🇮🇱🇸🇰🇹🇯 Election Bonanza: Israel, Slovakia, Tajikistan
🇮🇱🇸🇰🇹🇯 Election Bonanza: Israel, Slovakia, Tajikistan
Hello! Welcome to an election-bonanza-edition of Inside The Newsroom, where we’ll dissect three elections that took place around the world in the past week. Guyana also had an election, but results are still coming in, so we’ll dive into that one next week. Exciting, right? Anyway, in Israel’s third election within a year, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party won the most seats, but face an uncertain future as his corruption trial begins shortly. A new coalition swept to victory in Slovakia, as the long-time leftwing SMER-SD were ousted after eight years of tainted rule. And in Tajikistan, a common trend around the world continued as the authoritarian People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan party romped its way to re-election in a ballot riddled with reported fraud. Okay, let’s get digging! 🧐
Photo credit: Middle East Monitor
All Eyes on Netanyahu
Monday marked the third time the people of Israel have gone to the polls in just 11 months, as no party had previously been able to form a majority in the Knesset. Astonishingly, we might be in for another election. With 99 percent of results in, the incumbent Likud Party-led rightwing coalition currently has 59 seats, leaving it just two seats short of a majority. The results mean that days or weeks of negotiating follow yet again, as current prime minister and leader of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, will once again need to reach across the aisle to secure a majority. But if history tells us anything, a majority won’t materialize and the people of Israel might need to vote for a fourth time. Meanwhile, there were significant gains for the Joint List, the alliance representing the country’s two million Arabs, making them the third largest party with 15 seats.
Credit: The Guardian
While the dealmaking has already begun, negotiations will be overshadowed by a new challenge for Netanyahu in his attempt to win a fifth term. Israel’s longest serving prime minister is due to appear in court on March 17 to face charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and could face up to 10 years in prison if he’s found guilty. The charges stem from a three-year police investigation alleging the 70-year-old accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of luxury gifts from billionaire associates in return for political favors (where have we seen that before?) with Israeli media and telecoms giants. The looming trial has enormous consequences for the latest round of political manoeuvring, with rival politicians seeing little incentive to help Netanyahu as he becomes the first sitting Israeli PM to face criminal charges while in office. And the future looks gloomy for Bibi: The panel of three judges for the trial will be led by Rivka Friedman-Feldman, one of the investigators that convicted Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who stepped down from his post after it became apparent that he’d be indicted. Olmert was eventually convicted and served two thirds of a 27-month sentence.
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Ordinary People Vote for Ordinary People. Wait, What?
Moving to Central Europe next and Slovakia elected the opposition Ordinary People party — what a freaking name — whose anti-corruption platform won 25 percent of the vote and 34 of the 150 seats available. They’ll now form an anti-corruption coalition with the primary aim of transforming how its parliament operates. The results marked a 10 percent swing against the incumbent Direction — Social Democracy Party (ironic much?), whose eight-year regime comes to a sorry end. Campaigning was dominated by public anger over the 2018 murder of investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, the first killing of a journalist since the country’s independence in 1993. It led to mass protests calling for the elections to be brought forward. And boy did the people get what they wanted, which even led to former prime minster Robert Fico and the country’s police chief stepping down.
Credit: Politico
Kuciak dedicated his career to investigating Slovakia’s most powerful, focusing on tax fraud and corruption that made many of the country’s elite business tycoons extremely uncomfortable. One businessman hot under the collar is Marian Kocner, whose name appeared in leaked police documents from 2005 that linked him with organized crime, and is accused of ordering the hit on Kuciak and Kusnirova. The last article Kuciak wrote for Aktuality, titled “Italian Mafia in Slovakia; Its Tentacles Reach As Far As Politics”, shed light on how people close to one of Italy’s most powerful mafia groups, ‘Ndrangheta, had settled in Slovakia and embezzled EU funds aimed at improving living standards in poor areas in eastern Slovakia. The case is an unfortunate reality for many former Soviet states trying to grapple with unbridled capitalism almost overnight.
On Wednesday, OLANO’s leader Igor Matovic said he’s working to form a four-party coalition as soon as possible, a move that will set to root out corruption and mafia links as soon as possible.
Tajikistan Continues Authoritarian Rule
The election was described as “fraud ridden” and billed as a “rote exercise” to refresh the mandate of the ruling People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan. No surprises were expected and no surprises were produced as the PDPT, who has been in power since 2000, won its fifth landslide election in a row. The PDPT lost four seats, taking its supermajority to 47 of the 63 seats in Tajikistan’s parliament ironically called the Palace of Unity, and saw its vote share decline 12 percent to 50 percent, but the rest of the seats were filled by parties close to authoritarian president Emomali Rakhmon. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights wrote the “level of respect of fundamental freedoms has further deteriorated since the last elections and the choice between political alternatives is limited in the absence of independent media and a functioning opposition.”
So what does this all mean for Tajikistan moving forward?
Well, this election wasn’t exactly well publicized, partly because people in Tajikistan have been so disenfranchised that little campaigning took place in any part of the country. One guy who spoke to Eurasisanet said …
“I have never voted, and I have no idea who is taking part in these elections,” said Zaytuna, 25, from Dushanbe. “Our father goes with our passports. He will vote for the communists. He still remembers how under communism they got a salary that lasted until the end of the month, how bread cost one kopeck and that student stipends were enough to pay for trips to the cinema and transport.”
So it will be much of the same heading forward. One issue that’ll be severely negatively effected is the country’s human rights, which are among the worst in the world, and have regressed significantly over the past decade. Daler Sharipov is just one example of the authorities violating personal rights. Sharipov is an independent journalist who’s been critical of the government, and has been held in jail since the end of January for “inciting religious discord”. He’s facing up to five years in prison and is part of more than 150 people that have imprisoned since mid-2015 on politically motivated charges.
Elections so far…
Cameroon, Azerbaijan and Ireland
… next elections
Guyana
March 19: Vanuatu
April 12: North Macedonia
April 15: South Korea
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