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Ohio Issue 1 Election 2023: Live Results – The New York Times
Elections|Ohio Issue 1 Election Results: Amendment Approval Thresholdhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/08/us/elections/results-ohio-issue-1.html More
There’s an extraordinarily important referendum in Ohio next week that the anti-abortion movement hopes most citizens don’t notice. It’s a vote that demonstrates why reproductive rights and the preservation of democracy, two issues that have catalyzed recent Democratic victories, are intertwined. That’s almost certainly why it’s being held in the torpid month of August, a time when a great many people would rather think about almost anything other than politics.Issue 1, which Ohio Republican legislators put on the ballot, would make future ballot measures to change the state Constitution harder to pass in two key ways. If it’s approved, citizens who hope to put amendments to the voters would first have to collect signatures in each of the state’s 88 counties, up from 44 now. And to pass, constitutional ballot initiatives would need to win 60 percent of the vote, rather than a simple majority.The measure’s import may not be immediately clear to voters, but it’s meant to thwart a November ballot initiative that will decide whether reproductive rights should be constitutionally protected in Ohio, where a sweeping abortion ban is tied up in court. Publicly, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, has denied that abortion is the motivation behind Issue 1. But at a private event in May, he told a group of supporters, “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.”The outcome of next Tuesday’s vote will resonate nationally, because the strategies of both Ohio abortion-rights supporters and opponents are being replicated elsewhere. Throughout the country, reproductive-rights advocates, faced with legislatures that have insulated themselves from the popular will, are turning to referendums to restore some of what was lost when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And throughout the country, abortion opponents understand that to keep abortion illegal, they need to change the rules.Most voters, as we’ve seen repeatedly, want abortion to be legal. Last August, a Kansas measure declaring that abortion isn’t protected by the state’s Constitution was defeated by an overwhelming 18 percentage points. In the midterms, there were abortion-related initiatives on the ballots in five states, including Kentucky and Montana, and the pro-choice side won all of them. Encouraged by these victories, activists are planning ballot measures to restore reproductive rights in states including Arizona, Florida, Missouri and, of course, Ohio.Ohio has been trending right for years, but gerrymandering ensures that the State Legislature is far more extreme than the population. As The Statehouse News Bureau, a news organization devoted to Ohio politics, has reported, “Ohio’s voter preference over the past 10 years splits about 54 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic.” Yet under Ohio’s highly gerrymandered maps, Republicans control 67 of 99 State House seats and 26 of 33 State Senate seats. The Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled these maps unconstitutional, but before the last election, federal judges appointed by Donald Trump ordered the state to use them.“This August election is sort of a final vote that gives the people any chance to say, at some point we still exert power here,” said David Pepper, former head of the Ohio Democratic Party and author of “Laboratories of Autocracy,” a book about undemocratic right-wing statehouses.Ohio, you might remember, is the state that forced a 10-year-old rape victim to flee to Indiana for an abortion. Its prohibition on abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detectable — usually at around six weeks of pregnancy — has no exceptions for rape or incest. The Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told The Statehouse News Bureau that even though he signed the law, he thinks it goes farther than voters want, and he urged lawmakers to amend it, though he didn’t specify how. But with Republicans in gerrymandered districts more worried about primary challenges from the right than about general election challenges from the center, they have little incentive to respond to public sentiment. Instead, some anti-abortion lawmakers want even stricter anti-abortion laws, and one, Representative Jean Schmidt, has said she’d consider a ban on birth control.The November ballot initiative to make abortion a constitutional right is a chance for Ohio voters to circumvent their unrepresentative representatives. With this August initiative, the Republicans are working to head off the voters by essentially asking them to disenfranchise themselves. Because most people are unlikely to give up their rights quite so easily, Republicans scheduled the vote at a time when few are paying attention. Just last December, Ohio Republicans voted to effectively eliminate August special elections because of their expense and low turnout. But for this election, they reversed themselves.It is not just Democrats who oppose Issue 1; the former Ohio governors John Kasich and Bob Taft, both of whom are Republicans, do as well. “This is a fundamental change in Ohio’s voting rights,” Taft said during a League of Women Voters forum in June, adding, “I just think it’s a major mistake to approve or disapprove such a change at the lowest-turnout election that we have.”The task for opponents of Issue 1 isn’t to convince voters, but to alert them. “It’s just a math question: Can you reach enough people on a short timeline?” said Yasmin Radjy, executive director of the progressive group Swing Left, which is running a get out the vote drive in Ohio. Polling has been mixed: A July USA Today/Suffolk University poll found that 57 percent of voters oppose the measure, but one from Ohio Northern University shows a tossup, with a little more than 42 percent supporting Issue 1, 41 percent opposing it, and the rest neutral or undecided. (Interestingly, the Ohio Northern poll also shows that almost 54 percent of voters support a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive rights, suggesting that some voters aren’t connecting Issue 1 to abortion.) As The Columbus Dispatch points out, there hasn’t been an August vote on a ballot initiative in Ohio in almost a century, making the outcome unpredictable.Issue 1’s backers are doing their best to confuse Ohioans with ads suggesting, bizarrely, that the initiative is about defending parents’ rights against those who, as one spot said, “put trans ideology in classrooms and encourage sex changes for kids.” This is such dishonest agitprop that it’s challenging to even parse the logic behind it, but essentially, Issue 1 proponents are pretending that language in the November referendum saying that “individuals” have the right to make their own “reproductive decisions” implies that children have the right to transition without parental consent.If the right prevails on Issue 1 — and probably even if it doesn’t — you can expect to see the blueprint repeated in other places. Already, Republicans in states including Florida, Missouri and North Dakota, recognizing the danger that direct democracy poses to their own abortion bans, are trying to make the ballot initiative process much more onerous.In May, Dean Plocher, the Republican speaker of the Missouri House, angry that a bill creating new obstacles to citizen-led ballot initiatives had stalled in the State Senate, warned that, in the law’s absence, there would be a referendum to “allow choice,” which would “absolutely” pass. If that were to happen, he said, the Senate “should be held accountable for allowing abortion to return to Missouri.” It’s not clear whom exactly he thought the Senate should be accountable to. He certainly didn’t mean the voters.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
For a brief time this summer, it seemed like Thailand might finally be on the cusp of truly representative government.In elections in May, a pro-reform party won the largest share of votes, riding a wave of public discontent over nine years of military rule and the outsize prerogatives enjoyed by the Thai royal family. Thailand’s monarchy is one of the wealthiest and longest-reigning in the world. Backed by the military and the judiciary, it is the linchpin of a conservative establishment that has fought off challenges to its dominance for decades, often with royally-endorsed military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments. This state of affairs has mired Thailand in a cycle of recurring political violence and frustrated the democratic yearnings of a new generation.So, like many of my compatriots who also grew up in this authoritarian climate, I celebrated the win by the progressive Move Forward Party, which openly seeks to curb royal power, and the second-place finish of Pheu Thai, a longtime opposition party. Voters issued a resounding call for change.Now those hopes are being crushed.More than two months after the elections, Thailand still does not have its new government, as the conservative establishment maneuvers to deny the will of the people once again by frustrating Move Forward’s efforts to form a coalition.We’ve been here before. But this time it feels even more ominous for the future of Thai democracy. A royalist establishment that has in the past relied on the blunt force of the military has added political sophistication to its arsenal. Working through the parliamentary system, this old guard has maneuvered to block Move Forward and co-opt Pheu Thai in return for allowing the party’s 74-year-old spiritual leader Thaksin Shinawatra, a popular former prime minister, to return from exile.The Thai monarchy has always been an aggressive contender for political power.In 1932, Thailand ended centuries of absolute royal rule in favor of a constitutional monarchy. But the ensuing 70-year reign of late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016, undid much of that. After taking the throne in 1946 the king forged ties with the military and together they engineered a neo-royalist system which, although far from an absolute monarchy, placed the palace at the political apex and exalted King Bhumibol as a godlike figure. Elected governments were subservient or tossed out. The neo-royalists were never interested in investing in electoral politics to guarantee their power, relying instead on shortcuts like military coups and strict lèse-majestélaws that forbid criticism of the monarchy and are an important tool for protecting its privileges.Supporters of Move Forward Party’s leader and its prime minister candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, during a protest in Bangkok.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockBut over the past decade, with the towering figure of King Bhumibol gone and the palace occupied by his less-revered son, King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, the neo-royalists have realized the need for novel strategies. After its latest coup in 2014, the military moved to preserve conservative dominance and contracept future challenges with new changes, including stuffing the Senate with appointees to offset the democratically elected House of Representatives.These tactics are hardly new in the political life of Southeast Asia. Autocratic governments in the region have become more sophisticated in manipulating electoral systems to secure power. Myanmar’s military junta has for years retained 25 percent of the seats in Parliament, which enables it to block constitutional changes that could weaken its authority. After decades of neutralizing dissent, the Cambodian strongman Hun Sen has more recently turned to using stage-managed elections to give his regime a thin veneer of legitimacy. (He intends to hand power over to his son.)The Thai neo-royalists are adopting the same strategies.Parliamentary means have been used to deny Move Forward its right to form a government. The party’s leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, failed to secure enough votes in Parliament to become prime minister and is also under investigation for failing to disclose shares held in a media company, which could disqualify him from office. Move Forward represented too much change to Thailand’s stifling political culture and simply could not be allowed to take power.Other forces that bode ill for reform are also in motion. The conservative pushback has prompted the pro-democracy Pheu Thai party to break from a proposed coalition with Move Forward and into talks with conservatives on forming a government.This is a momentous shift for Thai politics. Pheu Thai is the successor to a party founded by Mr. Thaksin, a populist business tycoon who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. Mr. Thaksin won over voters by advocating to improve livelihoods in poor and marginalized regions of the country. But when his popularity threatened to eclipse that of King Bhumibol, he was ousted in a coup and fled the country, saying he could not get a fair trial in Thailand on a series of corruption charges; he was later sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison. The struggle for influence — marked by two coups and a series of violent street demonstrations — between the conservative establishment and Mr. Thaksin’s supporters and relatives has dominated Thai politics for more than two decades.Now there are indications that Mr. Thaksin and Pheu Thai are falling in line with the royalists. Mr. Thaksin has long expressed a desire to come home and reunite with his family. In the run up to the elections in May, he pleaded publicly for “permission” to return home and came out against reforms proposed by Move Forward to curb royal influence.Last week, Mr. Thaksin’s daughter announced that he would return to Thailand on Aug. 10 after 15 years in exile. Royalists who had previously cursed Mr. Thaksin as public enemy No. 1 are now cheering his return, hoping to thwart what they see as the greater threat: the Move Forward Party and the generational change that it represents.Mr. Thaksin gets to come home; the royal establishment dodges a potent challenge. The only ones who won’t get what they want are the Thai voters.Pavin Chachavalpongpun @PavinKyoto is associate professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. He is the editor of the forthcoming “Rama X: The Thai Monarchy under King Vajiralongkorn.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
The death toll from Sunday’s suicide bombing, which targeted a political rally near the border with Afghanistan, rose to at least 54 people, an official said.The Islamic State affiliate in South Asia claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan that killed dozens of people and injured about 200 more, in the latest bloody sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country.The death toll from the explosion on Sunday, which targeted a political rally in the Bajaur district near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, rose to at least 54 people, Shaukat Abbas, a senior officer at the provincial police’s counterterrorism department, said on Monday.The Islamic State affiliate, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, claimed on Monday that a suicide bomber had carried out the attack, characterizing it as part of the group’s war against democracy as a system of government, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.The blast was among the deadliest terrorist attacks in months in Pakistan, where some militant groups operating along the border with Afghanistan have become more active over the past year. The rise in violence represents a grim shift: Since 2014, when security forces carried out a major military operation to flush militants out of Pakistan, the country has experienced relative calm.But several high-profile attacks this year — including a bombing in Peshawar that killed more than 100 people and an hourslong assault on the police headquarters in the port city of Karachi — have sent shock waves across the country, with scenes of bloodshed that seemed to announce militancy’s return to Pakistan.The attacks have raised questions about whether Pakistan’s security establishment can stamp out militancy without the American air and other military support it relied on during the 2014 security operation. The violence has also stoked tensions between Pakistani officials and the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, which the Pakistani authorities have accused of providing haven to some militant groups. Taliban officials have denied that claim.“The attack in Bajaur unquestionably presents a significant escalation of ISK’s growing capacity and aggressive stance in northwest Pakistan — a region which is already home to many other militant factions,” said Amira Jadoon, the co-author of “The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries,” using another abbreviation for the Islamic State affiliate.“It also shows ISK’s continued ability to access and operate on both sides of the border, as it has done so in the past.”On Monday, funeral processions took place in several villages in the Bajaur district to bury victims of the attack.Khuram Parvez/ReutersAt least three people suspected of being involved in the attack have been arrested so far, the local police chief, Nazir Khan, told news outlets. They were being interrogated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, he added.On Monday, funeral processions took place in most villages in the Bajaur district as dozens of families gathered to bury victims of the attack. Even those not mourning loved ones were shaken by the attack and its aftermath, residents said.Shakir Ali, a shopkeeper who volunteered to take the injured to the hospital, said the screams and cries echoing across the area after the explosion were still ringing in his head on Monday. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, almost everyone who passed him was covered in blood, he recalled.“It was difficult for us to determine who was injured and who was not,” he said.The attack — among the first by a militant group on a political rally in the country this year — stirred concerns about whether the country’s deteriorating security situation will affect the next general election, expected in the fall.The election is seen as critical to restoring political stability to a country that has been rocked by mass protests and unrest since Imran Khan was forced out as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence in April last year.Security personnel guarding the site of a bomb blast on Monday.Abdul Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPaving the way for the election this fall, the current government is expected to dissolve Parliament in August and hand over power to a caretaker government that will oversee the election process. The establishment of a caretaker government is constitutionally required to carry out a general election.While it is unlikely that ISIS-K has the capacity to significantly disrupt the elections, many security experts are concerned that the Pakistani Taliban — a militant group also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the T.T.P. — may try to target campaign rallies or voting sites, analysts say.The T.T.P. — which is an ideological twin and ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan — frequently attacked political rallies during Pakistan’s 2008 and 2013 election seasons and the group has seen a resurgence since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.“The question is how is the T.T.P. planning to sabotage the coming election season,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “So far, indicators are that it won’t — but that can change.”Salman Masood More
Nigel Farage, a political insurgent and ally of Donald J. Trump, exposed his bank for dropping him over “reputational risks.” Some analysts say he could parlay his situation into a comeback.When Nigel Farage campaigned for a fellow populist, Donald J. Trump, in 2020, he seemed like a faded star seeking the spotlight abroad after it had swung past him at home. Mr. Farage, who helped mobilize the pro-Brexit vote in 2016, was marginalized in Britain, then consumed by the pandemic.No longer: For three weeks, Mr. Farage, has been back on the front pages of British papers, with an attention-grabbing claim that his exclusive private bank, Coutts, dropped him as a customer because of his polarizing politics.Early on Wednesday, after Mr. Farage’s allegations were largely vindicated, the chief executive of his bank’s parent, NatWest Group, resigned after she admitted improperly discussing his bank account with a BBC journalist. The chief executive, Alison Rose, said she was guilty of a “serious error of judgment.”For Mr. Farage, who expertly stoked the dispute on social media and with appearances on the TV network GB News, the drama catapulted him back into the limelight. It was a striking turn of events for a political insurgent who became, for many, a reviled symbol of Brexit, and later, a culture warrior on right-wing television.Now, facing expulsion from Coutts, a bank founded in 1692 that serves members of the British royal family, Mr. Farage suddenly began getting expressions of sympathy from some improbable places.“He shouldn’t have had his personal details revealed like that,” Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party said on the BBC Radio 5 Live show. “It doesn’t matter who you are; that’s a general rule,” Mr. Starmer said, adding that Ms. Rose’s departure was warranted by her mishandling of the case.Among Mr. Farage’s stoutest defenders was Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said on Twitter, “No one should be barred from using basic services for their political views. Free speech is the cornerstone of our democracy.”Pressure from Mr. Sunak and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, hastened Ms. Rose’s downfall after she confessed to being the source for the BBC report, which claimed, erroneously, that Mr. Farage had been dropped because he did not have enough money in his accounts. The government owns 39 percent of NatWest, which in turn owns Coutts.Alison Rose resigned her position at NatWest Group after saying she spoke to the BBC about Mr. Farage’s bank account.Simon Dawson/ReutersThe episode, analysts said, underscores the power that Mr. Farage, a former head of the U.K. Independence Party, still wields over the Conservatives. The Tories have long feared losing the votes of Brexiteers, who were critical to their electoral landslide in 2019, to whatever populist party is currently identified with Mr. Farage.Though Mr. Farage, 59, stepped down in 2021 as head of his latest party, Reform U.K., he is the host of a GB News talk show and remains an outspoken voice on issues like asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats. Prodded partly by Mr. Farage’s commentary, Mr. Sunak has made curbing the influx of small boats one of the five major goals of his government.“They’re very aware they need to hold on to the Farage-friendly voters they picked up in 2019,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, “They’re being driven in that direction, too, by the right-wing print media. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened — and it won’t be the last.”Mr. Farage isn’t satisfied yet. He is demanding the ouster of NatWest’s chairman, Howard Davies, and the chief executive of Coutts, Peter Flavel. And he says he will fight on behalf of thousands of other people whose accounts he says have been unfairly closed.“You can’t live or survive in the modern world without a bank account — you become a nonperson,” Mr. Farage said on GB News on Wednesday. “The whole banking industry culture has gone wrong. We need big changes in the law.”What exactly Mr. Farage has in mind is not clear. But his campaign plays into a fervid political climate in Britain, which suggests that his critique might gain traction. The Conservatives, trailing Labour in opinion polls by double digits, are seizing on social and culture issues to try to galvanize their voters.Mr. Sunak asserted this week that the Labour Party was in league with criminal gangs and unscrupulous lawyers in promoting the flow of asylum seekers across the channel. He presented himself as the bulwark against this illegal immigration, the kind of claim Mr. Farage might have made when he was in politics.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain onboard Border Agency cutter HMC Seeker, last month ahead of a news conference on immigration. Pool photo by Yui Mok“If Farage is smart, he will use this as a runway to some kind of political comeback,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent whose recent book, “Values, Voice and Virtue,” claims that Britain is ruled by an out-of-touch elite that is well to the left of the broader population.“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Goodwin said. “The institutions, like the banks, are dominated by people who lean much further to the cultural left than many voters and who often do not even realize they are being political.”Such sweeping assertions are open to debate, of course. In the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has had mixed results going after what he calls the “woke” policies of corporate giants like the Walt Disney Company.What makes Mr. Farage’s story striking is that he turned out to be right on the facts of the banking case — and some bastions of the British banking and media establishment turned out to be wrong.In late June, Mr. Farage said on social media that his bank told him it planned to close his account in July. Seven other banks, he said, turned him down when he tried to open a new account. He said he believed he had been flagged as a “politically exposed person,” meaning he was vulnerable to bribery by foreign governments, and therefore a risk to the bank.In early July, the BBC reported that the bank, now identified as Coutts, dropped Mr. Farage because he was not maintaining adequate account balances — and that his politics had nothing to do with it. But on July 18, Mr. Farage made public a 40-page document he obtained from the bank, which painted a different picture.A branch of Coutts Bank in London.Susannah Ireland/ReutersMr. Farage, the report said, is “considered by many to be a disingenuous grifter,” often criticized for racist or xenophobic statements. Such statements, it said, put Mr. Farage at odds with the bank’s goal of being an “inclusive organization.” The report also noted that he is an ally of Mr. Trump’s and a fan of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though the bank’s risk committee found no evidence of “direct links” between him and the Russian government.“There are significant reputational risks to the bank in being associated with him,” the report concluded, recommending that Coutts wind down its relationship with Mr. Farage after the expiration of a mortgageThe BBC’s economics editor, Simon Jack, and the chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, apologized to Mr. Farage — as did Ms. Rose, who confirmed that she was the source for its report. She expressed regret for discussing his account, as well as for “the deeply inappropriate language contained in those papers.”For Mr. Farage, who has sometimes seemed adrift since Britain left the European Union, it seemed the springboard to a new cause, if not a return to politics.“It signals a big campaign on behalf of the huge number of ordinary people who’ve been de-banked and have had no one to speak up for them,” Mr. Farage said through a spokeswoman at GB News. More
The surge of the Alternative for Germany party has shaken the country’s political establishment. But for mainstream conservatives, it has also prompted an acute identity crisis.Mario Voigt, a leader of Germany’s mainstream conservative party, has watched with concern the slow but steady string of victories notched by the far-right Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD.In his home state of Thuringia, in eastern Germany, the AfD just last month won the district administrator’s seat, giving the far right bureaucratic authority over an area for the first time.Since the spring, the AfD has only gathered momentum. The party has gained at least four points in polls since May, rising to 20 percent support and overtaking the country’s governing center-left Social Democrats to become Germany’s second-strongest party. A more recent poll, released on Sunday, put the AfD at a record high of 22 percent support.The AfD is now nipping at the heels of Mr. Voight’s own Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, which remains the country’s most popular but now sits in opposition.“Now is the critical juncture,” Mr. Voigt said in an interview. “We have to understand, if we are not showing or portraying ourselves as the real opposition in Germany, people will defect to the Alternative for Germany.”The ascent of the AfD, a party widely viewed as a threat to Germany’s democratic fabric, has posed a crisis for the country’s entire political establishment, but an especially acute one for the Christian Democrats, who are struggling openly with how to deal with the challenge.Should they pivot further right themselves and risk their centrist identity? Should they continue to try to isolate the AfD? Or, as that becomes increasingly difficult, should they break longstanding norms and work with the AfD instead?Those questions have bedeviled not only the Christian Democrats in Germany but also other mainstream conservative parties around Europe as nationalist and hard-right parties have made strides. Most recently, in Spain, the conservative Popular Party began partnering with the far-right Vox party at a local level. It even seemed prepared to do so nationally, until Spanish voters rebuked Vox in elections on Sunday.As state parliament elections approach in eastern Germany, including in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony, finding answers is urgent for the country’s Christian Democrats. Eyeing potential victories in the former East Germany, the AfD has vowed to foment a “political earthquake” in the months ahead.For now, the AfD has the political winds at its back. Germany’s support for Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion — and the energy and refugee crises the war has provoked — has fueled German anxiety and, along with it, support for the AfD.As the current government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, tries to reorient Germany’s economic and security policies, critics say it has not made its case convincingly enough for many Germans.But neither, perhaps, has the C.D.U. in opposition.Chancellor Olaf Scholz, center, during a visit to a Siemens plant in Erlangen, Germany, this month.Pool photo by Ronald Wittek“The C.D.U., its more moderate worldview and its moderate position is not really equipped for the situation of this time, when we are having a war, when we have in the energy crisis, with high costs and now with a government which tries to ideologically influence people’s lives,” Mr. Voigt, the leader of the C.D.U. in Thuringia’s state parliament, said.“This together, in my opinion, forces the C.D.U. to answer the question: What is your DNA? What is your different perspective?”It is a remarkable round of public soul-searching from a party that as recently as 2021 had a lock on political power in Berlin for nearly two decades under Ms. Merkel. But now the party is engaged in a sometimes messy public debate over how to meet an angrier, more uncertain time.Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, in a television interview on Sunday night appeared to open the door to working with the far-right AfD in local governments. The party had previously vowed never to cooperate at any level with the AfD, which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified as a “suspected” extremist organization.“At the municipal level, party politics have advanced a bit too far anyway,” he said. “There has now been elected a district administrator in Thuringia. And, of course, this is a democratic election. In Saxony-Anhalt, in a small community, a mayor has been elected who belongs to the AfD. And, of course, this is a democratic election. We also have to accept that.”After members of his own party bristled at his comments, Mr. Merz walked them back. One of his deputies, Carsten Linneman, said that Mr. Merz was merely pointing out the policy’s “difficult implementation on the ground.”“If it’s about a new day care center in the local Parliament, for example, we can’t vote against it just because the #AfD is voting along,” Mr. Linneman said in a statement. “We do not make ourselves dependent on right-wing radicals.”The leader of the Christian Democratic Union in Thuringia’s state parliament, Mario Voigt, voting in Erfurt, Germany, in 2020.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockNorbert Röttgen, a C.D.U. lawmaker in Parliament, called recent polling showing the AfD’s ascent “a disaster” and “an alarm signal” for “all parties of the center.”His party, he said, needed to “ask itself self-critically why we are not benefiting in practice from such great dissatisfaction with the government.”Some political experts view the resurgence of the AfD as a rejection of Ms. Merkel’s policies — particularly her immigration and climate-friendly stances. That has created a particularly awkward situation for current members of the party.To win back voters, “it will be necessary to reject some of the policies of Merkel,” said Torsten Oppelland, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Jena in Thuringia. But, he added, doing so ran the risk of alienating others.The Christian Democrats, he said, “will go on being an important party. But for winning governing majorities, it’s a huge problem.”Many in the party have declared that they will never resort to pushing the kind of far-right, populist rhetoric that the AfD traffics in. Markus Söder, the head of the state in Bavaria, has warned that the party cannot campaign on a message of “anger and frustration.”“Repeating and chasing after populists does not bring any positive results; on the contrary, it strengthens the right-wing original and not the copy,” Mr. Söder told a local newspaper. “I will not risk Bavaria’s political decency for a fleeting percent of approval in the populist area.”Yet some in the party have begun tilting further right. Mr. Merz this month replaced a top party aide responsible for day-to-day political strategy with a more conservative member.Much of the party’s angst has been channeled into pummeling the climate-friendly Greens, a part of Chancellor Scholz’s governing coalition. Conservatives blame the Greens for stoking anti-Berlin sentiment in the more rural, economically depressed areas where the AfD enjoys strong support.And whereas Ms. Merkel famously declared “We can do it!” at the peak of Europe’s immigration crisis in 2015, Mr. Merz has adopted a more hawkish tone.An asylum seeker taking a selfie with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel after her visit to registration center in Berlin in 2015.Bernd Von Jutrczenka/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“The refugee crisis is present again, combined with the uneasy feeling that there is always enough money for refugees, but less and less for kindergartens, schools and hospitals,” he wrote in a recent edition of his newsletter, explaining the rise of the AfD.Mr. Voight believes the Christian Democrats can still find electoral success with the party’s “pragmatism” and “moderate worldview.” But its message, he said, must be “understood at people’s tables.”“You have to tear down this wall in a way,” Mr. Voigt said, to bring AfD-friendly voters “over to the good side of politics, the democratic side. They have frustration, they have anger, you have to address it. And you have to talk to them in a language that they understand.”Jan Redmann, the party leader in Brandenburg, said in an interview that he believed that C.D.U. members had inadvertently allowed the AfD to define their positions on crucial issues like immigration, because they “tried not to be mixed up with” the far-right party.“People want a government that secures the borders — people are against illegal trafficking, against illegal migration,” Mr. Redmann said. “And if no party in the democratic field is giving them this position, it makes the AfD stronger.”An Alternative for Germany campaign poster in Saxony-Anhalt this month.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockEkaterina Bodyagina More
Mr. Hun Sen, whose party won stage-managed parliamentary elections on Sunday, has been prime minister of Cambodia since 1985. He said he would hand power to his son.Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, said on Wednesday that he would resign next month and hand power to his son.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, made the announcement in a televised address, three days after his political party had declared victory in stage-managed parliamentary elections. He said in the address that his eldest son, Gen. Hun Manet, 45, would succeed him and that the move would not violate any rules in the National Assembly because his son is also a lawmaker.In June, Mr. Hun Sen had said that he would hand over the premiership to his son at some point after the vote. But he also made clear that he had no plans to retire.“Even if I am no longer a prime minister, I will still control politics as the head of the ruling party,” he said at the time.Mr. Hun Sen, who has held power since 1985, said on Wednesday that his son would be confirmed as the new prime minister by Parliament on Aug. 22, according to local news media.His Cambodian People’s Party was always a virtual lock to sweep the election on Sunday. His government has suppressed all meaningful opposition over the years by jailing dozens of critics and shuttering dissenting news media outlets, among other tactics.In March, a prominent opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 27 years of house arrest on a treason charge and barred from running or voting in elections. Another opposition leader with a high profile, Sam Rainsy, lives in exile in France.Mr. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge fighter, has long maintained tight control of most of Cambodia’s institutions. In recent years he has used social media to reinforce his power.Weeks before the recent election, Mr. Hun Sen’s usually very active Facebook went dark after the oversight board for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recommended that he be suspended from the platform for threatening political opponents with violence. But a few days before the vote, his account was reactivated. More
