“I voted … I’m so happy … I’ve voted for the ANC, is that OK?”
One woman, who had just cast her first vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections, asked Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, now the Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, this question. This fundamental premise for the people to freely vote for their choice and have their vote respected defines the core of the democratic process. In many of 2024’s momentous elections, it seems that numerous regimes have found ways to break down every path of representation, even while attempting to preserve a façade of said democracy. In other cases, meanwhile, national elections of sovereign countries are often compromised, or worse, bought by powerful states.
This year, at least 64 countries will hold national elections, affecting nearly half of the global population. Some of the most internationally popular elections, namely those in the United States, India, and Russia, have more predictable results, yet there are other politically and historically decisive elections coming up this year. Dr. Jonathan Murphy, Head of the INTER PARES | Parliaments in Partnership Programme at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), has assisted in evaluating the upcoming elections in South Africa, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Tunisia, and Moldova. He believes the following elections have equally important significance to their internal democratic progress and the surrounding regional power structures.
INTER PARES is an EU-funded project that helps strengthen parliaments in multiple countries by “enhancing their legislative, oversight, representative, budgetary and administrative functions.”
South Africa
South Africa has been a dominant-party state since the end of apartheid and the election of the first African National Congress (ANC) President, Nelson Mandela, and the ANC-majority legislature. The National Congress has held onto the majority seats of the Assembly since then, and, except for one president affiliated with ANC’s former paramilitary faction, the presidential seat. However, as election day approaches, national polls have shown a pattern of declining ANC support–most recently at an all-time low of 39% since the 2019 election.
Similar to the Indian Congress, Dr. Murphy explains, the ANC’s reputation as the representative of independence and liberation has been quickly forgotten in the face of widespread domestic grievances. “After a number of elections, after the realization that liberation hasn’t brought transformation to everybody, there is an inevitable loss and fractionalization of support,” he observes, pointing to persisting corruption which has kept South Africa as one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Nevertheless, because of the post-apartheid’s perfect representation system, it is still very difficult to predict what the next South African government will look like: the ANC will almost certainly stay as the largest party in parliament, but its coalition plans remain unclear—and rightfully so. The two largest opposition parties, the “white party” Democratic Alliance (DA) and populist, far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Murphy believes that the ANC will have to decide whether it governs with the EFF, the radical populist party, or the DA, the white party of business. In either case, the majority party will face an awkward political position regardless of with whom they decide to ally. Even then, it is not yet unclear whether South Africa will operate under a political coalition or a minority party ruling, like France. As the ruling party’s popularity plummets, South Africa’s democracy may be put to the test of whether it can withstand a peaceful, democratic transition.
Sri Lanka
One of the most decisive factors in the upcoming elections in Sri Lanka centers around the candidates’ economic plans in the midst of the country’s recent worst-ever economic crisis. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 Easter Bombings, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and governmental, political and financial errors, the economic devastation has seized most of the incumbent president’s support. More shockingly, the latest polls show that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and United National Party (UNL)–the two ruling parties since 2019–have received an all-time low support rating of 7% and 6%, respectively. Up to the last democratic election in 2019, the center-left Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) was leading the polls, possibly expecting to take over from a highly unpopular UNL. Instead, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a Marxist-Leninist communist party, has been consistently leading the polls since last year, with a stunning 53% of adults in support of them as of February 2024.
Anura Kumara “AK” Dissanayaka, the celebrated leader and presidential candidate of the JVP, has worked on reforming his party’s narrative and tailoring it to become as appealing to Sri Lankans as possible. Previously considered a violently anti-imperialist, anti-Indian party, the JVP shifted its focus from pursuing a socialist Sri Lanka to fighting corruption and maintaining public welfare. Using a populist performance of dissent, Dissanayake and his party have been able to relate the most to the frustrated population.
Abandoning some of the “outdated” platforms like their former stand on Indo-Lanka relations, the JVP’s leading candidate has unofficially gained India’s attention as a major player willing to mend relations. Despite that, the party still retains some of its more controversial beliefs such as its extreme anti-Tamil sentiments against the Tamil minority in the country, such as raising arms against the Sri Lankan state in 1987 in fear of Indian expansionism through Tamil presence, and, more recently, convincing India to cease from supporting the minority population.
“The relationship between what’s going on–national and regional alliances, [the rise of] regional powers–is something that is becoming more and more important,” Dr. Murphy notes. In his view, this election might be oriented to be a less radical version of the 2023 proxy election in Maldives between pro-Indian and pro-Chinese candidates. Dissanayaka’s visit to India, he continues, shows that Sri Lanka’s relationship with India will likely remain the “closest one.” Still, there is the possibility of the new government severing ties with India and exploring the “Chinese option.”
More globally, Murphy observes that the “world is balkanizing into blocs of interest,” referring to the rising polarization of the new multipolar world. In Sri Lanka’s pursuit to survive the current devastating economy and retain its autonomy, the upcoming elections may very much decide which “bloc” Sri Lanka will be joining for a long time.
Mexico
On June 2, 2024, citizens in Mexico will elect their first female president; the two leading candidates, Claudia Sheinbaum of the MORENA party) and Xóchitl Gálvez of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), are both women. As the forefront candidate, Sheinbaum has been leading the polls with 50.8% to Gálvez’s 39.9% in the latest poll. Sheinbaum is a member of the same party as the current incumbent, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, representing the country’s left-wing in opposition to the conservative PAN.
A little over 2,000 miles to the north, the United States will be holding its own presidential election just five months after Mexico’s. As migration is rising to become a major issue for both countries, the results of both elections might transform border security policy between the two. In a critical declaration, PAN candidate Gálvez announced her intentions to work with the US to cooperatively confront “a ‘common enemy’ in the cartels.” MORENA’s Sheinbaum, however, focuses on “attention to the causes, more and better police, intelligence and research, and coordination.”
Dr. Murphy highlighted the importance of separating the candidates’ narratives from what they will actually accomplish in office. For Mexico’s northern neighbor, Dr. Murphy asserts that “even though Biden does not use the same rhetoric, [he] still thinks that the need to enhance border security will be a priority for whoever will win the US elections.” He also notes that the current MORENA candidate is much less populist than the incumbent, opening the door for “discourse [to] be more constructive.” However, the US elections seem to bear more heavily on how the rhetoric will change on border security and cooperation on containing drug cartels. “I wouldn’t see America going to war with Mexico, but the tone is inevitably going to be different,” Dr. Murphy summarizes, emphasizing the fact that political campaigning, relative to regional issues like border security, is more likely to be far from real, enactable policies.
Tunisia
Democratic backsliding has defined many of the Arab and North African countries previously affected by the Arab Spring in the early 2010s. Tunisia is the only successful democracy emerging from the Spring’s demonstrations, and its democratic institutions have also fallen prey to “Saiedization”: the authoritarian grasp on the sovereignty of the constitution and the people’s power. Since President Kais Saied suspended the parliament and unaccountably expanded his constitutional powers, the upcoming presidential elections have been relatively easy to predict as the incumbent has been repressing political dissent. Even then, Tunisia still holds the most potential for returning back to the democratic path out of all the countries in the Middle East.
Saied’s skyrocketing popularity did not materialize in a vacuum; instead, it is a textbook example of the risks of a weak, polarized democratic government reigning after a coup d’état or a revolution. Dr. Murphy, who personally consulted the Tunisian Parliament after the 2011 revolution, believes that the Tunisian citizens were disappointed with the divisive political atmosphere in the democratic period. “They felt that the politicians spent all their time arguing on how they would divide up power and none of their time thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens,” he explains, creating the natural catalyst for the rise of an authoritarian, elegantly outspoken president.
Looking at Morocco and Algeria, which are similar to Tunisia in terms of shared culture and geographic region, the hope for slow democratization is not baseless. In the case of Lebanon and Libya, where the revolutions brought upon state fracture caused by civil wars and challenging geographical location, Dr. Murphy asserts that these countries will inevitably have to go through the process of “state-building” before thinking of an orderly, democratic system. In the least optimistic cases, like Egypt, the incumbent leader has embedded his powers through every part of the government, military, and most of civil society. Cases like the latter seem, heartbreakingly, like they will uphold the status quo for some time.
Moldova
Since 1991, Moldovans have been almost evenly split between pro-European supporters and pro-Russian ones. Because of the country’s history with Russia under the Soviet Union, the Kremlin still considers Moldova under its sphere of influence. The Russian hybrid war on Moldova has been defined by Russia as “funding anti-government protests, in local elections and running vast disinformation campaigns to try to topple the government and derail Moldova from its path toward full EU membership.”
Unlike the other cases, Moldova seems to be facing the threat of “physical confrontation,” according to Dr. Murphy, which seems to be the more pertinent problem over the risk to electoral integrity. The Russian government has been capitalizing on the pro-Russian, separatist Transnistria region by destabilizing Moldova’s energy supply. The European Union has recently passed the EU4Energy Initiative, which will fund more sustainable energy infrastructure in Moldova in an effort to work with the pro-European government on securing energy security and sustainability. The upcoming presidential elections may eventually show how serious Russian President Vladimir Putin is with his expansionist goals.
Democracy– and World Order– At Stake
“As a black man, I feel that I belong here, and I have dignity,” is how one South African political commentator described the value of his first civic participation activity. The “Rainbow Nation” dream, a term late President Nelson Mandela used to refer to his newly united, democratic nation, does not seem to be defining the democratic process in most states anymore, including the one to which Mandela referred.
As Dr. Murphy concluded the interview, he emphasized the importance of viewing the quest for democracy as a continuous, incremental process rather than an instant transformation. As he pointed to the rising threats of voter-attractive “simple solutions,” Dr. Murphy reasoned that “people who believe in democracy, they have to make an effort and struggle to make sure that their democratic values are victorious.” In all the discussed cases, these elections have a shaping factor, regardless of how immediate their effect on their constituents is, that will both test the countries’ democratic progress and their holistic autonomy against existing and emerging power states.
With more than half of the global population voting in (or at least affected by) national elections, there is a fear that many of the elections seem to lack fairness or the capability of bringing positive transformation. However, they all have considerable influence on the internal regimes’ dynamics and surrounding regional geopolitical order. Today, in such an interconnected world, your vote not just decides who your leader will be in the next few years, but how the world, and the state of democracy, will look like tomorrow.
Photo Credit: Foreign Policy
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