Yearly Archives: 2014

Serbia

Serbian Progressives win huge victory, majority in National Council

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Although everyone expected the governing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS, Српска напредна странка) to win Serbia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, no one quite expected the Progressives to win such a stunning mandate — the first time in the post-Milošević era that a single party won an outright majority in the Serbian parliament.Serbia_Flag_Icon

Although the Progressives went into Sunday’s election with the largest bloc of seats in the 250-member National Assembly (Народна скупштина), the fluke of the previous elections in May 2012 left the Progressives stuck in coalition with the center-left, nationalist Socialist Party of Serbia (Социјалистичка партија Србије / SPS), and the Socialist leader Ivica Dačić as prime minister instead of a Progressive prime minister.

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RELATED: Who is Aleksandar Vučić?  Meet Serbia’s next prime minister.

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Back in 2012, the Progressives were unwilling to enter into coalition with the center-left Democratic Party (Демократска странка / DS), and Progressive leader Tomislav Nikolić had just defeated Serbian president Boris Tadić, ending eight years of Tadić-led, Democratic government.  That gave Dačić, whose Socialists finished a surprisingly high third-place in the 2012 elections, the power to decide whether he would enter government with Progressives or with the Democrats.

After weeks of negotiations, Dačić chose the Progressives.  The price for the Progressives was to allow Dačić to become prime minister.

Dačić’s record isn’t incredibly poor — he presided over the official opening of accession talks for Serbia’s ultimate entry into the European Union, his corresponding efforts to integrate Serbia into mainstream Europe have brought Serbia and Kosovo closer to a long-term settlement over Kosovo’s status (and Kosovo’s own future European integration), and the Serbian economy is doing better than it was two years ago, despite a broader push of austerity measures over the 21-month government.

But with polls showing the Progressives with such a wide lead, and with the Serbian left divided between supporters of Tadić and supporters of former Belgrade mayor Dragan Đilas, the tail-wags-the-dog world of a Socialist-led government made increasingly little sense to top SNS leaders, most especially Aleksandar Vučić, the first deputy prime minister who is now set to become Serbia’s prime minister for the next four years.  Even before the Progressives essentially demanded snap elections in January, Vučić and his young, Yale-educated finance minister Lazar Krstic were setting more government policy than Dačić.

Sunday’s election was a landslide for Vučić and the SNS, which outpolled its nearest competitor, Dačić’s SPS, by more than a 3-to-1 margin.  Đilas’s Democrats won  just 6% of the vote, and Tadić, leading the alternative center-left bloc, the New Democratic Party/Greens (NDS, Нова демократска странка — Зелени), won just 5.7% and 18 seats.

serbia NA 2014

Vučić now seems free to push through an ambitious agenda of economic liberalization, including a new bankruptcy law, a looser labor law, an anti-corruption push and accelerated privatization of state industries — with the goal of unleashing a stronger Serbian economy as well as bringing Serbia’s laws and economic policy closer in line with mainstream EU policy.  Although the Progressives will control an absolute majority in the Serbian parliament, Vučić may yet try to bring one or more of the decimated opposition parties into a wider, reform-minded coalition. Continue reading Serbian Progressives win huge victory, majority in National Council →

Kazakhstan, Russia

To ы or not to ы, Zhirinivosky asks — as Kazakhstan, central Asia worry

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Lest you think that Russia’s favorite crazy uncle doesn’t have anything to say about the latest standoff between Russia and the West, failed presidential candidate and ultranationalist loudmouth Vladimir Zhirinovsky has some choice theories about what’s holding Russia back these days — and he’s been on quite a roll in the last month or so.kazakhstanRussia Flag Icon

It’s been nearly two years since his donkey-flogging stunt during the almost-risible Russian presidential election. Though Zhirinovsky (pictured above won just 6.2% of the vote in that race, it amounts to nearly 4.5 million Russians that have stood by the colorful demagogue since he rose to Russian politics in the mid-1990s.

Not surprisingly, Zhirinovsky believes that Viktor Yanukovich remains the rightful president of Ukraine, and he urged Russia to send troops into Ukraine to support Yanukovich’s claim to the Ukrainian presidency.  For the record, Zhirinovsky supports the right of Crimea to join Russia, too. (Maybe that’s because in January 2013, Zhirinovsky was pelted with pickled cabbage salad on a visit to Kiev by a woman who attacked the flamboyant politician as a ‘Ukrainophobe.’)

But the most curious attacks recently have come with respect to another area of Russia’s ‘near-abroad.’  Last month, Zhirinovsky called for Russia, in essence, to annex five entire countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan — as Russia’s ‘Central Asian Federal Region,’ with a capital that should be known as ‘Verny,’ a Russian word for Almaty, Kazakstan’s largest city (and the city where Zhirinovsky himself was born and grew up).  Even more mystifying is Zhirinovsky’s attack on the Russian letter ‘ы.’  It’s an odd sound — it’s a vowel not unlike the English ‘y,’ though the sound is apparently very difficult for non-native Russian (and other Eurasian language) speakers:

Zhirinovsky says he wants the letter removed from the Russian alphabet, calling it a “nasty Asiatic” import.  The vowel came to the Russian language from the Mongols, Zhirinovsky was quoted as telling the State Duma on March 12.

“Only animals make this sound, ‘ы- ы,'” he said, adding that the regular “и” (“i”) is enough for the Russian alphabet.  “Ы” doesn’t exist in any other European language, argued Zhirinovsky. “This primitive, Asiatic sound is the reason people don’t like us in Europe,” he told lawmakers.

The five central Asian nations each used to be republics in the former Soviet Union, and all of them have relatively strong ties with Russia. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are candidates to join Russian president Vladimir Putin’s much-feted Eurasian Union, which is meant to be a regional counterweight to the European Union (and also to the economic power of India and China). Continue reading To ы or not to ы, Zhirinivosky asks — as Kazakhstan, central Asia worry →

Slovakia

Fico, Kiska advance to Slovak presidential runoff

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Slovak prime minister Robert Fico led in the first round of the country’s presidential election on Saturday, but he’ll face stiff competition in the March 29 runoff from political neophyte Andrej Kiska.slovakia flag

Fico won 28.0% of the vote and Kiska took 24.0% — both contenders were expected to finish in the top two spots and advance to the final round.  The big surprise in Saturday’s election, however, was the strength of third-place finisher Radoslav Procházka, a Christian democratic independent who won 21.2% of the vote.  Milan Kňažko, an actor, also a Christian democrat, and a top Slovak leader of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, won 12.9% of the vote.

The results mean that Fico (pictured above) will face a very tough time winning an absolute majority against Kiska in two weeks’ time.

The outcome of the election itself isn’t as significant as the surrounding context.  Slovakia’s presidency is essentially ceremonial, though the president formally nominates the prime minister and some members of Slovakia’s constitutional court and other judicial offices.  Though the president can veto routine bills passed by the unicameral Národná rada (National Council), a simple majority of the National Council can override the presidential veto.

That means that the Slovak presidency is much more like the ceremonial German presidency instead of the truly powerful French presidency — and even, from a constitutional perspective, weaker than the Czech presidency.

Accordingly, the election is important for two reasons.  First, the election has now become a referendum on Fico and his governing center-left party, Smer – sociálna demokracia (Direction — Social Democracy).

Second, if Fico wins, his elevation to the presidency will necessitate the selection of a new prime minister and government.  Continue reading Fico, Kiska advance to Slovak presidential runoff →

Australia, South Australia, Tasmania

Labor nearly shut out of Australian state government

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After today’s state elections in two Australian states, the center-left Australian Labor Party has lost power after 16 years in Tasmania and it may yet still lose power in South Australia, where the race remains too close to call. tasmania_flagsouth australia flagAustralia Flag Icon

If Labor hangs onto government in South Australia under premier Jay Weatherill, he’ll be the last Labor premier left standing in any Australian state, capping a catastrophic electoral run — just six years ago, Labor controlled the government in every Australian state.  If the center-right Liberal Party emerges victorious in South Australia, Labor will control no state governments (though it remains in power in the Australian Capital Territory of Canberra).

In Tasmania, where Labor was believed to have had a better chance of hanging onto power, premier Lara Giddings lost her bid to win a fifth consecutive Labor government.  With around 80% of the vote counted, Labor had won just 27% of the vote and six of the Tasmanian House of Representative’s 25 seats.  The Liberal Party, under the leadership of Will Hodgman, who is set to become Tasmania’s new premier, will win at least 14 seats.

In South Australia, however, Weatherill could still remain premier, given the tight margin.  Labor has lost ground, but not nearly as much as expected, and it’s been to the benefit of not only the Liberals, but also the South Australian Green Party.  Going into today’s election, Labor controlled 26 seats in the 47-member House of Representatives (the lower house of the South Australian parliament), the Liberals controlled 18 and independents controlled three.  As the final votes are counted, Labor now has 23 seats, Liberals hold 22 seats, and two independents seem increasingly likely to determine who will form the next government.

A conservative Liberal/National Coalition government under prime minister Tony Abbott swept into power last September at the national level, ending six years of rocky Labor government marked by infighting between supporters of prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.  Rudd initially brought Labor to power in 2007, but his Labor caucus pushed him out of office in favor of Gillard in 2010.  Shortly before last year’s election and facing a landslide defeat under Gillard, the Labor caucus turned back to Rudd, who served as prime minister again for the final three months of Labor’s government.  Both Rudd and Gillard have retired from politics, and former financial services minister Bill Shorten was elected Labor’s new national leader in October.

State-level setbacks have become something of a gruesome spring ritual for Labor over the past few years: Continue reading Labor nearly shut out of Australian state government →

European Union, Serbia

The most important EU success story you’ve never heard? Serbia.

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ashtonserbia

The global media’s attention this weekend will be fixed on Crimea, where a status referendum is almost certainly likely to result in its  annexation into the Russian Federation.European_UnionSerbia_Flag_Icon

But the world’s attention should be on Serbia, which is holding snap elections on March 16 — the same day as the Crimean referendum.  Serbia’s parliamentary elections come just two months after formally opening negotiations to join the European Union, a landmark step in what’s been a decade-long push for greater Serbian-EU integration.

When political commentators tell you that Ukraine is the frontier of the European Union, they’re right that European policymakers have both an economic and security interest in Ukraine’s stability.

But the true frontier of the European Union is the Balkans, and no country is more vital to the future political and economic stability of the region than Serbia, home to over 7 million residents, the most populous of the Balkan states.

Polls show that the outcome of Sunday’s election is almost certain — a wider majority for the center-right Serbian Progressive Party (SNS, Српска напредна странка), which as a member of the current coalition government, is working to tackle corruption, liberalize and privatize sectors of the Serbian economy and bring Serbian budget closer to balance — all while the country faces unsteady economic growth and an unemployment rate of 20%.

Notwithstanding the real economic pain today in Serbia, none of that matters as much as the fact of Serbian continuity with respect to European integration.  Though Serbia’s formal accession may take up to a decade, Serbia seems certain to become either the 29th member (or the 30th member, following Montenegro) of the European Union.  What’s more, the most significant fact of Serbian political life in the past two years has been the durability of the national commitment, across all major political parties and ideologies, to Serbia’s eventual EU membership.

Think back to the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.  Or to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that marked the civil war among Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Or to the Serbian aggression over Kosovo that led to  NATO military action against Belgrade in 1998-99 and the emergence of the semi-independent Kosovo today.  Or to the dictatorship of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević from 1987 until 2000, with full-throated support from Moscow.

Though it’s something that we take for granted in the year 2014, it wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that Serbia today would be so united in its push to turn economically and socially toward Europe.

It wasn’t even so clear in 2012.

Nikolić and Dačić: an unlikely pair of EU champions

In the last parliamentary elections in May 2012, the SNS won the greatest number of seats (73) in Serbia’s 250-member National Assembly (Народна скупштина), and the SNS’s Tomislav Nikolić, running for the fifth time, narrowly won the Serbian presidency over incumbent Boris Tadić, whose center-left Democratic Party (Демократска странка / DS) had governed Serbia since 2004.  Tadić, throughout the 2000s, laid the groundwork for greater cooperation with the European Union.

When Tadić lost power in July 2012, no one knew whether Nikolić and the Serbian Progressives would pursue EU cooperation with the same zeal as the Democrats had.  Nikolić (pictured above, right, with EU foreign affairs high representative Catherine Ashton, middle, and prime minister Ivica Dačić, left) long favored Russia over the European Union, and his first trip abroad as president was to Moscow, where he declared in September 2012, ‘The only thing I love more than Russia is Serbia.’   Continue reading The most important EU success story you’ve never heard? Serbia. →

Crimea, Russia, Ukraine

Crimea prepares to ‘vote’ in status referendum

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The billboard above announces Sunday’s hastily coordinated referendum, presenting the choice for Crimea as between joining the Russian federation or a future of, apparently, Nazism run amok.Russia Flag IconUkraine Flag Iconcrimea

The March 16 vote comes barely three weeks after Russian troops essentially took control of the peninsula.

The Crimean crisis, and the wider Ukrainian crisis, have been widely discussed throughout the international media, so there aren’t too many original points I can make about Sunday’s vote.

The most obvious, perhaps, is that no one expects Crimea’s election to be either free or fair, in any normal sense of those words.  Though self-determination is one element from which nation-states today derive legitimacy, consider the context of the Crimean referendum with the context of September’s referendum on Scottish independence — the referendum date was settled more than a year in advance, the terms agreed by both UK prime minister David Cameron and Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, the debate focusing on the economic and other policy implications of independence.

It’s also important to remember that Crimea, ultimately, remains a sideshow.  The more compelling story about Ukraine today is that its acting government is working, largely with success, to bring calm to the rest of the country.  US and European financial support is likely to shore up Kiev’s shaky finances, preventing Ukraine’s pending sovereign default, and a May 25 presidential election could restore some semblance of political stability after the fall of corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 (though that won’t end the cultural and economic imbalances that have caused such a strong east-west divide in Ukraine).

A phony choice?

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Crimea’s referendum will be a slapdash affair meant to rubber-stamp the newly constituted Crimean parliament’s decision to seek Russian annexation.  That’s clear from the tilted nature of the referendum’s wording.  Crimeans will choose between two options, worded in Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar:

1.  Do you support Crimea joining the Russian Federation as a federal subject?

2.  Do you support restoration of the 1992 Crimean constitution and Crimea’s status as a part of Ukraine?

The second option, as many scholars have written, is needlessly complicated, because there’s some doubt over which version of the 1992 Crimean constitution that the referendum option references.  The original version states that Crimea is an independent state; only later was the constitution revised for Crimea’s current status, an autonomous republic within Ukraine.  So there’s some suspicion that if Crimeans support the second option, it’s a vote for Crimean ‘independence’ from Ukraine that would, in essence, still bring Crimea under Russian control. Continue reading Crimea prepares to ‘vote’ in status referendum →

Estonia

Who is Taavi Rõivas? A look at Estonia’s likely new prime minister

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Last week, when Estonia’s nine-year prime minister Andrus Ansip stepped down, virtually everyone thought that Estonia’s European commissioner Siim Kallas (himself, briefly, a former prime minister) would step into Ansip’s shoes as the Eesti Reformierakond (Estonian Reform Party) prepares to put itself on a stronger footing for expected March 2015 elections.estonia

After all, Kallas helped found the Reform Party in the mid-1990s, served as a highly regarded president of Estonia’s central bank in the early 1990s, and held several posts in government before leaving for Brussels in 2004, where he’s amassed plenty of additional experience — as a vice president of the European Commission since 2010.

Instead, Kallas faced renewed controversy over $100 million in loan guarantees that he signed while central bank governor in 1994.  Moreover, the concept that Kallas could wage a shadow campaign for prime minister while still officially a member of the European Commission ruffled feathers in both Tallinn and Brussels — even more so in light of open rumors that Kallas and Ansip would simply trade jobs, with Ansip stepping into Kallas’s shoes at the Commission.

Kallas formally ruled out a return as prime minister on Wednesday, and the Reform party nominated instead Taavi Rõivas (pictured above), social affairs minister since just December 2012.  At age 34, he would be the youngest head of government in Europe, and notably, the first Estonian leader who was just a child when the Soviet Union collapsed — Estonia won its independence just five days short of Rõivas’s 12th birthday. Continue reading Who is Taavi Rõivas? A look at Estonia’s likely new prime minister →

United Kingdom

Miliband’s EU hedge makes a disastrous referendum more likely

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edmiliLabour leader Ed Miliband announced yesterday that, if elected prime minister after next year’s general election, he would not hold a referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued (now 41-year) membership on the European Union.United Kingdom Flag Icon

At first glance, it sounds like exactly the type of pledge that plenty of pro-European British constituencies, including much of the business community, would applaud — eliminating the uncertainty of the United Kingdom’s future within the European Union that features prominently in the current government’s referendum promise.

It’s hard to see what Miliband has to gain politically or strategically with his new pronouncement on a future EU referendum, a essentially in reaction to Cameron’s position from last year.  It will satisfy neither pro-European nor anti-European voices, allows Cameron to bill himself as a champion of democratic choice, adds additional uncertainty (especially with the likelihood of a new Berlin-led EU treaty effort in the years ahead), and locks Miliband into what could be incredibly short-sighted  policy.

Most of all, it shows why so many Brits, including plenty of Labour supporters, fear that Miliband doesn’t have the skills to make it to 10 Downing Street. Continue reading Miliband’s EU hedge makes a disastrous referendum more likely →

Canada, Ontario, Toronto

Chow’s entrance settles October Toronto mayoral race

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oliviachow

The initial view today is that with Olivia Chow’s resignation as an MP in the federal Canadian House of Commons and her announcement on Thursday that she will launch a candidate for Toronto’s October 27 mayoral election, the race is now Chow’s to lose.Canada Flag Iconontariotoronto

At first glance, there are a lot of good reasons to believe that Chow is really the frontrunner, and her announcement closes the effective field for Toronto’s 2014 mayoral aspirants.

In a race otherwise dominated by at least two or three high-profile conservative candidates, Chow is the only left-leaning candidate, and she’ll be able to easily consolidate the left-leaning support within the Toronto metropolitan area.

But Chow is not the frontrunner — and her fate depends almost entirely on how the pool of center-right Toronto voters divides up. Continue reading Chow’s entrance settles October Toronto mayoral race →

France, United Kingdom, United States

The future of political communication is the viral Internet meme

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twoferns

If you woke up this morning to the ‘leader of the free world’ doing an interview with Zach Galifianakis, immediately scratched your head and wondered whether you could be trusted to read anything before coffee, you weren’t alone.France Flag IconUSflagUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

When I first saw it, I thought it was a joke — surely this was Galifianakis somehow video-shopping the president of the United States into a forum that’s otherwise reserved for the likes of spanking Justin Bieber.

But no — and after a couple of sober, caffeinated views, I realized that this was for real.  So no matter what else was going on with your day today, in world or US politics, it was The Day That Barack Obama Turned Up On ‘Between Two Ferns.’  It dominated the US news cycle — even Jonathan Chait wrote about it! Continue reading The future of political communication is the viral Internet meme →

Colombia

Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

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uribe

The big headline from Sunday’s congressional elections in Colombia is the return of the powerful conservative former president, Álvaro Uribe, who won election to the Colombian Senado (Senate).Colombia Flag Icon

But the bigger story is more complicated — and the truth is that each of the two major camps in Colombian politics has something to be happy about from the weekend’s elections, which were conducted in the shadow of two important upcoming elections — a recall election involving Gustavo Petro, the leftist mayor of Bogotá on April 6 and a presidential election on May 15 (with a potential runoff to follow later in the summer).

Uribe (pictured above) has carved out a space where he now leads the main opposition to Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, demonstrating his enduring popularity and his determination to play a role in Colombian governance, despite his ineligibility to run for the presidency in the future.  It will make Colombia’s congress a much livelier place, to say the least, and it will require Santos (or his successor) to work hard to maintain a working majority in the Colombian congress, and especially in the Senado.

Santos, however, should be delighted that his coalition suffered only marginal losses to Uribe’s forces.  Despite Uribe’s gains on Sunday, Santos remains the heavy frontrunner in the upcoming May 15 presidential election.  That’s in part because Uribe himself is barred from reelection, so Uribe’s new party is supporting former finance minister, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who has far less popularity and charisma than either Uribe or Santos.

You can think of Colombia politics today as a competition between two major blocs — a centrist/center-right coalition that supports Santos and a more conservative bloc that supports Uribe.  In addition, there’s a minor bloc of leftist parties that today find themselves largely outside the mainstream of Colombian politics, with the exception of the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

Uribe formed CDlogothe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) last year, and he ran on the slogan of ‘mano firme, corazón grande,’ or ‘firm hand, big heart,’ campaigning in opposition to Santos’s high-profile push to negotiate a lasting peace settlement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).  While Uribe should be happy with the results of the senatorial elections, it’s clear that the ‘Uribe bloc’ is still far smaller than the ‘Santos bloc,’ which includes three major parties:

  • The Partido Liberal Colombiano (Colombian Liberal Party), once Colombia’s largest center-left party, has converged with the other parties in the Santos-led coalition, pulling it ever closer to the center-right in recent years.  The party split over whether to support Uribe, who began his political career in the Liberal Party.  Though it fielded separate presidential candidates in both 2006 and in 2010, it will support Santos in 2014.
  • The Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’) is a conservative party formed in 2005 by Liberal uribistas, and the ‘U’ once stood as much for Uribe as for ‘unidad.’  It became Colombia’s largest party in the Uribe era, and it now forms the backbone of Santos’s coalition.
  • Cambio Radical (Radical Change), founded in 1998, became increasingly important over the course of the 2000s, and it formed part of Uribe’s presidential majority in the 2000s, just as it today forms part of Santos’s presidential majority.  Like the Party of the ‘U’ and the Liberal Party, it will support Santos in the upcoming presidntial election.

The major swing vote between the two blocs is the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party).  Like the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party dates back to the 1840s, and it was once Colombia’s chief center-right party.  It’s currently part of Santos’s coalition, but it’s the weakest link among the four parties that have backed Santos since 2010, and it’s the likeliest source of future support for Uribe.  Though it supported Uribe in 2002 and 2006 and Santos in 2010, it is fielding its own presidential candidate in 2014, Marta Lucía Ramírez, a former senator and defense minister between 2002 and 2003.  That hurts Santos by depriving him of the Conservative brand (though only a few Conservative lawmakers have actually endorsed Ramírez), but it also hurts Uribe and Zuluaga by dividing the conservative opposition to Santos.

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Uribe guided Colombia’s transition from a country paralyzed by drug-related violence into a more secure, economically vibrant regional leader between 2002 and 2010, backed by the military and economic aid of the US government.  Despite efforts to run for a third term, Uribe bowed out of the presidency in support of Santos, his defense minister.  Santos (pictured above) easily won election in June 2010, king nearly 70% of the vote in a runoff against Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, the candidate of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

Almost immediately, however, Uribe started criticizing Santos, and Uribe irrevocably broke with his one-time protégé when Santos directed the Colombian government to enter into negotiations with FARC, a leftist guerrilla group that has waged an insurgency against Colombia for the better part of the last half-century.   Continue reading Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator →

El Salvador

Sánchez Cerén narrowly leads Salvadoran presidential vote

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SSCortiz

Though El Salvador’s vice president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, was expected to win the March 9 presidential runoff, the result was so tight that no winner has yet been formally declared, pending a recount of the too-close-to-call election.el salvador

Sánchez Cerén (pictured above, left, with running mate Óscar Ortiz, right) almost won the presidency outright in the first round on February 2, taking 48.92% of the vote, a nearly double-digit lead over his challenger, San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, who won just 38.95%:

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Sánchez Cerén hopes to extend the rule of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the one-time guerrilla group that is today El Salvador’s major leftist political party.  In 2009, Mauricio Funes, a former journalist, led the FMLN to its first-ever electoral victory, ending nearly two decades of post-civil war rule by the center-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA, Nationalist Republican Alliance).

On Sunday, however, provisional results show that Sánchez Cerén won just 50.11% of the vote, narrowly leading Quijano, who had 49.89% of the vote:

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How did this happen?

It wasn’t too difficult to realize, even before February 2, that the runoff vote would tighten.  That’s because in the first round, Sánchez Cerén easily consolidated the FMLN vote, while Quijano had to compete against Elías Antonio ‘Tony’ Saca, a conservative who served as president from 2004 to 2009.  Saca, following his presidency, was kicked out of ARENA, largely over allegations of corruption stemming from his presidential administration and his future presidential ambitions.  Accordingly, Saca led a third-party coalition against both Quijano and Sánchez Cerén in 2014.

Though Saca won a relatively disappointing 11.44% in the first round, it seemed clear that Quijano would win the majority of Saca supporters in the second round.  Taken together, the combined Quijano-Saca support totaled  50.39%, proving in the first round that there’s a basis for a center-right, conservative electoral coalition.  If Quijano were able to win almost all of the former Saca voters and/or win over a few first-round FMLN voters, he could leapfrog Sánchez Cerén and into the presidency.  Sunday’s provisional result seems to indicate that, though Quijano consolidated much of the conservative vote, it still wasn’t quite enough (though let’s wait for the full recount). Continue reading Sánchez Cerén narrowly leads Salvadoran presidential vote →

North Korea

‘Everybody votes in agreement!’ But why does North Korea bother?

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everybodyoteyes

There’s no country on the planet more autarkic or isolated than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.northkorea

Last year, when Kim Jong-un decided to show that he was in charge, he executed his own uncle, Jang Song Thaek, who had been a top advisor to Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il.  There’s no question that Dear Leader is running North Korea, however poorly he may be running it — it has a GDP of around $40 billion while South Korea has a GDP of $1.130 trillion.

But when North Korea holds elections on Sunday to determine the 687 members of the Supreme People’s Assembly (최고 인민 회의), voters will have just one choice — a candidate of the Workers’ Party of Korea (조선로동당), the long-governing party of North Korea.  In some cases, voters may choose the candidate of either the Korean Social Democratic Party or the Chondoist Chongu Party, both of which govern in coalition with the Workers’ Party under the banner of the ‘Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland.’

Kim himself is standing in constituency #111 — an auspicious number!  He will represent Mount Paekdu — how sacred!

Or whatever.

The Supreme People’s Assembly is certainly not the fount of power in North Korea; instead, it’s a rubber-stamp parliament that rarely even convenes.

Given the nature of power and government in North Korea, what could Kim possibly gain out of the expense and hassle of staging she elections?  It’s not to gain a democratic mandate, because there’s no opposition (and there’s no way for North Korean voters to vote in secret against the government’s candidate).  The elections are such a sham that they certainly aren’t being staged for showing the world that North Korea is acceding to the mechanisms of democratic legitimacy.  I haven’t even listed North Korea’s election s on the 2014 electoral calendar because they so comically fall below the standards of anything we understand to be a valid election.

In contrast, elections for the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) in neighboring China seem like bona fide exercises in civic duty.

So what gives?  There are at least three reasons why North Korea continues to go through the charade of holding ‘elections.’ Continue reading ‘Everybody votes in agreement!’ But why does North Korea bother? →

Costa Rica

Johnny Araya suspends campaign in Costa Rica

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johnny After the February 2 first-round votes in both El Salvador and Costa Rica,  I wrote that even though the Costa Rican vote was tighter than the Salvadoran vote, it was easier to predict that Luis Guillermo Solís would defeat San José mayor Johnny Araya (despite just a 1.3% lead for Solís in the first round) in the April 6 runoff than Salvadoran vice president Salvador Sánchez Cerén (with a nearly 10% lead in the first round) would defeat San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano in the March 9 runoff.costa_rica_flag

Sure enough, while Sánchez Cerén is the favorite to win this weekend’s vote in El Salvador, the bigger news from Central America this week was Araya’s decision to suspend his campaign after a University of Costa Rica poll earlier this week showed the Solís held a staggering 44-point lead over Araya, winning 64.4% to just 20.9% for Araya (pictured above).

Though that poll included a sizable undecided vote (around 14.6%), it showed that Araya had lost ground in the past month — he won 29.6% of the first-round vote.

Facing the ignominy of leading Costa Rica’s most enduring party, the center-left Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN, National Liberation Party) through even more embarrassment, Araya suspended his campaign on Wednesday, with one month to go before the runoff.

The reasons for Araya’s decision were clear from the moment the Araya-Solís race were established — or before: Continue reading Johnny Araya suspends campaign in Costa Rica →

Ukraine

Ukraine (Crimea and Sevastopol) fact of the day

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Ukraine's new PM Tymoshenko greets opposition leader and former PM Yanukovich before meeting in Kiev

If you re-run the results of the 2010 presidential election without Crimea and Sevastopol, you reduce the margin of the winning candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, against his opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko (pictured above with Yanukovych), by about half.Ukraine Flag Icon

The final result of the runoff election?

Yanukovych: 48.95%
Tymoshenko: 45.47%
Against all: 4.36%

Now look what happens when you simply remove the votes from Crimea and Sevastopol, where Yanukovych racked up some of his largest margins against Tymoshenko:

Yanukovych: 47.03%
Tymoshenko: 45.11%
Against all / Crimea / Sevastopol: 7.86%

It doesn’t mean that, without his support in Crimea and Sevastopol, Yanukovych would have lost the 2010 presidential race, which everyone at the time considered a relatively free and fair vote.  But it would have made a clear win much messier, perhaps giving Tymoshenko a case to rally against potential election fraud.

That’s something to keep in mind for the future of Ukrainian politics if, as expected, Crimeans vote on March 16 in favor of annexation by Russia (in what will almost certainly not be a free and fair vote).

It probably will have little effect on the scheduled May 25 presidential election, which will almost certainly be won by either Petro Poroshenko, a businessman who supported the anti-Yanukovych protests, or by Vitaliy Klychko, the heavyweight boxing champion and opposition political leader.  But as the old east-west tensions that have become the hallmark of Ukrainian politics reemerge (as they invariably will) for, say, the 2019 presidential election, it will be that much more difficult in a Crimea-less Ukraine for an eastern leader, sympathetic to Russia, to win the Ukrainian presidency in the future.

It’s also worth noting that in the 2012 parliamentary elections, Yanukovych’s eastern, pro-Russian Party of Regions (Партія регіонів) won 11 of 12 single-member districts within Crimea and Sevastopol. (The 12th went to Union, a local pro-Russian party).  In the 2012 elections, Yanukovych changed electoral law to provide that 225 of the 450 seats in Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, would be determined on a first-past-the-post basis in single-member districts — the idea being that the Party of Regions would win more seats by splitting the opposition, a strategy that largely succeeded for Yanukovych in 2012.  Under the previous 2004 constitution, which has now been reinstated by Ukraine’s parliament in the wake of Yanukovych’s ouster, all 450 seats are determined on the basis of proportional representation through national party vote.