Monthly Archives: November 2012

China

Fifth Generation: Who is Yu Zhengsheng?

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This is the fourth in a series of posts examining the Chinese leaders expected to be named to the Politburo Standing Committee during the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) that kicked off November 8.  Prior installments on Zhang Gaoli here, Zhang Dejiang here and Liu Yunshan here.

Today, we continue our look at the expected members of the Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee with Yu Zhengsheng (俞正声), currently the Party secretary of Shanghai municipality — where he presided over the citywide expo in 2010 — and a Politburo member since 2002.

Yu’s elevation — if true — to the Standing Committee would seem to be a victory for the conservative elite — he’s a ‘princeling,’ a cautious economic reformer  at best, and close to former leader Deng Xiaoping and former leader Jiang Zemin (江泽民).  With the Congress likely to reduce the number of Standing Committee members from nine to seven, his inclusion would mean the exclusion of the relatively more reformist Party secretary of Guangdong province, Wang Yang (汪洋) and the leader of the Party’s organization department, Li Yuanchao (李源潮) — Wang, and especially Li, are considered protégés of the outgoing general secretary, president and ‘paramount leader,’ Hu Jintao (胡锦涛).

He served as the Party’s minister of construction from 1998 to 2001.

From 2002 to 2007, he was the Party secretary in Hubei province, a province of over 57 million people in central China, home to the Three Gorges Dam.

Cheng Li, director of research and a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center, notes in his profile of Yu his ‘extraordinary family background’: Continue reading Fifth Generation: Who is Yu Zhengsheng? →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: November 12

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Greece finally passes its 2013 national budget with 167 votes, though the deal will have left the center-left PASOK with even fewer MPs after seven refused to vote for the deal.

Rice and politics in Thailand.

Former justice minister Angelino Alfano narrowly leads Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno to be the Italian center-right’s candidate for prime minister.

Meanwhile, current Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani and Florence mayor Matteo Renzi are essentially tied in advance of primaries later this month.

More context in Sierra Leone’s election later this week.

A new Nutella tax in France?

The new ‘purple’ coalition in the Netherlands is plummeting in popularity over a plan to make health premiums income-dependent. [First link in Dutch]

Rafael Correa will, as expected, run for reelection as Ecuador’s president next spring.

Germany’s Green Party gets new leadership.

What the effects of Scottish independence would mean for the remaining UK.

The campaign has begun in advance of Romania’s Dec. 9 general election.

Ukraine’s opposition begrudgingly accepts their loss in the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Prince Mohammed’s elevation to interior minister augurs start of generational change

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Although Suffragio covers mostly countries where democratic elections feature prominently in national politics, this month’s Chinese transition reminds us that although some countries do not have elections, they most certainly have politics.

That’s true in Saudi Arabia, where last week we saw the signs of the first transition of power to a new generation, the grandchildren of Ibn Saud — or King Abdulaziz — with the elevation of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as interior minister on November 5.

The current Saudi king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, is Abdulaziz’s 10th son, and has governed since 2005, but has really effectively been the de facto Saudi leader since the previous king’s stroke in 1995.  The current Saudi crown prince (heir to the throne) is Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Abdulaziz’s 25th son.

Prince Mohammed (pictured above) replaces Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, himself Abdulaziz’s 31st son (allegedly!).

But Abdullah is 88 years old, Salman a relatively sprightly 75 years old, and Ahmed is 70, and the once-thriving set of Abdulaziz’s sons has thinned over the years, leading to increased speculation about how the next generation of the House of Saud will begin to assume power.  The next generation of Saudi leadership will face huge challenges, not least of which how to provide employment opportunities to young Saudis, deal with calls for political reform in the era of the ‘Arab Spring,’ and diversify an economy that remains too dependent on oil — and that’s before the trickier foreign policy issues presented by a United States that will brook no further Saudi-grown terrorist attacks, a Yemen at the south of the Arabian peninsula that’s becoming a chaotic terrorist haven, and Syria, a close Saudi ally, descend further into a bloody civil war.

Prince Mohammed had served as assistant interior minister since 1999, and he’s made headlines as a relatively modern Saudi royal — U.S. and other officials have applauded his efforts in attacking home-grown terrorism within Saudi Arabia, and he was in 2009 himself injured in a suicide attack.  he’s seen as somewhat more reformist than the current ruling generation, but no one really knows where his true passions lie.

The director of the Eurasia Group‘s Middle East practice, Crispin Hawes wrote in Foreign Policy on Friday that the move may presage the elevation of Khalid Al Faisal Al Saud, a son of the late King Faisal, to become second deputy prime minister and accordingly, second in line to the throne (after Salman, the crown prince):

Abdullah seems intent on defining a long-term plan for the succession in an effort to prevent the kingdom from instability if, as is possible, there is a rapid series of deaths among the current and elderly ruling generation. The transition to the generation of Mohammed and Khaled al-Faisal, grandsons of Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud and modern Saudi Arabia’s founder, has been the subject of speculation for years. Faisal is in his early 70s, only a few years younger than Salman, but the move is a very significant one.

Prince Khalid is currently the governor of Mecca province, Saudi Arabia’s most populous province and the home of its chief port Jeddah (and of, course, the great pilgrimage city of Mecca itself).  Like Prince Mohammed, Khalid enjoys favor from both conservative and relatively liberal members of the House of Saud.

Some background is in order, because the Saudi succession is a complex business.

King Abdulaziz, then still known as just Ibn Saud, first conquered Riyadh (the homeland of the Saud family) in 1902.  He fought in concert with the Allied powers during World War I against the Ottoman Empire (which controlled Arabia at the beginning of the 20th century), and consolidated power in 1932 to create the modern state we know today as Saudi Arabia.  As such, Ibn Saud / King Abdulaziz is generally accepted as the founder of the current kingdom.  With the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938, and the wide-scale extraction of oil beginning in the 1940s, the Saudi grip over the Arabian peninsula has been relatively secure, financed by vast oil wealth, and since Abdulaziz’s death, each successive Saudi king has been one of his many, many sons — at least 37 and possibly 45 or more.

Abdulaziz’s kingdom has been ruled by one of his many sons to this day, which means that the Saudi leadership has become increasingly geriatric.  Continue reading Saudi Prince Mohammed’s elevation to interior minister augurs start of generational change →

China

Fifth Generation: Who is Liu Yunshan?

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This is the third in a series of posts examining the Chinese leaders expected to be named to the Politburo Standing Committee during the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) that kicked off November 8.  Prior installments on Zhang Gaoli here and Zhang Dejiang here.

Liu Yunshun  (刘云山), more than almost any other person in the People’s Republic of China, is responsible for the execution of the so-called ‘Great Firewall’ — that mix of controls that censors access to the Internet within China.

This isn’t a history of the ‘Great Firewall,’ but if you haven’t, go read James Fallows’s essential piece on Internet censorship in China in The Atlantic, and you’ll start to understand why Liu is a natural choice for elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee.  As Fallows writes, there’s really not one ‘Great Firewall,’ but a sophisticated systems of controls.  Internet-based data comes to China via three major choke points: from Japan to Beijing/Tianjin, from Japan to Shanghai, and from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, making it easier for China to censor information coming into the country with a number of technologically-enabled strategies.  Furthermore, although the system is relatively easily circumvented by a proxy server or, to better effect, with a virtual private network (VPN), few Chinese citizens can afford or seem willing to go through the hassle of circumventing the ‘Great Firewall.’

Liu (pictured above), aged 65, has been a Politburo member since 2002, and since 2007, he been the director of the Party’s propaganda department, and so the PRC’s chief official responsible for propaganda and censorship.

He’s vice chair of the Party’s splendidly euphemistic Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilization, which essentially controls the Party’s propaganda department, currently chaired by outgoing Politburo Standing Committee member Li Changchun — Liu is expected to succeed Li upon his ascension to the Politburo Standing Committee as the PRC’s top ‘propaganda czar,’ where he is expected to continue the Party’s strict controls over media and Internet censorship.

Liu’s background is unique in three ways. Continue reading Fifth Generation: Who is Liu Yunshan? →

China

Fifth Generation: Who is Zhang Dejiang?

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This is the second in a series of posts examining the Chinese leaders expected to be named to the Politburo Standing Committee during the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) that kicked off November 8.

Yesterday, I examined the background and career of Zhang Gaoli (张高丽), the Party secretary in the municipality of Tianjin.

But another Zhang is expected to be appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee — Zhang Dejiang (张德江), a North Korean expert who’s been part of the wider 25-member Politburo since 2002 and who has served as a vice premier for energy, telecommunications and transportation.

Like the other Zhang, this Zhang is also 66, and he’s also a protégé of former president and ‘paramount leader’ Jiang Zemin (江泽民).

Earlier this year, Zhang stepped into the spotlight to take over from the disgraced Bo Xilai, who was forced to step down as the Party secretary of Chongqing municipality in March 2012 amid various scandals about corruption and a high-profile trial of his wife, Gu Kailai, who was convicted in August for murdering a British expat in August.  Late last month, Bo was expelled from the National People’s Congress, and he’s expected to be tried for charges soon as well.  It marked a remarkable downfall for Bo and the most sensational Chinese political scandal in recent memory.

Bo had attained near rock-star status as Chongqing’s leader, and his leftist ‘Chongqing model’ that featured double-digit growth along with attention to social welfare programs in the face of China’s rising inequality, as well as populist attacks on organized crime and a retro embrace of the ‘red’ culture of old-school Maoism and the songs and slogans of the Cultural Revolution, caused great discomfort among the highest echelons of the Chinese government, who determined that his anti-corruption programs were less than honest governance than the corrupt shakedowns of a leader on the verge of building his own personality cult.

Like Zhang and Xi Jinping (习近平), who is expected to become China’s new ‘paramount leader,’ Bo was a ‘princeling’ — the son of an earlier senior Party dignitary, Bo Yibo — one of China’s most powerful leaders in the 1980s and the 1990s — which makes the younger Bo’s downfall all the more remarkable.

With Zhang firmly reasserting more orthodox control over Chongqing — he denied earlier this week that a ‘Chongqing model’ even exists– he appears to have passed a key hurdle in a career that’s seen as many highlights as disappointments.

Now, it appears that Zhang will take the seat on the Politburo Standing Committee that seemed at one time virtually assured for Bo.

As noted above, Zhang’s father Zhang Zhiyi served as a major general in the People’s Liberation Army.

Zhang studied Korean in his youth and studied economics in Pyongyang in North Korea before returning to China, and his Korean expertise brought him initially to prominence when he arranged Jiang’s trip to North Korea in 1990 and, under Jiang’s patronage, rose through the ranks in Jilin province, which borders North Korea and Russia in the far northeast of China.  Zhang was appointed Party secretary of Jilin province in 1995 and served until 1998, and he was credited with successfully addressing the issue of Korean immigration — about 4.25% of Jilin’s population is ethnically Korean. Continue reading Fifth Generation: Who is Zhang Dejiang? →

European Union, Personal, United States

Andrew Moravcsik, Brookings panel explore US-EU relations in Obama’s second term

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I had the opportunity to catch Princeton University’s Andrew Moravcsik (pictured above, middle) at the Brookings Institution yesterday for a brief panel discussion on relations between the United States and the European Union following the reelection of U.S. president Barack Obama.  Moravcsik engaged with Atlantic columnist Clive Crook and other panelists on not only the direction of US-EU relations in Obama’s second term, but also whether US-EU relations are even incredibly relevant at all for an administration likely to have higher priorities. 

It takes a special kind of brass for an American to become one of the fundamental scholars of European integration, but Moravcsik is the father of the liberal intergovernmentalism theory of European integration, which purports that European institutions are essentially the creations of nation-states, and that supranational entities such as the European Union only have as much power as those states unanimously agree to provide them.  It stands in contrast to the competing neofunctionalism theory that purports that institutions like the European Union gather more power through the spillover effects of integration, allowing them to grow and gain additional power as integration deepens, notwithstanding the wishes of nation-states.  It’s a fascinating debate, and it’s especially fascinating to consider the consequences of both theories for the ongoing European response to the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis.

Needless to say, few political scientists — European, American or otherwise — have had as much influence on European integration theory as Moravcsik.  As such, he’s long been one of my favorite scholars since I first studied European integration theory at the European University Institute, so it was somewhat of a pleasure to see him discuss US-EU relations in person — and not less than a 10-minute walk from home at that.

The discussion featured much of the standard debate between intergovernmentalism and functionalism, with Crook arguing in particular that the United Kingdom under prime minister David Cameron was perhaps irretrievably isolating itself from Europe and that it risked geopolitical irrelevance if it did so.  He worried that the European Union, more generally, has failed to adequately provide ‘variable geometry’ for European countries — a so-called ‘multi-speed Europe.’

Moravcsik, however, largely shrugged off those concerns and noted that a multi-speed Europe emerged two decades ago, with some countries participating more fully and others, like the United Kingdom, choosing to participate in some core functions but not others:

There’s a lot of people in Brussels who say a lot of things, but what happens is what member states say.

He pointed to the limited nature of participation in the eurozone — many members, including the United Kingdom, have not acceded to the single currency.  He also pointed to the voluntary nature of opting into any unified European foreign policy (e.g., the ‘coalition of the willing’ that included the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland, but few others, in support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), the flexibility of European competition policy, and the opt-out nature of the Schengen Agreement that establishes the free crossing of borders throughout Europe, to which even some non-EU countries are party.  He added that Turkey and, increasingly, Morocco are both, to some degree, integrated into the European Union, if not in quite a de jure capacity.

I found Moravcsik’s thoughts on US-EU relations more intriguing, however — especially his thoughts on the Obama administration’s much-trumpeted ‘pivot to Asia.’

Moravcsik argued that US-EU relations are far more sanguine than, perhaps, has been reported, and noted the role that German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi played in preventing — or at least delaying — the kind of eurozone crisis that could have endangered Obama’s election.  He added that U.S. and European interests are largely aligned and that when the Obama administration needs to call someone in the world with the will and means to support its goals, it’s still likely to call on Europe.  He noted that the United States and Europe agree more consistently today than they did during the Cold War on issues as wide-ranging as nuclear proliferation, Israeli-Palestinian peace, consequences of the ‘Arab Spring,’ and environmental and climate change policy.

As such, he dismissed the idea of a ‘pivot to Asia’ as nothing so much as overheated rhetoric, comparing it to the talk of the United States as a unilateral ‘hyperpower’ in 2003.  In both cases, he argued that Europeans have (wrongly) taken American rhetoric at far more than face value.  To the contrary, Moravcsik claimed that the ‘pivot to Asia’ talk was ‘drummed up’ as a strategic justification for the United States pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That was perhaps a bit starker than I’d imagined.  After all, Obama is headed, of all places, to southeast Asia for his first post-reeelction trip — to Myanmar/Burma, the first trip by a sitting U.S. president to that country in U.S. history.

Broadly speaking, Moravcsik argued that large strategic shifts, like any ‘pivot’ to Asia, are accomplished only gradually over long periods of time.  That strikes me as largely correct, but it nonetheless will be interesting to see what happens between now and 2017 on U.S. Asia/Pacific policy.

Notably, we have a handful of measuring sticks to guide us: Continue reading Andrew Moravcsik, Brookings panel explore US-EU relations in Obama’s second term →

China

Fifth Generation: Who is Zhang Gaoli?

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This is the first in a series of posts examining the Chinese leaders expected to be named to the Politburo Standing Committee during the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) that kicked off November 8.

With the apparent finalization of the seven members (reduced from nine) of the new Politburo Standing Committee, it appears that Zhang Gaoli (张高丽) has made the cut, and indeed, Zhang typifies the ‘new’ faces of the so-called ‘fifth generation’ of China’s leadership — neither incredibly new nor incredibly liberal.

Zhang, age 66, would be among the oldest of the Standing Committee’s new members and is a protégé of former president Jiang Zemin (江泽民).  Although Zhang is expected to be a strong voice for continued economic reform, he’s not exactly a liberal reformer in the style of Wang Yang, the Party secretary in Guangdong who has been relatively lax about censorship and restrictions on political speech.

What does stand out about Zhang’s record, though, is that he’s been at the forefront of China’s economic wave in three different positions in three urban hot spots on China’s eastern coast over the past 15 years — so much so that Zhang could emerge as the new executive vice premier, essentially the lead economics policymaker in China — it’s thought that he and Wang Qishan (王岐山) are in competition for the role.

Currently, Zhang currently serves as the Party secretary in Tianjin municipality — along with Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, Tianjin is one of four municipalities that is essentially governed like China’s other provinces.  Tianjin, just north of Beijing, has long been a key transportation hub on eastern China’s coast and, with 11.1 million people, China’s fourth largest city — to put it in perspective, Tianjin has just a handful more people than Chicago and New York combined.  As Party secretary, Zhang has been instrumental in developing Tianjin’s Binhai New Area — a new economic zone along the coast that aims to replicate the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, and by all accounts, is succeeding at breakneck speed, and has already surpassed Pudong in terms of GDP.

In many ways, his ascent parallels the ascent of China’s emergence as a global economic power, with all the positive and negative attributes that brings — admirers point to his fervor for liberalizing China’s economy, but critics decry debt-financed public-sector spending on misguided infrastructure:

All this debt-fuelled investment in trophy projects has certainly resulted in rapid headline growth rates, and clearly it has boosted Zhang’s career. But how much of it will ever generate an economic return is doubtful. The handful of analysts who have examined Tianjin’s finances in detail warn of a massive bad debt explosion in the making….  As party boss in Tianjin, Zhang has proved himself an ardent proponent of China’s investment-at-all-costs growth trajectory.

That is exactly the model economists say Beijing must now reject if it is to avoid the dreaded middle-income trap and sustain its development over the next 10 years.

Unfortunately, if Zhang does indeed succeed to the economic policy hot-seat next week, it looks as if China’s chances of a successful rebalancing away from debt-funded investment and towards growth powered by private consumption will be severely diminished.

Perhaps more fundamentally, however, Zhang made his mark as the Party secretary of Shenzhen from 1997 to 2002.  Shenzhen is a special economic zone adjacent to Hong Kong — it was essentially opened up to free-market policies by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and it was one of the first experiments in the great transformation of China from a Maoist communist economy one into a ‘market socialist’ economy.  Continue reading Fifth Generation: Who is Zhang Gaoli? →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: November 8

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Foreign Policy on Hu Jintao’s legacy.

Greece’s Hellenic parliament has passed the fiscal austerity package required to receive more funds.

A calamity in Ghana suspends campaigning.

Sierra Leone will hold a presidential debate tomorrow.

James Traub assesses John Kerry as a potential U.S. secretary of state.

FT Alphaville‘s guide to the Chinese transition.

 

China

It’s still all about Jiang

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A humorous post on Weibo, China’s variant of Twitter, of various shots of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin nodding off — or otherwise looking quite somnolent at the 18th National People’s Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Congress kicked off earlier today in Beijing, and is expected to produce the elevation of Xi Jinping (习近平) to the position of general secretary of the Party as China’s current president and ‘paramount leader’ Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) transfers power to a new generation of leaders.

Notably, Hu’s predecessor, former president Jiang Zemin (江泽民) has emerged as a key political player, and he has influenced many of the expected new members of the Politburo Standing Committee that will essentially govern China for the next five years under Xi’s leadership.

The post was removed from Weibo, of course.  Despite a remarkably more open transfer of power, there are still limits on political expression in the People’s Republic.

Puerto Rico, United States

Could Puerto Rico really become the 51st U.S. state?

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In addition to the defeat of Puerto Rico’s budget-cutting governor Luis Fortuño in yesterday’s gubernatorial election, Puerto Ricans have also voted in a two-question referendum in opposition to its current commonwealth status, marking the worst result for the status quo in four such referenda in half a century. 

That doesn’t mean Puerto Rico is exactly on the fast track to become the 51st state of the United States.

There are reasons to believe that the path to statehood would encounter obstacles both from U.S. legislators in Washington, D.C. as well as difficulties in San Juan — not least of which due to the fact that Puerto Rico’s newly elected governor, Alejandro García Padilla, opposes Puerto Rican statehood and is likely to prioritize creating jobs and reducing crime over constitutional status issues.

The island is currently a U.S. territory, and since 1952, its constitutional status has been as a ‘commonwealth’ of the United States.  More on that below.

Tuesday’s referendum

First, let’s examine the actual referendum and the result.

The referendum itself was a complex two-question vote.  Puerto Ricans were first asked whether the commonwealth should continue to have its present form of territorial status.  Puerto Ricans were also asked which non-territorial option they prefer among three options: becoming a U.S. state, becoming independent, or becoming a ‘free associated state’ — think of the latter option as ‘independence light‘ akin to the relationship that Palau and the Marshall Islands have to the United States or like the relationship the Cook Islands have with New Zealand.

See the second prong of the ballot question:

Puerto Ricans could vote on the second question regardless of their position on the first question, so voters who support the current commonwealth status could nonetheless vote for their preferred non-commonwealth status as well.

Around 1.82 million voters participated in the referendum.  On the first question, 53.99% of voters voted that Puerto Rico should not continue to have its present form of territorial status, and 46.01% supported the current status.  In four referenda since 1967, that’s clearly the strongest vote against Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status.

On the second question, though, the headline statistic that most U.S. media are reporting is that 61.15% of Puerto Rican voters supported statehood (with 33.31% supporting a ‘free associated state’ and just 5.53% supporting full independence).

But that overstates the case, because over 486,000 voters cast either invalid or blank votes on the second question.  When you take those into consideration, statehood won just 44.62% of total votes, blank and invalid votes ‘won’ 27.04%, the ‘free associated state’ option won 24.31%, and full independence won 4.04%.

So while statehood seems to be the preferred alternative, not even a majority of the voters who took part in the referendum actually cast a vote for statehood.  Furthermore, we don’t know how ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters actually voted on the second question, so there’s no way to know, what the anti-commonwealth voters, as a group, actually prefer.

Accordingly, the result isn’t a clear victory for much of anything, let alone statehood.  That may be fine — it’s just a non-binding referendum anyway.  As noted above, García Padilla and his Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico (the PPD, Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico) is opposed to statehood, so it seems less likely that Puerto Rico will aggressively pursue statehood than if the incumbent, Luis Fortuño of the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico (the PNP, New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico) had won reelection.

Notably, however, Puerto Rico’s ‘resident commissioner,’ its non-voting representative to the U.S. House of Representatives, has the chief responsibility of introducing legislation to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state. Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi — who was only narrowly reelected on Tuesday with a 1% margin — belongs to the pro-statehood PNP.  Pierluisi, indeed, has indicated that he favors introducing such legislation.  We’ll find out, I guess.

Proponents of statehood chafe at the idea that Puerto Rico is somehow less equal, that it’s a colonial remnant from the imperial era.  Other supporters believe that full statehood would help lift Puerto Rico’s economic status by creating more links to the mainstream U.S. economy — the island’s GDP per capita of just $24,000 is almost half of GDP per capita on the mainland, the island has been stuck in a recession for the past six years and poverty, crime and unemployment are much higher there than on the mainland.

Opponents argue that statehood would not deliver many more benefits than Puerto Ricans currently enjoy, while subjecting it to less autonomy and more responsibility for U.S. federal taxes.  Furthermore, opponents worry that statehood could endanger the unique ‘boricua’ culture of the predominantly Spanish-speaking territory.  Needless to say, if you’ve ever been to San Juan, you realize quickly that it’s a world away from even heavily Latino U.S. cities like Miami, Los Angeles or New York. Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans are already well assimilated into U.S. culture and life — indeed, there are more mainland citizens of Puerto Rican descent in United States than on the island, and Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland share a rich cultural heritage, especially within the ‘Nuyorican’ diaspora that emerged in New York in the 20th century.

Since 1952, independence has remained a fairly unpopular option, although if Puerto Rico were a sovereign nation, it would be the Caribbean’s fourth most-populous country, after Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Its $96.26 billion economy would become the largest economy in the Caribbean, dwarfing not just the Cuban ($60.8 billion) or Dominican ($55.6 billion) economies, but also Central American ones, such as Panamá’s ($30.7 billion) and Costa Rica’s ($41.0 billion).

Puerto Rico’s status in context

Tuesday’s vote was the just the most recent of four increasingly complex referenda on Puerto Rico’s status since becoming a commonwealth in 1952.  Continue reading Could Puerto Rico really become the 51st U.S. state? →

Puerto Rico, United States

Who is Alejandro García Padilla?

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Although voters in the United States chose to retain a Republican House of Representatives, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president in Barack Obama, it wasn’t as good a night for incumbents in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Alejandro García Padilla (pictured above), a Puerto Rican senator, narrowly defeated Puerto Rico’s governor Luis Fortuño in Tuesday’s Puerto Rican gubernatorial election and Fortuño conceded the race earlier this afternoon — with over 96% of the votes counted, García Padilla leads with 47.85% to just 47.04% for Fortuño.

The result will cap what was generally a good night for García Padilla’s Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico (the PPD, Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico), which also took back control of Puerto Rico’s Asamblea Legislativa (Legislative Assembly) from Fortuño’s Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico (the PNP, New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico), and which also won the mayoral race in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital and largest city.

So who is García Padilla? And how will García Padilla will his administration differ from Fortuño’s?

García Padilla, age 41, an attorney and former law professor, was elected to Puerto Rico’s Senate in 2008 as the PPD’s most popular vote-winner.  He previously served as the secretary of consumer affairs under former PPD governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá from 2005 to 2008.

García Padilla’s victory first and foremost likely means an end to the austerity policies of his predecessor.

As governor, Fortuño has essentially eliminated Puerto Rico’s $2 billion budget deficit, but he’s done so by cutting public sector jobs and reducing spending on higher education, even while he reduced taxes 50% for individuals and 30% for business.  The implementation of his economic program has drawn considerable attention in the United States, and Fortuño himself is somewhat of a star within the Republican Party — he and his wife had primetime speaking roles during the Republican National Convention in August.  If Mitt Romney had won Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, it seemed likely that Fortuño could even be elevated to a cabinet position in a Romney administration.

Fortuño, already on the ropes after losing two referenda earlier in the summer to reduce the number of legislators in Puerto Rico’s legislative assembly and to give judges the right to deny bail in certain murder cases (Puerto Rico, uniquely, entitles everyone to bail regardless of the crime), was never quite a favorite for reelection.

García Padilla ran a stinging campaign against the harshness of Fortuño’s austerity measures in the face of an economic climate even more troubling than on the U.S. mainland — the economy has been in recession for six years, unemployment remains relatively high at 13.6% and the poverty level has reached a staggering 45.6%.  Meanwhile, crime is rising steadily, with over 1,000 murders in 2011 alone.  Puerto Rico’s GDP per capita of just around $24,000, about half that of the United States, makes it already much less prosperous than the mainland.  Continue reading Who is Alejandro García Padilla? →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: November 7 (Obama reelection edition)

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Pakistan headline: ‘Obama Drones Romney’

Obama’s reelection and Bangladesh.

Obama’s reelection and India.

Obama’s reelection and Pakistan.

Obama’s reelection and South Korea.

Obama’s reelection and East Asia.

Obama’s reelection and Japan.

Obama’s reelection and Venezuela.

Obama’s reelection and Germany.

Obama’s reelection and France (and Europe). [French]

Obama’s reelection and Spain. [Spanish]

Obama’s reelection and Denmark.

Obama’s reelection and the Balkans.

Obama’s reelection and Poland.

Obama’s reelection and Russia.

Obama’s reelection and Kenya.

Obama’s reelection and the Arab World.

Obama’s reelection and Israel.

Obama’s reelection and Turkey.

Obama’s reelection and Mexico.

UK prime minister David Cameron thinks Mitt Romney’s failure is a warning for conservatives.

 

United States

What Obama’s reelection means for world politics

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It now appears that U.S. president Barack Obama has been reelected for a second term through January 2017, notwithstanding the highest unemployment rate in a generation, an economy that continues to show sluggish growth and the highest budget deficits since World War II. 

But what does it mean for world politics that Obama — and not his Republican rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — has won the election?

David Rothkopf had a superb piece in Foreign Policy yesterday listing 12 catastrophes the next president — Obama or Romney — must avoid.  Those catastrophes range from another terrorist attack like the Sept. 11 attacks, a trade war with China, a real war with Iran, regional destabilization in the Middle East, escalating U.S. involvement in north Africa, a fiscal or budgetary crisis, and Japan-style long-term economic stagnation.

In addition, I would add that the U.S.-Mexico relationship is at a critical juncture with the incoming administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and the return of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party) to power after 12 years.  That has implications for U.S. drug policy, energy policy and potential foreign development of the Mexican oil industry, border security and immigration reform, trade and other Latin American economic policy.

Sub-Saharan Africa, too, is at a critical point — economic growth is returning and China has moved aggressively to develop the continent’s resources after two decades of conflict and misery.  From Ghana to Kenya, Africa will face a flurry of elections in the months ahead.  Aside from the remaining problems in Mali and Libya, the United States has a keen interest in two additional immediate issues: (i) solidifying the role of Ethiopia as a regional partner in stabilizing the Horn of Africa following the death of longtime leader Meles Zenawi two months ago under newly installed prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and (ii) ensuring that the newly independent South Sudan doesn’t turn into a failed state and that relations between Sudan and South Sudan over resource allocation don’t ignite a war that could easily inflame much of central Africa.

Of course, with Obama’s reelection, as soon as U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton steps down, her successor will likely be Massachusetts senator John Kerry, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice or national security advisor Thomas Donilon.

But despite the fact that Romney seemed to agree more than disagree with Obama on foreign policy in their final presidential debate back in October, there are real differences between the two.  Here are ten of the most salient consequences of what Obama’s win means for world politics — beyond giving hope to other incumbents that you can win reelection despite a subdued economy:

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First Past the Post: November 6

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