Leading Off
● Hungary – parliament (April 8)
Hungary has been ground zero for a worrisome retrenchment of democracy and the rule of law that has spread through Eastern Europe over the past decade. In the wake of the Great Recession, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's radical right-wing Fidesz party won a supermajority in parliament in 2010. He has since used that dominant position to consolidate power across the government, media, and industry. With no real challenge on the horizon in the upcoming election, Orban will continue to run Hungary for the foreseeable future.
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Because Fidesz's two-thirds majority allowed parliament to amend the Hungarian constitution, there's been almost no check on Orban's increasing power. Over the past eight years, Fidesz has been able to change electoral laws, replace independent judges with stooges, take over state-run media, and neutralize any part of the government with an independent voice.
The new electoral laws allowed Fidesz to retain its supermajority with only 45 percent of the vote in 2014, thanks in part to a familiar tool: gerrymandering. (Fidesz subsequently fell below the two-thirds mark after two special election losses, but its power remains largely undiminished.) The European Union, which subsidizes Hungary to the tune of billions of dollars a year, has pushed back at times, but it's been ineffective in getting Hungary to respect the rule of law and democratic norms.
While Hungary has not reached the levels of authoritarianism in, for example, Russia, a better comparison might be Turkey. Like Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not tried to outlaw opposition parties, though both have put fingers on the scale. But they both seem to think that an election victory means that they should be able to act completely unchecked. Of course, it's unclear in both cases what would happen if an opposition party actually won an election and tried to take power.
No other party in Hungary is in a position to challenge Fidesz and Orban, who are polling close to 50 percent. In 2014, a center-left coalition won just 26 percent of the vote, almost 20 points behind Fidesz. That coalition soon fell apart and the leading center-left part, the Hungarian Socialist Party, is now polling in the teens. Jobbik, an anti-Semitic neo-fascist party, is actually polling in second place in the high teens. There is also a Green Party and another center-left party called Democratic Coalition, both polling in the high single digits.
The only real question is whether or not Fidesz will win a two-thirds majority again. But even if it falls short, much of the damage has already been done, and Orban will almost certainly be allowed to continue ruling unimpeded.
Notable Developments
● Colombia – legislature (March 11)
Colombia held its first legislative elections since the passage of a landmark peace agreement at the end of 2016 with the far-left rebel group FARC, which agreed to disarm and participate peacefully in the electoral process. While FARC won very few votes, the governing centrist parties, led by Party of National Unity President Juan Manuel Santos, suffered major losses. Right-wing parties, led by former President Alvaro Uribe's Democratic Center Party, gained a significant number of seats, although it's unclear if they'll be able to form a majority coalition.
These results could foreshadow the outcome of the May 28 presidential election to succeed the term-limited Santos. Polling in countries like Colombia is often very difficult, but surveys show that the main contenders appear to be Democratic Center nominee Ivan Duque and former Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro, who is a leftist. However, it's unclear just who will make the runoff, since Sergio Fajardo, a former governor of Antioquia, the second-largest of the country's 32 departments, is running on a centrist platform and could make it to the second round.
● Sierra Leone – president and legislature (March 7 & March 31)
Presidential candidates representing the two largest parties in Sierra Leone comfortably advanced to a runoff, with a close second round expected. With incumbent Ernest Bai Koroma barred from running again after 10 years in office, his All People's Congress party put forward Samura Kamara, an economist who has served as finance minister and foreign minister. The opposition Sierra Leone People's Party is running Julius Maada Bio, who served in the Sierra Leone military and led a coup in 1996 that took down the ruling military junta and returned the country to democratic rule.
Both major candidates won around 43 percent of the vote, while the other contenders were well behind in the single digits. Kamara dominated in the north, where the APC has strong support among the Temne and Limba people, while Bio dominated in the south of the country. Bio previously ran for the presidency against Koroma in 2012 and won 37 percent of the vote, so his first-round showing is already an improvement over his prior performance. The runoff took place on Saturday, March 31, but the outcome won't be known until later in the week. We'll cover the results of the runoff in next month's International Elections Digest.
Grab Bag
● Canada: Ontario – Progressive Conservative leadership election (March 10)
In a stunning turn of events, members of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party (known colloquially as the Tories) elected former Toronto City Councilor Doug Ford, brother of deceased crack-smoking right-wing populist Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, as their new leader. Ford, who in 2016 described his support for Donald Trump as "unwavering," hopes to finally topple incumbent Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberal Party has held power continuously for 15 years in Canada's most populous province, in an election scheduled for June 7.
Despite his profile, in the handful of opinion polls taken since Ford's win, the PCs have maintained the lead that they've (mostly) held for the past three years. However, the non-conservative vote is currently split just about evenly between Wynne's Liberals and the left-leaning New Democratic Party under Andrea Horwath.
● Slovakia – prime minister's resignation
After widespread protests in the wake of the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, Prime Minister Robert Fico resigned from office but ensured that his Social Democratic party would continue to govern the country. Deputy Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini will take over the top job, but no one expects Fico, who remains head of his party, to step too far away from power. New elections are not required before March of 2020.
● Slovenia – parliament (May)
Slovenia will hold parliamentary elections in May—one month ahead of schedule—following Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s resignation in March. Cerar's centrist to center-left Modern Centre Party has become deeply unpopular, and polls show it poised to lose the vast majority of its seats. Those same surveys also show a surge for Marjan Sarec's center-left party, and it could end up forming another coalition with the Social Democrats and a few other parties.