstrates that the threat at your door does not necessarily mean you are full-hearted in support of Ukraine.”Ukrainian artillery positions firing at enemy forces near the front line in the Donbas region this month.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesA Globsec survey in March of public opinion across Central and Eastern Europe found that 51 percent of Slovaks believed either the West or Ukraine to be “primarily responsible” for the war. Mr. Fico, who served for more than a decade as prime minister until 2018, played off this sentiment.He adopted some of the rhetoric of Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Orban, who has resisted the overwhelming Western position on Ukraine that Russia’s brutal invasion of the country was a flagrant violation of international law that must be resisted in the name of liberty, democracy and the sanctity of national sovereignty.“Fico was inspired by Orban, but does not have the same deep ideological roots, and is more of a pragmatist,” said Ludek Sekyra, a Czech businessman who chairs the Sekyra Foundation, a supporter of liberal causes. “He has been adept in exploiting unease over the vast influx of Ukrainian refugees, small-country resentment of the European Union and Russian sympathies that do not exist in the Czech Republic.”A possible coalition with another former prime minister, Peter Pellegrini of the social democratic Voice party, which won almost 15 percent of the vote, may increase the likelihood of pragmatism from Mr. Fico, who was responsible for Slovakia’s adoption of the euro and has shown strong pro-European sentiments in the past.With Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia all showing significant sympathy for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the tides have shifted in this part of Europe. Even Poland, an ardent supporter of Ukraine that has taken in more than 1.5 million refugees from there during the war, recently decided to close its border to low-price Ukrainian grain imports.The governing hard-right nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland is in a tense electoral standoff this month against the liberal opposition. Although the country’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczynski, remains staunchly anti-Russian, his nationalism and conservative values mesh with Mr. Orban’s and Mr. Fico’s. A PiS victory would undermine European unity further as the war shows no sign of a possible resolution.Mr. Kaczynski opposes the kind of European political, military and economic integration of which President Emmanuel Macron of France is a fierce advocate. There has even been murmuring of a possible Polish exit from the European Union — a far-fetched notion but one suggestive of the European tensions that the war has begun to feed.The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, left, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven in Western Europe, a recent German Marshall Fund survey found that support for Ukrainian membership in the European Union stood at just 52 percent in France and 49 percent in Germany. In Germany, only 45 percent of respondents favored Ukrainian membership in NATO.Still, overall, the survey found that on both sides of the Atlantic, some 69 percent of people favor financial support for Ukraine’s reconstruction, while countries including Britain, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Lithuania showed strong support for the Ukrainian cause across the board.“More and more, we are hearing a clear message to Mr. Zelensky: Please cut a deal with Putin,” said Mr. Rupnik.After the immense sacrifice of the Ukrainian people in defense of their country against a flagrant Russian aggression, that, however, is the thing most difficult for Mr. Zelensky to contemplate, let alone pursue.That a country on the Ukrainian border should now have voted for a man who has said he will “not send a single cartridge” of ammunition across that border can only increase the pressure on Ukraine’s leadership.It also poses evident problems for a European Union already worried that Donald J. Trump may retake the White House next year, and facing internal divisions that a Polish election may sharpen further. More

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      Tight Finish in Slovak Vote Makes Government’s Shape Hard to Predict

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      In much of Europe, the election was seen as a bellwether of mainstream support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. But voters seemed most concerned with pocketbook issues.Two exit polls released early Sunday after Slovakia’s parliamentary election showed a tight finish between a liberal party that wants to maintain robust support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and a Russia-friendly populist party, in a vote that many in Europe saw as a bellwether of support for the war.But neither of the top two finishers came close to winning a majority, leaving the shape of the next government — and its policy toward Ukraine — dependent on the performance of smaller parties with widely differing views on Russia and on their readiness to form a coalition with either Progressive Slovakia, a liberal grouping, or a rival party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister strongly opposed to helping Ukraine.Faced with a plethora of choices between communists and far-right nationalists, Slovakia, a small Central European nation that borders Ukraine, voted on Saturday in a general election freighted with outsize consequences about the West’s support for Ukraine.Twenty-five parties from across the political spectrum put up candidates for Parliament, but the first- and second-place finishers — separated by less than two percentage points, according to exit polls — offered diametrically opposed positions on Ukraine.Exit polls indicated that Progressive Slovakia, a liberal party that wants to continue support for Ukraine, had finished just ahead of Mr. Fico’s Smer party.Analysts cautioned that the official vote count, which was expected to drag on until Sunday morning, could put either party in the lead but with such a narrow margin that both have a shot at forming a coalition government. Early official results that gave Mr. Fico’s party a strong lead came mostly from villages, which are more conservative, and did not include liberal-tilting cities like Bratislava, the capital.The seemingly close result leaves Voice, the social democratic party of Peter Pellegrini, an estranged former ally of Mr. Fico, as a likely kingmaker.Despite near-constant political upheaval since the last election in 2020, Slovakia, a member of the European Union and NATO, has been a particularly robust and steady supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia, welcoming refugees and providing millions of dollars’ worth of mostly Soviet-era weapons. It was the first country to provide Ukraine with fighter jets and air defense missiles.Given Mr. Fico’s vociferous opposition to aiding the Ukrainians, the election was closely watched across Europe as an indicator of mainstream consensus on the war.But Slovakia’s election, for most voters, was not primarily about Ukraine, said Dominika Hajdu, an analyst with Globsec, a research group based in Bratislava. “It was more about values, conservatism versus liberalism” and bread-and-butter issues, like food and fuel prices.As in many other European countries, Slovakia has a proportional voting system that helps smaller parties win seats, so long as they get 5 percent of the vote, and that makes the shape of the government dependent on which smaller parties meet the threshold.Mr. Pellegrini, whose Voice party finished third, according to exit polls, campaigned on promises to strengthen the state and lower grocery prices. He shares the anti-immigrant views of Mr. Fico, his former boss, and of the far-right nationalist party Republika. Unlike Mr. Fico and the far right, though, Mr. Pellegrini has shown no interest in halting support for Ukraine.Voice, the party of former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, could be a kingmaker.Darko Bandic/Associated PressMr. Fico’s party, Smer, led in the polls throughout much of the campaign but lost momentum in recent days, as previously undecided voters, apparently put off by Mr. Fico’s often aggressive style, sought calmer alternative candidates.Mr. Fico served for more than a decade as Slovakia’s prime minister until he was forced to step down in 2018 amid widespread public outrage over the murders of Jan Kuciak, a young investigative journalist who was digging into government corruption, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.Mr. Fico was succeeded as prime minister by Mr. Pellegrini, a protégé who later formed his own rival party.Progressive Slovakia, which narrowly failed to win seats in the last election, appears to have benefited in Saturday’s vote by its distance from Mr. Fico and the often squabbling center-right politicians who have run the country for the last three years in a series of unstable coalitions.Previously, the only E.U. member to speak out forcefully against aiding Ukraine was Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an increasingly authoritarian leader whose constant clashes with his nominal partners in NATO and the E.U. on a range of issues have made his country a noisy outlier with limited influence.Slovakia, governed since 2020 by a series of mainstream, if fractious and very unstable, coalition governments, played an important and early part in rallying Europe’s support to Ukraine and cannot be as easily ignored as Hungary, which officials in Brussels and other major European capitals have come to see as an inveterate troublemaker.Michal Simecka, who leads the Progressive Slovakia party, is a former journalist and a member of the European Parliament. Vladimir Simicek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe failure of any party to win anything near a majority on Saturday opened the way to laborious back-room haggling over the composition of a new coalition government which could leave either of the probable top two finishers — Mr. Fico’s Smer party or Progressive Slovakia, led by Michal Simecka, a former journalist and liberal member of the European Parliament — in overall charge.Mr. Fico vowed during the campaign to “not send a single cartridge” of ammunition to Ukraine if elected and staked out increasingly pro-Russian views, a position amplified by a galaxy of small but influential Moscow-friendly news media outlets in Slovakia and pro-Russian voices on social media.The vice president of the European Union’s executive arm in Brussels, Vera Jourova, a Czech politician responsible for digital policy, called last week on digital platforms like Facebook and TikTok to do more to blunt what she described as Russia’s “multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation” ahead of elections in Slovakia, and in Poland in mid-October.The Slovak vote, she said, was a “test case” for Russia’s ability to influence voters’ choices through online disinformation.Slovakia has deep pools of genuine sympathy for Russia stretching back to the 19th century, when an early Slovak nationalist politician and writer, Ludovit Stur, despairing of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s grip on the region, looked to Russia, a fellow Slavic nation, for help. He suggested that land inhabited by Slovaks be absorbed by the Russian Empire.Russia has worked hard to strengthen these historical sympathies through pro-Russian media outlets and groups like Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, a belligerent motorcycle gang affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves bikers’ group in Russia, which has an influential presence on social media. A Globsec survey in March of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe found that 51 percent of Slovaks believed either Ukraine or the West to be “primarily responsible” for the war. The figure is much lower in other Eastern European countries.Any shift away from support for Ukraine by whatever coalition government is ultimately formed would be unlikely to reduce the flow of arms significantly, given that Slovakia has already given most of what it can spare. Still, it could help bring into the mainstream calls for an end to support, or at least a reduction, which are so far limited to Europe’s political fringes.The slow progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against entrenched Russian positions in Ukraine’s south has dampened expectations of a quick victory and amplified voices in France and other major European countries opposed to an open-ended commitment to arming Ukraine. More

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      Maldives Votes in Presidential Runoff Overshadowed by India and China

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      The election has become a referendum on the two Asian giants’ influence on the small nation’s direction.As voting began on Saturday in the presidential runoff in the Maldives, the race was proving to be as much a referendum on the competition between India and China for influence as it was a chance to determine the small island nation’s next leader.The pro-India incumbent, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has trailed Mohamed Muizzu, the mayor of the capital, Malé City, who has pushed for stronger ties with China. When neither managed a first-round victory with half of the vote early this month, the race was pushed into a runoff.The campaign season has focused on a range of issues, including a housing crisis in the overcrowded capital, which is scarce on land, and the country’s dwindling dollar reserves. That problem has prompted parties to offer competing “de-dollarization” proposals relating to trade.But none of the issues have hung as heavily as the influence of the two Asian giants over the future of the Maldives, a nation of about a half-million people that lies 450 miles south of India. The Maldives is particularly important because it sits along busy shipping routes in the Indian Ocean.“The fact is, either of them will try to control the Maldives — it is inevitable,” Mohamed Rauhan Ahmed, 27, a political science student, said of China and India on Saturday outside a polling station in Malé City. “But I think Solih can do a better job of managing them both and keeping them at an arm’s length.”While his preferred candidate was not in the runoff, he said, “For a change, we experienced peace and freedom in the last five years” under Mr. Solih.For China and India, the jostling for influence among their neighbors is nothing new. China enjoyed an early advantage because of its deep pockets and the development loans it brought as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, but India has asserted itself more in the region in recent years.New Delhi stepped in to assist Sri Lanka with billions of dollars when the country’s economy crashed last year. It has also expanded its presence and projects in the Maldives since Mr. Solih won the presidency in 2018, ending the five-year tenure of the pro-Beijing Abdulla Yameen, who is now in prison for corruption.Outside a voting site in the Hulhumalé district of the capital, Ahmed Rassam, 36, complained Saturday of government graft and a lack of a promised judicial overhaul. “But mostly, we sensed the unpleasant feeling of losing our nation’s sovereignty to India,” he said in explaining his support for Mr. Muizzu. “He can bring progressive change.”As the election race heated up, the main opposition coalition, which includes Mr. Muizzu’s People’s National Congress, made maligning the current government’s growing relations with India a main focus. Using slogans like “India Out,” it has denounced Mr. Solih’s government for bringing a small contingent of Indian military personnel to the island.While Mr. Solih has embraced his ties to India, inviting investment from its companies and development aid from its government, he has denied that it has been at the cost of relationships with other countries. During one election debate, Mr. Solih also rejected the opposition’s assertion about the nature of foreign troops’ activity, saying, “There is no Indian military personnel conducting military work in the Maldives.”In the initial round of voting, which featured eight candidates, Mr. Solih got 39 percent, trailing Mr. Muizzu’s 46 percent.The president has been undermined by a messy public split in his Maldivian Democratic Party, with Mr. Solih’s childhood friend Mohamed Nasheed, a former president, parting ways before the election to create his own party. Mr. Nasheed, who helped Mr. Solih become president, had felt increasingly marginalized.The candidate put forward by Mr. Nasheed’s new party received 7 percent of the vote, making it a potential kingmaker in the runoff. But Mr. Nasheed, now the speaker of Parliament, has found himself in a difficult spot, torn between his longtime closeness to India and the breakdown of his relationship with the president, which he has said cannot be surmounted.Mr. Nasheed’s party announced that it would “refrain from supporting either candidate” in the runoff, results of which were expected on Saturday evening. More