Leading Off
● Brazil – president (Oct. 28)
In a catastrophic outcome for the world's fourth-largest democracy, far-right former Army Capt. Jair Bolsonaro defeated leftist Fernando Haddad by 55-45 in the runoff to become Brazil's next president. Bolsonaro can rightly be called a fascist: He is an open admirer of Brazil's right-wing military dictatorship that brutally suppressed the opposition from 1964 to 1985 and claims the junta's failure was that it didn't kill enough people. His victory has sparked grave fears that he will attempt to dismantle Brazil's struggling three-decade-old democracy and consolidate his power with the military's support.
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Formerly a fringe figure with little national influence, Bolsonaro ran as an outsider and capitalized on massive corruption scandals that had tarnished both the long-ruling leftist Workers' Party and the center-right parties supporting President Michel Temer, who came to power in 2016 after he and his allies used the pretext of corruption to execute a legislative coup that removed leftist President Dilma Rousseff. Temer and the mainstream Right ushered in brutal fiscal austerity policies that left him discredited and with an approval rating in the single digits.
Former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is one of the most beloved politicians in a country that has otherwise soured on mainstream political figures, had been running to reclaim his old position, but after he was convicted and imprisoned for corruption, his Workers' Party had no popular standard-bearer and was left with Haddad. With voters fed up with endemic corruption, rising crime, and economic malaise, Bolsonaro stepped into that vacuum while Haddad was still saddled with voters' mistrust over his party's reputation for corruption.
Bolsonaro also benefited from a surge in Brazil's population of evangelical Christians, many of whom were drawn to his extreme hostility to abortion rights. Indeed, Bolsonaro is a virulent misogynist, homophobe, racist, and xenophobe: He once told a fellow member of Congress that she was too ugly to rape; has said if he had a gay son that he would prefer the child "die in an accident"; has commented that his actual sons were too "well-educated" to fall in love with black women; has disparaged indigenous and Afro-Brazilians as "lazy"; and has called African refugees the "scum of humanity."
Bolsonaro also holds plutocratic views on economic matters and was overwhelmingly backed by the business elite, since he favors neoliberal policies that will gut social protections for the working class. With devastating consequences for the global fight against climate change, Bolsonaro intends to let big corporations ravage the environment, and the Amazon rainforest in particular, by rolling back regulations put in place under the Workers' Party. And because his far-right Social Liberal Party and more mainstream conservatives made large gains, the highly fragmented new Congress leans strongly to the right.
Most alarming is Bolsonaro's utter disregard for the rule of law and civil rights, his love of military dictatorship, and his glorification of violence and even torture. He has promised to purge his leftist political opponents and either imprison them or force them into exile. Bolsonaro has also vowed to militarize law enforcement and all but let both the military and the police kill with impunity as a response to the country's high violent crime rate. Scholars of fascism and the far-Right are rightly concerned that Bolsonaro will use the levers of state power to subvert democracy itself.
Frighteningly, media reports arose that police had conducted warrantless raids of universities across Brazil to confiscate anti-fascist materials and interrogate professors under the pretext of enforcing laws that regulate political advertising during campaign periods. Brazil's Supreme Court unanimously rebuked law enforcement over this gross violation of the rule of law, but it's just a prelude to what Bolsonaro may try to unleash as president. He's already called for censorship in the education system at large, and that's surely just the beginning.
Notable Developments
● Australia – Wentworth by-election (Oct. 20)
Last month, the center-right Liberals lost the seat vacated by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, sending their coalition with the more right-wing National Party into minority government for the final months of its term. Turnbull had resigned after losing a leadership election for the Liberal Party and getting replaced by Scott Morrison, a more right-wing candidate, and his suburban Sydney seat massively swung towards independent Kerryn Phelps over Liberal nominee Dave Sharma.
The Liberals' loss could have conceivably brought down the government, but so-called "crossbench" members of Parliament (those associated with neither the government nor the opposition Labor Party) have thus far allowed the government to continue with only 74 of the chamber's 150 seats. Australia's next federal election will likely take place in the spring of 2019.
● Canada: New Brunswick – government formation
After winning a plurality of the popular vote but falling short of the threshold for a majority government in October's provincial election, New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant made an effort to preserve his Liberal Party's government when the provincial legislature re-convened on Nov. 1. As expected, though, this effort failed, and Progressive Conservative Blaine Higgs has become the 34th premier of this Atlantic Canadian province. Higgs' center-right PCs won 22 seats to the Liberals' 21, both short of the 25 needed for majority status. However, in a decisive turn of events, a minor right-wing populist party, the People's Alliance, managed to win three seats in last month's election. It subsequently gave its support to Higgs' leadership, giving New Brunswick its first minority government since 1920.
● Germany: Bavaria – state parliament (Oct. 14); Hesse – state parliament (Oct. 28); CDU leadership election (Dec. 7)
Significant changes have come to the German political scene, and more are on the way. Angela Merkel has announced that she will not run for re-election as party leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in December and will not seek to continue on as chancellor beyond the current parliament, scheduled to end in 2021. Merkel has led Germany since 2005 and has been a moderating force during the rise of right-wing populism across Europe.
There are three main candidates to take over the leadership of the CDU. CDU General Secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (often referred to by her initials, "AKK") is widely regarded as Merkel's preferred choice and someone who would continue Merkel's leadership style. Two other contenders, former CDU parliamentary leader Friedrich Merz and Health Minister Jens Spahn, are further to the right, with Merz and AKK seen by observers as neck and neck among the 1,001 CDU delegates who will decide the election. A win by Merz or Spahn could also hasten Merkel's departure from the chancellorship prior to her planned departure in 2021.
Meanwhile, CDU, along with its more right-wing Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and their grand coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), all continue to suffer losses in state elections. In Bavaria, CSU had its worst showing since 1950, dropping more than 10 points since the last election and losing the party's overall majority. CSU was forced to form a coalition with the Free Voters of Bavaria, a centrist regional party that came in third. The SPD, meanwhile, lost half of its vote, mostly to the center-left Greens, who came in second place. Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right Islamophobic anti-immigrant party, won 10 percent of the vote in its first time competing in Bavarian state elections.
In the western German state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, CDU and SPD again both saw drops of more than 10 points, largely to the benefit of the Greens and AfD. The Greens just barely beat out SPD for second place, and AfD can now claim to be represented in every state parliament in Germany—a distinction only SPD and CDU/CSU could claim previously. Despite the CDU's losses, the party still came in first and will likely continue its pre-election coalition with the Greens, though with only a one-seat majority.
● Madagascar – president (Nov. 7 & Dec. 19)
The first round of Madagascar's presidential election among three former heads of state saw the defeat of recent incumbent Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who had resigned earlier in 2018 amid protests over proposed electoral reforms and paved the way for a caretaker consensus government to administer elections. Advancing to December's runoff were former Presidents Marc Ravalomanana and Andry Rajoelina, who had ousted Ravalomanana in a 2009 military coup and held power until 2014.
Rajoelina held a 39-36 lead over Ravalomanana, with Rajaonarimampianina taking a measly 7 percent in the first round, but international election observers alleged instances of vote-buying and other fraud, especially by Rajoelina, and both leading candidates criticized the country's election commission. Madagascar has struggled to hold free and fair elections since the end of a military-backed transitional regime in 2014, and it's unclear if these latest results will be viewed as more legitimate than previous elections.
● Mali – parliament (Nov. 25 & Dec. 16)
After a relatively smooth presidential election over the summer, Mali will conduct parliamentary elections later this month, with runoffs scheduled for Dec. 16 where necessary. Mali had been among Africa's most stable democracies in the 1990s and 2000s, but an Islamist insurgency followed by a temporary coup d'etat in 2012 put the country on much less stable footing. U.N. peacekeeping forces and French troops remain on the ground in Mali to defend against Islamist attacks.
● Sweden – government formation
For the first time in modern Swedish history, parliament has rejected a proposed prime minister after the conservative Moderate Party failed to form a center-right minority coalition government with the smaller center-right Christian Democrats, Centre Party, and Liberals. Because Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson attempted to overcome the left-of-center bloc's plurality by relying on votes from the far-right Sweden Democrats to command a majority, the more centrist Liberals and Centre Party bolted, voting down a government they argued would have been held hostage to the whims of extremists.
However, both the Liberals and the Centre Party have ruled out backing a center-left Social Democratic coalition, given their wide differences on economic policy, so Sweden is still no closer to forming a government after September's elections produced fragmentation unprecedented in the post-World War II era. Parties will have to resume negotiations, but it appears one of the few, if only, realistic configurations remaining would involve some sort of grand coalition between the Social Democrats and the Moderates, which has never happened before. Consequently, new elections are far from implausible.