The narrative of federal spending in Canada ignores provincial debt

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I don’t mean to single out any particular post at any particular think tank, but a post from Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute today gets to the heart of why I am so distrustful of think tanks that lean so clearly either to the right or to the left.Canada Flag IconUSflag

The Cato post comes after Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty (pictured above) unveiled a budget on Tuesday that outlines further spending cuts designed to lower Canadian public debt more deeply, largely keeping to the same fiscal path that prime minister Stephen Harper’s government has set for years.  The post, however, argues that the gap between federal spending in Canada as a percentage of GDP, which is lower, and federal spending in the United States, which is higher, is growing:

In Canada, federal spending fell to just 15.1 percent of GDP in 2013 and the government projects that the ratio will decline steadily to 14.0 percent by 2019 (p. 268). Federal debt as a share of GDP fell to just 33 percent this year.

Then follows some fairly massive generalizations about the state of Canadian and US federal spending over the past two decades and contemporary politics in both countries:

On federal fiscal policy, Canada has had pragmatic centrist leadership for the last two decades, with voters keeping the loony left out of power. In the United States, we’ve had power divided between centrist Republicans and loony left Democrats in recent years….

Pundits often claim that the Republicans are controlled by radical Tea Party elements. I wish that were true, but in terms of policy results there is no evidence of it. Republican and Democratic leaders are apparently satisfied with federal spending, deficits, and debt far larger than acceptable to the centrists in Canada.

And there’s a chart that proves it! See!? Canada good, US bad.

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But there’s no indication that these numbers include spending at the provincial level, which is much more robust in Canada than corresponding spending at the US state and municipal level.  It’s trend that has accelerated in the past two decades, as well, following Canada’s narrow brush with Québec’s independence referendum in 1995.  That makes the chart essentially useless — it’s an apples-to-maple-leafs comparison.   Continue reading The narrative of federal spending in Canada ignores provincial debt

Can the Obama administration save François Hollande?

2ckb1152No one could miss the undertones of yesterday’s op-ed, co-written by US president Barack Obama and French president François Hollande, in The Washington Post and Le Monde:France Flag Icon

A decade ago, few would have imagined our two countries working so closely together in so many ways. But in recent years our alliance has transformed. Since France’s return to NATO’s military command four years ago and consistent with our continuing commitment to strengthen the NATO- European Union partnership, we have expanded our cooperation across the board. We are sovereign and independent nations that make our decisions based on our respective national interests. Yet we have been able to take our alliance to a new level because our interests and values are so closely aligned.

It was one of the biggest, wettest, sloppiest kisses that the Obama administration has given a foreign leader — and it’s not something that this administration does often.  It’s part of the red-carpet treatment that Obama is rolling out for Hollande, who visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia on Monday, and will be the host of a state dinner tonight at the White House.

It’s clearly an opportunity for the newly single Hollande to move on after a dismal January, when sensational headlines over his trysts with a French actress overshadowed his his attempts to introduce a new economic reform package.  It became a nearly monthlong saga that sent Hollande’s partner, Valerie Trierweiler, to a Paris hospital for over a week, and that ended with their breakup.

Time magazine, which a wide-ranging interview, asks this week on its cover whether Hollande can fix France.  It’s worth asking whether, first, the White House is trying to help fix Hollande.  Polls routinely show Hollande with an approval rating in the low 20s (or even high teens), making him the least popular president in the history of the Fifth Republic, not even two years into his five-year term.

The White House treatment, including Monday’s joint editorial, undoubtedly hopes to share of Obama’s star power with the widely derided president.  Obama needs Hollande’s help to finalize the US-EU free trade pact, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, even though it could harm French farmers and wine producers by opening the European Union to cheaper US exports.  Obama will also need Hollande’s help to win a long-term nuclear energy deal with Iran while the temporary six-month deal remains in effect.

It’s true that France has been, surprisingly, almost as reliable a partner on US foreign policy as the United Kingdom in recent years.  Hollande has deepened France’s 21st century internationalism, of course, most notably through his decision to mount a largely successful intervention to keep northern Mali from falling to foreign Islamic jihadists, thereby giving Bamako the space to hold new elections and build a stronger national government.  French peacemakers in the Central African Republic may have also helped limit violence between Christians and Muslims in December and January and smoothed the way for Michel Djotodia’s resignation.  Hollande was willing to back a US military attack on Syrian president  Bashar al-Assad last August when the United Kingdom and the US Congress were not.

 

But credit for the hard work of repairing US-French relations, insofar as it relates to the newly muscular tone of French foreign policy, more appropriately rests with former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration marked the true pivot on foreign policy.   Continue reading Can the Obama administration save François Hollande?

Who is Yoichi Masuzoe?

yoichiTokyo certainly seems to have a fondness for electing colorful characters as its governors — and its newly elected governor appears like he will be no exception.Japantokyo

Yōichi Masuzoe (舛添 要), who easily won the Tokyo gubernatorial election on Sunday, first became well-known in the 1990s as a television commentator.  In 1998, he wrote a book, When I Put a Diaper on My Mother, which detailed the process of caring for his elderly mother and gave Masuzoe a platform to discuss health and aging in Japan.  That’s particularly relevant for Japan, which has the world’s second-highest median age (44.6, just 0.3 years higher than Italy), and where the population peaked at just over 128 million in 2010 in what demographers believe will be a massive depopulation over the coming decades.

Masuzoe (pictured above) first ran for the Japanese governorship in 1999, though he placed third with just 15.3% of the vote.  Elected to the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet (国会), Japan’s parliament, in 2001, Masuzoe rose through the LDP ranks.  He chaired a constitutional panel in 2006 that advocated amending Japan’s Article 9, thereby allowing the Japanese Self-Defese Forces to become a full army.  Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三), who was then in his first stint as Japan’s prime minister, appointed Masuzoe as Japan’s minister for health, labor and welfare, a position he held between 2007 and 2009, when the LDP suffered its most severe postwar electoral defeat.

He left the LDP in 2010 to form the New Renaissance Party (新党改革) at a time when his national profile seemed to be rising.  But by the time a national election came along in December 2012, the LDP was set to win a landslide victory under Abe and his economic program, popularly dubbed ‘Abenomics.’  Eclipsed by the Japan Restoration Party (日本維新の会), a merger of the two new parties of Tokyo’s governor at the time, Shintaro Ishihara (石原 慎太郎), and Osaka’s young mayor, Tōru Hashimoto (橋下 徹), the New Renaissance Party failed to win a single seat.

Today, the Japan Restoration Party is setting its sights somewhat lower after a disappointing result in the July 2013 elections to the House of Councillors and a series of bad publicity for Hashimoto, who defended the use of ‘comfort women‘ by Japanese soldiers in World War II in May 2013, has called snap elections in Osaka, where he’ll stand for reelection after proposing the merger of Osaka’s city and prefectural governments.

But Masuzoe is today riding high — running as an independent with the support of the LDP and its conservative Buddhist ally, New Kōmeitō (公明党, Shin Kōmeitō), Masuzoe won the election in a near-landslide, garnering more than double the support of his nearest challenger, Kenji Utsunomiya (宇都宮 健児), a Japanese attorney and anti-nuclear activist, and the runner-up in Tokyo’s December 2012 gubernatorial election.   

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In third place was the man who once threatened to knock Masuzoe from his frontrunner perch — Morihiro Hosokawa (細川 護煕), who served as prime minister between August 1993 and April 1994, leading the first non-LDP government since 1955.  Though he resigned over accusations of bribery, and thereupon left politics, the DPJ recruited him for the 2014 Tokyo race.

Though Hosokawa had the formal support of the DPJ and Masuzoe the formal support of the LDP, several top Democratic Party figures backed Masuzoe.  Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎), the LDP architect of economic reform in the 2000s, backed Hosokawa, in large part due to his anti-nuclear stance.

In contrast to Utsunomiya and Hosokawa, who pledged to limit spending on the 2020 Olympics and opposed a return to nuclear energy, Masuzoe supported return to nuclear energy and now stands a good chance of ushering Tokyo through to the 2020 Olympics with plenty of LDP patronage, though Masuzoe will face reelection in 2018.  Earlier Monday, Abe’s government appeared to push with renewed vigor to restore Japan’s nuclear power capability just three years after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and at times, the Tokyo gubernatorial race felt like a showdown between Abe and Koizumi, arguably the two most successful political figures in Japanese history of the past two decades.

The truth is that Tokyo voters weren’t thinking about the contest as a referendum on nuclear power, but competent city governance.  Abe, still basking in the success of his economic program (though that success may be somewhat less impressive than it was half a year ago), was always going to cast a large penumbra in the race.

Moreover, Utsunomiya and Hosokawa split the mostly anti-Masuzoe vote — had they united, they would have stood a strong chance at overtaking him, thereby denting the political invincibility that Abe and the LDP have enjoyed since December 2012.   The fourth-place candidate, Toshio Tamogami, a former general in the Self-Defense Forces, waged a largely nationalist, militaristic campaign, enough to win 12.4% of the vote that might have otherwise gone to Masuzoe.

Masuzoe expressed other odd views during the campaign — he indicated, rather bizarrely, that he didn’t believe women were capable of leading the country, inspiring an equally ‘sex boycott‘ among Tokyo women.

Back in Tokyo, Masuzoe is in good company historically though, given that the Tokyo governorship has attracted some of Japan’s most colorful politicians on the left and the right.

Continue reading Who is Yoichi Masuzoe?

Swiss immigration vote threatens access to EU single market

2007SVPAn infamous campaign poster from the 2007 Swiss election that depicts a flock of white sheep inside Switzerland, with one kicking a black sheep outside — the implication being that the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP, Schweizerische Volkspartei in German; UDC, Union démocratique du centre in French) would tighten immigration policies to keep out migrants and perhaps reverse the trend of greater immigration to Switzerland in recent years.  Critics pointed out the nastier racist undertones of the poster.swiss

It’s that advertisement that I had in mind today as Swiss voters elected by a narrow 50.3%-to-49.7% margin to adopt an initiative ‘against mass immigration’ that would introduce quotas to Swiss immigration, despite the wishes of the Swiss government and Swiss business interests and the warnings of top EU officials.  The result threatens the existing treaties between Switzerland and the European Union that guarantee the free movement of persons, one of the four ‘core’ EU freedoms.

It’s a significant victory for the SVP, which has emerged as a major force in Swiss politics through its forceful advocacy of a nationalist, conservative agenda to restrict immigration and oppose greater EU integration.

The result means that the Swiss government now has three years either to renegotiate or revoke the bilateral agreement finalized in 2002 with the European Union over free movement of persons.  That treaty is part of a larger package that provided Switzerland access to the EU single market in exchange for enacting certain aspects of EU policy, and it’s part of a wider process that has more closely integrated Switzerland with the European Union over the past decade.  The country’s historic independence means that it’s never seriously pursued EU membership — Switzerland joined the United Nations only in 2002, after all.   Continue reading Swiss immigration vote threatens access to EU single market

What’s going on in Michoacán?

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Even as Enrique Peña Nieto basks in a largely successful first year as president, capped off with a massive energy reform that will introduce elements of privatization and foreign investment to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state oil company, and the first step of tax reform that will raise VAT of junk food and sodas, Mexicans aren’t sure that his administration is making the same progress on security. michuocanMexico Flag Icon

Nowhere is that more true than in Michoacán.

A sprawling Pacific state that unfurls from the western Mexican coast inland nearly to the capital of México City, Michoacán wasn’t necessarily predestined to become a synonym of drug-fueled anarchy.  It’s not home to the Zapatista-style insurgency that former president Ernesto Zedillo faced in Chiapas in the mid-1990s, the destabilizing political protests that former president Vicente Fox faced in Oaxaca in 2006, or to the horrific body counts in Ciudad Juárez and elsewhere in Chihuahua that dominated gory headlines just a few years ago during the presidency of Felipe Calderón.

michoacan Continue reading What’s going on in Michoacán?

How Tunisia became the ‘success story’ of the Arab Spring

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In the two countries where the Arab Spring ‘revolutions’ of early 2011 quickly toppled long-standing dictators, Tunisia has become the ‘success story’ and Egypt its ‘failure.’  Whereas Egypt is grinding through what’s now three years of fits and starts in its political development, Tunisia today seems like it’s on a stronger and more productive path to economic stability and political harmony.egypt_flag_newtunisia flag

First off, it’s hard to know exactly what anyone means by ‘success’ with respect to Islamic democracy, especially in the context of North African history, which has little history of democratic institutions.  By the way, is the Lebanese political system a ‘success’? Is Indonesia’s? Turkey’s? Iran’s? Pakistan’s?

Moreover, the truth isn’t so easily distilled down to the mantra of ‘Tunisia good, Egypt bad,’ and it wasn’t always so clear that Tunisia would succeed where Egypt today seems to have failed.  Experiments in political change in both countries continue to develop, and there’s still time for Egypt to ‘succeed’ — and for Tunisia to ‘fail.’

Tunisia, this week, marked the third anniversary since the fall of its former president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Egypt and Tunisia both enacted new constitutions in January, inviting a comparison between the two approaches to post-revolutionary politics.

In Egypt, the military-led government pushed through a more secular version of last year’s constitution with stronger protections for human rights, though it did so by controlling the Egyptian media, deploying violence to silence its critics and excluding the Muslim Brotherhood (جماعة الاخوان المسلمين‎) from joining the political debate.  Not surprisingly, the Brotherhood boycotted the constitutional referendum, and the new constitution passed with over 98% of the vote.  Last month’s vote was the third constitutional referendum in Egypt since Hosni Mubarak’s fall from office in February 2011.  Egyptians also overwhelmingly endorsed constitutional reforms in March 2011 and in December 2012, the latter a hasty effort by former president Mohammed Morsi that hijacked the process from Egypt’s preexisting constituent assembly to enshrine the Brotherhood’s vision for Egypt into a new constitution.

Tunisia took a different path to constitutional reform, playing the tortoise to Egypt’s hare.  It didn’t jump to an immediate referendum — and it won’t hold a popular referendum on Tunisia’s new constitution.  Instead, its interim government conduction an election in October 2011 to choose a 217-member constituent assembly that late last month promulgated a constitution that’s even more progressive than Egypt’s, in line with the historically secular tradition of Tunisian governance and the moderate nature of Tunisian Islam — it protects freedom of expression and religion and provides for some of the strongest women’s rights in the Arab world.

Mehdi Jomaa (pictured above), an independent who most recently served as minister of industry, took office on January 29 to lead a caretaker, technocratic government designed to keep Tunisia on track through the planned elections later this year.

The charter won the support of secular members of the constituent assembly, but also the support of the assembly’s largest bloc, the Islamic democratic Ennahda Movement (حركة النهضة, Arabic for ‘Renaissance’‎).  While the constitution doesn’t enshrine sharia law or even proclaim Tunisia to be an ‘Islamic state,’ it incorporates Islam as Tunisia’s state religion and states in its preamble the ‘attachment of our people to the teachings of Islam.’  That has left the constitution open to charges that it’s vague and inconsistent, especially Article 6, which attempts to provide for freedom of religion and protect against ‘offenses to the sacred’: 

The State is the guardian of religion. It guarantees liberty of conscience and of belief, the free exercise of religious worship and the neutrality of the mosques and of the places of worship from all partisan instrumentalization.

The State commits itself to the dissemination of the values of moderation and tolerance and to the protection of the sacred and the prohibition of any offense thereto. It commits itself, equally, to the prohibition of, and the fight against, appeals to Takfir [charges of apostasy] and incitement to violence and hatred.

Despite the shortcomings of Tunisia’s constitution, it wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that the Ennahda Movement and Tunisian secularists would reach a compromise — Ennahda always had enough strength to kill the constitutional process if it truly wanted.  By 2013, rising political violence from within the Salafist, conservative ranks of Tunisian Islamists threatened the entire venture, notably the assassinations by radical Islamists of Chokri Belaïd, the leader of the leftist, secular Democratic Patriots’ Movement, in February 2013, and of Mohamed Brahmi, the founder and leader of the socialist/Arab nationalist People’s Movement, in July 2013.

Egypt, in contrast, has now held three constitutional referenda, November 2011/January 2012 parliamentary elections that were annulled by Egypt’s top court and a May/June 2012 presidential vote that ended in Morsi’s election, his ultimate overthrow by the Egyptian army in July 2013, and a brutal crackdown against Morsi’s supporters.  Egypt is expected to hold a presidential election this spring, with another parliamentary election to follow, and army chief and defense minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is almost certain to run and likely to win, representing, in essence, the re-Mubarakization of Egypt.

Whereas Egypt’s 2014 elections will be its third restart at attempted representative government since Mubarak’s fall, Tunisia’s unscheduled 2014 elections follow three years of careful, if difficult, work by the constituent assembly and Tunisia’s interim government.

So what marks the key differences that explain why Tunisia and Egypt are so far apart today?  Continue reading How Tunisia became the ‘success story’ of the Arab Spring

Pre-Sochi required reading list: McFaul’s foibles and Putin’s Olympics

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If you read nothing else before the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, you could do much worse than these two brilliant pieces in Foreign Policy and Politico Magazine that explain in majestic scale the state of Russia today and the nature of US-Russian relations in the 2010s, even as journalists started arriving in Sochi earlier this week and reporting the (sometimes humorous) problems with infrastructure. USflagRussia Flag Icon

The first is a profile of Michael McFaul (pictured below), the US ambassador to Russia, who announced earlier this week that he will step down following the Winter Games in Sochi, after just two years as the US envoy to Moscow.  Just the second non-career diplomat in US history to hold the post, Michael Weiss writes in Foreign Policy about both McFaul’s successes and failures, but especially McFaul’s failures, evident from the first sentence:

The Kremlin, for instance, will be sad to see the nicest, most eager-to-please man to ever inhabit Spaso House quit the joint after only two years of floundering and squirming under the Kremlin’s systematic, Vienna Convention-violating sadism.

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McFaul (pictured above with Obama), a  professor of political science at Stanford University, previously served as US president Barack Obama’s special assistant and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs.  The ‘reset’ concept with Russia at the beginning of the Obama administration was McFaul’s brainchild — though the US secretary of state at the time Hillary Clinton, memorably presented her Russian counterpart with a reset button inscribed with the word peregruzka (‘overload’) instead of perezagruzka (‘reset’).  But it’s important to remember that McFaul was also instrumental in the successful negotiations to enact deeper nuclear non-proliferation through the New START treaty with Russia enacted in May 2010.

Weiss’s piece makes clear just how difficult it was for McFaul to adjust between ‘advocate’ mode and ‘diplomat’ mode, and most of the major ‘gaffes’ of McFaul’s tenure relate to the gap between advocate and diplomat — over-reliance on social media; meeting with a wide group of the Kremlin’s political opponents for his first official meeting; dissembling over the Magnitsky Act (which ties US-Russian trade to human rights abuses) and encouraging Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization; or even the time he tweeted about ‘Yoburg’ (which translates to ‘Fuckville’ in Russian) instead of ‘Yeakaterinburg.’

McFaul had a style that was hard to account for or justify, as when he admitted, by way of an apology, that he was “not a professional diplomat.” This, too, had the merit of being true; but what, it prompted many to wonder, was he doing in the most difficult diplomatic posting on the planet advertising as much?

Though John Beyrle, the career diplomat who served as ambassador between 2008 and 2011, would not have made those same mistakes, he also wouldn’t have tweeted a message of support (‘I’m watching.’) to opposition figure Alexei Navalny last summer during a politically-motivated trial on trumped-up charges.  Part of the charge against McFaul is that he didn’t follow the rulebook of international diplomacy, but that runs both ways — one man’s diplomatic faux pas is another man’s bravery.  If, a decade from now, we look back at the August 2013 confrontation with Syria as the start of a successful model for US-Russian cooperation, the Obama-McFaul reputation on Russian relations will look drastically better  (of course, that depends mostly on the cooperation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in dismounting his chemical weapons program and the ability of the OPCW and UN personnel to evacuate them from a country in the midst of a civil war).

Ultimately, though, the McFaul tenure coincides with what seems today like a stark deterioration in bilateral relations, even from the headier days of 2009 and 2010.  Here’s the devastating kicker:

Unfortunately, he’s leaving with the Russian media portraying America as a country that tortures orphans to death, brainwashes children into becoming homosexuals, supports al Qaeda terrorists in the Middle East, eggs on neo-Nazis to overthrow the government of Ukraine, and otherwise behaves as both a bumbling colossus and a serially defrauded and discombobulated mug in world affairs.

The second piece you should read is Leon Aron’s piece in Politico Magazine explaining how the Winter Games initially came to Sochi (partly a rare English-language speech from Putin to the International Olympic Committee in 2007):

But it mostly explains why, at a price tag of between $50 billion and $55 billion, they’re the most staggeringly expensive Olympics ever (more than even Beijing’s 2008 Summer Games and more than all previous Winter Games in Olympic history):  Continue reading Pre-Sochi required reading list: McFaul’s foibles and Putin’s Olympics

More thoughts on Venezuela and Argentina

I discussed the dual economic crises in Venezuela and Argentina today on SiriusXM’s Cristina channel on ‘From Washington Al Mundo’ with Mauricio Claver-Caroné.argentinaVenezuela Flag Icon

It was an absolute pleasure — and Suffragio readers should check out the entire program on SiriusXM.  But in the meanwhile, here’s the audio from my segment.

The segment picks up from my piece last week in The National Interest, which tracks the similarities between the economic crises in both countries, but also the other similarities in their politics, their history, and the way that past governments handled neoliberal economic reform in the past.  So there are a lot of common threads that go beyond basic macroeconomic coincidences to the cultural, political and historical.

I also noted today that it seems like Argentina is a half-step or so behind Venezuela in terms of its economic crisis.  It’s only just now starting to feel the real crunch of a dollar shortage.  The headline this week is about a ketchup shortage, and that’s the kind of headline that featured in Venezuela last year — shortages of everything from toilet paper to holy water.

Anyway, please do check out the audio if you’re interested — I’ve only started to do television and radio interviews, so I’m learning as I go.

How Goldman Sachs nearly collapsed Denmark’s government last week

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A crisis over whether to approve the sale of part of Denmark’s state energy company to Goldman Sachs divides the country’s beleaguered minority government, leaving the first female Danish prime minister and her administration in jeopardy. denmark flag

It sounds like an episode of Borgen, the acclaimed television show about Danish political intrigue and the human costs of public office.*

But it was real-life Danish politics last week, when Helle Thorning-Schmidt pushed through a controversial sale of stock amounting to 18% of DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas) Energy, the national energy company, to Goldman Sachs, even though nearly seven out of 10 Danish voters oppose the sale and worry that Goldman will hold too much power over management and other key decisions.

Thorning-Schmidt (pictured above) leads the Socialdemokraterne (Social Democrats), the largest center-left party in Denmark.  In the September 2011 parliamentary elections, the Social Democrats actually lost a seat.  The largest party today in the Danish parliament is Venstre (Liberals, literally the ‘Left’), Denmark’s primary center-right party.

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But the strength of other leftist parties in the 179-member Folketing, the Danish parliament, allowed Thorning-Schmidt to pull together a minority government with the coalition support of two additional parties.  The first is Det Radikale Venstre (Danish Social Liberal Party, literally the ‘Radical Left’), a centrist liberal party that gained eight seats in the 2011 election.  Its leader, Margrethe Vestager, currently serves as deputy prime minister and minister for economic and interior affairs.

The second is the Socialistisk Folkeparti (the Socialist People’s Party), a democratic socialist party that lost seven seats in 2011.  Accustomed to opposition, the party joined government only for the first time since 1959, and its leader Villy Søvndal became foreign minister.  But Søvndal stepped down in September 2012, due to criticism within the party about the 2011 losses and sniping that he was focusing more on government than on the party leadership.  and in the ensuing leadership contest in October 2012, Annette Vilhelmsen defeated Astrid Krag.  Though many party leaders supported Krag, Vilhelmsen’s victory represented a triumph for the party’s left wing, though the party never fully united behind Vilhelmsen’s leadership.  Vilhelmsen clashed often with her coalition partners over economic policy, and it was Vilhelmsen’s decision to pull the party out of Thorning-Schmidt’s coalition at the end of last week, declaring that it wouldn’t be a part of government ‘at all costs.’   Continue reading How Goldman Sachs nearly collapsed Denmark’s government last week

Scotland passes same-sex marriage, joining England and Wales

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Though the UK parliament in Westminster enacted same-sex marriage in July 2013 to great fanfare, the nature of devolution in the United Kingdom meant that Scotland’s parliament in Holyrood would have to pass its own version.United Kingdom Flag Iconscotland

The devolution process that began in 1997 under Labour prime minister Tony Blair created parliaments for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.  But regional devolution ran deepest in Scotland — Wales opted for fewer regional powers than Scotland, and Northern Ireland’s parliament, created as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, spent much of the 2000s suspended.  Ironically, that meant that for a brief period, same-sex marriage would be the law of the land in England in Wales, but not in the more socially liberal Scotland.

That changed today, when the Scottish parliament voted 105 to 18 in favor of enacting same-sex marriage.  First minister Alex Salmond, who leads a pro-independence government of the Scottish National Party (SNP) fast-tracked the bill to keep pace with Westminster.  Though the bill wasn’t without controversy, especially from within the Church of Scotland and other religious groups, support within the Scottish Labour Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats meant that the bill was always likely to sail through Holyrood.

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Though the major opposition to same-sex marriage in England and Wales came from within the Conservative Party of prime minister David Cameron (who himself supported marriage equality), the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Ruth Davidson (pictured above), is herself gay and strongly supported the marriage equality effort in Scotland. Though the Tories hold just 15 seats in the 129-member Scottish parliament (compared to 65 seats for the SNP and 37 for Labour), Davidson and Cameron have shown that conservatism and marriage equality aren’t necessarily incompatible.

The lengthier Scottish consultation process on the same-sex marriage bill included outreach to hear the views of religious groups, and churches will have the right (though not the obligation) to ‘opt in’ to same-sex marriage in Scotland when the law takes effect later this year.  That makes the Scottish same-sex marriage act somewhat stronger than the English version, which provides a blanket ban on same-sex ceremonies within the Church of England.

The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales will take place in March, and the first marriages in Scotland will take place later in autumn 2014.

It also leaves Northern Ireland as the only part of the United Kingdom without same-sex marriage — and as I wrote last summer, don’t expect the Northern Irish assembly at Stormont to take up the cause of LGBT equality anytime soon:  Continue reading Scotland passes same-sex marriage, joining England and Wales

Ramphele debacle leaves South African opposition reeling

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Less than a week after anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele became the presidential candidate of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the second-largest political party in South Africa, Ramphele on Sunday backed out of her decision to lead the South African opposition into expected spring parliamentary elections.south africa flag

Though the deal would have merged the DA with Ramphele’s smaller party, AgangSA, founded just over a year ago, the merger collapsed over whether AgangSA would remain a separate entity or would be collapsed entirely within the Democratic Alliance.

It’s a short-sighted decision that leaves neither Ramphele nor Helen Zille (pictured above), the leader of the Democratic Alliance and premier of Western Cape province, looking very skilful.  The collapse of the Ramphele-led alliance must surely rank among the worst self-inflicted disasters of recent world politics.

Zille, in particular, released a harshly worded statement late Sunday savaging Ramphele:

“This about-turn will come as a disappointment to the many South Africans who were inspired by what could have been a historic partnership,” Zille said.  “By going back on the deal, again… Dr Ramphele has demonstrated – once and for all – she cannot be trusted to see any project through to its conclusion. This is a great pity.”

Insisting that the DA had negotiated with Ramphele in good faith, Zille added: “Since Tuesday’s announcement, Dr Ramphele has been playing a game of cat and mouse – telling the media one thing, Agang supporters another thing, and the DA another.  “It is not clear what her objective is, but whatever it is, it is not in the interests of the South African people.”

Without Ramphele, the Democratic Alliance seemed set for its most successful election since its foundation in 2000.  Zille won 16.7% of the vote in the previous April 2009 elections, 23.9% of the national vote in May 2011 municipal elections, and the party seemed headed to win one-quarter or even one-third of the vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections.  Though Zille has a hold on Western Cape province, party leaders hope to make breakthroughs in Eastern Cape and Northern Cape provinces, as well as in Gauteng province, where former Johannesburg mayoral candidate and city council member Mmusi Maimane has helped transform the party’s local (and national) image. 

That won’t necessarily change because of the tumultuous courtship with Ramphele and AgangSA, but it doesn’t make Zille look like an incredibly strong leader to hand her party’s presidential nomination to someone who flaked out within hours of receiving it.  South Africa’s election must be held before July 2014, and if it takes place closer to July than, say, to April or May, the Ramphele breakup stands a good chance of receding into the background.  But it also means that, barring a major turn of events, Zille will have to recalibrate expectations from ‘historic breakthrough’ back down to incremental gains.  Continue reading Ramphele debacle leaves South African opposition reeling

Former diplomat Solís leapfrogs to top of Tico presidential race

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Before yesterday’s presidential election, polls showed Luis Guillermo Solís, an academic and former diplomat, in fourth place in the race to become Costa Rica’s next president.  costa_rica_flag

But on the strength of a surge in momentum at the end of the campaign, Solís (pictured above) not only elbowed his way into an expected April 6 runoff (only the second such runoff in the country’s history), but leapfrogged all the way to the top spot, edging out the frontrunner, San José mayor Johnny Araya, and the younger, more populist leftist José María Villalta.  More recent surveys indicated a definite upswing in support as Solís capitalized on a strong performance in the final presidential debate, but even a late January poll showed Solís behind Araya, Villata and a conservative candidate, Otto Guevara.

Solís ultimately outpolled Araya by a little over 1% of the vote as undecided voters appear to have lined up solidly for the former diplomat — and he even defeated Araya in San José municipality, despite the fact that Araya has served as the city’s mayor since 1998.

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So what happened? Continue reading Former diplomat Solís leapfrogs to top of Tico presidential race

Sánchez Cerén exceeds expectations in first-round Salvadoran vote

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With almost every vote  counted tonight, here’s where the Salvadoran election stands:el salvador

In El Salvador, vice president Salvador Sánchez Cerén commanded 48.92% of the vote against the center-right San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, who has won 38.95% of the vote, with 99.15% of the vote reporting.

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Though Sánchez Cerén (pictured above, top) was favored in most polls to the first round of the Salvadoran presidency, he wasn’t expected to come so close to winning the entire presidency — essentially within 1.07% of nabbing the absolute majority he would need to take the presidency in a first-round victory.

That result is much better than Sánchez Cerén’s Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) could have hoped for.  It’s not only a first-round win, but it significantly outpaces polling expectations that put Sánchez Cerén equal to or behind Quijano, the candidate of El Salvador’s center-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA, Nationalist Republican Alliance).  It’s a vote for enhancing the social welfare programs and the turn to the Alianza Bolivariana (ALBA) in Salvadoran governance.

Though Sánchez Cerén is now favored to win the March 9 runoff against Quijano, but it’s not a certain outcome.  Third-place candidate, former president Elías Antonio ‘Tony’ Saca, who won a somewhat disappointing, 11.44% of the vote, will almost certainly back Quijano and even if he doesn’t, it’s hard to believe his voter base support Sánchez Cerén.

That means that though Sánchez Cerén outpaced Quijano by essentially a 10% margin, the runoff could be very close, and it will become a classic left/right race to determine Salvadoran economic policy, regional alliances and the best strategy to solve violent crime.  Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla leader for the once-Marxist FMLN during the Salvador civil war of 1979-92, is further to the left of outgoing president Mauricio Funes, a former journalist and the first FMLN candidate to win election since the end of the Salvadoran civil war. Quijano, however, has been dogged by allegations of corruption and ties to past ARENA officials who are under investigation, including former president Francisco Flores.

Triple-election weekend on two continents

Voters in three countries will go to the polls on Sunday in three very different kinds of contests on two continents:

In Thailand (population: 66.8 million), voters will elect all 500 members of the  House of Representatives, the lower house of the Ratthasapha (National Assembly of Thailand, รัฐสภา), the lower house of Thailand’s parliament.  thailand

Prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra called snap elections following growing protests that began last November, ostensibly over an amnesty bill, but which have now torn the country back into the familiar pro-Yingluck ‘red shirt’ camps and the opposition ‘yellow shirt’ camps, the same pattern that’s gripped Thailand since the election of Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001.  Their ruling Pheu Thai Party (PTP, ‘For Thais’ Party, พรรคเพื่อไทย) seems set to win a landslide victory due to the boycott of the opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์).  So the election itself is unlikely to end the political protests and growing political violence.

The Democrats and their supporters are instead calling for an unelected governing council, and there’s a chance that, if the situation escalates, the Thai military could intervene (as so often in the past).

  • Read more about what the Thai protests have in common with Ukraine’s protests here.
  • Read more about the Thai government’s disastrous rice subsidy scheme here.

In El Salvador (population: 6.3 million), three major candidates are vying for the Salvadoran presidency.  Incumbent center-left president Mauricio Funes is ineligible to run for a second term.   el salvador

Polls show a tight race between Salvadoran vice president Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the candidate of the leftist guerrilla front-turned-political party Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) and San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, the candidate of the center-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA, Nationalist Republican Alliance).  Former conservative president Tony Saca is also running at the head of a coalition that includes a breakaway faction from ARENA.

If, as expected, no candidate wins over 50% of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a March 9 runoff, which seems likely to pit Sánchez Cerén against Quijano in a race that features vastly different approaches to security, corruption, economic policy and regional alliances.

Sánchez Cerén is a former guerrilla leader during the 1979-92 Salvadoran civil war, and Quijano has been dogged by corruption charges and is linked to other ARENA figures under investigation for corruption.  Funes, a former journalist, became the first FMLN candidate to win election in 2009.

  • Read more about how, one decade on, El Salvador’s dollarization policy is going here.

In Costa Rica (population: 4.8 million), a general election will determine who will be the country’s next president and all 57 members of the Asamblea Legislativa (Legislative Assembly).   costa_rica_flag

The two leading candidates, according to polls are longtime San José mayor Johnny Araya, the candidate of the ruling Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN, National Liberation Party) and José María Villalta, the only legislator of the previously minor socialist / social democratic Frente Amplio (Broad Front).

If none of the candidates wins 40% of the vote, the top two candidates will face off in an April 6 runoff.

Araya is seeking the third consecutive term for the PLN after the presidencies of Óscar Arias from 2006 to 2010 and the incumbent Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica’s first female president.  Chinchilla’s administration is unpopular — both for its inability to control corruption or to tackle the country’s growing debt.

Two other candidates could conceivably pull an upset, however: Otto Guevara, a conservative attorney, who is running his fourth consecutive presidential campaign, and Luis Guillermo Solís, a social democrat and former diplomat in the Arias administration.

The two Central American elections follow a general election in Honduras last November and precede a presidential election in Panamá on May 4.  Earlier this week, Nicaragua also cleared the way for Sandinista president Daniel Ortega to run for reelection in 2016.

  • Read more about Suffragio‘s coverage of the recent Honduran general elections and the  presidential inauguration last Monday of Juan Orlando Hernández here.

How Yingluck’s rice subsidy backfired in Thailand

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The outcome of the parliamentary elections in Thailand’s February 2 vote is almost certain, with the opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์) boycotting the election, thereby handing an artificially inflated landslide victorythailand to prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her allies.

Anti-government protests, which began in November over a proposed amnesty bill, and which resulted in Yingluck’s decision in December to call snap elections, continue to rage on, and Yingluck’s government, having already called a state of emergency, has indicated it will start cleaning government buildings in Bangkok of occupying protesters on Monday, February 3.

Though the protests have long eclipsed their immediate cause, an amnesty bill that both Yingluck’s supporters and opponents jeered, the ensuing ignition of political tension (and political violence) between the pro-government ‘red shirts’ and the opposition ‘yellow shirts’ has threatened to endanger the fragile stability that Yingluck, the sister of former, now exiled, prime minister Thaksin Shinwatra, tried to establish since her initial election in 2011.

But lurking behind the protests and the tension is a parallel controversy over the most consequential policy decision of Yingluck’s government — a well-intentioned rice subsidy scheme designed to stabilize the price of the rice crop for Thai farmers not only ran out of money, leaving farmers dissatisfied and angry, but knocked Thailand from its perch as the world’s top rice exporter and now threatens to plunge Thai’s credit rating to junk status. Continue reading How Yingluck’s rice subsidy backfired in Thailand