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      Greece Election: Kyriakos Mitsotakis Claims ‘Strong Mandate’ With Win

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      His party’s election victory comes as the country experiences strong economic growth, with voters seemingly willing to look past scandals and disasters that have tarnished his government.Greek voters on Sunday overwhelmingly re-elected the conservative New Democracy party, preliminary results showed, setting the stage for its leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to strengthen his grip on power with an absolute majority and what he called a “strong mandate” for the foreseeable future.With his landslide victory, voters appeared to have overlooked his government’s ties to a series of scandals and embrace his promise of continued economic stability and prosperity.With 91 percent of the votes counted at 9:45 p.m., the party had 40.5 percent, and was poised to win 158 seats in Greece’s 300-member Parliament, far ahead of the opposition Syriza party, which was in second place with 17.8 percent, with 47 seats. The socialist Pasok party took third place, with 12.5 percent, and got 32 seats.In a statement from his party’s headquarters in Athens, the capital, Mr. Mitsotakis described the results as “a strong mandate, to move more quickly along the road of major changes.”He also said of those who had voted: “In a resounding and mature way, they put a definitive end to a traumatic cycle of toxicity that had held the country back and divided society.”Turnout, however, was just over 52 percent, compared with 61 percent in the first elections held in May, according to preliminary results. Earlier on Sunday, Greek television showed images of packed beaches following a final week of campaigning in which politicians had appealed to voters not to forsake their vote for the waves.New Democracy won the first election in May by 20 percentage points — the largest margin in decades. But it had fallen short of the votes necessary for an absolute majority in Parliament. Mr. Mitsotakis, who as prime minister had overseen a period of economic stability and tough anti-migrant measures, opted to head for a second vote conducted under a system that grants bonus seats in Parliament to the winning party.The gambit worked.Now, with an expected solid majority in Parliament, Mr. Mitsotakis will have more freedom in policymaking and will most likely spur international credit rating agencies to lift their ratings on Greece’s bonds — which have lingered in junk status — to the much-coveted investment grade, lowering the country’s borrowing costs.Mr. Mitsotakis was brought to power in the 2019 election, when his party also won 158 seats. He served as prime minister until May this year, then stepped aside following the inconclusive vote.He has vowed to continue focusing on prosperity, appealing to voters who seemed to overlook revelations about the wiretapping of an opposition leader by the state intelligence service, a fatal train crash in February that killed 57 people and a catastrophic shipwreck off Greece that killed hundreds of migrants as the government was facing fierce criticism for its hard-line migration policies.A pro-refugee demonstration this month in Kalamata, Greece. Mr. Mitsotakis’s party secured a solid parliamentary majority despite criticism of his government’s tough anti-migrant measures.Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times“I never promise miracles,” he said on Sunday, “but I can assure you that I will remain faithful to my duty, with planning, devotion and chiefly hard work.” He added that his second term could “transform” Greece with dynamic growth rates that would increase wages and reduce inequalities, and he vowed, “I will be the prime minister of all Greeks.”Greece’s economy stabilized under Mr. Mitsotakis after a decade-long financial crisis that shattered Greek society and shook the eurozone. Growth this year has been twice the eurozone’s average, spurred by his government’s tax cuts, while wages and pensions have risen and large investors are again pumping money into the economy.These achievements have reassured many Greeks who feared a return to the uncertainty and upheaval of the crisis years, analysts say.“One should not underestimate what this economic stability and growth means in material but also in psychological terms for a country which has been on the brink of economic collapse in the previous decade,” said Lamprini Rori, a professor of political analysis at the University of Athens.Strengthening the country’s international image and position, and bolstering people’s sense of security and national pride, all meant a “positive calculus” for New Democracy, she said.The center-left Syriza is led by Alexis Tsipras, under whose watch Greece came close to leaving the eurozone in 2015. Mr. Tsipras had promised justice and change, calling Mr. Mitsotakis arrogant and his government “an unaccountable regime that is a danger to society.”On Sunday, Mr. Tsipras said the election result was chiefly negative for society and democracy. The fact that three hard-right parties were set to enter Parliament, along with New Democracy, was a “warning bell,” he said.Analysts said the opposition had trouble gaining traction amid a rejuvenated economy.“The opposition’s narrative was ‘down with the junta’ and ‘we’ve become a banana republic,’” said Harry Papasotiriou, a professor of international relations at Panteio University in Athens. “But people saw economic growth.”With New Democracy’s dominance pretty much undisputed, Mr. Tsipras is likely to face new questions about his future, as there is no clear potential successor to the charismatic former communist firebrand.A campaign ad in favor of Alexis Tsipras and the Syriza party, which he leads, in Athens this past week. Byron Smith for The New York TimesSyriza also had to contend with increased support for hard-left fringe parties, including Sailing for Freedom, which was formed by the former Syriza official Zoe Konstantopoulou and was poised to gain national representation for the first time. It picked up 3.1 percent of the vote, or eight seats.The support for fringe parties demonstrated the failure of both the Syriza and Pasok parties to convince voters that they can offer a dynamic opposition, Professor Rori said.Apart from Mr. Mitsotakis’s strong showing, the small, relatively unknown party, Spartans, did surprisingly well, and appeared poised to enter Parliament with 13 seats after winning 4.7 percent of the votes.The party, which has a nationalist, anti-migrant stance, had not registered in opinion polls until a few weeks before the elections in June, when Ilias Kasidiaris, the jailed former spokesman of the now-defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, publicly backed it after his own party had been banned from running because of his criminal convictions.In a televised statement, the Spartans’ leader, Vasilis Stingas, thanked Mr. Kasidiaris for his support, which he said had been the “fuel” for the party’s success, adding, “We’re here to unite, not divide.”Other smaller parties on track to enter Parliament include the little-known ultra-Orthodox, pro-Russia, hard-right Niki party, with 10 seats. It started gaining support in the weeks before the May election.The presence of new smaller anti-systemic parties in Greece’s next Parliament will bring more voices into the chorus of criticism against Mr. Mitsotakis — but not necessarily in a productive way, according to Professor Rori.She remembered chaotic sessions involving Golden Dawn and Ms. Konstantopoulou, and fears a degeneration of Greece’s political opposition.“It was all about impressions, stalemates, toxicity,” she said. More

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      Elecciones en Guatemala: lo que hay que saber

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      Los comicios en la nación centroamericana están marcados por la exclusión de importantes candidatos y llamados a tomar medidas enérgicas contra la delincuencia.Guatemala, el país más poblado de Centroamérica, votará este domingo en unas elecciones presidenciales que están dirigiendo el foco de atención a la erosión del Estado de derecho en una nación que se ha convertido en una fuente importante de migración hacia Estados Unidos.La incipiente democracia del país tras el fin de una guerra civil hace unas cuatro décadas que dejó cientos de miles de personas desaparecidas o muertas —una de las más sangrientas en la historia reciente latinoamericana— ha decaído en años recientes bajo un gobierno cada vez más autoritario.El poder judicial se ha utilizado como arma arrojadiza y ha forzado al exilio a decenas de jueces y fiscales que se dedicaban a combatir la corrupción. La libertad de prensa también ha recibido ataques: este mes, el editor de un importante periódico que expuso muchos episodios de corrupción fue sentenciado a seis años de prisión tras haber sido acusado de delitos financieros.El Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Guatemala, un país de 18 millones de habitantes, ha incrementado las preocupaciones sobre los ataques a las normas democráticas tras haber descalificado a varios candidatos presidenciales importantes que eran percibidos como una amenaza a la clase política y económica dominante.La descalificación de varios candidatos de la contienda presidencial, entre ellos Carlos Pineda, ha generado dudas sobre la legitimidad de las elecciones del domingo.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLas tensiones en torno a la inestable democracia de Guatemala han dejado a algunos votantes desilusionados y preguntándose si deberían incluso molestarse en ir a votar.“Creo que no deberían celebrarse las elecciones”, afirmó Óscar Guillén, de 70 años, quien explicó que tenía planeado dejar su voto en blanco para expresar su descontento.Los electores todavía podrán elegir entre un nutrido grupo de más de 20 candidatos, ninguno de los cuales se prevé que obtenga una mayoría el domingo, lo que obligaría a ir a una segunda vuelta el 20 de agosto entre los dos primeros lugares.Las segundas vueltas se han vuelto comunes en Guatemala desde que los acuerdos de paz de 1996 pusieron fin un conflicto interno que duró 36 años y que estuvo marcado por brutales tácticas de contrainsurgencia que resultaron en un genocidio contra la comunidad indígena.El presidente actual de Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, tiene prohibido por ley buscar la reelección. Pero incluso luego de que un aumento pronunciado en los crímenes violentos y un costo de vida extremadamente alto causaron que el mandatario, conservador, sea profundamente impopular, los candidatos líderes en la contienda son de tendencia en general conservadora, lo que sugiere que habrá continuidad con la clase política dominante del país.La votación no es obligatoria en Guatemala y la tasa de abstención, que casi llegó al 40 por ciento en las últimas elecciones presidenciales en 2019, será observada de cerca como un indicador del descontento entre los electores.A continuación, lo que debes saber sobre las elecciones de este domingo.Sandra Torres parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Quién se está postulando a la presidencia?Ninguno de los tres candidatos principales tiene proyectado obtener ni siquiera algo cercano a la mayoría necesaria para ganar en primera vuelta el domingo. En diferentes encuestas, Sandra Torres, una ex primera dama, parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento. (Según las encuestas, los números del candidato presidencial del partido de Giammattei rondan cifras bajas de un solo dígito)Torres, de 67 años, estuvo casada con Álvaro Colom, presidente de Guatemala de 2008 a 2012 y quien falleció este año, a los 71 años de edad. Se divorciaron en 2011, cuando Torres intentó postularse por primera vez a la presidencia, en un intento de sortear una ley que prohíbe que los familiares del presidente puedan presentarse como candidatos.Torres no logró conseguir la autorización para postularse a la presidencia ese año, pero obtuvo el segundo lugar en las dos elecciones presidenciales más recientes. Después de las elecciones de 2019, fue acusada de cometer violaciones de financiación de campaña y pasó tiempo en arresto domiciliario.A finales del año pasado, un juez sentenció que no había suficientes pruebas para proceder al juicio de Torres, lo que le permitió volver a postularse. Durante la campaña, ha logrado conseguir el apoyo de su partido, la Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), el cual está bien arraigado y es ampliamente conocido en Guatemala.Torres, al igual que sus dos principales rivales, ha expresado admiración hacia la represión a las pandillas ejecutada por el gobierno del país vecino de El Salvador, la cual ha ayudado a disminuir los niveles de violencia, pero también ha planteado preocupaciones referentes a abusos de derechos humanos.Torres también ha prometido ampliar las transferencias de efectivo y la asistencia alimentaria para las familias de bajos recursos, valiéndose de su experiencia como primera dama, cuando fue el rostro de este tipo de iniciativas populares.Otra de las principales candidatas, Zury Ríos, de 55 años, es también una figura conocida en la política guatemalteca. Es la hija de Efraín Ríos Montt, quien fue dictador del país a principios de la década de 1980 y que fue condenado por genocidio en 2013 por intentar exterminar a los ixiles, un pueblo maya indígena de Guatemala.Aunque la evidencia contra su padre fue meticulosamente documentada y detallada en su juicio, Ríos ha negado repetidas veces que haya ocurrido un genocidio. Su partido ultraconservador está liderado por figuras que tienen vínculos con su padre.Sin embargo, aunque Ríos publicita sus credenciales conservadoras y su fe cristiana evangélica, tiene un historial más matizado como exdiputada del Congreso, donde forjó alianzas en un esfuerzo por obtener la aprobación legislativa para proyectos de ley enfocados a mejorar las condiciones para las mujeres y la comunidad LGBTQ.Otro de los principales aspirantes a la presidencia es Edmond Mulet, de 72 años, un abogado y experimentado exdiplomático que ha sido el embajador de Guatemala en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, así como jefe de la Misión de Estabilización de las Naciones Unidas en Haití.Si bien Mulet ha destacado su experiencia diplomática, también es conocido por su labor como abogado en la década de 1980, cuando fue arrestado en conexión con su trabajo organizando adopciones de niños guatemaltecos por parte de familias canadienses.Aunque fue puesto en libertad rápidamente y ha negado haber cometido algún delito, Mulet ha tenido que invertir tiempo en la campaña para explicar su participación en este episodio.En su campaña, Mulet está representando a un partido nuevo que no ocupa ningún escaño en el Congreso, pero que ha forjado una coalición competitiva de candidatos a nivel local y nacional para las elecciones del domingo. Entre sus propuestas se encuentran la creación de una pensión universal, el incremento de salarios policiales y la construcción de una nueva cárcel de máxima seguridad.Alrededor del 20 por ciento de los legisladores en el congreso de Guatemala enfrentan algún tipo de acusación por corrupción.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Cuáles son los principales temas?Corrupción: Guatemala obtuvo elogios en la última década por sus esfuerzos para reducir la impunidad y la corrupción. Pero esa iniciativa, liderada por una comisión de investigadores internacionales respaldada por la ONU, fue sistemáticamente desmantelada en años recientes cuando los intereses políticos y económicos arraigados comenzaron a acosar a jueces y fiscales anticorrupción y a obligarlos a salir del país.Según grupos defensores de libertades civiles, la exclusión de candidatos importantes en las elecciones refleja cómo la élite está firmemente reafirmando su poder.Familiares alrededor del ataúd de Miguel Rojché Zapalu, uno de los hombres guatemaltecos que murieron en un incendio en un centro migratorio cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos, durante su funeral en abril en Chicacao, una comunidad indígena.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesMigración: Los guatemaltecos figuran entre los grupos de migrantes de más rápido crecimiento en Estados Unidos. El número de migrantes que llegan anualmente se ha incrementado cerca de 33 por ciento entre 2010 y 2021, de 830.000 a más de 1,1 millón.Existen varios factores que impulsan a los guatemaltecos a emigrar, en el que destaca la falta de oportunidades económicas: cerca del 59 por ciento de la población vive por debajo de la línea de pobreza.El gobierno de EE. UU. le dio prioridad a la lucha contra la corrupción y el fortalecimiento de la democracia en Guatemala y otros países centroamericanos al principio del mandato del presidente Biden, argumentando que eso evitaría que la gente abandonara su tierra natal.Pero esos esfuerzos han hecho muy poco para prevenir un retroceso de la democracia en la región o para reducir de forma notable el flujo de migrantes.Un acusado es escoltado a una audiencia en unn tribunal de Ciudad de Guatemala.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesDelincuencia: Un tema importante durante toda la campaña electoral en Guatemala han sido los llamados a emular la represión a las pandillas realizada por el El Salvador, tras señalar la creciente frustración con los altos niveles de crímenes violentos.La cantidad de homicidios en Guatemala —impulsada en parte por pandillas poderosas— se incrementó casi 6 por ciento en 2022 con respecto al año anterior, y también ha habido un aumento marcado en el número de víctimas de homicidio que han mostrado señales de tortura. Muchos guatemaltecos citan el temor a la extorsión y el crimen como razones para emigrar. More

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      Guatemala Election: What to Know

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      The election in the Central American nation is marked by the exclusion of top candidates and calls to crack down on violent crime.Guatemala, Central America’s largest nation, will vote on Sunday in presidential elections that are casting scrutiny on the erosion of the rule of law in a country that has become a major source of migration to the United States.Guatemala’s nascent democracy — which emerged after the end of a civil war nearly four decades ago that left hundreds of thousands dead or missing, one of the bloodiest in recent Latin American history — has frayed in recent years under an increasingly authoritarian government.The judiciary has been weaponized and has forced into exile dozens of prosecutors and judges focused on battling corruption. Press freedom has also come under attack, and this month, the publisher of a leading newspaper that exposed many episodes of graft was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of financial crimes.The electoral authority in Guatemala, a country of 18 million, has added to concerns about assaults on democratic norms after it barred several top presidential candidates who were viewed as a threat to the political and economic establishment.The disqualification of several candidates from the presidential race, including Carlos Pineda, has raised questions about the legitimacy of Sunday’s voteDaniele Volpe for The New York TimesThe tensions over Guatemala’s teetering democracy has left some voters disillusioned and wondering if they should even bother casting a ballot.“I don’t think there should even be an election,” said Óscar Guillén, 70, explaining that he planned to leave his ballot blank to express his disenchantment.Voters will still choose from a crowded field of more than 20 candidates, not one of whom is predicted to obtain a majority on Sunday, which would force a runoff on Aug. 20 between the top two finishers.Runoffs have become common in Guatemala since peace accords in 1996 ended an internal conflict that lasted 36 years and was marked by brutal counterinsurgency tactics that resulted in genocide against Indigenous people.Guatemala’s current president, Alejandro Giammattei, is barred by law from seeking re-election. But even though a sharp increase in violent crime and a punishingly high cost of living have made Mr. Giammattei, a conservative, deeply unpopular, the leading candidates in the race generally also lean conservative, suggesting continuity with the country’s political establishment.Voting is not mandatory in Guatemala, and the abstention rate, which was nearly 40 percent in the last presidential election, in 2019, will be closely watched as a gauge of voter discontent.Here’s what you need to know about the vote on Sunday.Sandra Torres has been the top candidate across several polls, though her support would fall far short of winning a majority of the vote. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWho is running?Of the three leading candidates, no one is predicted to secure anything close to the majority needed to win outright on Sunday. Across several polls, Sandra Torres, a former first lady, appeared to be the top candidate, but with levels of support hovering around 20 percent. (The presidential candidate from Mr. Giammattei’s party is polling in the low single digits.)Ms. Torres, 67, was married to Álvaro Colom, who was the president of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012 and who died this year at 71. They divorced in 2011, when Ms. Torres first tried to run for president and tried to circumvent a law prohibiting a president’s relatives from running for office.She was still barred from running that year, but was the runner-up in the two most recent presidential elections. After the 2019 election, she was accused of campaign finance violations and spent time under house arrest.Ms. Torres prevailed in that case late last year when a judge ruled that were was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, allowing her to run again. On the campaign trail, she has been able to draw support from her party, National Unity of Hope, which is well established and widely known in Guatemala.Ms. Torres, like her two main rivals, has expressed admiration for the crackdown on gangs by the government in neighboring El Salvador, which has helped drive down violence, but has also raised concerns about human rights abuses.She has also promised to increase cash transfers and food assistance to poor families, building on her time as first lady when she was the face of those kinds of popular initiatives.Another top challenger, Zury Ríos, 55, is also a familiar figure in Guatemalan politics. She is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator in the early 1980s who was convicted in 2013 of genocide for trying to exterminate the Ixil, a Mayan people.While the evidence against her father was meticulously documented and detailed at his trial, Ms. Ríos has claimed repeatedly that no genocide ever took place. Her ultraconservative party is led by figures with links to her father.Still, while Ms. Ríos promotes her conservative credentials and evangelical Christian beliefs, she has a more nuanced record as a former member of Congress when she forged alliances in an effort to win legislative approval for bills aimed at improving conditions for women and L.G.T.B.Q. people.Another main presidential contender is Edmond Mulet, 72, a lawyer and a seasoned former diplomat who has served as Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States and the European Union, as well as the head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.While Mr. Mulet has highlighted his diplomatic experience, he is also known for his work as a lawyer in the 1980s, when he was arrested in connection to his work arranging adoptions of Guatemalan children by Canadian families.Though he was quickly set free and Mr. Mulet has denied any wrongdoing, he has still spent time on the campaign trail having to explain his involvement in the episode.In his campaign, Mr. Mulet is representing a newly formed party without any seats in Congress, but that has forged a competitive coalition of candidates at the national and local level in Sunday’s election. His proposals include a universal pension, increasing police salaries and building a new high-security prison.About 20 percent of the legislators in Guatemala’s Congress face some kind of corruption accusation.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWhat are the main issues?Corruption: Guatemala won plaudits during the past decade for efforts to curb impunity and graft. But that initiative, led by a U.N.-backed panel of international investigators, was systematically dismantled in recent years as entrenched political and economic interests started hounding anticorruption judges and prosecutors from the country.The exclusion of top candidates in the election reflects, civil liberty groups say, how elite figures are steadily reasserting their power.Family members mourned over the coffin of Miguel Rojché Zapalu, one of 17 Guatemalan men killed in a fire at a migration center near the U.S. border, during his funeral in April in Chicacao, a predominantly Indigenous community.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesMigration: Guatemalans rank among the fastest-growing groups of migrants in the United States. The number of those arriving annually has increased by about 33 percent from 2010 to 2021, from 830,000 to more than 1.1 million.Various factors drive Guatemalans to emigrate, notably a lack of economic opportunity, with about 59 percent of the population living below the poverty line.The United States made fighting corruption and shoring up democracy in Guatemala and other Central American countries a priority early in President Biden’s tenure, arguing that it would keep people from leaving their homelands.But those efforts have done little to prevent a backsliding of democracy in the region or make a major dent in the flow of migrants.A defendant being escorted to a hearing at a court in Guatemala City.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesCrime: A top theme throughout the campaign season in Guatemala has been calls to emulate the crackdown on gangs in El Salvador, pointing to the rising frustration with high levels of violent crime.The number of homicides in Guatemala — fueled in part by powerful gangs — climbed nearly 6 percent in 2022 from the previous year, and there has also been a sharp increase in the number of murder victims who showed signs of torture. Many Guatemalans cite fears of extortion and crime as reasons to emigrate. More

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      Taiwan Faces a #MeToo Wave, Set Off by a Netflix Hit

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      A torrent of sexual harassment accusations has prompted questions about the state of women’s rights on an island democracy that has long been one of Asia’s most progressive places.In the past few weeks, a wave of #MeToo allegations has raced to the very top of Taiwan’s political, judicial and arts scenes, forcing a new reckoning of the state of women’s rights on a democratic island that has long taken pride in being among Asia’s most progressive places.Nearly every day, fresh allegations emerge, setting off discussions on talk shows and on social media, with newspaper commentaries and activist groups calling for stronger protections for victims.In many ways, Taiwan stands out for the significant strides that women have made that helped elect the island’s first female president and bolster laws against rape and sexual assault, before #MeToo took off in the United States. But the flood of new sexual harassment accusations points to what activists and scholars say is entrenched sexism that leaves women vulnerable at work, and a culture that is quick to blame victims and cover up accusations against powerful men.President Tsai, in 2020, with other officials. Some of the earliest #MeToo allegations centered on senior members of her political party, posing risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters.Makoto Lin/Taiwan Presidential Office, via ReutersThe outpouring of complaints was set off by a popular Netflix drama about Taiwanese politics called “Wave Makers,” which featured a subplot about a female member of a political party telling her boss that she had been sexually harassed by a high-ranking party member. Her boss promises to help her report the harassment, and in an indication of how often such politically inconvenient complaints are ignored, says, “Let’s not just let this go this time.”That quote from the fictional supervisor became a clarion call, inspiring more than 100 accusers, mostly women, to speak out on social media, sharing their accounts of unwanted kisses, groping and in a few cases, attempted rape. They described the indignities endured at the workplace, including inappropriate touching and unwanted advances by male colleagues and bosses, as well as lewd comments. Some of their posts have been shared thousands of times.The stakes are particularly high for President Tsai Ing-wen’s governing Democratic Progressive Party. Senior party and government officials were among the first accused of harassment and of seeking to silence accusers, forcing Ms. Tsai to apologize twice for her party’s mishandling of internal complaints. The criticism runs counter to the party’s record as a champion of liberal values, which includes legalizing same-sex marriage in 2019 and granting gay couples the right to adopt earlier this year. And it poses risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters ahead of a presidential election next year.“The Democratic Progressive Party has regarded itself as the governing party that supports gender equality,” Fan Yun, a party legislator who is also a professor specializing in gender issues at National Taiwan University, said in a telephone interview. “The Netflix show was seen by others as a snapshot of what’s happening within the party, and it has brought about great impact.”A scene from Wave Makers. A line from the show about properly addressing a sexual harassment complaint, “Let’s not just let this go this time,” resonated in Taiwan.NetflixAmong the most senior figures accused of harassment is Yen Chih-fa, who denied the allegation but resigned from his post as an adviser to President Tsai. Taiwan’s highest legal body said it would investigate a complaint against a former chief justice, Lee Po-tao. Tsai Mu-lin, a high-level party official, has been accused of bullying a female party staff member into silence when she reported that a male colleague had tried to enter her hotel room.Mr. Tsai, who is not related to the president, has since stepped down.The woman who accused him, Chen Wen-hsuan, said she felt empowered to speak out publicly by the other women who had shared their experiences. “This movement has taught me that no injustice should be swallowed,” she said. “After all, we can’t just let it go.”Allegations have also been made against men from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang, as well as across Taiwan’s society more broadly, including in academia, journalism, and most recently, entertainment.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman he met at work of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude. Aaron Yan, a pop star, apologized after an ex-boyfriend accused him of secretly shooting videos of them having sex, when the ex-boyfriend was 16, a minor. Local prosecutors said this week they would investigate the allegation.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude.Visual China Group, via Getty ImagesIn some ways, the #MeToo movement points to a generational shift in attitudes brought about by the hard-fought advances won by women’s rights activists in decades past. Taiwan’s younger generation started learning about gender equality in elementary school, as part of curriculum changes enacted in 2004, and have since come of age.But workplaces are struggling to keep pace.Taiwan’s younger generation has “a higher awareness of gender diversity and equality than the older generation,” said Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant professor of government at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “However, the workplace that young people are entering is still dominated by the older generation.”Lawmakers have pledged to quickly pass changes to laws to make workplaces and schools safer by holding organizations accountable for protecting victims of harassment. The changes would require organizations to track complaints and provide independent, third-party review panels if needed. Women’s rights groups have called for Taiwan to extend the statute of limitations for sexual harassment complaints, currently at one year.But activists also say more needs to be done to address the culture of sexism that underlies the misconduct and deters many women from speaking out. A survey by Taiwan’s labor ministry last year showed that only a tiny percentage of female respondents who said they had encountered sexual harassment at work had filed complaints. Activists and scholars in Taiwan say that men in power, whether they are supervisors in workplaces or police officers or judges, are often seen as sympathetic toward other men in power, and likely to blame the victim.This month, Lai Yu-fen, 27, accused a Polish diplomat, Bartosz Rys, on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, of what Ms. Lai described as sexual assault last year. She said that when she filed a police report, investigators asked why she had apologized to the diplomat as she rejected his advances, and why she had not told her family about the encounter. She said a defense lawyer gossiped about her to mutual friends. “I want to take back my own story,” Ms. Lai said in an interview.The Polish Office in Taipei, Poland’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, confirmed that it cooperated with the authorities. Prosecutors decided not to charge Mr. Rys, whose posting ended last year and who later left Taiwan. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment, but said on his Twitter page that Ms. Lai had sought money in exchange for dropping the accusation. (She said the request for money was part of negotiating a legal settlement.)To those working in Taiwan’s civil society, perhaps the most concerning of allegations are those directed at activists seen as influential leaders in the rights community. Lee Yuan-chun, 29, an activist, this month publicly accused Wang Dan, a veteran Chinese pro-democracy dissident, of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex in 2014. He said he was suing Mr. Wang.Wang Dan, middle, a Chinese pro-democracy dissident, was accused this month by an activist of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex. Andres Kudacki/Associated PressIn a statement, Mr. Wang said he hoped that the public would reserve judgment until a court ruled on the lawsuit. “As a public figure, one’s private life will be subject to more stringent scrutiny,” he said. “Through this incident I will pay more attention to this in the future.” More

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      A.I.’s Use in Elections Sets Off a Scramble for Guardrails

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      Gaps in campaign rules allow politicians to spread images and messaging generated by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence technology.In Toronto, a candidate in this week’s mayoral election who vows to clear homeless encampments released a set of campaign promises illustrated by artificial intelligence, including fake dystopian images of people camped out on a downtown street and a fabricated image of tents set up in a park.In New Zealand, a political party posted a realistic-looking rendering on Instagram of fake robbers rampaging through a jewelry shop.In Chicago, the runner-up in the mayoral vote in April complained that a Twitter account masquerading as a news outlet had used A.I. to clone his voice in a way that suggested he condoned police brutality.What began a few months ago as a slow drip of fund-raising emails and promotional images composed by A.I. for political campaigns has turned into a steady stream of campaign materials created by the technology, rewriting the political playbook for democratic elections around the world.Increasingly, political consultants, election researchers and lawmakers say setting up new guardrails, such as legislation reining in synthetically generated ads, should be an urgent priority. Existing defenses, such as social media rules and services that claim to detect A.I. content, have failed to do much to slow the tide.As the 2024 U.S. presidential race starts to heat up, some of the campaigns are already testing the technology. The Republican National Committee released a video with artificially generated images of doomsday scenarios after President Biden announced his re-election bid, while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official. The Democratic Party experimented with fund-raising messages drafted by artificial intelligence in the spring — and found that they were often more effective at encouraging engagement and donations than copy written entirely by humans.Some politicians see artificial intelligence as a way to help reduce campaign costs, by using it to create instant responses to debate questions or attack ads, or to analyze data that might otherwise require expensive experts.At the same time, the technology has the potential to spread disinformation to a wide audience. An unflattering fake video, an email blast full of false narratives churned out by computer or a fabricated image of urban decay can reinforce prejudices and widen the partisan divide by showing voters what they expect to see, experts say.The technology is already far more powerful than manual manipulation — not perfect, but fast improving and easy to learn. In May, the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, whose company helped kick off an artificial intelligence boom last year with its popular ChatGPT chatbot, told a Senate subcommittee that he was nervous about election season.He said the technology’s ability “to manipulate, to persuade, to provide sort of one-on-one interactive disinformation” was “a significant area of concern.”Representative Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement last month that the 2024 election cycle “is poised to be the first election where A.I.-generated content is prevalent.” She and other congressional Democrats, including Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have introduced legislation that would require political ads that used artificially generated material to carry a disclaimer. A similar bill in Washington State was recently signed into law.The American Association of Political Consultants recently condemned the use of deepfake content in political campaigns as a violation of its ethics code.“People are going to be tempted to push the envelope and see where they can take things,” said Larry Huynh, the group’s incoming president. “As with any tool, there can be bad uses and bad actions using them to lie to voters, to mislead voters, to create a belief in something that doesn’t exist.”The technology’s recent intrusion into politics came as a surprise in Toronto, a city that supports a thriving ecosystem of artificial intelligence research and start-ups. The mayoral election takes place on Monday.A conservative candidate in the race, Anthony Furey, a former news columnist, recently laid out his platform in a document that was dozens of pages long and filled with synthetically generated content to help him make his tough-on-crime position.A closer look clearly showed that many of the images were not real: One laboratory scene featured scientists who looked like alien blobs. A woman in another rendering wore a pin on her cardigan with illegible lettering; similar markings appeared in an image of caution tape at a construction site. Mr. Furey’s campaign also used a synthetic portrait of a seated woman with two arms crossed and a third arm touching her chin.Anthony Furey, a candidate in Toronto’s mayoral election on Monday, used an A.I. image of a woman with three arms.The other candidates mined that image for laughs in a debate this month: “We’re actually using real pictures,” said Josh Matlow, who showed a photo of his family and added that “no one in our pictures have three arms.”Still, the sloppy renderings were used to amplify Mr. Furey’s argument. He gained enough momentum to become one of the most recognizable names in an election with more than 100 candidates. In the same debate, he acknowledged using the technology in his campaign, adding that “we’re going to have a couple of laughs here as we proceed with learning more about A.I.”Political experts worry that artificial intelligence, when misused, could have a corrosive effect on the democratic process. Misinformation is a constant risk; one of Mr. Furey’s rivals said in a debate that while members of her staff used ChatGPT, they always fact-checked its output.“If someone can create noise, build uncertainty or develop false narratives, that could be an effective way to sway voters and win the race,” Darrell M. West, a senior fellow for the Brookings Institution, wrote in a report last month. “Since the 2024 presidential election may come down to tens of thousands of voters in a few states, anything that can nudge people in one direction or another could end up being decisive.”Increasingly sophisticated A.I. content is appearing more frequently on social networks that have been largely unwilling or unable to police it, said Ben Colman, the chief executive of Reality Defender, a company that offers services to detect A.I. The feeble oversight allows unlabeled synthetic content to do “irreversible damage” before it is addressed, he said.“Explaining to millions of users that the content they already saw and shared was fake, well after the fact, is too little, too late,” Mr. Colman said.For several days this month, a Twitch livestream has run a nonstop, not-safe-for-work debate between synthetic versions of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Both were clearly identified as simulated “A.I. entities,” but if an organized political campaign created such content and it spread widely without any disclosure, it could easily degrade the value of real material, disinformation experts said.Politicians could shrug off accountability and claim that authentic footage of compromising actions was not real, a phenomenon known as the liar’s dividend. Ordinary citizens could make their own fakes, while others could entrench themselves more deeply in polarized information bubbles, believing only what sources they chose to believe.“If people can’t trust their eyes and ears, they may just say, ‘Who knows?’” Josh A. Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, wrote in an email. “This could foster a move from healthy skepticism that encourages good habits (like lateral reading and searching for reliable sources) to an unhealthy skepticism that it is impossible to know what is true.” More

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      How Do Kwon, a Crypto Fugitive, Upended the Politics of Montenegro

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      Only days before an election in Montenegro, a letter from Do Kwon, the fugitive founder of the Luna digital coin, claimed that crypto “friends” had provided campaign funding to a leading candidate.Already notorious as an agent of market mayhem, the crypto industry has now unleashed political havoc, too, upending a critical general election in Montenegro, a troubled Balkan nation struggling to shake off the grip of organized crime and the influence of Russia.Only days before a vote on June 11, the political landscape in Montenegro was thrown into disarray by the intervention of Do Kwon, the fugitive head of a failed crypto business whose collapse last year contributed to a $2 trillion crash across the industry.In a handwritten letter sent to the authorities from the Montenegrin jail where he has been held since March, Mr. Kwon claimed that he had “a very successful investment relationship” with the leader of the Europe Now Movement, the election front-runner, and that “friends in the crypto industry” had provided campaign funding in return for pledges of “crypto-friendly policies.”Europe Now had been expected to win a decisive popular mandate in elections for a new Parliament. Its campaign mixed populist promises to raise salaries and pensions with pledges to put the country on a clear path to joining the European Union by cleansing the crime and corruption that flourished under Montenegro’s former longtime leader Milo Djukanovic.The party still won the most votes, but fell far short of expectations, finishing just ahead of a rival group that supports Russia and that can now disrupt efforts to form a stable pro-Western coalition government. Only 56 percent of the electorate voted, a record low turnout.Mr. Kwon’s intervention “destroyed us,” said the Europe Now leader, Milojko Spajic, a target of the disgraced crypto entrepreneur’s letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times and whose existence leaked in the local news media before the vote.Milojko Spajic, the leader of the Europe Now Movement, believes Mr. Kwon’s letter hurt his party’s chances in national elections.Stevo Vasiljevic/ReutersIn an interview, Mr. Spajic denounced Mr. Kwon’s accusations as “super fake” and part of a “dirty political game” to hurt his party’s chances. Mr. Kwon’s lawyers have not disputed the letter’s authenticity.As a founder of Terraform Labs, the Stanford-educated Mr. Kwon was once hailed as a crypto trailblazer, responsible for the design of a popular digital coin, Luna, he said would change the world and whose fans he proudly referred to as “Lunatics.”The spectacular collapse in May 2022 of Luna and a second cryptocurrency that Mr. Kwon designed, TerraUSD, transformed him from a hero of innovation into a fugitive wanted by both the United States and South Korea on fraud charges.After that, he vanished, his whereabouts a mystery until the authorities in Montenegro announced in March that he had been arrested while trying to board a private plane to Dubai in Podgorica, the capital, using a forged Costa Rican passport.He had insisted it was genuine, but a Podgorica court on Monday found Mr. Kwon and a South Korean crypto business partner guilty of using forged travel documents and sentenced them to four months in jail.What Mr. Kwon was doing in Montenegro before his arrest and when he arrived is still unclear. His activities since his arrest are murkier.Though stripped of his electronic devices, the jailed Mr. Kwon appears to have somehow moved $29 million from a crypto wallet linked to him, South Korean prosecutors said, confirming a report by Bloomberg News.Dritan Abazovic, the acting prime minister of Montenegro and a political rival to Mr. Spajic, said there was no record of Mr. Kwon entering the country or registering at hotels, so the authorities want to establish whether he had local collaborators.“I’m not accusing Spajic of anything,” Mr. Abazovic said in an interview, “but we need to see what was happening in the crypto community here and whether it was involved in money laundering and campaign financing.”Campaign posters in Podgorica, Montenegro. Only 56 percent of the electorate voted in the election on June 11, the lowest turnout in decades.Stevo Vasiljevic/ReutersLong a center for cigarette smuggling and cocaine trafficking during Mr. Djukanovic’s more than three-decade rule, Montenegro has in recent years promoted itself as a center for the crypto industry.In 2022, Mr. Spajic, who was the finance minister at the time, predicted that the industry could account for nearly a third of Montenegro’s economic output within three years.For Mr. Spajic and fellow blockchain believers, crypto was the next Big Thing, according to Zeljko Ivanovic, the head of the independent media group Vijesti.“It was seen as an easy way out — a new secret recipe to replace the smuggling that had been Djukanovic’s recipe for decades,” Mr. Ivanovic said. “But the miracle cure turned out to be a disaster.”Eager to attract talent, Montenegro last year awarded citizenship to Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian and the founder of Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrency platform.Mr. Buterin said he “never knowingly met or talked to Do Kwon, including through third parties,” and “never gave money to Europe Now.”In May, he hosted a blockchain conference in Montenegro that was attended by, in addition to high-tech enthusiasts, Mr. Spajic and the acting prime minister, Mr. Abazovic.The Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin was awarded Montenegrin citizenship as part of an effort to develop a crypto industry in the country.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesMr. Spajic posted a photograph on Twitter of himself with Mr. Buterin, who is holding up his new Montenegrin passport, and the message: “We will bring the best people in the world to Montenegro.”Montenegro’s welcoming ways, however, also attracted George Cottrell, a British financier convicted of wire fraud in the United States, who later moved to Montenegro under a new name, George Co.Mr. Cottrell, according to officials, left Montenegro for London on June 9, soon after the police raided Salon Privé, a bar in the coastal resort town of Tivat that law enforcement officials believe is connected to him. It features gambling machines and a “cryptomat,” used for buying and trading digital currencies.Ratko Pantovic, Mr. Cottrell’s lawyer, who also represents the bar, said his British client had no connection to the gambling salon or the crypto industry.Montenegro’s acting interior minister, Filip Adzic, who oversaw the police raid in Tivat, said Mr. Cottrell had not been charged with any crime but was being investigated for involvement in possibly illegal crypto activities.Montenegro, Mr. Adzic said, needed to be careful with a business that, because it facilitates anonymous transactions, “is good for organized crime, good for financing terrorists and good for money laundering.”The police raided a bar in Tivat, Montenegro, that featured gambling machines and a “cryptomat,” used for buying and trading digital currencies.Savo Prelevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAmerican and South Korean prosecutors want to examine three laptops and five cellphones seized by the authorities from Mr. Kwon at the time of his arrest for clues to what happened to billions of dollars invested in his now mostly worthless digital coins.Of more interest to Montenegrin authorities, however, is what they may contain relating to campaign financing and Mr. Kwon’s relationship with Mr. Spajic.In a court hearing on June 16, Mr. Kwon’s lawyers said their client denied having funded Mr. Spajic’s electoral campaign. Mr. Kwon’s letter, however, said that “other friends in the crypto industry” contributed.“I have evidence of these communications and contributions,” Mr. Kwon said in his letter.Mr. Spajic initially denied any connection to Mr. Kwon, but later acknowledged he had known him since 2018 and invested money with him on behalf of an investment fund he says he was working for in Singapore — “he cheated us,” Mr. Spajic said — and met him again late last year in Belgrade.That followed an announcement by South Korean prosecutors in September that Interpol, the global police organization, had issued a “red notice” for Mr. Kwon’s arrest. Mr. Spajic said he had met Mr. Kwon only because “we wanted our money back.”Mr. Kwon gave a different account, claiming in his letter that Mr. Spajic wanted to discuss campaign financing. He said Mr. Spajic, who was then planning to run for the presidency, explained that he was “raising few million USD for the upcoming campaign” and “asked me to make a contribution.” Mr. Kwon said he declined.Mr. Spajic said it was “absolutely false” that they discussed campaign financing.Milan Knezevic, leader of the pro-Russian bloc that finished second in the June 11 election, casts his ballot.Boris Pejovic/EPA, via ShutterstockMilan Knezevic, the leader of the pro-Russian bloc that finished second in the election, said he relished his group’s unexpectedly strong result, achieved in part because of the disruption caused by Mr. Kwon, but he still regretted that Montenegro had opened its arms to crypto mavens.It would have been better, Mr. Knezevic said, sitting in an office decorated with pictures of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, to have welcomed fighters from the Islamic State militant group.“At least with ISIS, you know what you are up against,” he said. “But we have no idea what these crypto people are really doing.”Alisa Dogramadzieva More

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      Sierra Leone’s Election: What to Know and Latest News

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      In Saturday’s vote, President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term to pursue an ambitious if unfulfilled education initiative, while the country is facing a crippling economic crisis.Since he became president of the small West African nation of Sierra Leone in 2018, Julius Maada Bio has dedicated 22 percent of the country’s budget to education, a policy that has sent an additional one million children to school and received attention from international backers.As Sierra Leoneans voted on Saturday for their next president — some lining up at polling stations hours before they were scheduled to open — Mr. Bio made that education initiative a key argument for voters to give him a second five-year term.But many voters have more urgent concerns than an education policy that has often fallen short: soaring inflation, youth unemployment, daily power cuts and relentless heat waves worsened by climate change.Across the country on Saturday, many polling stations remained closed because electoral materials or officials were missing.“Some of us have been here since 3 a.m. and still voting hasn’t started,” Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean writer, wrote on Instagram shortly before midday. “We don’t really understand what is going on.”New shade covers the Congo Market in Freetown, where relentless heat waves are making life increasingly difficult.Yagazie Emezi for The New York TimesWhat is at stake in the election?Sierra Leone, home to 8.4 million people and one of the world’s poorest countries, has gained attention for its new education policy, which if it succeeds, could inspire other countries in Africa and beyond.But economic matters top most voters’ concerns: The war in Ukraine has driven up fuel and food prices, including for rice, fish and gas.Year-on-year inflation is above 43 percent, the highest level in two decades. The national currency, the Leone, has had the worst depreciation in sub-Saharan Africa.“When Sierra Leoneans think they’ve reached the bottom, it gets worse,” said Cyril Jengo, an economist based in Freetown, the capital.The leading candidates say they plan to address the cost-of-living crisis, but Sierra Leone’s entire economy would need a revamp, analysts say, as it mostly relies on imports and is frequently hit by crises: the Ebola epidemic a decade ago, the coronavirus pandemic and now the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine.Who are the candidates?Out of 13 candidates, two have a credible chance of winning: Mr. Bio, the current president, and Samura Kamara, a former government minister.The election is a rematch: Mr. Bio was elected in 2018 after beating Mr. Kamara by a tight margin.Mr. Bio, 59, a former military officer who participated in two coups during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, briefly ruled the country in 1996 as the head of a military junta. He handed power to a democratically elected president a few months later and went to study in the United States. He returned to Sierra Leone, and ran for president in 2018.President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio has vowed to provide free health care to all children going to school, and to promote food self-sufficiency.Mr. Kamara, 72, is an economist who served as minister of finance and then foreign affairs when his party was in power in the 2010s.He has made broad promises about economic development, opportunities for youth and the fight against climate change.In 2021, Mr. Kamara was charged with embezzlement in a case tied to the renovation of Sierra Leone’s consulate in New York while he was foreign minister. Mr. Kamara’s supporters say the case, which is being heard by the Supreme Court, is politically motivated to discredit him. The case was adjourned so that he could run, but a ruling is expected in July.Samura Kamara is challenging Mr. Bio again after narrowly losing in 2018.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat is the president’s record?Through its education reform, Mr. Bio’s government has sought to ban school fees and recruited thousands of new teachers. More than 3.1 million children are now officially in school, up from under two million in 2018.But many parents still have to pay school fees, and teachers complain that they have not received the salary increase they were promised.Girls on their way to school in Freetown. Mr. Bio has dedicated 22 percent of Sierra Leone’s budget to education.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio’s government has also adopted a land-rights policy aimed at protecting local communities against foreign companies seeking to exploit their land. And a new gender-equality policy requires employers to hire women to at least 30 percent of their positions — a minimum that the current government has not reached.But Mr. Bio has also been criticized for muzzling civil society groups and responding with violence to demonstrations last summer, resulting in more than 25 deaths. And his promises to address the economic crisis and develop agriculture sound hollow to many.“The poverty is endemic and deepening,” said Jimmy Kandeh, a Sierra Leonean professor emeritus of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “Whether the politics will deliver a change, I don’t think there’s much hope in that.”When, where and how do people vote?Some 3.4 million people are registered to vote on Saturday in Sierra Leone’s five administrative areas. They will also elect their members of Parliament, mayor or local chiefs, and local councilors.Observers from the African Union, the West African economic bloc known as ECOWAS, the European Union and the Carter Center are monitoring the vote. There is no electronic voting.What do polls predict, and when are results expected?Polls have Mr. Bio as the favorite. Many of the country’s 3.4 million voters vote along regional and ethnic allegiances.Presidential candidates must get 55 percent of the vote to win in the first round, and a runoff is likely, according to Mr. Kandeh. Results are expected to be announced by the electoral commission the following week. A runoff would be organized two weeks later.For the first time, polling officials will send results to a database run by the electoral commission via a dedicated app. Nigeria tested a similar method for the presidential election in February, but the process was plagued with problems, and the results were delayed.Joseph Johnson contributed research. More

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      Greek Youths, Shaped by Debt Crisis, Plan to Vote for Stability

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      Many children of Greece’s traumatic years of economic collapse have opted for pragmatism over radicalism and say they will back a conservative on Sunday.Days before this Sunday’s election in Greece, three young women with piercings and ironic T-shirts who sat outside a hipster coffee shop in an Athens neighborhood best known as a hub of anarchist fervor said they wanted stability.“Money is important — you can’t live without money,” said Mara Katsitou, 22, a student who grew up during the country’s disastrous financial crisis and one day hoped to open a pharmacy. “There’s nothing that matters to someone more than the economy.”As a result, she said, she would cast her vote for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, the square, conservative prime minister who graduated from Harvard, who is fond of riding his bike and who, polls suggest, will win convincingly on Sunday in a second national election. With Mr. Mitsotakis — who is also the son of a former prime minister — Ms. Katsitou said, she had “definitely a better chance.” About a third of young voters like her feel the same, polls indicate.After spending impressionable years amid so much panic, desperation and humiliation during the decade-long financial crisis that erupted in 2010 — and which collapsed the Greek economy — many of Greece’s depression-era children have grown up to say they have no interest in ever turning back.In many quarters, youthful radicalism has given way to unexpected pragmatism, a yearning for prosperity and a steady hand, and an inclination to overlook or at least mute outrage over any number of scandals that have dogged Mr. Mitsotakis.Young Greeks have expressed no interest in going back to the realities of the 2010s. At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in three Greeks were jobless, and many struggled to buy food and pay bills.Byron Smith for The New York TimesIn recent days, a shipwreck that killed possibly more than 600 migrants has raised new questions about the Mitsotakis government’s hard-line measures to curb arrivals of migrants. The wiretapping of an opposition leader by the state’s intelligence service and Mr. Mitsotakis’s consolidation of Greek media has prompted concerns about the erosion of democratic norms. A train crash that killed 57 people in February revealed the shabby state of key Greek infrastructure, for which he apologized.But for Greeks, including an increasing number of younger Greeks, polls show that all of those issues pale in comparison to the country’s economic stability and fortunes.Mr. Mitsotakis’s government has spurred growth at twice the eurozone average by cutting taxes and debt, and by increasing digitization, minimum wages and pensions. Big multinational corporations are investing in the country. Tourism is skyrocketing. The country is paying back creditors ahead of schedule, increasing the chances of rating agencies lifting Greece’s bonds out of junk status.“It’s all about jobs, about, you know, raising disposable income and bringing in a lot of investment and about growing the economy much faster,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in a recent interview. “This was always my bet, and I think that we delivered, if you look at the numbers.”A bus stop with a campaign poster for Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis this month in Athens.Byron Smith for The New York TimesGreece’s 2010 debt crisis was a searing national catastrophe. Humiliating bailouts connected to seemingly endless austerity measures slashed household incomes by a third and sent unemployment skyrocketing as hundreds of thousands of businesses collapsed.At the peak of the crisis, in 2013, nearly one in three Greeks were jobless, and many were disheartened after years of violent protests, in which demonstrators clashed with the police in the streets of Athens and other cities in clouds of tear gas. Scenes of the most desperate people trawling through bins for food — once unheard-of — shocked the majority of Greeks who struggled to make ends meet.“We still have a deep sort of legacy of 10 years of a crisis,” Mr. Mitsotakis acknowledged in the interview. “Not many people appreciated how painful the crisis was — we lost 25 percent of our” gross domestic product.Mr. Mitsotakis, the standard-bearer for the New Democracy party, has won over a sizable share of the generation that grew up in that time, increasing his support among voters aged 17 to 24 by three points, to 33 percent.Just as telling, support among young voters for his leftist opponent, former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Syriza party, has collapsed, falling to 24 percent from 38 percent since the 2019 elections, when Mr. Mitsotakis defeated him.In an initial election in May, Mr. Mitsotakis’s party thrashed Syriza by 20 points, but it was not enough of a majority to lead a one-party government. Instead of cobbling together a coalition, Mr. Mitsotakis opted for another election. With a new, more favorable election law that gives a bonus of seats to the leading vote-getter, he now hopes to win a landslide victory that will allow him to govern alone.Overall, Mr. Tsipras is trailing Mr. Mitsotakis by more than 20 points.Support for Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the left-wing Syriza party, among young voters has fallen since he was defeated by Mr. Mitsotakis in the 2019 elections.Byron Smith for The New York TimesThat is despite his efforts to depict Mr. Mitsotakis as an undemocratic, arrogant and unaccountable strongman who he says has overseen a “massive redistribution of wealth from the many to the few” in his four years in power.Not all young voters, of course, are behind Mr. Mitsotakis. Many complain that the prosperity that is supposed to kick-start their lives is making things so costly that they cannot move out of their homes.Not all of the economic indicators are good, either. Greece still has the European Union’s highest national debt, and it is the second-poorest nation in the European Union, after Bulgaria. Tax evasion is still common.Mr. Tsipras has tried to convince young voters that, in fact, he, not Mr. Mitsotakis, is not only the true agent of change, but also of stability. He has promised financial relief, including better health benefits, though it remains unclear how those would be funded.“We’ll fight so that hope for justice and prosperity for all is not lost in this country, for a fair society and prosperity for everyone,” Mr. Tsipras said this week at a campaign event in the western city of Patra.Some voters, suffering under rising prices and exponentially increasing rents, support him.“The crisis isn’t over; it’s still here,” said Grigoris Varsamis, 46, who said his record shop’s electric bills were through the roof and that he would vote for Mr. Tsipras.An information booth for former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras this month in Athens.Byron Smith for The New York TimesBut there is little doubt that Mr. Tsipras, a former Communist firebrand who governed in the latter years of the financial crisis, has been tainted by a lasting association with the pain of that era.In 2015, under his leadership, Greeks voted to reject Europe’s draconian aid package, and Greece was nearly ejected from the eurozone. Social unrest returned and talk of “Grexit,” referring to Greece exiting the eurozone, mounted. Many young Greeks who grew up during that time feel scarred by the Syriza experience.Grigoris Kikis, 26, an award-winning chef at the restaurant Upon in Athens, remembers that the financial crisis coincided with his trying to break into the world of restaurants as a 13-year-old volunteering in kitchens after school.As restaurants closed and his father fretted about paying his workers, the chefs around him worried about the budgets for produce, meat, plates and glasses. When they wanted to try out a new dish, they could afford to test it only once.Today, Mr. Kikis runs a popular bistro in Athens with a 300-label wine list, in-house coffee-roasting machines and an eclectic menu with plates tried 25 times before they make the cut.“The restaurant is full every day,” he said, explaining that he would vote for Mr. Mitsotakis to keep it that way. “Many people my age care most about the economy. They say there is more opportunity and higher salaries, and maybe people will come from abroad and want to work in Greece because things changed for the better.”Grigoris Kikis, a chef in Athens, said people his age felt strongly about the future of their country’s economy.Byron Smith for The New York TimesThe same is true for Nikos Therapos, 29, a sustainability consultant. When he was 16, he said, the drastic cutting of the public budgets cost his mother, a kindergarten teacher, her job. His father’s company, in the hard-hit construction industry, shrank, too.“I remember very clearly about not being so optimistic about my professional career,” he said.In 2015, when he was studying business in Brussels, Greece was embroiled in intense political and social upheaval, and, Mr. Therapos recalled, his fellow students shunned him in working groups.“I was regarded as the lazy Greek, even though they didn’t know anything about me,” he said. “It was really unfair for me and my generation.”But in the past four years, Mr. Therapos said, there had been a change.“I cannot say we are back to normality for the simple reason that I have never known normality,” he said. But for the first time, he said, he felt “confident in our future.”Many of his more leftist friends had also shifted to Mr. Mitsotakis, Mr. Therapos said, because they want a “stable and sustainable economic system.”Unsurprisingly, Mr. Mitsotakis agreed.“At the end of the day,” he said, “Greece is no longer a problem for the eurozone. I think this offers a lot of people relief.” More