A stunning comeback victory for the centrist mayor of Bucharest was also good news for Kyiv, but elsewhere in Europe, the far right continues to flourish.
As Romanians voted on Sunday in arguably the most consequential election in the country’s post-communist history, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would have been preparing to welcome a fellow disruptor to the European stage. The first round of a controversially rerun presidential contest had been handsomely won by George Simion, a euroskeptic ultranationalist who views US President Donald Trump as a “natural ally” and opposes military aid to Ukraine. On the back of a 20-point lead, 38-year-old Simion, who has a taste for violent rhetoric, was so confident of winning that he made a confrontational visit to Brussels in the last days of his campaign.
Those expectations were confounded in remarkable fashion at the weekend. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan benefited from the highest voter turnout in 30 years to triumph comfortably. One of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Dan was a relieved Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who, in Hungary and Slovakia, already has to contend with two Russia-friendly governments on Ukraine’s western border.
First and foremost, the stability promised by Dan’s victory is good news for Romania, which has been in political turmoil since the original presidential election was canceled amid allegations of Russian interference. Having made his name as a politically independent anti-corruption campaigner, he must now attempt to unite a deeply polarized country in which inequality, graft and poor public services have proved to be, as elsewhere, a launchpad for far-right populist insurgents.
More broadly, the size of the second-round turnout — which included a huge diaspora vote — suggests that hitching a ride on the Trump bandwagon is as liable to motivate a mainstream backlash in Europe as generate “make America great again”-style momentum. Given the global volatility unleashed by Trump’s reckless, bullying style, and the dark shadow cast over eastern Europe by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions, the strategic attractions of hugging the EU and NATO close are more readily apparent than they used to be. Handed the opportunity to turn east, a substantial majority of Romanian voters looked west.
Elsewhere though, on a “super Sunday” of three European elections, outcomes were more ambivalent and less uplifting from a progressive perspective. The center also held in Poland, where liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski narrowly won the first round of another crucial presidential election, ahead of the nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki. However, the high combined vote for hard and far-right candidates suggests that result might be reversed in two weeks’ time. One-and-a-half years after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was given a prime ministerial mandate to bring Poland back into the European mainstream, euroskeptic ultranationalism remains a force to be reckoned with.
In Portugal, a snap election triggered by the center-right governing party saw it retain power, but was notable mainly for the record number of votes cast for the far-right Chega party. Postal ballots could yet propel Chega to second place, ahead of the Socialist Party, after a dismal night for the Portuguese left.
Dan’s famous victory was undoubtedly the story of the night, confounding a narrative of an inexorable rightward shift in central and eastern Europe. However, amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, and as mainstream parties echo far-right agendas on migration, the politics of Europe continue to feel anxious, polarized and alarmingly unpredictable.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
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