Monthly Archives: September 2012

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: September 14

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The policy differences that would need to be bridged in any VVD-Labour coalition in the Netherlands following Wednesday’s election.

Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh passes reforms to ease foreign investment in India’s retail and aviation sectors.

Catching up with Hamdeen Sabahi’s leftist/nationalist movement in Egypt.

Moon Jae-in is set to win the presidential nomination on Sunday of the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’) in South Korea; but whither Ahn Cheol-soo?

London mayor Boris Johnson is now the most respected politician in the UK.

A Spiegel interview with Philipp Rösler, Germany’s economy minister on his Vietnamese roots.

Allies and opponents alike are lining up against the potential reelection of president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina.

Will October be too late for Greece?

U.S. president Barack Obama tells Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his ‘red line’ is Iran’s acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Senegal’s legislature votes to abolish its senate.

 

Egypt

Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle

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Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi today in Brussels made his most detailed comments yet on the Sept. 11 protests/attacks that took place at the U.S. embassy in Cairo (and the more deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in Libya):

“Muslims and Christians in Egypt are equal citizens and have the same rights… We are cautious about those principles and human values, also respecting visitors and respecting tourists… and respecting and protecting diplomatic delegations and private and public properties, and not attacking them.

“Freedom, and ensuring safety of self, and protecting this freedom and people and preserving property is the responsibility of the Egyptian nation.”

He continued: “The Egyptian nation is capable now of protecting people’s opinions and allowing them breathing room, as well as protecting diplomatic delegations and all foreigners, visitors, tourists, embassies and consulates in Egypt.”

“I see in Egypt and the Arab and Islamic world a severe anger toward the violations made by a very small number of individuals. They have insulted the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. We stand very strongly against this. We don’t agree with or approve this, and we stand against anyone who tries to raise such false slogans and create these disturbances, tension and hatred between populations.”

“Those [people] are not accepted, not by people in Egypt nor other Arab and Islamic countries, nor by their own people. I affirm that the American people reject this and I’ve called on them to declare their rejection of them, at the same time with our rejection of those bad practices that bring harm and not benefit.”

Got all that?  To me, those sound like the words of a president terrified at the thought of losing any side over this week’s crisis — and the sides are too numerous to count.

At home, he certainly can’t be seen as standing weak in defense of Islam, but he also can’t be seen in the United States as condoning violent attacks on the U.S. embassy.

It’s hard to believe that Morsi has been in office for only about 10 weeks — he won (narrowly) Egypt’s presidential runoff on June 24 against former air force commander and Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.

Remember, too, that it’s been just six months since Morsi has appointed his prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and less than a month since Morsi pulled off his more-or-less successful political coup in retiring the military’s chief, Hussein Tantawi, who had served as Egypt’s defense minister since 1991, thereby making Morsi the indisputable head of state.

It’s clear that the U.S. president Barack Obama is none too pleased with Morsi’s reticence in condemning the attacks, especially given the unqualified condemnation offered up across the board by Libya’s political elite yesterday.  The U.S. administration, with Obama up for reelection within 60 days, might be justifiably short on patience with the Middle East these days, given the dual crises in Libya and Egypt following the embassy riots, and an Israeli prime minister who is publicly attacking the Obama administration at every turn over Iran’s nuclear weapons program (and despite Morsi’s visit to Tehran, the first of an Egyptian leader since the 1979 Iranian revolution, there’s no love lost in Cairo for Iran).

Above all, Morsi was set to meet with Obama in Washington in October — if that meeting still happens, you better believe it’s going to be incredibly tense.  U.S. public opinion has now sharply condemned Morsi, and even the Cairo embassy has taken to snarking at the Muslim Brotherhood via Twitter for talking out of both sides of its mouth (one Arabic, the other English).

Morsi cannot lose the United States and the United States naturally wants to give him the benefit of the doubt — despite the Obama administration’s unease with an Islamist president, Morsi was elected democratically, and the U.S. will want to see the positive outcome of the Arab Spring that it so vociferously trumpeted since the early days of the protests in Tahrir Square back in February 2011.  So it’s still in the best interests of the United States to maintain a constructive relationship with Egypt.  But Morsi needs U.S. support even more — not just in luring tourists, but in encouraging the foreign investment necessary to revitalize a stagnated, bloated and state-heavy economy, including a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Foundation. Continue reading Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: September 13

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Québec liberals have a new interim party leader in Jean-Marc Fournier.

@USEmbassyCairo snarks the Muslim Brotherhood on Twitter for talking out of both sides of its mouth (one Arabic, one English).

Juan Cristóbal Nagel at Caracas Chronicles does not care for Venezuelan presidential candidate Henrique Capriles’s pandering on continuing (and expanding) the Misiones social programs of president Hugo Chávez.

David Remnick’s home-run piece on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cold war with U.S. president Barack Obama.

The Diplomat on China’s “one country, two systems” and why it might be collapsing.

The Economist‘s Banyan blog pans Rahul Gandhi.

Henk Kamp, the current social affairs minister, will lead the cabinet formation process in the Netherlands following yesterday’s election.

Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping resurfaces after a 13-day absence.

 

The Netherlands

Rutte’s VVD edges out Samsom’s Labour as both gain in Dutch election

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Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte looked more likely than not to continue as prime minister of the Netherlands Tuesday night after his party, the free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) won the largest share of the vote in the Dutch election, with 98% of the votes counted.

The VVD won 26.6% of the vote, entitling it to 41 seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, an increase of 10 seats over the 2010 election.

It was followed very closely by the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), with 24.8%, which entitles it to 39 seats, a nine-seat increase from 2010 under the incredibly strong performance of Labour leader Diederik Samsom, a former Greenpeace activist who took over the party’s leadership only in March 2012 and spent much of the past year trailing the more staunchly leftist Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) of Emile Roemer.

All things being equal, Rutte and Samsom are the clear winners of the election.  Rutte will now be able to attempt to form a government with a credible mandate for bringing the Dutch budget within 3% of Dutch GDP — his prior government fell in April of this year when Geert Wilders, the leader of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), refused to support further budget cuts.

Samsom is nearly as much a winner as Rutte, though.  His polished performance in the various Dutch leaders debates (in contrast to Roemer’s often bumbling performances)  convinced Dutch voters that he possesses sufficient poise to be prime minister.  Samsom, a more leftist leader of the Labour Party as compared to his predecessor, former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, offered essentially the same anti-austerity option as Roemer, but without the anti-Europe sentiment of a Roemer-led government.  Even if he remains in the opposition, he can become the chief voice against Rutte’s budget cuts during the next government and work to build upon his party’s gains from today’s election.

The Socialists finished far behind with 9.7% and 15 seats — unchanged from 2010, but a huge disappointment after polls showed a gain of potentially 35 seats just a few weeks ago.

The Socialists, in fact, finished just behind Wilders’s anti-immigration, anti-Europe PVV — with 10.1% and also just 15 seats, it’s a nine-seat drop from the 2010 election, a huge disappointment for Wilders and a success for those who favor an approach of integrating Muslims into Dutch culture rather than excluding them.  Essentially, voters seemed to blame Wilders for dragging them back to the polls just two years after the last election — and furthermore, the essentially pro-European Dutch did not seem to take to Wilders’s contrived and virulent campaign to bring the Dutch guilder back and pull the Netherlands out of the eurozone.  Wilders never found the same resonance over Europe in 2012 that he obvious found over Muslim immigration in 2010.

Rutte’s coalition partners, the once-dominant but now-atrophied Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) won just 8.5% and 13 seats, a drop of eight seats from 2010.  The progressive / centrist Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) won 7.9% and 12 seats.

Also returning to the Tweede Kamer were the center-left, Christian Democratic ChristenUnie (CU, Christian Union) with 3.1% and five seats, the ecologist GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft) with 2.3% and three seats, the Calvinist, ‘testimonial’ Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP, the Reformed Political Party) with 2.1% and three seats, and finally, both of the newly-formed Labour spinoff 50PLUS and the animal welfare advocate Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD, Party for the Animals), each with 1.9% and two seats.

As soon as tomorrow, cabinet formation talks are expected to begin — and for the first time, the Dutch parliament will take the lead in exploring potential coalitions (instead of the Dutch monarch, Queen Beatrix).  Those talks typically take up to three months, but can take longer — the 2010 government was formed after four months of negotiations.

Given the result, it looks like three coalitions are possible: Continue reading Rutte’s VVD edges out Samsom’s Labour as both gain in Dutch election →

The Netherlands

Dutch election today; UPDATE: VVD, Labour tied for first place

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UPDATE (6 pm ET): Results are coming in slowly (see here for real-time results).  Some exit polls are now showing the VVD could win 44 seats.  If so, I think it’s possible for the VVD to form a majority government without Labour — they’d need the CDA, Democrats 66 and several of the smaller parties, including the Greens.  But it’s *just* barely doable.  If Rutte could pull it off, it would be quite an accomplishment, and it would give the Netherlands a much more stable government than it’s had since 2010, although maybe not an ironclad government through 2016.  Samsom would remain in the opposition, and could build on his very strong performance in advance of the next election.

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UPDATE (3:30 pm ET): The first exit poll is out, showing the free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) and the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party) essentially tied for first place.  The Ipsos projection has the VVD of prime minister Mark Rutte with 41 seats and the Labour Party of Diederik Samsom with 40 seats.

The Soalistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) wins 15 (as many as they won in 2010), but a sharp fall from polls that showed the Socialists leading the election less than a month ago.  Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration, anti-Europe party, the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), will fall from 24 seats to just 13, and the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), fall from 21 to 13 seats.

If the projection holds, I think Labour is likely headed into government, one way or another.  With the collapse in support for the Socialists, it seems more likely than not that Samsom and Rutte will be forced to negotiate a so-called ‘purple’ coalition together, although an anti-austerity coalition could not be ruled out — the result now is too close, however, to know if Labour will win more seats, thereby making Samsom the likelier candidate to become the next Dutch prime minister.

It will have been an incredibly disappointing night for Wilders — who many consider a bit of a demagogue.  His problems are three-fold: (i) voters blame the PVV for early elections (with a campaign that interrupted holiday season!), (ii) Wilders’s attempt to turn his populist formula from anti-Islam to anti-Europe was clunky and obvious and insincere, and (iii) Dutch voters just aren’t anti-Europe to the degree Wilders was arguing — Netherlands was a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Commission, after all!

It’s nearly as bad a night for Emile Roemer, who dropped like a stone after Samsom impressed voters in the debates and Roemer seemed to flail.  Voters realized that Samsom, a relatively leftist leader of the Labour Party, was close enough on the substance of budget austerity to Roemer, but with the poise of a potential prime minister and sufficiently pro-Europe not to scare Berlin and Brussels.  Samsom seemed to offer the same message but in a package that wouldn’t embarrass the Netherlands on the international stage.

It’s also a good night for stability — it’s the first time in nearly a decade that two parties would hold over 40 seats each in the Tweede Kamer.  It looks like, even in the closing days of the campaign, voters moved tactically to the VVD and to Labour, and away from the smaller parties — that bodes well for stability over the next four years, if Rutte and Samsom or Samsom and others can agree a credible coalition program.

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Dutch voters are at the polls today to select the 150 members (by proportional representation) to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament. 

Follow all of Suffragio‘s coverage leading up to the election here.

 

Libya

Who is Mohamed al-Magariaf?

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Today’s U.S. — and world — media are likely to be focused on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the resulting deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel there, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. 

That’s crazy, given that today has already seen the jarring attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, an attempted assassination on the new Somali president, and amid increasingly public tensions between the United States and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program.  And that’s just in the Middle East — today is also a big day for Europe, with the Dutch elections and the German constitutional court’s decision to uphold the European Stability Mechanism.

In the meanwhile, it’s worth noting a little more about Libya’s new interim sort-of leader, Mohamed al-Magariaf, who in a press conference earlier today strongly condemned the hardline Salafist attacks on the U.S. consulate and apologized for the killing of Stevens and other U.S. personnel (in contrast to Egyptian president’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohammed Morsi, who has yet to condemn the Cairo embassy incident):

“On behalf of the presidency of GC, government and the Libyan people we offer deep condolences to the American government, people and the families of the ambassador and other victims,” the statement said.

The statement also said Libya “confirms the strong relations between the Libyan and American peoples which has been further cemented as a result of the US government’s support of the 17 February revolution.”

“While we strongly condemn any attempts of insult the person of the Prophet and our sanctities or tampering with our beliefs,” we reject the use of force and terrorizing innocent civilians, said Magariaf.

Al-Magariaf was elected the president of the General National Congress of Libya on August 12, making him Libya’s interim (for now) head of state.  As among the three Muslim countries that the United States has liberated in the past decade, for better or worse, al-Magariaf contrasts with Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai in that he is less corrupt and more dependable.  Among the three countries (and Pakistan, too), he is by and far the friendliest and most helpful leader.

Al-Magariaf is from Benghazi, where the attack took place.  Benghazi is Libya’s second-largest city and the urban center in the eastern Cyrenaica region of Libya (in contrast to the coastal northwestern Tripolitania and southwestern Fezzan).  Benghazi is also, ironically, where the revolt against Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi began in 2010.

The GNC, an interim parliament called for the purpose of running Libya’s government until an elected Constituent Assembly can draft a new constitution for Libya, was appointed following Libya’s first free election in decades on July 7 — among the 200 members, 120 seats were reserved for political independents and 80 for political parties.

Among the 80 seats reserved for political parties, Mahmoud Jabril’s National Forces Alliance (تحالف القوى الوطنية) won 39, and it was seen as a victory for moderates — the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party (حزب العدالة والب) won just 17 seats.  Al-Magariaf himself represents the National Front Party (حزب الجبهة الوطنية‎), a successor to the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, a group al-Magariaf formed in 1981 in opposition to Gaddafi, who ruled Libya from 1969 until just last year.

The National Front Party won just three seats, but al-Magariaf has a long record of opposition to Gaddafi and good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya.  Al-Magariaf is a political liberal more interested in rebuilding Libya’s government and economy than promoting Islamic rule, but is viewed with less suspicion than Jibril, who served in Gadaffi’s administration from 2007 to 2011 as the head of Libya’s National Economic Development Board in an effort to revitalize and privatize the Libyan economy.  Although al-Magariaf served as Libya’s ambassador to India until 1980, he defected in Morocco in that year, and remained in exile in the United States as the leader of the National Front until his return to Libya just last year.

Continue reading Who is Mohamed al-Magariaf? →

Canada, Ontario

Ontario by-election loss leaves Liberals with minority government

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Attention on Canadian politics has been mostly on Québec over the past month, but it’s worth noting that Ontario held two by-elections last Thursday that may augur early provincial elections soon.

The Liberals needed to win both seats in order to win back a majority government for premier Dalton McGuinty (pictured above).  While they easily held the Vaughan constituency, they lost the Kitchener-Waterloo constituency to the New Democratic Party.  The loss is attributed to the unpopularity of McGuinty’s government fight to cut public-sector wages, and in particular, to cut the wages of public teachers.  McGuinty’s government, with the support of the Progressive Conservative Party, this week passed a bill that implements a wage freeze on public teachers and denies them the right to strike for the next two years, which has been seen as a betrayal of public unions that have consistently supported McGuinty’s Liberal government.  That 180-degree turn against teachers’ unions could well be a fatal strategic error for McGuinty, because it not only freed them to support the New Democratic Party (which shows signs that it could be as ascendant in Ontario politics as it has been federally) in the recent by-election, but potentially throughout the province in the next election.

So it’s a difficult loss for McGuinty, who became premier in 2003, and was reelected in 2007 and in 2011, albeit with a minority government, watching a 70-seat majority cut to just 53, with the Progressive Conservatives gaining 11 seats to hold 37 seats, and the New Democratic Party gaining seven seats to 17.  By and large, McGuinty has been seen as a moderate and business-friendly premier, but has always been supported by teachers — until recently.

The NDP won the longtime Tory stronghold in what was seen as a three-way toss up — Catherine Fife, who won the seat, won 39.8% to just 31.8% for the Tory candidate and 24% for the Liberals.

With the NDP’s win on Thursday, the Tories fall to 36 seats in Ontario’s unicameral legislative assembly, and the NDP rises to 18, but the Liberals remain, tantalizingly, just one short of a majority.

Ontario politics has, generally speaking, been a two-party affair, with a one-time NDP breakout — current federal Liberal interim leader Bob Rae was premier in Ontario under the NDP banner from 1990 to 1995 — but a resurgent NDP that’s now leading federal polls for the next Canadian general election is now a lethal threat at the Ontario provincial level once again.  The Tories generally dominated Ontario politics from 1995 to 2003 under the premiership of Mike Harris, who was often mentioned as a potential federal Tory leader.

The next Ontario election, which must take place before October 2015, are expected to occur much sooner upon the fall of McGuinty’s minority government — thus, the significance of last week’s by-election, which could have pushed those elections back out to 2015.

Current polls show that the Tories, under leader Tim Hudak, generally lead in advance of the next election, with the Liberals tied with the NDP.  Polls show that Hudak is the least popular of the three Ontario party leaders, with the NDP’s Andrea Horwath increasingly gaining favor among Ontario voters.

The Netherlands

On the eve of Dutch elections, a primer (and a prediction) on cabinet formation

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In most countries, an election is the decisive moment in forming a government.  After the election results are in, it’s usually immediately clear who will become the next president or prime minister or chancellor (or so on).  Even in countries with complex parliamentary systems, where coalitions still take time to negotiate, it’s typically pretty clear to spot which party will emerge to form the government.

In the Netherlands, however, the election is more prologue than main event: no single party has won a majority of seats in the Dutch parliament since 1900, so the main government-forming exercise is the complex negotiation that follows Dutch elections.  While not as tortured as recent Belgian political negotiations, Dutch cabinet negotiations typically take around three months to complete — and that’s only when the coalition formation process is fairly routine.

The last government, a minority coalition headed by Mark Rutte, was sworn in only in October 2010, following elections earlier in June.

This year, two thing augur a relatively longer (than shorter) period of cabinet negotiations:

  • First, poll volatility and the likelihood that a large number of parties are expected to win double-digit numbers of seats in the 150-member Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, will make the arithmetic of forming a majority government even more difficult.
  • Second, MPs eliminated the role of the monarch from the cabinet formation process in 2010, which will now be headed by the chair of the Tweede Kamer, Gerdi Verbeet, instead of Queen Beatrix (pictured above), leaving the process more uncertain and less transparent than in years past.

In years past, the Dutch monarch (since 1980, Queen Beatrix) has typically initiated the process by meeting with each of the party leaders and appointing an informateur, typically a senior statesman, to explore the possibility of various governing coalitions.  Coalition negotiations can go through several stages of informateurs — for example, in 2010, the Queen ultimately appointed five different informateurs, including three who served in the role twice.  Thereupon, the monarch appoints the formateur — typically the leader of the largest party in parliament — to negotiate the details of the coalition agreement among the coalition partners, including the governing agenda for the coalition, appointments to the cabinet and other issues.

This year, the process is a bit more unsettled — it will be Verbeet and parliamentarians who can shape the agenda of the negotiations, which could result in delays as everyone navigates a new process, and which some critics believe could make the cabinet formation process less transparent.  Although Queen Beatrix was widely seen as steering the 2010 negotiations away from any PVV participation in government (and that bias was one of the reasons MPs voted to strip the monarchy of its role in cabinet formation), it is not necessarily the case that parliamentarians will have any less bias in choosing informateurs.

The final TNS Nipo poll forecasts the following results for tomorrow’s election (similar to results from other polls):

  • 35 seats for Rutte’s free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy).
  • 34 seats for the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), which has seen its support rise with the success of its leader Diederik Samsom in the recent debates.
  • 21 seats for the anti-austerity, leftist Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party), a marked decline from a month ago, when it led polls, before its leader Emile Roemer made some anti-European comments and was seen as having stumbled in the debates.
  • 17 seats for the populist, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom) of Geert Wilders, a sharp decline in seats.
  • 13 seats for the progressive/centrist Democraten 66 (Democrats 66).
  • 12 seats for the conservative Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), a sharp decline.
  • 6 seats for ChristenUnie (CU, Christian Union), a smaller, vaguely center-left, Christian democratic party.
  • 4 seats for GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft), the Dutch green party.
  • 4 seats for 50PLUS, a new party founded in 2009 by former Labour politicians.
  • 2 seats for Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP, the Reformed Political Party), a Calvinist party that’s in electoral alliance with ChristenUnie, but is typically a ‘testimonial’ party uninterested in joining coalitions.
  • 2 seats for the Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD, Party for the Animals), another ‘testimonial’ party focused on animal rights and welfare.

If those polls are correct — and, I’ll caution, polls still show many undecided voters — I see three potential coalitions:

  • a centrist, pro-Europe ‘purple’ coalition, largely between the VVD and Labour,
  • a more leftist anti-austerity coalition, largely between Labour and the Socialists, and
  • an unlikelier VVD-led pro-austerity coalition without Labour.

It seems more likely than not, however, that Labour is headed back into government as either the leading party or a supporting coalition member of the next government. Continue reading On the eve of Dutch elections, a primer (and a prediction) on cabinet formation →

Chile

The other September 11: the Chilean coup against Salvador Allende, 39 years on

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While most people in the United States today reflect upon the 11th anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, DC, it is easy to forget that “September 11” marks an entirely different national tragedy for Chile.

On September 11, 1973, Chile’s military launched a coup against the country’s elected president, Salvador Allende.

On that day, the Chilean military took the port of Valparaíso at 7 a.m., closed the country’s radio and television stations by 8 a.m., and by 9 a.m., had moved in to occupy Santiago, the capital.

Coup leaders demanded shortly thereafter that Allende resign the presidency.  Allende, who remained in the president palace, La Moneda, refused, despite threats to bomb the palace, if necessary, to bring about his resignation.  Allende thereupon launched a dramatic speech live on Chilean radio, defending his economic policies and, above all, vowing not to resign in the face of a coup that aimed to overturn the results of a democratic election.

As troops moved in on the palace, Allende either shot himself or was assassinated by the military — the circumstances of his death remain unclear today, but by 2:30 p.m., the military had taken La Moneda.

The coup led to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet — and with it, the deaths of up to 3,000 Chileans and the imprisonment and torture of many more thousands of political prisoners during his regime.  Although Pinochet’s reforms are credited with restoring economic stability to Chile, and he ultimately conceded to demands for democratic reform (he stepped down in 1990 after losing a referendum for reelection), he was plagued with legal charges in Chile and abroad for human rights violations and embezzlement alike.

Today, 39 years later, Chile still grapples with the national trauma of the 1973 coup and the resulting Pinochet era.  The country has one of the most developed economies in South America (notching 6% GDP growth in 2011), and it became the first South American country to become a member of the Organization for Economic Development, which it joined in 2010.  There’s no doubt that today’s dynamic Chilean economy had its genesis in the policies of the Pinochet regime.

But political wounds from the 1973 coup and the Pinochet regime have been more difficult to heal.  The 1991 Rettig Report, which tallied the number of deaths, disappearances and human rights abuses perpetrated during the Pinochet era, became a textbook example of truth-and-reconciliation commissions.  Despite those efforts, the long legal fight against Pinochet cast a dark shadow over Chilean political life until his death just six years ago — he died awaiting trial in Chile; meanwhile, a statue of Allende (pictured above) now sits in the courtyard in front of La Moneda.

Although Chile returned to democracy with presidential elections in 1990, a coalition of center-left parties, the Concertación won every presidential election until just two years ago, when center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera narrowly won election in January 2010, marking the Chilean right’s first return to power in the post-Pinochet era. Continue reading The other September 11: the Chilean coup against Salvador Allende, 39 years on →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: September 10

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The International Foundation for Electoral Systems is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

A superb profile of incoming Quebec premier Pauline Marois.

More commentators join the bandwagon in favor of a (very unlikely) federal Liberal leadership run by former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

More commentators join the bandwagon in favor of a (very unlikely) Tory leadership run by London mayor Boris Johnson.

Defeated president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador is leaving his party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), to form a new youth-based movement on the Mexican left.

The shortlist of Booker Prize novels will be announced tomorrow.

The field in December’s South Korean presidential election remains unsettled.

Germany’s top constitutional court will rule on the European Stability Mechanism this week.

While talks between the ‘troika’ and the Greek government continue, there are signs that German chancellor Angela Merkel has changed her mind about a potential ‘Grexit.’

A roundup on the Dutch election campaigns with just two days to go before voting.

France’s wealthiest man is seeking Belgian citizenship.

Somalia

Who is Hasan Sheikh Mahmoud? And is Somalia capable of turning a new leaf?

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Somalia has a new president today — Hasan Sheikh Mahmoud (pictured above) — after his election by Somalia’s new parliament, which itself was sworn in just last month.

Mamhoud defeated current president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in the second round of voting — although the incumbent won the first round of voting, Mamhoud finished a close second, defeating prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, who came in third.

But who is Mahmoud?

And, more importantly, can he succeed where 15 prior transitional governments have failed in reviving a country that vies as perhaps the world’s most infamous failed state?

Mahmoud, and academic and a civic activist, speaks both Somali and English, has worked for the United Nations Children’s Fund in Somalia from 1993 until 1995, and he co-founded the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development in Mogadishu, the country’s capital, in 1999.  Last year, he formed the Peace and Development Party.

Allegations of bribery (among all factions) are already marring Mahmoud’s victory, but the fact that the vote even took place is perhaps itself the bigger victory for a country that’s effectively been without a government for over two decades– Somalia descended into anarchy and clan-based fighting after the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, who had ruled the country since 1969.

Recently, a UN-backed transitional roadmap, reinforced by the African Union, has prompted some hope that Somalia may have reached a transition point — the roadmap led to the current political process, and last year, AU and other regional forces ended fighting in Mogadishu.  Although al Shabaab and other militants have been swept from the capital, ending years of street-battle violence, Islamic militants still control much of the rest of the center and south of Somalia.  Al Shabaab  (Islamic for “the youth,” it formed in 2006 as a radical spinoff from Somalia’s main Islamist group, the Union of Islamic Courts, and is now affiliated with al Qaeda).

Despite the gains, Mahmoud and the Somali parliament have a very long road ahead in regard to gaining control in Somalia and securing the entire country, to say nothing of other pressing needs for infrastructure and economic development.  Mahmoud’s legislative counterpart, Mohamed Osman Jawari, who was appointed speaker of the federal parliament on August 28, is also an English-speaking academic and an attorney by occupation.  Jawari served briefly as the minister of transportation and as minister of labor and sports in the Siad Barre regime, and he lived in Norway in exile after civil war broke out in 1991.

Both Mahmoud and Jawari as seen as technocratic and academic moderates, in contrast to both the Islamist fundamentalists who rose to power in 2006 and the warlords of Somalia’s various clans. Continue reading Who is Hasan Sheikh Mahmoud? And is Somalia capable of turning a new leaf? →

The Netherlands

Samsomania! Five reasons why everything’s coming up roses for the Dutch Labour Party

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In less than two weeks, we’ve watched the Dutch election transformed from a two-party race into a three-way tie, as the Dutch Labour Party leader Diederik Samsom has burst into a starring role on the Dutch political stage.

Samsom’s party, the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, the Labour Party), now either leads or is essentially tied with the two prior leading parties in advance of the September 12 elections for the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament.

Those two parties are the center-right, free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), led by current prime minister Mark Rutte, and the stridently leftist, anti-austerity Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) led by Emile Roemer.

In the latest Ipsos Nederland poll and projection, Rutte’s VVD would win 34 seats, Roemer’s Socialists would win 27 seats and Samsom’s Labour would win 26 seats.  Three other smaller parties win a significant share of the vote: the anti-Muslim (and now increasingly anti-Europe) Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), led by Geert Wilders, would win just 20 seats, the progressive Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) would win 14 seats, and the center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) would win just 13 seats.  TNS Nipo and Maurice du Fond polls show an even more ascendant Labour result.

Rutte’s VVD emerged with the most seats in the prior 2010 election, and he formed a minority government with the CDA, with outside support coming from Wilder’s PVV.  The current government fell in April, when Wilders refused to support Rutte’s budget package, which aimed to cut the 2013 Dutch budget to within 3% of GDP.

Labour, then headed by former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, finished with one fewer seat than the VVD in 2010, and is currently the main opposition party in the Tweede Kamer, but it had consistently lost support ever since — until now.  Cohen stepped down earlier this year, and Samsom, a more leftist Labour leader, replaced him in March.

So the latest poll capture the recent resounding resurgence for Labour, but also indicates that the Socialists and the Democrats 66 would still improve on their 2010 election totals, indicating that the Dutch parliament would be a much more anti-austerity parliament — a Labour-Socialist coalition is a possibility, as is a so-called ‘purple coalition’ between Labour and the VVD.  Labour last governed the Netherlands from 1994 to 2002 under prime minister Wim Kok, when the VVD and Labour joined together under a so-called ‘purple coalition’ (alongside the Dutch Greens and the Democrats 66), and Labour and the CDA governed in coalitions in the 1980s.

Whew! But that doesn’t explain why Samsom has so drastically improved his party’s chances to the point where he is now a credible contender, with Rutte and Roemer, to become The Netherlands’s next prime minister.  Here are five reasons why:  Continue reading Samsomania! Five reasons why everything’s coming up roses for the Dutch Labour Party →

United Kingdom

Cameron reshuffle nudges UK government rightward

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UK prime minister David Cameron announced his first major cabinet reshuffle Tuesday since taking office in May 2010.

As predicted, justice minister Kenneth Clarke was demoted to ‘minister without portfolio,’ marking what will likely be the end of front-bench politics for the ‘big beast’ of Tory — and British — politics, and for his thoughtful take on prison reform.  He’ll be replaced by the far more right-wing (and non-lawyer) Chris Grayling, an up and coming figure on the Tory right, who had previously served as employment minister.  From The Guardian:

Grayling’s appointment also signals a determination by Cameron to take a tougher line on sentencing, the Human Rights Act, legal aid and community punishment, a nexus of policy issues that has left Conservative backbenchers frustrated by what they regarded as Clarke’s willingness to pander to Lib Dem opinion.

Lady Sayeeda Warsi, the only Muslim in the cabinet and a one-time rising Tory moderate star, was also demoted, from co-chair of the party to senior minister of state at the Foreign Office.

Cameron’s reshuffle among junior ministerial offices was much more thoroughgoing, and also marks a significant swing to the right — and a swing to a cabinet that is ‘more male, white, southern and Oxbrigdge’.  The net effect will be to isolate further deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats.  Chancellor George Osborne will keep his job, meaning that there’s no shift from the budget austerity upon which Cameron has staked his government’s legacy.

Canada, Quebec

What next for Liberal leader Jean Charest?

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Jean Charest stepped down yesterday as the leader of Québec’s Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ), following his loss in Tuesday’s election for the 125-seat Assemblée nationale.

His party finished less than 0.75% behind the soveriegntist Parti québécois (PQ), and it won just 50 seats to the PQ’s 54.  But those four extra seats mean that the PQ will form a minority government under Pauline Marois, bringing Charest’s nine years as premier to an end.  Charest himself lost the seat that he has held since 1998 in his election district of Sherbrooke (where he also held a federal seat in the House of Commons from 1984 until leaving federal politics to take the helm of the PLQ).

The race is on to replace him, although outgoing justice minister Jean-Marc Fournier has already said he’s not running, and the remaining candidates are hardly well-known figures:

  • Raymond Bachand, Charest’s finance minister since 2009, has only been a MNA since 2005 and, at age 64, may be viewed as too old for the leadership.
  • Pierre Moreau, an MNA since 2003, was most recently Charest’s transportation minister.
  • Sam Hamad, also an MNA since 2003, the is Syrian-born, a former minister of labour, employment and transport, and most recently minister of economic development.
  • Pierre Paradis, an MNA since 1980, who clashed with Charest and never served in Charest’s cabinet, was previously a candidate in the 1983 leadership race that Robert Bourassa won.

In fact, the 1983 contest that Bourassa won was the last contested PLQ leadership race.  Bourassa, who was premier of Québec from 1970 to 1976, resigned after losing the 1976 election to the PQ, only to return in 1983 to provincial politics — he would thereupon return as premier from 1985 to 1994.

After nearly three decades at the pinnacle of Canadian and Québécois politics, surely Charest deserves a break — to be a grandfather and to reclaim a bit of his own life.

But was Charest’s decision the right one politically? Continue reading What next for Liberal leader Jean Charest? →

Canada, Quebec

An amazing 48 hours in Québec

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Well, there’s not much I can add to what the Canadian — and indeed, the Québécois, media — have covered in the past 48 hours.

But let’s just recount:

  • In Tuesday’s election, the Parti québécois (PQ) finished first with 31.94% with 54 seats.
  • Premier Jean Charest’s Parti liberal du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) came a very-much closer-than-expected 31.20% with 50 seats.
  • The newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) trailed narrowly with just 27.05%, but won just 19 seats.  That’s surely somewhat of a disappointment for its leader, François Legault, but the party did very well in the Québec City region and former Montréal police chief and anti-corruption figure Jacques Duchesneau won a seat.  Nonetheless, the CAQ was the significant gainer in the election and Legault has an excellent chance to build upon his success.
  • As such, the PQ leader, Pauline Marois, will form a minority government, and Marois will the first woman to become Québec’s premier, although it seems likely that we’ll see new elections long before the five-year government runs its course.
  • Marois’s victory speech was marred by a horrific assassination attempt, which left one man dead and another injured.
  • Léo Bureau-Blouin — the articulate 21-year-old and student spokesman — won his seat for the PQ in Laval-des-Rapides.
  • The leftist Québec solidaire won both seats for Amir Khadir and rising star Françoise David, but achieved a total vote of just 6.03%.  That, however, combined with the 1.90% that the breakaway sovereigntist Option nationale won likely hampered the PQ in its efforts to win a majority government — that’s nearly 8% of the electorate that would likely not have supported the PLQ or the CAQ.
  • Charest stepped down as leader yesterday after three decades in political life and after nine years as Québec’s premier.  Charest lost his own election district, Sherbrooke, which he has represented in either the federal House of Commons or Québec’s Assemblée nationale.
  • Marois has already started to move forward on ending Charest’s planned tuition hikes on students, the controversial Bill 78 limiting street protests and introducing changes to Bill 101, strengthening and enhancing the French-language requirements in the province.