Monthly Archives: September 2012

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Pauline Marois and the Parti québécois will form Québec’s new government

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I’m in Mexico City’s airport about to board a flight to Washington, but La Presse and other outlets in Québec are calling it: The Parti québécois will win the election, form the next government (right now projected as a minority).  Premier Jean Charest’s Parti liberal du Québec will finish a strong second, and the Coalition avenir Québec follows far behind in seats, but close behind in total vote percentage.

It’s three-vote margin in Sherbrooke, Charest’s own election district.

Follow ThreeHundredEight and the Montreal Gazette‘s live-blog for additional up-to-the-moment coverage.

European Union, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, The Netherlands

Is the European ‘Christian democracy’ party model dead?

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When Dutch voters go to the polls on September 12, we don’t know whether they’ll favor prime minister Mark Rutte’s Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) or Emile Roemer’s Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) or even Diederik Samsom’s Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, the Labour Party) as their top choice.

What we do know is that the election could well be the worst post-war finish for the traditional Christian Democratic party in the Netherlands, the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal).  It’s currently on track to finish in fifth place (or even sixth place) in a country that it had a hand in governing virtually without break in Dutch post-war politics until 2010.

In 2010, the CDA won just 21 seats in the lower house of the Dutch parliament, and it could win just 15 seats or less this time around.

So it goes all across Europe:

  • In Italy, the Democrazia Cristiana controlled the government (or participated in governing coalitions) for nearly 50 years of post-war Italian politics.  The Tangentopoli (‘Bribesville’) scandal led to its demise under the weight of massive corruption allegations in 1992, and the remaining core of that party, the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e di Centro (UDC, the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats), led by Pier Ferdinando Casini, plays a significant, but minor role in Italian politics today.
  • Norway’s Christian Democratic Party, the Kristelig Folkeparti (KrF) once dominated Norwegian politics as well, but now holds just 10 out of 169 seats in the Norwegian parliament.
  • In Bavaria, the Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU, Christian Social Union) has controlled Bavaria’s state government since 1957.  It’s still the overwhelmingly largest party in Bavarian politics, but it lost 32 seats in the Landtag in 2008 and now holds just 92, and it looks likely to lose even more seats in the Bavarian state elections that must be held in 2013.
  • In Switzerland, the Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz (CVP, Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland) has steadily declined since the 1970s.

Only in German federal politics does Christian democracy seem to be holding on — in the form of Angel Merkel’s Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU, Christian Democratic Union), which is allied at the federal level with Bavaria’s CSU.

So what’s happened to Christian democracy? And is it a concept whose time is up?

Christian democracy emerged as a political movement in the 19th century, as much as anything a reaction of the Catholic Church to the Industrial Revolution — and to the Marxist ideas that had so effectively challenged industrial capitalism in the mid-19th century, in the same way that the social democratic movement that gave voice to (and moderated) the growing labor movement.  (Some political scientists see a parallel in the “justice and development” strand of moderate Islamist parties that have emerged in Turkey and through vehicles like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan).

It reached its heyday during the Cold War as a bulwark against the communist influences of Soviet Russia, but today seems increasingly an anachronism as the European right divides into, on the one hand, a free-market liberal ideology untroubled with cultural issues and, on the other hand, a nationalist ideology that is increasingly both anti-Europe and anti-immigrant.  That fragmentation provides yet another complication in navigating the European Union out of its current debt and currency crisis — the European Union was formed and the eurozone conceived in a world where Christian democracy largely controlled the initial EU member states. Continue reading Is the European ‘Christian democracy’ party model dead? →

Canada, Quebec, Romania

Québec votes today

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Canada’s only French-speaking and second-largest province goes to the polls today to elect the 125-member Assemblée nationale — Quebec’s politics are a fascinating subset of Canadian politics (notwithstanding the fact that the election will likely have a minimal impact on federal Canadian politics).

Rather than try to provide my own rundown and projection, I’ll leave it to Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight: his ridiculously detailed (and amazing) projection calls for a majority government led by the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), although just barely.

Polls show three top parties since premier Jean Charest announced snap elections and kicked off the campaign on August 1:

  • Charest’s own Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) — Charest has governed the province since 2003, and the Liberals are seeking their fourth consecutive mandate in the face of charges of corruption (the Charbonneau Commission is looking into whether the government traded construction contracts in exchange for political financing) and a government that’s not done enough to boost the economy, despite a flashy plan to develop northern Québec.
  • The PQ, led by Pauline Marois, which is looking to return to provincial government after nearly a decade.
  • The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), led by François Legault, which was formed just last year and which lies vaguely to the right of the PLQ, although not in every way, and which lies somewhere between the sovereigntism of the PQ and the federalism of the PLQ (Legault, a former PQ minister, once supported the 1995 referendum on Québec’s independence, but has said any CAQ government will not pursue a new referendum).  The CAQ’s recruitment of quality candidates has been a boost, none of which more so than former Montréal police chief Jacques Duchesneau, whose presence in the election has been a constant reminder of potential PLQ corruption.

Grenier forecasts 63 seats for the PQ, just 33 seats for the Liberals and 27 for the CAQ.  If true, it would be a bloodbath for Charest’s Liberals, who would stand a chance of being pushed not only out of government, but into third place (while the CAQ becomes the Official Opposition) — it would likely also mean that Charest himself would lose his seat in Sherbrooke, a district where he’s been winning elections since 1984.

Roughly speaking, the PLQ is expected to hold its own in Montréal and its suburbs, where most of the province’s anglophones live (although they comprise 10% or so of the electorate, English-speakers tend to vote en masse for the Liberals, even though there are signs that some may be considering the CAQ).  The CAQ is expected to do well around Québec City further north, and the PQ is expected to do well everywhere else.

A key question will be whether two smaller more radically leftists and sovereigntist parties, Québec solidaire (whose spokeswoman Françoise David performed well in the party leaders debate) and Option nationale, succeed in taking away votes form the PQ — Marois has tread very lightly on the sovereignty issue, making it clear that she’s more interested in governing the province than arranging another referendum.

Increasingly less important over the course of the campaign has been the tuition fee issue — student protests over tuition hikes that shut down Montréal universities, and Charest’s police-heavy (some might say unconstitutionally repressive) response, brough international attention last spring.  Despite Marois’s opposition to tuition hikes and a high-profile PQ candidate in 20-year-old student leader Léo Bureau-Blouin, the issue has not had the salience you might have expected just a few months ago.

I am traveling most of Tuesday, but hopefully will have some brief thoughts much later tonight when we have an idea of which party — PLQ, PQ or CAQ — has won the most seats and whether they’ll command enough seats to have a majority government.

In the meanwhile, a little Céline Dion to help set the election day mood, and of course you can follow all of Suffragio‘s coverage of the election here.

À bientôt!

Canada, Quebec

Plan Nord and the Québec election

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Lurking behind the sexier issues at the forefront of tomorrow’s Québec provincial elections — sovereignty, federal-Québec relations, health care, corruption inquiries, tuition fees and student protests — lies an issue that will be quite strongly affected by who wins.

That issue is premier Jean Charest’s Plan nord — a plan announced in May 2011 to exploit the natural resources in the great expanse that comprises the northern two-thirds of Québec.  The idea is that over the next 25 years, the Plan will attract up to $80 billion in investments for mining, renewable and other forms of energy and forestry.  Charest, whose Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) is struggling to win a fourth consecutive mandate, has made it one of his government’s top priorities, although it’s been met with some resistance from environmentalists as well as from the native Innu people, around 15,000 of whom inhabit Québec’s far north, to say nothing of Charest’s political opponents.

His government claims that northern Québec contains deposits of nickel, cobalt, platinum group metals, zinc, iron ore, diamonds, ilmenite, gold, lithium, vanadium and rare-earth metals, and that, with a warming climate and melting polar ice, extracting the mineral wealth will be easier than in past generations.  The region, although fairly undeveloped and remote, already produces 75% of hydroelectric power in Québec.

Pauline Marois, who leads the sovereigntist — and more leftist — Parti québécois (PQ), which leads polls for tomorrow’s election, has said that she will not scrap the plan if elected, but will instead raise royalties on mining companies from 16% to 30% for mining companies that achieve a certain level of profits, with a minimum royalty of 5% on all mining companies.  Charest’s government has already raised royalties from 12% to 16%.

François Legault, the leader of the newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), has argued that Charest’s government is “putting all its eggs in one basket” with Plan nord, but he hasn’t said he wants to scrap it — he’s criticized Marois as well for trying to extract more royalties from mining companies.  Legault has proposed using $5 billion from the province’s $160 billion Caisse de depot et placement (its public pension fund) to capitalize a new natural resources fund.

In announcing Plan nord, Charest stressed the developmental elements of the plan, which would include a $2.1 billion investment from the province in northern infrastructure and which would also aim to build roads to link communities — in many cases, for the first time.

He also stressed the conservation elements of the plan — the government has claimed it will set aside 50% of the region for natural protection and unavailable for industrial development.

Late last week, however, Charest’s PLQ was ranked the worst of the three parties for the environment in a survey among environmental groups — a fourth party, the leftist and sovereigntist Québec solidaire,  scored the highest with 83% under the survey, while the Liberals scored just 33%.  The report followed another news story in Le Devoir late last week that claimed the Plan nord would wipe out wild caribou herds in the region.

Meanwhile, it is not clear that Charest has ever had the native population, which owns much of the land and mineral rights, quite on board.  Also last week, Ghislain Picard, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, criticized the Charest government in a criticized the manner in which the Charest government has approached northern development: Continue reading Plan Nord and the Québec election →

Angola

As expected, Dos Santos and the MPLA are leading the vote count in Angola

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It wasn’t a surprise — Angola’s president José Eduardo dos Santos has won reelection, following the parliamentary victory of his Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – Partido do Trabalho (MPLA or the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party) after elections on Friday, September 1 with nearly 74% of the vote.

Read about the run-up to the election here — no one predicted that the elections would be free or fair.

From Reuters:

The provisional results gave the MPLA’s closest challenger, former rebel group UNITA, nearly 18 percent, while the third-placed CASA-CE party was approaching five percent in its first election test after being formed by UNITA dissident Abel Chivukuvuku four months ago.

Chivukuvuku told reporters his party, which along with UNITA had complained repeatedly of serious irregularities in the vote preparations and the electoral process, was analysing the results before deciding whether to accept or reject them.

But another prominent CASA-CE member, candidate for Luanda William Tonet, dismissed the provisional results as “cheating taken to its maximum level”.

“This is like a declaration of war by the MPLA … it indicates to citizens that there can be no alternative through the electoral route,” he told Reuters.

Mexico, Personal

Impressions of Oaxaca in México’s Peña Nieto era

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I have been in Oaxaca this weekend (and will be so until Tuesday of the following week — when Québec votes!) and I wanted to share just a little about what I’ve seen here, and how it colors my perception of Mexican politics.

Oaxaca is the capital of Oaxaca state, which is by and large a student-heavy city (so lots of supporters of the #YoSoy132 movement in opposition to president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) ) in a state that already traditionally supports the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), and its candidate for president in the July 1 election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.  It is also the capital of state that is the most indigenous in all of México– with Zapotec, Mixtec, Mazatec, Chinantec and myriad other groups calling the region their home.  It is the home of México’s sole indigenous president, Benito Juárez, a central figure of 19th century Mexican history.

The backstory is that Oaxaca was the site of a fierce — and deadly — fight between police forces and the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO, or the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca), which emerged after the tense showdown between authorities and a teachers’ union during a strike in Oaxaca in May 2006.  Brutal force by the police during that strike escalated the incident into a full-fledged battle that left Oaxaca, essentially, with a reputation as the Chiapas of the 2000s.  Although the governor at the time, Ulises Ruiz, a PRI governor, left office in 2010, his successor is the PRD-backed Gabino Cué, the first non-PRI governor of Oaxaca in over 80 years, and peace has, more or less, returned to the beautiful city 5,000 meters above sea level.

Nonetheless, and despite the ruling of México’s highest election court that Peña Nieto, has indeed won the election, despite accusations of unfair play from the PRD, I have been struck by the expressions of anti-Peña Nieto grafitti everywhere (see above, and see below, with Carlos Salinas, former PRI president from 1988-1994, ummm, popping out of Peña Nieto’s brain:

And here is Mexico’s president-elect being portrayed as garbage:

It’s understandable that there’s a certain segment of Oaxaca’s population that is significantly opposed to Peña Nieto, given the authoritarian background of the PRI when it was in power for seven decades from 1929 to 2000, but it’s striking that there’s been so little, just two months after the election, in the way of support of López Obrador or of opposition to the current, outgoing Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, whose Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) has held the presidency for the past 12 years.

None of this is to rule out the potential of a Peña Nieto presidency, but it’s a clear signal that he has yet to convince many segments of México’s vast population that he has their interests at heart.

Photo credit to Kevin Lees — Oaxaca, Mexico, September 2012.