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Imran Khan: “The Poster Boy for Populism"
Weeks after a chaotic general election, Pakistan’s political parties still struggle to form a coalition to move the country forward. GZERO’s Tony Maciulis sat down with Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Hina Khar at the Munich Security Conference for her take on how the nation’s imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan maintains a hold over supporters and remains a powerful political force.
Independent candidates mostly aligned with Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), won the most votes on February 8, though they fell short of a majority, setting off a power struggle between Khan and his political rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Comparing Khan to former US President Donald Trump and India’s leader Narendra Modi, Khar said, “He really represents what populist leaders are all about. He’s able to get everybody to rally around what all is wrong and the great injustices. However, when he comes to power, he doesn’t have any to plan to sort it out.”
Khar explained that Khan’s popularity flows from his ability to tap into the frustrations of his base, who are deeply concerned about rising costs of living, including food and energy prices.
While she hopes the political parties will be able to come to a resolution that respects the voters' mandate, Khar says “the jury is out” about whether Khan will ultimately bow out of the process.
Khar also addressed the ongoing tensions between Pakistan and neighboring India. In a past interview with GZERO, she had described India as a “rogue nation,” a claim she stood by once again in Munich. Modi’s popularity, she said, “is based on anti-Muslim, anti-Islam” sentiments that resonate with Hindu nationalist supporters.
A demonstrator holds a sign reading "Hate makes you small" at a rally organized by the German Trade Union Confederation on "For Democracy and Solidarity" on Jan. 27, 2024.
A black eye for Germany’s far right
That’s one way to understand why the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, was narrowly defeated last weekend in a local election in a place it has scored wins in the past. A recent scandal involving contact between AfD leaders and officials considered neo-Nazis – conversations that reportedly centered on plans to deport immigrants, including some who have German citizenship – set off a firestorm.
Last weekend, anti-AfD protests filled the streets of some 30 German cities, and that sentiment appears to have pushed higher-than-expect turnout among anti-AfD voters for the election in the German state of Thuringia.
There will be larger elections in this region in September, and AfD may well perform much better. But last weekend’s protests and local election results, from a place considered an AfD stronghold, remind us that Europe’s anti-populist political forces are strong too.
The logo of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is displayed on a window, during the 54th annual meeting of the WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024.
Who’s skipping Davos – and watching the polls?
While Donald Trump was winning in Iowa and preparing for New Hampshire, economic and political elites were in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum … where they were worrying about a potential Trump 2.0.
As jets descended on Davos, there was plenty of chatter about who was and wasn’t in attendance. Five years ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a keynote at the confab. This year, he sat out along with most of his front bench. After chatter about the scarce Canadian contingent, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was added to the agenda, perhaps to make it seem like the Liberals weren’t working overtime to avoid hobnobbing with the jet set while Canadians struggle with affordability, housing, and healthcare crises. After all, his party is way behind in the polls, and Trudeau is taking flak – and facing a possible ethics investigation – over his winter vacation in Jamaica.
President Joe Biden also skipped Davos. His approval rating is…not great, hitting a new low this week. Like Trudeau, he may be inclined to stay close to home and focus on domestic issues as Americans face their own affordability crisis.
As worries about the large contingent from China working overtime at Davos for foreign investment circulate around Washington, Biden sent the soon-to-retire John Kerry and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose plane conked out before his trip back, to make the rounds and discuss climate change and the war in Gaza.
The American and Canadian Davos lineups remind us that foreign politics is often domestic politics abroad. Both Biden and Trudeau are in tough reelection races, with Biden likely to face Trump in November, and Trudeau set for a matchup with Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by October 2025. And neither man will find votes in Davos.
Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei attends a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 11, 2023.
Who the heck is Javier Milei?
Perhaps you’ve heard about Argentina’s new presidential frontrunner. His name is Javier Milei, and his raucous political rallies feature him as a ranting, raving, rock star who wants to “blow up” the country’s political lethargy.
His charisma approaches the level of Donald Trump, a leader he says he admires. He wants to make the US dollar Argentina’s legal currency, close down the country’s central bank, and legalize the sale of human organs without government interference. He has argued that sex education in Argentina’s schools is part of an elite plot to destroy the traditional family.
Milei’s campaign style suggests he’s usually the last to leave the karaoke bar.
And it’s precisely because of his libertarian – some would say anarchic – views and his open hatred for a political class that has failed to pull Argentina from a chronic economic crisis that his star is on the rise.
We know he’s a leading contender because Argentina has a political process that asks voters to indicate their preference for president two months before the election. In August, Milei won a jaw-dropping 30% plus of the vote in a race that included 22 candidates. The main center-right opposition bloc won 28%. The ruling leftist Peronist coalition took 27%.
The election will be held on Sunday, and with an inflation rate of 116% that keeps 40% of the country in poverty, it’s not hard to see why many voters might turn to a self-proclaimed political arsonist.
If this political dynamic sounds familiar, it’s because anti-politician politicians have become a phenomenon in recent years. Trump represented a complete break with the American political class, personified perfectly by Hillary Clinton. In 2018, exhausted by the scandals and stagnating economy under left-wing governments, Brazilian voters turned to profane former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro.
But this isn’t just a right-wing phenomenon. French voters chose Emmanuel Macron in 2017 in part because he challenged both the center-right and center-left establishment parties that dominated France for decades. Like Macron, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador created his own political party and drove it to power in 2018 by challenging a political class perceived as hopelessly corrupt. On the left, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro represented a similar let’s-just-start-over approach to political problem-solving.
It should be noted, however, that Trump was impeached twice, indicted four times, lost his bid for reelection, and is now running again with a national approval rating of 40%. Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection too, and he’s now banned from running for office for eight years. Macron and Petro have become deeply unpopular. Only López Obrador has managed to defy political gravity while governing as a political outsider.
Argentina’s voters will decide on Sunday just how serious they are about a Javier Milei presidency. The most recent polls say the vote might be close, but Milei remains the favorite.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico gestures as he attends a joint news conference with the French President at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, June 22, 2016.
After pivotal election, Slovakia forms new government
Two weeks after winning Slovakia’s elections, former PM Robert Fico, a left-wing populist who campaigned on limiting illegal migration and curtailing military support for Ukraine, has struck a deal to form a new government.
Fico’s social democratic SMER-SSD will form a coalition with the moderate center-left HLAS (Voice) party and the nationalist SNS party.
The former PM’s criticisms of EU sanctions on Russia and his calls for Kyiv to negotiate with Moscow had raised fears that Slovakia, under his leadership, might break ranks with its fellow NATO and EU members on some aspects of Ukraine policy. Fico has said that he supports reconstruction and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, but he doesn’t want to send more Slovak weapons.
The coalition memorandum explicitly reaffirms Slovakia’s commitment to a foreign policy shaped by its membership in NATO and the EU, while also respecting “sovereignty.”
HLAS’ moderating influence, as well as Fico’s track record of governing more pragmatically than he campaigns, likely played a role in the decision to directly address the NATO and EU issue early on. But we’ll see Fico’s stripes more clearly soon enough: He is likely to be confirmed as PM ahead of an EU summit later this month that will focus largely on Ukraine.
For a deeper explainer of who Fico is, what a journalist’s murder has to do with him, and how Ukraine played into the election, see here.
A giant Second World War Polish Home Army flag is seen, as participants attend the "March of a Million Hearts" rally, organised by the Civic Coalition opposition parties, two weeks ahead of the parliamentary election, in Warsaw, Poland October 1, 2023.
Viewpoint: Polarized Poles head to polls
In less than two weeks, Poland’s United Right alliance will face the biggest challenge to its grip on power since gaining control of parliament in 2015. The national-conservative party’s strident rhetoric and generous welfare policies have lost some of their appeal, but voters don’t appear ready to decisively embrace the alternative path offered by the liberal opposition either. Among other uncertainties, it’s unclear how the tricky politics of the war next door in Ukraine will play out when polls open on Oct. 15.
Months of difficult government-formation talks and maybe even new elections could follow. We sat down with Eurasia Group expert Anna-Carina Hamker to talk about what to expect.
Why have voters soured on the United Right?
The alliance has been losing support since a constitutional court packed with its appointees instituted an abortion ban in 2020. An overall sense of fatigue with the government and a lack of new (young) faces is another factor that has contributed to its gradual decline.
Over the past 12 months, a deteriorating economic situation has also contributed. The well-targeted social benefits that the United Right has used to shore up its support in the past – such as the 500 zloty per child payments to families the government has promised to expand – have become less effective in a context of high inflation.
Despite these developments, the United Right maintains a strong base of mainly rural voters (more than 30% of the electorate) and will likely win the largest vote share in the elections.
What are the main issues for voters?
According to recent surveys, the main issues are inflation, access to and the quality of healthcare, security (particularly in light of the war raging in Ukraine), and the independence of the judiciary. Under the guise of fighting the remnants of communism, the government has adopted multiple laws bringing the judiciary under political control, causing a long-running confrontation with the EU.
Security has been a key topic in the United Right’s campaign, but recent surveys suggest that Poles trust the leading opposition party – the Civic Coalition – slightly more to keep them safe. This is likely the result of recent mishaps, such as a series of conflicting communications issued in response to an incursion into Polish airspace by Belarusian helicopters. De-politicizing the judiciary and the media is a key priority for the liberal opposition. On the economy, the far-right Confederation party has gained a lot of support with its proposals for radical tax and benefits cuts.
What role has Ukraine played?
A big one!
The United Right is at risk of losing some (potential) supporters to the far-right Confederation over the generous support offered to Ukraine, both in terms of military and humanitarian aid.
Polish farmers – a key United Right constituency – have suffered from falling grain prices they attribute to the large amounts of Ukrainian grain exported to Poland and other EU countries. The Confederation party has wooed these farmers with its anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. Fearing a loss of support, the United Right enacted a unilateral grain import ban before the summer that provoked tensions with Brussels and Kyiv. The government fired back by announcing a reduction in financial support for Ukrainian refugees from next year.
What is the likelihood of a contested election? Difficult government formation process?
I think the election will likely produce a hung parliament – that is, no parliamentary majority for the United Right or the combined liberal opposition. In that case, Confederation will be the kingmaker. Both the United Right and the liberal opposition will probably try to enlist its support, either for a minority government or by convincing individual lawmakers to switch sides.
Though there is more ideological alignment between Confederation and the United Right, Confederation would be wary of being co-opted by the ruling alliance, which could prompt it to join forces with the liberal opposition instead.
In the event of a hung parliament, we expect a lengthy government formation process that could drag out into the new year. There is also a substantial risk that the parties fail to form a government, forcing snap elections early next year.
What would another United Right government mean?
This will depend on whether the United Right commands a parliamentary majority or relies on cooperation with Confederation. In the former case, I’d expect mostly continuity on foreign policy, but the rather aggressive rhetoric directed at Brussels would ebb a bit, as would the assertiveness toward Ukraine. Domestically, the ruling alliance would likely try to tighten its grip on power even more by undermining the powers of democratic institutions.
In the case of cooperation with Confederation, I think relations with the EU could get even worse. Both parties are critical of the European Commission’s powers, and, considering that they are competing for the same national-conservative electorate, there could be a battle between the two parties about who is best at protecting Polish sovereignty from Brussels’s influence. Warsaw’s growing assertiveness toward Kyiv would likely also remain a problem as the parties continue to compete.
What would a liberal opposition-led government mean?
Its immediate priorities would be to de-politicize democratic institutions, reform the judiciary, and improve relations with Brussels. It would likely also take significant steps to accelerate Poland’s green transition. However, considering that the ruling coalition would consist of at least three parties, I think that once immediate priorities have been addressed, there will be a lot of potential for tensions and, thus, slow policy progress and maybe even the government’s collapse. We have seen these problems in other European countries with three-party governments, such as Germany.
Edited by Jonathan House, senior editor at Eurasia Group.
The newly elected leader of Syriza leftist party, Stefanos Kasselakis, delivers a statement to the members of the press outside the party's headquarters in Athens, Greece, September 25, 2023.
Ex-Goldman banker takes helm of Greek leftist party
Stefanos Kasselakis, a Miami-based former investment banker and shipping magnate, is taking the helm of Greece’s left-wing Syriza Party, which was left bloodied by June’s general election.
The crushing defeat – the party won less than a quarter of the national vote – led to Alexis Tsipras’s resignation as leader.
On Sunday, Kasselakis won 56% of the party’s vote to succeed Tsipras as leader. His unlikely victory in the historically communist and anti-fascist party’s leadership election comes amid a booming economy that contrasts sharply with the austerity Greeks faced under Syriza’s last government.
Who is Kasselakis? Until recently, he was a no-name in Greek politics — and he didn’t even live in Greece full-time. As a youth, he earned a scholarship to the prestigious Philips Academy in Massachusetts and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
He took a job at Goldman Sachs after graduating but soon founded his own shipping company. Kasselakis reportedly earned a reputation for dealing well with distressed assets after successfully selling off five of the company’s ships in 2022.
But his political resume is thin: He debuted as an at-large candidate for Syriza in the June elections (expatriates are allowed to run), but he didn’t even win the seat.
Then, late last month, he released a campaign video explaining his life and arguing he was the right man to defeat sitting Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The handsome, young, openly gay Kasselakis said he had seen first-hand capitalists “buying cheaply other people’s labor” and how “arrogance makes money.”
The video took off, and buoyed by its success, Kasselakis sprang into action, visiting the areas most severely affected by recent wildfires and floods to criticize the government’s response. He also visited an Aegean island where thousands of Greek communists were imprisoned after the country’s civil war, underlining his sympathies to Syriza’s left wing.
Just 19 days after publishing the video, he beat leading establishment candidate Eftychia "Effie" Achtsioglou in the first round of the leadership contest by 9 percentage points.
A new Syriza? Kasselakis’s overtures to Syriza’s historical leftism notwithstanding, the party ideology might be just that: historical. Prof. Michael Rossi, who teaches modern Greek politics at Rutgers University, says Kasselakis’s ascension is a sign that Syriza is moderating its left-wing populism to survive.
The ruling center-right New Democracy Party took a comfortable lead in the June elections, energized by Greece’s strong economy. It’s a sharp contrast with the austerity measures Greece was forced to adopt during Syriza’s only term in government from 2015-2019. They came to power after the collapse of the traditional center-left party PASOK, which had been left holding the bag after the global financial crisis triggered a Greek sovereign debt crisis in 2009.
“A vote for Syriza in the past was a vote against New Democracy, against PASOK, against the European Central Bank. And then once they get into power, they realize that they can't do much without long-term cooperation with other parties,” says Rossi. “How we get the Goldman Sachs guy speaking on their behalf is very simple: Syriza is now filling in the gaps of what PASOK once was.”
But unseating New Democracy will be challenging. The Greek economy is growing at twice the eurozone average, and unemployment is at the lowest level in a decade. The Mitsotakis government has cut taxes and raised the minimum wage while simultaneously reducing debt so that the country is currently ahead of schedule in paying back its bailout loans. A strong record to carry into elections no matter how you slice it.
That said, there is a lot of debt to be repaid — 166% of GDP, to be precise. And while unemployment may be lower, 11% is no walk in the park. Neither is persistent inflation amid rising food and energy costs as nearly one in five Greeks lives below the national poverty line.
This may open a window for Syriza under Kasselakis to build a base among those who still feel left behind in preparation for the next election no later than 2027 – though Rossi says it is unlikely to be large enough to totally unseat the incumbents. Instead, he says, a larger Syriza minority in parliament could limit New Democracy’s coalition options, or even spark a grand left-right coalition.
“Is it possible at some point in the future that a former Goldman Sachs head of Syriza could work with New Democracy?” he asks, answering with: “Hey, this is Europe.”
Jörg Prophet, AfD candidate for mayor in Nordhausen, stands in the city center.
Hard Numbers: German far right comes up short, Ukraine dreams of drones, a space rock arrives on earth, world trade slows
54.9%: In an upset, Jörg Prophet, of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, lost a promising bid for mayor of Nordhausen the office on Sunday, as incumbent Kai Buchmann kept his job, winning 54.9% of the vote. The AfD has been polling at 21.5% nationwide, but has even more support in Thuringia, which is where Nordhausen is located.
$1 billion: Ukraine wants a drone army, and it’s looking to spend more than $1 billion to get one. Drones, Ukrainian leaders say, are great for reconnaissance, dropping bombs, and self-exploding on impact – all useful things in Kyiv’s war of defense against Russia. But what are drones not so good at? Holding territory.
6.21 billion: That’s how many kilometers (3.86 billion miles) a NASA capsule traveled to deliver the largest-ever asteroid sample to American soil. The capsule landed in a Utah desert on Sunday. Scientists hope the sample will help us better understand how the solar system formed and why life occurred on Earth.
3.2%: World trade volumes dropped 3.2% in July compared to the same month last year — the steepest decline in almost three years. High inflation is crushing demand for exports, while the resulting interest rate hikes are choking off credit, fueling fears of a global economic slowdown.