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Election cliffhanger captivates world, prompts fears for fate of U.S. democracy

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareThe world watched with a mixture of apprehension, dismay and fear on Wednesday as the United States struggled to extricate itself from a divisive presidential election and appeared to face a protracted legal battle.President Trump’s premature claim of victory and false allegations of voter fraud drew expressions of shock over the state of U.S. democracy, along with disparagement from U.S. adversaries.European media outlets questioned whether the United States was on the brink of collapse. China ridiculed the U.S. election as that of a “developing nation’s.” Germany’s defense minister warned of an “explosive situation,” even a “constitutional crisis.” A leading Brazilian newspaper prophesied that “more rounds of attacks on the foundations of democracy are guaranteed.”AdvertisementThe headlines abroad aren’t expected to quiet anytime soon. After before the votes were counted on election night, he spent much of Wednesday leveling allegations of electoral fraud without evidence. His campaign has since to determine which votes will count. Days of court battles and political uncertainty lie ahead. Many fear violence.“It highlights this fissure in America, and it troubles the parts of the world that would like to see American democracy succeed,” said Thomas Carothers, a senior official at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The image of American democracy has taken a series of body blows in the last few years, and this election probably only increases them.”Despite the uncertainty, Asian markets rose Thursday, with Tokyo’s Nikkei up more than 1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gaining almost 3 percent by early afternoon local time.That followed a good day on Wall Street. Some analysts said the gridlock on taxes and regulation in Washington that would come with a President Biden and a Republican Senate was actually buttressing stocks. “Equity markets have now decided they like the prospect of a ‘do nothing’ President,” Ray Attrill, head of FX Strategy at National Australia Bank, told Reuters.Countries that have long struggled with democracy have begun to see their own political woes reflected in the United States. “In Africa, that’s nothing new,” said Oliver Dickson, a radio broadcaster in Johannesburg. “Election rigging — essentially what Trump is doing — is a long-standing practice over here. When a democracy is being hijacked, only its institutions can rescue it.”AdvertisementThe democratic process in the United States has never been flawless; it has long been marred by problems with campaign finance, gerrymandering and toxic polarization. But never has an incumbent president been perceived as so pointedly trying to undermine the process itself. In rhetoric and action, President Trump has sought to .“It’s breaking apart the image of America,” said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House in London. “It’s puncturing that vision.”The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for his claims of electoral fraud and his calls to halt the vote in areas where it appeared to be turning against him.“Nobody — no politician, no elected official, nobody — should limit the people’s right to vote,” said Michael Georg Link, a senior official with the organization. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.”AdvertisementThe tumult in the United States is unfolding as democratic values around the globe are fraying. The Pew Research Center this year found mixed opinions about democratic ideals across 34 countries surveyed. Far fewer people in India and Israel said they believed freedom of speech was important than five years earlier. Freedom House reported in March that .Not only have authoritarian regimes in countries such as China and Russia become more entrenched, the Washington think tank found, but “establishment democracies” have backslid. The trend has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic as .“If the foundations of our democracy are threatened, it will have a detrimental effect for struggling democracies in other parts of the world,” said Sarah Repucci, the author of the Freedom House report. “People who are fighting for democracy in their own countries look to what’s happening in the United States, and it influences their sense of what’s possible. What happens here has an enormous influence on the fate of democracy abroad.”AdvertisementIn Brazil, where President Jair after mimicking many of Trump’s campaign tactics, political analysts said the U.S. election will likely convince strongman leaders that nationalist populism has enduring appeal and democratic norms can be swept aside without political cost.“Irrespective of who wins this thing, these results suggest that leaders worldwide who take their cues from Trump, including Bolsonaro, are now emboldened,” said Matias Spektor, a political scientist at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. “That the U.S. electorate has not given Trump a major rebut suggest the market for everything he embodies is alive and kicking.”Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador to the United States, tweeted that Biden would probably prevail, “but paradoxically, I can’t help to consider this election as a success for Trump. After so many scandals and polemics, after the COVID disaster, after the George Floyd death and its aftermath, and with major media against him, it’s not so bad.”AdvertisementStephen Bartholomeusz, a business columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote that Trump “is likely to remain a significant and destabilizing force in U.S. politics regardless of whether he continues to live in the White House, or is ejected.”In Europe, there was pervasive fear that the situation in the United States could deteriorate rapidly.“America looks into the abyss,” Spain’s El País said in a headline.Trump’s behavior was “common in authoritarian regimes,” France’s Le Monde editorialized.News outlets abroad focused on the dispute over the vote count in their Thursday editions. , a conservative Iranian newspaper, ran a picture of Trump below the words “They stole my votes,” and an image of Biden and the words “All votes must be counted.” Another Iranian newspaper, , ran photos of both candidates with the headline “Brawl.”AdvertisementOn Wednesday, daily new coronavirus cases in the United States for the first time. In New Zealand, where the government was re-elected in a landslide last month after an effective response to the pandemic, some wondered why the scale of the outbreak in America hadn’t doomed Trump’s chances.Trump had been guilty of a “chronic mishandling of the covid-19 pandemic,” wrote in an editorial, “but as with so many other aspects of this massively unpredictable year, it was hard to tell what role it played in the final result.”But for all of the angst among defenders of democratic norms, there was glee among right-wing Trump supporters. “It’s pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump and @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears,” .AdvertisementBolsonaro, who voiced his support for Trump repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the election, doubled down on Wednesday, even as some of the returns cast Trump’s chances in doubt. “You know my position; it is clear,” he said. “I have good politics with Trump, and I hope he will be reelected.”However, some hoped that a Biden win would mean renewed American embrace of multilateralism. After the Democratic candidate tweeted that although the United States had officially left the Paris climate accord on Wednesday, in “exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it," a former U.N. official said he hoped that was just the start of U.S. returning to international agreements.“The whole world" was waiting for the United States to exercise “global leadership worthy of a responsible, collaborative [and] humble world power,” Kul Chandra Gautam, former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General, wrote in response to Biden’s message.Few expressed hope on Wednesday that the global decline in democracy will be easily reversed.AdvertisementThe Trump administration has supported democratic efforts where it is politically beneficial, such as in Venezuela or Iran. But it was following the departure of President Evo Morales. It didn’t comment when , deployed the military to crack down on people flouting quarantine rules.The divisive presidential election, analysts said, could cement the notion that America as a country does not care as much about democracy — either at home or abroad — as it once claimed.“This has been terribly damaging to the cause of global democracy,” Carothers said. “It highlights that even high levels of education and wealth are not enough to guarantee democracy.”McCoy reported from Rio de Janeiro. Robyn Dixon and Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow, Siobhán O’Grady, Miriam Berger and Adam Taylor in Washington, Eva Dou in Seoul, Michael Birnbaum in Riga, Latvia, Rick Noack in Berlin, Shibani Mahtani and Theodora Yu in Hong Kong, Niha Masih and Taniya Dutta in New Delhi, Paul Schemm in Dubai, Lyric Li and Liu Yang in Beijing, Simon Denyer in Tokyo, Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv, Steve Hendrix in Jerusalem, Danielle Paquette in Dakar, Senegal, Kareem Fahim in Istanbul, Amanda Coletta in Toronto, Mary Beth Sheridan in Mexico City and Loveday Morris in Berlin contributed to this report.The latest: Graphic: Live updates: 25th Amendment: Election results under attack: CommentsGift ArticleTOP STORIESGoing GlobalEssential reporting and analysis from correspondents around the world.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareThe world watched with a mixture of apprehension, dismay and fear on Wednesday as the United States struggled to extricate itself from a divisive presidential election and appeared to face a protracted legal battle.President Trump’s premature claim of victory and false allegations of voter fraud drew expressions of shock over the state of U.S. democracy, along with disparagement from U.S. adversaries.European media outlets questioned whether the United States was on the brink of collapse. China ridiculed the U.S. election...

Election cliffhanger captivates world, prompts fears for fate of U.S. democracy

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