Daily Archives: May 2, 2014

South Africa

Who is Mmusi Maimane? (Possibly the next premier of Gauteng).

3 Comments

Mmusi+Maimane+XXX

While left-wing populists like Julius Malema have received much more attention internationally as South Africa prepares for its national elections on May 7, Mmusi Maimane is the rising star to whom the rest of the world should be paying attention.south africa flag

He’s quickly becoming one of the chief spokespersons for the Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest opposition party in South Africa. Although polls show that the DA will nonetheless lose next month’s elections by a massive margin to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the DA hopes to build on its gains from 2004 and 2009 to win its greatest level of voter support yet. 

In Gauteng, the economic and financial hub of South Africa, and the most populous province in the country with 12.25 million people, Maimane is campaigning hard to become Gauteng’s next premier in one of nine provincial elections that are taking place simultaneously with national elections.

Maimane (like a growing number of world politicians) has been compared to Barack Obama for his quick rise, youthful image and the liberal use of the Obama playbook in his campaign for premier. In 2011, he ran for mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, and he wound up as the opposition leader of the city council. At 33, he’s waging a credible campaign against the ANC, anchored with a pledge to sort legal title for over 200,000 urban South Africans who have only informal ownership of their homes.

Critics in the ANC charge that he’s a convenient black face for a party that draws support predominantly from the white community in South Africa. But as the DA’s support grows, and voters become disenchanted with the ANC, especially the so-called ‘born-frees,’ the emerging class of young voters who never lived under apartheid, voting patterns are slowly changing. If Maimane leads the DA to victory in Gauteng — or even wages a sufficiently tight race — he’ll easily become the party’s dominant figure.

He’s capitalized on the ANC’s unpopularity in several regards — police brutality deployed against miners during a strike in Marikana a couple of years ago, pervasive corruption that’s now highlighted by $23.5 million in state spending for ‘security improvements’ to president Jacob Zuma’s home in Nkandla, and pervasive unemployment among South Africa’s young, urban, black population.

Here’s an ad from last month that went viral after South Africa’s government tried to ban it from the airwaves — it shows just how damning the anti-Zuma and anti-ANC message has become:

It also helps that the ANC in Gauteng is divided by rival factions — that’s why the incumbent, Nomvula Mokonyane, doesn’t seem to be running for reelection, and the provincial secretary general David Makhura is leading the ANC campaign, even though the ANC hasn’t formally announced a candidate for premier.

Dali Mpofu, a longtime ANC politician — who once allegedly had an affair with Winnie Mandela in the 1990s — left the ANC to join Malema’s socialist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in November 2013, and is leading the EFF’s efforts as its premier candidate in Gauteng. That, too, could pull votes away from the ANC, much to Maimane’s benefit.

Given those dynamics, and given Maimane’s serious policy proposals and considerable political talent, it’s a puzzler why Maimane isn’t the overwhelming favorite in the race.

Some of the answer lies in the wariness of South African voters to turn away from the ANC, which still looms mythically for its role in ending white apartheid rule 20 years ago.

In 2009, the Democratic Alliance won 16.66% of the vote and increased its representation in the 400-member National Assembly from 47 to 67, and it won control of the Western Cape province. Polls show that the Democratic Alliance will win between 20% and 25% this time around. The DA is expected to retain control in Western Cape (where the DA’s leader Helen Zille, a white former Cape Town mayor and former journalist and anti-apartheid activist, serves as premier). It will also contest for control of Northern Cape province as well.  Continue reading Who is Mmusi Maimane? (Possibly the next premier of Gauteng). →

Panama

Panamanian presidential race is all about Martinelli

Leave a comment

Ricardo-Martinelli

If he could run for reelection, it seems certain that Ricardo Martinelli, the grocery chain tycoon-turned-politician, would almost certainly win a second term in office — he’ll leave the Panamanian presidency this year with approval ratings in excess of 60%.Panama Flag Icon

But with Panama’s law prohibiting consecutive terms, the closest Martinelli can come to a second term is by supporting the ticket of his own center-right Cambio Democrático (CD, Democratic Change), whose vice-presidential candidate is Panama’s first lady, Marta Linares de Martinelli.

* * * * *

RELATED: The internal politics of the widening of the Panama Canal 

* * * * *

Martinelli has a strong record. Panama’s economy has grown by an average of between 8% and 9% through his five-year term (significantly boosted by the revenues garnered from the country’s eponymous canal.). He’s also introduced supplementary pensions for Panamanians over 70, built Panama City’s metro system, and spent around $20 billion on infrastructure projects. That includes the $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion initiated by his predecessor, though the expansion has faced cost overruns and worker strikes that have postponed the expected completion date from 2015 to 2016.

He’s faced accusations, however, that he’s undermined Panamanian democracy, bullied opponents and presided over such a culture of corruption that Martinelli himself may face bribery charges in Italy after leaving office.

ariasyamigos

Critics argue that the CD’s presidential candidate, José Domingo Arias, another former businessman who served two years as minister for foreign trade and three years as minister for housing and land development under Martinelli, is merely a figurehead. They worry that if Martinelli’s wife (pictured above with Martinelli and Arias) is vice president, the incumbent will continue to control too much power in Panama. Despite a constitutional provision that appears to limit family members of the incumbent from running for president or vice president, Martinelli’s allies on the Panamanian supreme court have not blocked Linares’s vice presidential candidacy. But there’s also a sense that most Panamanians realize this going into the weekend’s vote.

In a fierce column for the Wall Street Journal last month, Mary O’Grady chastised Martinelli for trampling Panamanian democracy. She was shocked (shocked!) that a Central American president may have promised greater spending in exchange for a parliamentary majority over the past five years, and she ultimately compared Martinelli (unconvincingly) to Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega:

In 2012, Mr. Martinelli tried to pack the Supreme Court by adding three new seats to guarantee his influence and raise the odds that he might overcome the prohibition on re-election the way Daniel Ortega did in Nicaragua. When Panamanians went to the streets to resist, he withdrew the proposal. The lust for power remains.

It’s worth noting that even in Costa Rica, which has the best governance standards in all of Central America, two recent former presidents have been convicted of corruption. It’s also a pretty rich argument for a columnist in a country where the frontrunners for the 2016 presidential election are the wife of a former president (Hillary Clinton) and the son and brother of two former presidents (Jeb Bush). Martinelli himself took to Twitter to attack her in a fairly petty retort, which wasn’t perhaps the most convincing step.

All pearl-clutching aside, and without getting into the theoretical question of ‘good corruption’ and ‘bad corruption,’ Martinelli certainly isn’t the first Latin American president on the right or the left to chafe at term limits. Though initially instituted to prevent the kind of personality-based caudillos that had a tendency to co-opt presidential systems throughout Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, strict one-term limits make presidents from Mexico to Chile lame ducks from the first day of their administrations. It’s not surprising that politicians like Martinelli (and like former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya) are looking for ways to escape the yoke of single term limits.

The two main challengers to Arias come from Panama’s two traditional parties. Continue reading Panamanian presidential race is all about Martinelli →