Elections 2023: Cyprus, Monaco, Ecuador, Berlin all VOTE
A new president, new hope for unity in Cyprus…in Monaco, the past is present…in Ecuador, another hurdle for the president…Berlin’s doing it over and turning right.
Continuing our pledge that Andelman Unleashed will chronicle every presidential or national leadership election around the world, the focus today is on four compelling contests.
Cyprus …. A new president
If there is one thus far ineluctable reality that has marked the modern history of Cyprus, it has been its division into three nations and two peoples—Greek Cypriots to the south, Turkish Cypriots to the north. A third sovereignty is that of the two bases to which British forces withdrew more than a half century ago when the island became independent. So, the island remains a tribute to the strategic nature of this 3,572 square mile island, a third the size of New Hampshire, that dominates the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
From the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election, the priorities of the people were pretty clear. They want their government to find a way to unify their country. And that was the pledge of the winner, Nikos Christodoulides, who at age 49, was born in 1974—the year the two halves divided. No Cypriot leader since has found a way to bridge this gap.
"I look you in the eyes and give you a promise: I will do everything to be worthy of your trust," Christodoulides told an audience of cheering supporters packed into a stadium in the capital of Nicosia which itself is bisected by the line dividing Greeks from Turks. Following a barrage of music over the sound system by Joan Jett and Lenny Kravitz, and accompanied by his wife and four daughters, the new president pledged, "I will be president of all Cypriots."
Though he is nominally conservative and just 49 years old, repeating the recent pattern set in other European countries, particularly Italy, in fact Christodoulides seems fully prepared to chart his own path forward. He has remained a member of the DISY party of his predecessor Nicos Anastasiades who, after serving the maximum of two five-year terms, was barred from a third run. But Christodoulides broke with his party, defeated its official candidate in the first round, then in Sunday’s runoff beat back a determined challenge by 66-year-old Andreas Mavroyiannis by a vote of 51.9% to 48.1% in a generational contest. Mavroyiannis, a former Cypriote ambassador to the United Nations, though also running as an independent, was backed by AKEL, a party with communist roots whose leader, the late Dimitris Christofias, drove the island to near bankruptcy during his term from 2008 to 2013.
The new president-elect’s promises were manifold throughout the campaign—pledges of crafting a rare unity government while dealing head on with his nation’s growing problems of runaway inflation, labor disputes, corruption scandals, and ballooning immigration pressures that have led an explosion of asylum applications. But above all he has vowed to break the deadlock in reunification talks, whose latest rounds collapsed in disarray in 2017. In a nod to the centrist and right-of-center parties that have taken a hardline on solving the longstanding division of Cyprus, he pledged that the framework of the United Nations-brokered talks should be renegotiated before being resumed.
Though the seeds of division had long existed, today’s partition was set in place after Turkish military forces invaded in 1974. This action followed violent inter-communal clashes that led to a coup launched by Greece's then-ruling military junta unseating the long-standing Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios III. All this led to the collapse of the Greek junta, installation of a civilian government in Athens, and expansion of Turkish control across the northern third of the island. Eventually a UN-brokered ceasefire created a buffer zone still known as the Green Line that cuts across the island and its capital, and remains monitored by the United Nations.
The opposition daily Cyprus Mail called Christodoulides the “Teflon candidate,” and indeed he has weathered any number of political storms in reaching the pinnacle of Cypriot leadership. The young, energetic figure has risen rapidly over the past decade from government spokesman to foreign minister, bringing fresh ideas—and now big promises.
Monaco …. la meme chose
In Monaco the more things change the more they remain the same. Last week’s vote was a landslide, indeed total victory for the governing Union Nationale Monégasque and its leader Brigitte Boccone-Pagès. Her coalition snagged all 24 seats in the unicameral Assembly of Monegasque Elected Representatives.
The mayor, Georges Marsan, announced the results of the vote in this city-state that is officially the Principality of Monaco—the second-smallest sovereign state in the world after Vatican City, which itself is embedded entirely within Rome, the Italian capital. Of the 38,000 inhabitants of its three-quarters of a square mile territory—half the size of New York’s Central Park—just 7,596 have the right to vote, being at least 25 years old and Monegasque nationality.
The opposition New Ideas for Monaco party, led by 78-year-old Daniel Boéri, which won not a single seat, had planned to “launch debates, particularly on women's rights and on how to go further on abortion within the framework of the Constitution." Although abortion was decriminalized in Monaco in 2019 and women undergoing an abortion no longer risk prison, performing an abortion is still prohibited.
The reality is that Monaco is a constitutional monarchy with Prince Albert II as the much-loved and respected hereditary head of state and heir of the House of Grimaldi which has ruled Monaco with only scattered interruptions since 1297. Prince Albert, son of the late Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace Kelly, wields unchallenged power over affairs of this Mediterranean refuge of wealth and privilege where the average per capita net worth clocks in at $2.1 million, the highest in the world. Not surprisingly, there is no personal income or capital gains tax. Moreover, Monaco has also acquired the quite deserved reputation as “the safest square mile in Europe,” with one police officer for every 100 inhabitants and all but ubiquitous video surveillance of what is also the most expensive real estate market in the world and marinas that can accommodate the superyachts that flock there.
Though Monaco has still not managed to negotiate an association agreement with the European Union, it did succeed in becoming a full voting member of the United Nations in 1993, maintaining a separate and independent foreign policy from its large neighbor, France. Still, the French president must approve the prime minister or any other appointee of Prince Albert, France guarantees its military security, and thanks to its relationship with Paris, Monaco is able to use the euro as its official currency. Last week’s vote will not rock any of these deeply anchored realities—just what every true Monégasque desires: plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose (the more it changes, the more it remains the same)—with a nod to Jean-Baptiste Karr, the great French editor who coined the phrase in his journal Les Guepes (The Wasps) in the issue of January 1849.
Ecuador…. no amendments
It was a critical vote on a constitutional amendment that would have given desperately-needed new powers to Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso in his ongoing—and largely losing—battle to stamp out drug trafficking in his beleaguered nation. And it failed.
The extradition reform was just one of eight referenda on the nationwide ballot—all defeated—that would have allowed Ecuadorian citizens to be sent abroad for trial on drugs and weapons charges—especially in the United States. Today, such extradition is banned, giving criminals free rein to operate in a nation whose judicial system is held hostage to the power and wealth of cartels. The vote was 51.45% to reject this measure.
"I accept that the majority doesn't agree that these (crime) issues would be resolved with the tools put up for consideration in the referendum," Lasso said in a televised speech after the results became known. "But I believe that we Ecuadoreans should have a broad and serious debate, without dogmas or ideologies, about how to face the threat that drug trafficking and its links to sectors of politics represent today.”
Two of Lasso’s other proposals—to give the attorney general more power to choose prosecutors and reducing the size of the National Assembly to 100 members from 137—were also rejected respectively by 51.61% and 53%.
Much of this repudiation of Lasso may be attributed to his popularity, which has plummeted to the vicinity of 20%.
None of this will help the country’s credit rating either. Fitch Ratings service suggested Lasso’s “governability challenges will increase. Tensions with the National Assembly have already derailed investment and labor market reforms, and prospects for passing other reforms now appear remote.”
Fitch analysts concluded: “Defeat in Ecuador’s constitutional referendum…is likely to result in legislative gridlock,” Fitch Ratings says. “The resulting blow to reform prospects and heightened political uncertainty could make securing market access to bridge next year’s forecast funding gap more difficult.”
Berlin….another shift to the right
Voters in Berlin followed the trend in a number of other recent European contests, sending Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party to victory in the state that includes the nation’s capital.
Ordinarily, Andelman Unleashed does not deal with local elections, but in this case the stakes potentially suggested a national turnaround, a foretaste of a conservative swing in the elections in the state of Hess, whose capital Frankfurt is one of the financial capitals of Europe. It is also could pose a major challenge to Olaf Scholz, the liberal, Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor of Germany—his priorities and hold on power going forward.
Sunday’s vote for 130 members of Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus (House of Deputies) was a re-do of the 2021 election, which courts had invalidated due to a host of irregularities that ranged from voting stations running out of paper ballots to precincts closing early or staying open longer than scheduled. The Social Democrats came out on top in the last vote, with the CDU a distant third behind the Greens, which led to the legal challenges by the CDU.
The victory of the Christian Democrats brought an end to 22 years of uninterrupted rule in Berlin by the Social Democrats. This time, a multinational team of election observers from the Council on Europe pronounced the election fair. “The overall impression is that everything is going really well,” the head observer Vladimir Preexilic told DPA [the German press agency]. “Things are really well organized, I have to say.”
Some observers suggest that disgust with the way the first ballot was conducted may have played a significant role in voters’ desire for change, rather than any hard shift in the nation’s direction. It was the worst performance for social democrats in Berlin since World War II when the city was divided between democratic West and Communist East Berlin under Soviet control. “The Berliners have made their views clear—they want something else,” said Franziska Giffey, the capital’s current SPD mayor. “We have to exercise sone humility in this situation.”
Still, the control of the mayor’s office itself will depend on the ability of the CDU, which has a strong plurality, though not an absolute majority in the state parliament, to assemble a working coalition. “The CDU gained 10 percentage points and the government got a shellacking,” said Carsten Lennemann, deputy head of the CDU’s parliamentary bloc told the Financial Times. “The was a clear winner and the people now expect that this winner is given the chance to form a government.”
For the outcome of this process and host of compelling elections coming along this year, stay tuned to Andelman Unleashed.
Another sharp and brilliant comment from Professor Rotberg....my compliments and appreciation. He is so right. I expect to be on Cyprus in July.....hoping to see at least glimmers of progress !
These election coverages are superbly important. It is particularly salient that Andelman provides a great insight into the Cypriot situation. If Nikos Christodoulides, South Cyprus's new president, can in fact persuade his people to undertake meaningful peace negotiations with North Cyprus it will be an effort worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. We were almost there in 2004, but South Cyprus turned down a carefully crafted UN plan to reunite the island. Ever since, South Cyprus leaders have refused even to begin to talk seriously with the North. Now, as Andelman's report suggests, reunification may at last be timely.