The United Kingdom will remain in the EU — for now, at least.

EU leaders, acting on a request from Prime Minister Theresa May, once again postponed the deadline by which the U.K. would be ejected from the bloc without the protection of a negotiated Withdrawal Agreement, this time setting the date for October 31.

Crucially, however, they granted Britain the flexibility to leave earlier — essentially as soon as the U.K. government can reach a deal among its own warring factions, and parliament ratifies the Withdrawal Agreement. That’s the 585-page treaty securing protections for citizens’ rights, a financial settlement, and the insurance policy for the Ireland border known as “the backstop.”

The delay of this Friday’s deadline — itself a postponement from the original date of March 29 — averts a potentially catastrophic no-deal departure that both sides had increasingly feared as a path toward mutual disaster.

The decision was reached after a more arduous, and longer than expected debate among EU27 leaders at a summit in Brussels that began Wednesday evening and stretched until 2 a.m. Thursday. While the leaders had agreed ahead of time that an extension was necessary, French President Emmanuel Macron made a fierce argument for only a short postponement, effectively siding with May who had requested a delay until June 30.

“This means an additional six months for the U.K.” — Donald Tusk, European Council president

Heavily outnumbered by other leaders, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron eventually relented. But he succeeded in reducing the extension to nearly half of the year-long delay that EU officials had envisioned going into their meeting.

“This means an additional six months for the U.K.,” European Council President Donald Tusk declared at a closing news conference. “During this time, the course of action will be entirely in the U.K.’s hands. It can still ratify the Withdrawal Agreement, in which case the extension will be terminated. It can also reconsider the whole Brexit strategy. That might lead to changes in the Political Declaration [setting out the future relationship], but not in the Withdrawal Agreement. Until the end of this period, the U.K, will also have the possibility to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit altogether.”

Tusk closed with a plea to “our British friends … please do not waste this time.”

For the U.K., the reprieve carries a potentially steep political price: Unless May pulls together a deal quickly, Britain must participate in next month’s European Parliament election. That sets the stage for a dramatic vote on May 23 that will serve as an electoral lightning rod for the highly-charged emotions that have divided the country since the June 2016 referendum.

That immediately amps up pressure on May to reach an accord with the opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. But Corbyn no longer faces the short-term threat of being blamed for a no-deal outcome, and may now be emboldened to torpedo the negotiations and press instead a new national election. Already, he has accused May of refusing to budge from the government’s red lines.

May blames MPs

Asked at a 2.44 a.m. news conference whether she thought she should apologize for again disappointing those who wanted the U.K. out of the EU as soon as possible, May put the blame firmly on parliament.

“Over the last three months I have voted three times to leave the European Union,” she said, barely attempting to hide her exasperation.

Rolling her eyes, she added: “If sufficient members of parliament had voted with me in January we would already be out of the European Union. We haven’t been able to get that majority in parliament.” She would work for that majority across party lines, she said, so that the U.K. could leave “as soon as possible.”

“That’s what I’m going to continue to work for,” May said.

While averting a crash-out, the delay may offer little solace to thousands of businesses and millions of citizens on edge about what Brexit will mean for their lives and livelihoods. Until there is agreement in Westminster, a no-deal scenario will remain a very real a possibility down the line.

For the EU, the extension was the choice of a lesser evil. Brexit will continue to pose a major distraction, and cast a shadow over the upcoming European Parliament election and the subsequent negotiations to form a new Commission and appoint a new roster of leaders. At the same time, it keeps alive the hope among some in the EU that Brexit will be undone and a U.K. departure will never come to pass.

Macron surprised many of his fellow leaders with the ferocity of his arguments. He was second to last to speak in the traditional tour de table and officials said that many leaders believed Macron intended to veto any extension that went beyond May’s request of June 30, such was the vehemence of his speech.

Macron bats for Brexiteers

After the meeting, Macron insisted that he had not backtracked but rather stuck to his principles and that he was also defending the democratic choice of British voters to leave the EU.

“The majority position was rather to give a very long extension but in my view it wasn’t logical and above all it was neither good for us nor for the British people,” he said.

“There were temptations to go very far in granting deadlines, and in my view it wasn’t about respecting the vote of the British people but rather to get them locked into membership,” Macron said.

That amounted to a stunning accusation of double-dealing by some of his fellow EU leaders who insisted that they were doing everything in their power to leave Britain in charge of its own fate. But it also reflected Macron’s own view of himself as a crusader for ambitious EU reforms that so far have failed to gain much traction and will not be helped by Britain’s lingering membership.

The final result was a classic EU compromise. A Halloween end date for a process that for many in the EU has become an increasingly terrifying horror show. The date also coincides with the end of the Juncker Commission’s mandate, meaning a fresh start for the EU’s new leadership.

May has said she intends for Britain to leave long before that date. Officials in Brussels who have watched the U.K. miss every Brexit deadline on offer said they will believe it when they see it.

It was clear that Merkel had emerged as a driving force to prevent a disorderly, no-deal departure by the U.K. and that she had been instrumental in countering Macron’s push for a much shorter extension.

“I think that also what she’s attempting is proper and correct, but she does not yet have a big ace up her sleeve, in my assessment” — Sebastian Kurz, Austrian chancellor

“We want an orderly exit, and that can be ensured by allowing for some more time,” Merkel said at the end of the long night’s proceedings. “For me it was clear that we, that Germany, would fight for an orderly exit — not because of British demands but for our own interest.”

EU leaders had also sought reassurances from May that Britain would continue to act in good faith, and not seek to sabotage any of the bloc’s decision-making in Brexit’s extra time. The decision by the EU27 leaders also included a provision mandating that the bloc “review progress” at its regular summit in June. Officials said that meant an informational update and not that leaders would take any new decision or that the U.K. might face any new deadline or mandate.

Despite taking the immediate heat out of Brexit, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was among the leaders who said they could not predict how the process would now play out.

“Theresa May very clearly once again described how her plan looks, what plan she’s pursuing,” Kurz told reporters. “I think that also what she’s attempting is proper and correct, but she does not yet have a big ace up her sleeve, in my assessment.”

Jacopo Barigazzi, Lili Bayer, Jack Blanchard, Eline Schaart, Paul Taylor and Zia Weise contributed reporting. 

Image:  Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Makassar, Indonesia – After opening the new subway system in Indonesia’s gridlocked capital, President Joko Widodo flew east to the Sulawesi city of Makassar in March to tell a crowd of hundreds about the benefits of infrastructure.

“You might have seen that Sulawesi has a wind power plant,” the former furniture salesman, who is seeking re-election in next week’s polls, told them.

“It’s the first in Indonesia. Do you think we can expand it?”

Soon after he took office in 2014, Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, declared that eastern Indonesia would receive the bulk of the country’s infrastructure development, citing the region’s investment potential.

A 145km railway, a massive port and dams were included on an ambitious list of infrastructure projects for the poorer region.

But the president’s words fell on deaf – and even resistant – ears in the most populous province of Indonesia outside Java and Sumatra.

Mardin Desewan, 37, was told two years ago that one of the planned dams would submerge his hometown of 2,000 people in the mountains. He did not oppose the dam knowing it could improve irrigation, prevent flooding and generate electricity. But then he heard how much compensation he would get.

“For one square metre of land, we would receive 3,500 rupiah ($0.25),” the father of two said from his home in the mountains outside South Sulawesi’s capital, Makassar. “That’s a single packet of instant noodles.”

For a hectare of land, his family would receive barely enough to survive for a year, not counting having to find a new home and job.

Mardin and a group of residents, assisted by Indonesia’s Legal Aid Institute, travelled to Jakarta last July to lobby officials. Some 56 families then tried to sue but the case failed in February. So, the residents protested on the streets of Makassar and then chained shut the gates of the project site in their village.

“If Jokowi doesn’t take a political stance on the side of the community in infrastructure projects,” said the group’s legal adviser Andi Maksim Akib. “They will definitely not give their votes to Jokowi.”

Kalla effect

Analysts and national voter surveys predict Widodo will win a second term, but land issues fuelled by infrastructure development, and a strong swing towards conservative Islam in a region that helped underpin Widodo’s 2014 victory, is expected eat into his vote.

Since campaigning began in September, voter surveys in South Sulawesi have never put Widodo above 50 percent, even as national figures have given him a slight majority.

For those who remember the province’s 71 percent backing five years ago, it’s a more-than dramatic drop in support and partly reflects the loss of current vice president Jusuf Kalla, who hails from Makassar, but cannot run again because he has served two terms.

“After independence [in 1945], there were some prominent people from the east who tried to bring eastern Indonesian issues to the national level,” said Muhammad Isran Ramli, an infrastructure researcher at Makassar’s Hasanuddin University.

“Most people and policies were focused on what happened in the west, and only with Kalla did the government begin focusing here.”

Widodo quickly made himself the hard-hat-wearing president ready to open dams and toll roads. Over the past seven months, he has put infrastructure at the heart of his re-election campaign. Prabowo Subianto, Widodo’s challenger, is also targeting infrastructure improvements.

South Sulawesi not only represents the provincial heart of infrastructure development beyond the most populated islands of Java and Sumatra, but is also the symbolic centre of Indonesia’s often-neglected eastern regions.

Fourteen percent of the country lives in the east of the country – scattered among islands from Bali to the border of Papua New Guinea. But more than half its villages are without electricity or telephone lines, according to government data.

“This is Jokowi’s political investment in eastern Indonesia,” said Emilianus Yakob Sese Tolo, who researches development in the east at the Politeknik St. Wilhelmus Bowwae in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara. “Forty-four percent of voters in eastern Indonesia came from Sulawesi. South Sulawesi itself contributed 20 percent of the voters [in the last election].”

Researchers agree Widodo’s plans have been largely successful: 19 ports, 10 airports, 17 dams, 40km in bridges, almost 3,500km in new roads, and more than three million repaired or new hectares of irrigated land among the projects completed across the archipelago.

But construction, almost always awarded to state-owned companies, has been fraught. While Widodo told the presidential debate in February there had been no land conflicts related to infrastructure during his first term, data from the Agrarian Reform Consortium, a farmer advocate NGO, showed at least 210 land conflicts connected to infrastructure between 2016 and 2018.

‘Can do better’

Even without conflicts in some cases, development has simply failed to live up to voters’ expectations.

In Tolo’s home province of East Nusa Tenggara, he says projects remain unfinished and rice field expansion is lackadaisical. In Maluku, road growth has been strong, Ramli said, but people really want ports, considering it is a province of thousands of islands and fishing families

The disappointment over Widodo has created an opening for Prabowo and conservative Islamic groups.

Disappointed that five years of promises have not delivered, voters in the east are looking for alternatives. Some have said they will abstain, others are drawn to Prabowo who has cultivated an image of an iron-fisted, nationalistic, business leader.

Additionally, Prabowo has courted the religious vote.

As the origin of several post-independent Islamist movements, South Sulawesi has historically leaned towards religiously grounded politics, said Dedi Dinarto, a research associate at Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“Very strong Islamic organisations that are very militant in the public, they try to convince the public that Prabowo is our next, very promising, president,” said Dinarto. “When you look at how the Islamic organisations try to convince the public about who an ideal leader is, they are inserting these conservative values.”

Tolo said respondents to his surveys in East Nusa Tenggara did not feel any difference between Widodo’s predecessors and Widodo himself, and many voters just want a change, even if they are unsure about what that might be.

They may also want to use the election as an opportunity to pressure Widodo into doing more.

“I think Jokowi has done his best, but of course he cannot succeed in all his infrastructure projects,” Tolo said, “That’s why we need to criticise Jokowi, so he can do much better.”