Tag Archives: sham elections

Syria

Why is Syria holding a presidential election in the middle of a civil war?

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It’s always been somewhat baffling to me why authoritarian rulers and dictators go through the motions of sham elections. Syria Flag Icon

The voters inside the country know better than anyone else that the elections aren’t a real choice, and in many cases, boycotting the vote or voting for the ‘wrong’ candidate, if a choice is even permitted, can carry perilous results.

International observers aren’t really fooled, either. With the proven work of folks like the National Democratic Institute and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, there’s a 21st century international standard for free and fair elections, and the NDA, OSCE and other similar groups have a thoroughgoing process for certifying the sanctity of elections in developing democracies.

Furthermore, in the world of social media and 24-hour news, it’s harder to carry out the kind of widespread fraud. That doesn’t mean elections are perfect. In Venezuela, the collapse of the state, governing institutions and chavismo mean that a totally fair election is almost impossible. But there’s nonetheless a limit — even with a decade’s worth of dirty tricks, Nicolás Maduro managed only a narrow win in April 2013, for example.

So why is Syrian president Bashar al-Assad pushing forward with an election on June 3?

In case you were wondering about the outcome, here’s a chart of every presidential election in Syria since Hafez al-Assad came to power in a military coup in 1971:

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In each of the prior ‘elections,’ Syrian voters were presented with a yes-or-no choice on the incumbent, either Hafez al-Assad or, since his death in 2000, his son, Bashar al-Assad.  Continue reading Why is Syria holding a presidential election in the middle of a civil war? →

Tajikistan

Imomali Rakhmon extends two-decade rule after winning sham election in Tajikistan

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Within Russia and the 14 other former Soviet republics, there are two flavors of politics.tajiktajikistantajikistan

In one set of former Soviet countries, there’s the unmistakable emergence of strengthening, if imperfect and fragile, democratic institutions.  That’s true for the three European Union states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), as well as Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, in fits and starts.

But in the other set, it’s as if the Soviet Union never crumbled, and the authoritarian model of Soviet government remains as strong as ever — in the case of Azerbaijan, which held its presidential election last month, Ilham Aliyev was overwhelmingly reelected, renewing the Aliyev family’s hold on Azerbajian since the 1970s.

So it was in Tajikistan, where Imomali Rakhmon was reelected president with nearly 87% of the vote on November 6 — Rakhmon first came to power in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, and he managed to hold onto power through a brutal five-year civil war that took on elements of a proxy war between Russia and Iran, which ended only in 1997.  In recent years, Rakhmon has presided over an essentially authoritarian state.

Human rights activist Oynihol Bobonazarova was prohibited from running against Rakhmon in the recent election, clearing the way for Rakhmon’s rubber-stamp reelection.

International observers roundly criticized the vote:

Andreas Baker, presidential adviser to the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly and an OSCE election observer in Dushanbe, said that “while quiet and peaceful, this was an election without a real choice.”  In an interview with RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Baker criticized Rakhmon for taking advantage of his incumbency.  “While there was extensive state media coverage of the official activities of the incumbent president, that meant that he had a significant advantage throughout the campaign,” Baker said.

Baker also mentioned irregularities in the election.  “The observation mission took note of widespread proxy voting, family voting, and group voting, as well as indications of ballot-box stuffing on election day,” he said.

Tajikistan is one of the five central Asian republics that, taken together among the former Soviet republics, have proven most impervious to democracy.  ‘Great Game’ analogies aside, it’s a region that’s attracting greater attention from the United States, China and even India — not to mention Russia’s long-standing influence.

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Tajikistan has more distance from Moscow than any of the other four Central Asian nations — it doesn’t even border Kazakhstan, let alone Russia.  It shares a long border with Afghanistan to the south, which makes it a country of some significance to the United States, especially as US military involvement in Afghanistan winds down in 2014.  It also shares a border with China’s Xinjiang province to the east.  Beijing is equally interested in Tajikistan’s stability, lest it disrupt a population of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang who practice Muslim and are much closer culturally to Central Asia than to the Han Chinese culture that dominates the People’s Republic of China.

Ethnic Tajiks comprise the vast majority of the country’s population (around eight million) — they speak Tajik, a variant of the Persian language, and they largely practice Sunni Islam. A once sizable Russian minority shriveled to less than 1% of the population during the civil war, and Russian ceased to have any official role in Tajikistan four years ago.

Following the civil war, Tajikistan’s economy grew rapidly, and it continues to mark relatively high GDP growth — around 8% in 2012.  But don’t let that fool you — the high-growth is in part due to such an unimpressive starting point, and Tajikistan remains the poorest of the Central Asian republics.  Its economy is based chiefly on aluminum mining, cotton cultivation and little else — and certainly not the kind of vast oil and natural gas wealth that’s boosted Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.  Remittances from abroad (mostly Russia) amount to up to between one-third and one-half of the country’s GDP.  Rakhmon’s regime is riddled with corruption and it hasn’t been incredibly keen on economic reforms, either, and Tajikistan is a major transit point for heroin and other opiates between Afghanistan and Russia/Europe.

Continue reading Imomali Rakhmon extends two-decade rule after winning sham election in Tajikistan →

Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea holds sham legislative elections

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Oyala

Even as the world realizes that sub-Saharan Africa has a broad diversity of cultures, ethnicities, economies and political identities, Equatorial Guinea is far afield from anything ‘typical’ about the region. equatorialguinea

With just over 700,000 people, it’s the least populous country on Africa’s continental mainland and, geographically, it’s divided between a rectangular province, Río Muni, nestled between Gabon and Cameroon, and an island, Bioko.  As a former Spanish colony from 1778 to 1968, it’s the only country in Africa where Spanish is an official language.  With abundant rainforest timber and with the discovery of oil wealth in the past two decades, Equatorial Guinea is also one of the richest countries in Africa — with a GDP per capita of between $15,000 and $36,000 (estimates vary wildly), it should be as developed as much of western Europe, though it’s not.

But the country’s idiosyncrasies don’t end there.

Its president, Teodoro Obiang, has led the country since ousting his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in a coup in 1979.  Despite the fact that he’s one of the world’s more repressive dictators, Obiang represents quite an improvement over his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, who controlled the country through an 11-year terror during which one-third of the country’s residents were killed or fled.  During the Macías Nguema era, schools were closed to prevent the kind of education that might lead to an uprising, cocoa and coffee plantations were destroyed as its pre-oil economy tanked throughout the 1970s, and churches essentially forbidden because of the cult of worship under ‘papa Macías.’  Historians cannot decide whether Macías Nguema’s regime is more appropriately the ‘Dachau of Africa,’ or the ‘Auschwitz of Africa,’ but it was horrid enough to stand on its own terms.

Obiang, who as a top official in his uncle’s regime, shares some complicity for the horrors of in the 1970s, but initially effected the trial and execution of his uncle and relaxed the brutality that was decimating the country, though opposition and other analysts argue that his rule has become increasingly brutal throughout the years.  Nonetheless, while his patience for opposition forces has never been strong, it’s been especially weak since a 2004 coup attempt that may have involved the son of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Despite the fact that elections were held on May 26, the Partido Democrático de Guinea Ecuatorial (PDGE, Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea), was pre-destined to win power in the Camara de Representantes del Pueblo (House of People’s Representatives), where it already held 99 out of 100 seats, and in the newly formed upper house, the Senado (Senate), where 55 of 70 seats were up for election, with the remaining 15 to be selected directly by Obiang.   The PDGE isn’t really a political party in any sense, but more a mechanism for Obiang to extend dictatorial power — it’s believed that Obiang hopes to pass on the country’s presidency to his son Teodoro ‘Teodorín’ Obiang, a second vice president of the country and a former agricultural minister.

Although oil reserves were only discovered in the mid-1990s, Equatorial Guinea is the continent’s third-largest oil exporter after Nigeria and Angola, attracting US, European and Chinese foreign development.  Its more recent discovery of natural gas reserves have only accelerated its GDP growth (which routinely hits double digits and beyond — it notched nearly 40% GDP growth in 2004, for instance).  While that’s caused inflationary pressure in recent years, none of the GDP growth has trickled its way down to the majority of the country’s population — poverty remains high and development remains low. Continue reading Equatorial Guinea holds sham legislative elections →