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Notes -
Transnational Thursdays 5
Added coverage from other countries is strongly encouraged! The more the merrier, I’m hoping for this to be a collaborative thing.
Colombia
President Gustavo Petro ran on a populist platform that’s been a staple of many parts of Latin America but uniquely absent in Colombia; industrial licensing, reasserting national control in face of fossil fuel multinationals, land redistribution, pension & healthcare form, etc. However, his coalition remains in the minority and while Petro rode a wave of discontent to the Presidency, it now seems to be his turn to grapple with protests against his reforms, particularly a form of Medicare for All and some labor laws that reduce employer flexibility with short term contracts. In light of his corruption scandals the conservative-dominated lower house froze progress of three of his major reforms bills on pensions, healthcare, and labor The latter of the bills, which would have reduced working hours and increase overtime pay, was ultimately rejected.
How you feel about Petro’s reforms is up for debate; Colombia has avoided the worst of the Latin American experiences of populism, never enduring a period of hyperinflation and genuine economic collapse, and has made some good progress reducing poverty. However, it remains a seriously poor and extremely unequal country - there is certainly significant progress and reforms to be made.
Argentina
The three Argentinian parties have released their platforms (1, 2). The peronist Frente de Todos renamed itself Unión por la Patria for some reason and will probably be led by either the Interior Minister or Kirchner’s former VP. The neoliberal Juntos por el Cambio (the likely winner imo) will likely be led by either the mayor of Buenos Aires or the former Security Minister. Libertarian La Avanzada is running its founder Javier Millei.
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone is about to have elections, which are generally tense affairs. The previous election went to a runoff and one candidate publicly (and falsely) accused the incumbent party of staging Rwanda style genocide against his party/ethnic group, and threatened to not accept the results if he lost. A credible threat coming from a man who overthrew the government twice in the 90s and ran with a campaign slogan of “By Force”! Luckily he won, so I guess we’ll never know what he would have done.
Or maybe we will, because he’s running against the same guy and isn’t popular outside of his ethnic support base. He ran on a campaign of women’s rights and free education for all, but the rollout of the school program has been difficult due to the government’s tenuous control over the rural majority of the country. An IMF fuel subsidy established by his predecessor also expired right after he came to power, rocketing up fuel prices and everything downstream. Falling cost of living has led to several protests throughout his rule which have been put down mercilessly. The opposition party has accused him of rigging the electoral commission, which is probably true but it’s also true that the opposition is probably going to commit electoral fraud in some way as well - let’s just hope it stays peaceful.
Nigeria
Following new President Bola Tinubu’s termination of half a century of fuel subsidies, Nigeria has been wracked with internal protests. His hope is to redirect those funds into progressive priorities like education and healthcare but currently risks large strikes, coming at a time when the government has had to devalue their currency yet again. Fortunately, the government and labor unions have now finalized an eight week timeline for them to negotiate a new minimum wage to make up for rising gas prices, which will ideally avoid that scenario.
Tinubu continues to shake things up, following his arrest of the head of the Central Bank by removing the head of the government’s anti-corruption body ( in fairness, all four of the previous leaders were also removed for corruption themselves) and replacing “all Service Chiefs [the heads of the army, navy, and air force] and the Inspector-General of Police, Advisers, Comptroller-General of Customs from Service.”. National security is one of Tinubu’s largest priorities so it will interesting to see how he reshapes his administration’s security approach.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan passed a referendum in April with 90% on a new constitution which both (nominally) expanded civil liberties as well as significantly increased the power of the office of the Presidency. The referendum passed with an implausible 90%, expanded term limits from 5 years to 7 and allowed President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to run for an additional two terms in what will likely be similarly controlled elections. Mirziyoyev, himself only the second leader of the country (his predecessor just being the former Soviet secretary who held onto power till his death in 2016), came to power via appointment and a shambolic election, and seems to be quickly moving to reestablish the authoritarianism of his predecessor.
India
More on the ethnic conflict in Manpiur:
Also, Modi will be visiting the United States today. Observers expect Biden to downplay human rights abuses under the BJP and try to coax India as a meaningful partner in their larger conflicts with China and Russia.
Iraq
Iraq approves its largest budget ever, with the goal of rehabilitating public infrastructure and creating some 600,000 new public service jobs (unemployment was a large focus of the protests over the past few years). Critics accuse the government of running up fiscal deficits irresponsibly, and in denial of projected likely falls in oil revenue, as well as trying to use patronage to secure their power (for instance, the Iranian aligned PMF forces were recently given over a million acres of land that will be distributed in contracts for these development projects). On the flip side, the government also just completed a deal with Qatari companies to help build power plants with Iraq, which would reduce its dependence on Iran (currently 30-40% of energy needs).
An underrated aspect of the Afghanistan withdrawal is that the U.S. no longer needs to secure supply lines through Pakistan so it has more of a free hand to ally with India against China.
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On the Russia front, does anyone know the deal with Prigozhin? Western media sources seem to be suggesting there's some coup/countercoup dynamics unfolding today. As far as his part, he's allegedly saying "this is not a military coup, but a march of justice," which if true sounds... a bit coup-like.
No idea. I got woken up by a call from work at 5am today and so planned to hit the sack early, but now I'm too excited to sleep. Nothing unusual outside so far.
This seems astoundingly, almost incomprehensibly, unwise.
Some people are speculating it's all kabuki, and it's an attempt to trick Ukraine into a major blunder or catch it unaware in some kind of significant operation. This seems too cute by... Well, several orders of magnitude, and something better suited for the next GoT book.
On the other hand, what is Prigozhin's game plan? The status quo, though not ideal for him, seems most likely to have ended with him spending the rest of his days in a well-appointed dacha. Not the worst end for a mercenary.
Why take this risk? Is it just a massive miscalculation on the level of support he'd have, enabled by narcissism and delusions of grandeur?
Before I went to sleep, I thought this was an operation to unmask potential putschists. This morning it looks like a straightforward rebellion.
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I'm surprised that Iraq of all countries has energy shortages. Energy ought to be on thing they're not short of! It seems their energy infrastructure just hasn't been maintained properly, there are issues with domestic gas production (there's not enough of it for some reason, they're flaring an awful lot of it off). They also have rather hot summers, so that puts a bit of pressure on electricity markets.
It goes to show how dysfunctional the Iraqi state still is after we wrecked it. That's not to say it was ever especially functional, but not even being energy secure is an amazing feat for such a country. Iran is under huge sanctions and yet they're exporting electricity! Iran has a big domestic car industry, Iran produces drones and so on, they have industry. Iran isn't the best-run state in the world, there's a lot of air pollution from the gas they burn (inefficiently and under huge subsidies) - but it's better than Iraq.
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