Compass Elections: February Roundup

A Fight for Second Place

Ecuador - February 7

By Graham Hillmann

*Andrés Arauz, the presumptive front-runner (Wikimedia Commons)*

*Guillermo Lasso, the runner-up (Wikimedia Commons)*

Ecuador held general elections on February 7 to choose the country’s next president. Incumbent Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno, first elected in a 2017 runoff after narrowly defeating the conservative candidate Guillermo Lasso, did not run for reelection. Weeks after the elections took place, they remain unresolved and contentious. Leftist candidate Andrés Arauz has a sizable lead but seemingly failed to win outright, necessitating a runoff. The second spot in that runoff remains the subject of controversy, with the aforementioned Lasso and Indigenous rights activist Yaku Pérez vying for the spot. Lasso and Pérez ran neck and neck in a race that underwent a partial recount, and although Lasso appears to have emerged victorious, protests and accusations of fraud have created a volatile situation. In addition, elections took place to select members of the Ecuadorian National Assembly.

The 2017 elections marked the end of an era in Ecuadorian politics. After ten years in office, the country’s leftist president Rafael Correa did not run for reelection. Correa’s tenure was a watershed moment for Ecuador. First elected in 2006 against the backdrop of a chaotic Ecuadorian political scene and a “pink tide” of leftist success across Latin America, Correa deftly combined fiery populist rhetoric and an ambitious leftist policy platform to gain and maintain power, winning reelection twice more in 2009 and 2013. Correa’s tenure saw a marked increase in government spending, a reduction in poverty, and economic growth, as well as the ratification of a new constitution that limited presidents to two terms and would render him ineligible to run in 2017. Although this limit was later removed in 2015 (and reinstated in 2018), the latter part of Correa’s presidency saw civil unrest and declining economic fortune, leading Correa to announce that he would be stepping down after the 2017 elections.

Lenín Moreno, who had served as Correa’s vice president for the first six years of his tenure, was nominated by Correa’s leftist PAIS Alliance to succeed him in 2017. His main opponent was Guillermo Lasso, a banker and former governor who had run against Correa in 2013 as the candidate of the conservative Creating Opportunities Party (CREO). In an election that primarily focused on corruption and Correa’s leftist policies, Moreno led handily in the first round but fell just short of the margin needed to avoid a runoff. Amid swirling allegations of fraud that led to a partial recount, Moreno prevailed by a significantly narrower margin in the runoff, winning the presidency by just over 2 percentage points.

Although largely running as Correa’s protege, Moreno broke with his hard-left predecessor upon taking office. Moreno has overturned several of Correa’s laws, slashed government spending, cut taxes, and sought loans from the IMF and World Bank that had been opposed by the Correa government. He strained the close relations Correa had fostered with other leftist Latin American leaders, and austerity measures he had introduced to manage debt taken on by the Correa administration led to a series of protests in late 2019, which Moreno accused Correa of orchestrating. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic challenges only compounded the administration’s woes and the public’s discontent. By the end of his tenure, his approval rating hadplummeted, and his popularity among the left had atrophied so severely that his approval ratings were actually higher with Lasso’s 2017 supporters than his own. Given all of this, Moreno’s decision to step down at the end of his term may not be particularly surprising.

Meet the Candidates

The Union for Hope (UNES) has emerged as the largest coalition on the left for the election, opposing the policies of the Moreno administration and enjoying the support of Correa. Their candidate, 36-year-old Andrés Arauz, is a youthful economist and public servant who previously served as a high-ranking minister in the Correa administration. Arauz has been described as a “largely unknown” political figure with a low profile. He’s widely considered to be Correa’s protege, if not his proxy, and he’s expressed strong opposition to Moreno’s harsh austerity measures. As the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the country, he has proposed ambitious direct payments of one thousand dollars to a wide swath of Ecuadorian households. Perhaps even more telling than Arauz’s platform was his original running mate—Rafael Correa himself, who had to be dropped from the ticket due to corruption charges that have left him exiled in Belgium.

On the Ecuadorian right, the Creating Opportunities Party (CREO) has formed a coalition with the Social Christian Party (PSC) for the 2021 elections. Unlike Arauz, however, their candidate has been a familiar presence in Ecuadorian politics for many years. A distinguished businessman and banker who briefly served as governor of the populous province of Guayas in the late 1990s, Guillermo Lasso is now making his third campaign for president. Lasso first ran under the CREO banner in 2013, when he placed second to Correa in the first round but failed to take the race to a runoff. Lasso’s 2017 bid was more successful, facing Moreno in a runoff and losing very narrowly in a race marred by allegations of fraud. Lasso is the rightmost candidate in the race, though he likely falls closer to the center than either of his opponents. He generally favorsmarket-oriented solutions to the country’s problems, and he opposes neither the country’s agreement with the IMF nor its associated austerity measures. His more ambitious plans include the creation of two million new jobs, massive reductions in the deficit while simultaneously cutting taxes, and stimulating growth in the country’s oil industry.

Though largely falling on the left, Ecuador’s sizable Indigenous population has frequently found themselves alienated by Correa’s mainstream left. The Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement (MUPP) has, accordingly, served as a powerful vehicle for Indigenous, environmentalist, and anti-imperialist interests since its founding. Their candidate, Yaku Pérez, is a prominent Indigenous rights activist who previously served as president of the Kichwa advocacy group ECUARUNARI and as prefect of the southern Azuay Province. A staunch opponent of mining, oil drilling, and water privatization, Pérez has also been a fierce opponent of Moreno, opposing his austerity measures and even endorsing Lasso in the 2017 runoff.

A Messy Aftermath

Ecuadorian presidential elections use a two-round system. For a candidate to be elected in the first round, they have two options: winning at least 50 percent of the vote, or winning at least 40 percent of the vote while leading their nearest competitor by at least 10 percent. If neither condition is met, a runoff election must be held. For example, in the 2013 matchup between Correa and Lasso, Correa won 57 percent of the vote and was able to win outright by fulfilling the first condition. In the 2017 matchup between Moreno and Lasso, however, Moreno fell just short of 40 percent and was forced into a runoff.

Arauz and Lasso spent most of late 2020 trading leads in the polls, while Pérez trailed both candidates significantly in a distant third. Throughout January, however, Arauz began to pull away from Lasso, securing double-digit leads in several late January polls. Such numbers were borne out in the actual results—Arauz currently stands at 32.7 percent, holding a significant lead but falling well short of the 40 percent needed to win outright and necessitating a runoff. Though such a result for first place was entirely expected, the result for second place was anything but.

Pérez overperformed his polling numbers dramatically, drawing essentially dead even with Lasso in the 19 to 20 percent range. This wouldn’t have been an issue had Arauz managed to squeak out an outright win, but with the election going to a runoff, a second-place finish now means a ticket to the second round. Lasso and Pérez have thus proceeded to throw everything they have at ensuring their spot in the runoff.

Pérez, who trailed Lasso by a margin of only some 32,000 votes, immediately requested a recount. Lasso initially supported this effort, but later pulled back his support when his position became more secure. The National Electoral Council, for their part, initiated a partial recount of about 45 percent of the country’s total ballots, but it suspended that same recount just a few days later. In response, Pérez publicly lambasted Lasso as corrupt and the authorities as fraudulent, but offered no evidence. Pachacutik and Pérez’s Indigenous base of support has also begun to rally in their favor, with a caravan of demonstrators converging on Quito, the country’s capital, to demand accountability from the authorities on February 24. While Lasso is now expected to face Arauz in the April 11 runoff—he stands at 19.7 percent, ahead of Pérez’s 19.4 percent—the situation remains volatile, and the dust may not settle for some time.

In the Assembly

Ecuador also held elections to elect new members of the unicameral National Assembly. The National Assembly has a total of 137 members, with 116 being elected on provincial level multi-member constituencies, 15 elected from a national at-large district, and six elected from three two-member districts representing overseas citizens. Ecuador amended its election law in 2019, changing the previous open list system to a closed list one and adopting the Webster method for apportionment (which helps smaller parties), making this the first legislative election under the new rules.

In general, the trends in the National Assembly largely mirrored the trends seen in the presidential race. Five parties won a significant number of seats in the legislature. The biggest winner was the Union for Hope, which won a large plurality of 49 seats, an astonishing achievement for a new party that was coming into the election with no representation whatsoever. Pachacutik also made huge gains, becoming the second-largest party in the legislature with 27 seats. The Democratic Left (ID) saw similarly large gains to become the third-largest party in the legislature with 18 seats, capping off what proved to be a great night for the Ecuadorian left (ID’s presidential candidate, Xavier Hervas, performed fairly well and ended up taking fourth place with 15.9 percent.) Tied with ID with 18 seats was the Social Christian Party, which became the largest right-leaning party in the legislature despite only gaining a few seats. Creating Opportunities, on the other hand, actually had a poor night and lost more than half its seats after splitting from its former coalition partner SUMA, falling to 12 seats. The biggest loser turns out to be the now-moribund PAIS Alliance, which lost every single one of its 74 seats.

Control of the presidency is not yet certain, and the volatile situation around a potential recount and allegations of fraud could conceivably escalate. What’s more, the job of whoever becomes the next president will not be an easy one: according to the United States Naval Academy’s John Polga-Hecimovich, “Whoever wins will find it very difficult to govern. They will need to reconcile the need to address social grievances with fiscal reality.” What is certain is that Rafael Correa’s brand of leftist politics still looms large in Ecuador, and a right-wing resurgence is unlikely. With the main left-wing parties and coalitions together accounting for 61 percent of the popular vote in the legislative race, Andrés Arauz is definitely the front-runner in the runoff. The inauguration of the next President of Ecuador will take place on May 24.

The Return of a Prime Minister

Kosovo - February 14

By Sophia George and Kyle Wang

*Former (and likely incoming) Prime Minister Albin Kurti (Wikimedia Commons)*

After Kosovo’s previous government triggered a snap election in December 2020, Kosovo citizens cast their votes on February 14 in the third parliamentary elections in under four years. The previous government under the conservative Avdullah Hoti was formed in June 2020 after his predecessor, progressive Albin Kurti, failed a confidence vote. However, in December, Kosovo’s Constitutional Court ruled that the narrowly-confirmed Hoti cabinet was unconstitutional due to the deciding vote being a member of parliament with a criminal conviction in the past three years, which would disqualify the lawmaker from serving as an MP. As a result, a snap election was called, and the Hoti government became a caretaker government.

Braving the freezing temperature, Kosovans cast their votes in the 2021 elections. According to the Central Election Commission of Kosovo, the left-wing nationalist opposition party Vetëvendosje (LVV, Self-determination Movement) garnered a landslide victory with 47.9 percent of the vote, the highest vote share in the country’s history. The Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), the ruling center-right party, trailed far behind with only 17.4 percent of the vote, and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the country’s other center-right party and a traditional rival of the PDK, followed with 13.1 percent of the vote, which caused the LDK’s chairman Isa Mustafa to resign. The conservative Alliance for the Future (AAK), led by former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj (2004-2005, 2017-2020) came in fourth with 7.4 percent, passing the 5 percent threshold for non-minority parties to enter parliament.

The LDK, formerly the second-largest party, was part of Kurti’s coalition, but withdrew support and called for a motion of no confidence in March 2020 after the LDK interior minister was fired from Kurti’s cabinet over the minister’s attempt to call for a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (an emergency declaration would have given the PDK-affiliated President Hashim Thaçi more power). The vote of no confidence was also egged on by the American ambassador, as the Trump administration was frustrated with Kurti over the prime minister’s skepticism towards a Trump-mediated deal with Serbia. The European Union, however, opposed the ouster of Kurti.

During the course of the campaign, Albin Kurti and his campaign partner, speaker of the parliament Vjosa Osmani, capitalized on Kosovar anti-establishment sentiment by running on an anti-corruption platform, promising “a new day” in politics. Osmani is also serving as the acting president after Hashim Thaçi (also the first prime minister from 2008 to 2014) resigned in November 2020 after being indicted for war crimes. In January, Kosovo’s election complaints panel banned Kurti from serving as a member of parliament due to him being convicted in 2018 for his involvement in releasing tear gas in parliament in 2015 in protest of the ratification of a controversial border deal with Montenegro, which falls within the three-year rule barring people with conviction from serving as MPs. However, he is still able to become prime minister as there is no constitutional requirement for the officeholder to be a member of parliament.

Despite this wide margin of victory, it is unlikely the LVV acquires outright the necessary 61 seats in the 120-member Assembly to form a government by itself. The 2008 Constitution decrees that 100 seats are elected directly by open list proportional representation, and the remaining 20 seats are reserved for Serbs (10 seats) and other minorities (Roma - 4 seats, Bosniak - 3 seats, Turkish - 2 seats, Gorani - 1 seat). It is difficult for any leader to achieve a majority government without coalition building, and Kurti has made clear that he has no intentions of doing so with the PDK or the LDK. This means that the LVV will need to look to the minority seats for potential coalition partners.

Balkan Shenanigans

In a statement given in the wake of the election results, Kurti alluded to the challenges Kosovo faces ahead. The new government will have to continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, a current economic downturn, and stalled negotiations with Serbia. Formally recognized by the European Union as a potential candidate for accession, Kosovo aims to achieve EU membership by 2025. However, this goes hand in hand with restarting negotiations with Serbia, something Kurti claims will not be a priority for his government.

Tensions between the two states have persisted for the 12 years since Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. Although most Western countries formally recognize Kosovo’s independence (with some notable exceptions such as Spain), Serbia’s key diplomatic allies—Russia and China—do not. The Kosovar-Serbian conflict has its roots in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, which resulted in the demise of the medieval kingdom of Serbia against Turkish forces. The land of Kosovo became a holy site in Serbia’s national mythology in the 19th century. From 1998 to 1999, tensions reached a tipping point between the ethnic Albanians majority and ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, and the resulting conflict culminated in an 11-week bombing campaign by NATO against Serbia. Following Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008, both countries eventually negotiated the EU-mediated Brussels Agreement in 2010 for the normalization of relations (but not recognition), yet occasional conflicts still occurred.

While Kosovo views the United States as its most important international partner, the U.S.-Kosovo relationship became strained during the Trump administration as a result of its role in toppling the Kurti government. Kurti’s successor Hoti signed the economic normalization agreement with Serbia in September 2020 at the White House, but according to the Washington Post, critics have called the outcome underwhelming—a photo opportunity to shore up Trump’s diplomatic credentials in an election year.

Kurti has cited polling showing Kosovans rank “negotiations with Serbia” far behind justice, jobs, and the COVID-19 pandemic in importance to justify putting the issue on the back burner. However, the Biden administration has urged leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to normalize relations based on “mutual recognition.” President Biden’s late son Beau once served as a legal adviser in Kosovo, and Kosovo has named a highway after Beau in 2016, making the issue one with special resonance for Biden. It is likely that more pressure will be brought on both Kosovo and Serbia to resume negotiations in the future, whether by the United States or the European Union.

A Milestone for Democracy?

Niger - February 21

By Kyle Wang

*President-Elect Mohamed Bazoum (Wikimedia Commons)*

In the runoff election for Niger’s president on February 21, the ruling party’s candidate Mohamed Bazoum defeated former Nigerien President Mahamane Ousmane to win the presidency. In the first round of the election, held on December 27 last year, no candidate received a majority of the vote: Bazoum was in the lead with 39 percent, while Ousmane came second with 17 percent. In the runoff, Bazoum secured victory with 56 percent of the vote to Ousmane’s 44 percent.

Niger’s center-left ruling party, the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS), has been in power since 2011 when the incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou was elected. Issoufou’s decision to step down after two five-year terms was heralded as a victory for democracy in a country that has seen three military coups since its first transition from military to civilian rule took place in 1991.

Ousmane, Niger’s first democratically elected president, was ousted in a 1996 coup. His military successor, Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, was in turn assassinated in another coup in 1999, which promised a return to democracy. The next democratically elected president from the conservative National Movement for the Development of Society (MNSD), Mamadou Tandja, won the election in the same year and was re-elected in 2004. However, Tandja’s attempt to pursue an unconstitutional third term and his dissolution of the legislature triggered another military coup in 2010 .

In elections held in 2011, PNDS, then an opposition party, won the largest share of seats in the unicameral National Assembly (a status it still holds), while Mahamadou Issoufou defeated the MNSD candidate (and former prime minister) Seyni Oumarou to become president after a runoff. Issoufou ran for re-election in 2016, and while he fell just short of a majority in the first round, he won 92.5 percent of the vote in the runoff after the opposition boycotted the election.

Mohamed Bazoum, who served as interior minister and foreign minister under Issoufou, is as a result considered a natural successor to the president. His victory in the election is also historic, as it would be Niger’s first transition of power between two democratically elected leaders. However, the transition is unlikely to be a peaceful one: eight election officials were killed in attacks on Election Day, and opposition protests following the announcement of the runoff results have so far resulted in at least two deaths and hundreds of arrests.

Despite an ECOWAS observer mission calling the vote “free, fair, credible and transparent,” supporters of Ousmane and his Democratic and Republican Renewal party (RDR) have accused the PNDS of electoral fraud but offered no evidence. Even with his party and its coalition partners controlling a solid majority of the legislature’s 171 seats, Bazoum may still have a difficult task ahead of him as he seeks to unify the country and address the country’s problems, from corruption to armed violence by jihadist groups in the Sahel.

More Power to Populism

El Salvador - February 28

By Graham Hillmann

*President Nayib Bukele (Wikimedia Commons)*

El Salvador held legislative elections on February 28 to select members of the country’s Legislative Assembly. The elections were a huge victory for President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s young populist president who, despite widespread popularity, previously had few allies in the legislature.

Bukele, age 39, began his career as a businessman before getting his start in politics in 2012, when he was narrowly elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán. In 2015, he was elected mayor of the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador by an equally narrow margin. In both elections, he ran as the candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was founded as a leftist guerrilla group during the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-92) and later evolved into the largest party on the Salvadoran left. However, in 2017, the FMLN expelled Bukele for sowing division within the party, sparking heated controversy. Bukele went on to found Nuevas Ideas (NI), a party that was essentially a vehicle for his future presidential bid. That bid came in 2019, when he was elected president with the support of the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA).

Bukele has enjoyed high approval ratings during his time in office, but his tenure has also been marked by rising authoritarianism, corruption, and serious conflicts with the Legislative Assembly. Neither NI nor GANA controlled a significant number of seats in the legislature, which was largely split between FMLN and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). This culminated in a 2020 crisis in which gridlock over a proposed American loan to fund law enforcement led Bukele to dispatch soldiers from the Salvadoran Army into a Legislative Assembly building, constituting what has been described as an attempted coup. The 2021 legislative elections served as a prime opportunity for Bukele to extend his control over the legislature, worrying many local and international observers.

The Parties

Nuevas Ideas (NI) - Simply put, the party of Bukele. He was the party’s founder, and the party is currently led by his cousin Xavier Zablah Bukele. Those looking for much more in the way of ideological substance may be disappointed. NI was initially formed to support Bukele’s presidential campaign, and support for the president remains its primary objective. Its ideology could be roughly described as populist, but it defines itself vaguely. As a new party, it held no seats going into the 2021 elections.

National Republican Alliance (ARENA) - The largest party on the Salvadoran right. Founded to counter FMLN influence, it defines itself as democratic, market-oriented, and nationalist. It controlled the Salvadoran presidency for 20 years between 1989 and 2009, and since 2012 it has been the largest party in the National Assembly.

Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) - Founded as a leftist guerrilla group that became one of the largest forces in the Salvadoran Civil War, the FMLN laid down their arms and became the dominant political party on the Salvadoran left following the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords that ended the war. The party controlled the presidency from 2009 until Bukele’s election in 2019, and it was the second largest party in the National Assembly heading into the 2021 elections.

Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) - A center-right party, it was on GANA’s ticket that Bukele was first elected in 2019. It’s a fairly new party, first founded in 2010, and it held the third most seats of any party heading into 2021.

National Coalition Party (PCN) - The last of the truly major parties, the nationalist PCN was the country’s dominant party until the 1980s, not unlike Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The party held continuous power throughout the 1960s and 1970s in both the executive and the legislature. Though its power has declined dramatically since then, it still held the fourth most seats of any party prior to 2021.

Minor Parties - Also competing were the centrist Christian Democratic Party (PDC), whose power peaked in the 1980s, the center-left Democratic Change (CD), and a collection of unrepresented parties including the centrist Vamosand humanist Nuestro Tiempo (NT).

The Results Roll In

The Legislative Assembly consists of 84 members. These members are elected from 14 constituencies that correspond with the country’s departments, with seats proportionally allocated to each department, and the seats are filled via open list proportional representation.

NI had a colossal lead in polling from the 2019 presidential election all the way until the run-up to election night. Indeed, NI’s lead actually increased over time, from the 20s to leads that approached a whopping 68 points by January 2021. The election was largely expected to be a landslide victory for Bukele’s faction, and they didn’t disappoint, rumbling to a massive victory on election night. NI won an astonishing 66 percent of the vote and took its total number of seats from zero to a comfortable majority of 56 –– 13 more than they needed for control of the legislature.

Virtually every other party saw their numbers decline precipitously. ARENA was the only other party to crack a double digit percentage of the vote, winning 12 percent in total and losing nearly two thirds of their seats to settle in second place with 14. FMLN saw similarly horrific numbers, winning seven percent of the vote and losing nearly all of its seats, bringing it to fourth place with four seats remaining (behind GANA, who won a smaller five percent of the vote but took third place with five seats). PCN continued its decline, winning a meager four percent and losing nearly all of its seats to end up in fifth with just two seats left. PDC, NT, and Vamos won about one percent of the vote and a seat each, while CD lost its only seat.

A Day in the Spotlight

By Kyle Wang

Liechtenstein - February 7

One of Europe’s smallest constitutional monarchies elected a new parliament on February 7. Since the end of World War II, the Principality of Liechtenstein, sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland, has been governed by a coalition of its two major center-right parties, the Progress Citizens Party (FBP) and the Patriotic Union (VU).

The monarchy is popular, and the prince as the head of state still holds substantial executive power compared to other constitutional monarchies like the United Kingdom and Spain. In 2003, Liechtensteiners actually voted to expand the power of Prince Hans-Adam II in a constitutional referendum after he threatened to move to Austria instead. (Hans-Adam has since delegated most of his governmental powers to his son Alois while remaining as head of state.)

Liechtenstein’s unicameral legislature, the Landtag, is composed of 25 members and elected by open list proportional representation from two constituencies, the northern Unterland and the southern Oberland. The FBP and the VU are usually neck and neck in the results as they have little actual policy differences, thus regularly alternating control over the office of the prime minister. This two-horse race reached its most extreme result in the 2021 elections, where the two both won 35.9 percent, separated by just 42 votes (with VU in the lead) and tied in the number of seats won (10 each).

With the incumbent prime minister being the FBP’s Adrian Hasler, if he is succeeded by Sabine Monauni, ambassador to the EU and the party’s new candidate for prime minister, Liechtenstein would have its first woman prime minister—a significant achievement considering Liechtenstein only grantedwomen the right to vote in 1984, one of the last countries to do so in Europe. Alternatively, the VU’s Daniel Risch would become prime minister.

The remaining five seats in the Landtag are divided between the left-wing (and formerly Republican) Free List with three seats, and the right-wing anti-establishment Democrats for Liechtenstein (DpL) with two.

Catalonia, Spain - February 14

The Spanish region of Catalonia elected its regional parliament on February 14, which saw pro-independence parties expanding their majority in the legislature. The issue of Catalan independence has long been a controversial and prominent issue in the region’s politics, and it helped spark one of Spain’s largest political crises in 2017 when separatist leaders held an independence referendum despite courts ruling it unconstitutional. (“Yes” won 92 percent of the votes cast with a turnout of only 43 percent.)

Following an attempted unilateral declaration of independence, Spain’s central government then dissolved the Catalan government and imposed direct rule from Madrid, causing Carles Puigdemont, then-president of Catalonia, to flee into exile in Belgium. Catalonia’s last regional election took place two months after the referendum, and it saw pro-independence parties retaining a slim majority in parliament, though falling short of a majority in the popular vote. Quim Torra, another pro-independence politician, became Catalonia’s president in 2018, but he was later barred from public office by Spain’s supreme court in September 2020 for violating campaign laws by displaying pro-independence symbols in Spain’s 2019 general election.

Catalonia’s unicameral legislature is made up of 135 members, elected using closed list proportional representation with an electoral threshold of 3 percent. The main parties in the parliament can be separated into two broad camps: the pro-independence and the anti-independence blocs. On the separatist side, the largest parties were Together for Catalonia (Junts, or JxCat), the center-right party of Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra; the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the center-left party of incumbent Vice President Pere Aragonès (also acting president following Torra’s ouster); as well as the left-wing Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). In 2020, a new big-tent coalition was established under the Junts name, incorporating smaller separatist parties across the political spectrum, though ERC and CUP remained separate.

On the unionist side, the main leader is the center-left Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), which is the regional branch of Spain’s governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). There is also the far-right Vox, the conservative People’s Party (PP), the left-wing populist En Comú Podem (ECP)—the regional branch of Podemos, PSOE’s coalition partner—and Ciudadanos (Cs), which essentially started out as a single-issue party opposing Catalan nationalism, and is somewhat hard to pigeonhole, though most sources describe it as center-right. All in all, a bunch of strange bedfellows.

In the February 14 elections, the separatist parties maintained and slightly increased their majority in the Catalan parliament. ERC came first with 33 seats, followed by the Junts coalition with 32 seats, while CUP secured nine seats—74 seats in total. However, the PSC on the unionist side also made a strong showing, tying with the ERC with their 33 seats, and won the most votes in terms of the popular vote (23 percent to ERC’s 21 percent and Junts’ 20 percent). Vox entered parliament for the first time, gaining 11 seats, and ECP maintained its eight seats. The biggest loser, however, is Cs. Despite long being the largest unionist party in the Catalan parliament, Cs lost voters to PSC and Vox, winning only 5.6 percent of the vote (having won 25.4 percent in the 2017 elections), with their number of seats dropping from 36 to only six. PP also had a poor showing, clinging onto its representation in parliament with three seats.

While PSC is led by Salvador Illa, who resigned as Spain’s health minister to run in the election, it is unlikely that he would be able to form a government, as the pro-independence parties signed a manifesto during the campaign rejecting a potential coalition with the PSC. However, with ERC having an edge over Junts, there could still be considerable room for dialogue as ERC aims for a more gradual approach to independence compared to Junts, which favors direct confrontation with the central government.

Turks and Caicos Islands - February 19

The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), a British Overseas Territory near the Bahamas, held an election for its unicameral House of Assembly on February 19, which resulted in a landslide victory for the center-left opposition Progressive National Party (PNP).

The British government suspended self-government for the TCI in 2009 after an inquiry discovered evidence of widespread corruption, and representative government was only restored in 2012 with a new constitution. Under the new constitution, the House of Assembly is composed of 21 seats, of which 15 are directly elected. 10 of the 15 are elected from single-member constituencies, while the remaining 5 are elected from an at-large All Island District.

The incumbent conservative People’s Democratic Movement (PDM) and its leader, Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson (who is also the islands’ first woman premier) were dealt a huge defeat in the election, losing all but one seat. The PNP’s leader Charles Washington Misick became the new premier.

Laos - February 21

With the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) governing Laos as a one-party state since 1975, the results of the landlocked Southeast Asian country’s parliamentary elections on February 21 are hardly in doubt. The LPRP is the sole legal party in Laos, and all candidates (including independents) standing for the election must be first vetted and approved by the party.

According to Australian National University’s Keith Barney, there is a regular degree of turnover in the National Assembly’s 149 seats in spite of the choreographed nature of the elections, with the candidates responding to local social, economic, and environmental issues. The Politburo members elected by the LPRP’s 11th Party Congress in January would have the real power to decide the country’s policies.