{"id":2626,"date":"2011-04-26T16:52:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T16:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/?p=2626"},"modified":"2011-05-03T10:59:09","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T10:59:09","slug":"election-watch-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/2011\/04\/election-watch-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Myanmar<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Thein Sein was chosen to become Myanmar\u2019s first civilian President in 50 years on 4 February. A career soldier and general who resigned his commission to stand in last November\u2019s parliamentary elections, Thein was appointed by parliament, which met for the first time in more than two decades. The new President represents the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), landslide winners of the 2010 poll, which was widely held to be unfair due to pre-election voting, prohibitively high candidacy fees, the restriction of campaigning and media censorship. At the time, opposition parties lodged complaints with the election commission accusing the USDP of fraud. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi refused to take part in the election and urged her supporters to boycott it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The office of president has a strong executive function, which includes the power to appoint the head of the armed forces, the cabinet and chief ministers of regions and states. Thein\u2019s record of loyalty to General Than Shwe, leader of Myanmar\u2019s military junta since 1992, makes it highly unlikely that the army\u2019s overwhelming influence on politics will be shaken.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cape Verde<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In parliamentary elections held on 6 February, Cape Verde reinforced its reputation for political stability in a region prone to coups and wars. Opposition leader Carlos Veiga, Prime Minister between 1991 and 2001, conceded defeat even before the official results were announced. Veiga\u2019s party, the Movement for Democracy, secured only 32 seats in the 72-seat parliament against 38 for the ruling African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV), giving Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves, who first took office in 2001, a third consecutive five-year term. The government\u2019s record of a decade of consistent economic growth, averaging 6 percent, served it well. Campaigning focused on two key issues: unemployment, which is high at around 13 percent, and energy supply – power cuts delayed the tallying of the election results. With virtually no natural resources at its disposal, the government of this drought prone archipelago faces challenges ahead if it is to maintain strong growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uganda<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Uganda\u2019s long-serving President, Yoweri\u00a0 Museveni, has extended his quarter-century reign over the country for a further five years. In elections on 18 February, Museveni polled 68 percent of the vote, up from 59 percent in 2006 but down from the 75 percent support he enjoyed in 1996. His nearest rival, veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye – Museveni\u2019s former physician – mustered only 26 percent. Besigye rejected the result and, along with four other unsuccessful presidential candidates, called for peaceful \u2018Egyptianstyle\u2019 protests. While opposition candidates were able to campaign more freely than in previous elections, international observers expressed concerns about the government\u2019s misuse of state resources to influence voters, candidates and electoral officials. There was a large turnout in the north of the country where, for the first time, people were able to go to the polls without fear of attack from the rebel Lord\u2019s Resistance Army.<\/span><\/p>\n

Germany<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On 20 February, in Hamburg, the first of seven German states to hold elections this year, the ruling centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered what Chancellor Merkel has called \u201ca stinging defeat\u201d. In its worst electoral performance since it was founded after the Second World War, CDU support was cut almost in half, plummeting to 21 percent, while the opposition Social Democrats won enough votes to secure an absolute majority in the state assembly. Merkel attributed the results to local – not national – issues, blaming bungled educational reform and the resignation of a popular CDU mayor rather than disaffection with her government\u2019s handling of the eurozone debt crisis. The loss of Hamburg\u2019s three seats in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, will make it harder for the centre-right coalition to pass legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ireland<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Irish voters, angry at the mismanagement of the economy, dealt a humiliating blow to Fianna F\u00e1il in elections on 25 February. The party, which has spent three out of every four years in power since 1932, lost three-quarters of its seats in the D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann (the lower house) and was beaten into third place by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. For the centre-right Fine Gael, this was its most successful showing, although it only managed to secure 36 percent of the vote and fell short of the 83 seats required for an overall parliamentary majority, forcing it to form a coalition government with Labour. Enda Kenny, the new prime minister, has promised to renegotiate the terms of the country\u2019s \u20ac85 billion EU\/IMF bailout loan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Estonia<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The decisive victory of the centre-right coalition in parliamentary elections on 6 March has been viewed by many analysts as a remarkable show of support for a government which had steered the economy through a severe crisis by imposing harsh austerity measures.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the economy shrank by almost 15 percent in 2009, the government reduced its budget by the equivalent of 9 percent of GDP. Wages were cut by up to a quarter in some workplaces, and unemployment peaked at 19.8 percent in early January 2010, but a recovery is now well underway with growth of 4 percent projected for this year. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip\u2019s Reform Party gained two extra seats, giving it a total of 33 of the 101 seats in parliament. Reform\u2019s coalition partner in the previous administration, the conservative IRL, also did well, winning an additional four seats to reach a total of 23. The campaign of the opposition leader Edgar Savisaar was damaged by allegations that his Centre Party had received financial support from Russia – his party lost three MPs, slipping to 26 seats. The election was Estonia\u2019s first since joining the eurozone in January.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein was chosen to become Myanmar\u2019s first civilian President in 50 years on 4 February. A career soldier and general who resigned his commission to stand in last November\u2019s parliamentary elections, Thein was appointed by parliament, which met for the first time in more than two decades. The new President represents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[75,14,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}