Elections 2022: Cue the Revolution
Across the world…Andelman Unleashed chronicles 30 remarkable elections in 2022. And looks ahead to 2023. From France to Fiji…São Tomé to Tunisia, a year of revolution and evolution.
CNNOpinion graphic
But first, the last ….
The final pair…Fuji and Tunisia themselves illustrate the perils and pains of voters held hostage.
First, Fiji….
As feared, the military was called out to "maintain order" after voters elected a hung parliament in a country with a long history of military coups. In a nation suspended, some would say torn, between the two major powers seeking to dominate the region—China and the United States—the renewed insertion of the military into the electoral processes of a self-described democracy is most disquieting.
As I wrote in Andelman Unleashed last week, it’s hard to envision corruption, manipulation, or apathy for that matter in a South Pacific paradise, but that’s just what's been the rule in Fiji. It appeared at first as though democracy this time just might have won out. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, lost his parliamentary majority. While his FijiFirst party accumulated a plurality of 42.5%, the two leading opposition forces—People’s Alliance with 36% and the National Federation Party with 9%—said they'll form a winning coalition to block Bainimarama. At the time Fiji's military pledged not to intervene, especially since international election observers said they've seen "no significant voting irregularities."
A week later, however, Bainimarama, still the prime minister, ordered the military in to "preserve order." Few have forgotten that it was the very Commodore Bainimarama, then the armed forces commander, who in 2006 overthrew the elected government in a bloodless coup and seized power. In 2009, he suspended the constitution, imposed a state of emergency, and continued ruling by decree. Bainimarama's FijiFirst has not conceded defeat and the island nation and Fijians are waiting for their figurehead president to recall parliament so lawmakers can vote for a new prime minister. As it happens, the leader of the combined opposition, Sitiveni Rabuka, poised to become the new ruler, was himself the leader of an earlier military coup.
Then, Tunisia….
Barely 11 percent of the nation's eligible voters turned out for an election last week that appeared quickly to have done little to turn this nation from the path of totalitarian abuses that have marked its trajectory since it gave birth to, then crushed, the Arab Spring more than a decade ago. As I wrote in Andelman Unleashed, the turnout set a new world record low—behind the 18% posted in Haiti in 2015 or the 19% in Afghanistan in 2019. Perhaps this should be an object lesson, peeling back the mask of dictatorships. When voters recognize they have no real choice, they simply don't bother showing up.
“No one can find a single party of importance across the political spectrum or a civil society organization that sees Saturday’s election as anything other than a sham vote to create a Potemkin parliament,” Monica Marks, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at New York University Abu Dhabi told Ben Hubbard and Ahmed Ellali of The New York Times.
As it happens, though, we'll likely be revisiting Tunisia since only 21 candidates secured a requisite majority, sending most constituencies into an equally irrelevant second round of voting on January 20.
Regardless of the outcome, real or imagined, in the runoff it seems hardly likely that Tunisia will be in any position to halt the spiral precipitated by the actions of President Kais Saied. In February, Saied suspended the country's Supreme Judicial Council and a month later dissolved parliament completely. In July, voters "approved" a new constitution that extends presidential rights in Tunisia even further. But now, foreign investors are pulling out, the International Monetary Fund has frozen a public sector loan, and inflation is passing 10% with no brake in sight.
And then there's the rest…
As I wrote last week in my column for CNN Opinion, "2022's elections taught me about humanity, politics and ‘magic sauce’ …. Some excerpts and conclusions:
Liberal democracy was hanging on by a thread this year across the world as nations ranging in size from France to the Faroe Islands went to the polls to choose who would rule them. All too often, though, voters demonstrated a sharp turn to the right or, having little free choice, merely cemented in power ancestral dictators.
Over the course of this year, I’ve chronicled 30 national elections on five continents and four oceans – beginning with France’s presidential election in April and continuing through to Fiji and Tunisia last week. Each has had its own unique cast, but often seem to exhibit certain core principles – object lessons for how people prosper or simply survive in the disparate corners of our planet.
First were the game-changers – nations and people that chose a substantial break with a past that didn’t seem to have worked for them, or where leaders promised something better and were able to persuade voters that they had some sort of magic sauce.
Perhaps the top example this year has been Italy. Here, the country shed a consummate technocrat, Mario Draghi, previous longtime president of the European Central Bank, who as prime minister of Italy for 20 months had been piloting his country through the Covid-19 pandemic and away from the shoals of utter economic collapse. All while embracing the efforts of Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion, and its hopes of joining the European Union….
In his place, voters chose to install a toxic triumvirate of far-right extremists, led by Giorgia Meloni. Italy’s first woman prime minister was at the helm of the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini.
Meloni’s fellow troika members were Matteo Salvini, a veteran right-wing extremist, and the 86-year-old four-time Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, an unabashed supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Not long after Meloni’s victory in Italy, at the other end of Europe, Swedish voters were going to the polls with equally dramatic results. They elected a rightist prime minister who needed the nationalist, firmly anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats to form a government – a party whose leader Jimmie Akesson, in pre-election debate, had reportedly refused to choose between President Joe Biden and Putin.
The Putin factor
Halfway across the globe, Brazil's voters also appeared at first blush to be opting for an abrupt change in direction in October’s election. Though in this case, it involved shedding right-wing demagogue Jair Bolsonaro and returning to power the far-left icon, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
But it was a pyrrhic victory for “Lula,” as he is known. He was immediately confronted by a parliament with a majority held by the party still controlled by Bolsonaro – a man whose campaign was reportedly supported by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, and who is friendly with Putin. In short, don’t count out Bolsonaro for a minute. [ And as it happens, Bolsonaro will be giving a pass to his successor’s inauguration, choosing instead to spend New Years Eve at Mar-a-Lago. ]
A similar political bind had already developed in France. One hand giveth, the other taketh away as voters rewarded President Emmanuel Macron with a second five-year in April, the first back-to-back repeat since Jacques Chirac two decades ago.
But then weeks later in June, the same voters removed Macron’s absolute majority in parliament. Instead, they turned over the role of power broker to the far-right icon Marine Le Pen, who Macron had twice defeated for the presidency. Le Pen has well-documented, close ties to Putin going back years. (She has also condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while advocating that sanctions on Russia should be removed).
Coupled with the fourth consecutive victory by Hungary’s firebrand Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s staunchest ally within the European Union, the Kremlin leader has appeared to have cemented a powerful network of supporters on multiple continents.
The comebacks
All this was happening in deeply entrenched democracies. Elsewhere, in the face of broad international condemnation, several long-standing dictators or dynasties managed to cement their single-handed rule of their nations.
In the November election in OPEC-member Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang, the world’s longest-ruling head of state with 43 years in office, won nearly 99% of the vote….
Turning to Asia, voters in the Philippines who decades earlier shed the long, kleptocratic rule of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, somewhat inexplicably returned their son Bongbong Marcos to power with a resounding victory in May.
His victory assured that Bongbong and his mother Imelda, now aged 93, would likely go unpunished for their family’s stolen funds that are estimated to have risen as high as $10 billion during the Marcos’ rule a half century ago. Philippine voters appear simply to be hoping that history won’t repeat itself.
Another of what I Iike to call franchise-holders was Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He managed to return to power in November’s election with the help of far-right parties that both oppose statehood for Palestinian territories and embrace Israel extending its sovereignty throughout the West Bank…..
The wild cards
And then there are those who somehow managed to snatch victory following some very questionable campaign moves.
Notable among these was Denmark’s youngest female prime minister Mette Frederiksen. Her campaign was burdened by an ill-considered decision to exterminate the country’s entire 17-million strong mink population after a scare that the critters might be in a position to pass along Covid-19 mutations to humans….
At the time England’s Magna Carta first ushered in the concept of democratic choice, there were barely 300 million people in the world. This year, the global population hit 8 billion.
Yet as I have chronicled this year, for the most part, democracy of one form or another still is not played out, as the defeat of election deniers in the US midterms suggested.
My hope is that enough voters recognize the value of maintaining a system of free choice, even in the hardest of times, to keep democracy alive – even if they do not always achieve the goal of tolerance, respect and cohesion.
Onward to 2023…..
Which brings us to next year when Andelman Unleashed will continue its pledge to chronicle every national election. First up will be Benin choosing its parliament on January 8, followed by the Czech Republic electing its president on January 13-14, then that second round for Tunisia. But the high points of our calendar won't be unspooling until we hit Turkey in June and Argentina in October. Poland, Chile, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, even Ukraine are due for elections at some point during 2023. Stay tuned!
And finally, there's … Sherif….
Leave it to an outsider, Egypt's extraordinary cartoonist, Sherif Araya, to dissect France's landmark efforts to keep democracy alive….a frantic Marianne, personification of the French republic, holding a flag with right and left seeking to pull the nation apart. So far, they have not succeeded. But the jury is still out. The 250+ artists of Cartooning for Peace will be watching.