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.
When US budget carrier Southwest Airlines last week announced a new partnership with China Airlines, Southwest’s social media were filled with comments from travelers excited by the new opportunity to visit China. Of course, China Airlines is not based in China, but in Taiwan, and the new partnership connects Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with 30 cities across the US. At a time when China is increasing efforts on all fronts to falsely label Taiwan as “China” in all arenas, Taiwan does itself no favors by having its flagship carrier named China Airlines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is eager to jump at
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
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