🗺️ Picks of the Week — November 6
Election Dissection in Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Georgia and Moldova...
Happy Friday folks! Election fever has taken hold this week so we decided to turn today’s Picks of the Week into a special election dissection, as we break down the four other national elections that took place around the world over the past seven days. I know, hold onto your hats, it’s going to be wild.
Today also marks the Inside The Newsroom debut for Sophie Foggin, a freelance journalist based in Colombia who’s previously written for The Telegraph, NPR, Latin America Reports and the Bogota Post. Sophie, welcome. Take it away…
Thanks Daniel! Hello everyone, today we’ll visit Africa where Tanzania and the Ivory Coast both elected incumbent presidents, and both resulted in deadly violence; we’ll also travel to the country of Georgia where more protests have erupted due to alleged electoral fraud; and we’ll finish in Moldova whose presidential election will go to a runoff that’s set to shape the future of Europe’s poorest country. Okay, let’s get to it!
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2020 Elections We’ve Covered So Far
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October: Chile and Guinea 🇨🇱 🇬🇳, New Zealand and Bolivia 🇳🇿🇧🇴, Northern Cyprus, Lithuania and Tajikistan 🇱🇹🇹🇯, Kyrgyzstan, Czech Republic and New Caledonia 🇰🇬🇨🇿🇳🇨
September: Jamaica and Iran 🇯🇲🇮🇷, Montenegro 🇲🇪, 2020 Elections: What’s Happened Since Part 2
August: 2020 Elections: What’s Happened Since Part 1, Belarus and Sri Lanka 🇧🇾🇱🇰
July: Mongolia, Iceland 🇲🇳🇮🇸, Croatia, Dominican Republic 🇭🇷🇩🇴 and Syria, North Macedonia 🇸🇾🇲🇰
June: Serbia, Kiribati and Malawi 🇷🇸🇰🇮🇲🇼
May: Burundi 🇧🇮 and Suriname 🇸🇷
April: South Korea 🇰🇷
March: Israel, Slovakia and Tajikistan 🇮🇱🇸🇰🇹🇯
February: Cameroon, Ireland, Azerbaijan🇨🇲🇮🇪🇦🇿 and Iran, Togo🇮🇷🇹🇬
Tanzania
What happened in Tanzania?
We start this week in East Africa where incumbent President John Magufuli was re-elected in a landslide, winning 84 percent of the vote. His ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party also won big, securing 253 of the 261 parliamentary seats announced so far, enough to change the country’s constitution. Magufuli’s party won by wide margins in opposition-held constituencies, prompting the main opposition candidate, Tundu Lissu, to reject the result and allege electoral fraud claiming ballot boxes were tampered with.
Unfortunately it was deadly violence that preceded the election, with reports that police shot and killed 11 people during protests the day before. The shootings took place on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, which has a political union with Tanzania. Meanwhile social media outlets ground to a near halt as the government was accused of slowing down the internet, and in some cases shutting it down completely. The country’s election commission also suspended Lissu for using incendiary language.
We’ve already seen a glimpse of the future under Magulfi’s administration, with Lissu and several other opposition figures being arrested for challenging the results. Meanwhile, analysts predict that the country’s democracy now faces a complete collapse after a steady decline under Magulfi.
Credit: The Economist
Ivory Coast
What happened in the Ivory Coast?
Switching sides now as we move west to the Ivory Coast, who re-elected President Alassane Outtara for a third term with 94 percent of the vote. The considerable vote share was largely because the country’s main opposition candidates, Pascal Affi N'Guessan and Henri Konan Bédié, encouraged their supporters to boycott the election as they claimed the president’s attempt to win a third term was unconstitutional.
Outtara announced in August that he’d be standing for a third term, just months after announcing his retirement. According to the BBC, his supporters say a change to the constitution in 2016 means Outtara’s first term essentially did not count. Protests and violence persisted right up to election day in a country still reeling from a civil war sparked by post-electoral violence in 2010 that killed around 3,000 people. In 2020, reports suggest a total of 35 people were killed up to and including election day.
Opposition leaders N'Guessan and Bédié announced they will form a transitional government, which immediately provoked a stern response by the ruling party against trying to spark more protests. The fear now is that the seeds have been sown for a repeat of the violence that took place a decade ago, with bloodshed being an unfortunate backbone to the country since its independence from France in 1960.
Georgia
What happened in Georgia?
Moving to the country of Georgia next where the populist incumbent party Georgian Dream extended its rule, winning 48 percent of the vote. But as is the recurring theme in elections throughout the world, the country’s opposition, the United National Movement, won 27 percent and rejected the vote despite the electoral commission earlier verifying the results.
The result means the ruling Georgian Dream, founded by the country’s richest man and in power since 2012, extend its control into a third term, which could be make or break for the country’s democracy. We’ll see how long the protests last, and how much impact they have, but it seems that momentum for political change could fizzle out.
Georgia set for more protests amid claims of vote-rigging in election
Moldova
What happened in Moldova?
We finish today in Moldova, where no one of the eight presidential candidates secured a majority in the first round of voting, sending the election to a runoff that will be held on November 15. The runoff will feature incumbent President Igor Dodon, who won 33 percent, and former Prime Minister Maia Sandu, who surprised many by winning the first round with 36 percent.
Moldova is widely considered to be one of Europe’s poorest countries, and the final candidates have vastly different plans for the country’s future. The differences between the two candidates — Dodon has close ties with Russia, while Sandu is pro-Europe — reflect the country’s division since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. We’ll save what’s next depending on the final results in nine days’ time.
That’s all for today. See you next week for more global news and election fun! 👋