A victory for democracy in Hungary

Hungarians went to the polls yesterday in parliamentary elections, and responded with a resounding "Ruszkik Haza!", telling Putin (and Trump) proxy Victor Orbán to fuck off. The opposition even gained a two-third majority, enabling it to amend the constitution and undo all of Orbán's fuckery (including the stacked electoral system which translates bare majorities into supermajorities).

The opposition front may be led by a right-winger, but I (and more importantly, Hungarians) will take a normal, democratic, conservative over a fascist any day. And he's promising the right things: normalising relations with the EU, joining the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and prosecutions for the corrupt beneficiaries of Orbán's regime. Hopefully that will include Orbán himself, for his role in channelling public money to his friends and family. Which means Orbán will either need to flee back to his master in Moscow, or face a prison cell.

Trumpism in Kaipara

Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson is known as the "Trump of the North" due to his racism and authoritarianism. And now he seems to be mirroring his idol's contempt for democracy, calling an emergency meeting of the Kaipara District Council in an effort to overturn the election results:

Craig Jepson, the outgoing mayor of Kaipara, has called an emergency meeting for Thursday evening challenging the results of the district and regional council elections.

Jepson had endorsed his deputy Jonathan Larsen to succeed him, but on the preliminary vote Larsen is just five votes ahead of challenger Snow Tane. And Newsroom has been told that Tane is set to overhaul him, when election officials announce the special votes tomorrow.

Councillor Pera Paniora, whose Māori ward seat will be disestablished from Friday, says many older Māori and other voters had cast special votes for Tane.

They were dismayed at moves by Jepson and Larsen like banning karakia at council meetings, and disestablishing the Māori ward, she says.

The Local Electoral Act includes provisions allowing candidates or electors to apply for a recount or challenge election results. None of them require a council meeting. Jepson is either attempting to bypass them (and try and illegally direct the local electoral officer to apply instead, and prevent results from being published), or they are trying to get the council to spend public money to support the appeal of his favoured candidate. Neither is acceptable.

Jepson claims there was misconduct in the election (signage for a different election which may not be illegal and which he thinks may have affected Kaipara's). If so that question can be determined by a judge. But in the meantime, he just looks like an outgoing mayor trying to use the council to put his thumb on the scale and overturn a vote rather than accept the will of the people.

Palmerston North keeps the cookers out!

Local body election results were announced on Saturday, and it seems that Palmerston North has kept the cookers out! Mayor grant Smith was handily re-elected, and while progress results showed the Greens' Kaydee Zabelin losing her council seat to Labour's Zulfiqar Butt, the preliminary results (which included Saturday-morning voters) reversed that. Of course, it could change again in the final results as preferences shift on the specials, but its a good place to be in. Meanwhile, no outright cookers were elected (though cooker queen Jackie Wheeler is next in line and could still get in on special votes). But the council has shifted slightly right, with retiring leftish councillor Patrick Handcock replaced by keep rates low loonie Hayden Fitzgerald.

On Māori wards, its also good news, with Palmerston North voting decisively to say "fuck you" to the regime and keep its Māori ward. Horizons was looking like a failure on the progress results, but the preliminaries have reversed that, with "keep" now enjoying a 120 vote lead. So its going to come down to the special votes, due out at the end of the week.

More attempted voter suppression from National

Back in July, National introduced its Electoral Amendment Bill, containing the widest attack on the right to vote seen in Aotearoa. Rather than following the long-standing policy of wanting people to cote and so making it easy for them, National wanted to make it harder - and especially harder for people less likely to vote for them. And while they clearly felt they couldn't get away with American bullshit like voter ID, they went for widespread voter suppression by closing the roll early. The supposed justification for this was that it would lead to a quicker vote count, but the Electoral Commission has said that's bullshit. The real reason is to eliminate left voters from the voting pool and so rig the election in their favour - just like their American masters do.

That stinks, its undemocratic, and it will destroy public faith in free and fair elections. And now we find out that it could have been even worse: National wanted to prevent people from voting outside their electorates completely:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith marked the idea of banning people from voting when outside of their electorate “worth exploring” - before ultimately not pursuing it.

This would stop anyone who was working, studying, or on holiday outside of their electorate during the election from casting a vote.

Goldsmith was exploring ideas for cutting down on the number of “special” votes in order to speed up the final count of votes.

You might think that the long advance-voting period would mitigate this, and those expecting to be away on holiday or business could just vote earlier. But the empirical evidence from the last few elections shows that that's not the case: we still get plenty of special votes from those who are casually out of their electorates on election day. Meanwhile, there's a significant group which would be effectively disenfranchised by the move: students. Lots of them enrol when living with their parents, then move away to university, and never update because the move is "temporary" - meaning they are registered in a completely different electorate to the one they actually live in. And this group also tends not to back the current government. So its partisan voter suppression in the name of "efficiency".

Fortunately, they didn't go through with it. But the fact they even considered it shows how desperate National is to rig the election and prevent their enemies from voting - and how convinced they are that they will lose if everyone gets to vote.

We need to defend our democracy from these tyrants. And that starts by throwing them out on their arses next year. But we also clearly need greater constitutional protections for electoral law, to prevent this sort of fuckery in future. And if National won't agree to add further clauses to the reserved provisions, then the next government should push them through by referendum.

Who to vote for in Palmerston North 2

Palmerston North held a mayoral candidate debate last night, and based on the Substandard's writeup, I've finally figured out how I'm ranking the candidates.

My first preference goes to Michael Morris, who's big pitch was being vegan. He's also the only candidate to fully back the Featherston Street remodelling, saying that "if the city was serious about sustainability, health and inclusivity it had to look beyond giving priority to people driving motor cars." He's also Green-affiliated, so that puts him to the top.

Number two is incumbent Grant Smith, who has been a pretty good mayor, and (from once being a Nat IIRC) now describes himself as "centre-right with a green tinge" (which is accurate, given his record). Both he and Mickalad had second-thoughts about the design of Featherston Street, but not the goal, which is not a terrible position to take.

Number three is Orphée Mickalad, who played up his National Party affiliations (so fuck him), and whose main pitch just seemed to be "a new face".

Not preferenced: Caleb Riddick, whose answers were all danger-signs: rabidly anti-Featherston Street, self-described "independent", no real platform. I'm not saying that he's a cooker - but from his statements and the complete lack of public information about him, I can't rule it out either. And that's enough to chuck him in the bin.

So, I've now finally filled out my form, and its just a matter of finding a big orange bin to dump it in.

Who to vote for in Palmerston North (2025)

My local body voting papers arrived earlier in the week, so its time for the usual post in which I try and work out who I'm voting for. This year in addition to my usual policy interests of climate change, public transport, decent services (which must be paid for), and wanting a council that looks like Aotearoa, I'm doing an outright litmus test on Māori wards: supporters in, opponents out. I'm also worried about the quiet campaign of stealth cooker candidates seeking to infiltrate, subvert, and undermine local government. Sadly the media seems to have stopped paying attention to this, and there hasn't been any concentrated coverage or big exposes like last time, so I've had to try and spot the cookers myself. I've also been using the Progress Report to see what there is about the candidates; unfortunately policy.nz hasn't been very useful to me this time (it may be useful to you?). Where does that leave me? Read on...

Referendums

If it wasn't clear enough, I will be voting to retain Māori wards at both local and regional level, because fuck this racist anti-Māori regime. Also, the endless parade of local body figures - including lots of boring old white conservatives - saying simply "they work" or even defending them on economic grounds, ought to convince everyone that the government has made a very bad decision here.

Mayor

There are four candidates this time, all of which seem fairly normal. All of them support Māori wards, and all of them seem to be on roughly the same page (so far) regarding climate change and public transport - though there's a mayoral debate next week, so maybe some policy differences will arise then. Until then I'm mostly going on vibes, and those are that the incumbent, Grant Smith, is pretty good. That said, I like Orphée Mickalad, and normally I'd preference him ahead of Smith on demographic grounds (young before old etc...), if not for the fact that he talks about "faith" in his blurb (which is usually a sign of being a bigot or a weirdo or both), and he supported the regime tolling the existing state highway connection to Hawkes' Bay (which I don't use, but still... fuck that shit). Michael Morris's big pitch is that he's a vegan, which doesn't seem to have much relevance to local government, but I'm tempted to rank him first on environmental grounds (STV, so it doesn't hurt). There is no information about Caleb Riddick, none whatsoever. He might be a great candidate (and again, would normally rank highly on demographic grounds) - but there's just nothing, other than support for Māori wards. In the current environment that's a danger sign, so unless something pops up in the debate next week, he's probably not even getting preferenced.

City Council This is a big decision-space: 37 candidates for 13 spaces in the Te Hirawanui general ward. So its mostly an exercise in winnowing the field. Fortunately some of it is easy: there are two Green and two Labour candidates, who will get the top spots, and the incumbents are known quantities who generally support Māori wards as well (with a couple of notable exceptions), and some of them can be safely given a lower preference. There are also people who are easy to rule out, starting the ACT candidate (fuck them), anyone who has signed the Taxpayers Onion pledge, anyone who says "keep rates low" (or equivalent), anyone ranting about Featherston Street and cycleways, and cookers. On the latter front, Jackie Wheeler submitted against the pandemic response (and explicitly endorsed Voices For Freedom to boot); she also founded the local angry "residents" group, which is a VFF front (so, no preference for anyone they endorse). Quintin McGregor also submitted in favour of the virus, spewing cooker tropes. Mel Butler ran last time and I'd marked her as an anti-vaxer then. Dave Poppelwell is a former New Conservative candidate. Zakk Rokkanno smells like a cooker as well, talking about being "not easily led" and "think[ing] for myself" (last time it was an explicit promise to Do His Own Research), but his concern about "cancel culture" is still a screaming red flag - what are you afraid of being "cancelled" over, Zakk?

"Back to basics" seems to be the local cooker passphrase, and so anyone with that in their blurb (Dunlop, Hoskins, Salisbury) can be ruled out.

Incumbents who can be ruled out: Hapeta and Wood (Nats, oppose Māori wards), Arnott (pro-car), Findlay, Meehan, and Naylor (keep rates low). I'd also rule out Michael Strachan, simply because he seems to have no idea what local government actually does (its not about mental health and education), and because he talks about "faith" (weirdo!). Verne Wilson is just a Business Daddy, so he can fuck off.

So who does that leave who might get a preference after my top four (Zabelin, Barrett, Butt, Johnson) and safe incumbents (Bowen, Dennison)? Nelson Harper is involved in Just Zilch (a local food rescue charity; a good sign), and a self-described greenie. He's been critical of Featherston Street, but approaches it from a place of not being sure it was the best design, rather than "rarr! bike lanes!". Worth a preference I think. Cameron Jenkins is from the Manawatu Tenants Union, and a queer community advocate. Richard Woolgar is a water engineer, seems pretty sensible, supports Māori wards, and might be OK.

People I'm not sure about: Tobias Nash (an OK blurb, and he's been trolling the cookers and the TPU, but I'm just not sure OK, seen some endorsements of him as smart and progressive, so I'll bump him up to giving him a preference), Eldhose Poovathumveettil Mathew (good blurb, but mentions reducing rates while promising more services), Adrian Phillips (pro-rail, pro-Māori wards, but talking about political "independence" just smalls bad), Atif Rahim (pro 3 waters last time, but also says "sensible spending"), and of course Caleb Riddick (again: nothing to judge on but the blurb, which isn't enough). These might get a preference if I have any left.

The Māori ward candidates all look quite good, but I'm not on that roll.

Horizons

Lots of choice this year - ten candidates for four positions. And a recent debate showed most candidates to be on the same page on the issues I care about. The exception being Peter Wells, who I'd rule out just on his "affordable rates" tag anyway. I also have a long-standing hate against corrupt former mayor Jono Naylor, even if he spoke up strongly for Māori wards and is largely in the right place on everything else.

Horizons still uses the archaic and undemocratic bloc-vote system, so I need to be more careful than I would under STV. I'll happily give a tick to incumbents Wiremu Te Awe Awe and Fiona Gordon, and to Green candidate Emma Gregg. as for my fourth vote, it'll probably go to Daniel Fordyce (the Just Zilch seal of approval again!), or to Manu Karki. I'd rule out Charles George purely on demographics (and because he talks about being "independent" again - should this be an official red flag?), but nothing seems particularly wrong with the other two.

Voting closes at noon on Saturday, 11 October, so I have a bit of time to refine my choices. Because of the general unreliability of NZ Post these days, I'll be dropping my vote in one of the big orange boxes around town, rather than trusting the postal system. Fortunately there's one at every library, supermarket, and a bunch of other places as well, so it ought to be easy.

Update (11/09/2025): added comments about Tobias Nash; I'm bumping him up from "not sure" to "preference".

Another unfair Australian election

Australians went to the polls on Saturday in an election originally expected to be a tight contest between an uninspiring ALP government, and a full-on monstrous radical Coalition opposition. But then Trump happened, and Dutton doubled down on culture war bullshit, and so instead its been a Labour landslide. Which is welcome, I guess - shit-lite is still "lite", and everyone loves to see Trump get kicked in the balls - but it again shows the rank unfairness of Australia's electoral system.

The ALP won 56% of the seats on (at current count) just under 35% of the primary vote. The coalition - which got a slightly lower primary vote of 32% - won 26% of the seats. The Greens, who won 12% of the vote, and One nation, which got 6%, received no seats at all, while independents got 10% of seats for 7.5% of the vote. 10% of seats are still in doubt, so these numbers may change a little, but its also very obvious that this is a wildly disproportionate result, practically British levels of unfairness. And I'm not sure why Australians continue to put up with it, especially when it turns their politics into a cosy oligopoly where both shit and shit-lite push racism while pandering to the fossil-fuel industry, in pursuit of some horrific conception of a racist, coal-addicted median-voter.

Australian politics could be better. And the way to make it better is by moving to a fairer electoral system. It worked here, after all. But why would shit and shit-lite support that?

Grooming us for identity theft

Local body elections are in October, and so like a lot of people, I received the usual pre-election enrolment confirmation from the Orange Man in the post. And I was horrified to see that it included the following:

Why horrified? After all, surely using email, rather than the failing postal system, makes elections more accessible?

Sure. But it also exposes us to scams and fraud. Think about the emails you usually receive. How many of them are real? Now think about important emails - things from your bank, or NZTA, the IRD. How many times have you seen warnings from the government or these bodies about scam emails?

Now imagine the following: you receive an email from "votе.nz", with a link (also to votе.nz) where you can confirm your details. You click it, and it presents you with a RealMe login page, asking you to enter your username and password to proceed.

This is exactly what the government would do (because DIA is desperately pushing RealMe into everything whether they want it or not). And its also how you get scammed (with or without the lookalike Cryillic letter). And in this case, the consequences of being scammed includes identity theft, someone being able to use your RealMe to get a passport in your name, and possibly having your voter details changed to deny you your right to vote.

The government should be protecting us from these risks. Instead, we have a government agency basically grooming us to be scammed, because its more administratively convenient for it to do so. Its stupid and wrong, and it would be nice if they stopped.

Germany keeps the fascists out

Germans went to the polls today, in what looks to be their most important election since 1945. The good news is that they seem to have kept the fascists out, with the Putin/Trump/Musk-backed Alternative für Deutschland coming second and effectively excluded from power. Instead, it looks like a Christian Democrat / Social Democrat coalition is the only viable government - the Greens don't have the numbers to get the CDU to a majority, and no left coalition is possible. Which will be bad for the Social Democrats again, but there are definitely far worse coalition outcomes.

The presumptive chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has made it clear that he is unhappy with Trump and Musk's attempted election interference, and that he considers the alliance with America to be dead. Which is a hell of a turnaround in a country that used to be a core US ally. But I guess that's what happens when America starts betraying its friends, and if it means a Europe which is no longer a US vassal, but instead stands for its own interests, that doesn't sound like a terrible thing at all.

As for AfD, they've already been classified as an extremist organisation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and there's a real possibility of the party being banned. That of course doesn't solve the problem of its voters, who will no doubt simply switch their allegiance to whatever neo-Nazi vehicle Putin/Trump/Musk fund for them next. So hopefully Germany's new government will put some work into defending German values and stopping the AfD's radicalisation pathway (rather than the present tactic of trying to imitate them).

The UK needs proportional representation

Like a lot of people, I spent Friday watching the UK election. There's the obvious joy at seeing the end of 14 years of Tory chaos, but at the same time the new government does not greatly enthuse me. In order to win over the establishment, Starmer has moved UK Labour even further to the right, and while the new government will be less cruel and more competent than the previous one, the ongoing commitment to austerity and terfery and colonialism means there's not really any hope there. Labour will be competent - unlike the Tories - but also they won't change anything - exactly like the Tories.

Meanwhile, it should be obvious to everyone that the UK electoral system is fundamentally broken and unfair. Labour won fewer votes than last time, and increased its vote-share by a trifling 1.5% - and somehow doubled its seats. Meanwhile the LibDems won close to their fair share: 72 seats from 12% of the vote, but the Greens won just 4 seats off 7% of the vote, and Reform 5 seats with 14%. Its the most disproportionate UK election ever, and the unfairness of it is clear to all. The UK desperately needs to move to proportional representation.

PR will of course mean that Reform - an outright fascist party - is represented in parliament. But it will be represented according to its proportion of the vote. Because the failure mode here isn't proportional representation, but the disproportionate representation given by first-past-the-post. In this election, Labour won two-thirds of the seats on just one-third of the vote. And to point out what should be obvious: Reform (or a similar party) could one day do that too. Proportional representation stops that. Reform (or a similar party) could enter coalition, if other parties are morally bankrupt and willing to work with them (so the UK will need to establish a norm against that, just as Germany has) - but its chances of winning power outright are low. And that's actually some protection. The problem, as always, is convincing the current beneficiaries of that unfair system to change it.

Change in Catalonia?

or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. Meanwhile, the (Spanish) Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC) has emerged as the largest party, and likely the centre of any possible government.

There are reasons for this. The Catalan parties had failed to deliver independence, and the government had basically collapsed due to infighting. Meanwhile the Socialists had turned down the temperature at a national level, pardoning independence leaders and agreeing to "dialogue". One of the Catalan parties - the Republican Left - had collaborated in this, while the other - Junts - played hardball to extract a general amnesty for those persecuted for promoting independence. And pro-independence voters it seemed preferred the latter approach.

El Nacional has a rundown on the coalition maths, and it is ugly. The PSC could put together a bare majority with (pro-independence) left-wing parties - something which used to be a common arrangement, but which is likely to be unstable now. Or it could form a decent majority with the pro-independence, right-wing Junts - but that's likely to be even worse. Or, it could form a bare majority with the other Spanish parties, but that means working with the openly fascist Vox. The PSC is unlikely to find any of these options particularly appealing. The question is how many of their potential partners would prefer another election in six months...

Can the Greens overtake Labour?

With Labour doing so badly this election (and indeed, doing badly every election since 2008, except when Jacinda was in charge), Sue Bradford has suggested that they might soon be overtaken by the Greens:

The Green Party could surpass Labour at the next election if it does not get its act together, former Green MP Sue Bradford says.

Bradford told Morning Report Labour has been taking more of a middle-ground approach to its policies.

"At this point, if Labour goes on like it is, I think that there's every chance that Greens can even potentially overtake them in terms of percentages and numbers in the House, unless Labour does get its act together and become a lot clearer about who they stand for..."

While I'd like to see this happen, a dose of realism is in order: on preliminary results, Labour won roughly two and a half times more party votes than the Greens, and more than twice as many as the Greens and Te Pāti Māori combined. They'd need to collapse to well below their historic minimum (with all votes going to the Greens) for the Greens to come close. And even with their recent awful performance, I just don't see that happening soon, because there's generations of tribal loyalty there.

Longer term, though, its a different story. Every election brings more young voters, who have different values to Labour's older core, and who are energised about Aotearoa's core problems of climate change, inequality, and housing. And every electoral cycle, the Greens convince more of the public that their solutions – emissions reduction, a wealth tax, increased public spending – are what we need. If Labour continues to resist offering those solutions, if it continues trying to protect the status quo and the wealth of its house-hoarding MPs, then voters are going to look naturally to the party which does offer them. Botched, status quo responses to the crises those problems will cause will only strengthen that trend. So it's nowhere near unimaginable for the Green vote to grow and eventually overtake Labour’s, especially if Labour remains crap.

If Labour wants to avoid this fate, they need to not be crap. They need to actually respond to our problems, and promise to fix the bits of the status quo which are so obviously rotten and not working, rather than simply promising to manage it better. And its not clear if they even want to do that, or if the "no more revolutions" / "vision is for people on drugs" conservativism ushered in by Clark has so infected their party as to make it utterly unresponsive to the real world. I'm hoping that they do want to do it, and that they decide to be a better party which offers people something. But if they don't, if all they ever offer is endless austerity as things fall apart, then they deserve to be eaten for lunch.

Democracy wins in Poland

Poland has been on a nasty path for the last eight years, with the ruling "Law and Justice " Party becoming increasingly bigoted, authoritarian, and undemocratic. But they had an election over the weekend, and it looks like Polish voters have thrown their would-be tyrants out:

Opposition parties appear to have won enough votes in Poland's general election to oust the ruling right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, almost complete results show.

With more than 99% of votes counted, PiS led with 35.64%, while Donald Tusk's liberal Civic Coalition party had 30.48%.

But Mr Tusk is now most likely to be able to form a broad coalition.

That would end eight years of rule under PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

And all of this on a record turnout, with more young people voting than pensioners. I guess they wanted a future that wasn't just full of hate and resentment.

The new government will have a lot of work to do: restoring abortion rights, rebuilding relations with the EU, restoring the independence of the judiciary, public service, and state media (all of which are full of PiS cronies). But at least they have a chance to do it, and turn Poland back into a modern democratic state, rather than an authoritarian Kaczynski fiefdom.

Everyone loses in Spain

Spanish voters went to the polls yesterday in national elections. And it looks like everybody lost, with neither bloc winning a majority.

The elections had been called early after the (former fascist) People's Party and (actually fascist) Vox had swept local elections, causing the Socialist government to panic. But in the end the PP and Vox could only muster 169 seats in the 350 seat Congress. Meanwhile, the Socialists and the left-wing Sumar managed 153. And in between there's a bunch of mostly Catalan and Basque regionalist parties, who both the main blocs hate. They're never going to vote for a PP/Vox government, given the latter's desire to eliminate their languages and end their autonomy - but the Socialists have broken the promises they gave to these parties to secure power last time, and started their campaign with an explicit "fuck you" to them. The gambit here will be the usual "are you really going to let fascists into government?"; the problem is that after years of mistreatment enabled by this bullshit, some of those parties might just say "fuck you" right back, and trust in the power to roll the government whenever they want to limit its abuses, rather than clearly worthless promises. Which is a high-risk strategy, and another way for everyone to lose.

If no government can be formed, then it will be back to the polls, just as happened in 2019. Given that the socialists called the election early for fear of a bigger loss if they waited, hopefully they'll have a strong incentive to avoid that result.

Thailand votes for change

Thais went to the polls on Sunday, in the second election under the military's new 2017 constitution, and voted overwhelmingly for change. The default opposition Pheu Thai Party, who the establishment has been getting the military to overthrow for the last two decades, and which was denied power last election by the military-stacked senate despite winning a majority of the vote, ended up coming second. They lost out to "Move Forward", a popular movement which wants to repeal Thailand's undemocratic lese majeste law, downsize the military, crush the monopolies of the rich and limit the monarchy. Together these parties won almost two-thirds of the vote. Meanwhile, the party of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha seems to have got 3%. But thanks to the military-drafted constitution, under which the military-appointed Senate gets a vote in selecting the prime minister, he may still end up in power, despite this overwhelming rejection. And even if that doesn't happen, there's always the threat of another coup...

This situation - of elected governments being overthrown and democracy limited - looks like it will continue as long as Thailand has an establishment which refuses to accept democracy and an oversized military willing to act as their tool. The only way this cycle will be broken is if the military is downsized so that it can no longer be a danger to its own people. But that's obviously easier said than done.

A Polynesian government for French Polynesia

People went to the polls in French Polynesia on Sunday in the second round of territorial elections, and delivered a resounding victory to pro-independence Tāvini Huiraʻatira. Which means that French Polynesia, one of the last colonies in the Pacific, is going to get a Polynesian government which will rule for Polynesians, rather than France or its settlers.

OK, that's putting it a bit harshly - French Polynesia has come a long way since the early 2000s, when it really was a choice between independence of the colonial boot, let alone before that, when the French manipulated elections and jailed pro-independence politicians on trumped-up charges. Every political party in French Polynesia is officially now pro-autonomy, with many also favouring a Cook Islands-style "free association" relationship of independence in all but name (as far as the colonial power is concerned; as the Cooks have shown Aotearoa, it actually means complete independence in practice and the formal status whenever they want to claim it). And while the Tāvini did not win a majority of the votes (France imposed an unfair electoral system, which gives the plurality winner a supermajority, precisely to keep them out), they almost certainly have the backing of a majority of voters to kick the French out in practice, if they can fudge it to those who want full independence now. Of course, that requires France to come to the negotiating table. And as we're seeing in New Caledonia, the Pacific's last colonial power doesn't really do "good faith"...

As for what this means for Aotearoa, one of our neighbours is going to be talking to the UN and demanding a formal decolonisation process. We should support them on that journey. People should govern themselves. They should not be ruled by others.

Democracy returns to Fiji?

In December 2006 then-Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew Fiji's elected government in a military coup. While Fiji officially returned to democracy in 2014 with new elections, post-coup decrees on political parties, public meetings, and freedom of expression kept the opposition out. But now, its over: Fiji went to the polls last week, and despite opposition candidates being arrested and a convenient election-night "anomaly" with the results, produced a hung Parliament. And now, after a few days, the party holding the balance of power - SODELPA, the successor to the government which was overthrown in 2006 - has made its decision, and there's the happy sight of every opposition political party uniting to throw out Bainimarama and the coup regime. After 16 years, Fiji will finally be getting a new Prime Minister: Sitiveni Rabuka. Yes, this guy:

On the morning of 14 May, around 10 am, a section of ten masked, armed soldiers entered the Fijian House of Representatives and subdued the national legislature, which had gathered there for its morning session. Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, dressed in civilian clothes, approached Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra from his position in the public gallery and ordered the members of parliament to leave the building. They did so without resisting. The coup was an apparent success and had been accomplished without loss of life.

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, including seven years in which Rabuka was elected Prime Minister (under a stacked constitution he wrote, just like Bainimarama did), and apparently he now regrets his actions, but still: couldn't they find anyone better? Anyone not... tainted by dictatorship and authoritarianism?

Still, this is a moment of hope: the coup regime is out. Fiji once again has a chance to move back towards being a normal democracy. Hopefully the military won't fuck it up for them this time.

Fiji's election "anomaly"

Fijians went to the polls yesterday in the third post (latest) coup election. In the leadup to the poll, the (now elected) coup regime arrested opposition candidates and there were allegations that regime Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had visisted the ballot-printing centre and ordered the CCTV cameras turned off while he was there. Last night, the release of initial results was delayed. And then this happened:

Initial results indicated a strong, then very strong showing for opposition parties, before the Fijian Elections Office (FEO) advised of issues with the provisional count at around midnight last night.

Elections supervisor Mohammad Saneem held a press conference late in the evening, saying the FEO had detected an anomaly in the system.

"To cure this, Fijian Elections Office had to review the entire mechanism through which we were pushing our results," Mr Saneem said.

[...]

The updated provisional results published early this morning, with about 60 per cent of polling venues counted, showed a surge in votes for the incumbent ruling party.

Fiji First, led by incumbent Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, was narrowly ahead with 45 per cent of votes when the FEO announced it would stop processing provisional results this morning.

All of which invites the suspicion that the "anomaly" was that the wrong people were winning, and that the regime chose the Mexican solution: a "computer problem" followed by new results. And the opposition is already planning to challenge the results on exactly that basis (whether they'll get justice in regime courts with regime judges is another question).

There are international observers present, so it will be very interesting to see what they have to say about this "anomaly", and about whether the poll was free and fair and the results honest.

Democracy wins in Brazil

Brazilians went to the polls today in a run-off presidential election, and voted narrowly to re-elect former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rather than authoritarian, coup-apologist, anti-environment, covid-superspreader Jair Bolsonaro. Which is pretty good news for Brazilian democracy, the global climate, and actual Brazilians - Bolsonaro managed to murder more than 700,000 of them with his covid-denial, and Brazil's senate has recommended that he face murder charges over it.

I don't know enough about Brazilian politics to interpret the Chamber of Deputies results and work out if Lula will actually be able to do anything, or will have to fight a hostile legislature. But even if its the latter, the change at the top and the democratic ousting of an authoritarian would-be dictator is something to celebrate.

The Monday after

The local body election finished over the weekend, and seems to have delivered a tide of reactionary grey NIMBYs over much of the country. Wellington seems to be the exception, electing a progressive Green mayor backed by a left majority council, so they will get to have nice things like intensification, public transport and cycleways, and maybe a bit less shit on the streets. In much of the rest of the country though it appears to be all cars, motorways, "heritage", anti-three waters, and "Keep Rates Low" - all while demanding central government pay for their pet projects.

Palmerston North seems not to have done too badly. From preliminary results, mayor Grant Smith won on the first ballot, in part because there wasn't any real competition. For council, it doesn't seem so bad: both Green and one Labour councillor were elected, and while we lost Labour's Zulfiqar Butt, no-one really terrible was elected. Though the caveat on that is that VFF-candidate James Candish is the highest-ranking unsuccessful candidate, and so could potentially displace the Greens' Kaydee Zabelin on the specials. Turnout seems to have been around 35%, though again that's without the special votes. Which is pretty shit, really.

The good news is that with low turnout around the country and well-publicised problems with last-minute voting in Auckland, politicians seem to be open to fixing the mess of local government elections. The Spinoff has some ideas here, though I'm cautious about trying to replace (rather than supplement) postal voting with physical booths in an STV, general-ward environment like Palmerston North. Ranking even a portion of the ~30 candidates we had took considerable effort and research - its a bit much of an information load to expect people to handle in a few minutes in a polling booth. Which means either encouraging people to do their research first and take their own cheat sheets (which is a discouragement), allowing Australian-style "how to vote" material (culturally alien in Aotearoa), or encouraging councils to reduce ward sizes to give voters a more manageable decision-space (which they will hate). We should however absolutely turn the job over to the Electoral Commission and put the incompetent private election companies out of business. And we should absolutely not give the job to incompetent, unsafe, and fundamentally insecure online voting companies instead.