Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at elections around the world, China and India ending a four-year border standoff, and U.S. President Joe Biden apologizing to Indigenous communities.
Voting Around the World
The U.S. presidential election may only be 11 days away, but until then, FP’s eyes are on a slew of nations going to the polls this weekend. On the ballots are issues ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to Chinese investments to domestic political scandals. Here are the biggest votes you should be watching:
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at elections around the world, China and India ending a four-year border standoff, and U.S. President Joe Biden apologizing to Indigenous communities.
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Voting Around the World
The U.S. presidential election may only be 11 days away, but until then, FP’s eyes are on a slew of nations going to the polls this weekend. On the ballots are issues ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to Chinese investments to domestic political scandals. Here are the biggest votes you should be watching:
Kiribati. The Pacific island nation’s presidential election kicks off on Friday, with pro-China incumbent Taneti Maamau seeking a third and final term. His ruling Tobwaan Kiribati Party (TKP) won more than 70 percent of parliamentary seats in September, allowing Maamau to leverage his supermajority to sideline opposition challengers.
Yet on Monday, presidential candidate Kaotitaake Kokoria broke away from the ruling TKP to form his own alliance. Now, smaller parties are throwing their weight behind Kokoria to upset the TKP’s hold on power and push back against Maamau’s infrastructure development deals with China. Under Maamau in 2019, Kiribati broke its 16-year relationship with Taiwan to back Beijing.
Georgia. Analysts are calling Georgian parliamentary elections on Saturday a potential turning point for the country. The ruling Georgian Dream party seeks to bolster its conservative agenda, arguing that a working relationship with Russia would prevent Tbilisi from facing the same fate as Ukraine. The country’s splintered opposition hopes to unite around challenging Georgian Dream by advocating for NATO and European Union membership.
Both parties claim to be ahead in the polls. On Wednesday, Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili vowed to ban opposition groups should his ruling party win. Georgian Dream passed contentious legislation in recent months, including a foreign agents law in May and an anti-LGBTQ package in September, that has sparked widespread protests over human rights concerns.
Japan. Sunday’s snap election could threaten the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) more than 10 years in power. Upon taking office on Oct. 1, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba ordered a snap election to fulfill promises of reform. Public discontent with the LDP has grown in recent years due to rising costs of living and a party funding scandal. Yet Ishiba’s decision may have backfired, with an opinion survey in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper suggesting on Monday that the LDP could lose as many as 50 seats in the lower house—forcing it to rely on the smaller Komeito party to maintain majority control.
Uruguay. Center-left opposition leader Yamandú Orsi is favored to win the first round of the country’s presidential election on Sunday. Campaigning on his experience growing up during a dictatorship, Orsi has focused on tackling homelessness, poverty, and crime. He has also suggested that he would pause a prospective trade deal with China to continue negotiations through Mercosur, a free trade bloc in Latin America. Despite Orsi’s popularity, analysts expect the need for a runoff on Nov. 24, in which ruling conservative coalition candidate Álvaro Delgado and outsider conservative Andrés Ojeda will likely join forces.
Bulgaria. The Eastern European nation will hold its seventh snap election in just four years on Sunday. Experts predict voter turnout to reach around 30 percent—the country’s lowest on record since the fall of communism in the 1990s. Following anti-graft protests in 2020, Bulgaria’s political parties have struggled to form a stable ruling coalition. The rise of pro-Russia parties outside of the mainstream and Bulgaria’s status as the EU’s poorest member have not helped matters. The center-right ruling GERB party is predicted to come in first, but analysts are already expecting Bulgarians to return to the ballot box early next year.
Also to keep an eye on: Uzbekistan will hold parliamentary elections on Sunday under its new mixed electoral system. And Lithuania’s left-leaning opposition Social Democrats are hoping to repeat their early parliamentary election wins during the second and final round of voting on Sunday.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Border deal begins. China and India implemented a border agreement on Friday, officially ending a four-year military standoff in the disputed Ladakh region in the Himalayas. The deal signals a thaw in tense bilateral relations between the historically opposed Asian powers, and its timing alongside the BRICS summit held this week in Kazan, Russia, demonstrates the bloc’s growing influence on the world stage.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in Kazan on Wednesday to officially announce the deal, which will have troops from both countries withdraw from the region as Beijing and New Delhi engage instead in joint patrols there. A senior Indian official said the process should conclude by the end of the month. Diplomats believe the arrangement will return the region back to its pre-2020 status—before a deadly border clash killed dozens of soldiers and heightened security concerns.
Historic apology. U.S. President Joe Biden formally apologized on Friday for the federal government’s role in forcing Indigenous children to attend boarding schools, where more than 970 Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died and many others experienced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Biden’s trip to the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix on Friday was his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president.
In 2022, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the country’s use of boarding schools over the past 150 years to try to assimilate Indigenous children into white society. It found records of at least 18,000 children, some as young as 4 years old, who were taken from their parents and forced to attend programs across more than 400 schools that sought to erase their Indigenous cultures.
“In making this apology, the president acknowledges that we as a people who love our country must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated,” the White House said in a statement.
New forces in Kursk. North Korean troops could be deployed to Russia’s front line with Ukraine as early as this weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday. His warning follows Ukraine’s military intelligence agency claiming on Thursday that North Korean troops have already been sent to Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv staged a major incursion in August. This was the first report of North Korean soldiers being ordered to the battlefield to help Moscow fight Kyiv since the war began.
The Kremlin denied Ukraine’s intelligence report, but Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was Moscow’s decision to determine how it used its partnership treaty with Pyongyang. In total, around 12,000 North Korean forces are believed to be inside Russia. “These units pose a significant threat in both offensive and defensive operations,” a South Korean defense analyst told FP’s Keith Johnson.
What in the World?
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday. Including this trip, how many visits has he made to the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023?
A. 7B. 9C. 11D. 13
Odds and Ends
After nearly eight months in Earth’s orbit, four astronauts finally returned home on Friday. Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps (all with the United States’ NASA program) and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin flew to space in March and were set to return two months ago. But issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule and safety concerns surrounding Hurricane Milton stalled their return flight. Their mileage rewards must be off the charts.
And the Answer Is…
C. 11
While Blinken was racking up more frequent flyer miles, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave a speech in Washington that stressed the importance of U.S. alliances, FP’s Lili Pike and Rishi Iyengar report.
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The post 5 Important Foreign Elections to Follow This Weekend appeared first on Foreign Policy.
