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Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Sicily, Ukraine

Four key elections underway today in Ukraine, Italy, Lithuania and Brazil

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It’s a quadruple-threat Sunday for world elections!

Ukraine: parliamentary elections. In Ukraine, voters will go to the polls for legislative elections to select 450 members of the unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.  The elections will be a key test for Ukraine’s fledgling democratic institutions eight years after the ‘Orange Revolution.’  Pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, whose support is based in the eastern half of the country, is hoping to win an outright majority in a campaign that has been far from free and fair.  Two center-right groups are vying for the opposition vote — a bloc led by former prime minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been imprisoned on politically-motivated charges and a new anti-corruption group led by heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klychko.  Unlike in the previous 2007 parliamentary elections (which were fully by proportional representation), today’s elections will be determined one-half by proportional representation and one-half through direct single-member districts.  That means the anti-Yanukovych vote could splinter, allowing the government to consolidate its control over Ukraine.  The election result will likely determine whether the former Soviet republic of 45 million people will continue its turn toward Europe as a potential European Union member.

Lithuania: parliamentary runoff. Nearby, in another former Soviet republic of just over three million people — Lithuania, voters return to the polls for a runoff after a vote two weeks ago that saw the triumph of two leftist parties: the populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, won 19.96% and the more center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) won 18.45%.  The governing Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats)  of prime minister Andrius Kubilius won just 14.93%, a defeat for Kubilius after a difficult campaign that reflected the realities of four years of grinding austerity and difficult economic conditions.  Half (70) of the seats in Lithuania’s unicameral parliament, the Seimas, were determined by the October 14 vote, while 71 more seats are determined in single-member districts, and many of those will be determined in today’s runoff vote. It’s virtually certain that the Social Democrats and Labour will form the next government, likely under the leader of the Social Democrats and former finance minister, Algirdas Butkevičius rather than the corruption-plagued Uspaskich, although either the Social Democrats or Labour may ultimately wind up with more seats after today’s vote.

São Paulo: mayoral runoff. In Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, home to nearly 11 million people, voters will choose a mayor in a contest that will have implications for Brazil’s national politics.  Voters will choose between the top two candidates from the Oct. 14 vote: Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and a former education minister in Lula’s administration; and José Serra, the candidate of the center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who lost the Brazilian presidency to Lula in 2002 and, more narrowly, in 2010 to Rousseff.  Serra, himself a former mayor of São Paulo from 2004 to 2006, when he won election as the governor of São Paulo state, despite a pledge to serve his entire term as mayor,  Serra led the vote two weeks ago with 30.75% to 28.99% for Haddad.  Serra and Haddad edged out Celso Russomanno, a famous television consumer advocate in the 1990s, with support from the evangelist Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, who had been the frontrunner throughout the campaign, who finished with just 21.6o%.  Polls show Haddad with a double-digit lead over Serra, however, which could effectively end Serra’s hopes for a third run at the presidency.

Sicily: regional parliamentary elections.  Finally, in the southern Italian region of Sicily, voters will select the 90 members of Sicily’s unicameral regional parliament.  Three parties are vying for the largest share of the vote, and 80 seats are awarded by proportional representation: a center-right coalition led by European parliament member Nello Musumeci and backed by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (who was convicted Friday for tax fraud) and his Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom); a center-left coalition led by Rosario Crocetta (pictured above, top), the openly gay mafia-fighting former mayor of Gela (Sicily’s sixth-largest city); and the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo, who kicked off his party’s Sicily campaign by swimming across the Strait of Messina.  Radical leftists and a conservative Sicilianist/autonomist coalition are also expected to win significant support. The election is a significant test in advance of national elections expected to come in April 2013 following the technocratic government of prime minister Mario Monti, who has pledged not to run in his own right.

Brazil

Paes wins reelection in Rio in advance of 2016 Olympics; Serra leads mayoral race in São Paulo

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Boris Johnson, move over. Eduardo Paes (pictured above, top) was reelected as mayor today of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-most populous — but most evocative — city during municipal elections that saw José Serra (pictured above, bottom), a perennial figure of the Brazilian right, lead the race for mayor of São Paulo.

Paes easily won reelection with 64.60% of the vote, representing a wide coalition that includes not only his own party, the wide Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), but also the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.  He faced an energetic opponent in Marcelo Freixo of the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL, the Socialism and Freedom Party), a state assemblyman in the state of Rio de Janeiro and a human rights activist, who received around 28.15% of the vote after waging a savvy campaign through aggressive use of social networks like Twitter and won the support of much of Brazil’s cultural elite — and his increasing support in the days leading up to today’s election, coupled with his criticism of the Olympic development as an unequal move benefitting corporations more than society, had given the International Olympic Committee some cause for alarm.  Freixo had challenged the evictions and clearings that have marked the push to prepare Rio for not just 2016, but also the 2014 World Cup.

Paes, who has served as Rio’s mayor since 2008, however, was able to brag that he brought the 2016 Olympic Summer Games to the city — and can take credit for the widely acknowledged improvements in the city, especially as regards the ongoing ‘pacification’ of the once-notorious favela slums that dot the hillsides above the richer parts of Rio below — the ‘pacification’ campaign involves both the implementation of police control over a favela and wresting control, often by force, of each slum from drug gangs and criminal forces, but also the institution of better schools and other municipal services designed to keep the favelas firmly within the city’s control.  In addition, Paes is working to build four new superhighways in advance of 2016, has improved bus transit and has spearheaded an overhaul of the Porto Maravilha that served as the city’s main port during the Portuguese colonial era.

Despite the surprisingly widespread availability of Twitter in favelas, Paes’s coalition of 16 parties gave him access to 16 minutes of free daily public broadcast time during the campaign, giving him an advantage over Freixo’s 1 minute and 22 seconds, in addition to the other perks of incumbency and the benefits of having been associated with nabbing South America’s first Olympic Games.

The win will be a mild victory for the Workers’ Party as well — it is expected that Rousseff will likely run for reelection, although Lula will also be eligible to run (presidents are limited to just two consecutive terms, but are not limited as to two terms for life).  The Workers’ Party has been subdued by the constant drip of trial proceedings over a political corruption scandal from the early 2000s.

The Workers’ Party will be even more thrilled with the mayoral election in Brazil’s most populous city, São Paulo, where its candidate Fernando Haddad, a former federal minister of education, won 28.99% of the vote, narrowly trailing Serra, the candidate of the centrist Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who won 30.75%.  Celso Russomanno, a famous television consumer advocate in the 1990s and candidate of the small Partido Republicano Brasileiro (PRB, Brazilian Republican Party), had led polls for most of the race and was considered the frontrunner, but finished a disappointing third with just 21.60%.

Russomanno, with backing from the evangelist Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, had shown success throughout the campaign in winning support in the traditional strongholds of the Workers’ Party.  Haddad, a former minister of education in Lula’s administration, was seen as a weak candidate imposed as the party’s standard-bearer by Lula himself.

 Haddad and Serra will now advance to a runoff vote to determine who will become São Paulo’s mayor, and a win for Haddad would be a huge triumph for the Workers’ Party.

Serra, who lost the Brazilian presidential election by a wide margin in 2002 to Lula and by a narrower margin in 2010 to Rousseff, served as minister of planning and minister of health during the administration of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who preceded Lula as president from 1994 to 2002.  More recently, Serra was elected as mayor of São Paulo for the first time in 2004, although he left the post early to contest the governorship of São Paulo state in 2006, which he subsequently won.  Serra had broken a pledge he made in the 2004 campaign to remain mayor through his whole term, however.

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