Australia’s inconclusive election

S P SETH

Australia has gone through, what one might call, an inconclusive election. The ruling conservative coalition has scraped through but it will have a difficult time of governing during, what looks, like an interim period before new elections might have to be called. Uncharacteristically for Australia, it has been going through a period of political instability, having changed multiple prime ministers through internal party coups followed by elections. The government in Australia has generally alternated between a conservative coalition and the Labour Party. Most people in Australia tended to vote for one or the other, with only a very small bloc of undecided voters. But, as with everywhere else in the western world, the old political certainties are no longer relevant with many voters, remaining undecided till the end. And in Australia’s case, about a quarter of the voters seem to have opted out of the comfortable feeling of political allegiance to either of the two main parties, and have ended up voting for a minor party/group and independents.

In Australia’s preferential voting system, a voter’s second and even subsequent preferences count in determining the final outcome. In other words, even if a party were to win a majority-vote it might still lose the election on the basis of results in marginal seats. Another important feature of Australian elections is that the voting in the country is compulsory. Therefore, a voter has to, in most cases, make a choice, which makes the election result quite representative. And the large vote in favour of minor parties and independents is a sure sign that a growing number of voters are not happy with what is on offer periodically at the time of successive elections.

Another disturbing feature of the recent election is the return of the racist and xenophobic Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party, with three likely seats in the Senate (upper house). Last time when she was elected to the parliament in 1996, she was mouthing anti-Asian rhetoric blaming almost all Australia’s problems on Asian immigrants, as well as targeting Australia’s aborigines as if they haven’t suffered enough already. This time, she has got even more ammunition by largely, but not exclusively, targeting Muslims. And as part of her anti-Muslim tirade she has asked for a Royal Commission into Islam and surveillance cameras in mosques. At the same time, she is also seeking a Royal Commission into climate change, as she questions its validity. In other words, she is bit of a nutter but, as with all such characters ---as with Donald Trump in the US--- they tap into a fertile constituency deeply unhappy and anxious with changes around them. They feel that their erstwhile ‘idyllic’ world has changed forever. Here in Australia, Pauline Hanson is no Donald Trump but she is still a lightening rod of sorts.

One might wonder what has gone wrong with Australia? The answer is that fundamentally there is not much wrong with the country. It is still one of the richest countries in the world and with one of the highest living standards. But the main worry, as featuring in the recent election, is that Australia’s luck might be running out, while the two main parties are simply engaged in point scoring for political gain and not seriously confronting the issues facing the country. Basically, with the slump in commodity prices, like iron ore and coal as Australia’s major exports, it is feared that it will adversely affect people’s living standards.

With the recent commodities’ export boom, Australia virtually had an uninterrupted couple of decades of economic prosperity---it even managed to get through the global financial crisis relatively unscathed--- which is now coming to an end. As a result, its debt level has gone up and it is running budgetary deficits. But the budgetary situation is being blown out of all proportion, considering that Australia’s national debt is less than 20 per cent of the GDP. But the question of debt is regarded as a sacred cow lest Australia, at some future time, go the way of Greece or Argentina. And both sides of the political spectrum are agreed on the need to rein in the debt and turn the budget into a surplus within the decade.

But the question is how to do it? The conservative coalition, which has just scraped through, is business friendly and believes that an investment-friendly regime, with cuts in company tax rates worth $50 billion over the next decade, would bring in more foreign investors propelling economic growth. Which would increase employment, spur consumer spending and create a virtuous cycle of all round growth. It is further argued, as the conservative government did during the election, that without healthy economic growth the country would not be able to sustain its living standards as well as its social, health and education benefits. Further on, because of fiscal constraints from a slowing and transitional economy, they felt that there would be need for spending cuts on a whole range of social and health benefits, though they sought to underplay it during the election. The Labour Party, on the other hand, sought to capitalize on the government’s handouts to their business mates while trying to cut on necessary social, health and educational services.

At the same time, the opposition the Labour Party didn’t want to come out as an irresponsible profligate political alternative and agreed on the need to rein in the budget deficit around the same time frame of under a decade, but not at the cost of Australia’s much popular universal health care, and spending on education. And they campaigned vigorously against the $50 billion tax bonanza for big business over ten years. No wonder that from a very low base of parliamentary seats held by them, the opposition Labour Party increased their tally impressively, with the opposition leader sounding like he was the real winner. In the midst of it, as pointed out earlier, nearly a quarter of the voters have voted against the existing two-party system by voting for minority parties/groups or independents. Which will make the task of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that much harder.

In other words, the task of governance will increasingly become difficult, thus further increasing voters’ disillusionment with the two-party political system of ruling alternatively without any real change. This process of growing voters’ disillusionment with existing political system is now seen all over the old western democracies, with some local variations.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Britain’s identity crisis and global disorder

S P SETH

The British referendum to leave the European Union (EU) will not only affect the United Kingdom but is likely to have wider repercussions. Some of its supporters were jubilant calling it Britain’s independence day by freeing the country from EU’s institutional and bureaucratic stranglehold. For 17 million Brits voting to quit EU—though about 16 million voted to remain in the EU--- it is democracy at work. However, a good number are said to be regretting their decision. But the die is cast and the process of separation will take its due course.

There has indeed been an attempt by some Brexit supporters and promoters to put the best spin on their decision, suggesting that nothing much will change in terms of Britain’s relationship with Europe. Here is Boris Johnson, who led the charge against EU membership, disingenuously saying in a newspaper article, “I cannot stress too much that Britain is part of Europe, and always will be. There will still be intense and intensifying European co-operation and partnership in a large number of fields… EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in EU.” In a subsequent article in the Telegraph, London, he again suggested that things would remain, more or less, the same while allowing Britain to recover its sovereignty. He wrote this article a few days after announcing that he had withdrawn from the contest for David Cameron’s position, which threw the ruling Conservative Party into considerable confusion, if not chaos.  

Of course, there will be no immediate change until the divorce begins when Britain invokes Article 50 of the relevant treaty that sets forth the process of withdrawal. Incidentally, this provision hasn’t been used before. And once invoked, the process of withdrawal is set to take two years. In other words, once the separation is effected, it will mean that Britain will be like any other non-member country, with its new relationship negotiated separately. It will no longer be an insider with free access to, for instance, the EU single EU market. In Britain, there is a sense among some “Leave” proponents that all the loose ends, requiring renegotiation over a whole range of issues, might be sorted out in the period between now and the 2-year exit period thus putting the new relationship on a smooth bed as if nothing much has happened. It is like a divorce where the aggrieved former partners still carry on, though not in the same house. That is not how life works.

In his article in the Telegraph, London, before he decided to abandon his bid for leadership, Johnson mentioned two reasons for Brexit. These were: “… the No. 1 issue was control--- a sense that British democracy was being undermined by the EU system, and that we should restore to the people that vital power…” Second: “I believe that millions of people who voted ‘Leave’ were also inspired by the belief that Britain is a great country, and that outside the job-destroying coils of EU bureaucracy we can survive and thrive as never before.” He didn’t believe that immigration was a big issue.

Apart from Johnson, virtually every commentator highlighted anxieties about immigration as an important factor contributing to the ‘Leave’ vote.  And it wasn’t focused on Asian, Caribbean and Middle Eastern immigrants, though the racist abuse, affecting all minorities, has gone up since the referendum. . This time, though, the main focus of ‘Leave’ voters’ anger was European immigrants, like Poles and Romanians and from other EU member countries, who are free to enter, live and work anywhere in the regional union. In other words, it was a mix of issues--- a general sense of anxiety and fear that Britain was losing control of its affairs to the bureaucrats at the EU headquarters in Brussels. And a hope that once Britain was back with its sovereign control, its old spirit of adventure and enterprise would come into play and everything in the country would be so much better. This sense of a special, even exceptional, British enterprise is part of a deeply embedded nostalgia for the past when Britannia ruled the waves, as was once so proudly proclaimed.

But the reality is slowly dawning that leaving EU might not be the hoped for solution. To begin with, it has created political turmoil in the country. David Cameron has resigned and the contest for his position has further polarized the party. The lead conservative politician in the Brexit camp, Boris Johnson, has become a casualty of his success, and has announced that he wouldn’t be in the race as David Cameron’s successor. The market volatility following the Brexit decision belied Johnson’s contention that nothing much would change.  The economic consequences would continue to be felt over a period of time.

The immediate effect, for instance, has been the downgrading of the United Kingdom’s credit rating by global credit agencies. And there are fears that Britain might be headed for recession. It is likely to affect investments, create unemployment, and a possible downgrading of London as a major global financial hub. And indeed, this might have spill over effects for European economies as well by creating a general sense of economic uncertainty at a time when the recovery from the 2008-9 recession is still fragile or stagnant.

And at another level, the Brexit might set in motion a process of EU fragmentation by encouraging demand for popular referendum in other EU countries. As in Britain, there has been a growing populist reaction against EU as a symbol of all that is wrong, like the infringement of national sovereignty, increased unemployment, rapidly falling economic standards attributed to enforced austerity programs, out of control refugee and immigration problems and so on.  And all this is more oxygen for rightwing and fascist parties helping them to come to power, as in Poland and Hungary, as well as making a serious bid for power in some other member countries, like France, Holland and so on.

If EU’s fragmentation were to take hold, it could spell the end of the post-WW11 international system based on US-led western world. It is worth remembering that Britain was a leading allied power that defeated Nazi Germany and, besides being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it has been and is an important member/part of the international institutions that underpin global order. And its importance has tended to be more than its weight because of the special relationship with the United States. In some ways, the United Kingdom often looked like a projection of the US strategic posture into Europe and elsewhere in the world. While the US and EU are close allies and part of NATO, Britain was special. And to that extent, its exit from EU is likely to diminish its importance with the EU, the US, and the world at large. It was already a power of the past and now by retreating into its island status, it would increasingly be consigned to that role.

Britain’s identity crisis and global disorder--- Part 2

S P SETH

The 27-member EU (without Britain) is making it clear that Britain is not going to have any special deal with the EU after it has exited. There would be no concessional access to the EU’s large single market without the accepted four freedoms: that its members abide by the free movement of labour, goods, capital and services. At the same time, London’s status as the financial hub of the EU is under threat. Germany’s financial market regulator reportedly said that London could not host the headquarters of a planned European stock exchange and could not remain a centre for trading in euros after it has left the EU. This would down grade London’s status as a global centre in all sorts of ways--- politically, economically, and strategically. The anticipated negative effects will take time to filter through but, over time, the United Kingdom will be the loser.

At home, the Brexit referendum has thrown the country’s politics into turmoil. Which is seen at two levels. First: instead of clarifying the situation within the ruling Conservative Party after a fairly convincing vote to quit EU, it was thrown into chaos with the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, a close ally of the lead campaigner Boris Johnson, turning on him and declaring his own candidacy for prime minister’s job. Whoever comes on top and takes over David Cameron’s job will have a difficult task of uniting the party, not to speak of the country--- nearly half of which voted to stay in the EU. While the Conservative Party is working its way through its leadership crisis, the Labour Party is in all sorts of strife with its parliamentary wing resoundingly declaring a vote of no confidence in their leader, Jeremy Corbyn. However, Corbyn is refusing to go as he was elected by the rank and file membership of the Labour Party. He will probably have to go eventually because a Labour Party so hopelessly divided, is likely to be decimated in the next election.

Of course, the politics of the country might settle down over time but Brexit referendum has created overall uncertainty about the future. With Scottish voters having overwhelming voted to ‘Remain’ in the EU, it further complicates British polity. The Scottish First Minister met some of the EU leaders to canvass its case to remain as part of the EU. But that is not likely, as Scotland is part the United Kingdom and hence not able to exercise sovereign rights. Therefore, the only way for them to exercise the EU option would be to separate from the UK through another popular referendum that London might or might not allow so soon after the recent one that failed. The Brexit might also create problems with Northern Ireland, with its compatriots across the Irish border a part of the EU. The eventual solution might be a hastened union between the two parts of Ireland—north and south. In other words, it is a tangled world in the UK where its two parts, Scotland and Northern Ireland, would rather quit Britain to remain within the EU.  

Another aspect of the Brexit referendum, which I have already touched briefly, is how it might impact the European Union project, which has kept the feuding and warring Europeans from lunging at each other, as in WW1 and WW11. Coming in the wake of Europe’s still unresolved financial crisis--- with Greece at one time in danger of either quitting or forced to exit the euro zone and some other member countries facing their own moments of debt overload and forced into austerity regimes with mounting unemployment and social distress--- Britain’s decision to quit might start a process of unraveling over a period of time. Some of the issues that propelled British referendum are a matter of concern for some of its other members as well. The issue of loss of sovereignty is a serious concern with some countries, especially smaller countries, which feel that Germany and France, particularly Germany, tend to dominate through the pan-European institutions based in Brussels. Germany’s dominance was seriously resented in Greece, and in other countries forced into austerity regimes. The anti-EU constituency, strongly associated with extreme right and ultra nationalist parties, is quite influential in France and Netherlands and becoming stronger elsewhere. In Poland and Hungry, their right-wing, if not fascist regimes, also resent the human rights elements of the EU project.  

These powerful extreme nationalist forces have been strengthened further by the influx of refugees from the Middle East due to civil wars made worse by the so-called IS caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. Those voting for Brexit also feared, as part of their collective multiple neurosis, that Britain’s membership of the EU would make it further lose control of its national borders by letting in more refugees/immigrants into the country. Britain is suffering from an identity crisis and has been since it lost the empire. The referendum has tended to provide an outlet to vent out all these frustrations as well as the deep divisions in British society along generation, class, regions and city versus country. The educated people with higher incomes and living in cities and university towns have voted to remain in the European Union.

The problem, therefore, is--- and it is all over Europe and the west--- that many people and their numbers are increasing, feel alienated with the political system that seems to ignore their concerns and cater for those who underwrite the system. The process of globalization, these people believe, is not working for them as it has increased unemployment by exporting jobs to China and elsewhere in the developing world and it is only the mega rich of their world that are making a killing out of the political system at home and its global extension. Therefore, they want the center of gravity to shift back by reclaiming national sovereignty. And Brexit is a manifestation of this. In the US, the Trump phenomenon is clearly rooted in collective neurosis of blaming everything on the ‘other’.

At the geopolitical level, Britain’s exit from Europe must please Russia by hopefully reducing London’s disproportionate weight in the western political and military councils. Within EU and NATO, Britain has been the most strident critic of Russian occupation of Crimea and its role in the Ukraine crisis. London espoused the most comprehensive sanctions regime against Russia linked to its policies to destabilize Ukraine. And it is also very active in the NATO military maneuvers to checkmate an anticipated threat of Russian destabilization in the Baltic states and eastern Europe. Moscow should be pleased at Brexit for two reasons. First: as noted earlier, it will cease to be part of the European ‘collective’ and hence not able to exercise as much influence as it did by being within the EU. Second: if British exit from the EU were to start a process of loosening/fragmenting of Europe, Russia will have greater scope to fish in the murky EU waters.

In all sorts of ways, the British referendum in favour of exiting EU is likely to set in motion centrifugal forces that will not only affect the United Kingdom and Europe but also the established global order. This would help China to further push its claim as the alternative power centre.

    

Orlando massacre, gun culture and Trump phenomena

S P SETH

The massacre of 49 people, with 53 wounded, at a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, by a self-proclaimed supporter of the IS highlighted multiple issues that plague the United States. The first and foremost, of course, is the reality and fear of terrorist violence since the 9/11 tragedy, which changed the psyche and politics of the US and indeed, in so many ways, of the world. The subsequent military operations against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath to this day is a testimony to this. What has made the Orlando attack distinct is a professed combination by the killer, Omar Mateen, of religion (Islam—more pointedly his loyalty to IS) and his choice of the venue, a thriving gay club having a fun party. Even more confusing are reports that Mateen had visited the gay club over time and showed some interest in gay sex.

Indeed, a Latino guy reportedly told a Spanish-language television network in the US that he was Mateen’s lover for a time and claiming that Mateen acted out “of revenge” after finding out that one of his gay partners was HIV positive. In an interview with the television network, this guy, who called himself Miguel, said that, “…the thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism. In my opinion he did it for revenge.” Mateen was “terrified” after he found out that one of the Puerto Rican guys he had sex with was HIV positive. Miguel also reportedly said that Mateen hated gay Puerto Ricans because he had  experienced rejection at their hands. Incidentally, Puerto Ricans bore the brunt of casualties at the Orlando gay club massacre.

If Mateen was gay, it must have been terribly confusing and, possibly self-loathing, growing up with his Muslim/Afghan culture. His father was an Afghan immigrant but Mateen was born in the United States. Soon after the Orlando tragedy, his father had suggested his son was very upset by seeing two men kissing each other in a shopping mall, suggesting that this might have been the trigger for the mass shooting; though he wasn’t so sure about it in subsequent reporting. Such confusion and self-loathing likely created in him a split personality of not knowing who he was and wrestling with his inner self. And at the time of the tragedy, he seemed to be reaching a crisis point of wanting to resolve it on a high ‘moral’ and religious note, as he saw it, by proclaiming his loyalty to IS. However, the FBI has reportedly found no evidence so far that Mateen was gay in any way, which only adds to the confusion.

The Orlando massacre once again highlighted the inability/incapacity of the US political establishment to curb easy access to guns, especially the high caliber weapons like the one used by Mateen. Because the lethality of such weapons, whether used by an Islamic terrorist in a gay club, or a white supremist who targeted parishoners in a black church and the one who mostly killed children in a school shooting, is horrendous. President Obama has seen in his two terms, what looks like, an avalanche of mass shootings, with him repeatedly urging the need for sensible background checks for the sale of guns. But the country’s legislature has repeatedly rejected such calls, including the latest after the Orlando shooting.  The basic argument for such rejection is that it will violate the Second Amendment of the constitution that guarantees the right to bear arms-- even for those on FBI’s watch list and on flight watch lists-- because they might be innocent.

In a country where there are multiple agencies geared to prevent terrorist attacks, a very basic measure to restrict the availability of guns, even if this were to prevent only one incident of mass shooting, is beyond the comprehension of many people in the world. This Second Amendment right to bear arms to shoot people doesn’t make any sense unless the US was imaging itself in a continuing war with itself, as probably it did in the days of the Cowboys and Indians kind of world. But that world is long gone and the US is no longer fighting an organized enemy within. In other words, this obsession with guns and gun culture is propped up by the powerful National Rifles Association (NRA) with many in the Republican Party, as well Democrats, beholden to the NRA for its patronage. The NRA is virtually holding a gun to the US political establishment and they are petrified that it might kill their political prospects.

In the US’s toxic political culture where many people feel a pervasive sense of anxiety and fear for all sorts of reasons, the country’s love affair with guns is  constant as a defensive mechanism of sorts. And with Republican presumptive candidate Donald Trump fuelling this pervasive sense of threat from Muslims/Mexicans and immigrants in general and even the African-Americans, this kind of siege mentality tends to be reinforced with any mass shooting, even more so if it is the work of a Muslim terrorist/nutter like the San Bernardino shooting last December and now the Orlando massacre. Trump felt vindicated and congratulated himself that his injunction to ban Muslims from entering the US had somehow come true with the Orlando tragedy.

A tweet from him on the Orlando killings read: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance.” And he said, as if puffed up: “Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen—and it is only going to get worse.” And he added, “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning…” Because: “Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.” Making a case for gun ownership, he mimicked how if people in the Orlando gay club had guns, the killer Omar Mateen would have been taken down before he did massive damage. In other words, Trump and other like-minded people, and there are so many of them, believe that guns are not the problem; they most likely are the solution in the Orlando kind of massacre.

Trump represents a wide section of the Republican constituency and it is amazing that he “reflected the views of likely Republican voters extremely well”, according to a study by three American academics, Ronald B. Rapoport, Alan I. Abramowitz, and Walter J. Stone. Writing in the New York Review of Books, their conclusion is that, “On all three issues [with his extreme views] overwhelming majorities of likely Republican voters supported his positions: almost three quarters (73 percent) favoured banning Muslims from entering the US, 90 percent favoured identifying and deporting illegal immigrants as quickly as possible, and 85 percent favoured building a wall on the Mexican border.” With Trump’s extreme position finding such overwhelming support among likely Republican voters and the generally toxic political culture in the country, it is no wonder that the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) advocacy of the right to bear arms is so receptive and the country’s political establishment, by and large, is supportive of it. 

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.