Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nepal, Equatorial Guinea VOTE
Four landmark elections across two continents set new directions and cement the old.
Continuing our pledge that Andelman Unleashed will chronicle every presidential or national leadership election around the world, the focus today is on elections where a new challenge to Putin emerges, an old autocracy is cemented, and two democracies are at turning points. From my observation post in Paris, watching the stunning outcomes.
Brace yourself. Today, we have four major elections across Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Union over just this past weekend that promise some remarkable changes and potentially dangerous prospects, even stunning geopolitical shifts.
Kazakhstan, Putin’s latest headache?
If the war in Ukraine was a desire by Putin to secure his “near abroad” borders by co-opting a nation that threatened to turn increasingly westward, he’d better watch his back after Sunday’s election in Kazakhstan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was headed for a landslide victory in the snap election, racking up 81.3% of the vote and solidifying his grip on power less than a year after he’d effectively sidelined his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, who’d ruled with an iron grip since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Things promise to be a whole lot different now in this part of the world. Since winning his first election mandate with the support of Nazarbayev, one of Putin’s closest cronies among the nations of the former Soviet Union, Tokayev has sought to move quickly and resolutely in opposite directions from virtually everything his predecessor represented. "We can say that the people have expressed convincing confidence in me as president,” Tokayev said early today, describing the vote which should keep him in office for seven more years as one which will “go down in history.”
It's been a rocky two years that brought him to this moment. Tokayev first won election in 2019. His final break with Nazarbaev came earlier this year when violent protests, touched off by fuel price increases, morphed into the openly political theme of “Old man out,” referring to Nazarbaev and his efforts to hold onto power from the wings.
More than 230 protestors died in the pitched street battles. To appease the protestors and cement his own hold on the office, Tokayev sacked Nazarbaev from his security council post, restored the name of the capital to Astana from Nur-Sultan, and repealed a law granting Nazarbayev and his entire corrupt family immunity from prosecution. He also strengthened the role of parliament, reduced the power of the presidency, and limited the office to a single seven-year term.
But Tokayev’s most inflammatory and perhaps lasting transformation was his clear intention to move his oil-rich nation closer to the west and away from Russia to which it had been joined at the hip since it became a part of the Soviet Union in 1920. The Red Army succeeded in dominating the region, following more than a century of gradual accretion by forces of a succession of Russian czars. Then Tokayev made the bold move of calling the snap election and cement seven years of a change in direction.
Three days before the vote, government forces even thwarted a coup attempt. The National Security Committee reported that a group of seven people planned to "organise riots and a coup and proclaim a provisional government," adding that the suspects "share the views of exiled opponent Mukhtar Ablyazov.” Kazakhstan has tried and sentenced in absentia this former energy minister on charges of murder and embezzlement. Based now in France, he has vociferously encouraged protests through his social media channels. His backers were said to have been seeking to organise large-scale riots, attack administrative buildings and law enforcement offices with arms and weapons, including Kalashnikov assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns, ammunition, and materials for Molotov cocktails as well as walkie-talkies—all confiscated by government agents.
But Tokayev never really even waited for the elections that have proved to be a formality before continuing to expand his western-focused initiatives. Three days before the vote, Tokayev and his foreign minister, Mukhtar Tileuberdi, received the foreign secretary of the European Union Josep Borrell.
These two then announced their interest in implementing an “Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between Kazakhstan and the EU,” covering 29 areas of cooperation. Borrell promptly inserted himself directly into the forthcoming election, declaring “the upcoming elections are an important opportunity for Kazakhstan to demonstrate a clear will to ensure the full implementation of this ambitious reform agenda. I underlined the EU’s support in this regard.” Indeed, the EU already has more than $160 billion worth of investments in Kazakhstan. Moreover, Kazakhstan has proven oil reserves of more than 30 billion barrels, just behind the United States’ 35 billion. Pretty useful for the EU deprived of Russian oil—provided the west can find a way to get it out.
But of special significance, and likely to be the most irritating to Vladimir Putin is the reality that Kazakhstan has no interest in supporting the Russian leader in his war with Ukraine. Russia and Kazakhstan share the world’s single longest land border. Already Tokayev has delivered a slap in the face by refusing to recognize Russia’s annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk—territories the Kremlin seized at gunpoint in eastern Ukraine. Kazakhstan also has the largest population of ethnic Russians after Ukraine. Moreover, Tokayev has not hesitated to express his views publicly, even at a forum in St. Petersburg in June where he shared the stage with Putin himself.
Now, however, Tokayev is very much in charge in Astana, and Putin has his hands full in Ukraine.
Malaysia, an historic stalemate
The first Malaysian election I covered, for The New York Times, was in 1976 when Hussein Onn became prime minister, though it was clear to me even then that the real power in this central Southeast Asian nation was his deputy Mahathir Mohammed, who would succeed to the top spot in 1981 and hold it for 22 years. Indeed, for an uninterrupted stretch from its independence in 1955 through 2018, a single coalition—UMNO, dominated by the Barisan Nasional party—held sway in a nation of remarkable stability. Until recently. In 2018, a new coalition, Pakatan Harapan (BERSATU) or Alliance of Hope, managed to take control in Parliament under the same Mahathir Mohamad who I’d known in the late 1970s, this time at the age of 93. In 2018, he stood for election under a new coalition following a horrific billion-dollar scandal in the state investment fund 1MDB.
Now along came Saturday’s election with many firsts. For the first time in the nation’s history there was a fragmented “hung” parliament with no one, clear path toward a majority government. And the real stunner? For the first time ever, Mahathir, now 97, was defeated for his parliamentary seat—his first defeat in 53 years. He even came in fourth in a five-way contest in his longtime home constituency in Langkawi, a resort island in Malaysia’s northwest, which he had won with a large majority in the last election four years ago. The man known widely as “the father of modern Malaysia,” even lost his deposit having failed to get one-eighth of the vote cast.
Now, though, Malaysia—long an island of stability, a leading source of high-tech goods for much of Asia and beyond—is faced with an unparalleled electoral crisis. This hung parliament now has at least two forces competing to form a government from at least three coalitions. Whoever succeeds will become the nation’s fourth prime minister in as many years—putting Malaysia on a course followed by such shaky governments as Israel’s which has itself suffered through five elections in three years as we reported earlier this month.
The multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan coalition of veteran opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who has had a checkered past including imprisonment after a conviction for sodomizing a male aid, was ahead, having secured 82 seats, though far from a majority in the 222-seat parliament. Coming in next with 73 seats was former premier Muhyiddin Yassin, whose coalition includes an Islamist party that has touted shariah (Islamic) law. Back to the time when I was covering Malaysian politics, race and religion have been central to society with a Muslim ethnic-Malay majority dominating ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities who control much of the economic life of the country.
So how might Malaysia emerge from this? Well, perhaps it may all be in the hands of the King. That’s right. The Malaysian constitution grants King Al-Sultan Abdullah the right simply to appoint an individual who can assemble a ruling coalition.
Nepal, whither this nation?
Sandwiched between India and China, the United States is very much an interested party in the outcome of Sunday’s vote in this Himalayan nation that was a kingdom until 2008 but is now a parliamentary democracy. Just days before Sunday’s vote, China’s vice-minister for culture and tourism Li Qun paid an unusual visit to Kathmandu earlier this month, in the face of pleas for it to be called off in view of the election. Still, it sent a strong message. China is watching. Hardly surprising since Nepal shares its northern border with the sensitive Chinese province of Tibet, often on the edge of rebellion. Indeed, the capital, Kathmandu, is barely 40 miles south of the Tibetan frontier. And on Nepal’s south is the other Asian giant—India.
The results of the election could prove pivotal in determining Kathmandu’s future relations with all three powers, Suresh Chalise, Nepal’s former ambassador to the US and Britain told The Straits-Times, the leading newspaper in Singapore, which itself has not a small interest in the election’s outcome. “There has been a political shift at the regional level and beyond,” Chalise said. “As a result, the relationship between India, China and the US has a direct impact on Nepal’s ties with them. Hence, Nepal’s challenge will be to continue maintaining good ties with all the three amid this churn.”
Election returns arrive slowly in this Himalayan nation, complicated by the 2,412 candidates vying for 165 directly-elected seats in the parliament. But an early lead seemed to be accumulating for upstart Rastriya Swatantra Party headed by, who else but a popular television personality Rabi Lamichhane who, as the Kathmandu Post observed, “is basking in the glory of wide public attention ahead of the polls.”
Rabi’s party is providing a major challenge to the long-ruling Nepali Congress Party, which had originally been formed in Calcutta alongside India’s powerful party of the same name under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and his movement of independence of the sub-continent from Britain. It is hardly the only political force in this tiny nation of barely 17 million eligible voters. The second-largest party in the outgoing parliament has been the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist). There is even the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), a pro-monarchy party with substantial support.
China has been especially concerned with the well-being of the Nepalese Communist Party, going so far as to send a senior Chinese official who arrived in Kathmandu two years ago in an effort to patch up party rifts. Indeed, China has poured millions of dollars into Nepal in the form of aid and infrastructure investment as it has incorporated the country into its Belt and Road Initiative.
The outcome of this election could prove fateful. Stand by.
Equatorial Guinea, no uncertainty, but ….
And finally there’s no such uncertainty in Equatorial Guinea where there was never any real doubt as to the winner. The same individual has won every election, if you could call them that, over the past 43 years. More like a succession of coronations, which have left Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo as the world’s longest-serving head of state.
This time he managed to accumulate somewhere in excess of 99% of the vote. Reuters calls it, pretty accurately, a “tiny, authoritarian, oil-producing Central African state.” Obiang had two opponents—Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu, who has run in the previous five elections, and Andrés Esono Ondo, running for the first time. Together they’ve accumulated 185 votes out of 67,196 counted so far. The results seem hardly in question.
At the start of the campaign three weeks ago, the State Department issued a statement saying the US “calls on the government of Equatorial Guinea to honor its international commitments and constitutional principles by supporting a free and fair vote. The United States has been concerned by reports of arrests and harassment of opposition members and civil society, and we urge the government to allow its citizens to freely and confidently express their preferences at the ballot box. Equatorial Guinea can cultivate a more inclusive, peaceful, and democratic society by ensuring the expression of diverse political perspectives, a free and fair voting process, and the protection of the human rights of all individuals.”
So there we have it—Obiang, now 80, for another six years.
And now we have His Majesty the King stepping in as mediator and .... savior?!
Malaysia is the baseline against which you measure the “Singapore premium.”