We’ve seen today two very different elections on opposite sides of the world where new parties have emerged from nowhere to poll highly in a massive protest vote against the political system, in very different ways.
In Colombia, voters went to the polls in their presidential election to elect a successor to right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, who is stepping down after two terms and a failed attempt to amend the constitution to permit a third term. The frontrunner in the race is former Defence Minister and Uribe ally Juan Manuel Santos. His main rival was originally the Conservative Party’s Noemi Sanin, but she was pushed into third place in polls in early April by Green Party candidate and former Mayor of Bogota, Antanas Mockus.
Mockus served two terms as Mayor of Colombia’s capital in the 1990s and 2000s, and had previously served as President of the National University of Colombia. He teamed up with three other former reforming mayors to run an independent candidate for President before teaming up with the fledgling Green Party. Indeed, the party only won a handful of seats in Congressional elections as recently as March.
The party ran an innovative online campaign with creative use of social media and a sophisticated website, as well as Youtube videos like the one posted below. Polls predicted that Mockus was neck-and-neck with Santos for first place in the first round, and was leading in polls for the second round, which is held if no candidate wins a majority.
However, the result today saw Santos poll 47% to 21% for Mockus. The two will face off in another vote in three weeks time, but you would have to think that, with over 15% of the vote won by other right-wing candidates, Santos should win the election. Having said that, it is still a strong result for the left-wing in a country where the right is very dominant and is wracked by conflict between right-wing paramilitary groups and the far-left FARC guerillas.
Meanwhile, a city council election in Reykjavik, Iceland, has thrown up a bizarre result, with a joke party led by comedians winning the largest vote and probably claiming the mayoralty of a city of 120,000.
Iceland was hit particularly badly by the economic crisis, and the right-wing Independence Party suffered badly in 2009’s Parliamentary election, losing power to the Social Democrat and Left-Green parties.
Icelandic comedian Jón Gnarr set up the Best Party (Besti flokkurinn), a party that has appeared to both act as an anti-system protest party and a joke party, mocking and attacking the four major parties in Icelandic politics. The party has promised to have free towels at all swimming pools, a polar bear for the Reykjavik Zoo and a Disneyland for the Reykjavik Airport. They also appear to have developed clear policies on transparency and fighting corruption. Having said that, Gnarr said at the beginning that his party would not honour any of its promises, and that it would be openly corrupt, unlike the other parties who are secretly corrupt.
The party adopted Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best”, and they put out a version with new Icelandic lyrics, finishing with an impassioned speech by Gnarr. At the city council election on Saturday, the party polled 34.7%, coming first overall, just ahead of the incumbent Independence Party on 33%. The party won 6 out of 15 seats on the City Council and Gnarr is now claiming the right to the mayoralty, although a coalition between the major Independent and Social Democratic parties could block him. Whether he wins the mayoralty or not, the result is one of the strangest in recent western political history. You really must watch their video.
Submitted for your approval, Hartlepool Mayoral Elections
Election 2002
First Round: Con 8% Lab 28% Lib Dem 9% Campbell Ind 27% H’Angus Ind 29%
Second Round: Lab 48% H’Angus Ind 52%
H’Angus the Monkey (named after a local legend connected with Hartlepool) was the mascot of the local soccer team who was elected for the newly created mayoral post beating the offical Labour candidate. He was re-elected in 2005 and 2009.
The world is an amazing place!
Good to get an update on the Columbia thing. I first heard about the Green party candidate on the BBC world service on Sunday.
As for the Icelandic council election, I think the lesson there is the use of social media in political campaigns has been held back by candidates having to deliver serious content. Twixt comedy and politics is a potentially powerful mix, comedians have an ability to hit on a truth by way of satire, and by way of being comedians are given a longer leash in how they go about constructing an arguement.
I’m dreaming about what could have been. Imagine Bill Hicks + cure for pancreatic cancer + social media + political ambition. Whooshka! Obama might not have been needed.
Ben,
I was just wondering what evidence there is that the Colombian Greens are in anyway a ‘left of centre’ party rather than just another (small) mainstream party.
2 things
1. There are a range of green parties around the world that I don’t support. The German Greens have supported humanitarian interventions and the occupation of Iraq. I see no evidence that the Colombian Greens have any anti militarist perspective.
2. There are actual ‘left of centre parties’ in Latin America that are actually (or partially) in Government. Now those parties are contradictory, but there are these types of parties in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Equador, Venezuala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Do we know if the Colombian Greens have a positive (but critical) attitude towards these parties?
Have they been created to head off these movements? Are they hotile to these movements? What is their class basis?
Do the Australian Greens not perhaps have more in common with some of these parties than with the Colombian Greens because of a name?
It’s hard to know exactly how Colombian Greens fit into other countries’ politics. They are certainly the most left-wing of the mainstream parties in Colombia, which is a very right-wing countries. So when I say “the left-wing” I mean that they are on the left of Colombian politics. It’s always fraught to compare political spectrums between different countries, even in the same region.
The Colombian Greens have also emerged relatively recently, so their agenda isn’t as clear as other parties might be.
I don’t mean to contradict you Ben, but the left-right spectrum doesn’t necessarily work in all cases, not least of all in South America. Venezuala for example, is run by a leftist leader, but Hugo Chavez is a corrupt nutter that controls the Venezualan judicial system and increases poverty by an arcane mix of trade deals with only certain countries and skimming a bit off the top of most transactions (regardless of what the Green Left Weekly may say).
Colombia is a country of extreme poverty, danger and social insecurity, much of it derived from the drug trade. I wouldn’t consider Colombia a ‘right wing country’ (and I’ve been there, beautiful place, but bloody scary) but rather a country where the majority are controlled by a minority of drug figures and bought out officials. I don’t consider the removal of drug figures to be a left or right issue, but I can appreciate why voters would support whoever promises to remove that influence (and I understand that both sides have, but the military is largely on the side of Juan Manuel Santos, which lends that side more credibility). As I said, it’s not so much a left-right issue as a security issue.
And on a side note for the previous post, may ‘left’ parties support humanitarian intervention. Indeed, it is considered to be, in international relations, a liberal approach to global security (as it takes in human security and in most cases is at the direction of international institutions).
To add to that, most Colombians conservative in the way that most South Americans are. They are mostly Catholic and are inclined to officially follow certain Catholic directions and discriminations, but they are also very ‘festive’, if I may use that term, and highly socially accepting, even on ‘Catholic’ issues. There is also a high value placed on individual freedom and ecological issues, but, ultimately, these take second place to personal security.
The Colombian Greens are probably to the left for Colombian politics, but in South America you always have to take into account the facts of existence there, that the military usually backs one side and that the personal security of voters is usually the primary issue.
According to Wikipedia, Colombian Greens are ‘centrist’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_(Colombia)
*most Colombians are conservative in the same way that other South Americans are.
When I say Colombia is a right-wing country, what I mean is that its politics is very much dominated by the right. Of course the left-right spectrum doesn’t work in all cases, that is what I am saying. Clearly the Colombian Greens are particularly strong on issues of opposing authoritarianism and corruption, whether it comes from Uribe, Chavez or FARC.
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