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      Justin Trudeau Won Canada's Election, At a Cost

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      The prime minister struggled to find a campaign issue that could distinguish his party and expand its power in Parliament.OTTAWA — One day after an election Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “pivotal moment” in his country’s history, Canada seems to have pivoted right back where it started.Mr. Trudeau eked out a slim victory on Monday after voters turned out in record-low numbers, but his Liberal Party’s share of power in Parliament remains virtually the same as it was during the last session of Parliament. So does every other party’s.That helps explain why some Canadians are calling it the election to nowhere.And the winner may turn out to be the loser. Critics say the vote may have undermined Mr. Trudeau’s credibility and reinforced the notion among many Canadians that he is a political opportunist.“His job is secure, but I still think he comes out diminished in the end from this,” said Andrew McDougall, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.When Mr. Trudeau called the 36-day campaign — the shortest allowed by law — in August, he said he needed a strong mandate to bring the pandemic to heel and lead the country to economic recovery.Mr. Trudeau never explicitly acknowledged that he hoped to ride his popularity from the government’s handling of the pandemic to a majority in Parliament. But he also never denied it.Still, some questioned both the timing of the election, and the need.Prominent Liberals, among them his friend and former top political adviser Gerald Butts, argued that Mr. Trudeau never offered a compelling case that a minority Parliament had stopped him from accomplishing his legislative goals, especially its large pandemic-related spending programs. While the opposition delayed some of Mr. Trudeau’s measures, the only legislation he presented that did not pass were the bills still outstanding when Parliament was dissolved at Mr. Trudeau’s request for the vote.Anger over the prime minister’s decision to call an election followed him throughout the campaign. So did apathy.Several polls found that few voters were paying much attention, particularly before Labor Day, when it seems much of the nation’s attention was turned toward beaches, boats and barbecues.Although the election was the most costly in Canada’s history — it cost $600 million in Canadian dollars — voter turnout, which is likely to remain unchanged when final results are released, was 58.44 percent, the lowest ever.During the campaign itself, Mr. Trudeau struggled to find an issue that clearly distinguished him from his closest rival, Erin O’Toole.The first Conservative leader from Ontario, the most populous province, in more than half a century, Mr. O’Toole drafted a new platform for his party that on many key issues differed from Mr. Trudeau’s only in scope and detail. Then, when it appeared during the campaign that Mr. Trudeau was gaining traction by condemning a Conservative promise to repeal the Liberals’ ban on 1,500 models of assault-style rifles, Mr. O’Toole dropped it, if conditionally.The Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, speaking to supporters on election night in Oshawa, Ontario.Geoff Robins/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Trudeau was similarly unable to make headway by championing his climate change measures, including this introduction of a national carbon tax, to his advantage.Before the campaign, record-setting heat waves descended on parts of Western Canada, bringing death and out-of-control wildfires, including one that consumed a town in British Columbia. It put climate change higher on the list of concerns for Canadian voters.But in a bid to attract moderate voters to the Conservative Party, Mr. O’Toole dropped its long-held opposition to carbon taxes, which had been driven by the party’s power base in Alberta, the home of the oil sands. Mr. O’Toole released a carbon tax proposal as part of a package of climate measures.That undercut Mr. Trudeau’s efforts to argue that the Conservatives did not have a credible plan to mitigate climate change.“The Conservative Party has put forward a more ambitious platform than in 2019, in part to take that off the agenda,” said Kathryn Harrison, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia.At the end of the campaign, Mr. O’Toole did give Mr. Trudeau an opening, and Mr. Trudeau pounced on it. The Conservative leader expressed opposition to Mr. Trudeau’s mandatory vaccination and vaccine passport plans, a stance well outside what polls show to be the Canadian consensus.“Trudeau tried to use vaccine mandates as a wedge, and it worked quite efficiently,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.But perhaps not efficiently enough.Mr. Trudeau on Election Night in Montreal.Andrej Ivanov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the final results are days away, Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals stood at 158 seats, just one more than they emerged with after the 2019 vote — and well short of the 170 seats needed to control Parliament. The Conservatives had 119 votes, two fewer than before.The Conservative did score a symbolic victory: They won the greatest share of the popular vote. But the concentration of Conservative support in places like Alberta meant that it didn’t translate into the largest number of seats.The New Democrats under Jagmeet Singh, whose support Mr. Trudeau will again need to govern, gained one new seat, and now have 25. The Bloc Québécois emerged with 34 seats, a gain of two.With the distribution of power roughly the same as before, Mr. Trudeau will be forced to govern just as he did during the last session of Parliament.The left-of-center New Democrats will probably try to push Mr. Trudeau to adopt some of their proposals in exchange for their votes. But Mr. Singh’s powers are limited. His only alternative if he is rebuffed would be to force the government’s fall — and another election — or to back the Conservatives, his ideological opposites.The Bloc Québécois may also back some Liberal bills. But Mr. Trudeau will not court the support of the group, which champions Quebec independence.The New Democratic Party leader, Jagmeet Singh, in Vancouver on Monday night.Don Mackinnon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlthough Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals will return to Parliament a bit worse for wear, there is no sign that anyone within the party plans to challenge his leadership, even in the wake of what proved to be, at best, an ill-conceived election call.Mr. Trudeau is the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the famous — and famously polarizing — Liberal Prime Minister. When the younger Trudeau took over the reins, the party had governed Canada longer than any other, but it had fallen into third place. Many political commentators had it on a death watch.The came the 2015 election.The younger Mr. Trudeau, who remains Canada’s biggest political celebrity, not only revived the party but unexpectedly swept it into power by a large margin.The result, said Lori Turnbull, who teaches political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is that in 2021, the Liberal Party is under the absolute control of Justin Trudeau. Its political brand, and his personal one, have become one and the same.“Loyalty to the party is really loyalty to him, which is going to be really difficult when people start thinking about who the successor is going to be,” Ms. Turnbull said. “But right now, if you’re part of that movement, then you are all-in with him.” More

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      Russian Election Shows Declining Support for Putin’s Party

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      With voting in the country neither free nor fair, United Russia is still expected to retain power easily even if its seats in Parliament slip.MOSCOW — Early results in Russia’s parliamentary elections showed a rise in opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin’s governing party, though it was nevertheless expected to cruise easily to victory.In partial results broadcast by state television after three days of voting ended on Sunday, the party, United Russia, carried 44 percent of the vote, 10 percentage points less than in the previous election in 2016. In second place, the Communist Party received 22 percent, compared with 13 percent in 2016.Russian elections are not free and fair, and Parliament’s role in recent years has mainly been to rubber-stamp the Kremlin’s initiatives while providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy to Mr. Putin’s rule. Over the weekend, videos of ballot stuffing and other apparent instances of fraud circulated widely on social media. But allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had hoped to use the elections to deliver a rebuke to Mr. Putin by consolidating the opposition vote.The weekend’s elections came amid a harsh crackdown on dissent by the Kremlin and murmurings of popular discontent. Apparently fearing a rebuke at the ballot box, the authorities barred just about all well-known opposition figures from running for Parliament, while forcing many dissidents into exile and declaring popular independent media outlets to be “foreign agents.”The multiday nature of the elections — measures officially put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus — increased the likelihood of fraud by making the process harder to monitor, election observers and Kremlin critics said. And given the system by which the 450 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the Duma, are apportioned, United Russia could still maintain its two-thirds majority in the chamber despite getting less than half of the votes.The opposition’s uphill battle was complicated by decisions by Google and Apple to comply with Russian government demands to block access to Navalny-related content that was supposed to coordinate the protest vote. After the two tech giants on Friday removed from their stores a smartphone app connected to Mr. Navalny’s movement, Google over the weekend went further, apparently complying with a government request to block YouTube videos and Google Docs files that Mr. Navalny’s allies were using to coordinate voting across the country’s 225 electoral districts.Google did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment. Mr. Navalny’s allies, who are organizing the protest vote campaign from abroad, said they were notified by Google that their content could be blocked because of a government request.“This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government,” a YouTube message says when users in Russia try to open one of the blocked videos.Google’s compliance with Russia’s demands in recent days has represented a remarkable concession for a company that prides itself on enabling the open exchange of information. In Russia, Google’s products — in particular, YouTube — have helped provide avenues for free expression even as the Kremlin has rolled back democratic freedoms.Specific threats of prosecution against some of Google’s more than 100 employees inside Russia forced the company to take down the Navalny smartphone app, a person familiar with Google’s decision told The New York Times on Friday. Russian courts in recent months have outlawed Mr. Navalny’s movement as extremist and declared his “smart voting” campaign to be illegal.Nevertheless, Mr. Navalny’s allies have been pushing the tactic they call “smart voting” to pool opposition votes and elect as many challengers to United Russia as possible, no matter the challengers’ political views. Their campaign garnered support among opposition-minded voters, many of whom managed to find out which candidate the “smart voting” campaign supported in their district despite Google and Apple’s compliance with the Russian government’s demands.“This is an election without any choice, and while they can make up whatever result is necessary for them, ‘smart voting’ is a good mechanism,” said Philipp Samsonov, 32, a photographer in Moscow. “I hope that one day I can vote with my heart.”Mr. Samsonov said he planned to vote for the candidate picked by the Navalny team in his district — in his case, a Communist — as the person with the best chance of defeating the governing party’s candidate. Mr. Samsonov also said he planned to vote on Sunday evening to reduce the chances that something would happen to his ballot.It was too early to tell Sunday evening whether Mr. Navalny’s smart voting campaign had borne fruit, with the early results providing little clarity on how individual candidates were faring on a district-by-district level. But nationwide, the surge in support for the Communists and the decline for United Russia reflected an increase in Russian discontent. On a YouTube broadcast Sunday evening, a top aide to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, described the probable loss of seats by United Russia as progress in the strategy of chipping away at Mr. Putin’s hold on power.“This is, to put it lightly, a significant shift in the political landscape of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Volkov said.The “smart voting” app, used by allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, which Apple and Google removed in Russia on Friday.Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated PressA ballot box on Sunday in the village of Bolshoy Kunaley, Russia. Videos appearing to show ballot stuffing and other types of fraud during the vote have circulated online.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersGennadi A. Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party in Russia, said there had been a “huge amount” of violations in the elections and warned of demonstrations in the coming days — a notable statement because the Communists are typically loyal to Mr. Putin on key issues.“I can’t rule out that all this will lead to mass protests,” Mr. Zyuganov said Saturday on Twitter. “I am sure that people won’t stand for a blatant substitution of their choice.”In St. Petersburg, some independent election observers were removed from polling stations and detained by the police right before votes were counted. One observer, Ksenia Frolova, was detained after filing numerous complaints about irregularities.“We discovered that the same person cast a vote several times at different polling stations,” Ms. Frolova, 18, a biology student, said in a phone interview shortly after being released from a police station. “I feel morally exhausted. You just feel that none of your complaints mattered.”Last year, widespread fraud in the presidential election in neighboring Belarus set off huge street protests — an outcome that analysts say the Kremlin is determined to prevent from occurring in Russia. Buses of riot police officers were stationed around central Moscow throughout the weekend, but there were no significant protests.During the election, the authorities appeared to be pulling out all the stops to get the typical United Russia base to the polls: public sector workers, members of the military and security services, and pensioners. In central Moscow on Friday, groups of men in civilian clothes, all with similar, tightly cropped haircuts, lined up outside a polling station that covers the Russian Ministry of Defense.Some acknowledged that they were members of the military and that they had been “strongly advised” by their commanders to vote on Friday. Others said that they had been given time off to vote before the weekend, which they planned to spend out of town.And many Russians continue to support Mr. Putin. Outside a Moscow polling place, a teacher, Tatyana Kolosova, 46, said she had voted against United Russia to inject some “competition into the political sphere.” She said she hoped for a government shake-up after the elections that would result in more being done to reduce unemployment and support private business.But she dismissed Mr. Navalny as “an enemy of our country” and promised to vote for Mr. Putin if he ran for a fifth term as president in 2024, recalling the relative poverty and chaos of the 1990s, before he came to power.“I’m thankful that God gave us such a leader,” she said.Adam Satariano More

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      Germany’s Election Is Armin Laschet's to Lose, but Will He Succeed?

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      Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, is flagging in the polls, and he seems to be dragging the party down with him.FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany — His party is the biggest in Germany. It has won all but three elections since 1950, including the past four. Its departing chancellor is more popular than any politician in the country. And German voters crave stability and continuity.Armin Laschet, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, should be riding high. The race to replace Angela Merkel was his to lose.So far, he appears to be doing just that.Weeks before Germans vote on Sept. 26 in their most important election in a generation — one that will produce a chancellor who is not Ms. Merkel for the first time in 16 years — Mr. Laschet is sinking, and he is pulling his party down with him.The race is still close enough, and Germany’s coalition politics so unpredictable, that it would be dangerous to dismiss the conservative candidate. But after recent polls showed Mr. Laschet’s party dropping to record lows — of 20 percent to 22 percent support — his position is so dire that even some Christian Democrats have wondered aloud whether they picked the wrong candidate.More broadly, Mr. Laschet’s campaign has prompted queasiness among conservatives who fear they could be seeing a weakness in the party’s appeal that has been disguised for years by Ms. Merkel’s own popularity and is now exacerbated by her inability to groom a replacement.In 2018, she announced her personally chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate centrist. But even with Ms. Merkel’s support, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had trouble stepping out of the chancellor’s shadow and building her own base. She quit in 2020 as leader of the conservatives, leaving the door open for Mr. Laschet.Mr. Laschet had long boasted that if he could run Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he has been governor since 2017, he could run the country. But then extraordinary flooding this summer called even that credential into question, exposing flaws in his environmental policies and disaster management.Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr. Laschet visited the flood-ravaged district of Iversheim in July.Pool photo by Wolfgang Rattay“The biggest problem for Laschet is that he has not been able to convince voters that he can do the job like Merkel,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the University of Bonn.She cited images of him laughing as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made a somber speech after devastating flash floods that killed 180 people, and posing before a mound of trash to make a statement of his own. “He comes across as uncertain, flippant and unprofessional,” Ms. Reuschenbach said.In recent weeks, Mr. Laschet has seen his individual popularity drop below that of his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Scholz, while support for Mr. Laschet’s party has been in a free fall since late July. The situation is so dire that Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, is now intervening and trying to rally voters for Mr. Laschet.“Let’s be honest: It is tight. It will be very tight in the coming weeks,” Markus Söder, the head of the conservatives’ Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union, and an erstwhile rival, said at an election rally on Aug. 20 that was meant to propel Mr. Laschet’s campaign into a final, intense stretch. “It is no longer a question of how we could govern, but possibly of whether.”Mr. Söder openly challenged Mr. Laschet this year for the chance to succeed the chancellor, and he still enjoys a higher individual popularity rating among Germans than Mr. Laschet’s.Germans elect parties, not a chancellor candidate. But over the course of Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, her party has enjoyed the so-called chancellor bonus, meaning the willingness of voters to effectively cast a ballot for consistency.Although Ms. Merkel remains Germany’s most popular politician, her recent attempts to drum up support for Mr. Laschet have failed to turn his fortunes around, partly because they have appeared last-minute and halfhearted.Election campaign billboards featuring Mr. Laschet, left, and his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Schoz.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInstead, Mr. Scholz now appears to be reaping the incumbent benefit, playing up his closeness to Ms. Merkel to become the second most popular politician in the country.“Even conservative voters tend to approve of Mr. Scholz,” said Ursula Münch, the director of the Academy for Political Education in Tützing.Yet Mr. Laschet is known for comebacks, for surviving blunders — including making up grades for exam papers when he was lecturing — and for his ability to turn around a sagging campaign in the final stretch. In the weeks before the 2017 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, he focused on the need to increase security against a backdrop of record break-ins, to better integrate migrants and to reposition the state’s industry to focus on the future. The strategy worked and he defeated the incumbent Social Democratic governor, whom he had trailed in the polls for most of the race.Among Mr. Laschet’s influences is his faith. At a time when more and more Germans are quitting the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Laschet is a proud member. “I am not someone who uses Bible verses in my politics,” he said. “But of course it has influenced me.” And Ms. Merkel has praised his Christianity as a guiding moral compass.Mr. Laschet noted that his faith was something he had in common with President Biden, adding that the last time the leaders of the United States and Germany shared that faith was in the 1960s, with President John F. Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — also a Christian Democrat.Mr. Laschet talking with residents of Frankfurt an der Oder, in eastern Germany, last month.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnother influence for Mr. Laschet is Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a place with deep ties to Belgium and the Netherlands, Mr. Laschet has been integrated into the larger European ideal all of his life. He still maintains a home in Aachen with his wife, Susanne, whom he met through their church choir and youth group. Together they have three grown children, including, Joe Laschet, a social media influencer and fashionista for classic men’s wear.Mr. Laschet’s first political post was as a municipal official in 1979. He was elected to the German Parliament in 1994, and then, five years later, he was elected to represent his home region as a member of the European Parliament. He entered state government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, as Germany’s first minister for integration — a role focused on migrants and their descendants that earned him nationwide recognition.After the Christian Democrats suffered a stinging defeat in the 2012 state elections, Mr. Laschet helped rebuild the party. He supported Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million migrants in 2015, and two years later, he became the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia.This January, he fought to become the leader of the Christian Democrats, beating Mr. Söder, who remains a more popular politician with many Germans, but whether Mr. Laschet can save himself remains to be seen.He has had some minor successes, including a feisty appearance in the first televised debate and deftly dealing with an angry vaccination opponent who stormed the stage during a campaign stop. Mr. Laschet has also assembled a team of experts, including former rivals, like Friedrich Merz, who is well liked among the party’s conservative wing, in an effort to show his bridge-building skills. But none of these things have made a dent in the widening gap with the Social Democrats.At a campaign stop in Frankfurt an der Oder, a woman wielding a cellphone pushed her way toward the candidate as he stood on a bridge overlooking the Polish border, making a statement to reporters about Germany’s role in Europe.Asked if she intended to vote for Mr. Laschet, she demurred. “I don’t know yet who I will vote for,” said the woman, Elisabeth Pillep, 44. “But I don’t think it will be him.” More

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      Germany Investigates Russia Over Pre-Election Hacking

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      Berlin has protested to Moscow after identifying repeated attempts to steal politicians’ private information before the election this month that will decide Angela Merkel’s successor.BERLIN — The federal prosecutor’s office in Germany said Friday it was investigating who was responsible for a spate of hacking attempts aimed at lawmakers, amid growing concerns that Russia is trying to disrupt the Sept. 26 vote for a new government.The move by the prosecutor’s office comes after Germany’s Foreign Ministry said this week that it had protested to Russia, complaining that several state lawmakers and members of the federal Parliament had been targeted by phishing emails and other attempts to obtain passwords and other personal information.Those accusations prompted the federal prosecutor to open a preliminary investigation against what was described as a “foreign power.” The prosecutors did not identify the country, but they did cite the Foreign Ministry statement, leaving little doubt that their efforts were concentrated on Russia.In their statement, the prosecutors said they had opened an investigation “in connection with the so-called Ghostwriter campaign,” a reference to a hacking campaign that German intelligence says can be attributed to the Russian state and specifically to the Russian military intelligence service known as the G.R.U.Russia was found to have hacked into the German Parliament’s computer systems in 2015 and three years later, it breached the German government’s main data network. Chancellor Angela Merkel protested over both attacks, but her government struggled to find an appropriate response, and the matter of Russian hacking is now especially sensitive, coming in the weeks before Germans go to the polls to select a successor after her nearly 16 years in power.Moscow denied that it was involved in the hacking efforts.“Despite our repeated appeals through diplomatic channels, our partners in Germany have not provided any evidence of Russia’s involvement in these attacks,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing on Thursday.She called calling the German allegations “an extraordinary P.R. story,” and said the suspicions appeared to be the work of “individual politicians” intent on showing they would “not allow gaps in trans-Atlantic solidarity,” in an apparent reference to Germany’s strong ties with the United States.Andrea Sasse, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday of the hacking attempts, “The German government regards this unacceptable action as a threat to the security of the Federal Republic of Germany and to the democratic decision-making process, and as a serious burden on bilateral relations.” She continued, “The federal government strongly urges the Russian government to cease these unlawful cyber activities with immediate effect.”Ms. Merkel is not running for re-election and will leave office after a new government is formed, meaning the election will be crucial in determining Germany’s future — and shaping its relationship with Russia.Of the three candidates most likely to replace Ms. Merkel, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, who has pledged to take the toughest stance against Moscow, has been the target of the most aggressive disinformation campaign.From left, the top candidates for chancellor at a televised debate in Berlin in August: Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, Armin Laschet of the Christian Democrats, and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats.Pool photo by Michael KappelerThe other two candidates — Armin Laschet of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats, currently Ms. Merkel’s vice-chancellor and finance minister — have served in three of the four Merkel governments, and neither is expected to change Berlin’s relationship to Moscow.Ms. Merkel enacted tough economic sanctions against Moscow after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine despite some pushback in other capitals and at home, but she has also worked hard to keep the lines of communication open with Moscow.The two countries have significant economic links, not least in the energy market, where they most recently cooperated on construction of a direct natural gas pipeline, which the Russian energy company Gazprom announced had been completed on Friday.U.S. intelligence agencies believe that “Ghostwriter,” a Russian program that received its nickname from a cybersecurity firm, was active in disseminating false information about the coronavirus before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, efforts that were considered to be a refinement of what Russia tried to do during the 2016 campaign.But attempts to meddle in previous German election campaigns have been limited, partly because of respect for Ms. Merkel, but also because the far-right and populist parties that have emerged in France and Italy have failed to gain as much traction in Germany.German intelligence officials nevertheless remain concerned that their country, Europe’s largest economy and a leader in the European Union, is not immune to outside forces seeking to disrupt its democratic norms.Russia’s state-funded external broadcaster, RT, runs an online-only German-language service that for years has emphasized divisive social issues, including public health precautions aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus and migration.During a visit to Moscow last month, Ms. Merkel denied accusations that her government had pressured neighboring Luxembourg to block a license request from the station, which would have allowed it to broadcast its programs to German viewers via satellite.Valerie Hopkins More

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      It’s Election Season in Germany. No Charisma, Please!

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      The race to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in office is the tightest in years. But the two leading candidates are anything but exciting, and that’s how Germans like it.BERLIN — The most popular politician who would like to be chancellor isn’t on the ballot. The leading candidate is so boring people compare him to a machine. Instead of “Yes, We Can!” voters are being fired up with promises of “Stability.”Germany is having its most important election in a generation but you would never know it. The newspaper Die Welt recently asked in a headline: “Is this the most boring election ever?”Yes and no.The campaign to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years of her dominating German and European politics is the tightest in Germany since 2005, and it just got tighter. The Social Democrats, written off as recently as a month ago, have overtaken Ms. Merkel’s conservatives for the first time in years.But the campaign has also revealed a charisma vacuum that is at once typical of postwar German politics and exceptional for just how bland Ms. Merkel’s two most likely successors are. No party is polling more than 25 percent, and for much of the race the candidate the public has preferred was none of the above.Whoever wins, however, will have the job of shepherding the continent’s largest economy, making that person one of Europe’s most important leaders, which has left some observers wondering if the charisma deficit will extend to a leadership deficit as well.While the election outcome may be exciting, the two leading candidates are anything but.A campaign billboard in Berlin featuring Mr. Scholz — sometimes known as the “Scholz-o-mat.”John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLess than a month before the vote, the field is being led by two male suit-wearing career politicians — one balding, one bespectacled, both over 60 — who represent the parties that have governed the country jointly for the better part of two decades.There is Armin Laschet, the governor of the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, who is running for Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. And then there is Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who is Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor.The candidate of change, Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old co-leader of the Greens, has a bold reform agenda and plenty of verve — and has been lagging in the polls after a brief surge in the polls before the summer.It’s a nail-biter, German-style: Who can most effectively channel stability and continuity? Or put another way: Who can channel Ms. Merkel?For now it seems to be Mr. Scholz — a man Germans have long known as the “Scholz-o-mat” or the “Scholz machine” — a technocrat and veteran politician who can seem almost robotically on message. Where others have slipped up in the campaign, he has avoided mistakes, mostly by saying very little.“Most citizens know who I am,” was Mr. Scholz’s pitch to his party before being anointed chancellor candidate, conspicuously echoing Ms. Merkel’s iconic 2013 line to voters: “You know me.”More recently one of his campaign ads showed his reassuring smile with a caption using the female form of the word chancellor, telling voters that he has what it takes to lead the country even though he is a man. “Angela the second,” was the title of a Scholz profile in the magazine Der Spiegel this week.Mr. Scholz has tried so hard to perfect the art of embodying the chancellor’s aura of stability and calm that he has even been photographed holding his hands before him in the chancellor’s signature diamond shape — making what is known as the Merkel rhombus.Mr. Scholz at a campaign rally last week in Berlin. Opponents say he’s trying to sound like Chancellor Merkel.Florian Gaertner/Photothek, via Getty Images“Scholz is trying to be Merkel’s clone all the way down to the rhombus,” said John Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany who has been living in Berlin on and off since the 1960s. “The guy everyone likes best is the most boring guy in the election — maybe in the country. He makes watching water boil seem exciting.”But Germans, political observers point out, love boring.“There are few countries where such a premium is put on being dull,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European history at the University of Oxford who has written about the country.It’s not that Germans are resistant to charisma. When Barack Obama was running for president and delivered a rousing speech at the victory column in Berlin in 2008, 100,000 Germans cheered him on.But they don’t want it in their own politicians. That’s because the last time Germany had a rousing leader it didn’t end well, noted Jan Böhmermann, a popular TV-host and comedian.The haunting memory of Hitler’s Nazi party winning office in free elections has shaped Germany’s postwar democracy in various ways, Mr. Böhmermann said, “and one of them is that charisma is banned from politics.”Andrea Römmele, dean of the Berlin-based Hertie School, put it this way: “A Trump character could never become chancellor here.”Paradoxically, that’s at least in part thanks to an electoral system bequeathed to Germany by America and its Allies after World War II. Unlike in the American presidential system, German voters don’t get to elect their chancellor directly. They vote for parties; the parties’ share of the vote determines their share of the seats in Parliament; and then Parliament elects the chancellor.And because it just about always takes more than one party to form a government — and this time probably three — you can’t be too rude about the people you might rely on to be your coalition partners.“Your rival today might be your finance minister tomorrow,” Ms. Römmele said.Mr. Laschet, center, campaigning door to door last week in Berlin. He has promised to “secure stability.”Michael Kappeler/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesAs for the chancellor candidates, they are not chosen in primaries but by party officials who tend to pick people like themselves: career politicians who have given years of service to the party machine.Being good on television and connecting with voters doesn’t cut it, said Jürgen Falter, an electoral expert at the University of Mainz. “It’s a strict oligarchic system,” he said. “If we had primaries, Markus Söder would have been the candidate.”Mr. Söder, Bavaria’s ambitious governor, has heaps of beer-tent charisma and is the most popular politician in the country after Ms. Merkel herself. He was eager to run for chancellor, but the conservatives picked Mr. Laschet, a longstanding Merkel ally, not least, Ms. Römmele said, because at the time he looked most like “the continuity candidate.”But Mr. Scholz has beaten him at his game. During a televised debate between the chancellor candidates last Sunday, an exasperated Mr. Laschet accused Mr. Scholz of trying to “sound like Ms. Merkel.”“I find I sound like Olaf Scholz,” Mr. Scholz replied deadpan.“These days you’re doing the rhombus,” Mr. Laschet hit back — before himself invoking the chancellor in his closing statement.“Stability and reliability in difficult times,” he said. “That’s what marked us from Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl to Angela Merkel. The team C.D.U. wants to secure stability.”Recent polls give Mr. Scholz’ Social Democrats the edge with between 23 and 25 percent, followed by 20 to 22 percent for Mr. Laschet’s Christian Democrats, or C.D.U., and around 17 percent for the Greens.From second left: Mr. Laschet, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, and Mr. Scholz during a televised debate on Sunday.Pool photo by Michael KappelerTo his fans, Mr. Scholz is a voice of calm and confidence, a pragmatist from Germany’s taciturn north who represents the elusive silent majority. “Liberal, but not stupid,” is how he once described himself.But critics note that while crises have come crashing down on the election campaign — epic floods, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pandemic — a sense of urgency is missing from the campaigns of the two leading candidates.Much like Mr. Laschet, Mr. Scholz talks about tackling climate change but above all promises stable pensions, safe jobs, a balanced budget and not getting out of coal too soon.“The big story is that we have a world in crisis and there isn’t any sense of real crisis in Germany,” said Mr. Garton Ash of Oxford University.A bold vision for change has never been a vote winner in Germany. Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, won an absolute majority for the Christian Democrats by promising “No Experiments.” Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat, once famously said, “If you have visions you should go to the doctor.”As for Ms. Merkel, she has come to embody Germany’s distinctive political tradition of change through consensus perhaps more than any of her predecessors by co-governing with her traditional opponents for three out of her four terms.Mr. Böhmermann, the comedian, calls this a “democratic state of emergency” for Germany. “You could say we were well-managed over the last 16 years — or you could say we were anesthetized for 16 years.”“We need vision,” he lamented. “No one dares to articulate a clear political vision, especially the main candidates.”Chancellor Merkel last week at the Parliament in Berlin.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      How Beijing Has Buried Hong Kong’s Last Vestige of Democracy

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      The landslide victory of pro-democracy politicians in local elections in 2019 was a stunning rebuke of Beijing. Now, fear of retaliation has driven them to quit.HONG KONG — When Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians won a resounding victory in local council elections in 2019, they inspired hopes of democratic change. Now, fears of arrest have driven most of them to quit, laying bare that dream’s dramatic collapse.The opposition had swept nearly 90 percent of the 452 seats in Hong Kong’s district councils, riding on widespread antigovernment sentiment that had turned into months of protests. Though the polls were for the lowest rung of elected office, they were regarded as an informal referendum that showed the public’s support for the pro-democracy camp. The victory dealt a stinging defeat to Beijing and raised the opposition’s expectations that even greater electoral successes were within reach.But in less than two years, Beijing has struck back, demolishing those gains as part of a broader security crackdown that has drastically raised the risk of political dissent.More than half of the council members from the pro-democracy camp, over 250 of them, have quit in recent weeks to avoid being ensnared in Beijing’s campaign. Those who remain are worried about being arrested.A line at a polling station during the district council election in Hong Kong in November 2019, during which pro-democracy candidates won a large majority of the seats.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“Before, we had a lot of hope and anticipation. Now, it feels like our hands and feet are tied,” said Zoe Chow, an elected district official who had represented the working-class neighborhood of Sham Shui Po since 2015 before resigning in July. “We have to think very hard about what to do next because it feels as though everything we do is considered wrong.”By targeting opposition figures in local councils, the authorities are effectively burying the last vestige of democracy in Hong Kong. Dozens of politicians are in jail and facing potential life sentences on national security charges. Apple Daily, a major pro-democracy newspaper, has been forced to close after the arrest of its founder and top editors. Hong Kong’s largest teachers union and the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized large protest marches, both said in recent days that they would disband. Beijing has rewritten the rules for future elections to bar candidates it deems disloyal.The district councilors said they were alarmed by the government’s plans to impose a new loyalty oath on them and reports that perceived violations could leave them imprisoned, barred from politics or bankrupted.District councilors are not usually in the political limelight. They handle unglamorous tasks such as dealing with pest infestations, overflowing trash and illegal parking. They help residents with everyday problems such as the payment of bills or economic aid.Roy Tam, right, a district councilor, boarding a prison van in Hong Kong in March after being charged under the national security law.Jerome Favre/EPA, via ShutterstockBut in 2019, when the city was consumed with antigovernment protests, the councils took on outsize political importance. Many first-time candidates campaigned on issues raised by the protesters, even though the councils have little say on questions of police accountability or universal suffrage.After the opposition swept up the bulk of the seats, Beijing ordered, as part of a sweeping national security law, that anyone who assumed public office must swear allegiance to the Hong Kong government and its laws. The new condition was widely seen as paving the way to disqualifying the government’s critics.“It was only when so many radicals got on to the district councils through the 2019 election did the problems arise,” according to Lau Siu-kai, a senior adviser to Beijing on Hong Kong affairs.Beijing has said only patriots are allowed to run the city. It has applied vague definitions to what it means to break an oath of loyalty to the government. Last year, it ordered the ouster of four opposition leaders in Hong Kong from the city’s legislature for expressing support for U.S. sanctions against Hong Kong’s officials. The remainder of the pro-democracy camp in the legislature then resigned in protest.Volunteers campaigning for a candidate for the district council elections in November 2019. District councilors, who usually handle daily tasks, took on outsize political importance during the antigovernment protests.Chris Mcgrath/Getty ImagesThe government has not told the district councilors what consequences they may face for breaching the oath, or even when they are supposed to take it. But the city’s pro-Beijing news outlets carried reports warning that district councilors found infringing the oath could be forced to repay two years of salary and expenses. They also cited officials as warning that district councilors who had displayed protest slogans in their offices could be targeted.Michael Mo, a district councilor in the satellite town of Tuen Mun, said he quit to avoid the oath and the risk of being accused of disloyalty. He said he believed that such an allegation could later become the grounds for a national security investigation; in July, he fled to London.“It’s scary,” he said. “It’s like they’re trying to make a trap for you.”The exodus also follows months of tensions with city officials and pro-Beijing politicians. Many democrats wanted to use their platforms as district councilors to pressure the government on political issues. When they raised complaints about police conduct, for instance, local officials would sometimes cancel meetings or walk out.A government billboard earlier this year, after Beijing announced that only patriots were allowed to run the city.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesSome pro-government district council members have criticized the opposition representatives’ approach as unproductive.Lam Kong-kwan, one of two establishment representatives on the Sha Tin district council, pointed to a statement opposing the national security law that was approved last year by the 17 district councils controlled by the pro-democracy camp, calling it a distraction.“They always say they are reflecting the will of the people. But what does the will of the people even mean?” Mr. Lam added. “The people aren’t telling you to oppose the government or oppose central authorities.”But many pro-democracy district council members say the government is unwilling to work with opposition politicians even on public service improvement projects.Paul Zimmerman, a pro-democracy representative who did not step down, said the Home Affairs Department has not allowed him to approve agendas for committee meetings of the Southern District Council, even though he is now the most senior officer after a wave of resignations.A pro-democracy district councilor and his team distributing face masks and cleaning products at a housing estate in Hong Kong last year during the pandemic.Isaac Lawrence/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat will hold up plans for projects like a pedestrian bridge over a bay in the district, he said. He called it part of a campaign “to disempower the district councils.”The government has acknowledged that the resignations have crippled some district councils but said it did not plan to hold elections to fill the empty seats before next July.In Sham Shui Po, a district in the northwest corner of the Kowloon peninsula known for its walk-up tenement buildings, street vendors and old temples, older residents have long relied on council members to navigate the complexities of applying for government benefits and services.Yeung Yuk, a pro-democracy politician, resigned as one of its district councilors in July but said he would continue to help residents on a voluntary basis until the end of this month. His name is still visible on a sign outside his office on the ground floor of a high-rise in the Hoi Lai public housing complex, but a sheet of paper was taped over the Chinese characters for his former title, “councilor.”In Sham Shui Po, older residents have long relied on council members to navigate the complexities of applying for government benefits and services.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesAs he worked from his desk on a recent weekday, a steady stream of residents dropped by the office. Some wanted to buy cockroach poison. Others wanted to watch the television. Stacked on the tables were boxes of masks, bags of rice and bottles of tea. A poster on the wall showed the 25 council members from the district, with the photos of 20 crossed out.“I don’t want to leave them, and they don’t want to me to leave,” Mr. Yeung said, adding that he would find a part-time job in social work to support his family. Mr. Yeung, 36, was covering the rent of the office space out of pocket and with donations from residents. He planned to close the office at the end of August.Ngan Siu, a 71-year-old retiree, said she often sought Mr. Yeung’s help when she received government notices she did not understand. He had helped her register for her Covid-19 vaccine appointment and to receive a $640 spending voucher.“The government keeps telling us to go online, but how?” Ms. Siu asked. “If he didn’t help me, where else would I go?” More

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      Rached Ghannouchi: Tunisia Is in Danger of Dictatorship

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      On the morning of July 26, my colleagues and I — all of us democratically elected members of Parliament — found the Parliament building in downtown Tunis surrounded by army tanks and our access blocked on the orders of President Kais Saied.In a televised speech the night before, Mr. Saied announced a host of measures, the most startling of which was suspending the work of the elected legislature. He stripped members of Parliament of their parliamentary immunity, sacked the prime minister and consolidated judicial and executive power in his hands. By doing so, Mr. Saied is seeking to overturn the results of an entire decade’s hard work by Tunisians who have fought for democratic reforms. I believe his actions are unconstitutional and threaten Tunisia’s democracy.I held a sit-in in front of the Parliament building but ultimately decided to leave and urged others to do so because I was worried about any potential confrontation that could result in bloodshed. Nearly a week has gone by and we are still at an impasse. As leader of the largest party in Parliament, I’m writing this in the hopes of finding a way out of this crisis.Tunisians’ dissatisfaction with the political leadership’s performance is legitimate. In recent weeks, the country has seen a dangerous rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths as the health system struggled to respond effectively to the crisis. We were also faced with a difficult economic situation and a protracted political crisis.More than a decade ago, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor, set himself on fire and became the catalyst for the Arab Spring protests. Here in Tunisia, his actions helped bring about the end of over five decades of dictatorship, which were marked by endemic corruption, repression of dissent and economic underdevelopment. Today’s unrest is not a quest for freedom, but dissatisfaction over economic progress.We vowed to never forget what Mr. Bouazizi and thousands of Tunisians of all political persuasions struggled for. We sought to draft a new constitution enshrining the rule of law and separation of powers; to build new institutions to protect individual and collective freedoms; and, above all, we committed to respecting the ballot box. Tunisia’s Constitution of 2014 was hailed as one of the most progressive in the Arab world. But today, it is being ripped up by Mr. Saied.Mr. Saied said his actions were taken in order to return social peace to the country. He also said his measures are temporary. On the contrary, these decisions follow the playbook for establishing a dictatorial regime. He cited Article 80 of the Constitution, which allows him to take extraordinary measures if there is “imminent danger” threatening the nation. But Article 80 also stipulates that he must consult the prime minister and the speaker of the Parliament before doing so, and that Parliament must be in a state of continuous session to oversee the president’s actions during this period. By suspending Parliament, he has made impossible the condition under which the article can be invoked.The president’s moves tear up the system of separation of powers based on checks and balances that have been put in place by the Tunisian people and their elected representatives.Some political opponents are attempting to justify these anti-constitutional measures by resurrecting ideological differences between so-called secularists and Islamists. Neither label neatly fits the two sides. We consider our party, Ennahda, a Muslim democrat party, but what is being targeted here is not any specific political party but Tunisian democracy as a whole.This attempted coup against the Constitution and the democratic revolution is an assault on our democratic values. Such moves must be met with clear and strong condemnation by the international community. Tunisia is the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring and continues to be, for many Arabs, a source of hope in their pursuit of democracy.Tunisia has had its fair share of problems. We have faced the colossal task of building a new democratic system while facing deeply entrenched structural social and economic crises. We have struggled with an electoral law that produces a fragmented Parliament and requires the formation of coalition governments. Our progress in building democracy, implementing social and economic reforms and fighting the pandemic have been slow. But these crises are no justification for tearing up the Constitution and endangering the entire democratic system.One-man rule is not the solution to our country’s economic problems. Dictatorship invariably leads to increased corruption, cronyism, violations of individual rights and inequalities.I sincerely hope that Mr. Saied will reverse his decisions. There are several constructive steps he can take right now, and Tunisia’s Western and regional allies should support him in taking those steps.Parliament must be allowed to function in order to vote in a new government and embark on bold economic reforms to address the pandemic and unemployment. I hope that Mr. Saied will embark on a national dialogue to find the best way out of this impasse.We must build on what we have achieved, rather than throwing out democracy. We have seen in the past how gathering all powers in the hands of a single person led our country to plummet into the darkness and despair of dictatorship. Tunisia has overcome its problems through national dialogue in the past, and we are capable of doing it again.Mr. Ghannouchi was elected as the speaker of Parliament in Tunisia in 2019. He is a founder and the leader of the Ennahda party.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

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      Labour's Kim Leadbeater Wins U.K. By-Election in Batley and Spen

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      The election this week of the sister of Jo Cox, a lawmaker who was killed in 2016, was seen as a victory for Labour’s leader in a region where Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives had made big inroads.LONDON — Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Friday scored an unexpected if narrow victory in a battle for an open Parliament seat that was widely seen as a critical test for the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who has been under pressure for failing to revive the party’s fortunes.Many had expected that the Conservatives would take the seat, which Labour has held since 1997, because of the spoiler campaign of George Galloway. The victory will be a big relief for Mr. Starmer, who faced criticism in May when his party lost a by-election in Hartlepool, another former stronghold in the north of England.That result added weight to the idea that support for Labour had collapsed in the “red wall,” former industrial areas of England in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have been making big inroads.Results announced early Friday gave the Labour candidate, Kim Leadbeater, a win of just 323 votes over her Conservative Party rival, Ryan Stephenson, after an acrimonious contest in Batley and Spen, one of Labour’s traditional heartland seats in northern England.Voting in the by-election took place on Thursday after a campaign marred by claims of intimidation, including one episode in which Ms. Leadbeater was heckled aggressively and another that led to the arrest of a man on suspicion of assault in connection with an attack on Labour supporters.Ms. Leadbeater acknowledged that it had been “a grueling few weeks” but added, “I am absolutely delighted that the people of Batley and Spen have rejected division and they voted for hope.”Labour fought hard to retain Batley and Spen, which was represented in Parliament by Ms. Leadbeater’s sister, Jo Cox, until she was murdered by a far-right fanatic in 2016.Ms. Leadbeater’s narrow path to victory was a complicated one. She was competing not only against the Conservative candidate, Mr. Stephenson, but also against Mr. Galloway, a former lawmaker and veteran left-wing campaigner who sought to divert support from Labour.Although Labour held off the challenge from Mr. Galloway, its share of the vote in Batley and Spen was lower than in the 2019 general election.Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded in winning over many of Labour’s core voters in working-class communities in the north and middle of England.Before the result in Batley and Spen, there had been news media speculation that Mr. Starmer would be vulnerable to a leadership challenge if Ms. Leadbeater lost, as many were expecting.Most analysts believed that Mr. Starmer would have been safe regardless of the result, because there is no credible alternative waiting in the wings. But the victory — narrow as it was — will be especially welcome news for the party leaders, because the contest could have been avoided.The by-election was triggered in May when the area’s former Labour lawmaker, Tracy Brabin, was elected to another job as West Yorkshire mayor, requiring her to step down from Parliament. Mr. Starmer was accused of mismanaging the situation and putting the seat at risk by allowing her to run for the mayoral position.Since he took the job of leader last year, Mr. Starmer, a former top prosecutor, has tried to unite the party after it was routed in 2019 parliamentary elections under the stewardship of Jeremy Corbyn, its left-wing leader at the time.Mr. Starmer’s critics have accused him of a lack of charisma and of failing to set out a convincing alternative policy agenda to that of the Conservatives.His defenders have appealed for patience and have contended that the pandemic has made it hard for the opposition to impress voters whose attention is focused on government efforts to bring Covid-19 restrictions to an end.In his election literature, Mr. Galloway had called on voters to abandon Labour to increase pressure on Mr. Starmer and force him out of his job.When the count was completed early Friday, Ms. Leadbeater won 13,296 votes, Mr. Stephenson was in second place with 12,973 and Mr. Galloway third with 8,264.Labour “won this election against the odds,” Mr. Starmer said. “And we did so by showing that when we are true to our values — decency, honesty, committed to improving lives — then Labour can win.” More