The United States may pause its interest rate hiking cycle sooner than previously expected, following Friday's release of critical US inflation data. Investors are expecting the Federal Reserve to wait for sustained signs of inflation before raising interest rates further. Additionally, markets are also watching for the June 1 deadline for the US federal government to avoid defaulting on some debts if the nation's debt ceiling is not lifted and PMI figures across the globe on May 23.
Markets are set for a week of drama with Brexit talks continuing, US and Chinese economic statistics set to be released which will measure inflation and growth rates and Greece's elections on Sunday. These figures will provide investors with some insight into the direction of the global economy. There are signs that US inflation on Friday's Federal Reserve PCE price index may not increase further, resulting in a potential interest rate reduction. There is also subtle anticipation regarding China's central bank which may decide to increase monetary or fiscal incentives to boost the country's economy. Greece's election is anticipated to have a calming effect on the market if an investment-grade credit rating is achieved.
Greeks are set to go to the polls on Sunday 7 July to elect a new leader. The ruling party is the centre-right New Democracy, led by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is seeking a second term. The country is recovering from years of national debt and financial turmoil that left many households struggling, but Mitsotakis is credited with high growth, a drop in unemployment, and paying off debts to the International Monetary Fund. Nevertheless, securing a second term is by no means guaranteed, with opponents set to include opponents ranging from the far-right to the Communist Party.
Former UK Conservative MP Liz Truss's recent visit to Taiwan risks turning Taipei's quest for visibility into a Dutch auction as it attempts to counter Beijing’s intimidation and haemorrhaging of formal diplomatic support, said James Lee in The Diplomat. Taiwan risks coming across as a circus act by upstaging and obscuring officials from official diplomatic relations. Truss's visit called for "hard-power" support for Taiwan in the face of China's "authoritarianism" and provoked criticism from the UK's Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair Alicia Kearns, calling it "the worst example of Instagram diplomacy". The UK's official Taiwan policy should not be confused with informal links, as it has walked a fine line on Taiwan since switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1950.
The election of Greece's parliament is likely to be inconclusive, with both major parties having to scramble to find potential allies to form a ruling coalition. The new voting system means that an outright winner is unlikely, leaving the two leading parties to compete for alliances or face a second election to be held next month. The three leading parties, New Democracy, Syriza, and PASOK, will receive a three-day mandate each to form a government. PASOK has been attempting a comeback under new leader Nikos Androulakis, leaving their loyalty to a possible coalition government unclear.
In an interview, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he prefers a “strong one-party government,” and that experience has shown such governments to be much more stable than coalition governments. Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy currently leads in opinion polls, with poll ratings between 32-37%. Syriza, with support ranging between 27-31%, introduced the proportional voting system and, if elected, says it would attempt to form a broad coalition government.
An unlikely partner for Syriza would be Yanis Varoufakis, the former Marxist finance minister who leads the small Mera25 party. Varoufakis has ruled out joining a coalition with Syriza. Right-wing Kyriakos Velopoulos’s Hellenic Solution party made it into parliament in 2019. Still, he has rejected the two main parties, calling them “unreliable.” The communist party, on the other hand, which polls at just 5-6%, has ruled out participating in a coalition or backing a minority government.
Despite being forced to borrow 256 billion euros from the International Monetary Fund and its Eurozone partners to balance its budget, Greece managed to do so in four years despite a quarter of its GDP being lost to recession. Half a million workers and a quarter of a million small enterprises collapsed, and behemoths like Viohalko, the country’s largest industrial group, shifted its headquarters abroad. Despite political upheaval Greece has reached a surplus in the first quarter of 2023 and is expecting to outperform the EU average in its return to AAA investment grade status. Half of the Greek workforce is made up of small companies and self-employed individuals, and though the government has been attempting to encourage mergers and farming co-operatives through tax breaks, many small businesses continue to struggle with Greece’s high energy inflation and dire bureaucracy.
Young Greeks are increasingly turning to smaller parties in the country's parliamentary election, questioning the effectiveness of the major parties and mainstream politics. MeRA25, founded by left-wing former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, has 4% support, raising their numbers to nine deputies since the 2019 election. In the 17-29 year old age group, it polled at 8.6%. According to Loukia Kotronaki of Athens' Panteion University, there is no evidence of "a general shift to the right among young voters". During a nationwide survey of political attitudes following the fatal train crash near Larissa in February, her team found that 75.4% of those surveyed mistrust the Greek government, with 88.5% mistrusting the political parties. Young Greeks call for "greater accountability and transparency" and are increasingly experiencing a "fundamental resignation regarding official and collective political paths".
Grief from Greece's worst-ever train crash looms large over the country's general election and highlights a "broken government and dysfunctional state", with opposition parties utilizing the catastrophe as evidence of current issues within Greek politics. The disaster killed three close relatives, just 20 years old, who were traveling together after a public holiday with their family. Failures were found during an investigation into the accident, with some relatives calling it a "state assassination of our children". Grievances concerning nepotism, clientelism, the high cost of living and press freedom could create a coalition government or a second vote in July.
House Republican leaders should have acted immediately to protect the voting system by voting to expel George Santos, the representative indicted for fraud, according to the New York Times. Santos deceived the voters who brought him to office, eroding trust in Congress and the electoral system, the newspaper argues. Rather than allowing a vote to remove Santos, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republican leaders pushed the issue to the House Ethics Committee, while they considered the potential loss of Santos's vote. An expediting and timely investigation and recommendation for expulsion instead of censure and concern would prove to the American people there are minimum ethical standards for Congress, the New York Times argues.
Young people born after the restoration of independence in Timor-Leste will be able to vote in the country's parliamentary election on 12 May for the first time. Approximately 15% of the first-time voters will reflect the median age of 21. Despite its thriving democracy, Timor-Leste remains one of Asia’s poorest countries, with many challenges including youth unemployment, rural poverty and infant mortality. By voting, the young generation will have a chance to engage in decisions about their future and the direction of the country. The older generation, who are the political elites, are still the focus of attention, yet are beginning to cast an eye to the future. Independence hero Xanana Gusmao, 76, has been accompanied on stage at campaign events by his 20-year-old son, who is being touted as a future politician. Despite a reverence for previous leaders, younger voters are believed to be very conscious of the need to build the future rather than dwell on the past, which should lead to a change in political dynamics in the country in the future.
Ontario’s Shaw Festival is doing the near impossible each season: putting on comedies that are 40, 100 or 300 years old. The four directors working at the venue this season explain why comedy is even harder now that sensitivity standards are rising so high that what was funny yesterday may not be funny tomorrow. The popularity of the works of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse illustrate this, with books being reissued in altered forms with content warnings, while sitcoms from this century have had episodes edited or removed from streaming. Certain stand-up comedians now under attack for new jokes, sometimes literally, who take on older material use different strategies to get chuckles. Shaw Festival director, Tim Carroll, for instance, has come up with a radical way of keeping things fresh for the classic 1730 French romantic comedy, The Game of Love and Chance, by throwing out the script entirely; his actors are instead learning the structure of Marivaux’s scenes, and will improvise in different styles each night, often taking different roles.
Politicians in Canada must unite to understand and deter foreign electoral interference, according to David Salvo, senior fellow and managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Writing in The Globe and Mail, he criticised the politicisation of the country’s response and a focus on whether the outcome of individual elections was affected, at the expense of wider measures to protect democratic institutions. He welcomed Canadian political parties’ moves to establish a foreign-influence transparency registry and a beneficial ownership registry to unmask hidden owners of companies.
Greece is holding a general election on Sunday, with a second vote expected by July if parties fail to agree a coalition. Although opinion polls place the ruling New Democracy party in the lead, a change to the electoral system means that it is likely to fall short of an absolute majority. The opposition Syriza party is trailing by 4-7 points. The election campaign has centred on creating jobs and raising the minimum wage, amid a cost of living crisis affecting the country.
Greeks are voting today in a general election that the polls suggest will be tight. The snap election was called by Prime Minister Kyriakos M It'sotakis after he lost his majority in parliament. He has been challenged by former PM Alexis Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party. The poll opens amid a cost of living crisis, rail disaster issues and a recent wiretapping scandal. Recent opinion polls put Mitsotakis and his center-right New Democracy party in the lead. Changes to the country's electoral system mean a second vote is likely.
Despite being rocked by scandal and the introduction of new electoral laws, Greece’s leading New Democracy party is still predicted to clinch Sunday’s poll, according to analysts. New Democracy has consistently outpaced its main rival, the leftwing Syriza party, by at least five points, recent polls have shown. New Democracy may not take power immediately since a coalition government is looking likely under electoral laws passed by the previous government. If no party impresses with their showing at the election, the party with the highest votes is given three days to form an alliance.
The mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, is battling allegations over what officials have described as “sweetheart deals" with two local businessmen. The allegations threaten to sink the career of a key politician behind the "levelling up" agenda in the North East of England. Criticism centres on how 90% of Europe’s biggest brownfield site, the derelict Teesside Steelworks, came to be managed by Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, leaving taxpayers with only a 10% stake. The two businessmen are also joint venture partners in the local airport, another flagship initiative for Houchen, though they have denied any wrongdoing. Until a cleanup costing up to £500m is completed, the entire site is effectively worthless. Current valuations ascribe it a notional value of only £1. Houchen's critics cite the lack of a procurement process in selecting the site's private partners. Officials deny the allegation.
Greece's centre-right New Democracy party has won 39.6% of the vote in national elections, giving it 158 seats in the 300 seat parliament. The party's leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will become Prime Minister. The incumbent Syriza party took 31.5% of the vote, giving it 86 seats. Mitsotakis said after he was declared the winner that he would restore "proudness and sovereignty" to Greece. Greece has been tackling a cost of living crisis and a failing economy. Two minority parties, the Communist KKE party and the far-right Greek Solution party, also crossed the 3% threshold required to gain entry to parliament.
The centre-right New Democracy party looks set to win Greece's elections, but with less than 50% of the vote, it will have to form a coalition government, according to an initial exit poll. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's party is predicted to gain 36%-40% of the vote, while predecessor Alexis Tsipras's left-leaning Syriza is expected to win 25%-29%. An alternative vote will take place on 7 July if neither party can secure a coalition. Greek experts have said the exit polls may be unreliable because of a high number of voters who refused to say which party they supported.
Greek conservatives were leading over the leftist Syriza in elections on Sunday, according to a joint exit poll by six polling agencies. The conservative New Democracy party was projected to win between 36-40% of the vote versus 25-29% for the leftist Syriza party, which governed the country in 2015-2019 during Greece's financial crisis. New Democracy was not predicted to win outright.
Greece's ruling centre-right party, New Democracy, has emerged as the clear victor in an election held on 21 May, despite falling short of an outright majority. A second election will likely be held in July, as socialist party Pasok has ruled out a coalition with New Democracy. Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to win a second term under a revised proportional voting system. Analysts predict that it is more likely for socialist defectors to join New Democracy in government if the party falls short of a majority than for a coalition to form with opposition parties.
