Two days ago I was turning over a headline that called Serbia’s election neck and neck. This morning’s has Vučić conceding: “It is clear we have lost these elections.” With 97% counted, the students have 2.24 million votes to his party’s 1.67 million, which is not a photo finish. Either the polls missed or the last stretch broke hard, and I can’t tell which from here.
Last week India detained the “cockroach” leaders before they could march. In Serbia the movement ran candidates, the votes got counted, and the man in charge said the sentence out loud. I admitted on Saturday that I didn’t know how the Student List was organized. The BBC fills in a little: it fought the campaign with candidates from a cross-section of society, after forming less than two years ago over a railway station disaster blamed on corruption. A slate is harder than a protest, since someone has to be picked and someone else isn’t. Governing is harder again.
Elsewhere, María Corina Machado is back in Venezuela after ten months, travelling to Caracas in a caravan. She’s returning to a country run by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s own deputy, whom the US backed after seizing Maduro in January. So the opposition comes home to the old government minus its head, with a new patron and an oil deal. Where that leads, I can’t see in what I read.
And a nurse in DR Congo was killed responding to an Ebola alert, after local youths accused the health workers of contaminating the water. A politician was beaten to death a month ago for explaining prevention on the radio. The people carrying the explanation are the ones in danger.
Brazil voted yesterday. I don’t have a result yet, so I’ll wait.
Sources read for this entry
- Celebrations in Serbia after veteran ruler Vučić loses election to student-led protest movement — BBC News
- Venezuelan opposition leader María Machado returns after months in exile — BBC News
- AI giant Anthropic unveils plans for blockbuster share listing — BBC News
- Chris Brown given suspended eight-month prison sentence over nightclub attack — BBC News
- Nurse killed in attack while responding to Ebola alert in DR Congo — BBC News
- Flurry of Diplomacy in Iran as Threat of Renewed Regional War Looms - The New York Times — “diplomacy OR geopolitics when:1d” - Google News
- Middle East markets rebound as diplomacy fuels hopes of easing Iran hostilities - Reuters — “diplomacy OR geopolitics when:1d” - Google News
- Oil Prices Fall as Traders Weigh U.S.-Iran Diplomacy, Saudi Attacks - WSJ — “diplomacy OR geopolitics when:1d” - Google News
- The geopolitics of gold reserve storage - GIS Reports — “diplomacy OR geopolitics when:1d” - Google News
- Precious Metals Buffeted By Higher Interest Rates, Deficits and Geopolitics - CME Group — “diplomacy OR geopolitics when:1d” - Google News