Monthly Archives: March 2012

Canada

Friday eye candy, Canada version

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So here’s the oft-hailed future savior of Canada’s Liberal Party Justin Trudeau (son of that Pierre Trudeau, the 1970s and 1980s Canadian prime minister).

He’s shown here at a charity boxing match with Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau from Thursday.  Apparently, Defence Minister Peter MacKay (the leader of the Progressive Conservative party at the time of its merger with Stephen Harper’s western Canada-based Canadian Alliance) totally wimped out of Trudeau’s challenge.

Stats: 40 years old, 6’2″ and 175 pounds.  Not bad for someone who places top among voters in the 2013 Liberal leadership race, even though he ruled out a run six months ago.

Certainly a better bod than Bob Rae, Stephen Harper or Thomas Mulcair (but let’s see what André Boisclair is up to these days).

 

 

Alberta, Canada

Alberta’s Tea Party makes a run at power

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As the federal Canadian political scene solidified with the New Democratic Party’s selection of a leader last Saturday, attention this week has turned west to Alberta, where Premier Alison Redford (above, top) has called a long-awaited general election for April 23.

Alberta, Canada’s fourth-largest by population and its richest by GDP per capital, is an odd province politically — it has been governed by a conservative party for over a century, going back to 1917, when the United Farmers of Alberta entered electoral politics and swept the Liberal Party out of office.  In 1935, the more radical Social Credit took power — and stayed there until 1971, largely under the premiership of Ernest Manning, who served from 1943 to 1968, governing Alberta with a strongly Christian and prairie populist political power base that had little do with the “social credit” theories from which the party’s name originated.  Thereafter, the Progressive Conservatives took power, where they’ve remained ever since; under the premiership of Ralph Klein from 1992 to 2006, Alberta generally prospered with a strong economy buoyed by oil wealth as well.

Klein’s successor, Ed Stelmach, continued the streak in the 2008 elections, in which the Progressive Conservatives won 72 of the 83 seats in Alberta’s legislative assembly (the Liberals took 9 and the NDP the other 2).

But times being rough with a financial crisis, and with 41 consecutive years in power tricky for any party to navigate (let alone in a society with open elections), Stelmach’s popularity waned and Redford succeeded him last October.

With the Liberals and NDP terminally unpopular in Canada’s most reliably conservative — culturally and economically — province, it seems unbelievable that it took so long for a new conservative alternative to emerge.

That alternative — the Wildrose Party, so named for the wild roses that grow in the prairie province, burst onto the scene in 2008 and started to lead polls for the first time in 2010 (at the same time a little certain conservative movement in the United States was making trouble on the far right as well).  Its popularity waned as the economy seemed to improve and as Redford emerged, but it has now gradually clawed back into an essential tie for first place under leader Danielle Smith (above, bottom). Continue reading Alberta’s Tea Party makes a run at power →

Mali

Malian presidential candidates adjust to new reality

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After last week’s coup in Mali, it has been assumed that the president election scheduled for April 29 has been, uh, indefinitely postponed.

Indeed, in less than a week, France has suspended its “cooperation” with Mali and the United States, the European Union, the African Development Bank and the World Bank have all cut off their aid to Mali, but the coup’s leaders have declared a new constitution and promised fair elections in due course, in which none of the coup actors would participate.  Current president, Amadou Toumani Touré, who has been president for a decade (and who is known simply as “ATT”) and was set to step down after April’s election after a decade in office, and who had not been heard from or seen since the coup, stated yesterday he was unharmed, and he called for a quick solution to the standoff:

“I am free in my country,” he said in his first public comments since his removal last week.

“The most important thing is not about my well-being. I am two months to the end of my mandate. I think the most important thing today… is to find a way out of the crisis.”

The coup, led by Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo under the banner of the Comité national pour le redressement de la démocratie et la restauration de la démocratie et la restauration de l’état (“CNRDRE”) ousted ATT on the basis that the current government was not doing enough to stop Tuareg rebels who have since January been agitating in the sparse desert north of the country, which is culturally closer to the Libyan desert tribes than to the majority of the Malian population in the south.

Yeah Samaké, a candidate in that election who has received significant press in the United States as a BYU-trained Mormon candidate in a heavily Muslim country and who may or may not have been a frontrunner in advance of the scheduled election, weighed in on last week’s coup in an interview with Public Radio International.

Samaké stressed that he opposed the action and recounted his firsthand account of last Wednesday’s coup:

I was right in front of the radio station when they attacked the ORTM, the national televisions. We found ourselves surprised by militaries with gunfires, so there’s a light that clicked in my head, ‘This is likely to be a coup d’etat.’

Samaké added that the presidential candidates have formed a united front against the coup and meet daily to discuss strategy.

The coup leaders had apparently arrested and imprisoned another former prime minister and presidential candidate, Modibo Sidibé, but have since released him, although not without noting that Sidibé seemed to be predestined as ATT’s favorite to succeed him: Continue reading Malian presidential candidates adjust to new reality →

Georgia

Saakashvili still in command ahead of autumn vote

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As Russia appears to settle down from its presidential election and brief moment of popular tumult, a poll released today shows that Mikheil Saakashvili’s National Movement would win parliamentary elections, scheduled for October of this year, although he may not exactly be resting comfortably with the news.

Despite his National Movement’s 45% support to just 10% for the latest opposition coalition, the opposition is being funded by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the wealthiest man in Georgia, who gave a fiery interview to Der Spiegel today with some incredibly harsh words for Saakashvili:

America has chosen Georgia as a junior partner. The United States believes that Saakashvili is creating a democratic Georgia, but these are merely facades. I want to show the Americans his true face. Saakashvili is pulling the wool over their eyes.

But I would like to ask the West to take a look at the real situation in our country and stop being fooled by Saakashvili. Europe and America should judge Georgia’s leadership on the basis of their actions, not just their words and promises. Otherwise Saakashvili will transform Georgia into a dictatorship.

Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia and has, until recently, kept a low profile in the media and in politics in Georgia, as well described in this 2010 Prospect Magazine profile.  Continue reading Saakashvili still in command ahead of autumn vote →

Ireland

Irish referendum to be held May 31

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Mark your calendars: the Irish referendum on the European Union fiscal compact will take place on May 31.

If the Merkel-led austerity doesn’t take any hits following the French presidential election or the Greek parliamentary elections, it will still face the gauntlet of a feisty Irish electorate that might not be too keen on institutionalizing budgetary limits into the fabric of the EU, although the threats lurking behind any “No” vote — no further access to EU bailout money and higher interest rates — might well be more disastrous.

 

Canada

Mulcair emerges as NDP leader

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Thomas Mulcair won the leadership of the New Democratic Party Saturday night — giving Canada an Opposition Leader for really the first time since the 2011 general election. 

That general election, you may or may not know, scrambled Canadian federal politics, not so much by giving the Conservative Party, so resurgent under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and so much closer to the American right than the British right in its back-from-the-dead revival, an outright parliamentary majority, but rather in reducing the long-standing Liberal Party to just 34 of the 308 seats in Canada’s Parliament and becoming the Official Opposition on the back of a popularity wave that started, of all places, in Quebec.  Continue reading Mulcair emerges as NDP leader →

Senegal

Sall wins Senegalese presidency; Wade concedes defeat

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Macky Sall has won Senegal’s presidential race, and incumbent Abdoulaye Wade has conceded defeat, paving the way for the second peaceful transfer of power in Senegal in 12 years.

In contrast to the tense — and sometimes violent — days leading up to the first round of the Senegalese vote, the days leading up to the runoff were relatively peaceful as opposition to Wade coalesced around Sall, his former prime minister.

As votes came in Sunday, it became clear that Wade would not muster enough support to win — Wade won the first round with 34.8%, but it appeared that Sall would improve on his second-place 26.6% by consolidating virtually all of the non-Wade voters in the runoff.

A telling headline in Senegal’s Dakar-based Le Quotidien simply proclaimed, “Goodbye Wade!” Continue reading Sall wins Senegalese presidency; Wade concedes defeat →

China, Hong Kong

Leung wins in Hong Kong

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After one of the most raucous campaigns in Hong Kong’s — or China’s — history, Leung Chun-ying has emerged as the victor in Hong Kong’s election for a new chief executive.

Leung won 689 votes from the 1,200-member Elections Committee to just 285 votes for Henry Tang and 76 for pro-democracy candidate Albert Ho:

The race had become unexpectedly chaotic over the past months — the initial frontrunner Tang was plagued first by infidelity accusations and then by more serious scandals about illegal construction of a basement in his home — culminating in a media frenzy outside his Hong Kong building.  Tang was also almost certainly hurt by other corruption charges that recently emerged the outgoing chief executive Donald Tsang, in whose administration Tang had played key roles.

Although both Tang and Leung were seen as sufficiently pro-Beijing, Tang’s missteps and scandals made him wildly unpopular among the Hong Kong populace at large, with Leung leading most preference polls during the campaign.

Looking forward, perhaps the most important lesson of the race is that Hong Kong –and China — can withstand the sometimes messy process of popular democracy and the media coverage that accompanies it.

China has indicated it will permit a direct election in the 2017 chief executive race — if it follows through with that promise, PRC officials can look to the 2012 race as a promising precedent on the road to full democracy for the special administrative region.  Beijing’s dexterity in shifting its support, however subtle, from Tang to Leung, demonstrates that it would have been able to recognize with equal grace a popular vote resulting in Leung’s election as well.  More strident voices — like those of the Democracy Party and Albert Ho — have been met with damp enthusiasm from Hong Kong residents and elites alike, who are pragmatic in realizing that the chief executive must be able to work with, and not against, China’s leadership.

Continue reading Leung wins in Hong Kong →

Australia

Labor routed in Queensland

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As predicted, the Labor government in the Australian state of Queensland fell in Saturday’s elections — the rout was so bad that outgoing premier Anna Bligh announced she would resign from parliament.

The Liberal National Party won Saturday’s election with 49.5% of the vote to Labor’s 26.9%, as LNP leader Campbell Newman was set to be sworn in as Queensland’s next premier in the first non-Labor government in that state since 1998.  The LNP will take 78 of the Legislative Assembly’s 89 seats to just seven seats for Labor.  The Australian Party, contesting its first election, will take two seats on 11.6% of the vote.

After the vote, Bligh announced she would step down, arguing that her presence in parliament would impede Labor’s efforts to start building its way back toward power — or even toward official status as a political party (it fell short of the 10-seat requirement for official recognition).

Although the race was fought and won on mostly state issues, the rout cannot be incredibly comforting to the federal Labor Party or to Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, who left for a trade summit in South Korea this weekend without commenting on the vote.  The 16% swing against Labor is exactly the same swing that Labor suffered a year ago in the New South Wales election.

Polls showed that the federal Labor Party is in poor shape in Queensland heading into the next federal election — so much so that deputy prime minister Wayne Swan could lose reelection — former Queensland premier Peter Beattie minced no words:

“We have to rebuild or the Labor Party can lose the next federal election in Queensland alone,” he said.

“We have to sell what the Labor Party’s done or we will face a similar wipeout here.”

The vote came less than a month after a divisive leadership election between Gillard and former prime minister — and Queenslander — Kevin Rudd.

Notwithstanding the state issues that drove the Queensland election, a federal Labor civil war did no favors for Bligh and Queensland Labor.

Gillard has worked hard to turn the page on the divisive leadership contest — her government passed a landmark mining tax last week — but will have to work even harder to reverse the narrative of a government in decline.  With up to 20 months before the next general election, Gillard has at least some time, but it’s looking increasingly like her goal will be not to win the next election, but rather to avoid a landslide loss of the kind experienced in NSW and Queensland.

Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Senegal

A big weekend for world politics

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It’s a busy weekend for world politics!

Tomorrow (March 24) is a big day for anglosphere politics:

  • Canada’s New Democratic Party holds its leadership election to replace the late Jack Layton, who led the NDP in 2011 to defeat the Liberal Party to become Canada’s Official Opposition.
  • The Australian state of Queensland holds elections, where longtime Labor Party domination (since 1996) will likely come to an end in a key test for both former Labor prime minister (and Queensland native) Kevin Rudd and Labor current prime minister Julie Gillard in the wake of their Labor Party leadership showdown.

On Sunday (March 25), two more elections of note:

  • Senegal goes to the polls in a runoff in the presidential election, where former prime minister seems poised to overtake his one-time mentor, incumbent president Abdoulaye Wade.  Read Suffragio’s coverage of the election, including the leadup to the first round, here.
  • The 1,200-member Elections Committee meets to choose Hong Kong’s new chief executive, which has turned into a fight between Beijing favorite Leung Chun-ying and tycoon developer favorite Henry Tang (the scandal-plagued former Beijing favorite). Read Suffragio’s coverage here.

Russia

Next steps for the Russian opposition?

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In the wake of Vladimir Putin’s outsized 64% win in the first round of the Russian presidential election earlier this month, the initial protests against likely fraud — and fraud in December’s legislative elections — have fizzled as Putin and the Russian government quickly made clear they had little appetite for too much protest, deploying a near-military police presence throughout Moscow.

In the subsequent weeks, however, third-place finisher billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov (pictured above, middle) has made good on his promise to keep up the pressure for a more democratic Russia — and appears to be teaming with former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin (pictured above, at top) in that effort, leading some amount of credibility to his efforts.

Prokhorov’s campaign was greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism; Prokhorov had previously been on fairly good terms with the Kremlin and his was one of very few candidacies permitted to proceed (unlike longtime liberal reformer Grigory Yavlinksy, who was alleged not to have gathered up enough signatures in the runup to the presidential vote).  Since the election, Prokhorov has also ruled out serving in any future Putin cabinet as well.

Kudrin resigned as finance minister last September over a fight with President Dmitry Medvedev over budget issues, having previously served in the role since 2000.  Kudrin presided over the economic boom that lifted Russia out of the dire economic conditions of the 1990s.  Indeed, notwithstanding the turbulence of the financial crisis in 2008 and onwards, Russia today remains in much better economic condition than in the 1990s in no small part due to Kudrin’s stewardship.  In his 11 years as finance minister, Kudrin prioritized the repayment of Russian’s significant foreign debt accumulated in the 1990s and steered wealth from the oil boom of the mid-2000s into a stabilization fund for Russia.  At a time when Russia became politically more ostracized from the United States and Europe, and as the Putin-Medvedev regime became disturbingly less tolerant of dissent and less respectful of democratic norms and freedoms, Kudrin’s prudence as finance minister won plaudits from global investors.

Since his resignation, Kudrin has expressed enthusiasm in working with Yavlinsky (picture above, at bottom) to consolidate the liberal movement in Russia, supported the protest movement in the wake of December parliamentary elections and established a fund to promote democratic reforms in Russia.

Prokhorov, who owes his fortune to the sale of his share in Russia’s largest nickel mining operation and who owns the New Jersey Nets, could bring a lot of financial firepower to the Kudrin effort and a potentially young, energetic and popular face to the liberal movement — he finished second to Putin in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The troika of Kudrin, Yavlinsky and Prokhorov would be perhaps the strongest pro-democracy front in Russia’s post-Soviet history and would present a center-right opposition against both Putin’s siloviki state of former military and security officers and the dwindling leftist movement led by the Communist Party (its perennial presidential candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, finished second and attracted almost 20% of voters). Continue reading Next steps for the Russian opposition? →

Venezuela

Venezuelan presidential race a toss-up

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The latest poll from Consultores 21, a well-respected Venezuelan poll, released today and taken from March 3 through March 13, shows  Venezuela’s presidential race fairly well tied, as current president Hugo Chávez takes 46% and his challenger Henrique Capriles takes 45%.

The election won’t be held until October, but Capriles provides a unique challenge — in his anti-crime, centrist message to voters, in the unity of the opposition to Chávez, and in the youthful and energetic contrast that the Miranda state governor provides against the cancer-striken president, who’s led Venezuela for the past 13 years.

This will be one to watch.

 

China, Hong Kong

The wolf closes in on the pig in HK race

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It’s already midday Friday in Hong Kong, and so we’re nearly through the last business day prior to the election for Hong Kong’s third chief executive.

As the weekend approaches, there are signs that upstart candidate and poll favorite Leung Chun-ying may be outpacing former favorite, the scandal-plagued Henry Tang.

There were previous signs that the PRC leadership had begun to move towards Leung — both Leung and Tang are pro-Beijing — but those signs have apparently become unmistakable in the leadup to Sunday’s vote:

Liu Yandong, a member of China’s decision-making Politburo with key responsibility over Hong Kong, visited the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen this week to lobby election committee members for Leung, according to media reports.

“It is definitely a fact that the China Liaison Office is canvassing and pulling votes for C.Y. Leung,” said a member of the election committee. A media relations officer at the office denied it was backing one candidate over another.

Meanwhile, although it is clear that much of Hong Kong’s development and real estate aristocracy remain in favor of Tang, making it a certainty that the race will not be a runaway victory for either candidate, other blocs that comprise the 1200-member Elections Committee have begun to show their hands — largely in favor of Leung:

Leung, now widely seen as Beijing’s preferred choice, is apparently still short of the 601 minimum votes needed for an outright win, after securing only 510 to 590 votes by late yesterday – many at the expense of chief rival Henry Tang Ying-yen – according to the latest count by theSouth China Morning Post…. The number of votes pledged to Leung could rise by Sunday if members in subsectors like engineering and accounting, many of whom have yet to make their intentions public, back Leung, the former Executive Council convenor, who last month had 305 votes pledged.

Furthermore, a bundle of 60 votes comprised of representatives from the Federation of Trade Unions will be pledged to Leung, it was announced Friday. That alone represents 10% of the votes Leung will need to win an outright victory — one candidate much achieve a full majority of the Elections Committee in order to avoid a new vote in May. Continue reading The wolf closes in on the pig in HK race →

France

‘It is difficult to imagine François Hollande acting like him. That is probably unfair but that’s the way it is’

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In my post last night, I argued that the Toulouse shootings could harm French president Nicolas Sarkozy because it could (i) focus attention on the inability of French security services to apprehend Mohammed Merah after numerous warnings and after he committed two shooting rampages and (ii) force Sarkozy to mute his rhetoric on immigration, leaving the stage to more extreme voices like Front national candidate Marine Le Pen to capitalize on voter anger about the shootings.

I still believe that’s true — and we’ll know in two or three weeks when the politics of the tragic shooting have more fully played out.

And yet… this sentence from a superb summary in The Financial Times rings very, very true:

“This will definitely reinforce his strengths but it will also reinforce the weakness of his counterparty,” said one close associate of the president. “It is difficult to imagine François Hollande acting like him. That is probably unfair  but that’s the way it is.”

It’s been quite clear that Sarkozy has a much wider range of political skills than Hollande, and there’s a certain advantage to being able to project a message of unity and calm as the sitting head of state.