Tag Archives: corruption

India

Meet Arvind Kejriwal, the rising anti-corruption star of Indian politics

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Arvind Kejriwal

Yesterday, the new government of Delhi’s national capital territory launched a new anti-graft hotline that received nearly 4,000 calls on its first day.India Flag Icon

In what was supposed to be the year of Narendra Modi’s easy rise to India’s premiership, it’s another brash new leader who’s making headlines instead — and not just in India, but worldwide.

It’s Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, आम आदमी की पार्टी), literally the ‘Common Man’ Party, which emerged as the key player in Delhi’s December regional elections as  an alternative to Modi’s conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) and the governing center-left Indian National Congress (Congress, भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) of Sonia Gandhi, the party’s leader; Rahul Gandhi, her son; and outgoing prime minister Manmohan Singh. 

Kejriwal, at age 45 one of India’s youngest chief ministers, took office on December 28, leading a minority government that, somewhat ironically, enjoys the outside support of the INC, which controlled Delhi’s government between 1998 and last December’s elections.  Congress, which was running for a fourth consecutive term in power under chief minister Sheila Dikshit, was decimated — it not only lost its majority, but now holds just eight seats, after suffering from widespread corruption allegations.  Kejriwal actually ran in Dikshit’s New Delhi constituency and defeated her by a margin of 53.5% to 22.2% (state BJP leader Vijender Gupta received just 21.7%).

Though the BJP actually won the greatest number of seats (31 to the AAP’s 28), negotiations between the AAP and the BJP failed, and Kejriwal took up Congress’s somewhat surprising offer to back his government, thereby avoiding a new round of elections.  Unlike other regional parties in India, the AAP managed to take power on a broad coalition of supporters, not on the basis of representing certain religious or class-based constituencies — it attracted Muslims and Hindus, rich and poor, Dalit and non-Dalit, and especially India’s educated younger generation.

Kejriwal, a mechanical engineer by training and a former Indian Revenue Service official, started an NGO in 1999 called Parivartan, designed to provide tax assistance and other help to Delhi citizens.  But it was as an anti-corruption official that Kejriwal first caught fire in the national spotlight, and under the mentorship of Anna Hazare, worked to demand what would eventually become the Right to Information Act (RTI) in 2005, which required government bodies to reply to citizen requests for information within 30 days or face penalties, and which relaxes many previous exemptions from disclosure under the Official Secrets Act and other legislation.  RTI replaced the much weaker, toothless and exemption-ridden 2002 Freedom of Information Act.  

In 2011, Anna and Kejriwal succeeded in pushing the government to start the process for drafting a Jan Lokpal bill, an anti-corruption law that would create the Jan Lokpal, an independent citizen’s ombudsman commission that would have the ability to investigate corruption.  Though India’s parliament pushed through a Lokpal Bill in December 2013, it’s much weaker than the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill — for example, it doesn’t protect whistleblowers, it doesn’t provide for any real punitive actions or the ability to prosecute corrupt bureaucrats, and it doesn’t provide investigative independence to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation.  Kejriwal took the final leap into elective politics when he founded the AAP in November 2012 with the intention of contesting Delhi’s local elections.

Having now swept to power in Delhi (literally on the image of a broom ‘sweeping’ corruption away), Kejriwal wasted no time in announcing a 50% cut in power rates and free water to Delhi residents within hours of taking power.  He’s already working to implement the AAP’s anti-corruption agenda with the anti-graft hotline, and he’s pledged to introduce a Jan Lokpal bill specifically for Delhi soon.AAP broom

There’s good reason for Kejriwal to be in a hurry — with the AAP’s momentum spreading from Delhi to other parts of India, it could be in a position to make a splash in national politics with the upcoming elections for the Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of India’s parliament, which are due before May 31.  That gives Kejriwal some time to lay the foundation for what the AAP might be able to accomplish on a grander scale, a down payment on what a national anti-corruption party could enact.

After a decade of rule under Singh’s Congress-led governments, Indian voters are weary with Congress .  Its prime minister-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi seems unexciting and disinterested.  Indians are displeased with Congress’s reform record and the state of India’s precarious economy.  Meanwhile, the AAP has highlighted a growing disenchantment over bureaucratic corruption.

Though Modi, the decade-long chief minister of Gujarat state, promises to lead a BJP government that will bring Gujarat’s high economic growth rates to the entire country, there are doubts both about the extent to which Modi’s ‘Gujarati model’ is responsible for his state’s growth and how (and whether) such a ‘Gujarati model’ could even be translated to a much more diverse national economy.  Moreover, the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat continue to blemish Modi’s record.  Though he recently spoke out for the first time disclaiming any role in the violence, the riots, which resulted in the death of over 1,000 Muslims, will continue to haunt Modi’s campaign and the notion that he can be a trustworthy prime minister for India’s religious minorities.

So what damage might Kejriwal inflict on the status quo? Plenty.  Continue reading Meet Arvind Kejriwal, the rising anti-corruption star of Indian politics →

China

With the end of Bo Xilai’s trial, is Xi Jinping co-opting the ‘Chongqing model’?

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boxilai

It’s been perhaps the most sensational rise and fall of a top Chinese official in a generation, but the corruption trial against former Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai (薄熙来) wrapped up this week with plenty of surprises, China Flag Iconeven if his guilty verdict for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, is all but assured.

On the final day of what has been a sensation hearing by Chinese standards, Bo accused a top aide of becoming romantically involved with his wife, capping five days of what has been a spirited defense by one of China’s most charismatic 21st century party leaders.  Far from showing remorse, Bo (pictured above) has vigorously denied the charges and defended his actions:

He said he never cared for money. “The long johns that I’m wearing now were bought by my mother in the 1960s,” Bo said, suggesting he did not approve of the lifestyle Gu had created for their son, Bo Guagua.  “I have been working like a machine. I really don’t have time to care about air tickets, hotel expenses and travel expenses,” Bo said. He added: “The country did not pick me because I am a good accountant.”

That Bo has been allowed to mount such a public (and political) defense is not surprising, given his status as one of the second-generation ‘princelings’ of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党).  Even if Bo goes to prison for a decade or longer, the trial will have helped to cement his image as the leader of a ‘New Left’ movement within Chinese politics and society.

But what does that mean for the ‘Chongqing model’ that Bo championed as party secretary in Chongqing from 2007 to 2012?

The ‘Chongqing model’ is a vaguely neo-Maoist approach to governing China that involves a redoubling of state power and control, strengthening state-owned enterprises and aggressively attacking organized crime, while bringing back some truly unique vestiges of the era of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛泽东), such as encouraging the singing of revolutionary-era songs.  It’s often contrasted against the ‘Guangdong model’ — a leadership style that encourages private development to blossom instead of through state-sponsored economic policy and at least a passing respect for the rule of law and other institutional reforms.

You can place the two models on the familiar left-right ideological axis — the Chongqing model prioritizes equitable distribution among all classes, the Guangdong model prioritizes the highest economic growth possible.  In reality, however, the line between the two models is blurrier.  Though the ‘Guangdong model’ is associated with the relatively liberal former Guangdong party chair Wang Yang (汪洋), now a vice premier (though not a full member of the Politburo Standing Committee) in Xi’s government, it was Wang who served for two years as Chongqing party chair as Bo’s direct predecessor.  Realistically, the differences among China’s political elite remain smaller than their shared values.  Just as there’s little chance that China will return to the days of Mao-era socialist state planning, there’s also little evidence that economic liberalization and reform has led (or will lead in the future) to greater political freedom.

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Xi Jinping (习近平), who took power as Chinese president earlier this year after assuming leadership last November as the general secretary of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, is also lurching to the left in the first year of what is expected to be his ten-year stewardship of the People’s Republic of China: Continue reading With the end of Bo Xilai’s trial, is Xi Jinping co-opting the ‘Chongqing model’? →

Pakistan

Can Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar fix Pakistan’s sclerotic economy?

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dar

Last week, even before all of the votes had been counted, when it was clear that Nawaz Sharif would be Pakistan’s next prime minister, he named his designee for finance minister — Ishaq Dar (pictured above).Pakistan Flag Icon

Dar served as Sharif’s finance minister from 1998 until Sharif’s overthrow by army chief of staff Pervez Musharraf, and he spent much of his previous time as finance minister negotiating a loan package from the International Monetary Fund and dealing with the repercussions of economic sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. president Bill Clinton on both India and Pakistan in retaliation for developing their nuclear arms programs.

Currently a member of Pakistan’s senate, Dar briefly joined a unity government as finance minister in 2008, though Dar and other Sharif allies quickly resigned over a constitutional dispute over Pakistan’s judiciary.  The key point is that even across political boundaries, Dar is recognized as one of the most capable economics officials in Pakistan.

It was enough to send the Karachi Stock Exchange to a new high, and the KSE has continued to climb in subsequent days, marking a steady rally from around 13,360 last June to nearly 21,460 today.  Investors are generally happy with the election result for three reasons:

  1. First, it marks a change from the incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎), a party that has essentially drifted aimlessly in government for much of the past five years mired in fights with Pakistan’s supreme court and corruption scandals that affect Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari in lieu of a concerted effort to improve Pakistan’s economy.
  2. Second, the election results will allow for a strong government dominated by Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) instead of a weak and unstable coalition government.
  3. Finally, Sharif’s party is viewed as pro-business and Sharif himself, more than any other party leader during the campaign, emphasized that fixing the economy would be his top priority.  Sharif, who served as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1997 to 1999, is already well-known for his attempts to reform Pakistan’s economy in his first term.

Sharif will need as much goodwill as he can, because the grim reality is that Pakistan is in trouble — and more than just its crumbling train infrastructure (though if you haven’t read it, Declan Walsh’s tour de force in The New York Times last weekend is a must-read journey by train through Pakistan and its economic woes).  The past four years have marked sluggish GDP growth — between 3.0% and 3.7% — that’s hardly consistent with an expanding developing economy.  In contrast, Pakistani officials estimate that the economy needs more like sustained 7% growth in order to deliver the kind of rise in living standards or a reduction in poverty or unemployment that could transform Pakistan into a higher-income nation.  Already this year, Pakistan’s growth forecast has been cut from 4.2% to 3.5%.

The official unemployment rate is around 6%, but it’s clearly a much bigger problem, especially among youth — Pakistan’s median age is about 21 years old.  That makes its population younger than the United States (median age of 37), the People’s Republic of China (35) or even Egypt (24), where restive youth propelled the 2011 demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

Although Pakistan’s poverty rates are lower than those in India and Bangladesh, they’re nothing to brag about — as of 2008, according to the World Bank, about 21% of Pakistan’s 176 million people lived on less than $1.25 per day, and fully 60% lived on less than $2 per day.

Though it has dropped considerably from its double-digit levels of the past few years (see below), inflation remains in excess of 5%, thereby wiping out much of the gains of the country’s anemic growth:

pakistan-inflation-cpi

Pakistan is undeniably the ‘sick man’ of south Asia.  India, even facing its own slump, has long since outpaced Pakistan over the past 20 years, and increasingly over the past decade, Bangladesh has consistently notched higher growth:

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To make matters worse, Pakistan has a growing fiscal problem — although its public debt is lower than it used to be, it’s still over 60% of GDP, and a number of problems have led to debt-financed budgets in the past, including a 6.6% deficit in 2012.

That sets up a classic austerity-vs-growth conundrum for the Sharif government.

On the one hand, the familiar austerity hawks will argue that Sharif should focus on a reform program to lower Pakistan’s unsustainable deficits as a top priority.  If, as expected, Sharif obtains a deal with the IMF for up to $5 million in additional financing to prevent a debt crisis later in 2013, the IMF could force Pakistan into a more aggressive debt reduction program than Sharif might otherwise prefer.

On the other hand, given the number of problems Pakistan faces, growth advocates will argue that Pakistan should focus on more pressing priorities and save budget-cutting for later.  After all, with rolling blackouts plaguing the country, no one will invest in Pakistan regardless of the size of its debt.  It’s also important to remember that Pakistan is not Europe — it’s an emerging economy with a young and growing population that could easily grow its way out of its debt problems in a way that seems impossible for a country like Italy or Greece.

So how exactly will Sharif and Dar attempt to fix Pakistan’s economy?  Here are eight policies that Sharif’s government is either likely to implement — or should be implementing:  Continue reading Can Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar fix Pakistan’s sclerotic economy? →

Bangladesh

Matthew Yglesias’s callous 360-word post is wrong about Bangladesh

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savar

On a New York spring day on March 25, a long, long time ago (last decade), constitutional law scholar Noah Feldman was teaching administrative law to a gang of truculent law students when he stopped class in order to take us on a brief walk downstairs from the classroom to the Brown Building, which like everything else in downtown Manhattan, is now part of John Sexton’s growing New York University empire.bangladesh flag icon

The reason was the anniversary of what happened there in 1911 — a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history, which resulted in the deaths of at least 146 workers, many of them young, female and immigrant.  The death rate was tragically higher because the factory managers locked access to the stairwells and other exits, so as to prohibit theft.  The disaster, which came just five years after the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, detailing the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago slaughterhouses, became a major catalyst for a more progressive labor laws, greater employee rights and better workplace conditions.  Frances Perkins, who would become perhaps the most well-known U.S. secretary of labor in the 1930s, spearheaded the subsequent investigation into the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster.

I was heartened to learn that, on the day of the fire, NYU law students had helped to pull some of the workers there to safety.

I mention this because of the uncanny similarities to yesterday’s disaster at a garment factory in the nine-story Rana Plaza building in Dhaka that collapsed — like Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 102 years ago in New York City, the building was crowded, the fire doors and other exits were locked, and it’s fast becoming the worst garment industry disaster in Bangladeshi history.

Employees had the unenviable choice of jumping to their deaths or being crushed to death, much like the Triangle Shirtwaist workers who were forced to jump or to burn.

But I can’t help but note that Matthew Yglesias — a commentator that I usually find incredibly thoughtful, especially on all matters economic — wrote one of the lazier pieces of journalism I’ve read yesterday with a 360-word post in Slate on why it’s totes cool that Bangladesh can have collapsing buildings.  As it turns out, his piece featured barely one word for each dead Bangladeshi worker — now sadly, the death toll is already 243:

Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it’s entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States….

Bangladesh is a lot poorer than the United States, and there are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans.  That’s true whether you’re talking about an individual calculus or a collective calculus.  Safety rules that are appropriate for the United States would be unnecessarily immiserating in much poorer Bangladesh.  Rules that are appropriate in Bangladesh would be far too flimsy for the richer and more risk-averse United States.  Split the difference and you’ll get rules that are appropriate for nobody.  The current system of letting different countries have different rules is working fine.  American jobs have gotten much safer over the past 20 years, and Bangladesh has gotten a lot richer.

Yglesias is really channeling 18th century economist David Ricardo here, whose concept of comparative advantage still shapes much of international economics today.  The idea, for anyone who’s not taken an introductory economics course, is that countries should produce what they are most efficient as producing, produce a lot of it, and trade with other countries for the items that the country could produce less efficiently.  So Bangladesh should specialize in the things that it’s best at producing for the lowest cost — and it certainly seems like exporting clothing is one of those things, given that no country, excepting China, exports more clothing to the world.

Yglesias’s point is that it’s perfectly fine for Bangladeshis to specialize in cheap clothing because they’ll be able to produce it at less cost than, say, U.S. or German or Singaporean workers.  In that regard, he’s really arguing that Bangladesh’s comparative advantage is in cheap labor, and that’s of course a well-worn path for relatively poorer countries to become relatively richer countries — that was true in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, the United States in the 19th century, South Korea in the late 20th century.  Government regulation — whether that’s environmental regulation in China or workplace regulation in Bangladesh — adds additional costs to industry, it’s true, and that reduces the comparative advantage Bangladesh has in cheap labor.  That’s why Yglesias is arguing that it makes sense for Bangladesh to have lower workplace safety standards.

But Yglesias really doesn’t get the fundamental facts right — it appears that if the factory workers had listened to local regulators, who spotted the cracks in the building Tuesday, they would have never allowed their workers back into the factory in the first place, which has more to do with a culture of impunity and shady legal practices, not comparative advantage:

Continue reading Matthew Yglesias’s callous 360-word post is wrong about Bangladesh →

Venezuela

The policy case for Maduro in Venezuela

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madurobus

In my earlier companion piece today, I discussed the policy case for electing Henrique Capriles as the next president of Venezuela in an attempt (however vain) to separate the emotional divide in Venezuela from the policy rationales that underline each candidacy.Venezuela Flag Icon

Separating the policy from the personal is even more difficult in the case of Nicolás Maduro, however, whose campaign at every turn has been one massive embrace of Chávez, not only as a predecessor, but as nearly a deity in his own right.  So far, the Maduro campaign begins and ends with ‘Chávez,’ and there’s no guarantee that once elected, Maduro would wield a sufficient personal mandate even to take sufficient control of Chávez’s Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela).

There’s frustratingly little substance as to what Maduro (pictured above) would do with a six-year presidency, let alone whether he could come to dominate a governing regime with a handful of key powerbrokers, such as energy minister Rafael Ramírez, finance minister Jorge Giordani, and national assembly president Diosdado Cabello, none of whom will easily step aside from their relative and significant fiefdoms in government.

But, as I asked with respect to Capriles earlier today, what policy arguments should motivate a moderate voter who enthusiastically supported Chávez in 1998 but who’s become increasingly disenchanted about the reality of Venezuelan governance and who may be flirting with supporting Capriles — is there a rational case for supporting Maduro over Capriles?  Continue reading The policy case for Maduro in Venezuela →

Venezuela

The policy case for Capriles in Venezuela

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caprilesboat

Tuesday kicks off the official start of the campaign in Venezuela for the presidential election on April 14.Venezuela Flag Icon

It’s a little artificial, given that the campaign really began unofficially the day that Hugo Chávez died and certainly both the pro-chavismo and opposition forces have been preparing for such a campaign since Chávez left for his final, unsuccessful round of treatment in Cuba.

Not surprisingly, much of the pre-campaign has been waged on visceral and emotional lines — the pro-/anti- chavismo debate in Venezuela has become inextricably so linked to personalities and identity politics that it’s often hard to step back and articulate the policy rationale for each candidate.  Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate, has even stepped up his attacks against acting president Nicolás Maduro, in a much more insistent (even populist) tone than he ever took in his 2012 presidential campaign against Chávez.

That seems likely to intensify over the next 13 days.

But to the extent it’s possible to put aside the emotional in favor of policy, what policy arguments should sway, say, the moderate voter who enthusiastically supported Chávez in 1998 and well into the last decade but who has doubts about the performance of the government in recent years to make the jump to support Capriles (pictured above) and the broad Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD)?

Continue reading The policy case for Capriles in Venezuela →

Kenya

Live-blogging: the final Kenyan presidential debate

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While we monitor Italian election results, Kenya is hosting its second and final presidential debate in advance of the March 4 general election. kenya

The debate, which will feature all eight candidates (despite a last-minute threat by Uhuru Kenyatta not to join the debate), is set to focus on land policy, the economy and foreign policy.

Kenyatta and his chief rival, prime minister Raila Odinga, currently lead polls, with the other six candidates far behind.  Read my background on the Kenyan election here.

UPDATE: The debate is now over, and it was a fascinating three hours of debate.  The tenacity of the moderators, especially by Uduak Amimo in the first half of the debate, was particularly noteworthy, especially as she went down the row of candidates, challenging each one specifically on allegations of personal corruption and scandal in their own careers.  I’ve never quite seen anything like it, certainly not in a U.S. presidential debate.

That Kenya has hosted now, not one, but two, lengthy and robust presidential debates is a tribute to how far Kenyan democracy has come from the days of Daniel arap Moi.  Indeed, every sign indicates that all of Kenya’s political leaders have a very keen and active interest in avoiding the kind of ethnic-based political violence that followed the 2007 presidential election. If Kenya manages to make it through the election to a peaceful transfer of power, it will certainly be quite an improvement for not just Kenya, but for east Africa regionally.

It’s also a tribute to the vitality of Kenyan democracy that Kenyans were able to force Kenyatta to join this second debate after he claimed he would not participate late last week.  Although Kenyatta took plenty of heat during this debate over how much land he and his family own, there were no mentions, unlike in the first debate, of the International Criminal Court case against Kenyatta.

Ultimately, Kenyatta was viewed as having won the first debate against Odinga, and I think that he won today’s debate as well, so he was well served to show up after all, and I can understand why he’s done such a good job catching up with Odinga in the polls.

He’s a much more forceful debater and even when he’s on defense, his clarity and forceful manner stand quite in contrast to Odinga’s more defensive style.  Odinga, for whatever reason, refused on several occasions to go on the offensive against Kenyatta, most notably by excusing his land ownership by arguing Kenyatta is merely an ‘inheritor’ of the ‘original sins’ of land inequality begat at Kenya’s independence.

Speaking of land, the lengthy segment on land reform demonstrated how difficult the issue is and how difficult adjudicating land disputes will be for Kenya’s next president, even as the work of the independent National Land Commission promulgated in 2012, will continue.  Although the Commission gave the candidates an easy option to remain vague about land reform, it’s clear that no domestic issue will be more important in the next five years.

The race remains largely an Odinga-Kenyetta showdown, and polls show the race essentially tied between the two, with a runoff increasingly likely.

Among the other candidates, however, notably Mohammed Abduba Dida, Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth and James Ole Kiyiapi, it’s clear there’s a second tier of presidential aspirants who are well-informed and thoughtful on the issues of the day, who are willing to challenge both Odinga and Kenyatta, and who may well serve ably in the future in the governments of either an Odinga or Kenyatta presidency.

Continue reading Live-blogging: the final Kenyan presidential debate →

Italy, Sicily

Crocetta to become Sicily’s first openly-gay, first leftist president

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I wasn’t entirely sure he could pull it off, but the unlikely Rosario Crocetta will become Sicily’s first openly-gay regional president and likely the first leftist to have won a clear mandate in one of Italy’s most culturally and politically conservative regions.sicily flag

According to preliminary results, the center-left coalition backing Crocetta has won 30.48% and 39 seats in Sicily’s 90-member regional parliament, giving it a plurality of seats, but something short of an absolute majority.

Crocetta’s victory in Sicily makes the former Gela mayor Italy’s second openly gay regional president — he joins leftist Nichi Vendola, the president of Puglia (also in southern Italy).  This is a bit of a shocker given Sicily’s incredibly conservative bent, and the region has been consistently governed by center-right politicians and centrists alike, but never by a former Communist Party member.

Through the early 2000s, Crocetta was a member of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation Party).  Although many PRC members joined moderate social democrats and centrists to form what’s now Italy’s largest center-left political party, the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), in 2007, Crocetta certainly comes from the more radical leftist tradition.  Interestingly enough, so does Vendola, who was elected as Puglia’s regional president in 2005 from the PRC and subsequently reelected.  Vendola, who has future national political hopes, and who seems likely to play a  role in Italy’s upcoming national elections in early 2013, has formed his own leftist party — Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL, Left Ecology Freedom).

Not only is Crocetta’s victory a watershed moment for Italy’s left, it’s a victory for Sicily’s courageous anti-mafia forces.  In a region where politics and organized crime are often two sides of the same coin, Crocetta was an anti-mafia crusader as the former mayor of Gela, Sicily’s sixth-largest city, working to convince local businesses not to pay protection money to the Sicilian mafia.  In fact, he was such a stridently anti-mafia mayor that he’s been the subject of several assassination plots and has been living outside of Gela since 2009.

Meanwhile, the center-right coalition led by European Parliament member Nello Musumeci has won just 25.73% and 21 seats.

The surprisingly strong third-place winner was the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement), led nationally by the comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo — who swam across the Strait of Messina from the Italian peninsula to Sicily to kick off the party’s regional campaign.  Giancarlo Cancelleri, the presidential candidate backed by the Five Star Movement, won 18.18% and the party won 15 seats.

A center-right ‘Sicilianist’ coalition, essentially the coalition to which outgoing president Rafaelle Lombardo belongs, under the candidacy of Gianfranco Micciché won just 15.50% and 15 seats.  Lombardo resigned in July in the wake of charges of corruption and complicity with the Sicilian mafia, forcing early elections.

Although the Sicilian autonomist and center-right parties have governed together before, they won’t together command a majority of seats in Sicily’s regional parliament, meaning that the center-left will govern with a minority, likely with the outside support of Five Star Movement legislators, or even from the Sicilianist autonomists.  Continue reading Crocetta to become Sicily’s first openly-gay, first leftist president →

Italy, Sicily

Today’s Sicilian elections showcase potential party strength before 2013 Italian election

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Today, one of Italy’s most iconic regions — Sicily — goes to the polls to elect the 90 members of its regional legislature and, indirectly, a new regional president.

For all the beauty of its landscape, the majesty of its architecture and the divinity of its food and wine, Sicily, the home of the well known Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian organized crime group that has become synonymous with the word mafia, is not the world’s model showcase for good governance.

Sunday’s elections come six month early after the resignation on July 31 of regional president Raffaele Lombardo, who was elected overwhelmingly in 2008, but stepped down under a cloud of corruption — depressingly familiar charges of complicity with the Sicilian mafia.  The election also comes as a bit of a dress rehearsal for Italy’s expected upcoming general election (along with early elections expected soon in Lombardy as well) — just a couple days after former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conviction in a Milan court for tax fraud.

Rosario Crocetta (pictured above, top), the leading leftist candidate for president and the mafia-fighting former mayor of Gela (Sicily’s sixth-largest city) would be Sicily’s first openly-gay regional president and has campaign marks the best chance of the center-left in a generation to govern Sicily.  But polling nearly as well as the broad center-right and the center-left is the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo — he made a splash by swimming across the Strait of Messina from the Italian peninsula to Sicily at the beginning of the campaign (pictured above, bottom).

In one way or another, each of the five main parties competing in today’s election in Sicily will be able to pull lessons from the result in advance of national elections that, although just six months away, remain incredibly fluid.

Italy’s technocratic prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed in November 2011 to push through budget, tax and labor reforms in the midst of an Italian sovereign debt crisis, remains popular, but has said he won’t run in his own right for election (although could remain available to head a future technocratic government).

Berlusconi had pledged as recently as last Wednesday that he would not run for prime minister as the leader of his own center-right Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom), though the unpredictable former prime minister has already said he plans on staying in politics to some degree.  Yesterday, in a Nixonesque, hourlong rant, the enraged, newly-convicted Berlusconi hinted he might even try to bring down Monti’s government to bring forward a snap election even sooner, lashing out at Monti, German chancellor Angela Merkel, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and a ‘judge-ocracy’ that he says is ruling Italy.  With plenty of money and control over Italy’s private media, he’ll be able to influence politics as long as he wants.  Currently, the PdL secretary is Angelino Alfano, a 41-year-old former justice minister who is from Sicily and rising star who’s thought to be the leading contender to lead the PdL into the next general election.

Meanwhile, the center-left Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party) expects to choose its candidate for prime minister in November.

With 5 million people, Sicily features just around 8.5% of Italy’s total population.  Despite a national GDP per capita of around $31,000, Sicily’s is something like $19,000, vying for Italy’s poorest region with a handful of other southern provinces — it’s nearly half the GDP per capita of the richest province, Lombardy (around $39,000).

In the prior regional elections in 2008, Lombardo led a center-right coalition that included the PdL, the Unione di Centro (UdC, Union of the Center), remains of what used to be the once-formidable Christian Democratic party and his own regionalist Movimento per le Autonomie (MpA, Movement for Autonomies) and together won 65.4% of the vote and 61 of the 90 seats in Sicily’s regional parliament.  A PD-led leftist coalition, headed by Anna Finocchiaro, won just 29 seats at 30.4% of the vote.  The vast majority of the seats (80) will be chosen by proportional representation, with a 5% threshold for winning seats; an additional 10 members are elected with a block-voting system.

In today’s regional elections, though, there are five coalitions/parties, each fielding its own candidate for regional president — polls are hard to come by, but it’s a bit of a free-for-all.

Near the top of the polls is the PdL coalition, headed by Sebastiano ‘Nello’ Musumeci.  Musumeci, a member of the European Parliament, is himself a member of a small autonomist right-wing party in Sicily, Alleanza Siciliana (Sicilian Alliance), having his roots in the now-defunct National Alliance, a stridently right-wing party which had neofascist roots.  Although he’s not actually a member of the PdL, a broad win for Musumeci would bolster the PdL nonetheless and, in particular, boost Alfano’s chances of leading the PdL into the next elections — despite record-low polling for the PdL nationally, Alfano would be attempting to become Italy’s first Sicilian prime minister since Mario Scelba led the Italian government from 1954 to 1955.

Also at the top of the tolls is Crocetta’s PD-led coalition (also supported by the UdC).  Crocetta’s election would be historic in at least two ways.   Continue reading Today’s Sicilian elections showcase potential party strength before 2013 Italian election →

Pakistan

Khan ‘peace rally’ near Waziristan border has implications for politics in Pakistan and beyond

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Imran Khan, the upstart cricket star-turned-politician, led a ‘peace march’ over the weekend, right up to the Waziristan border, in protest of the U.S.-initiated drone attacks designed to target terrorist forces.

Although the march was turned back at the Waziristan border — the Pakistani government literally blocked the road after warning Khan that it could not guarantee the safety of Khan and his entourage — it’s a minor watershed moment for Khan and Pakistani politics, and it marks one of the most high-profile criticisms of what has become an increasingly important element of U.S. ‘Af-Pak’ policy:

The much-publicized rally, which was originally meant to culminate in North Waziristan, ultimately did so in Tank. Amid rousing sloganeering and cheering, Imran Khan delivered his victory speech, thanked his supporters (and the police) and headed back. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief that no untoward incident took place. It’s very rare in Pakistan for a crowd of thousands to have a face-off with law enforcers and avoid a clash. A good precedent was set.

Khan has attacked the drone strikes as a human rights violation and illegal under international law.

Indeed, critics have alleged that the drone program has killed more civilians than intended terrorist targets — and a Stanford/NYU report released in September appears to corroborate that concern.  The U.S. military and the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama, however, claim that the unmanned flights deliver ‘surgical’ strikes against strategic pro-Taliban targets that are destabilizing both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the U.S. marked the 12th anniversary of its military protest last week — targets that the Pakistani military forces are unwilling or unable to control.

First and foremost, the march has boosted Khan’s exposure even further.  Khan is hoping to make gains in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections expected in February of next year.

Khan, who entered politics in the 1990s, leads the secular, liberal Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک), which is currently polling a strong second place nationally, with 24% against 28% for the conservative, rural-based Pakistan Muslim League (N) (اکستان مسلم لیگ ن,  or the PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.  Just 14% support the governing center-left, urban-based Pakistan People’s Party (اکستان پیپلز پارٹی, or the PPP).

President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and current prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf belong to the PPP.  The PPP has been in power since elections in 2008 following the military regime of Pervez Musharraf,  but has recently been bogged down by ever-present corruption accusations, economic malaise and a high-profile constitutional fight over the power of the prime minister.  Continue reading Khan ‘peace rally’ near Waziristan border has implications for politics in Pakistan and beyond →

India

Could Coalgate finally bring down Manmohan Singh’s government in India?

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In the span of 10 days, India has seen a government report on government abuse in awarding coal contracts morph into perhaps the most ferocious scandal of Manmohan Singh’s government.

The scandal — known as ‘Coalgate’ — stems from an August 17 report from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India that accuses the  governing Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) of handing out coal mining contracts to companies without going through the proper competitive bidding process, leading to inflated prices for the ultimate recipients.  The accusation comes.

Singh spoke about the scandal for the first time on Monday in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, challenging the house to debate the issue in full and disputing the corruption accusations.  In turn, Singh was met with jeers and shouts of, “Quit prime minister!”

His remarks appear to have emboldened the opposition — the conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी).  BJP leader Sushma Swaraj responded to Singh by accusing Congress of swapping coal mining contracts for bribes:

“Mota maal mila hai Congress ko” (Congress got big bucks),” Swaraj said….

“Congress has got a fat sum from coal block allocation, that is why this delay (in amending the laws) was caused. My charge is that huge revenue was generated but it did not go to the government and went to the Congress party,” Swaraj said.

Her “mota maal” charge was confirmation that the party, unfazed by government’s criticism for holding up Parliament or lack of support from non-Congress players, is in no mood to step down from its “maximalist” demand for the PM’s resignation.

In the past week and a half, Coalgate has monopolized Indian politics and all but ensured that the Indian parliament’s monsoon session* will be held up as a result of the scandal.  Congress and its allies control the Indian parliament with 262 out of 543 seats so, short of a formal vote of no confidence, Singh and Congress will likely govern until the next scheduled general election in 2014.  The government currently has no plans to call a trust vote itself — Singh, by daring the opposition BJP on Monday to call a trust vote, knows that leftists parties that comprise the ‘Third Front’ in the Lok Sabha would loathe supporting a BJP-led initiative to bring down the Singh government.

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy argues that Singh will likely survive this scandal, because some BJP members are also implicated in the coal scandal.  Keating lists the growing number of scandals that Singh’s government has already survived:

  • accusations that Congress bribed allies in return for their support in last vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha — in 2008 over the U.S.-India nuclear pact,
  • corruption with respect to awarding contracts for the Commonwealth Games,
  • the ‘2G scam,’ whereby the government sold mobile phone bandwidth at a loss of $30 billion to the Indian government, and
  • most ironically, the 2011 firing of the government’s anti-corruption chief PJ Thomas on corruption charges.

But it’s not been a good year for Singh — or for India — and while most people still believe that Singh is personally one of India’s most honest politicians, he could have a hard time weathering the latest corruption charge plaguing his party.  That’s especially true now, with the entire world worried about India’s weakening economy.  Just last month, Time Magazine Asia declared Singh an ‘underachiever’ in a scathing cover story.

Continue reading Could Coalgate finally bring down Manmohan Singh’s government in India? →

Pakistan

Everything you need to know about the showdown between the Pakistan People’s Party and the Supreme Court of Pakistan

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So you already know that Pakistan is, well, kind of a hot mess, as far as governance is concerned.

You also know that the Muslim country of 180 million has had, since Partition from India in 1947, a helter-skleter relationship with democratic institutions, with periods of civilian rule interspersed with healthy intervals of autocratic military regimes.  You know that on many vectors, Pakistan falls short of what even its neighbors have accomplished, not just with respect to democracy, but also with respect to rule of law, corruption, terrorism, press freedom and so on.  (Think of Pakistan, perhaps, as a 21st century version of mid-20th century Argentina, or any other South American country where democracy didn’t quite take, despite strong party identification.)

You know that Pakistan is a traditional U.S. ally and a key strategic relationship in the ongoing U.S. efforts in Afghanistan (and along the Af-Pak border), but that Pakistan’s political and military establishment rarely speaks with one voice and that Pakistan’s government more often hinders than helps the U.S. government in its ongoing anti-terror efforts.

But what of the latest political crisis there?  The prime minister has been dismissed by the Supreme Court? And the new prime minister may be dismissed as well? All because of some corruption charges against the president? But isn’t basically every public official in Pakistan corrupt?

It’s understandable that a crisis like this could leave your head spinning in a run-of-the-mill democracy, but in a place like Pakistan, with so many extrapolitical considerations, it’s nearly incomprehensible.

Without further ado, Suffragio presents a quick primer on what’s happened so far in the showdown, and what we might expect in the near future. Continue reading Everything you need to know about the showdown between the Pakistan People’s Party and the Supreme Court of Pakistan →

China, Hong Kong

Tsang apologizes, pledges to implement anti-corruption reforms in Hong Kong

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Outgoing chief executive Donald Tsang apologized on Friday to Hong Kong residents one day after two damning reports criticized Tsang for accepting luxurious gifts and favors from business tycoons and misuse of public funds — the report of one three-month inquiry, established by Tsang himself amid impeachment calls in March, found his conduct “totally inappropriate”:

“Because I handled matters improperly, public confidence in Hong Kong’s government as a clean government was shaken and our colleagues in the civil service were disappointed,” he said, bowing his head and looking on the verge of tears. “Here I sincerely apologise once again.”

The disclosure that Tsang had accepted favors from Hong Kong businessmen, including travel of yachts and private jets, special deals for rent on a penthouse in Shenzhen, and other gifts, rocked Hong Kong at the height of the campaign to replace Tsang, who had previously enjoyed a sterling reputation for probity, first as a civil servant for over three decades and as chief executive since 2005.

In another instance, Tsang was discovered to have spent public money for a $6,900 per night suite on a visit to Brazil.

One report recommended making it a criminal offense for the chief executive to accept certain favors without special permission:

[Former chief justice Andrew Li Kwow-nang] recommended that legislation be enacted so that accepting advantages required the permission of a statutory independent panel, which consists of three members, including a chairman, to be appointed jointly by the chief justice and the president of the Legislative Council.

The committee also suggested that the chief executive and his spouse can receive gifts valued below HK$400; gifts valued between HK$400 and HK$1,000 – if the gifts are inscribed with the chief executive’s or his spouse’s names; and invitations to functions or performances worth up to HK$2,000.

The scandal only amplified other charges of sleaze and corruption surrounding Henry Tang, who lost the chief executive election to Leung Chun-ying on March 25 when it became increasingly clear that both the Hong Kong public and the Chinese leadership in Beijing preferred Leung.  Although the 1200-member Election Committee were the only ones with votes in the election, Hong Kong residents made their voices heard loudly during the campaign.  It is expected that Hong Kong will hold its first openly democratic chief executive race in 2017.

Tsang will step down on June 30, but said he would work with his successor to craft anti-corruption legislation, which would be an unprecedented step for Hong Kong as it prepares to open the door to full democracy.

Such legislation will rise to the top of Leung’s agenda, which also includes increasingly high housing prices for Hong Kong residents, the strains placed on Hong Kong’s health, housing and other public services by migrants from mainland China and Article 23, a long-controversial anti-subversion law.