January electoral roundup

I won’t have much time for blogging in the next fortnight, and what there is will probably be mostly about the United States, so let’s get in now with a quick review of what else has been happening around the world.

Vanuatu

Vanuatu went to the polls yesterday in an early election called to forestall a no-confidence motion against prime minister Charlot Salwai. Salwai had only been in office for a little over a year, but that was better than his two predecessors, who couldn’t manage a year between them.

The problems are the familiar ones of South Pacific politics: a weak party system, a bad electoral system, small electorates, entrenched corruption and an economy dominated by the public sector. As usual the outside world, including big brother Australia, shows little interest; we gladly offer aid in the face of natural disasters, but have done nothing to address the causes of democratic decay.

My post on the previous election (also held early) explains some of the political background. Broadly speaking, Salwai represents the centre-right or pro-French side of the country’s politics, but the reality is that he and his colleagues mostly just represent themselves.

Ghana

Ghana got a new president last week, although, like another more famous case, he is actually an old president recycled. John Mahama, who previously held the job from 2012 to 2017, returned after winning last month’s election, in which he beat Mahamudu Bawumia on the first round, 56.4% to 41.7%, a margin of more than 1.7 million votes.

Bawumia was vice-president under president Nana Akufo-Addo, who was prevented from running again by term limits. As was the rule in most places last year, the administration suffered from anger over inflation and its defeat came as no surprise. Mahama’s National Democratic Congress also won a big majority in the legislature.

Democracy in Africa is not having an easy time, but Ghana remains one of its success stories, as I highlighted as far back as 2009.

Mozambique

Symptomatic of that difficult time is Mozambique, which has also had a presidential inauguration. Daniel Chapo was sworn in on Wednesday in a ceremony boycotted by the opposition, which maintains that the October election was rigged.

As we noted at the time, the official results, which credited Chapo with 71% of the vote, were simply not credible. Sometimes violent protests since then, however, have failed to shake the government’s resolve; Chapo’s party, Frelimo, has never lost an election and evidently does not intend to start now.

Croatia

Finally some good news for an incumbent: Croatian president Zoran Milanović was re-elected for a second term with 74.7% of the vote in the runoff held last Sunday, a margin of more than 840,000 votes. The second round was only barely necessary; Milanović scored 49.7% in the first round, held a fortnight earlier, and was thirty points ahead of his main opponent, centre-right challenger Dragan Primorac, on just 19.6%.

Croatia has a parliamentary system so the position is mostly ceremonial, but Milanović has been a somewhat controversial incumbent: he did not hide his partisanship in last year’s parliamentary election and hoped to become prime minister if the centre-left had been victorious. He therefore has a poor relationship with his centre-right government – which survived the election with a reduced majority – and that will probably continue.

But Croatian voters seem to feel that divided government is not such a bad thing.