Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world, this week we are examining two nail biters: one just resolved, and another over the horizon.
O Canada !
Never for a very long time have the words of the national anthem resonated so deeply as this morning after Canadians awakened to a new government—as ambivalent as they might have been about their choice. If there was one big loser in Monday's historic contest, it was none of the candidates competing for leadership atop the Canadian government. Instead, that honor of biggest loser must be reserved for the leader of the country with which Canada shares its southern border. What looked to be a tsunami-sized victory by a conservative, even Trump-like clone up north, wound up with the Conservative party standard-bearer actually losing his own seat in Canada's new parliament.
Instead, this was the front page in the Toronto Star:
Instead of the aspirant, Conservative Pierre Poilièvre stepping into the role that it seemed back in January was all but engraved in stone with the resignation of the Liberal's disgraced prime minister Justin Trudeau, Canadians chose another Liberal to rule them going forward. Mark Carney has been the one chosen to stand up to Donald Trump who still lusts after the completely insane idea of turning their country into America's 51st state. I mean, for openers, neither Puerto Rico nor the District of Columbia has succeeded in statehood. To turn that trick on Canada, it would now seem, would mean an invasion of a style popularized by Vladimir Putin.
Still, as London’s Independent observed:
Poilievre himself is a rather Trumpish figure who campaigned hard on crime and immigration, complained about "woke ideology,” and embraced the anti-lockdown trucker protests of 2022.
Still, there are any number of challenges ahead. Starting with the results:
What does this mean exactly? For openers, Carney, who ran the Bank of England during Brexit and the Bank of Canada, is going to need a little help from his friends. Three seats shy of an absolute majority in the new Parliament, and no way he can expect much from the Conservatives. A position with which the Liberals are hardly unfamiliar as Trudeau was forced to govern with only a plurality after elections in 2019 and 2021. But at the same time, it's quite clear Carney has won a real mandate to take no guff from Donald Trump, as he told the BBC in an interview:
Carney has said his country deserves respect from the US and will only enter trade and security talks with President Donald Trump "on our terms". Carney said he would only visit Washington when there was a "serious discussion to be had" that respected Canada's sovereignty.
Since Trump's re-election to the White House, the US president has repeatedly mentioned making Canada the "51st state" of America, which has infuriated Canadians. Carney, who secured a historic victory for his Liberal Party, said such a scenario was "never, ever going to happen."
To his supporters, Carney was even more direct, as Dylan Robertson reported for The Toronto Star:
“Who is ready,” he shouted to cheers and applause and people chanting his name in a crowded hockey arena in Ottawa in the wee hours of the morning. “Who is ready? Who is ready to stand up for Canada with me? And who is ready to build Canada strong?"]
The nation's leading newspapers focused more on Canada and Carney's narrow victory as votes were still being counting Tuesday afternoon and the makeup of the new Parliament still uncertain. Toronto's Globe and Mail, for instance:
Indeed, there are all sorts of challenges—and opportunities—awaiting Carney, now a real, elected prime minister rather than an interim Trudeau place holder. And as Toronto’s Globe and Mail observed, the new prime minister does not look to be wasting very much time at all embracing challenge #1 :
At the same time, Carney does have other priorities too, as David Callaway of Callaway's Climate Insights put it:
Despite living in a country ravaged by wildfires in recent years, most Canadians didn’t count fighting global warming in their top 10 most-pressing issues, almost all of which involved standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump in some way.
But Liberal leader Mark Carney, the most high-profile climate globalist to ever become head of a major country, suddenly has a historic opportunity to illustrate how a democratic country can reduce a history of harmful carbon emissions and introduce a new era of clean energy. The former head of central banks in Canada and England and one of the best-known leaders of international climate summit groups and conferences, Carney has kept a purposefully low profile on climate in the weeks since he was elected leader of his party to face Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the national election….
Canada, with its vast oil fields and oil sands, is the world’s 11th largest emitter of harmful carbon pollution, sandwiched in between Saudi Arabia and Mexico. But it also broke into the top 10 last year in clean energy investment, putting more than $2 trillion to work on renewable energy projects, according to Bloomberg NEF.
Carney said in his victory speech that Canada can become an “energy superpower” in both clean energy and traditional fossil fuels, as well as fighting climate change.
How many other big challenges might Carney pose to Trump who appears to be doing all he can to dismantle any mechanism to promote clean energy.
So now, it’s a matter of wait and see, though it would appear Trump himself is hardly prepared to talk nice as the CBC reported:
Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump a day after securing the Liberals a return to power and following a campaign very much based on reproaching the president's trade war and his 51s state ambitions. According to a readout of the call from the Prime Minister's Office, Trump congratulated Carney.
"The leaders agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together — as independent, sovereign nations — for their mutual betterment," the readout said. "To that end, the leaders agreed to meet in person in the near future."
However, in a statement to The Canadian Press earlier in the day, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the election "does not affect President Trump's plan to make Canada America's cherished 51st state.
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David reported for The New York Times from 1966 to 1988, serving as a correspondent in Saigon, then as bureau chief in Moscow and Jerusalem, finally as chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He's written seven books, including one anthology of his poetry, and another, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, that won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His first novel, The Interpreter, was published April 15—an eye-opening return to a very special moment in Saigon a half century ago.
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Hungary on edge….
We have a year to go, but already we can hear the hoofbeats along the puszta (the Hungarian plains). For the first time, Victor Orban could be in real trouble. And few are monitoring this like David Carretta and Christian Spillmann of La Matinale Européennein Brussels where the leadership of Europe is largely praying every day that this scenario might just come to pass:
Viktor Orban's star is fading. The Hungarian Prime Minister has a real opponent. Peter Magyar is mobilizing the crowds, and his party, Tisza [MSZP], has taken the lead in voting intentions. Fidesz trails Tisza by 14 points (37–51%), according to the latest poll conducted in April. Will Orban be able to concede defeat if he is defeated in the general elections in early 2026? Nothing is less certain. Donald Trump, his mentor, is ready to violate the US Constitution for a third term and flouts the rule of law. The campaign is underway in Hungary, and the accusations against Magyar are worrying. Will the EU remain silent if Orban acts like Lukashenko in Belarus or Erdogan in Turkey to cling to power?
But just look at the charts—Orban's Fidesz party (orange) fading just slightly but suddenly, apparently out of nowhere comes MSZP (red) of Peter Magyar in the middle of last year. Then, somewhere around the time on January 20 when Donald Trump placed his hand on the bible, Magyar and his MSZP surged past Orban and kept on rising.
As Carretta and Spillmann continued:
One man represents the next generation: Peter Magyar, 44. A former member of Fidesz, of which he became a prominent member thanks to his wife, Judit Varga, he left the party in February 2024 following a scandal that cost Hungarian President Katalin Novak and Varga, the Minister of Justice, their jobs. Magyar divorced, joined the opposition, denounced the massive corruption and enrichment of members of Viktor Orban's inner circle, created Tisza (Respect and Freedom or MSZP)….
Tisza is establishing itself as an alternative to Fidesz and has led the polls since March. Orban is on the defensive. “The Tisza party is not a Hungarian party. It's a Brussels party,” he accuses. “We saw it with our own eyes, we heard it with our own ears: the Tisza party and Brussels conspired against the Hungarian people."
Voices in Hungary are concerned about the direction the duel between Magyar and Orban [ruler of Hungary since 2010] is taking. “While all credible polls show Orbán’s Fidesz lagging far behind Péter Magyar’s Tisza, discussions in Hungary are turning to whether Orbán might try to imprison or ban his rival, as Turkey has done. The real question now is: will Hungary hold free and fair elections in 2026? And would Orbán relinquish power?” asks Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Pany, VSquare’s Central Europe investigations editor based in Budapest and a contributor to the website Direkt 36….Orban has amended the electoral law several times, always in favor of his party.
And then there's Singapore
Not much doubt there's a real democracy at play in this prosperous island-nation in Southeast Asia, despite one party that has dominated the scene since it won its independence from Britain more than 60 years ago. As the headline in its flourishing local paper The Straits Timessuggests:
SINGAPORE—Seven election rallies are set to take place on April 30, just three days before about 2.75 million Singaporean voters head to the polls on May 3. The rallies on April 30 are scheduled to run from 7pm to 10pm.
Since I first met Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1976, the Lee family or its allies and descendants have dominated the politics of this thriving nation. Which is not to suggest there is not a vibrant democracy here. Rather, there is a population that perceives the benefits of the system that Lee and his party have brought to the nation and are ill-prepared to rock the boat. Still, if there was ever an opportunity to open a chink in the armor of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), this could be that moment. As Nikkei Asia observes:
An election rally held last week by Singapore's main opposition Workers' Party drew thousands to an open field still wet from earlier rain. As the crowd pressed toward the stage, mud crept past attendees' soaked shoes and up to their ankles, but few seemed to mind.
"A parliament with a more rational, respectable, and responsive WP will not hamper Singapore," party leader Pritam Singh said as he closed out the night's speeches, drawing cheers from the audience. "We counter the groupthink of the PAP and suggest alternative ideas to better the lives of all Singaporeans," Singh stressed.
The WP supporters' enthusiasm stood in contrast to the rally held the same night by the ruling People's Action Party. Older supporters, dressed in the party's traditional white, sat among a crowd of 700, according to local media. After Prime Minister and PAP leader Lawrence Wong delivered the final speech, many left quietly.
Despite visibly larger turnouts at its rallies, the WP remains the underdog in a political landscape long shaped by the PAP's uninterrupted rule since Singapore's independence in 1965. The WP is fielding just 26 candidates in eight constituencies for the 97-seat parliament this year, meaning it has no chance to win a majority in the May 3 polls.
For now, Singapore's largest and oldest opposition group is seeking to build on the record 10 seats it won in the previous polls in 2020. It is fielding a slate of strong new candidates to push for its policies, such as the introduction of a wealth tax and exemptions to the country's goods and services tax.
Andelman Unleashed will be chronicling the outcome, so do stay tuned!
Good write-up on Canada, and permit me to add a few words. And one quibble: Justin Trudeau wasn't a 'disgraced' leader, he was a tired brand name, with a failed marriage, a morale problem, and his father's penchant for hanging onto power. He had a few other flaws, but was never 'disgraced'.
His loss of appeal though, lead to a political vacuum, not a 'surge' in support for Conservatives. Huge numbers of Canadian Liberals indicated to pollsters they would 'vote conservative' while holding their noses, mostly, to get rid of a tired party leader. In other words, there was never any 'dramatic swing' to and from Poilievre, there was a return to normal among liberals, with Carney. Then, this was increased by the idiotic behavior of Donald J Trump, who even helped the Liberal Party surge in Quebec, where they hate Trump passionately.
As I put, in a short note submitted to Toronto Star today (but I think I'm on their blacklist, so it won't appear): "The suggestion that the Liberal government only squeaked into power [touted by initial press coverage] is a tad exaggerated. The Liberals face only 2 parties bent on overthrowing the elected government: the Conservatives and the Bloc québécois. Let's be honest -- both are parties founded in [regional] separatist movements, not for a united Confederation. However, big however, their combined strength is 4 seats shy of 'bringing down' the liberals in Parliament. Secondly, no NDPer in the House is going to allow that to happen. Which means that Mark Carney needs only to get the NDP cohort into [strategic alliance based on inherent goals and values] and they can sign a 'confidence' agreement, guaranteeing never to support a vote of non-confidence.
Also, the NDP is now in a crisis of identity -- because the world of 2nd-International Social Democracy has changed since they were formed in the 1960s. The best advice I'd offer (they won't listen) is to let the 7 NDPers cross the floor, and join the Liberal Party as a progressive caucus. Just like the left of the US Democrats. That would even get them 'official party' status, which they now have lost. Inside that framework, they could still communicate their own agenda, respecting the need to keep Trump-friendly, and separatist-friendly Canadian Cons out of power in Ottawa.
Good write-up on Canada, and permit me to add a few words. And one quibble: Justin Trudeau wasn't a 'disgraced' leader, he was a tired brand name, with a failed marriage, a morale problem, and his father's penchant for hanging onto power. He had a few other flaws, but was never 'disgraced'.
His loss of appeal though, lead to a political vacuum, not a 'surge' in support for Conservatives. Huge numbers of Canadian Liberals indicated to pollsters they would 'vote conservative' while holding their noses, mostly, to get rid of a tired party leader. In other words, there was never any 'dramatic swing' to and from Poilievre, there was a return to normal among liberals, with Carney. Then, this was increased by the idiotic behavior of Donald J Trump, who even helped the Liberal Party surge in Quebec, where they hate Trump passionately.
As I put, in a short note submitted to Toronto Star today (but I think I'm on their blacklist, so it won't appear): "The suggestion that the Liberal government only squeaked into power [touted by initial press coverage] is a tad exaggerated. The Liberals face only 2 parties bent on overthrowing the elected government: the Conservatives and the Bloc québécois. Let's be honest -- both are parties founded in [regional] separatist movements, not for a united Confederation. However, big however, their combined strength is 4 seats shy of 'bringing down' the liberals in Parliament. Secondly, no NDPer in the House is going to allow that to happen. Which means that Mark Carney needs only to get the NDP cohort into [strategic alliance based on inherent goals and values] and they can sign a 'confidence' agreement, guaranteeing never to support a vote of non-confidence.
Also, the NDP is now in a crisis of identity -- because the world of 2nd-International Social Democracy has changed since they were formed in the 1960s. The best advice I'd offer (they won't listen) is to let the 7 NDPers cross the floor, and join the Liberal Party as a progressive caucus. Just like the left of the US Democrats. That would even get them 'official party' status, which they now have lost. Inside that framework, they could still communicate their own agenda, respecting the need to keep Trump-friendly, and separatist-friendly Canadian Cons out of power in Ottawa.
as always detailed text, paragraph to paragraph. thank you very much mr david, informational and sharp