French voters react to the expected results of the second round of legislative elections near Place de la Republique in Paris on July 7, 2024. (File photo | AP)
LONDON: As global power shifts and political certainties crumble, economically struggling and disgruntled voters have turned against incumbent governments of both the right and left in many of this year’s dozens of elections.
Voters from India to South Africa to Britain have dealt blows to long-ruling parties, European elections have shown growing support for the far right on the continent, and France’s centrist president has struggled to thwart a similar surge at home.
Speaking at a summit in Canada in June, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer said that if there’s a global trend, it’s that “people are tired of the incumbents.”
More than 40 countries have already held elections this year. More uncertainty awaits in 2024, when more than half of the world’s population will hold elections. The world is already feeling anxious about the US presidential elections in November, when an assassination attempt on Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump dealt a shocking blow to the fiercely contested race.
Unpopular incumbent
The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and soaring food and fuel prices have left disgruntled voters desperate for change.
“Voters really hate inflation,” says Rob Ford, a politics professor at the University of Manchester, “and they will punish governments that create inflation, whether through fault or not.”
Inflation and unemployment are rising in India, the world’s largest democracy, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party unexpectedly lost its parliamentary majority after a decade of rule. Opposition parties have doubled their hold on parliament, forcing Modi to turn to his coalition partners.
In South Africa, extremely high unemployment and inequality have led to a dramatic decline in support for the African National Congress, which has been in power since the white-minority apartheid system ended in 1994.
The party, formerly led by Nelson Mandela, lost its majority in parliament for the first time and was forced to form a coalition government with the opposition.
In Britain, the center-left Labour Party won a landslide victory, ousting the Conservatives for the first time in 14 years. As in many countries, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a fed-up electorate that wants lower prices and better public services but is deeply skeptical of politicians’ ability to deliver change.
US-China tensions
Taiwan, sandwiched between world powers China and the United States, held one of the most important elections this year.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai Ching-te won the presidential election, which was seen as a referendum on Taiwan’s relationship with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory.
Beijing views Lai as a separatist and has stepped up military pressure with military drills across the Taiwan Strait. Lai has pledged to strengthen the defence of the self-ruled region, and the United States has pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, raising tensions in one of the world’s hotbeds of conflict.
In Bangladesh, a key U.S. partner and close ally to China, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was elected for a fourth consecutive term in elections boycotted by the opposition. The U.S. and Britain said the vote was not credible, free or fair.
Political dynasties
In some countries, family ties help secure and consolidate power.
Pakistan held messy parliamentary elections overseen by the powerful military, pitting established politicians against one another for the prime ministerial post, led by a coalition led by Shehbaz Sharif, brother of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
The opposition alleges the election was rigged, with rival former prime minister Imran Khan jailed and barred from running. Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ruled that Khan’s party was unfairly denied some seats, and the situation remains unstable.
In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest democracy, former Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto has been formally sworn in as president, more than two months after an election in which he won more than 58% of the vote.
Subianto’s two losing rivals alleged fraud and nepotism — his vice president-elect is the son of outgoing President Joko Widodo and Subianto was the son-in-law of Indonesia’s late dictator Suharto — and the country’s Supreme Court rejected their claims.
Some outcomes were predictable. Russian President Vladimir Putin was re-elected to a fifth term in elections scheduled after a brutal crackdown on dissent. Rwanda’s elections extended the three-decade rule of President Paul Kagame, a largely unopposed authoritarian leader.
The Far Right’s Uneven Advance
Far-right forces are gaining strength in Europe as the continent struggles with economic uncertainty and an influx of migrants from conflict zones.
Parliamentary elections in the European Union’s 27 member states have shifted the bloc’s centre of gravity, shaking the ruling parties in France and Germany, the bloc’s traditional driving forces, with far-right forces shaking them down.
The European elections have caused political convulsions in France, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for risky early parliamentary elections to stave off the rise of the far-right after crushing defeats for centrist, pro-business parties.
The anti-immigration National Coalition party won the first round of voting but fell to third place in the second round due to a center-left alliance and strategic voting, leaving parliament divided.
New Faces, Tough Challenges
The presidential election was a test of Senegal’s reputation as a stable democracy in a West African region shaken by a series of recent coups.
The surprise winner was Basil Diomae Faye, a little-known opposition politician who was released from prison before the election as part of a political amnesty.
Faye is Africa’s youngest elected leader and his rise reflects widespread dissatisfaction among Senegalese youth with the direction of the country, which has made new oil and gas discoveries in recent years but whose people are yet to reap the real benefits.
Mexico has elected Claudia Scheinbaum as the first female president in the country’s 200-year history. The 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor and protégé of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed to continue the direction set by the popular leftist leader.
She faces a polarized electorate, deadly drug-related violence, an increasingly influential military and tensions with the United States over immigration.
Uncertainty is the new normal
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will seek an extension to his more than decade-long presidency marked by complex political, social and economic crises that have pushed millions into poverty and forced them from the country. The opposition is united, but the ruling party has tightly controlled the voting process, and many question whether the votes will be counted fairly.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, is set to hold its first long-delayed elections in December, a significant milestone but one fraught with risk and risk of failure.
The overriding question is the choice voters will make on November 5 in a nation that remains tense and divided. The shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, which wounded the former president and killed one rally attendee, came as Democrats agonized over the fitness of President Joe Biden, who has resisted calls for him to step down.
The prospect of a second term for Trump, a protectionist man wary of international conflict, is evidence that global power dynamics are shifting and political certainties are crumbling.
“The world is in transition,” said Neil Melvin, director of international security at the Royal Institute for Integrated Security Studies, a defence think tank.
“There is a very broad process going on that is reshaping the international order,” he added. “It’s a kind of anti-globalism. There is a return to the nation-state and a growing opposition to multilateralism.”
