Heads of State and Government

A footnote to the May 2016 forest and brush fires in Alberta, Canada is the presence of three hundred South African professional firefighters. They had previously received training in the use of Canadian firefighting equipment. Air Canada transported the firefighters from South Africa to northern Alberta, a flight that lasted more than twenty hours. According to Canadian media, the flight was the first time Air Canada operated to South Africa. The South Africans are part of Working on Fire, a South African government-funded job creation program with a focus on the marginalized. According to its website, it has five thousand men and women trained in wildfire fighting with two hundred bases around the country. Almost one third are women, the highest percentage of any firefighting force in the world, according to the website of Working on Fire. Wildfires have always been a part of the ecology of South Africa, often used as a tool for the management of grasslands and some forests. There are two fire seasons: the summer in the Western Cape, and the winter almost everywhere else. As elsewhere, now most fires in South Africa are started by accident or through carelessness. Working on Fire would appear to be an effective program that directly addresses marginalized youth, especially in the rural areas, in addition to meeting the need for wildfire fighters. It is not clear from media sources whether the Alberta government compensated the South African organization for wildfire fighting services, or instead paid the firemen individually.

Pei-Yu Wei is an intern for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The inauguration speech of Tsai Ing-Wen, the new president of Taiwan, on May 20, drew much attention from audiences both at home and abroad who hoped to glean information about the future path that Taiwan’s China policy might take. Tsai, the island’s first female president, is the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a party known for its more independent stance vis-a-vis China, and Beijing has so far regarded her rise with wariness. But how indicative are Taiwanese inaugural speeches of policies down the line? The inaugural addresses of Taiwan’s democratically elected presidents have always touched on the issue of China, from broad principles for engaging with Beijing to detailed policies. The cross-strait relationship is not only a critical challenge faced by administrations throughout the years, but also important to regional stability. However, a look back at the speeches of Taiwan’s four democratically elected presidents suggests that inaugural addresses are not necessarily a useful guide to the eventual policy pursued. Lee Teng-Hui, Taiwan’s first democratically elected president and then-chairman of the ruling Kuomintang party, noted in his 1996 inauguration speech that reunification was the common goal of both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China.  Lee appeared to follow this policy until 1999, when he declared that bilateral ties between Beijing and Taipei should be redefined as a “special state-to-state” relationship. During his term, Lee also supported “Taiwanization,” a movement to build an identity that emphasized Taiwan instead of China or Japan, and, more contentiously, was originally part of the independence movement. Unlike Lee, Ma Ying-Jeou, who swept to victory in 2008 on a platform of establishing greater economic ties with China, did not stray from the pledges he made in his inaugural address. After a landslide victory, Ma addressed the nation and highlighted the importance of better ties between Taiwan and China. In his inaugural speech, he emphasized that the status quo reflected mainstream opinion, and that the two sides should interact based on the 1992 Consensus, a compromise of “one country, different interpretations [on both sides of the strait].” Ma also promised to normalize the cultural and economic relationship, and to open up direct flights between China and Taiwan. Even though the implementation of direct flights occurred later than scheduled, Ma did consistently follow the 1992 Consensus, the importance of which he stressed once again in his second inaugural address in 2012. Even during periods when his insistence on closer ties with Beijing, such as attempting to pass a contentious trade agreement through parliament, saw his approval drop to 9 percent in 2013, he continued to adhere to his vision. Chen Shui-Bian, Ma’s predecessor, however, strayed from his originally more centrist position on the China-Taiwan relationship. As the first DPP president-elect, it went without saying that he attracted much skepticism from China. In his inauguration speech in 2000, Chen famously put forth the “Four Nos,” a pledge that as long as Beijing had no intention of using military action on Taiwan, his administration would not do four things: declare Taiwanese independence, change the national title from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan, include a doctrine of special state-to-state relations with China in the Constitution of the Republic of China, or promote or hold a referendum on unification or independence.  Just two years later, however, Chen announced in a telecast to the World Federation of Taiwanese Associations meeting that “Taiwan and China occupy the two sides [of the Taiwan Strait], and that there is one country on each side.” This drew criticism from both China and the United States; both countries considered it a departure from Chen’s earlier inaugural promise. Chen further antagonized both states when he condemned the “One China Policy” a year later. Of the three presidents before her, Tsai’s situation most closely mirrors that of Chen. Like Chen, she faces a balancing act between the dangers that China poses and the demands of the electorate. Chen may have been more ideologically motivated than Tsai, and he also faced a KMT-majority legislature and different domestic situation when inaugurated. However, it is important to consider that, like Chen, Tsai was elected on a platform that in part advocates a cautious approach to cross-strait relations, and may face pressure from her party, which holds a majority in parliament. Furthermore, Tsai will undoubtedly confront greater pressure from a populace that is not only increasingly skeptical of China, but also identifies less and less as Chinese. Good, or at least stable, relations between Beijing and Taipei will thus require a give-and-take process. In her own inauguration speech, Tsai was careful to demonstrate that she will not do anything that would veer far from the status quo.  She said she would follow the Constitution (which claims mainland China as territory of the Republic of China), but did not reference the 1992 Consensus, an omission in line with the majority opinion in Taiwan. A poll conducted this April showed that around 52 percent of those surveyed opposed basing bilateral relations with China on the 1992 Consensus, while over 60 percent said that they could not accept Beijing pressuring then-president-elect Tsai into accepting the Consensus. Beijing’s current strategy of pressuring Tsai to give in and agree with the 1992 Consensus, through actions such as holding military drills along its southeast coast, undoubtedly will backfire, as heavy-handed strategies against Taiwan usually do. This will make it even more unlikely for Tsai to come to a compromise on the Consensus. Tsai’s omission shows that she is willing to follow mainstream opinion on cross-strait relations, even when it may anger Beijing. Tsai has demonstrated that she is willing to toe the party line for now, so to speak. However, if there is not enough incentive for her to follow her inaugural promises, past experiences show that she may stray from her centrist position.

My new book on South Africa is now available in hardcover and Kindle. The book’s core argument is that despite the corruption and incompetency of the Zuma administration combined with slow economic growth, the country’s democratic institutions are strong enough to weather the current period of poor governance. Intended for the non-specialist reader, the book includes an orientation to the history of South Africa. A review of current demographic trends highlights the persistent consequences of white supremacy and apartheid. Since Nelson Mandela’s 1994 presidential inauguration, social and economic change has been slow. Despite the emergence of a black middle class and a few black oligarchs, the gulf between white wealth and that of the other racial groups is greater now than it was in 1994. Whites also have longer life spans, a reflection of their access to much better education and health services. However, politically the country is a fully functioning democracy with credible elections. The book includes a discussion of education, health, contemporary politics, and land reform with an eye as to how South Africa’s democracy is responding to thorny challenges. The book highlights the strength of constitutionally mandated institutions, the rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary. South Africa is a constitutional democracy, not a parliamentary democracy. The constitution limits what governments can do at all levels and has among the most elaborate protections of human rights of any country in the world. Notably, South Africa has outlawed capital punishment and is the only African country that permits gay marriage. Both are the result of judicial rulings based on human rights provisions in the constitution. Both are deeply unpopular, yet there has been no significant effort to amend the constitution to permit the former and ban the latter; such is the prestige of the rule of law. Morning in South Africa concludes with an assessment of why prospects are poor at present for closer South African ties with the West, especially the United States, so long as the current government leadership remains in power. However, I conclude that South Africa’s democracy has been surprisingly adaptable, and that despite seemingly intractable problems, the black majority are no longer strangers in their own country. These are the basis for building in the future a new, stronger relationship between the “rainbow nation” and the West.

The New York Times on May 18 opposed the U.S. sale of military aircraft to Nigeria in an editorial titled Block the Sale of Warplanes to Nigeria. The core of the editorial’s argument is that President Muhammadu Buhari has not done enough to respond to charges that the Nigerian army has committed war crimes in its fight against Boko Haram. The newspaper also asserts that “Nigeria’s government cannot be entrusted with the versatile new warplanes, which can be used for ground attacks as well as reconnaissance.” The newspaper cites the State Department’s annual human rights report, which it quotes as saying that Nigerian “authorities did not investigate or punish the majority of cases of police or military abuse” in 2015. It also cites a staffer to Senator Patrick Leahy as saying “we don’t have confidence in the Nigerians’ ability to use them (the aircraft) in a manner that complies with the laws of war and doesn’t end up disproportionately harming civilians, nor in the capability of the U.S. government to monitor their use.” Also cited by the newspaper is a report conducted by Amnesty International that states the Nigerian security services “murdered, starved, or tortured to death” more than 8,200 civilians between 2011 and 2015. The New York Times acknowledges that President Buhari “is an improvement over his disastrous predecessor” and is fighting Boko Haram, which some U.S. military officials see as cooperating with the self-proclaimed Islamic State. It also notes the president’s anti-corruption campaign. But the paper’s bottom line appears to be that the Nigerian president has not done enough. Senator Leahy is the author of the “Leahy amendment,” the law that blocks U.S. assistance to foreign military units credibly accused of human rights abuses. Opposition will also be supported by other American human rights organizations. Senator Leahy is a Democrat and represents Vermont. (Vermont’s other senator is Bernie Sanders.) A former president pro tempore of the Senate, Leahy commands immense respect on both sides of the Senate aisle. President Obama’s Democratic administration would sponsor the proposed armed sales, so opposition is likely to come primarily from within his own party and human rights organizations, which Democrats often regard as part of their core constituency. The Obama administration leaves office on January 20, 2017. It remains to be seen whether it will pursue the warplane sale, and if it does, whether it will be successful.

While the world is distracted by Brazil’s impeachment drama, Venezuela’s impending meltdown, and Cuba’s promising détente with Washington, a potentially significant election campaign is underway in Peru that may have long-term implications for the success of the region’s “right turn.” Two candidates with robust neoliberal credentials are neck and neck in the second round contest that will take take place on June 5, and will determine who governs the country through 2021. Perhaps because of the similarities in the likely economic policies of the two contenders, not much foreign media attention has been focused on the election: regardless of who wins, Peru seems likely to continue with outward looking initiatives, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Pacific Alliance, while practicing market-friendly policies at home. But precisely because the economic policies of the two candidates are so similar—prominent Peruvian columnist and political scientist Alberto Vergara notes that whichever candidate governs Peru beginning in late July, their cabinet will be composed of technocrats who could serve their rival—observers have not focused on the underlying significance of this election to the democratic legitimacy of Latin America’s new rightward turn. The election takes place against the backdrop of the commodity bust that has diminished President Ollanta Humala to virtual insignificance (his approval ratings are under 15 percent), and a fractious party system, organized—to the extent that it is organized at all—around the legacy of disgraced and jailed President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori, who governed by electoral and then authoritarian means from 1990 to 2000, and whose daughter, Keiko Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular (FP) won almost 40 percent in the first round of voting, famously vanquished the Sendero Luminoso and then was himself vanquished by revelations of massive corruption and human rights abuses. But the fact that Fujimori’s legacy is the lodestar that provides the basic orientation of the electoral contest does not mean that anti-Fujimorismo is an orderly or organized opposition. Indeed, Peru’s 21 million voters fragmented in the first round between a variety of inchoate political forces. Most organized were those of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) of the PPK party and Verónika Mendoza of the left-leaning Frente Amplio, who competed in a nail-biting race for second place, in which PPK triumphed by 20.1 percent to Mendoza’s 18.8 percent. Following them in the electoral lists were a panoply of other candidates, some of whom were disqualified by the electoral court at the last minute, and others who garnered single-digit returns. PPK’s second place finish behind Keiko Fujimori means that the central debate of the second round has been around public security and family life issues, such as same sex marriage and abortion rights. But the fragmentation of the opposition in the first round meant that the election will to some extent be a referendum on the desired strength of checks and balances. If Fujimori wins, her Fuerza Popular will control Congress (73 of 130 seats), a majority that she could presumably use to pardon her father, or worse yet, to stack the judiciary, electoral bodies, or other oversight agencies. Understandably, Fujimori has done everything possible to downplay such possibilities, but there is a strong credible commitment problem at work: if she wins, there may be little constraint on her worst inclinations, whatever those might be. The Keiko campaign has understandably taken every opportunity to make the point that she is not her father, that the battles of the old generation must be buried, and that the mafia-authoritarianism of the 1990s has been left behind. She has stressed her commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and emphasized her democratic credentials at every step of the process. Oddly, PPK’s campaign has not been successful in pushing this narrative, and ominously for his chances, PPK’s own rejection rates have risen even as Keiko’s fell. Part of the problem is that PPK was himself running a deeply personalistic campaign—his party shares his own initials, after all—and he has had to dilute his own message in the second round to bring on board the disparate anti-Fujimori forces to his left. Also damaging is the fact that PPK himself openly supported Keiko in the 2011 runoff against Humala. The central PPK campaign message, that Fujimorismo has not changed and remains a potent threat to democracy, has been lost in the din over family life and rule of law concerns. PPK has not been very good at pushing the argument that he helped to reconstruct Peru as a minister in the post-Fujimori Alejandro Toledo cabinet, in part because Toledo’s legacy is a mixed one that may not help PKK with undecided voters. And so far, at least, PPK’s anti-corruption rhetoric has neither lowered voter support for Keiko, nor gained him fresh new support of his own. Looking forward, Vergara notes that whichever candidate is chosen to lead Peru will have the tough task of building institutions that can address the political fragilities of Peru’s consolidating democracy. Amidst a slowing economy, not many Peruvians will be thinking about how to improve the institutionalization of the party system or the workings of anti-corruption agencies. But ultimately, this could prove to be the most important legacy of the next presidency.

The past week has brought a number of puzzling new feints and jabs in Brasília’s bloody political cage match: - Most dramatically, reputable news organizations are reporting that President Dilma Rousseff is contemplating resigning from office later this week, despite having spent much of the past year denying that she would ever countenance resignation; - After months of behind the scenes scheming to break with Rousseff and form his own government, Vice President Michel Temer announced that if he becomes president, he will not run for office again in 2018; and - Temer agreed to a laundry list of demands from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) as the price of their support. In the rapidly shifting political landscape of the impeachment drama, these perplexing reports only make sense when seen through the lens of legitimating, or de-legitimating, Rousseff’s removal. All parties are scrambling ahead of what looks like the certainty of a simple majority vote next week that would suspend Rousseff and install Temer as interim president. This week, the Senate special committee will vote on a report on whether or not to proceed to a trial; the Senate floor will then move to a simple majority vote on the trial, with overwhelming chances of approval. This vote would remove Rousseff for 180 days while the trial proceeds. On current trends, if the undecided senators follow the direction of their states and parties in the Chamber of Deputies, there are currently northward of fifty-eight votes for conviction, four more than the two-thirds majority needed. In the context of what looks—today—like almost certain conviction, Rousseff’s gambit appears to be to make it as hard as possible for Temer to govern with any semblance of legitimacy. Threatening to resign, and calling on Temer to resign alongside her, might be one of the few tactics available to Rousseff and capable of winning widespread public support. Whether or not she is serious about resignation, the mere suggestion that new elections would be more legitimate than impeachment has considerable political effect, especially in light of polls showing that three–fifths of Brazilians would support Temer’s removal. Although the chances of approving the necessary constitutional amendment seem low, calling for new elections is a powerful cudgel. Meanwhile, Rousseff is reported to have choreographed her departure from the Planalto Palace and to be contemplating an international tour to protest the impeachment effort, both of which might produce the desired cloud over the Temer administration. For his part, Temer is eager to ensure that the bandwagon effect skillfully constructed in the Chamber does not fall apart during the long Senate trial. The hangover that followed the spectacle of impeachment in the Chamber led to a certain buyers’ remorse: Rousseff was punished, but in the process, Brazilians got a closer look at their unpalatable Congress. The horrible spectacle of April 17’s impeachment vote, and the remarkably lopsided result (367 for, 137 against, 9 absent and abstaining) was shocking, even to those long inured to the opportunism of Brazil’s legislators. The governing coalition, many of whom had provided support to the Workers’ Party for the past thirteen years, suddenly turned its daggers on Rousseff. The spectacle was horrendous, demonstrating the opportunism of the congressional “bibles, bullets, and beef” caucuses, and the remarkable hypocrisy of legislators who are deeply implicated in corruption scandals casting votes against a president who is not thought to be personally implicated in corruption (although she faces allegations of having benefited from her party’s campaign finance violations and may soon be placed under investigation by Prosecutor General Ricardo Janot). As public revulsion with all politicians grows, Temer faces the tough task of keeping the pro-removal coalition intact, while simultaneously building a new administration from the ground up. In tackling these twin challenges, he has had to promise the world, most notably to the PSDB, which had threatened to remain outside the new government. As their price for joining Temer, the PSDB reportedly submitted a long list of demands, ranging from the sensible (a commitment to keep the Lava Jato investigation going), to the unlikely (a commitment to serious tax reform), and the downright fanciful (a commitment to political reform). Why the PSDB would ever expect Temer to fulfill those promises is, of course, moot: the list provides the PSDB with just the veneer of legitimacy they need. Joining the Temer administration is now harder to paint as golpista, and instead is portrayed as a high-minded commitment to the painful and necessary reforms needed to recover from the chaotic Rousseff years. Temer, meanwhile, brings on board an important ally that will help legitimate his very tenuous administration, providing a fig leaf of policy respectability that might otherwise be missing in an administration dominated by the unprincipled Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). There will still be considerable drama surrounding the removal of Rousseff, and the daily news is likely to bring continued surprises and calculated misdirection. But the lens of legitimacy may provide the best analytical perspective on the news emerging from Brasília during the remainder of this turbulent year, in a political environment in which legitimacy is a scarce commodity for all of the major actors.

In late April, I spent several days in Taiwan as part of a Council on Foreign Relations delegation. We met with a wide range of officials from the major political parties, including President Ma Ying-jeou, President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Legislative Yuan Su Jia-Chyuan, and Kuo Chang-huang, a first-term legislator. It is a period of political transition from eight years of Kuomintang (KMT) leadership under President Ma to a government led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with Tsai at the helm. And waiting in the wings is the brand new New Power Party (NPP), which was born out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, and earned itself five seats in the most recent Legislative Yuan elections. Our meetings made three things clear to me. First, officials from each party have their own distinct set of priorities, but all share a finely-honed pragmatism. For Ma and the KMT, the priority is preserving and extending the legacy of cross-strait peace and stability that it believes derives from its success in enhancing ties with Beijing.  Even as it begins the process of winding down, the KMT is still committed to seeing through agreements with Beijing on issues such as trade in goods and services.  The road ahead will be tough given its losses in both the executive and legislative branches. The DPP and Tsai, in contrast, were all about domestic politics—pushing forward on grand-scale job training and affordable housing programs, and seeking to tap into the energy and capabilities of the island’s young people.  Reinvigorating Taiwan’s economic presence on the global stage is also front and center for the next administration, although, here too, the path forward is somewhat murky. The New Power Party was represented by a trio of young, dynamic, and edgy politicos, seeking to consolidate and expand their gains, while pushing for greater independence of action from Beijing. No one is calling for Taiwanese independence tomorrow. Second, China is succeeding in its aim of influencing politics in Taiwan during the transition, but not in the way it desires. Beijing began the year by reversing its eight-year tacit understanding to not establish diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Taiwan (thereby giving the island nation a semblance of sovereign international status) and resuming ties with Gambia. Next, it successfully pressured Kenya to deport as many as forty-five Taiwanese (the number is in dispute) to the mainland as part of a larger set of arrests of suspects in a telecom fraud ring. Despite Taiwan’s vehement protests (and a previous agreement between Taipei and Beijing to manage their own citizens in such cases), Beijing has not relented. Taiwan has sent a ten-member delegation to Beijing to try to negotiate their release. (Notably, Malaysia, which faced a similar demand from Beijing, repatriated the Taiwanese citizens back to Taiwan not to the mainland.) Beijing may think that it is firing a warning shot across the bow to Tsai by demonstrating just how much Beijing can take away if the president-elect doesn’t toe the line. Instead, however, Beijing’s actions are undermining its best partner in the Taiwanese government, President Ma, making it nearly impossible for him and his team to claim that under KMT rule Taiwan made real and sustainable progress in its relationship with the mainland. After all, if the presumed gains of the past eight years can be wiped out in the space of three months, it only reinforces the sense among many in Taiwan that Beijing cannot be trusted. Finally, after falling off the American radar screen over the past eight years, Taiwan is quickly edging its way back on. The next administration needs to keep its eye on the final objective—“that cross-Strait differences be resolved peacefully and according to the wishes of the people on both sides of the Strait.” This means we don’t help stir the pot on Taiwan and we don’t sell-out Taiwan for some ephemeral grand bargain with Beijing. Taiwan may be small but it is not a small matter. At stake is not only our relationship with Beijing but also American values and principles, which are exemplified by Taiwan’s vibrant and determined democracy.

Earlier this week I had the chance to talk with Michael T. Derham, a partner with Novam Portam, about the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and Brazil’s possible paths forward. You can listen to our conversation here.

The first rule of watching South Korean elections is the same as the first rule for watching Korean TV dramas: be prepared to be surprised. In this respect, South Korea’s 2016 National Assembly electoral result delivered, as virtually no one predicted the magnitude of the failure of the ruling Saenuri party or its major standard bearers. The results left the former majority party in second place at 122 seats, well short of the 151 seats needed to exercise a majority in the 300-seat National Assembly. The first place Minjoo or Democratic Party of Korea, pruned by the departure of entrepreneur-turned-National Assemblyman Ahn Cheol-soo, who started his own People’s Party, captured 123 seats to become the largest party in the National Assembly. Ahn’s own start-up experience proved sufficient to lead the newly-established People’s Party to a better-than-expected thirty-eight seats, primarily centered in Korea’s southwestern Jeolla region. The election also was a defeat for South Korea’s queen of elections, Park Geun-hye, following over a decade of dominant influence on national electoral outcomes. The result will constrain her presidency to initiatives that do not require National Assembly approval and will hobble her ability to secure legislative approval for future cabinet appointments. South Korea’s executive office wields significant power, especially over national security and foreign policy, but there are virtually no prospects for progress on any other matter that requires legislative support or approval. As with any good Korean drama, now that the shock has sunk in, it is clear that the signs of deep divisions within the Korean electorate exposed by this election were there all along. The biggest signal that the ruling party was headed for failure was revealed in the handling of the candidate selection process. Since at least 2000, South Korean voters have consistently expressed discontent with political parties, seeing them as corrupt and unfaithful intermediaries that distort the will of the people and translate it to serve their own interests. Because South Korean voters know that candidate selection is vulnerable to corruption that empowers the party leadership at the expense of the constituents, the parties that have implemented transparent or impartial candidate selection processes have tended to receive greater voter support. But the Saenuri party process this cycle was defined by perceptions of meddling and factional infighting between pro- and anti-Park forces, turning voters off. In retrospect, there were enough signs to know how this year’s National Assembly election drama would end all along. The veneer of unity generated by the Park administration’s efforts to engineer social and political cohesion and support has given way, revealing at least four types of deep divisions within South Korea’s electorate: First, there is the generational division between progressive younger voters who are concerned about jobs and the conservative older voters who are concerned about welfare. Park’s presidential victory in late 2012 was fueled by support from the older generation and generated disillusionment among younger voters. Three years later, voters are dissatisfied with the Park administration’s performance on both jobs and welfare. Second, there are personal divisions, personified most clearly by the fact that Park’s 2012 economic advisor, Kim Chong-in, who coined the phrase “economic democratization,” took leadership of the Democratic Party of Korea, while Lee Sang-don, who ran the Saenuri party selection process in 2012, was a prominent member of the newly-established People’s Party. In other words, former Park supporters were in the vanguard for the opposition. Third, there are structural divisions that are exacerbated by the dynamics that occur when the quadrennial National Assembly election lands in the fourth year of a five-year presidential term. This means that the time horizon of National Assembly candidates is longer than the time line of the president and therefore less likely to be controlled by presidential wishes. In addition, National Assembly elections become a dress rehearsal for the next presidential election in which leading candidates seek advantage or are winnowed out by the legislative electoral result. Dramatic failures this time included losses by former Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon and former Gyeonggi provincial governor Kim Moon-soo. Fourth, there are not only ideological divisions between parties, but personal divisions within parties that will be exacerbated as members focus on the December 2017 race for the presidency and fight for party nominations of the three main bases that now have the organization and funding to run a national election campaign. Each party must contend with internal divisions: Saenuri will be hobbled by continued pro- and anti-Park competition; Minjoo will face continued rivalry between pro-Roh and anti-Roh factions; Ahn Cheol-soo is the face of the People’s Party, but Jeolla province (former president Kim Dae Jung’s stronghold) is its base. In my view, further splits are unlikely because the People’s Party’s performance qualifies it to receive public funds under Korean election law, but a new party without a track record would not qualify to receive those funds. A progressive merger between the Democratic and People’s Parties will be often discussed, but in my view is unlikely now that rival organizational bases have been established to support a presidential run. The aftershocks of this election have reshaped the political ground in advance of South Korea’s December 2017 presidential election. Given the known flaws of Korea’s known professional politicians and public doubts that they are truly capable of addressing Korea’s increasingly intractable, interlocking, and mutually contradictory challenges of economic growth, demands to expand public welfare, and income inequality, the ground is set for an outsider candidate that is able to credibly promise transformational leadership and sterling administrative management. And UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon may not be the only plausible outsider who could shake things up. As the late Don Oberdorfer used to say about Korea’s most exciting political drama: hold on to your hats.

The fate of the 219 school girls Boko Haram kidnapped in 2014 has become a feature of the “face” of Nigeria abroad and also increasingly at home. On April 15, for the first time, the Nigerian Senate asked the relevant security agencies for a briefing on the Chibok girls. This is in response to the release of a ’proof of life’ video depicting the girls. A recent report in the Daily Telegraph (London) claims that Boko Haram is seeking a ransom of $50 million. According to the Daily Telegraph, the sources for the story are “close to the group.” The ransom demands allegedly were made during “secret contacts” with the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has previously said that he would negotiate for the girls. However, Lai Mohammed, the information minister, denies that the government is negotiating with Boko Haram. He says the government will not negotiate until it can “credibly establish the nature of” Boko Haram’s leadership; that is, identify those who can represent Boko Haram. And, he does not believe the video is a credible, current ’proof of life’. The Buhari government, plausibly, says that it does not know the whereabouts of the Chibok school girls. And, presuming they are alive and kept in identifiable groups, who is holding them, and whom might be a legitimate interlocutor on the Boko Haram side has yet to be determined. So Lai Mohammed’s denial that negotiations are taking place is credible. So, too, is his skepticism over the most recent video. Kidnapping, political as well as purely mercenary, is endemic in Nigeria. Violence associated with Boko Haram, and in some areas with ethnic and religious strife, is ongoing. Nigerian concern about the Chibok school girls, a specific group of victims among many, while real is probably not as intense as outside of Nigeria, where the girls are, among other things, a cause célèbre.

After months of suspense, President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment looks set to proceed in a floor vote in the Chamber of Deputies on Sunday, April 17. At present, impeachment seems more likely than not: Vice President Michel Temer and his allies have overcome many of the political hurdles to impeachment by skillfully creating a bandwagon effect among legislators, in part by arguing that there is little point in continued support for the outgoing Rousseff and that now is the time to make sweet deals with the incoming Temer administration. This week’s desertions mean that of the seven largest parties in Congress, only one (the PT) still supports the president, while five are in opposition (PMDB, PSDB, PP, PSB, and DEM) and one is still officially undecided (PR). Like a long night of heavy drinking, Sunday’s impeachment vote may feel at the time like a fitting way to put an end to the Rousseff years of economic mismanagement and political turmoil. Many Brazilians may be out demonstrating on Sunday, and celebrating (or drowning their sorrows) late into the evening. But Monday morning will bring a massive hangover, and like the aftermath of many a hard night, the morning after will bring as many new puzzles as it resolves: The Senate: The immediate question is whether the Senate will break the momentum set in motion in the Chamber of Deputies. Senate President Renan Calheiros has pledged support to Rousseff, but simultaneously assured the pro-impeachment forces that he will not get in the way of a Senate trial. Can the hapless Rousseff administration successfully build a more effective defense in the Senate, working with allies like this? They will have little time to mount a defense, as the Senate could vote within fifteen days on whether or not to proceed to trial. If a simple majority agree to proceed, Rousseff would be suspended from office for 180 days, handing her presidential powers of appointment and budgetary allocation over to Temer. Once that happens, it is hard to see how Rousseff holds together her evanescent coalition or builds up a new base of support, no matter how strong her defense in the Senate trial. The Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF): Will the high court, the STF, be asked to intervene? Already, the government is reported to be considering filing suit against procedural irregularities in the impeachment process before Sunday’s vote, and one such motion has been rejected. One of Brazil’s leading constitutional scholars, Oscar Vilhena Vieira, noted that there are a variety of ways in which the STF might intervene even after a vote has taken place. The high court is on a much slower timetable than politicians, and although temporary injunctions could immediately delay the impeachment process, there is also the possibility that judicial uncertainty could linger for some time. Temer: The vice president has played a skillful game, subverting the administration from within in subtle and deeply damaging ways. On Monday, a fourteen-minute long recording was released of Temer speaking to his allies as though impeachment had already occurred. The vice president claimed it was an accidental release, but the recording was a potent signal to wavering deputies that Temer was fully committed to impeachment. Yet Temer himself is hardly guaranteed a peaceful stay in the presidential office: allegations from plea bargaining witnesses have already tarred him with accusations of malfeasance; he has only 16 percent support in a recent poll; and the electoral court (TSE) could still move to remove him for campaign finance violations. If impeachment clears the Senate, Temer will only have two years to govern, but it may be that he spends much of this time under a shadow, not least because his bedfellows in the PMDB—including Eduardo Cunha and Renan Calheiros—are even more deeply implicated in corruption investigations. “A pox on all their houses” seems to be the deepening reply from the streets, and it will require all of Temer’s considerable political talents to overcome his low credibility and questionable legitimacy. Lava Jato: The “Car Wash” investigation is suddenly looking vulnerable, amid questions of whether a PMDB administration might undermine prosecutors. The excesses committed in March by prosecutors and the judge at the center of the case led many to believe that the Lava Jato investigation was closely allied to the pro-impeachment forces. But the supreme irony is that the Temer coalition is populated by a variety of actors—not least Cunha and Calheiros—who would gain enormously if the investigation ended up, as Brazilians say, “in pizza,” going nowhere. There are a variety of ways in which the investigation could be undermined by meddling from the executive branch, and there are rumors of a deal whereby Cunha would resign as president of the Chamber of Deputies in a bid to save him from expulsion from Congress and preserve his privileged standing in the high court. The new government: Assuming Rousseff is impeached on Sunday, what kind of mandate will the new government have, and what vision will an interim (and then, presumably, permanent) President Temer seek to implement? Will Temer seek a long-term legacy as a peacemaking statesman, undertaking painful reforms that might set the country on a new path, or will he seek quick victories that might lead to his election in 2018? Temer has claimed the former, but even if this is the case, the new government will need to overcome great polarization, an angry and mobilized opposition, and an abysmal economic situation, all while meeting the demands placed on it by the broad coalition that seated Temer in the Palácio do Planalto in the first place. The impeachment process—founded on historically unprecedented punishment of fiscal maneuvers that sixteen state governors and Temer himself are also accused of—will give credence to Rousseff supporters’ charges of golpismo, placing a dark cloud over the caretaker government. Many on the Left will be troubled and possibly radicalized by the one-sided nature of the outcome, which has left in place their deeply corrupt one-time allies in the PMDB and PP. The new president will need to deal with pressing fiscal challenges, all while meeting his promises that he would renegotiate state debts, and reward supporters with new roles in the already overstretched administration. In Brazil’s crazy political moment, a much less likely but not entirely implausible scenario is that Rousseff survives Sunday’s vote, perhaps by convincing enough wavering legislators to simply absent themselves from Congress, if they can’t stomach voting in her favor. In that case, there will still be a hangover, but of a different sort, like the difference between drinking cachaça instead of rum. This hangover will include a defenestrated and visibly exhausted president, a dysfunctional coalition, the continued threat of removal via a new impeachment request or an electoral court conviction, and continued macroeconomic malaise. Either way, Monday morning’s hangover is going to be painful.

In the aftermath of the Constitutional Court’s unanimous ruling that President Zuma and the National Assembly failed to uphold the Constitution over Nkandla, there are signs that the grassroots of the governing African National Congress (ANC) is losing patience. (Nkandla is Zuma’s private estate on which the public protector ruled public money was improperly spent; the presidency and the National Assembly stonewalled the public protector, actions which the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously violated the Constitution.) The ANC used its huge parliamentary majority to block an April 5 effort to impeach Zuma, but prominent ANC leaders are saying that Zuma must go. Zuma’s departure has some urgency. There is concern that if Zuma remains in office during the June-August local government elections, the opposition parties will score significant gains. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, believes it stands a good chance of capturing the local governments of Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Bay). Should that happen, local ANC officials in those jurisdictions will lose their jobs. On April 6, an ANC branch in the greater Johannesburg region sent a letter to ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe saying that Zuma had to go. According to South African media, the local branch proposed three options: the National Executive Committee should ask Zuma to resign and allow Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to act in his place until the party’s next conference in 2017. (This is essentially the path the party followed when it removed Thabo Mbeki from the positions of party and national president in 2009.) if Zuma refuses to resign he should be arraigned before the party’s integrity committee or the national disciplinary committee. While that review is underway, the president should be suspended from office so that he cannot influence the disciplinary proceedings. the party should hold a special national conference on how to move forward. These options are all credible. Yet, the ANC is unlikely to move on any of them until after the local government elections, and only then if the ANC does badly. That is by no means certain. Racial identity continues to play an important role in electoral politics. The ANC is the party of the black majority, 80 percent of the population. And Zuma, South Africans like to say, is a cat with nine lives.

The Nigerian Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, and a spokesman for the Nigerian army announced on April 3 the capture and arrest of Khalid al-Barnawi, the leader of Ansaru (“Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Lands”), a splinter group of Boko Haram. (The confirmation by Lai Mohammed makes the capture claim credible.) Ansaru has carried out a campaign of high-profile targeted assassinations and has kidnapped foreigners, especially Europeans. Khalid al-Barnawi is one of three Nigerian terrorists identified by the U.S. Department of State in 2012 as “specially designated global terrorists,” with a reward of up to $5 million for their capture or killing. The other two were Abubakar Shekau, the “face” of Boko Haram, and Abubakar Adam Kambar, the founder of Ansaru. Barnawi became the leader of Ansaru after Kambar was killed; Shekau has been silent, and there is speculation that he is dead or in Syria. All three had been followers of Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram who was murdered by the police in 2009. Ansaru split from Shekau’s Boko Haram in 2012, allegedly because it objected to the mass killing of Muslim “apostates” by the latter. Conventional wisdom is that Ansaru’s operatives are better educated, better trained, and much more international in outlook than those of Boko Haram. According to the media, Ansaru has close ties with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, unlike Boko Haram, which has ties of a sort with the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The media also reports that Barnawi received al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan and from the Algerian jihadi, terrorist, and smuggler Mokhtar Belmoktar. Ansaru’s international links make it potentially a greater threat to the United States than Boko Haram with its domestic Nigeria focus, though the former has never been as large as the latter. In part because intelligence is bad on Ansaru, Boko Haram, and their internal organization and international connections, the fact that Barnawi has been captured and will (presumably) be carefully interrogated is highly significant. With respect to Ansaru operations, however, it is hard to gauge just how important Barnawi’s capture is. Ansaru of late has been quiet, with no spectacular operations for many months. Some even believe that Ansaru was reabsorbed by Boko Haram. However, If Ansaru is in the process of regrouping, it will likely throw up a replacement for Barnawi, as have other terrorist organizations that have lost their leaders. Barnawi was born in 1976. He is from Biu in the northeastern Borno state. He was captured in Lokoja, the capital of Kogi state, also in northern Nigeria. The media reports that his real name is Usman Umar Abubakar. *Due to the primacy of recent developments in Nigeria and South Africa, the Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) will be published on Wednesday this week.

Over the weekend—near the end of the Christian observance of Holy Week—a fire broke out in Kano’s Sabon Gari market. It eventually destroyed 3,800 shops, according to the Nigeria Emergency Management Administration (NEMA), obliterated at least two trillion naira (approximately ten billion dollars) worth of goods, and affected at least 18,000 traders. The NEMA director general said, “This is the biggest market fire outbreak Nigeria has ever witnessed. This is a serious calamity.” (Despite the magnitude of the disaster it has not been reported in the mainstream Western media.) There was a previous fire in the market only five months ago. The Emir of Kano, Malam Muhammadu Sanusi II, called on the federal and state governments to investigate the causes of recent fires at Kano markets and schools. The emir is the former governor of the Central Bank who blew the whistle on the national petroleum company’s failure to remit revenue to the national Treasury during the administration of the previous president, Goodluck Jonathan. Kano’s Sabon Gari, the “foreigners’ quarter,” is often called the largest settlement of ‘non-indigenous’ people in northern Nigeria. Its population is made up of ethnic groups from all around the country, with the Igbo especially prominent. Most of the indigenous population of Kano is Hausa-Fulani, who are typically Muslim. Sabon Gari residents, on the other hand, are often Christian. The Sabon Gari is also known for its freewheeling atmosphere in otherwise observant Muslim Kano, with the ready availability of beer and prostitutes. Kano has been the site of ethnic and religious clashes in the past. Though not of late, Boko Haram has been active in Kano. Officials are saying that the fire is electrical in origin, and it spread rapidly because there was nobody in the market shortly after midnight. This is plausible. Market fires are common. Even this weekend, there was another large market fire in Birnin Kebbi, capital of Kebbi state. Senate President Bukola Saraki commented on March 27 that fires in markets around the country were negatively affecting gross domestic product. Nevertheless, there is speculation that the fire in Kano’s Sabon Gari market was the result of arson, and that it involved Boko Haram. Boko Haram has carried out big operations before around the principal Christian holidays, and the Sabon Gari market would be a tempting target. Arson could also have been perpetrated because of ethnic and religious hostilities. Thus far, no group has claimed responsibility for the fire. It is to be hoped that the federal and state authorities will respond positively to the emir’s call for a thorough investigation.