• Czech Republic Re-elects Milos Zeman, Populist Leader and Foe of Migrants
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[QUOTE]PRAGUE — After an election campaign centered on questions of civility in politics and the Czech Republic’s place in Europe, voters decided on Saturday to stick with President Milos Zeman and his often-caustic brand of populism that has stoked resentment toward Muslim immigrants and ruptured the country’s relationship with its allies to the west. His opponent, Jiri Drahos, a political novice whose views were not well known, sought to present himself as an antidote to what he characterized as Mr. Zeman’s bitter and divisive leadership. In recent years, Mr. Zeman, 73, has strengthened the country’s ties with Russia and has courted China. Mr. Drahos, 68, offered a firm commitment not just to the country’s membership in the European Union, but also to the bloc’s values. In rejecting his vision, the country was poised to continue in the same euroskeptic direction as its neighbors [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/world/europe/eu-gives-hungary-a-month-to-adopt-its-democratic-norms.html"]Hungary[/URL], Poland and [URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/europe/europe-neo-fascist-revival-slovakia.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSlovakia&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection"]Slovakia[/URL]. With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, the state-owned Czech News Agency declared Mr. Zeman the winner with 51.4 percent of the votes (or 2.8 million), compared with Mr. Drahos’s 48.6 percent (2.7 million). “The Russians could not be happier,” said Michal Koran, an analyst at the Aspen Institute, a think tank based in Prague, and the founder of the Global Arena Research Institute, which uses economic data to help understand political trends.[/QUOTE] [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/world/europe/czech-election-milos-zeman.html]New York Times[/url]
Another close election with a horrible outcome.
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