AA Edit | Winds Of Change Are Sweeping The World

There has been a significant shift in the global political landscape. The shackling of the US President Donald Trump in the midterms is the latest sign of this continuing shift which may have begun with youth movements in Nepal and Bangladesh and a popular uprising in Sri Lanka which came some years after the Arab Spring had shown the world was willing to seek change.

The Brazilians just preferred to keep faith with Lula and keep out far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. Their choice bucked the Latino American tide in which at least seven conservative and right-wing leaders had been chosen by the people. While Hungary’s Viktor Orban was shown the door after 16 years, long term Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia had to make way for a students’ movement that surprisingly grabbed the right to rule.

It appears Benjamin Netanyahu’s time may be up too if the latest indications about his chief rival in Gadi Eisenkot getting the first call to try and form the government are a guide to nations being swept away by this swelling tide of change. In Israel, it is not a shift to left wing populism since another brand of right-wing, security-oriented movement is being recognised with the downing of Benjamin Netanyahu whose waning popularity saw his Likud Party and coalition shorn of its majority.

Young people’s tilt to the left may be said to be rooted in material insecurity and general disillusionment with life, particularly their prospects that seem to have stalled, as much as what is seen as the failure of established politicians to deliver. The rising cost-of-living everywhere in the world is lending greater voice to the term affordability, which was the primary reason why Mr Trump’s Republicans faced such a rout in the polls.

The same reason can be attributed to the surprising victory of another person of Indian origin, a Tamil from Kerala, in Nithya Raman who has been elected mayor of Los Angeles and who beat the well-entrenched senior politician Karen Bass. A newcomer to the poll fray, she rode to victory on her opponent’s failure as she was absent from the scene when enormous fires flared around LA last year. The two most populous cities of the US — New York and Los Angeles — are in the hands of people of Indian origin now with Zohran Mamdani having led the progressive brigade into the office of mayor.

Youth power and the rekindled liking for democratic socialism which comes with the promise of redistribution of the wealth that is concentrated in the microscopic few in all societies now has been magnified by the young capturing the core of the online social media ecosystem. This new hyper power is also demonstrated in the power of protest that youth have brought with their enthusiastic messaging for change.

What the leaders of the US and Israel must learn from this is the fact that the cost-of-living and unaffordable urban housing which is leading to youth anxiety can be traced to the Iran war they foolishly started last February and whose deleterious aftereffects from the choking of a portion of global oil supply has exacerbated the situation.

The one favour that Mr Trump can do to himself and his beleaguered Republicans is to find an immediate way to negotiate the end to the Iran war so that the world may breathe easier. Much the same could be said of the Ukraine war too that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has been engaged in since Feb. 2022.

Setting the world right with a personal agenda might seem their biggest challenge to elderly men behind the trigger, but what they are blind to is the fact that the world is changing and it is people by a far younger age group with a life ahead of them and which they would like to live in peace to pursue happiness.