Thailand:
Yingluck Shinawatra was sworn in as Thailand’s first-ever female prime minister in early August following the landslide victory of the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) in the general elections on 3 July. The PTP took 265 seats against the incumbent Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democratic Party’s 159.
Yingluck, the younger sister of the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, maintains her family’s leadership of the antiestablishment ‘red shirt’ movement. Until Thaksin’s overthrow in a military coup in 2006, he had been highly popular with the rural poor for offering cheap healthcare and village loans. The exiled Thaksin has been sentenced, in his absence, to two years in jail for corruption. Soon after taking office, the new deputy premier Chalerm Yubamrung announced that fugitive convicted criminals, including Thaksin, could seek a royal pardon.
Several leading red-shirt protesters from the recent past were appointed to senior advisory posts in the government, but the key position of finance minister has gone to a former central banker, Thirachai Phuvanatnaranubala, who said his priority would be to maintain fiscal stability and to improve productivity in the economy. Bilateral talks with Cambodia took place in late August signalling a probable easing of the recent border tensions between the two countries.
Tunisia:
With an election date for a constituent assembly set by the interim authorities for 23 October, dozens of political parties have put forward candidates for the 218-seat assembly. The electoral lists are required to have equal numbers of men and women, and the candidates are expected to have no links with the former ruling party, which was dissolved soon after former President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was removed from power in January.
The ten biggest of the new parties range from Islamists to pro-market liberals to Communists. Opinion polls in August showed that Tunisians were undecided about their preferred parties, although they clearly favoured the essential principles of multi-party politics, freedom of expression and an independent judiciary. The mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda, has been effective in gathering support while promising not to make changes to secular aspects of Tunisian society, including women’s rights. The secular parties hope to outnumber Ennahda in the new assembly.
Denmark:
An alliance of left-of-centre parties secured a majority in Denmark’s general election of 15 September, bringing to an end the country’s ten years of centre-right rule. The result meant that the leader of the Social Democrats, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, became the country’s first female prime minister. She has set about forming a coalition that could maintain a possible majority of five seats in the 179-seat parliament, despite clear differences of policy between the left-wing Red-Green Alliance and the more centrist Social Liberals. Thorning-Schmidt’s platform included increased government spending, raising taxes on the wealthy and a plan for an extra hour’s work per week.
Egypt:
With both parliamentary and presidential elections due to be held some time in November, Egypt’s military rulers have been trying to lay new and ostensibly fairer political foundations to replace the monopolistic system that prevailed under President Hosni Mubarak – who was ousted in February after weeks of popular protests and has since been put on trial. The political and cultural elite has been wrangling over whether the constitution should be drafted before electing a new parliament, and if supra-constitutional principles should be laid down to prevent the country becoming an overtly Islamic state.
It is widely agreed that no political party should have the kind of special relationship with the state bureaucracy that was enjoyed by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, and that the security services should not be in a position to dictate whether candidates win or lose. A law issued by the armed forces in July said that half the seats in the People’s Assembly would be awarded through a list-based system and the other half by a single-winner system. There has, however, been concern that this could favour the better-organised groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Each party’s access to financial resources across the country will be critical to its final tally of seats. The FJP has so far appeared to be the best financed and best organised, and the idea of it going into a coalition with the liberal Wafd Party has been mooted.
One of the leading presidential candidates, Mohamed El Baradei, said in early September that holding elections on the basis of individual candidacy involved taking serious risks because of the current lack of security control. El Baradei also asked for greater clarity about the timing of the elections and the means by which a new constitution will be drafted. Other leading presidential candidates are expected to be Amr Moussa, a former head of the Arab League, Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist politician, and Ayman Nour, a long-standing opposition politician who stood against Mubarak in 2005.
Democratic Republic of Congo:
There are risks of renewed violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo as it prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections in November. There is ongoing conflict between different militia groups in the east of the country and demonstrations have been staged in the capital, Kinshasa, by opposition supporters claiming pre-election fraud. The elections will provide a test of the readiness of the electoral authorities, the police and international peacekeepers to deal with complaints and disagreements.
The main contenders for power are expected to be President Joseph Kabila and his People’s Party for Reconciliation and Democracy, and the veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi, who leads the Union for Democracy and Social Progress. However, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo has again named Jean-Pierre Bemba, who came second in the 2006 elections, as its presidential candidate, although he is held by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on war crimes charges.
