Tag Archives: politics

#GeoPolitics | Autocratic Regimes | A Shift in Power

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The rise of right wing populism in the United States brought on by the election of Donald Trump

We live in a troubled and troubling world, with the ravages of climate emergency a danger to us all — most particularly, British Columbians in 2021, living through a heat dome crisis in June, consuming province-wide wildfires this past summer, and now, flooding, economic devastation, and the destruction of roads and bridges that serve to exacerbate an execrable supply chain crisis.

And, then, there’s the politics of the western world, where authoritarianism and autocratic regimes across the globe have become even more brazen in their repression. Many democratic governments are backsliding and are adopting authoritarian tactics by restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, a trend exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The political flaws and social fault lines revealed by the pandemic will drive more people towards populist and authoritarian leaders that seldom deliver durable solutions for the concerns of citizens”, says International IDEA Secretary-General Kevin Casas-Zamora. “If there is one key message in the Global State of Democracy Report 2021 — Building Resilience in a Pandemic Era”, published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), an intergovernmental organization based in Stockholm, “it is that now is the time for democracies to be bold, to innovate and revitalize themselves. The Global State of Democracy report is not a wakeup call, it’s an alarm bell. Authoritarianism advances in every corner of the earth. Universal values — the pillars of civilization that protect the most vulnerable — are under threat.”

While many democracies have proved resilient during the pandemic, by expanding democratic innovations and adapting their practices and institutions in record time, in order to preserve our democracies, as Casas-Zamora states, bold action was required by our leaders to innovate and revitalize themselves.

Cuba’s pro democracy protesters take to the streets, to fight rising poverty and high COVID-19 numbers

One of the key findings of the report is the strength of civic activism all over the world. Pro-democracy movements have braved repression in places such as Belarus, Cuba, Eswatini, Myanmar, and Sudan, and global social movements for tackling climate change and fighting racial injustice have thrived.

More than 80 countries have experienced protests and civic action of different kinds during the pandemic despite often harsh government restrictions.

Asia and the Pacific has suffered a wave of growing authoritarianism as crises of various kinds have affected Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Myanmar. Democratic erosion is also widespread, including in India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka with many of them suffering from rising ethno-nationalism and the militarization of politics. China’s influence, coupled with its own deepening autocratization, also puts the legitimacy of the democratic model at risk.

In Africa and the Middle East, while elections remain the norm, the report states the democratic quality of these elections is on the decline and attempts to evade or remove presidential term limits present a risk to democracy.  2021 has seen four military coups: in Chad, Guinea-Conakry, Mali and Sudan.

The Middle East’s tainted track record on protecting civil liberties has been even further strained by the pandemic, with many elections held with the sole aim of keeping existing regimes in power, such as in Algeria, Egypt and Syria.

Moscow gripped with the largest anti-government demonstrations since the winter of 2011-12

The rise of autocracy and of right wing populism, its western democratic cousin, gives rise to understandable concern that liberal political values and the rule of law are heading towards terminal decline.

However, neither autocratic states such as China and Russia nor right wing populist leaders like Donald Trump in the U.S., Italy’s Matteo Salvini and right wing populist leaders in other western countries have had everything go their way. Their mixed fortunes suggest that it is premature to write off the prospects for global governance, even though the rules-based order constructed after 1945 is decomposing and will never return in its old form.

The Chinese and Russian states possess immense resources of violence and intimidation that allow them to suppress dissent with ease. From Tiananmen Square in 1989 on, China has proved that it has an unyielding state of mind, one that augurs poorly for Hong Kong protesters.

However, there is less tolerance for politically related violence in European societies, as demonstrated by the public backlash in Slovakia against the murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative journalist, and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová.

Should right wing populism fail to make deeper inroads in western political systems, owing to its unrealistic promises and policy confusion when in power, the deliberate disruption of the post-1945 global order would arguably slow down. The growing internal challenges of autocratic systems in countries such as Russia and Turkey might reinforce this trend.

However, the most important long-term trends in international relations over the past 30 years have been the rise of China and the accelerating shift of economic power from the west to the Asia-Pacific region.

That shift ensures that the Washington-designed post-1945 order, built mainly for the benefit of the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and their allies, in the years to come will give way to a more dispersed form of global governance.

For the west, the cold reality is not that autocracy will triumph and democracy will fail, but rather that the 500-year-long era of western global supremacy is slowly and inexorably coming to an end.

Decision 2021 | Day 25 | The 21st Century Belongs to the Conservatives?

Decision Canada 2021, Politics, , , , ,

For 9 long years, Canadian politics underwent a tectonic shift that for the longest period of time since Confederation seemingly buried the liberal elites of yesteryear, during the era of Stephen Harper’s reign as Canada’s Prime Minister.

The thesis propounded by conservative Globe and Mail columnist, John Ibbitson, and pollster Darrell Bricker, Global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs Research, is that  Canada is undergoing a fundamental shift (the eponymous “Big Shift”) that in the 21st century will result in a reformation of Canadian politics, governance, economy and values. The authors argue in their book that the Conservative Party of Canada is the political force best poised to take advantage of this changing landscape, and over the years and in the coming decades will be transformed into what was once the purview of the Liberal Party: the natural governing party of Canada.

Bricker and Ibbitson argue that one of the world’s most consensual countries is becoming polarized, exhibiting stark differences between East and West, cities and suburbs, Canadian born citizens and immigrants. The “winners” — in both politics and business — will be those who can capitalize on these momentous changes.

For almost its entire history, Canada has been run by the political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. For nine long, arduous years, though, these groups lost their power — without most of them realizing their power was on the wane. The Laurentian Consensus, the term John Ibbitson has coined for the dusty liberal elite, had been replaced by a new and powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. How did this happen?

So far in the 21st century, though, the Conservatives have governed for only 9 of 21 years. Despite their dispiriting election losses in the 2015 and 2019 federal elections, the Conservative Party has nonetheless continued to remain strong in northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in the rural regions of Ontario, and has even shown strength in Québec — but not in the Maritimes.

In his review in The Globe and Mail of John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker’s book, The Big Shift, journalist and academic Christopher Dornan writes …

“The Big Shift, as its title suggests, is one of those books that purports to divine a single, telling fact to explain Canada. If that fact echoes Jacques Parizeau’s infamous 1995 comment about “money and the ethnic vote,” it is not, as Bricker and Ibbitson advance it, a form of bigotry, but a species of determinism: The political values, and therefore voting tendencies, of new arrivals and first-generation Canadians are contingent on their race and region of origin.

Further, this “Big Shift in power to the West and to suburban immigrants” is not only permanent but “will make Canada inexorably a more conservative place.” Resistance is futile. Bad news for progressives, whether they manage to unite or not. They’re on the wrong side of a fundamental and irreversible demographic shift.”

While both of the book’s authors take great pains to stress that they’ve merely set out to document a “seismic shift” in the demographics of Canada, and what it portends for the political, social and economic future of our nation, for most who would read the book and interpret its internal thesis, from the book’s outset through til its end, it would be difficult to ignore the sense of triumphalism evident throughout Ibbitson and Bricker’s polemical treatise, as if somehow the shift to the “new” — and increasingly right wing — Conservative Party is inalterably inevitable.

“It’s one thing for the Conservative Party to chafe and protest  when in opposition,” writes Dornan. “But, if Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s style of government — which might best be described as “undertaken in a spirit of spite” — offers an example of what Canadians might expect from a Conservative government, it is entirely likely that a goodly number of our fellow citizens would find this approach to governance to be untenable, particularly in a country populated by families who came here to escape entrenched antagonisms. If that ever changes, then the Canada we all love — left and right, newcomer or born-and-bred — will be truly at risk.”

When Canadians go to the advance polls to cast a ballot this week, or to their polling station on Election Day, Monday, September 20th, Canadians must vote not just for the Prime Minister and the government of their choice, but for the future of Canada — our most cherished home — and the uniquely Canadian values of fairness, respect, compassion, equality, inclusion, diversity, safety, peace, and for being there for one another, as collectively we seek to create a more sustainably just Canada for everyone. As in every election, there is in 2021 a great deal on the line.