* India’s General Elections: A Major Setback for Modi
* EU-Parliament Elections: Far-Right Surge?
* Senora as President in Mexico
* Continuing Gaza War
By Shashi P.B. Malla
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have dominated Indian politics since first assuming power in 2014.
However, the results of India’s seven-phase, multi-week elections indicate have things have changed – dramatically!
In the last two elections, Modi’s BJP had secured an outright majority of legislative seats, which allowed it effectively to govern alone.
In this election, the party fell short of a majority of seats and will rely on its coalition.
Modi’s BJP was India’s top vote-getting party, and his “victory Tuesday makes him the first leader since India’s founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to secure a third five-year term,” writes CNN’s Rhea Mogul.
That said, the significantly diminished support came as a huge surprise. “Modi’s right-wing, Hindu-nationalist alliance was expected to secure a supermajority and with it the [ower to enact radical change unopposed…This is in some sense a wakeup call to a leader who is still very, very popular,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Political Research, “but who many voters feel have crossed lines for what should otherwise be a very vibrant democracy.”
The Financial Times’ editorial board welcomed the outcome, writing: “If it encourages the hubristic, Hindu-nationalistic BJP to engage in more deliberative policymaking and enlivens Indian democracy, just when many feared it was flickering, it could strengthen the country’s rise.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-chief of The Economist characterized Modi’s loss as a major blow for him but “a triumph for Indian democracy.” India humbled him.
Modi’s charismatic leadership and Hindu nationalism have been chronicled extensively.
Now, Modi and his BJP “are much diminished,” Devesh Kapur of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies writes for Foreign Policy.
“Modi has never had to rely on coalition partners. The election marks not only the end of single-party control in the Indian Parliament but also the BJP’s having peaked. Coalition governments – the natural order for India’s democracy since the late 1980s, except for the past decade – are back to stay.” To Kapur, the results show that all political ideologies, including Hindu nationalism, “have their life cycles.”
In his latest Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria writes that voters rejected Modi’s strongman tendencies.
India under Modi, who has governed since 2014, has been on them marked by robust economic growth but also Hindu nationalism and democratic backsliding, as groups that rate countries on freedom and democracy have marked India down during Modi’s tenure.
In this election, Zakaria notes, Modi enjoyed big advantages:
“His party massively outspent the opposition, using an election-financing scheme so blatantly one-sided that even India’s often compliant courts eventually shut it down…
“The agency charged with promoting government policies spent millions on ads with Modi’s face on them, reminding Indians of ‘Modi’s guarantees’ – that the economy would soar and that their lives would be improved…
In addition, opposition politicians were investigated by tax authorities, the leader of the opposition [ Rahul Gandhi] was unseated from his parliamentary seat, two chief ministers (the equivalent of U.S. governors) were jailed, and opposition party funds were frozen to make it virtually impossible for them to travel or operate.”
Economic growth has been good under Modi, but not notably better than past prime ministers who had much lower profiles and headed coalition governments.
Zakaria concludes: “Many sophisticated observers of the world often laud strongmen who run poorer countries, who can build roads and get things done quickly…
“But the average Indian voter seems to instinctively understand that in the long run, pluralism, cooperation and diversity are India’s distinctive features and its enduring advantage.”
EU-Parliament Elections
380 million eligible voters across the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states voted Thursday to Sunday to choose the next European Parliament with 720 seats.
It was a four-day process with results announced Sunday evening after the polls closed.
The main constitutional bodies of the EU are:
- The European Parliament, Strassbourg & Brussels, is like the ‘lower house’ of a national legislature.
- The Council of the EU, Brussels & Luxembourg, is the ‘upper house’, made up of senior leaders from the EU’s 27 governments.
- European Council, Brussels, is an advisory body; provides impetus and direction.
- The EU Commission, Brussels, is the executive arm of the multi-national organization.
- Court of Justice, Luxembourg Highest judicial body.
- European Central Bank, Frankfurt
- European Court of Auditors, Luxembourg
The European Parliament has real power these days, including to:
- Pass EU laws and scrutinize the executive
- Approve the EU’s budget
- Approve any new members, and
- Approve the European Commission President – nominated by the EU’s 27 leaders.
When all that is factored in, the EU’s 380 million voters are really weighing in to shape what the EU is and what the EU does.
And they’re doing that at a time when the EU itself can possibly shape major issues, whether it’s Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine (on the very doorsteps of the EU), China’s growing strategic power, the climate crisis, the energy transition, the international migration, and others (Newsletter International Intrigue, June 6).
What will happen?
Much will remain the same.
It’s looking like the parliament’s two big ‘old guard’ grouping of parties will remain the same big players: the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the centre-left Socialists & Democrats (S & D), with the EPP still on top.
But much will change too
Parties with more populist, nationalistic, Eurosceptic, and hard-right views polled well before the elections, and could very well end up as kingmakers.
The future contours of EU policy
- The EU-Commission President
The post has become more powerful over the last couple of decades.
The current president is Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s former defence minister [from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, now in the opposition].
She’s seeking re-election, but barely eked out a nine-vote majority last time (2019), so the populist parties could hold her fate in their hands.
- Migration policies
A more nationalist-populist parliament could mean stricter migration policies for the bloc, which has just seen a 17 % percent increase in irregular arrivals in a year.
- Some of those same smaller parties have also voiced disdain for von der Leyen’s EU Green Deal, which aims to make the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050.
- EU & the World
While Europe is broadly aligned on Ukraine, some of the populist parties [like the US Republicans] have voiced skepticism.
However, in the latest EU parliamentary elections, they have not ended up holding the balance of power, and cannot trim EU defence spending and shape EU security priorities.
There will be some serious horse-trading on plum positions like the president of the European Commission [currently Ursula von der Leyen from Germany] and the EU’s foreign minister or ‘High Representative’ [currently Josp Borrell, Spain’s former foreign minister, who has been relatively outspoken in criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza].
The Centre Still Holds
In a speech late Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the results so far showed her European People’s Party (EPP) – predicted to secure the most seats – could still act as an “anchor of stability,” but called on her political allies to help guard against extremist parties.
After an exit poll showed Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party expected to trounce his own candidates, French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the French parliament and called a risky snap election, with the first round on June 30.
Like Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also suffered a stinging blow in the exit poll, as his Social Democrats scored their worst-ever result of 14 % percent, while the mainstream centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came top with 29.5 % percent of the vote and the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) came an astounding second with 16.5 % percent.
Mexico’s Faltering Democracy
Beyond the feminist hopes encouraged by the election last Sunday of former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum as Mexico’s first female president, analysts have worried about the state of Mexico’s democracy – wondering if Sheinbaum will continue the populist, less-than-democratic tendencies of her patron, current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) {Fareed Zakaria: Global Briefing, June 5}.
AMLO “has built the most influential political machine since the days when Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) monopolized politics last century,” Bloomberg columnist Juan Pablo Spinetto noted before the election.
AMLO has feuded with the country’s election authority.
A separate issue from AMLO’s populism, Mexico is still beset by organized crime, and that has taken its toll on democracy.
Last week, just one day after Sheinbaum’s victory, the female mayor of the southwestern municipality Cotija, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa was shot to death along with her bodyguard by people in a white van.
Tony Garrastazu and Patrick Quirk of the International Republican Institute wrote in an LA Times op-ed before the election that “Mexico’s electoral machinery is struggling in the face of violence and threats.”
Last week Friday, Reuters noted a record 37 Mexican candidates for office had been assassinated ahead of Sunday’s vote.
As for questions about AMLO’s populist style, Sheinbaum now inherits leadership of his powerful Morena party.
Perhaps she will conclude that her mentor’s approach to politics – callousness, polarizing partisanship and a growing disregard for constitutional norms is a winning formula, Mexican journalist and Washington Post columnist Leon Krauze wrote before the vote.
“But there is a chance she chooses another path. She could adopt a fresh, more decent approach to politics, showing voters, especially those who voted for the opposition, that she is her own politician, independent from her predecessor. If that were to happen, I would hope the opposition would meet her halfway and start building a better future. Mexico can’t afford to spend another six years paralyzed by rancor.”
‘How Hamas Ends’
Domestic and international pressure keeps mounting for the Gaza war to end.
International opposition appears to be strengthened by each Israeli strike.
The families of Israeli hostages have demanded their government bring back their loved ones.
James Shotter and Neri Zilber write for the Financial Times that those demands were given fresh and bitter urgency this week as Israel’s military confirmed that four more of the 124 captives still held in Gaza had died, underscoring the families’ argument that Israel’s military campaign alone will not save their loved ones.”
And yet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to fight until Hamas is destroyed.
How might that happen?
In Foreign Affairs, Audrey Kurth Cronin proposes an answer, writing: “Over the course of decades of research, I have assembled a dataset of 457 terrorist campaigns and organizations, stretching back 100 years, and have identified six primary ways in which terrorist groups end. These pathways are not mutually exclusive . . . But Israel should pay close attention to one route in particular: groups that end not through military defeat, but through strategic failure.”
As for how Hamas’ collapse might come about, Cronin writes:
“Hamas has fissures that could widen and even lead to its collapse…Nut the far more likely way that Hamas could fail is through popular backlash. Hamas rules Gaza through oppression, using arrests and torture to suppress dissent…To help Hamas fail, Israeli should be doing everything in its power to give Palestinians in Gaza a sense that there is an alternative to Hamas and that a more hopeful future is possible. Instead of restricting humanitarian aid to a trickle, Israel should be providing it in massive quantities.”
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
Login to add a comment