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Jean Luc Melenchon poster at French leftist movement La France Insoumise's (LFI) headquarters in Paris.
What We're Watching: Macron has a left problem, Japan's nuclear option, the election no one cares about
Japan embraces nuclear to wean itself off Russian energy
Russia's war in Ukraine is pushing notoriously slow-moving Japan to make unusually swift policy shifts. In mid-March, Tokyo gave up its decades-long effort to negotiate with Russia over the return of the disputed Kuril Islands. Now, it's ready to ditch Russian energy, which resource-poor Japan needs to keep the lights on. (Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia but has not yet banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas.) PM Fumio Kishida announced Thursday that Japan will restart its mothballed nuclear reactors — a big deal because nuclear power is a highly sensitive topic in the only nation to suffer an attack with atomic weapons. Also, a tsunami caused in 2011 the Fukushima disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. That led Japanese public opinion to sour on nuclear, but now a majority support Kishida's plans, which also aim to help the country become carbon-neutral by 2050. Interestingly, the announcement comes just days after a top Japanese investor confirmed a $21 billion natural gas project in Siberia despite uncertainty over Russian sanctions and fears that Russia will cut off Japan first.
Will the left make Macron a lame duck?
President Emmanuel Macron triumphed in last month’s presidential election despite a closer-than-hoped-for race for the Élysée. But he’s still facing tough competition. A ragtag of four left-leaning parties have now joined forces ahead of legislative elections this June in an attempt to block Macron’s legislative agenda. After what appeared to be painstaking negotiations, Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who heads the far-left France Insoumise Party (LFI) and came a close third in the first round of the presidential election – has convinced the Communist and Socialist parties to join a bloc he’s already formed with the Greens. (Though leadership has agreed, the deal still needs to be approved by the Socialist Party's national committee.) The LFI-led bloc wants to thwart Macron’s ability to get anything done in the National Assembly, particularly his pledge to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. If they succeed in robbing Macron of a parliamentary majority, the president could be forced to appoint a leftist prime minister to steer the legislative agenda. Will the incumbent’s Renaissance rebrand lead to another triumph?
What We're Ignoring: Hong Kong’s “election”
Some 1,500 Hong Kongers go to the polls Sunday to "vote" for the chief executive. The quotation marks indicate that the process is a total sham for two reasons. First, there's only one candidate, John Lee. Lee, a former top cop handpicked by China, will succeed Carrie Lam, who declined to run for a second term after a tumultuous five years in office marked by political turmoil on the streets and the pandemic. Second, the chief executive is selected not by universal suffrage but rather by a small group of pro-China politicians and tycoons who always pick — you guessed it — whomever Beijing tells them to select. Actually, the most important thing about this year's election is that it's happening at all, given that it was postponed three months due to COVID. What comes next for Hong Kong under its new leadership? Lee says he wants to restore the territory to its former glory as the region’s business hub. That won't be easy under China's direct control and zero-COVID policy, both of which have led many foreign companies to leave or relocate to Singapore.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrives for an European Union Summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Belgium December 16, 2021.
What We’re Watching: EU vs twin threats, Hong Kong’s “election”, a Sicilian miracle
EU vs Omi-Kremlin. EU leaders met on Thursday to craft a response to the two major challenges of the moment for the bloc. The first is the surging number of COVID infections driven by the new omicron variant. An EU-wide approach has already been undermined as several countries — Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Greece — moved unilaterally to tighten entry restrictions. The EU is expected to redouble its efforts to accelerate vaccination campaigns: currently about 60 percent of adults have received two jabs, but that number falls below 50 percent in much of Eastern Europe. With omicron infections doubling every two days, there isn’t much time to get ahead of the winter wave. The other big challenge is Russia, which continues to mass as many as 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border. Vladimir Putin says he wants guarantees that NATO won’t expand eastward any more, and the EU and US are worried he’s about to invade Ukraine to underscore the point. Brussels is warning severe economic consequences if that happens, which could potentially involve mothballing the Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline to Europe. But here too, the EU is divided — some smaller Eastern member states want Brussels to slap sanctions ASAP as a deterrent, while France and Germany worry about provoking the Kremlin into war.
What We’re Ignoring
Hong Kong’s (s)election. Hong Kong is set to hold legislative elections on Sunday, the first since Beijing last year passed a sweeping security law that all but snuffs out the city-state’s political independence from the People’s Republic. And, surprising just about no one, the authorities have highly curated the candidate list, vetting everyone via a “patriots only” approvals process. As a result, only three of the more than 150 candidates on the ballot identify as pro-democracy. And it’s not just us who are ignoring this election: barely half of Hong Kongers themselves plan to vote, the lowest expected turnout in three decades.