Category Archives: Arsenal Analysis

New Turkey elections might be AKP’s worst option

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I suspect the AKP will regret it sorely if they call another election immediately, which is an option that has already been floated by some of the AK membership’s sorer losers (or sore 18-seats-short plurality-winners).

Here’s my back-of-the-envelope assessment on why new elections would return an even worse result for the AK Party than most other longer-term options, including a weak minority government or an unpleasant coalition arrangement. First, I bet there aren’t a lot of people who cast a vote for a non-AK option on Sunday and then wished they hadn’t. The only exception would perhaps be some small share of the 942,000 cranky voters for the Felicity Party — the minor Islamist party that shares roots with AKP…but it is generally antagonistic because of the shared background. The trendline is very much against the AKP, and buyer’s remorse from the first round is more likely to hurt them than to hurt the other major parties. The AKP in 2015 lost 2.3 million votes since the 2014 presidential election less than a year ago, despite 6 million higher turnout. To be honest, I wonder how the AKP didn’t see this month’s result coming after the lower-turnout presidential election saw the HDP get 9.76%, just shy of the 10% cutoff that applies in a parliamentary race. That meant they were credibly within reach and needed to be taken more seriously (especially to be a potential partner), rather than marginalized, literally attacked, and otherwise mishandled.

Second, there was a fairly large number of people who cast votes either for AKP or for a minor party (they collectively got about ~2.5 million votes I think) that I believe would vote for a different Big 3 opposition party now, knowing how everyone else ended up voting in the first round. In particular, I bet HDP would get an even bigger result in a fresh election now that it’s clear they can pass the 10% threshold so it’s not a “waste” to vote for them. Kurds, other minority voters, and Turkish allies in the electorate are likely to be even more enthusiastic about the party’s message and viability alike in an immediate second election, riding the successful momentum of the first one. The party specifically picked up a huge chunk of Kurdish ex-AKP supporters — and that’s likely to go up, if it goes any direction.

Third, even if AK holds fairly steadily onto its own voters but some 2 million minor-party voters shifted across to the Big 3 opposition parties in a second election, a CHP/MHP/HDP tripartite arrangement would emerge with the support of 27 million votes, not just 25 million. A narrower CHP/HDP liberal coalition would reach perhaps 18 million votes…which is just shy of what AKP got this time. That’s not enough for a liberal majority either, but it probably would land only 18-20 seats away. Between possible confidence-vote options from MHP (in theory anyway) and the more realistic scenario of HDP shaving off a fair number of additional MPs from AKP in Kurdish constituencies in a second round, I’d bet they could make it work some way or another. Which is not to say that such a coalition would be stable.

But it is to suggest (along with the other factors above) that AKP is probably looking at a far rosier scenario under their current performance than after a 2nd election.

Now to make lemonade out of lemons and demonstrate the rosier world than new elections, let’s acknowledge that there are some pretty acceptable coalition/cooperation scenarios if the AKP wants to seize the opportunity under the hand it was just dealt. Preliminary AKP/CHP talks have begun. One particularly exciting scenario for Turkey and the AK Party alike would be if Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu reached a deal that stripped significance powers away and platform out from under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sidelining him (and silencing him to the extent humanly possible) — rather than elevating him further — and finally allowing Davutoğlu to fly on his own. He’s been really squashed trying to escape Erdoğan’s shadow, but he always seemed pretty decent and very competent, with far less personal baggage than his benefactor. He could break the link between the party and its increasingly authoritarian / rogue party founder, Mr. Erdoğan. The party could move past him (and get on with the good work it had been doing under his leadership before he began to go around the bend in 2013), voters would be less alarmed by returning an AK majority to power in the near future, and Turkey’s democracy would be stronger.

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Mexico Elections: The seething chaos below

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In January, I published my article “The Questions Posed by the World’s 2015 Elections,” in which I identified the 15 national elections around the world that I thought presented the most intriguing or important questions this year. Chronologically, Mexico’s midterm legislative election held today will come as number five for the year (tied with Turkey, which is holding its parliamentary elections today too).

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Here are the questions I identified in January for Mexico’s election today (when voters will fill well over 2,000 national, state, and local offices around the country):

Mexico: Will the insulated Federal District finally be shaken out of its slumber by a growing protest movement and other reactions to the total capture of Mexican state and local government by the cartels? The Congress is up for election, but without a sea change in the foreign-focused Peña Nieto administration, few expect serious policy shifts at home, whatever the outcome of the midterms. Still, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition any more than they expect a spontaneous mass uprising that forces just such a sea change. Could be too early to tell.

 
Here’s an updated state of play as published in teleSUR (the Venezuelan-based pan-Latin American media outlet) and authored by Dan La Botz, the editor of “Mexican Labor News and Analysis” an online publication by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America and Frente Auténtico del Trabajo of Mexico:

Already at least 20 pre-candidates, candidates, and campaign managers have been killed while there have been dozens of other violent attacks on other candidates, campaign events, and party offices. Drug cartels are believed to be responsible for the murders of candidates who presumably threatened their interests, further fueling uncertainty about what the cartels might do on election day.

However, the larger threat to the Mexican government’s election plans comes from social and political protest movements. Teachers, indigenous groups, peasant communities, and armed “self-defense” organizations in various states say that Mexico’s political system and parties are corrupt and that voters should abstain from participating. Some groups announced plans to disrupt the election altogether.

 
Beyond cartel violence (and the uncontrolled vigilante groups that rose to oppose them), there are “militant teachers” angry over proposed education reforms:

The National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), a militant caucus within the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) which has been leading the resistance to the Education Reform Law passed by the Mexican Congress, has not only called for a boycott of the election, but intends to enforce a boycott in some states. In several states—Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacan, Oaxaca, and Zacatecas—teachers have blocked highways, seized toll booths, taken over the district office of National Electoral Institute (INE), and in some areas seized Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) refineries, leading to some conflicts with the police.

 
And then there are the escalating protests over the national government’s mishandling of the brutal massacre of more than 40 student-teacher activists last year at the hands of a local politician and cartel members. Those protests, seizures of government buildings, and disruption of highways are being orchestrated by other students and the families of the murdered activists. They hope to stop the election from going forward at all in the state where the mass murder occurred.

As the article also explains, between the factions openly trying to prevent the elections from happening (or at least boycotting them, formally or otherwise) and the serious partisan fractures on the left among those still planning to vote, the odds are actually significantly in favor of the conservative Peña Nieto government retaining its majority — and probably even adding to it.

But even as the election is likely to favor President Enrique Peña Nieto in its top-line results, it is also exposing a growing instability below the surface and signals that “the centre cannot hold” for much longer; things will fall apart if the status quo inaction and state failure in the face of underlying pandemonium continues.

In any other country, what is happening in Mexico right now would probably be considered a civil war on par with the past decade’s events in Iraq or Yemen. How soon will the national government (and other countries) wake up to that?

Turkey Elections: Down to the wire

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In January, I published my article “The Questions Posed by the World’s 2015 Elections,” in which I identified the 15 national elections around the world that I thought presented the most intriguing or important questions this year. Chronologically, Turkey’s parliamentary election held today will come as number five for the year (tied with Mexico, which is holding its midterm legislative elections today too).

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Here are the questions I identified in January for Turkey’s election today:

Can PM-turned-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party continue to consolidate its electoral mandate in the assembly (and consolidate power to the presidency instead of the prime minister’s office) in the face of mounting questions about the government’s Syria policy, Kurdish policy, family policies, and general authoritarian trends? Mathematically, even without any authoritarianism, the answer is probably yes. Should they? That’s a trickier question.

 
The mathematical question is shaping up to be a potentially much more gripping one than expected then. The dramatic and complex Kurdish political gamble (see my explanation from March) actually looks like it has a shot of paying off in the form of the Kurdish HD Party clearing its entry threshold to join parliament — though it is still very much on the margin of success and failure. If they win just over 10% of the vote, Erdogan’s aspirations for constitutional reform will likely collapse because the HD Party will taken some 50 seats that the AKP could otherwise use to reach a supermajority. If the HDP win slightly less than 10%, they’ll be wiped out completely and amendments will happen. They are hovering on the brink according to polling analyzed at the Al-Monitor link above. There have also been violent bomb attacks against Kurdish political supporters in recent days; the reaction from Erdogan — whose dreams are threatened by the HDP’s surging support — was not overly sympathetic.
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Waiting for a “Disruptor” candidate

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The ill effects of big money’s domination of our political system are indeed multitudinous and heavy. But I’m not as pessimistic as you might think about the possibilities of reversing that trend.

True, there are candidates who simply don’t care about the corrupting and corrosive influence of the sea of campaign cash on American politics and governance. But many of the candidates who do care (or would at least prefer not to have to do so much fundraising) have also made themselves excessively dependent on “consultants” and “strategists.” These operatives literally get compensated based on the number and cost of television ads that run — and quite often nothing else. In other words, the more ads that run and the more they cost, the more the consultants and strategists get paid (to tell the candidate to run more ads or lose the race).

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This is actually one reason why the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign could be genuinely fascinating. He’s reportedly planning to rely far less heavily on TV advertising and use the money for things that are probably genuinely more productive for delivering votes. This also very likely means he can run a solid campaign with vastly less money. If he can win some states and put up a decent showing, it might encourage other Democratic candidates in future (at various levels of government) to ditch the failed media-consultant model. Already there have been some low-profile victories in recent non-presidential races for Dems who emphasized cheap ground game over costly TV ad wars.

There’s a model from outside politics that demonstrates the potential of eschewing the costly TV-oriented campaign model in favor of something else. Successful internet apps and platforms generally seem to rise initially through favorable, viral word-of-mouth from early users. Not from expensive ad buys. People try the thing, they like it, and they tell everyone else to get on board. Yes there’s also less likely to be barrages of attack ads from a rival company against the new product, but the main factor in boosting consumer adoption is the positive and enthusiastic word-of-mouth reviews. (Negative ads in politics, by the way, tend to depress turnout rather than persuading someone to switch from one candidate to another.)

Of course, the media networks that cash in big on these advertisement purchases won’t be happy if such a transformation occurs. But legacy media has less total control than they once did. I believe it’s easier than ever for a candidate to break through by other means and get their message out with the help of enthusiastic voters who like them.

So: which presidential candidate is going to be the first to try being a “disruptor” and ditch the media-consultant/ad-buy model? Which candidate will win on the strength of favorable word-of-mouth from voters meeting him/her in person, without omnipresent TV ad exposure?

The toxicity of expensive TV campaigns and the consultants who push them is a relatively small, fixable problem to tackle that also carries fairly large ramifications for our political system.

Lessons from Burundi’s post-Civil War constitution

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The following is an installment in my ongoing series on the 2015 Burundian constitutional crisis.

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After reading the 2005 French-language Burundian constitution myself, I have tentatively come to the conclusion that the current President, Pierre Nkurunziza, is technically constitutionally allowed to seek another term — but only by deliberately misconstruing some poor word choices in the text. First, I present my textual analysis to develop this finding. Second, are my recommendations on what lessons can be drawn from this crisis, in terms of future drafting of documents to guide political transitions and post-transition foundations.

Basically, there are two conflicting elements in the text. Article 302 stipulated that the first “post-transition” president — which ended up being Mr. Nkurunziza — specifically had to be elected by both chambers of parliament, rather than the voters directly, “on a purely exceptional basis”:

A titre exceptionnel, le premier Président de la République de la période post-transition est élu par l’Assemblée Nationale et le Sénat élus réunis en Congrès, à la majorité des deux tiers des membres.

 
(My direct translation: “On a purely exceptional basis, the first President of the Republic of the post-transition period is chosen by the elected National Assembly and Senate assembled in Congress, with a two-thirds majority of the members.”)

But at the same time, Article 96 states that (in general, presumably): “The President of the Republic” is to be “elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year term renewable once”:

Le Président de la République est élu au suffrage universel direct pour un mandat de cinq ans renouvelable une fois.

 
So President Nkurunziza’s argument is that because he was indirectly elected under Article 302 in 2005 and then elected directly to a five-year term in 2010 that means he is eligible to renew his term one more time by direct election. Which is pretty sketchy — but a literally acceptable interpretation of the text, since Article 96 failed to take the lingering effects of Article 302 (which falls under the “Special Provisions” Title XV) explicitly into account.

Lessons: The wording of Article 96 is grammatically and syntactically stitched together for elegant efficiency rather than explicit clarity, which now seems to have been a mistaken decision. I believe one of the former Burundian Supreme Court members labeled it against the “spirit” of the document and the Arusha Accords that preceded it, even if it was perhaps a textually permitted interpretation.

Of course, there’s little likelihood that preventing this loophole could have avoided the current situation entirely, given that the President was determined to amend the constitution anyway, until he discovered he could use the loophole instead and avoid the hassle. Clearly he had an agenda, with or without this language error. Still, it has needlessly provided him a very convenient shield for his actions. And that, at least, could indeed have been avoided.

Recommendation to future transitional/foundational document drafters: Break up your sentences. And account for deliberate misinterpretations of conflicting provisions. If it had said “The President of the Republic is elected by direct universal suffrage. A presidential term is five years in length and renewable once” there would likely be no way to misread it intentionally. By joining those three thoughts (direct election AND term length AND term limit) into one sentence, it made the term limit contingent upon the election method, which itself had been exceptionally overridden in the other article for the purposes of the first post-transition term only.

While this subject may seem excessively narrow to which to devote a detailed analysis, I bring up these observations about the importance of precise drafting because I found it to be similar to Burkina Faso’s incredibly messy constitutional revisions that (apparently inadvertently!) left literally no one in line to succeed the presidency upon a vacancy, forcing — or at least facilitating and quasi-legitimizing — a military coup when the president resigned unilaterally. These decisions on wording can have far-reaching implications years later.

There will be a next political and economic leap forward

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Why should it be surprising that systems and processes created 50-70 years ago no longer work or command broad popular support? An international order created in a cauldron of Cold War and unresolved global colonialism has broken down in a completely different world? You don’t say!

Processes of democracy have remained largely stagnant since a period before internet, computing — or even legal participation by most of humanity. Many of its elements have hardly been modernized in many of the world’s “leading” democracies since before even all adult White men had the right to vote, let alone everyone else.

Many if not most of the major parties or their clear predecessors in the northern industrialized democracies (including those in the United States) were launched/became serious or were significantly reforged a little over 100 years ago. Of those centennial parties, few have undergone serious, radical transformation since then, even after two world wars and the end of the Cold War. They may have moderated or moved toward a midpoint, or they may have consolidated toward the wings, but they are largely still organized along century-old ideological axes.

In the span of 50 years, virtually all the global conditions and realities have changed. Virtually none of the governing, formal organizing, or official economic systems have.

History isn’t “finished” or “completed.” It didn’t end in 1965. It just keeps evolving, constantly. Why would you expect to see fewer radical changes in the global situation in the coming century (or quarter-century) than in the last century (or quarter-century)? If anything, they seem likely to grow more frequent.

Why are there so many people in positions of power or the media who seem stunned and confused that there is widespread public dissatisfaction in stagnant and unresponsive institutions at a national, supranational, and global level when they were devised 50, 70, 100, or more than 200 years ago and have barely been revised since? Why are they writing it all off as the misinformed whining of ignorant masses, after spending decades preaching about the wonders of democracy and public participation in self-governance?

There is no “permanent” order of things unchained from time, place, or circumstance. There’s no “inevitable” course of political and economic development. Why are we collectively so unwilling to begin to consider the next evolution of the two?

Mexican state of Baja Calif. to test government wage support

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While far from an ideal solution, Mexico’s federal government is planning to experiment in the state of Baja California with an unprecedented program to subsidize the difference between private wages and livable incomes for some farm workers.

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If signed on June 4, this plan negotiated by the state and federal government — in an effort to prevent current labor disputes, strikes, and blockades from boiling over into wider disorder or violence — would be in lieu of setting a much higher minimum wage and attempting to compel the private industry to pay that full amount (probably to keep the companies from just moving the jobs to another state with a lower prevailing wage).

The downside of the plan (I’m guessing) is that it’s likely some companies will try to lower their wages (illegally or otherwise) to pay even less at prevailing effective wage levels, but the government says it will negotiate with the industry to come to some sort of solution so that the existence of subsidies isn’t abused. (They’ll also raise the minimum wage somewhat — just not all the way to the 200 pesos/day target. The remaining difference will then be subsidized.)

Another criticism will likely be that this is essentially a taxpayer-funded gift to the large Mexican agribusiness corporations whose representatives and allies dominate the state’s government. But more on that later.

In general, of course, this new plan is fairly strange to our eyes, because the government here (also) typically doesn’t have a direct role in subsidizing general wages, since paying workers is a role we assign entirely to the actual employers, and the government just sets the legal floor. In theory. As The Atlantic points out, that’s not actually really accurate in practice in the United States; we just obscure it better than doing direct wage subsidies:

Having the government step in to fill the gap between reality’s wages and livable wages might seem foreign to Americans, but the U.S. government in a sense already does this—just less directly. A recent study from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center found that nearly three-quarters of people participating in government programs such as Medicaid and food stamps are in families headed by workers. The authors, calling this a “hidden [cost] of low-wage work in America,” estimated that through these programs, taxpayers provide these families with about $150 billion in public support. Additionally, programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit essentially subsidize the wages of workers whose income is below a certain level.

Shouldn’t companies be making up this difference instead of taxpayers? That’s how some state legislatures feel. Starting next year, California will publicly name any company that has more than 100 employees on Medicaid. And in Connecticut, state legislators are considering a bill that would require large employers to pay a penalty for each worker on their rolls earning less than $15 an hour.

 
And of course those various hidden costs to the government don’t even get into the actual blatant government subsidies in the U.S. for various agricultural production like dairy and corn to maintain certain production and price levels. Or the various massive tax incentives doled out to attract companies to specific states or communities (ideally only if they create a specific number of jobs, which is then essentially a wage support program in disguise).

But the Mexico experiment gets to the bigger questions: Whose job is it to ensure a livable wage in a globalized economy? And how is that goal best achieved, regardless of “moral” responsibility?

We may not instinctively like the idea of the government writing a check to make up the difference when private industry tries to tighten the screws on its workers in a loose labor market that favors employers, but what we like and how to realistically get the necessary goal accomplished may be two increasingly different answers in the 21st century.
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