Submission statement: Memes and shade

Submission Statement: Ukraine has agreed to speed up Polish requests to exhume the remains of Poles killed during the second world war, a breakthrough that could ease one of the most sensitive disputes between the two allies. The exhumations could help soothe resentment in Poland over the spillover from Ukraine’s war with Russia, now in its fifth year. Almost 1mn Ukrainian refugees have settled in Poland, where farmers have been hit by large-scale imports of Ukrainian crops.

The comrades are in chaos in the Eastern Cape.

South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission has indicated that they reject the ANC excuse that a technical glitch left them unable to submit PR lists for the upcoming local elections. The IEC has said they will not reopen submissions for parties which missed the deadline.

That means there are 4 municipalities in the Eastern Cape where the ANC will not be able to mount a meaningful campaign.

These are not big municipalities. But winning in local government is how you get your foot in the door. The Democratic Alliance rose to become the second largest party by winning local government wards off of the National Party. Local government is the most visible, street level form of politics that voters actually understand: fixing streetlights, filling potholes and building community centers.

And now, it looks like there will be 4 municipalities in one of the ANC's strongholds where opposition parties like the DA, EFF and UDM will have a real shot at winning.

These parties will have the opportunity to win voters by delivering for them. It also means the regional ANC in those municipalities may collapse entirely. The organisers and branch leaders who would have gotten jobs as counsellors won't have anything.

This has been a big screw up by the ANC in the Eastern Cape, but it is not surprising since this region has been fighting fierce factional battles for months now.

South Africa's political scene continues to fragment. The trend right now is that in a few years the electoral map will be a kaleidoscope of coalition governments at every level.

Why is this relevant?

Brazil is in the middle of an electoral race, and it's Supreme Court is at war. This is absolutely huge.

submission statement: this is relevant to the sub because Russia is seriously aiming to test the collective strength of the NATO alliance, at a time when tensions within the alliance are running high, efforts which if successful would undermine liberal governments across Europe and the wider world

The House cleared a stopgap funding patch Tuesday to keep cash flowing to federal agencies until mid-December — preventing a government shutdown before Election Day and setting up two major policy battles at year’s end.

The 370-48 vote takes care of Speaker Mike Johnson’s last must-pass bill before the midterms. But swift passage comes at a cost for House GOP leaders, who are now managing blowback from Republicans angry about the contents of the funding patch Senate leaders crafted and President Donald Trump endorsed.

The legislation would fund the government beyond the October start of the new fiscal year, keeping federal agencies running on current budgets through Dec. 11. It also allows incumbents to campaign for reelection without the threat of a government shutdown feeding into political messaging about dysfunction in Washington.

“We want to get a longer-term deal. But at a minimum, let’s ensure that we can continue to see government properly funded and functioning,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday, noting the “chaos” and “uncertainty” of last year’s record-breaking shutdown.

Besides funding the government through mid-December, the bill would temporarily block the White House from finalizing a rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants.

It would also delay a ban set to kick in next month on intoxicating hemp products — to the dissatisfaction of House hard-liners, who threatened to vote Tuesday afternoon against teeing up debate on other bills this week and potentially block any significant House floor action between now and November.

Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the Freedom Caucus, was among the Republicans who voted no on the funding patch and said he would oppose moving forward with debate on other bills too. He scoffed at the last-minute pressure campaign from the White House and hemp industry leaders promising to regulate intoxicating products in lieu of proceeding with the ban lawmakers enacted last November.

“They had 10 months,” Harris said in an interview this week, knocking the Trump administration for not taking action sooner to crack down on the products currently sold in the U.S. without age restrictions or other regulations. “There are profiteers who are making money on basically the health of our children, and I object to that.”

Trump is expected to sign the funding patch, which the White House endorsed last month ahead of Senate passage — even though it blocks the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing its controversial rule to overhaul the federal grantmaking approval process.

That Senate-added language, as well as a prohibition on new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, drove significant support from House Democrats.

“This critically stops the OMB rule from proceeding forward that many of us have been pushing against,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, cheering other “incredibly helpful” additions to the bare-bones stopgap House Republicans initially passed earlier this summer.

Democrats also hope to regain control of the House and Senate in the November elections and increase their leverage in December negotiations on government funding for the rest of the fiscal year.

“That’s the huge intervening event,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said this week about the election. “And it will impact whatever comes after it, no matter what anybody thinks. So it’s not like we’ll go back and pick up exactly where we left off.”

The Oklahoma Republican traveled to Ukraine and other European countries last month with his counterpart across the aisle, top committee Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

The two top appropriators are motivated to strike a year-end deal to fund federal agencies with updated budgets, Cole said, rather than clearing another short stopgap or resorting to a lengthy patch that keeps programs on autopilot through next September

“We both are pretty adamant that we need to get these bills done before the end of the calendar year,” Cole said, adding that he and DeLauro will be “working really hard once we know who the players are on the other side” of Election Day.

State level housing reform is all the rage, but not all laws are created equal. and, naturally, the easiest politics make for the weakest policy.

SURABAYA, Indonesia -- Two recent opinion polls show that President Prabowo Subianto's approval ratings have plummeted, with one saying the West Java governor is significantly more popular -- raising questions about Indonesia's political landscape ahead of the 2029 elections.

A poll released on Wednesday by Tempo Data Science, the research unit of Tempo magazine, shows that Prabowo's approval rating dropped from 75% in December last year to 37% in August. The survey had 1,260 respondents from Indonesia's 38 provinces.

Khairul Anam, general manager of Tempo Data Science, attributed the declining public satisfaction mainly to negative perceptions of the economy. "The two main issues putting pressure on people's daily lives are the high prices of necessities and the limited job opportunities," he said.

The result came a month after pollster Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting (SMRC) reported that Prabowo's approval rating had sunk from 81% in November to 51% last month.

Saidiman Ahmad, a researcher and program manager at SMRC, said the president's popularity level followed the same downward trajectory as his flagship programs: free meals for children and opening village cooperatives. Between November last year and July, public satisfaction with the two programs almost halved to just 34% and 25%, respectively.

The two costly programs have sparked a wave of protests in multiple cities over the past year, including the latest one that turned violent late on Thursday in Jakarta, where thousands rallied outside parliament. They were also demonstrating against corruption, inflation and other issues.

SMRC asked respondents to choose their favorite for Indonesia's next leader from among 20 names. Only 14.5% chose Prabowo, while 35% picked Dedi Mulyadi, the governor of West Java. Prabowo's main rival in the 2024 election, Anies Baswedan, the former Jakarta governor, and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming, came third and fourth with around 8% each.

With only Prabowo and Mulyadi in contention, the latter prevailed among respondents with 59% over the former's 28%. The rest of the respondents were undecided.

"If a presidential election were to be held today in Indonesia, Prabowo would likely lose," Ahmad said. "The president's popularity has certainly taken a severe beating this year."

In SMRC's poll last November, Prabowo topped the multi-name chart with 34%, followed by Mulyadi with 19.7%.

Mulyadi, 55, is a politician with Prabowo's Gerindra party, which the president still chairs. Popularly known in Indonesia by his initials KDM, the governor of Indonesia's most populous province -- West Java is home to approximately 50 million people -- is often compared to former President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. Both are seen as populist figures coming from non-elite backgrounds.

Mulyadi's populist bent is fanned by a strong social media presence, with over 12 million followers on TikTok and 9 million subscribers on YouTube.

Rendy Pahrun Wadipalapa, a political scientist at the National Research and Innovation Agency, said Mulyadi is the main beneficiary of Prabowo's diminishing popularity, which presents a dilemma: "Gerindra and Prabowo are almost certainly watching this closely and will likely try to manage Dedi's exposure carefully."

Wadipalapa said Prabowo might decide not to run for re-election, clearing the way for Mulyadi, or try to contain the latter's rise by offering him the vice presidency. But the 74-year-old president has never indicated he will not seek another term. In a February speech, he challenged his critics to "a fight in 2029."

Ahmad said that with his rising popular appeal, Mulyadi might not be happy with the second best option, and might leave Gerindra because "other parties will naturally gravitate towards a popular candidate."

Indonesia has a fragmented political system in which 24 parties competed in the last elections, held simultaneously with the presidential vote in early 2024. Only eight parties met the parliamentary threshold to win seats in the House of Representatives.

The election laws previously required a party or a coalition of parties to command 20% of legislative seats, or 25% of popular votes in the previous legislative election, to be able to nominate a presidential candidate. The constitutional court abolished that clause last year.

Observers doubt Prabowo will run with Gibran as vice president again in 2029 given the evident fallout between the two, and with Gibran's father, the former president. The eldest son of Widodo, Gibran has largely been sidelined from Prabowo's programs since they took over national leadership in October 2024.

Widodo, whose backing of Prabowo was considered vital to his election, has reportedly grown apart from the president, who was his defense minister.

Constitutionally barred from running for a third term, Widodo is also pushing his other son into politics. In 2023 Kaesang Pangarep became chair of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), but it failed to garner the minimum 4% of votes required to win seats in parliament.

Widodo left his old party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), over disagreements on presidential candidates. PDI-P is currently the largest party in parliament and the only one outside Prabowo's coalition.

Instead, the former president last year announced he would throw his weight behind PSI. In June, he started a "political safari" on the party's behalf, starting in Lampung province, followed by a visit to East Nusa Tenggara last month.

PSI Deputy Chairman Andy Budiman said he was optimistic his party will make it into parliament in 2029, saying it is enjoying growing popularity for two reasons: the "Jokowi effect" and, at the former president's urging, "structural consolidation" to establish a presence in every village in Indonesia.

"Jokowi's decision to identify with PSI has undoubtedly raised the party's profile, enabling it to tap into new sources of popular support," Budiman told Nikkei Asia.

Johannes Nugroho is a contributing writer.