2024 Election Watch: the United States, Russia, Portugal, and Iran

Donald Trump has once again claimed victory in the US Republican primary, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is guaranteed to be leading in this year’s election in Moscow. The big surprise this month, however, is the surge of the Far Right in Portugal which has gained an unprecedented following under the new Chega party.

With Super Tuesday over, it now looks certain that the big clash in November’s US presidential election will be between two octogenarians, President Joe Biden and the former president, Donald Trump.  However unbelievable as it seems, the people of the United States will face that choice and no one younger is likely to appear on the scene barring the death of one or the other candidate.

In March, the most important election will take place between the 15th and 17th  when those eligible to vote in the Russian Federation go to the polls to choose the next president and government. Russia’s land mass stretches from the great plain of Europe to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Arctic to the Black Sea, making it the largest country in the world as well as a great power with the biggest nuclear arsenal.

Formed in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union with its communist party command-and-control system, the new Russia embraced democracy through a series of reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev, leading to the election of Boris Yeltsin as the first democratically elected president. Two years later, a new constitution was ratified by three-fifths of Russian voters and the president was given sweeping powers. The new legislature, the Federal Assembly, was established (the Federation Council or upper house) with appointed representatives, and the lower house or Duma whose 450 members are elected by popular vote.

This experiment in democracy, however, was short-lived. The story of how Yeltsin was replaced at his retirement by the relatively unknown Vladimir Putin is an extraordinary part of the nation’s history. In 1998, one of the most influential oligarchs, enriched by his purchase of Russian businesses, was asked to find a potential successor to Yeltsin and drew up a shortlist for prime minister from within the Russian bureaucracy. One of these was Putin, who had been KGB chief in the east German city of Dresden, then under Moscow control,.  Putin had made no application for the job, nor is there any evidence that he knew it was available.

In the early years after his appointment as president in 2000, he was seen by the West as an ally. US President George W. Bush is reported to have said he had “looked the man in the eye” and found him “very straightforward and trustworthy” and gotten a “sense of his soul.”  For his part, Putin described Russia as a “friendly European nation” that desired “stable peace on the continent.” In his first address as president, Putin had promised to protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press and property rights, and announced his commitment to democracy.

Democratic backsliding began almost immediately: independent television networks were brought under state control, other news outlets were closed, gubernatorial and senatorial elections abolished, the judiciary curtailed, and opposition political parties restricted. Putin’s system was sometimes referred to as a “managed democracy.” Now he rules with an iron fist. You have only to read his most recent State of the Union message in which he threatens the West with nuclear weapons to realise why Europe’s defence departments are re-examining the threat from Russia and rebuilding military budgets.

While there will be candidates standing against Putin in the presidential election, they have no chance of winning anything but a trivial percentage of the vote.  Putin will be re-elected. In January, Russia’s national elections commission registered two candidates – Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Vladislav Davankov of New People – both parties have been largely supportive of legislation backed by Putin’s United Russia party. Yekaterina Duntsova, a politician who calls for peace in Ukraine, was rejected by the commission on the grounds that her paperwork contained errors, including spelling mistakes, and her appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court. As The Conversation recently noted, when Putin wins again, and if he serves his full six-year term, he will have been in power for 30 years, longer than any Russian or Soviet leader since Tsar Peter the Great.

The only European Union country to face an election this month is Portugal, one of the original six members of the former European Economic Community. The incumbent Socialist government has come ahead by barely two seats, but they  face opposition from a new centre-right coalition, the Democratic Alliance, which has added close to 50 seats to their platform giving them significant say in choices about government policy. Chega, a far-right party led by founder Andre Ventura, is cementing its place as Portugal’s third biggest party and appears to have wide support among young people who are disproportionately affected by low wages and soaring house costs, and many of whom are abandoning Portugal for other European countries.

The most important election in the Middle East took place at the start of the month in Iran, a country that has strong support from critics of the West and which has been a persistent thorn in the side of Washington and its allies for many years. In recent years, soaring cost of living, inflation of over 40 percent, and depreciation of the currency has fuelled discontent among the populace. Unsurprisingly, the ruling government of the Islamic republic was returned to power, but the clerics who rule in Tehran can hardly be encouraged by the results, particularly in the capital where there was only a 24 percent turnout and about half of the 30 parliamentary candidates did not reach the required threshold. The rate of participation is a setback for Iranian authorities, who have traditionally pointed to high voter turnout as proof of the Islamic republic’s legitimacy.

Colin Chapman FAIIA is a writer, broadcaster, public speaker, who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He is a former president of AIIA NSW and was appointed a fellow of the AIIA in 2017. Colin is editor at large with Australian Outlook.

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