Portugal: the contenders

I had some surprises the first time I looked at Portugal, and since then I've had some more. I have always thought of Portugal as a pretty conservative Catholic country, but it turns out that the current Socrates government have legalised abortion and affirmed the right of gay people to marry. I take from this that the Socialists are either very principled or get all their support from young people. Their other main priorities seem to have been doing some solid foreign-relations stuff on behalf of the EU, boosting the hi-tech sector and trying to get on top of the public-sector payroll (much like Greece, they seem to have had a lot of what is coyly referred to as "overcapacity").

The Socialist party, whose logo looks like it belongs on a newpspaper handed out on the street

Unfortunately that comparison with Greece's public sector was backed up with a comparison to Ireland's construction boom, and as a result the financial crisis screwed the budget and caused the sovereign debt bonds to rocket in price. Back in March, Jose Socrates went to the parliament with a pretty rough austerity budget and the following exchange took place (Translated):

Jose Socrates: "Guys, I know this budget is going to be unpopular, but we need to pass it or we're going to be forced to take an EU bailout to make the rent, and their money comes with a hell of a lot of strings attached. Plus, if it doesn't pass, I'm basically not going to be able to do my job."

Passos Coelho: "Sorry old fruit, but we reckon we'd have you on toast in a general election, so put up them dukes and get ready for a vote of No Confidence".


So step forward the PSD, main opposition and government in waiting, right?

The Social Democratic party, whose logo looks like a removal company from 1990

Well, maybe. Here's a smoothed chart of opinion polls:

Just before the election was called, there was a widespread perception that the Socialists had fallen asleep at the wheel and the PSD should be next to have a go. Since the actual campaign started, they seem to have been bleeding out.

One reason might be that the vote of No Confidence was seen as a bit mercenary; the PSD have a long history of preferring smaller government and voting for austere budgets. The political spectrum in Portugal is similar to ours here in the UK, but the divisions are different. Probably the best description of the PSD is that they are like our Coalition government: a big tent including Big Society conservatives and free-market Liberals. The difference is that while our Right-leaning Lib Dems said that they might not be getting everything they want, but the middle of a debt crisis was no time to monkey around with minority governments and early elections. The PSD, in the eyes of their critics, said that they might well be getting everything they want but there were political gains to be had, so the unsteady nerves of the market could go hang while they cashed in.

Another explanation is that steadily-rising Blue line. Attentive readers might be thinking that if the PSD are the Coalition, then there's room on the right flank: people who refer to themselves as Tories, the Carlton Club and Cornerstone Group. In Portugal, that's the People's Party.

The People's Party, whose logo looks like a symbolic instruction on a health and safety panel of a box of industrial cleaning powder.

The PP's traditional stomping ground is rolling back the abortion-and-gay-marriage achievements of the Socialists, but they're also the most anti-Europe party available. That's probably helping them at a time when Frankfurt is telling Portugal it needs to either cut down on pensions and libraries or else raise taxes.

Since Portugal has proportional representation, Parliament will probably end up looking a lot like the polls. If it stays as it is, the question will be: who is better placed to pull together a coalition or govern as a minority?

Passos Coelho - Image from the Lagos branch of the PSD

Pedro Passos Coelho is probably the favourite to be Prime Minister; if he can win back some of the support that's slipped away since March, or get the People's Party onside, he'll be there.

Jose Socrates- image by Francisco Leong/ AFP

On the other hand, don't count out the Prime Minister; he seems to have gotten some balance-the-budget cred for trying to do the hard but right thing when it came to it, but hasn't completely lost the protect-public-services ethos of a left-wing party. He's led a minority government before, and has a lot of credibility for his achievements, economic meltdown notwithstanding.

It look to me like it'll be a nailbiter.

Portugal

Image from Wikimedia

Countries often have a vignette that encapsulates their understanding of their own history. For Americans, it's fording your prairie schooner over the Big Blue River. For the British, it's Phileas Fogg, certain in his ability to circumnavigate the globe with nothing more than a pocketful of Pound Sterling, a handlebar moustache and a firm attitude [pdf]. For the Spanish, it's Pizarro going buck wild in South America.

The equivalent symbol of the Portuguese golden age is Vasco Da Gama, pitching up on the shores of Malabar with a trunk full of merchandise and a prepared spiel about exciting business opportunities.

Image from wikipedia

At this time Portugal was really good at seafaring: I mean, super-good. In fact:

Portugal fact: That gold symbol on the flag is an armillary sphere.

I'll admit that I have a fairly shaky grasp of Portuguese history after the time that the rest of Europe cottoned on to the colonialism game. For example, I didn't know that Portugal had a fascist dictatorship, and I certainly didn't know it lasted until the nineteen-god-damned-seventies. To put that another way, when my dad started school, there were Western European countries that were literal, actual, secret-police, paramilitary gangs, Mussolini-but-not-as-historical fascist dictatorships.

The Carnation Revolution seems to be a pretty heartening precedent for the Arab Spring, since Portugal is now very democractic, very free, and overall a pretty good place to live (and yes, I will keep linking to that site until you all visit it).

It also has my favourite-named World leader: José Sócrates.

Image by Jose Sena Goulao

Socrates is very much on the bubble for keeping his job. I'm going back to my ancestral homelands for the bank holiday, so we'll take a look at the people trying to knock him off next week, before the actual election on Sunday.

Turkey and Friends

Image from abgs.gov.tr

The EU is a pretty emotive subject. On one hand, you have the Express types who apparently believe that the EU is one steam-powered robot spider from being the villain from Wild Wild West. On the other, there are people like me who think the Lisbon treaty didn't go far enough and would actually sort of like it if everyone was required to learn Esperanto (or even better, Latin).

Strip away that emotive layer, and what remains is basically a 5-10% increase in cross-border trade, and the ability to use that as a very big carrot to get our near-abroad to fall into line on things like life and liberty.

(Dear readers who are also historians: it's been sixty years since the Schuman declaration. When was the last sixty-year stretch when no members of the EU-15 were at war with each other? If the answer is what I think it is, it's either very hopeful or we're overdue.)

Turkey really, really wants to join the club.

Image from Wikimedia

Inside the clubhouse, the bulk of opinion is in favour, but the opposition includes some big-hitters. 

• Britain and Italy say Turkey should join, and think it'd be a major coup for security and massively increase the influence of Europe in the Middle East. 
• Spain is in favour, liking the "peace and co-operation" angle.
• Sarkozy of France is opposed on the grounds that Turkey is in Asia, not Europe
• Austria are opposed, apparently on the grounds that Turkey besieged Vienna in 1683 and they're not over it
• Sweden says that Sakozy had no problem with Cyprus and that it sounds like total bullshit to them.
• But mentioning Cyprus around Greece makes them angry, and maybe they have a point. Something definitely needs to happen there.

The good news on the Cyprus front is that the European project is setting up exactly the kind of structures that can handle problems like this. 

What even the people who don't want Turkey electing MEPs would agree, though, is that it's a good thing if Turkey keeps working towards it. Since they first knocked on the door, Turkey has made massive strides towards making their economy more competitive and transparent, and has ratcheted down a lot of the crazy. There is still a lot of crazy, but I know I'm not alone in hoping that it's on the same track as Spain, just back a few decades and with more shisha.

The other thing everyone would agree is that Turkey's got a road. Membership would be a big deal. This isn't like Malta or Slovenia, where you might overlook the last few quibbles and wave them in. There are 72 million people in Turkey; If it ever joins, it'll be comparable in power to Germany, France, Italy or the UK. It would radically change the way that Europe relates to the Muslim world, and probably the way we think about both of those concepts.

Depending on your viewpoint; that might be the best reason to do it or the best reason not to.

Turkey and the Contenders

Turkey fact: You can often tell a Turkish man's political leanings by his mustache style: Over the lip for left-wing, trimmed flat for conservatives.


Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been Prime Minister since 2003, and unless something goes incredibly wrong, he is going to be Prime Minister after the election too.

Image from Wikimedia

On the other hand, this is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the opposition Republican party:

Image from gadanalam.com

The very short version is that Erdogan is a moderate-conservative, basically the Muslim version of Christian-Democratic politicians like Angela Merkel in Germany or Sarkozy in France. Kilicdaroglu is more left-wing, liberal and secularist; he's particularly popular among urban, young and middle-class voters.

This post ended up getting long, so I've put in a jump: read on to find out what those guys would say their most important difference is.

Peru update: Humala scares the horses

It turns out Ollanta Humala doesn't just need to convince the voters he's moderate on the economy: he needs to convince investors, too.

Reuters reports that business deals are being held over to wait and see who wins. Humala has said that if elected he'll respect private deals and maintain existing macroeconomic policy; if he does win he's going to spend a few weeks saying "No, really" and desperately trying not to sound too communist.

Fujimori seems to be seen as a safe pair of hands, though she's hanging out with a lot of advisers from her father's government: advisers that a lot of people think should be in court facing corruption charges. At least in South America, it seems business fears graft less than nationalisation.

For Humala to win, it seems like Hugo Chavez really needs to keep his mouth shut for a few weeks; sadly, this is not a skill he has demonstrated in the past.

Peru overview

"Viva El Peru" by Kareem Farooq

In the 1980s, Peru's reviews were pretty much all one-star. Hyperinflation, price controls and shortages meant that the economy was based on queueing, the Shining Path rebellion did basically whatever they wanted, and president Alan Garcia had approval ratings in the single figures.

Since then Peru's had a pretty incredible upward trajectory. Most people would now say it's not quite as good as Brazil or Chile, but better than Venezuela or Bolivia. On the 5th of June, they're electing a new President.

Peru for massive bluffers: "I would never have thought Fujimori could get out of her father's shadow, but it looks like it's coming right down to the wire. Best stay up on election night!"

Peru had its main election back in April, but the constitution requires that Presidents win at least 50% of the vote. No-one achieved this, so the country has had a few months to mull it over and are now having a run-off. The first round results looked like this:

Ollanta Humala	31.7%
Keiko Fujimori	23.5%
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski	18.5%
Alejandro Toledo	15.6%
Luis Castaneda	9.8%

By the by, looking at that list of names I would not be able to guess what country we're talking about or even what continent it's on.

I feel bad for dismissing them so briefly, but here are the basic summaries of the candidates knocked out in the primary.

Luis Castaneda: former mayor of the capital city, Lima. Ran for centre-right National Solidarity party, but never really got off the ground outside his home turf. Has a terrifying rictus for a grin. Peru's Rudy Guiliani.

Alejandro Toledo: Social liberal, economic centrist, president 2000-2006. Excellent president and legislator, terrible politician. He started the election campaign as the favourite, but that lead started to dry up when he started meeting people and going on TV. Will now have to fall back on his day jobs, which are professor of economics, senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, and consultant for the UN, OECD and World Bank.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski: Toledo's former finance minister: somehow got the nomination from the right-wing Christian People's party and despite that ran a highly centrist, technocratic campaign. His performance in the first round was unexpectedly good, and the first sign he was getting votes from anyone who didn't read the business pages and political blogs.

So anyway, on to the real contenders:

Image from keikofujimori.com/

I skipped a few years back up ahead. What happened between Peru's late-eighties calamity and the league-average democracy we see now? Well, cometh the hour, cometh the man: much as happened in Colombia, they elected a strongman. Alberto Fujimori looks like a little old Japanese man and that's because he is. However, that didn't stop him telling Peru that he was counting to three, and that Peru should look him in the face because he wasn't joking.

Alberto took an axe to the well-meaning market interventions that had screwed up Peru's economy and, after the "Fujishock", business started up again. He was also undeniably effective at dealing with the Shining Path, albeit that he used the army to suspend Congress and rewrote the constitution in the process.

A few years back, Alberto expressed an interest in running this year. Why isn't he doing that? Well, because he's serving a 25-year jail term for ordering extrajudicial killings, orchestrating kidnappings and flamboyant corruption.

Keiko's campaign platform:

• Reduce regulation on businesses and reduce cost of doing business by 20%
• Simplify tax regime, decrease taxes on enterprise and increase them on mining windfalls
• Build prisons and increase the types of crime that carry the death penalty
• Economic priority is strong growth (>7% year)
• "Mechanisms of coercion and control"
• Maybe or maybe not a presidential pardon for Dad.

Image from Omni-Bus.com

In the dying days of the Fujimori presidency, Ollanta Humala was part of a military uprising against the government. Ollanta himself later got a congressional pardon, but his brother is, in fact, serving 25 years for kidnapping and murder associated with the uprising. Peru certainly has election fever right now, but all things considered it's amazingly civil.

Humala's power base is in the rural poor; he's from the indigenous Quecha people (named after an Inca general, no less) and his father was in the Communist party. In past elections he's very much played the left-wing populist, declaiming into a microphone while wearing a red t-shirt. He even got an endorsement from Hugo Chavez. Of course, many people live their life based on doing the opposite of whatever Hugo Chavez recommends,and that endorsement probably killed his last campaign.

Humala has apparently learnt the lesson and is now dancing the andean version of the Potomac shuffle, hard. He's bought a suit and tie and started talking about the independence of the Central Bank.

Ollanta's campaign platform:

• Public ownership of basic services like water and sanitation
• Decrease sales tax and increase tax on mining companies
• Tight control over budget deficits and inflation
• Economic priority is reducing poverty rates and increasing equality
• Create a High Commission for Peace and Development, who will award compensation for victims of violence over the last decade
• Maybe or maybe not a presidential pardon for Bro

So, who'll win?

It's hard to say. For most of the time since the first round they've been neck-and-neck, with a high number of undecideds. The centrists and technocrats all fell at the first round, leaving their supports to choose between hard right and hard left; or, in the tasteful words of a prominent public intellectual, like choosing between AIDS and Cancer.

Humala has been trying to convince socially liberal Toledo supporters that he won't go around collectivizing things for fun, and Fujimora is certainly not making any play for voters who support gay rights. What Fujimora has done, apparently, is distance herself from her father's negatives (suspending congress, death squads) while holding on to his law-and-order credentials.

Back in the parliamentary elections, Humala's party (Gana Peru) got the most seats, and would probably have the easiest time building a coalition. On the other hand, the most recent polls seems to show a movement to Fujimora. The lead now is larger than the sampling error, but smaller than the number who say they'll spoil their ballots. Both sides are campaigning flat out to get the last few undecideds.

Since Humala's base is in the more remote rural parts of the country, I think we'll either see Fujimori declare victory early on election night, or Humala grind out a win in the last ballot box to be counted.

Turkey- Overview

Turkey-fact to use at parties: The American bird is named after the country because similar birds (now called Guinea fowl) used to be bought into Europe via the Ottoman empire. In Turkey, they're called India, and in parts of India, they're called Peru.

Turkey-fact for massive bluffers: "After the constitutional referendum last year, I think Erdogan has it in the bag. Turkey has certainly come on in leaps and bounds under the AKP, but ironically I don't think their European aspirations will come to much until the opposition find their feet again".

(Image from Visit2Istanbul.com)

Turkey one hundred years ago can basically be summed up by doing a Google image search for "sultan". The Ottoman Empire somehow managed to last for centuries, despite having a system that often lead to the head of state being a) inbred and b) raised in solitary confinement. Everyone was firmly of the opinion that the empire was just about to collapse from about 1650 through to 1923, when it finally did. The new revolutionary republic decided to move away from the last few centuries of the Sultan eating sherbet, sitting on exquisite silk cushions, and watching himself having sex in a mirror while making horse noises. Instead, they looked at what Europe and America had done since their 1820, and reckoned they could do the same.

Turkey today is an interesting place. Almost everyone is at least nominally Muslim, but the constitution is extremely strongly secular. Turkey sees itself as an integral part of Europe, and the rest of Europe is divided on the issue. The country is changing extensively, rapidly and dramatically. Turkey might become a model of European-level prosperity and freedom for the Muslim world, or it might collapse in on itself.

Image from a site specialising in weird football wallpapers

In about a month, Turkey is having a general election. Over the next few posts, we'll take a look at the contenders and examine the odds. We'll find out where they're coming from and what they're for. We'll see who's watching anxiously and who's already pissed off about it. I don't want to give too much away, but there are also hints of military conspiracies and one of the weirdest publishing phenomena I've ever heard of.

The principle of Democracy Fan

Most people I know are football fans. I don't really care about football; I'm not interested in making predictions and agonising when my team loses. It can be frustrating when you're the only one in the office who likes your particular sport. Just ask any cricket fan who's had to explain the distinction between a tie and a draw to explain why he's red-eyed and hoarse.

Me? I like democracy. I didn't really get into it before 2008, but back then it was easy. For every person keen to talk about whether Wilkinson would be fit in time for the away leg, there was someone willing to discuss the electoral college, or superdelegates, or the Bradley affect (mythical, as it turned out). Our own election revived that for a while, but generally people look glazed when I talk about Single Transferable Vote or Oscar Arias' Nobel prize.


The other thing I like, as anyone unfortunate enough to have met me a party will know, is expounding. What I want to do with this blog, basically, is expound to you, and use that expounding as an excuse to indulge in my deep-seated desire to read the whole of wikipedia.


There's an election somewhere in the world every few weeks, and some of them have nuggets of pure gold in them. Did you know that the last Hungarian election was won by the last party to self-destruct, leaving the public so disenchanted with the competition that there is effectively no opposition party anymore? Did you know that in 2008 Italy elected a man as Prime Minister who is best described as falling somewhere in a triangle described by the villains from Tom Clancy, Dan Brown and late-nineties Bond films?  Did you know that in 2010, Costa Rica elected it's first female president, and that she is named Laura Chinchilla?


Political theatre is, in my opinion, the best spectator sport there is. Allow me to be your sports-news-commentator.