Daily Archives: December 21, 2012

Gujarat, India

Modi’s Gujarat victory sets platform for national ambitions in 2014

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Votes were counted yesterday from two regional state elections in India — in Gujarat, on the west-center coast of India, with 60 million people, and in the much smaller Himachal Pradesh, a much smaller Himalayan state that borders Tibet, with just six million people.India Flag Icon

But in some ways, December 20 was the first day of campaigning for the national election — likely to be held in 2014 — to control India’s Lok Sabha ( लोक सभा), the 552-member lower chamber of the Indian parliament.

The upshot of the elections is that Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi (pictured above) has been reelected for a third consecutive term, and his victory has invariably made him the frontrunner to be the prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu nationalist and conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) in 2014, when the BJP hopes to national power for the first time since its stunning 2004 election loss.

Modi had done nothing to dispel the notion that he wants to become prime minister during the campaign, in which Modi, quite novelly in Indian politics (and to my knowledge, world politics), appeared simultaneously at rallies throughout the state using a hologram version of himself.

Even in his victory speech, when he addressed supporters not in the local language, Gujarati, but the more nationally recognized Hindi language, he seemed to indicate that he was turning his eyes toward a national audience.

Modi, if he does lead the BJP in 2014, will not face the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, but likely Rahul Gandhi — the son of the Sonia Gandhi, the president of Singh’s Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) and of the late former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and also the grandson of the late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Although some other BJP chief ministers appear ready to back Modi, he still faces obstacles — 2014 is far away, and the BJP chief minister of Madhya Pradesh since 2005, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who has also been a member of the Lok Sabha since 1991, will be seeking his third consecutive term next year.  Madhya Pradesh lies in the heart of central India, with an even larger population (75 million) than Gujarat and which also has an economy better than India’s average.

Furthermore, Raman Singh, who has been the BJP chief minister of the less-populous (25 million) but industrially vital east-central state of Chhatisgarh since 2003, will also seek his third consecutive term in 2013.

At the national level, the chief minister of Bihar state, Nitish Kumar, remains decidedly cold about running with Modi in 2014.  Kumar leads the Janata Dal (United) party (JDU), which holds just 20 seats in the Lok Sabha, but is the second-largest member, after the BJP, of the National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha that stands as the united opposition to Congress.  The JDU lies more to the political left of the BJP, and it’s been strongest in Bihar and Jharkhand in the far east of India.  Kumar, whose party is also more secular than the Hindu-based BJP, has worked to appeal to Muslims, which comprise 16.5% of the population in Bihar.  He has threatened to pull the JDU out of the alliance with the BJP if it nominates Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

But for now, let’s take a closer look at the results, announced yesterday, in Gujarat:

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Going into the election, the BJP controlled 117 of the 182 seats in the Gujarati regional parliament.  Modi held onto most of those seats, despite a nationalized campaign that brought Singh and both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to campaign against him, and despite rumblings from elements within Gujarat to Modi’s right and Keshubhai Patel, who preceded Modi, serving in 1995 and from 1998 to 2001.  Patel formed a new party, the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP), which won two seats, and likely stole away enough votes from Modi’s BJP to allow Congress to win a few more seats in the election.

Although Modi would probably have liked a wider victory — expectations spun wildly out of hand that he could win 130 to 150 seats, although that was never incredibly likely — it’s nonetheless a very strong win after more than a decade of incumbency for Modi personally and two decades of incumbency for the BJP, especially in a country that isn’t incredibly kind, electorally speaking, to incumbents (as the BJP learned yesterday in Himachal Pradesh).  Continue reading Modi’s Gujarat victory sets platform for national ambitions in 2014 →

United States

The next U.S. treasury secretary will be more important to world affairs than John Kerry

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Now that we’ve gotten the excitement about the nomination of U.S. senator John Kerry out of the way, we’re still a long way off from knowing who will succeed Timothy Geithner as U.S. president Barack Obama’s treasury secretary.

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Although in terms of protocol, Kerry will undoubtedly remain the top American diplomat, the next U.S. treasury secretary will be just as important — if not more important — than the incoming U.S. secretary of state, and he or she may well have a greater hand in setting foreign policy, given the precarious nature of the U.S. economy.

Although the most recent GDP estimates show that the economy grew at a 3.1% pace in the third quarter of 2012, growth in 2011 was around 1.7%, and any number of global factors could topple even an otherwise impregnable recovery.

Consider all of the key international issues on U.S. president Barack Obama’s agenda over the next four years:

  • the ongoing eurozone crisis and the destabilizing blowback to the U.S. economy from a eurozone breakup or further recession, unemployment and depressed aggregate demand in the European Union;
  • in the world’s second-largest economy — China — a new leader in Xi Jinping will face a slowing economy and a renminbi currency that remains elevated in value vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar;
  • in the world’s third-largest economy — Japan — a new leader in Shinzō Abe will embark upon a massive public spending binge in a country that’s set to become the largest external holder of U.S. debt (supplanting China, which held that role for a decade, and which has seen its own U.S. dollar inflows from export trade slow over the past four years);
  • Obama will want to leave office having concluded the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious trade and cooperation agreement among various North American, South American and Asian countries;
  • as the United States transitions from a net energy consumer to a net energy producer in the coming decade or so, foreign policy in the Middle East will become relatively less important as the United States becomes less dependent on Arab oil; and
  • for the first time in a generation or more, ‘investment’ and ‘boom,’ rather than ‘AIDS,’ ‘civil war,’ ‘famine’ and ‘genocide’ are more applicable to sub-Saharan Africa, taken as a whole — there remain major problems, but for the first time, the narrative of ‘cheetah’ economies from Nigeria to Ghana to Ethiopia has outpaced the narrative of horrors (like the ongoing violent morass in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

All of that means Obama’s next treasury secretary — whether current chief of staff Jacob Lew, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink or someone else — will be at the forefront of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the next four years.

Remember, too, that the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has been more important than anyone else in the United States over the past four years in stabilizing the world economy after the 2008 financial panic, and his continued emphasis on expansionary monetary policy has implications that go far beyond the U.S. economy.  His term ends in 2014, and he’s indicated he won’t stay on for a third term; minds have been known to change in Washington, but economic policymakers and investors alike will be keenly interested in the policy background and ideas of Bernanke’s successor — a choice that will likely be shaped with input from Geithner’s successor (and who may even be Geithner himself). Continue reading The next U.S. treasury secretary will be more important to world affairs than John Kerry →

United States

Five reasons why Kerry’s appointment as U.S. secretary of state is a slam-dunk

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U.S. president Barack Obama is expected to nominate U.S. senator John Kerry today to succeed U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who will leave the U.S. state department as one of the most admired public servants in the United States, despite the grumbling over the 9/11 Benghazi attack.USflag

I’ve argued for a long time that the senior senator from Massachusetts is by and far the best choice for the position, and he topped my pre-election list of potential top diplomats; James Traub over at Foreign Policy made the case expertly shortly after Obama’s re-election:

John Kerry is Hillary Clinton in pants. (Yes, I know, Secretary Clinton also wears pants.) He came within a whisker of being president — much closer than she did — and thus enjoys the aura of the almost-commander in chief. He is, like Clinton, a kind of living embodiment of America. He is immensely solemn and judicious, like her, but, unlike her, immensely tall. He is a decorated veteran with the iron grip of the ex-athlete. His baritone voice bespeaks bottomless gravitas. The man looks and acts more like a secretary of state than anyone since George Marshall. As a casting decision, it’s a no-brainer….

It has to be very flattering to be so earnestly interrogated by an enormously tall man who was almost president of the United States.

But it’s not all his tall, lanky body or his distinctive granite jaw.  There are other substantial reasons to appoint Kerry, many of which emphasize Kerry’s role at the heart of U.S. foreign policy for over five decades: Continue reading Five reasons why Kerry’s appointment as U.S. secretary of state is a slam-dunk →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: December 21

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East and South Asia

What will it take for Western governments to grant a visa to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi?

Full results from India’s regional state elections (more to come on those from Suffragio tomorrow).

Older voters swung the Dec. 19 South Korean presidential race to Park Guen-hye.

What comes next for former presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo?

The Bank of Japan moves toward the position of incoming prime minister Shinzō Abe.

Xi Jinping gives his full support to beleaguered Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying.

North America

Hoping for a boom in Nova Scotia (I have to say, I’ve seen no place more beautiful in autumn).

Spiegel mocks U.S. gun culture: ‘one nation under guns.’

Latin America / Caribbean

Ecuador’s top banker faked his economics degree.

Happy Mayan end-of-the-world day.

Assurances from Yucatán state governor Rolando Zapata. [Spanish]

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva will be investigated for his role in ‘mensalão‘ vote-bying scandal from 2005.

Africa

The United Nations has authorized an African-led intervention force in Mali.

Nigeria passes its 2013 budget.

Another small party in Ghana chides the government for irregularities during elections earlier this month.

Kenya’s Jubilee coalition is disintegrating.

Europe

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 4.5 hour press conference.

Urban planning and politics in Moscow.

Without apologizing, French president François Hollande has recognized French’s profondément injuste et brutal colonialism in Algeria.  [French]

Polish president Bronisław Komorowski boosts Poland’s entry into the eurozone.

The pro-life view on Ireland’s new controversial abortion liberalisation law.

Middle East

Egypt’s top elections official steps down two days before the final round of president Mohammed Morsi’s impromptu constitutional referendum.

Bayit Yehudi, the party in Israel that’s most likely to gain seats in Knesset elections on January 22 is targeting English- and French-speaking voters.