Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election in 2014 the world saw the emergence of many right-wing leaders across major nations — a shift which peaked when an unheralded Donald Trump seized the US Presidency in 2016.
That opened the door to clones in other nations. Jair Bolsonaro, a swashbuckling former captain, captured the Brazilian Presidency in 2018. Boris Johnson became British Prime Minister in 2019, riding a wave of pro-Brexit sentiment. These developments preceded the Covid-19 pandemic. Interestingly three of these worthies, ie Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson, got infected, with their blasé attitude to the virus. The right-wing mutual admiration club reached a high point with the handholding between PM Modi and President Trump, months before the 2020 US Presidential election, at an Indian diaspora event in Houston.
But as late British statesman Harold Wilson quipped, a week is a long time in politics. Thus recent developments have seen the re-election of three leaders, other than Johnson who is firmly out, look suddenly less than certain.
Bolsonaro faces former Brazilian president Louis Inacio Lula da Silva and is threatened by his machismo stance alienating female voters. This is a result of remarks like his daughter being born as he had a moment of weakness or him insultingly telling a fellow lawmaker that she was too ugly to be raped.
Donald Trump has managed to retain a vice-like grip on a majority of the Republican Party while continuing to lie brazenly about his electoral defeat or insisting that voting was rigged. But again female voters may be moving away from him due to rulings of the US Supreme Court that he has packed with judges steeped in right-wing ideology. The overturning of Roe v Wade bars easy access to abortion. The New York Times wrote that special Congressional elections last week have shown Democrats take 4 out of 5 seats, even in places where Republicans were expected to lead. Thus the control of the House and even the Senate may not easily pass to Republicans in the November mid-terms.
Trump looked menacingly re-electable only weeks ago. The US Department of Justice-authorised raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence at Palm Beach, Florida has altered the dynamics. Hundreds of classified documents that even a former president had no business retaining, and with national security implications, has hurt him politically. Public opinion that largely ignored his repetitive rule-breaking seems to have reached the limit of its indulgence. Even some of his supporters appear concerned over his unhinged reaction, still flowing from his pet conspiracy theories. Hopefully the law may finally entrap him and bar him from holding political office again.
On August 9, three days before the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar blindsided the BJP by quitting his alliance with them. He seamlessly then linked up with the RJD to be sworn in again as chief minister in a reincarnated alliance with his earlier arch rivals. This came on top of the still unsettled situation in Maharashtra where the continuance of the BJP’s alliance with the breakaway Shiv Sena group depends on how the Supreme Court rules on the real Shiv Sena’s defection charge. Thus at one go the 40 seats of Bihar and 48 of Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha, out of which currently BJP and its old allies hold over 80, go in the melting pot. So BJP’s “certain” win in 2024 is now looking far from inevitable. BJP’s hounding of the opposition is backfiring as it is causing opposition convergence.
Coming to democracies in India’s neighbourhood, the situation is also fluid. In Pakistan, Imran Khan has stirred up a mass movement which targets Pakistan’s military, his old patrons. He targets the US as masterminding his exit because he stands for unfettered democracy and independent foreign policy. He chose Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s statement to illustrate such independence. His party’s success in the Punjab state by-election enabled him to capture power in Pakistan’s largest province. His rabble-rousing is thus unique as it targets institutions like the army, that traditionally were seen as exempt from public scrutiny.
In Sri Lanka too, it was unimaginable months ago that the powerful Rajapaksa clan could be literally banished. They may still be pulling the strings from behind the curtain but a popular movement has shaken the cosy status quo. Amidst this chaos, China decided to test its hold on a bankrupt nation by seeking to berth its snooping ship Yuan Wang 5. With the Indian prime minister addressing the nation on August 15, when India completed 75 years of independence, all that Sri Lanka could manage was to push back the arrival of the Chinese vessel till August 16.
Thus in the last fortnight multiple events have occurred in democracies globally that hold promise of change and a return to centrist politics. If a week is a long time in politics, a fortnight can be pathbreaking.
The writer is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs
