Monthly Archives: December 2012

Gujarat, India

Gujarati voters consider third decade of BJP rule as Modi looks to prime minister race in 2014

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In Gujarat, the state where Mahatma Gandhi — India’s spiritual and intellectual founding father — was born, voters will go to the polls in two rounds on December 13 and 17 to elect a new regional government. 

Since 2001, however, Gujarat’s government has been headed by Narendra Modi (pictured above), the regional leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी), which currently holds 117 out of 182 in the state’s unicameral Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha, ગુજરાત વિધાન સભા). In the previous 2007 elections, Modi’s BJP defeated the Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) by an 11% margin — Congress currently holds 59 seats.

Politics in Gujarat is largely a straightforward contest between India’s two largest national political parties and, as one of India’s most conservative states, it’s long been a for the BJP, which has held a majority in the Legislative Assembly since 1995.

Modi is a longtime veteran of Indian politics, and he is widely thought to harbor national political ambitions, though he’s a relatively polarizing figure within India, and opponents have dismissed him as more hype than substance.

He will be looking to poll at least as well as he did in the previous 2007 elections, when the BJP won 49% of the vote and nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Legislative Assembly, as a springboard into the 2014 national elections.  Although that contest is still a long ways off,  Modi remains the favorite to run as the BJP’s candidate for prime minister in 2014, though he may face intraparty rivals, including former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani.  Congress is expected to run under the candidacy of Rahul Gandhi — the son of Congress’s president Sonia Gandhi and the late former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the grandson of the late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Although the state’s officials won’t start counting votes until December 20, barring a political earthquake, it’s a safe bet that Modi will emerge with a mandate for a fourth consecutive term in office.

In one of the world’s most novel twists on campaigning, he has turned heads by using a three-dimensional hologram avatar of himself to address multiple rallies in Gujarat simultaneously. Continue reading Gujarati voters consider third decade of BJP rule as Modi looks to prime minister race in 2014 →

Venezuela

Chávez officially names Maduro as anointed successor

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, only two months after winning reelection against his strongest opponent in 13 years in office, appears to have taken a turn for the worse in his ongoing struggle with cancer, has returned to Cuba for surgery. 

Before leaving, however, he indicated his express preference for his successor — for the first time — in the event that his health declines terminally.  That’s as close as any indication that Venezuelans have received from Chávez that he is battling terminal cancer, in a hasty address to the nation late Saturday night:

Unfortunately, comprehensive tests (performed in Cuba) found the presence, in the same area (previously) affected, of malignant (cancerous) cells. It has been decided that it is absolutely necessary and essential to undergo further surgery. This should happen in the coming days. Doctors even recommended performing the surgery yesterday (Friday) or this weekend at the latest.

Not surprisingly, Chávez anointed Nicolás Maduro (pictured above, left, with Chávez) as his favored successor, expressing openly what he had indicated implicitly in October when he elevated Maduro, formerly foreign minister, to become Venezuela’s new vice president.

Maduro, a former bus driver and trade unionist, has been part of Chávez’s ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela) since its foundation, and he was by Chávez’s side in 1998 when the PSUV first won power.  He was a member of Venezuela’s parliament until 2006, serving as speaker from 2005 to 2006, when he was named as Chávez’s foreign minister.  As such, he’s a fairly well-known figure to Venezuela’s key allies and opponents alike, including China, the United States and Cuba, although observers are cautiously optimistic he would be a more moderate leader, more in the mould of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva than Chávez.

Chávez is set to be inaugurated for his fourth term on January 10 — if he were to die during his third term, Maduro would take over as president until January 10.  If Chávez dies after reelection, Diosdado Cabello, the speaker of the National Assembly, would take over temporarily while new elections are organized.  Under Venezuelan law, a new presidential election would be required within 30 days of Chávez’s death or resignation during the first four years of his term (which is set to run for six years, through 2019).  Chávez’s announcement on Saturday makes it very likely that, despite Cabello’s presidential ambitions, Maduro would likely lead the PSUV in any such presidential election in the near future.

Venezuelans return to the polls on December 16 to vote for regional governments, including in Miranda state, where Chávez’s one-time challenger Henrique Capriles is facing a strong challenge from Maduro’s predecessor as vice president, Elías Jaua.

Capriles won 45% of the vote nationally against Chávez in October as the leader of the opposition coalition, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD).  If Capriles wins on Sunday in Miranda state, he will be well placed to compete in any future presidential election against Maduro.

Italy

Monti resigns as prime minister in light of Berlusconi’s political return

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It’s been an incredibly fast-moving weekend for Italian politics — shortly after Silvio Berlusconi announced he would return to the leadership of his floundering Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) on Saturday, prime minister Mario Monti announced that he would resign as prime minister upon the completion of Italy’s 2013 budget, meaning that the next Italian election could come sooner than April 2013 as previously planned.

Monti’s resignation is not the incredible bombshell that it seems — it will still take some time to pass the 2013 budget, and the coalition that supports Monti, comprised of the PdL and the center-left Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), seem likely to provide support for that budget.  Earlier today, after the Italian stock market dropped and Italian bond yields crept upwards to around 4.8%, Monti reassured global markets and Italians alike that he would continue to govern through the next election.  Monti was appointed prime minister in November 2011 after Berlusconi’s government found itself in the throes of a crisis of confidence over Italian fiscal policy with bond yields of over 7%, not to mention the corruption and sex scandal that had enveloped Berlusconi in his final years in office.

Monti has spent much of 2012 passing budget cuts, tax increases and market reforms through Italy’s parliament — Monti remains well-respected in Italy, although his austerity measures in particular have become increasingly unpopular.  As such, the upcoming Italian election was always going to determine the outcome of Monti’s reforms, and it will fall to the next government to consolidate and continue Monti’s reforms.  Indeed, Italy had already started turning toward election season, and although Monti is not running in his own right, he has indicated he could return to lead a second Monti government in the event, not unlikely, of a hung Italian parliament.

The PD, together with a handful of smaller leftist allies, selected just eight days ago the broad center-left’s candidate for prime minister, the PD’s current leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, in a race that saw much of Italy cheering on the youthful, energetic mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi.  Although Bersani has emphasized the importance of stimulating economic growth and creating more jobs, he’s largely indicated he would continue Monti’s broad path of fiscal readjustment.

Earlier in November, a handful of business leaders formed a new coalition, Verso la Terza Repubblica (VTR, Toward the Third Republic), a centrist group that will run in the 2013 election for the express purpose of returning Monti to government.  Its leaders include Ferrari CEO, former Fiat CEO and former president of Confindustria (Italy’s employer’s federation), Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.  A handful of smaller parties are also contesting the election in their own right, ranging from autonomist parties in Italy’s north and Italy’s south, the remnants of Italy’s old Christian Democrats, and parties ranging from fervently communist to nearly neofascist.

So, at most, Monti’s imminent resignation will accelerate the Italian election to February.

In one sense, that’s good news for Berlusconi’s opponents — the less time that Berlusconi has, with his ample amount of money and media power, to attack Monti’s reforms and his leftist opponents, the less likely it is that Berlusconi can turn around polls that show the PdL in third place, behind the PD and behind blogger Beppe Grillo’s anti-austerity Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement).

On the other hand, the PdL was set to contest regional elections on February 10 and 11 in Lombardia (in northern Italy and home to Italy’s financial and fashion capital, Milan) and in Lazio (in central Italy and the region surrounding Italy’s capital, Rome), and losses in those elections could have been even more embarrassing in advance of a later spring vote.  In Lombardia, Roberto Formigoni, who has served as regional president since 1995, announced the dissolution of the regional legislature after one of his PdL allies was arrested on the charge that he bought votes from the southern organized crime organization ‘Ndrangheta in the 2010 regional elections.  In Lazio, the PdL’s Renata Polverini resigned as regional president after just three years in office after being implicated in a public expenses scandal.

Ghana

Mahama wins reelection in Ghana over Akufo-Addo; parliamentary results still unknown

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Despite howls of protest about fraud from the opposition, John Dramani Mahama (pictured above) has won reelection as Ghana’s president in what appears to be an impressive victory for the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Although Mahama ascended to the presidency only in July upon the untimely death of John Atta Mills, his election victory against Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) exceeded Mills’s own victory against Akufo-Addo in 2008.

Mahama won 50.70%, giving him a margin of victory sufficient for a first-round victory and avoiding a potential runoff on December 28, unlike in 2008, when Mills defeated Akufo-Addo in an incredibly tight contest (and after Akufo-Addo actually won the first round).

Paa Kwesi Nduom of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), who also ran in 2008, finished with 0.59% of the vote, much less than his 2008 total.

Akufo-Addo has not yet conceded defeat, however, and the NPP is considering legal action to annul the election result.  In particular, the NPP is charging that Mahama’s government manipulated the results of two constituencies, one in the north and another in Accra, Ghana’s capital, to deliver 25,000 extra votes to Mahama, and it has called for an audit of the ballots counted in the presidential election.  Although Mahama’s margin of victory was around 326,000 votes, balloting was extended from Friday into Saturday in some regions because of voting glitches.  So while it seems doubtful that Akufo-Addo will prevail, electoral irregularities are not necessarily outside the realm of possibility, and NPP supporters demonstrated outside Ghana’s electoral commission over the weekend in protest.

Akufo-Addo’s familiarity to voters and his status as a veteran politician made him an incredibly effective challenger, especially because of his seductive platform for improvements to Ghana’s primary education system and a promise for universal secondary education and health care for all Ghanaian children.  Ultimately, however, Mahama inherited a government from Mills that grew last year at a staggering rate of 14.4% — Ghana’s economy was already doing very well when oil was discovered in 2007 (and first extracted in 2010), and it would have been quite a feat for Akufo-Addo to have defeated an incumbent in a country that marked Africa’s highest growth rate last year.

The NDC, under longtime president Jerry Rawlings, stabilized Ghana’s once-disasterous economy in the 1980s and 1990s and set the stage for Ghana’s transformation into a democracy.

The weekend’s election marked the fourth consecutive free and fair election since Rawlings peacefully transferred power after the 2000 election to the NPP’s John Kufuor.

What’s more striking than the total vote, however, is the regional result (set forth below in an election map– red for Mahama, blue for Akufo-Addo).  Unlike in 2008, when Akufo-Addo won essentially all of the south of Ghana (except for the greater Accra region in the southeast and the Volta region that runs in a narrow strip along Ghana’s eastern border), Mahama made inroads in what’s been traditionally NPP territory.  It’s worth noting, however, that in the dense Ashanti region (the deep blue region on the map), the heartland of the Akan ethnic group (Ghana’s largest), Akufo-Addo won 71.2% of the vote to just 28.0% of the vote for Mahama, and in the Eastern Region (the only other blue region), Akufo-Addo won 56.3% to 42.6% for Mahama.  Within the greater Accra region, Mahama won a steady 53% of the vote to 46.2% for Akufo-Addo.

We don’t have the full results of the parliamentary elections, which were held simultaneously with the presidential election, but the current count shows the NDC with 84 seats and the NPP with 79 seats.  Ghana’s unicameral parliament currently has 230 seats and is controlled (narrowly) by Mahama’s NDC, but Friday’s election featured an expanded parliament with 275 seats.  Given the closeness of the election and the flexibility of 45 new parliamentary seats, there’s still a chance that the NPP could control the parliament, despite Mahama’s presidential win, an outcome that would be unique in Ghana’s political history.

Romania

Ponta’s ruling party extends control with absolute majority in Romanian parliament

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Romanian voters, as expected, rewarded prime minister Victor Ponta (pictured above) with a resounding victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Ponta, who became prime minister in May 2012 and promptly proceeded to govern with an aggressive posture — engaging in several fights with Romania’s constitutional court and organizing a constitutionally sketchy impeachment referendum against his ideological nemesis, Romanian president Traian Băsescu — has benefitted from Romanian discontent over the economy.

Despite only tepid growth in 2010 and a 0.4% contraction in 2011, the previous government of Emil Boc, an ally of Băsescu, became increasingly and staggeringly unpopular after implementing severe austerity measures, in part to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund and a €20 billion bailout from the IMF and the European Union in 2009 to stabilize Romania’s budget.

Ponta’s center-left alliance of three parties called the Uniunea Social Liberală (USL, Social Liberal Union), defeated Băsescu’s hastily-formed alliance, the Alianţa România Dreaptă (ARD, Right Romania Alliance) by a lopsided margin of 58.6% to 16.7% in elections for the 315-member Chamber of Deputies (Camera Deputaţilor), the lower house of Romania’s parliament (Parlamentul României), giving Ponta an absolute majority.

Two smaller parties also won sufficient support for seats — above the 5% threshold for winning seats in the Chamber of Deputies.  The Partidul Poporului – Dan Diaconescu (PP-DD, Popular Party — Dan Diaconescu), a newly formed party backing Diaconescu, a media figure that waged a nationalist and socialist campaign, won 13.5%.  The Uniunea Democrată Maghiară din România (UDMR, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania), which represents the political interests of ethnic Hungarians in Romania, won 5.3%.

The simultaneous election for the 137-member Senate (Senat), the Romanian parliament’s upper chamber, saw nearly identical results — Ponta’s USL won 60.0%, the ARD 17.0%, Diaconescu’s party 14.2% and the ethnic Hungarians 5.4%.

Given Ponta’s overwhelming majority, the next step would typically be that Băsescu, Romania’s president, appoints Ponta as prime minister to lead a government.  But the bitter and toxic relationship between the two, however, has been the central narrative of Romanian politics in the past year, and Băsescu may refuse to appoint Ponta — perhaps by attempting to appoint as prime minister one of the other leaders of the parties that comprise the USL.

Despite valid concerns about Ponta’s dedication to the rule of law, if Băsescu doesn’t appoint Ponta in the face of the USL’s overwhelming electoral victory, he could risk triggering a constitutional crisis and, potentially, the threat of new elections, thereby frightening international investors and providing his opponents a new reason to seek his impeachment (again).

Nonetheless, the new government would have to work with Băsescu until 2014 when his term ends (unless Ponta attempts to impeach Băsescu).

Romania’s IMF funds will be exhausted next year, however, so the new government will have to work with the IMF and the EU to secure new budgetary funding.  With election season over, however, it seems almost certain that the next government, led by Ponta or otherwise, will be forced to adopt much of the budget-cutting posture of Romania’s previous Boc-led government.

Although Ponta’s government has restored some of the pensions and wages cut by the previous government, he hasn’t moved to cut the 24% VAT that Boc’s government introduced.

Italy

Five reasons Berlusconi returned to run in the upcoming Italian election

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After leading a symbolic ‘walk-out’ among his center-right Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) from the Italian senate on Thursday in opposition to the austerity measures and other reforms of caretaker prime minister Mario Monti, Il Cavaliere himself, Silvio Berlusconi (pictured above), today announced that he will lead the PdL as its candidate for prime minister in the upcoming Italian general election against a broad center-left alliance anchored by the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party).

So much for a ‘third republic’ in Italian politics — with the selection of the Italian left’s old-guard’s candidate, Pier Luigi Bersani, in the center-left’s broad primary earlier this month against Florence mayor Matteo Renzi (the latter remains Italy’s most popular politician), Italy remains, for now, stuck in the same-old politics as before.

Indeed, a Berlusconi-Bersani face-off would not have raised eyebrows a decade ago.

This time around, though, Berlusconi will face none of the political luck or goodwill that’s marked most of his career — he left office in November 2011 with Italian 10-year bond rates at an unsustainable 7% amid a growing financial crisis that threatened not only Italy, but the entire eurozone.  In addition, Berlusconi has little to show for his stint in office in the way of policy accomplishments, was convicted (subject to appeal) for tax evasion earlier this autumn, and he’s been shamed by accusations of sex with underage women at the now-famous and much derided ‘bunga bunga’ parties and using his influence for the benefit of at least one of those women, a Moroccan immigrant.

So his return to office in many ways would be met with not just disdain, but outright hostility, from outside investors and much of the European political establishment, including the leaders of the European Union, French president François Hollande and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Berlusconi’s return has been met with chilly responses across the Italian political spectrum.  Monti, who is not contesting the election but has indicated he would be available to lead a second government in the event of a hung parliament, cautioned against populism and warned that Italy must avoid returning to a position whereby Italy’s finances threatened trigger the eurozone’s wider implosion.  Beppe Grillo, a blogger and social critic, as well as the leader of the populist and anti-austerity Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement), savaged what he called Berlusconi’s ‘exhumation.’

Berlusconi’s one-time ally, Gianfranco Fini, who served as deputy prime minister, foreign minister and a former president of Italy’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies (Camera die Deputati), and who is running under the newly-formed Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia (FLI, Future and Freedom), also sounded alarm, noting that the PdL decision exposes Italy to additional risks.

Given the long odds — the PdL stands far behind the center-left coalition in every poll conducted for next year’s election (and sometimes behind the Five Star Movement, too) — why would the 76-year-old Berlusconi make a bid for a fourth term as Italy’s prime minister?

Here are five reasons why he could be making the race.

Continue reading Five reasons Berlusconi returned to run in the upcoming Italian election →

European Union, Personal

Joseph Weiler is the new president of the European University Institute

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It’s with some delight that I congratulate Joseph H.H. Weiler, Joseph Straus Professor of Law at New York University, who has been selected as the next president of the European University Institute, where he received his doctorate and where he taught law from 1978 to 1985. 

Weiler was my international trade professor in law school at NYU, and although I studied under an impressive roster of legal scholars at NYU — including former Stanford Law dean Larry Kramer, Chicago Law dean Michael Schill and Middle East / constitutional academic rockstar Noah Feldman — Weiler’s course on the law of the World Trade Organization and the North America Free Trade Agreement (and really, the European Union as well) opened quite a new world of international law to me, and his relationship with the EUI gave me the chance, as a law student, to study there for a semester with any number of other top legal and political science scholars.

The EUI, situated in the hills just above Florence and just below Fiesole in Tuscany, is an international, pan-European postgraduate and research institute established by the European Union’s member states in the 1970s.

Ghana

Ghana votes today

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Voters in Ghana are at the polls today!

They’re choosing a new president — the leading candidates are the incumbent, John Dramini Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Nana Akufo-Addo, the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who only narrowly lost the previous presidential election in 2008.  Polls and other evidence indicate that either candidate could realistically lead today’s vote.  If no candidate wins over 50%, a runoff will be held on December 28.

They’re also choosing 275 members of Ghana’s unicameral parliament.  Currently, the NDC holds a narrow majority, but the number of seats will be increased from 230.

Romania

What Sarah Palin means for the Romanian election

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Earlier this week, The Atlantic‘s David Graham pointed us to the fact that former Alaska governor and one-time Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin fell behind just U.S. president Barack Obama and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in popularity, at least in terms of most searched politicians.

Graham notes:

I’m going to let you in on a little journalism secret. Time was, political reporters knew that any post about Sarah from Alaska was any easy way to get eyeballs. (In one week in May 2010, I wrote three separate items under the rubric “Sarah Palin Real-Estate Watch.” All were well-read.)

You want to know who doesn’t turn eyeballs?

Victor Ponta.

Indeed, if you look at a Google Trends analysis comparing Victor Ponta and Sarah Palin, you’ll see quite clearly just how much more often ‘Sarah Palin’ is searched than ‘Victor Ponta.’

Yet for all the attention to Palin, it’s not her, but Ponta, Romania’s prime minister, who arguably holds the greater role in influencing not only European affairs, but U.S. foreign policy as well.

His party is set to win an overwhelming majority on Sunday in Romania’s parliamentary elections — the latest polls show his party/alliance, the Uniunea Social Liberală (USL, Social Liberal Union), with 62% of the vote and just barely one-fourth that support for the nearest opponent.  It’s important because Ponta has increasingly been viewed as bending the rule of law in order to benefit himself and his party.  He initiated a constitutionally suspect referendum against Romania’s president, Traian Băsescu, and the two are likely to lock Romania in political paralysis for the foreseeable future.  Continue reading What Sarah Palin means for the Romanian election →

Ghana

Simultaneous parliamentary elections could lead to split Ghanaian government

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Although much of the international (and national) attention has been on Ghana’s presidential election tomorrow, it’s important to note that Ghana will also conduct its parliamentary elections as well.

The elections are conducted, rather straightforwardly, in 275 separate single-member constituencies — it’s a first-past-the-post system, so the winner of a plurality of support is elected as a member of parliament.

With the presidential race still incredibly competitive (some polls show incumbent president John Mahama leading, and others show challenger Nana Akufo-Addo with a lead), it’s likely that the parliamentary result will likewise be tight as well, though if no presidential candidate wins over 50% of the vote, the race will go to a runoff on December 28, which would mean that Ghanaians will know which party will control the parliament when they decide who will go to Jubilee House as Ghana’s president.  That could strongly influence whether Mahama or Akufo-Addo win a potential runoff.

Currently, Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) controls 114 seats in Ghana’s unicameral parliament, while Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party controls 107, with seven additional parliamentarians who are either independents or represent smaller parties.  The NDC won control of the parliament in the 2008 elections that saw the NDC’s presidential candidate, John Atta Mills, triumph over Akufo-Addo in an incredibly tight presidential race.  Previously, the NPP held 128 seats and the NDC just 94 seats.

So whatever happens tomorrow, it seems unlikely that either the NPP or the NDC will sweep to a lopsided victory in the parliamentary elections.

That’s especially true given Ghanaian voting patterns over the past decade — the NPP’s traditional support comes from the south of the country, the heartland of the Akan ethnicity group that’s the largest ethnic group in Ghana (nearly 11 million out of a population of over 24 million people).  In fact, the maps of where the NPP led in 2008 in both the presidential and parliamentary election, and the map of the Akan heartland within Ghana, are nearly interchangeable.  The NDC has traditionally won its greatest support in the more Muslim north and along all of Ghana’s eastern border — namely, those areas that are not dominated by the Akan.

Indeed, if either Mahama or Akufo-Addo narrowly emerge with a lead of over 50% tomorrow, it’s even possible that Ghana could elect one party to control the Ghanaian presidency and another party to control the parliament.

The election will also feature a 45-member increase in the number of seats in Ghana’s parliament (from 230 to 275) in order to balance population growth, which could also create additional variability with respect to the ultimate result.  Continue reading Simultaneous parliamentary elections could lead to split Ghanaian government →

Romania

Ponta set to consolidate power in Romanian in Sunday’s elections

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It’s all but certain that Romania’s prime minister, Victor Ponta, will emerge from Romania’s Nov. 9 parliamentary elections as not only the winner, but with an extraordinary mandate to govern in his own right. 

Ponta (pictured above) became prime minister earlier this year in May after the government of Emil Boc fell over protests against the austerity measures that Boc’s government had implemented, in large part dictated as a condition of loans from the International Monetary Fund that have buoyed Romania’s budget since 2009.

Shortly after taking office, however, Ponta start acting in ways that have caused alarm throughout the European Union — Ponta called a constitutionally suspect referendum on July 30 to remove Romania’s president, Traian Băsescu, for overstepping his authority, despite a ruling to the contrary from Romania’s Constitutional Court.  That referendum failed because only 46.23% of voters turned out for the referendum (lower than the 50% threshold required), but Ponta and Băsescu have been locked in political warfare ever since, and will likely continue to do so until Băsescu’s term ends in 2014, although it seems very likely that Ponta and his allies could try to impeach Băsescu after Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Ponta’s referendum against Băsescu was only one of several constitutionally suspect actions in the first months of his tenure as prime minister.  Ponta made blatant attempts to put allies in charge of Romanian public television, attempted to push through a new first-past-the-post electoral law (that was ultimately rejected by Romania’s constitutional court), stacked the leadership of Romania’s parliament with his allies, and has been accused of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis.

Given that Romania, Europe’s ninth most-populous country with 21 million people, has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 2004 and a full European Union member since 2007, U.S. and European policymakers are anxious that Ponta will attempt to steamroll the Romanian judiciary and/or Băsescu.  The political turmoil in Romania has already caused EU officials to delay Romania’s entry into the border-free Schengen Area,  the free-travel zone that covers much of Europe.

It seems even more unlikely that the election will settle the feud between Ponta and Băsescu, who seems set to do everything he can within his role as Romania’s head of state to frustrate Ponta.  It’s possible that Băsescu could even refuse to nominate Ponta as prime minister following Sunday’s election, which would result in a constitutional crisis and, potentially, new elections.

The election comes at a time when outside investors are losing patience with Romania’s increasingly negative political climate, and, in particular, the IMF will increasingly pressure Romania’s government for concessions before early next year, when its current €5 billion funding package expires.

The latest polls all show a remarkably consistent lead for Ponta’s Uniunea Social Liberală (USL, Social Liberal Union), a patchwork alliance of various parties that formed just in 2011, primarily Ponta’s own Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, Social Democratic Party), the one-time center-right Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, National Liberal Party) and others.

Together, the USL as an alliance holds at least 161 seats (the PSD with 92 seats, the PNL with 57) in the 315-member Chamber of Deputies (Camera Deputaţilor), the lower house of Romania’s parliament (Parlamentul României), going into Sunday’s elections, and look very much likely to extend that lead.

Currently, the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, with 98 seats, is the Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PDL, Democratic Liberal Party), Băsescu’s party, which had governed after its victory in 2008 parliamentary elections until Boc’s government fell earlier this year.  The PDL, which is running under a center-right patchwork alliance, the Alianţa România Dreaptă (ARD, Right Romania Alliance), that formed only in September 2012 as an alliance among the PDL and two smaller parties, the National Peasant Christian-Democratic Party and Civic Force.

The ARD / PDL, however, remains deeply unpopular in a country that saw just 1% GDP growth in 2010, contracted by 0.4% in 2011, and has pushed through three years of harsh austerity measures.

In the 137-member Senate (Senat), the Romanian parliament’s upper chamber, Ponta’s PSD holds 40 seats and his allied PNL holds 27 seats, with just 35 for the PDL.

One recent poll, however, gave Ponta’s USL fully 62% of the vote to just 17% for the ARD, the second choice of Romanian likely voters.

Continue reading Ponta set to consolidate power in Romanian in Sunday’s elections →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: December 4

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South Korea holds its first of three presidential debates.

Angel Merkel officially launches her bid for a third term as Germany’s chancellor.

Artur Mas hasn’t given up on a broad left-right separatist coalition in Catalunya.

More anti-Morsi demonstrations in Cairo with 11 days before the snap constitutional referendum.

Two Kenyans facing trial in the International Criminal Court will run on a joint ticket in March elections.

Nana Akufo-Addo leads very narrowly in the latest poll for Ghana’s presidential election on Friday.

A Paraguayan peasant leader has been murdered.

The Dutch government has a Senate problem.

Foreign Policy interviews a cagey Ehud Olmert, although Olmert is virtually certain not to run in the upcoming election.

Labor’s leader Shelly Yacimovich and former Labor leader Amir Peretz are fighting over whether Labor could ever join a coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu.

Deputy (Likud!) prime minister Dan Meridor may lead Ehud Barak’s Independence party in January.

Ukraine’s government under prime minister Mykola Azarov has resigned.

Seven Kadima MKs are leaving Kadima to run under the Tzipi Livni Party banner in the January Knesset elections.

Ghana

Who is Nana Akufo-Addo? And how would he govern Ghana?

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Ghanaians go to the polls to elect a president and a parliament Friday, and there’s a good chance they will elect to send a new president to Jubilee House.

Although he’s technically the challenger in the race, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is a narrow favorite to oust John Dramini Mahama, the incumbent and candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who was elevated to Ghana’s presidency only in July after the death of John Atta Mills, who narrowly defeated Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election by the narrowest of margins.

This time around, Akufo-Addo seems even better placed to succeed in a campaign that has featured spirited debate about how best to provide education and health care to Ghana’s youth, how to approach ongoing tensions and instability in Côte d’Ivoire, and how to continue Ghana’s economy, the strongest in all of Africa.

Akufo-Addo has a strong pedigree in Ghanaian politics — his father, Edward Akufo-Addo, was the third chief justice of Ghana and served as Ghana’s chiefly ceremonial president from 1969 to 1972, as well as one of the ‘Big Six’ leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention that fought for Ghana’s independence and were arrested for their efforts.  Akufo-Addo’s great uncle and uncle were also members of the ‘Big Six.’

Like Mills before him, Akufo-Addo has the advantage of having run in a prior presidential race.  In the 2008 election, Akufo-Addo actually won the first round with 49.13% of the vote to just 47.92% for Mills, but lost the runoff, taking just 49.77% to 50.23% for Mills.

Before the 2008 election, Akufo-Addo, previously an attorney, served in the administration of former NPP president John Kufuor, first as attorney general, where he worked to repeal the criminal libel law that earlier Ghanaian administrations had used to inhibit free speech, and later as justice minister and foreign minister.

As African legal studies scholar Andrew Novak has written earlier this autumn for Suffragio, Mahama has at times looked amateurish and untested against the experienced Akufo-Addo.

Although the NPP is seen as traditionally more of the center-right and the NDC of the center-left, it’s Akufo-Addo who has called for a more activist role for Ghana’s government in the current campaign, including free basic and secondary high school education for all Ghanaians as well as free health care for all Ghanaian children.  Free primary education is enshrined as a fundamental right in Ghana’s constitution, but quality often falls far below acceptable standards, especially in rural Ghana.

Akufo-Addo has repeatedly and forcefully defended his plan against NDC skepticism that the NPP won’t be able to enact such sweeping reforms; Akufo-Addo, in turn, has criticized the NDC for failing to keep its promises from the 2008 election on health care.

Continue reading Who is Nana Akufo-Addo? And how would he govern Ghana? →

Ethiopia

Can Hailemariam retain power in Ethiopia?

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Hailemariam Desalegn was always a curious leader to succeed former Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi after Meles’s death late in August.

He’s from the south when Meles himself came from the far northern Tigray ethnic group (Meles’s rule was itself a derogation from hundreds of years of Amharic emperors in Ethiopia).  Hailermariam hails not even from among the largest southern ethnic group, the Oromo, but the much smaller Wolyata group, which represents just under 2.5% of Ethiopian’s population.

Hailemariam is also somewhat new to the highest echelons of Ethiopian power — he became deputy prime minister and foreign minister under Meles only in October 2010 after serving as president of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region from 2001 to 2006.

As a southerner, however, Hailemariam was thought after Meles’s death to have less-than-firm control over the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF, or የኢትዮጵያ ሕዝቦች አብዮታዊ ዲሞክራሲያዊ ግንባር) as an outsider from the dominant faction of the EPRDM, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (the TPLF, ሕዝባዊ ወያኔ ሓርነት ትግራይ,), which retains control over Ethiopia’s security apparatus.  Hailemariam’s support base lies not among the Tigray ethnic group of the far north of Ethiopia or the previously dominant Amharic ethnic group of the broad north-central highlands, but in the historically less-than-powerful south.

As such, when Hailemariam assumed power as interim prime minister in August, few people believed he would last.

But he was elected as prime minister formally in September, perhaps precisely because he’s associated with none of the various Tigray factions, which means that he should have some time until the next elections in 2015 to consolidate the office and his power base as Ethiopia’s new prime minister, even as Ethiopia continues to mourn Meles.

His first major step, in what appears to be a power-balancing cabinet reshuffle on November 29, was to appoint two additional deputy prime ministers — Debretsion Gebremichael, from the TPLF, is also minister of information technology, and Muktar Kedir, from the Oromo faction within the EPRDF, have joined Demeke Mekonnen, Hailemariam’s first deputy prime minister, who is from the Amhara faction of the EPRDM and minister of education.

Hailemariam also promoted Ethiopia’s minister of health Tedros Adhanom to become Ethiopia’s foreign minister.  Also a top Tigray official, Tedros has served as minister of health since 2005 and spent part of his childhood and undergraduate studies in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea.  He’s attracted international praise for his work as health minister — for example, he won the 2011 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award for his work to reduce HIV/AIDS and malaria in Ethiopia.  Despite his obvious qualifications, Tedros is close to Meles’s widow, Azeb Mesfin, who is also a member of the nine-person executive committee of the EPRDF, and is thought to have designs on winning power in her own right.

It’s worth noting that this is only the third transfer of power in Ethiopia in the past century — the country’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, came to power in 1928, was deposed in a military-led coup in 1974 and ultimately died in captivity in 1975.  The Derg, the Soviet-style commission that ruled until 1991, with often disastrous result, was overthrown by Meles and the TPLF, which eventually morphed into a government dominated by Tigray officials.

So the apparent seamlessness of the post-Meles transition (so far, at least), and the lack of any political violence or upheaval marks somewhat of a success for Ethiopia.  But the fundamental question remains whether Hailemariam will be able to govern in his own right:

[The succession] raises questions about how far any new prime minister can reshape the political landscape and has led to open speculation that Hailemariam’s appointment is a calculated political move by and for the TPLF, allowing them to maintain de facto political authority behind a cloak of ethnic pluralism.

Meles’ death exposes the dangers of a state built around one man, but he also leaves behind a formidable political machine. For Hailemariam the challenge is whether and how he can manage the machine. Members of competing elites may fight for control of this machine and ethnic movements on the periphery could be emboldened to exploit a perceived power vacuum.

As for Ethiopia, its government will face any number of political and economic tasks in the coming years. Continue reading Can Hailemariam retain power in Ethiopia? →