TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #93

Elections 2024: South Africa, Mexico, India .... the world views Trump as felon ... peace in Israel? ... bombs away in Ukraine ... an Olympic map ... and cartoonist urb looks at Taiwan, confronted

This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its mission to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.

But we begin with….

Elections 2024:  South Africa … Mexico … India

It’s official. For the first time since the end of apartheid, ushering in Black majority rule in South Africa, the African National Congress party founded by the late Nelson Mandela is no longer the majority, ruling party of the troubled, though still richest country in Africa. Indeed, the official results show the ANC plunging 17 percentage points to barely 40% of the vote in Wednesday’s balloting—down from a peak of 70% at the height of its power and influence 20 years ago.

For a full examination of the history & stakes in this landmark election, do have a look at Andelman Unleashed / Elections 2024: South Africa from March 31.

In Mexico 100 million voters were eligible to go to the polls Sunday to elect their new president in what will inevitably be an historic outcome—the only two real contenders are both women. The results, though, are hardly in doubt. Claudia Sheinbaum, also the first of Jewish ancestry and protegé of term limited incumbent Andrés Manuel López Obrador, holds a 25 percentage point lead in opinion polls over the other woman candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez.

Claudia Sheinbaum, left, promises continuity while Xóchitl Gálvez has vowed a tougher stance on organised crime

As the Financial Times explains:

After a polarising and violent campaign, Latin America’s second-largest economy has a historic opportunity to attract foreign investment as the US and China wage a trade war, but the next leader must first tackle a wide fiscal deficit, high levels of violence and creaking energy and water infrastructure. International drug cartels and local gangs have extended their reach into many aspects of the economy from agriculture to the oil industry. The violence reached record levels during President Obrador’s administration, with more than 175,000 people murdered and another 43,000 gone missing in less than six years. In the run-up to the vote some 36 people seeking public posts were murdered, with observers still on edge ahead of polling day.

And the stakes are high…as The Economist put it:

Mexico has become a crucial actor in the shifting global order. The number of migrants travelling through Mexico to the United States has surged, and illegal migration may currently be the biggest political issue in the world’s most powerful country. The West looks to Mexico to help it decouple from China, especially for manufacturing vital electronics and green technologies. Mexico’s next president will have great influence on both counts….

But the final test will be how the new president deals with the United States, no matter who is elected to occupy the Oval Office in five months.

We’ll be back this week with the results and a sense of where Mexico’s people have chosen to take their country.

Finally, India has just come to an end of its marathon six-week election cycle spanning the world’s most populous nation and still a democracy. Exit polls suggest that incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have no trouble reaching the 273 majority of seats in the 545-member Indian Parliament that will assure him re-election. However, his BJP party seems unlikely to reach the 400 seats his supporters had targeted as their goal. What still is a hold-your-breath issue is whether Modi will reach the 362 figure necessary to amend or redraft the Indian Constitution.

These exit poll numbers represent a potentially existential issue for religious and ethnic minorities and the underclass in this nation, not to mention the vocal, if no longer potent, opposition led by the Nehru-Gandhi family that ran this country for decades after its independence from Britain. Modi has made it his mission to assure dominance of the Hindu majority at the expense of the Moslem minority that is a legacy of British rule and the division of the subcontinent into Moslem-dominated Pakistan and Hindu India. But some 200 million Moslems remained behind in India after the split. Never have they felt more ostracized, more threatened than now. So perhaps the most profound stake in this election is whether India remains a true democracy at least tolerant of all its citizens, or falls under the sway of a leader determined to rule on behalf of his Hindu majorty and all but unchallenged.

Official results are due June 4, which is when Andelman Unleashed will return to examine the outcome and consequences.

How others see America

The Trump conviction outranked virtually every other priority on front pages around the world. No need to rehash any of that for our well-informed readership. So instead, let’s just have a look at how editors saw this on every continent—with rarely seen type faces and dominating headlines:

Le Monde

The Times of London

Neue Zürcher Zeitung [ NZZ ]

Arab News

The Times of Israel

O Globo

El Pais

The Australian

How others see the World

Paths out of Gaza….

Since we’re examining front pages this week….here’s Le Monde proclaiming “Gaza: Biden’s initiative to leave the impasse….a “roadmap for a lasting cease-fire.”

But then, the Israeli daily Haaretz leads with this report from its reporter Amir Tibon:

Ukraine….bombs away

The war may indeed be entering a new phase as Daniel Brössler and Nicolas Richter reported in the Munich daily Süddeutsch Zeitung::

Kiev will be allowed to use German weapons against targets on Russian territory. This will enable attacks on the city of Kharkiv from the border area to be repelled…. Germany and its closest allies are convinced that Ukraine has the right under international law to defend itself against Russian attacks, particularly in the area of ​​the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.

And France will be joining as Le Figaro reported:

The Head of State has lifted a taboo by giving the green light to the use of French weapons to target Russian territory.

French cruise missile heading to Ukraine

Emmanuel Macron opened a new initiative during his state visit to Germany: “We must allow them to neutralize the military sites from which the missiles are fired (…), the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked. If we tell them 'you don't have the right to reach the point from which the missiles are fired', in fact we tell them, 'we're giving you weapons but you can't defend yourself'. …Not only has Russia increased its production of ballistic missiles thanks to the help of its allies, but it is now using the protection of its borders more and more often to strike Ukraine.”

Don't forget the Olympics….

We’ve just found out how much fun the traffic restrictions will make living and working at our flat on the rue de Solferino in the heart of the red zone and a block from the Seine where the opening ceremonies will unfold….

But we will be there, never fear.

Finally, there’s urbs….

The great French cartoonist urbs imagines a powerful “China encircling Taiwan to ‘test’ its capacities.”

“’Pretend to surrender,’ the Chinese commander proclaims. ‘That would be simpler.’”

Rodolphe Urbs was born in Limoges in 1970. He is a press cartoonist after having decided of his own free will to hibernate in a bookstore and an art gallery since 2002. He owes his pseudonym to his punk period, very influenced by Bazooka, situationism and a Latin book on his high school desk. He draws for the newspapers Le Résistant, Sud-Ouest, Dazibao, and Le Canard Enchaîné, the great investigative and satirical Paris-based weekly broadsheet. His drawings, as was the case with this one, often find their way to p.1 of the Paris daily Le Monde via the global, Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace of which urbs is a valued member.

Here’s how urbs imagines himself, totally French, a Gitane hanging from his lips, topped by a beret: