What will 2024 be like on the international scene? Dozens of votes, which could maintain the apparent fragilities in several democracies, and new points of tension, which also risk digging the furrows of an instability that is becoming widespread. Panorama in five stages of a crazy time about to be written.
Elections in 50 countries
The year 2024 will be an election year or it will not be. Mathematics says it: in the next 12 months, more than half of humanity will in fact go to the polls, to participate in a presidential election, in 30 countries, or to renew legislative power, in a twenty others, and this, in a troubled international context, to say the least.
All eyes will certainly turn to the United States, where the prospect of a new face-off next November between the populist with authoritarian leanings Donald Trump and the Democrat Joe Biden has been looming for several months. India should also become the center of attention in May, with its billion voters determined, according to polls, to renew their confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the most populous country in the world, since 2014, man has been reducing political rights and individual freedoms, denounces the NGO Freedom House.
Eyes could also turn to Mexico, where in June, for the first time, a woman could win the keys to the presidential palace. Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, from the left-wing party, and senator Xóchitl Gálvez, at the head of a front bringing together three opposition parties, are best placed to succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
But it is on social networks that all concerns should above all be focused, believe several defenders of democracy, who note that these spaces have become not only sounding boards for disinformation, which rots social reflection and public debate. , but also fertile grounds for cultivating anti-democratic feelings with great bursts of frustration. And inevitably, in a mass election year, this phenomenon could bring danger into the home.
“What worries me most is that several platforms have cut their teams dedicated to protecting electoral integrity,” Laura Edelson, a professor of computer science at Northeastern University, said a few days ago. cited by the establishment. This is the case of X, formerly Twitter, where these guardians of reason in the face of the excesses of ultra-emotional communication were fired last September by the new boss, Elon Musk. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, also made a quiet change to its rules, which now allows political ads questioning the legitimacy of past elections. In short, Meta sees no ethical problem with making money from the “big lies” that threaten American democracy and that of other countries. “The current state of supervisory frameworks and resources [dans ces réseaux]as we approach what will be one of the most intense election years we have had in a long time, is very worrying,” adds Mme Edelson.
A Stalinist vote for a leader who could surpass Stalin
Everything has been put in place in Russia to ensure Vladimir Putin’s victory in the presidential election next March, after 23 years already at the head of the country, as president and prime minister.
This is because the strong man of the Kremlin had the Constitution modified in 2020 to remain at the top of a state in which he silences any form of opposition, through poisoning, imprisonment or forced exile. . His greatest threat, lawyer Alexei Navalny, was silenced in the country’s jails by a succession of opportunistic convictions driven by a corrupt judiciary, for fraud, for extremism and now for vandalism, which caused his sentence to expire. from 9 years to 30 years. The opponent regularly denounced his conditions of detention until very recently. Russian prison authorities have dropped him from the radar of his lawyers and family in recent weeks, likely under the pretext of another transfer to a new penal colony.
Coincidentally, this “subtraction” of the opponent from the Russian political environment was planned while the country’s dictator officially announced, on December 8, his candidacy for his own succession in a production showing a general of the army based in Crimea candidly implore the president in front of the cameras to do the honor of the Russian people by embarking on an electoral race, a race whose outcome is beyond doubt.
When asked by Russian state television a few weeks ago what kind of leader should replace President Vladimir Putin, his longtime spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, gave an answer simple and quick: “The same. »
This “same” man will then find himself in the perspective unique to Russia of being in power theoretically until 2036, which would make him break the record for longevity in the Kremlin, established by Joseph Stalin last century.
Taiwan at a time of choices, under threat
This is not a trivial announcement. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense has decided to put all of its troops on alert from January 12 to 14, 2024 to be ready to face any maneuver that neighboring China might decide to launch to disrupt the presidential election on January 13. next January. Beijing has dreamed for years, and by showing itself more and more intimidating, of putting this democratic, developed and westernized island back under its governance, and this, against the will of the majority of the inhabitants of this territory.
The latest public opinion still gave a lead to the Democratic Progressive Party, which is in power, and to its presidential candidate, former Prime Minister Lai Ching-te, the bête noire of the Xi Jinping regime because of his defense of the island’s autonomy and its connections with the West, particularly the United States, which promised to defend Taiwan’s freedoms against the Chinese communist dictatorship. Beijing would much prefer a victory for Hou Yu-ih, of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s historic party, undoubtedly the most willing to open discussions and negotiations with China on the future of the island territory.
To say that this January election could influence the destiny of Taiwan is therefore an understatement, in the context where 80% of Taiwanese believe that the Chinese threat has worsened in recent years. In the process, their confidence in the United States has been eroding for two years and in the face of the persistence of the war in Ukraine, which, for many there, has tarnished Washington’s credibility in matters of international security.
The vote will be held in a social environment which leaves little room for ambiguity. A September poll by the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s main research institution, showed that 78.4 percent of Taiwanese believe that their island and China do not belong to the same country, and that 60% consider themselves Taiwanese, compared to just 2.3% saying they identify as Chinese.
A fragile peace in the Balkans
The accusations of irregularities and fraud which marred the last legislative elections in Serbia in December, won hands down by the nationalist and pro-Russian right-wing party, are certainly not to be taken lightly, in this region of the globe where peace remains fragile. A peace to watch closely in 2024, a year that the strong man of the Kremlin should certainly use to breathe life back there on the still hot embers of past inter-ethnic conflicts. Croatia is due to hold a presidential election there. The current president, Zoran Milanović, pro-Russian, should try to get re-elected.
Last November, the Council of Europe sounded the alarm on the rise of ethnic and identity nationalism seeking to destabilize this region of the globe, with the complicity of Vladimir Putin, who knows how to take advantage of these climates to attack to the links now maintained by the former allies of the Soviet Empire with the European Union and NATO.
“Vladimir Putin’s Russia is today waging an “eternal war” against NATO, alongside its war of conquest against Ukraine, and it has found partners and sympathizers in the Balkans now inclined to support its cause” , summarized a few days ago Srdjan Vucetic, specialist in international security and keen observer of this region of the globe, in the pages of Duty. According to him, the West should be concerned about the Russian president’s influence in the region, with Vladimir Putin seeking to give renewed popularity to hate speech that led to the outbreak of conflicts at the end of the last century.
A few weeks ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had information that the Russian dictator was trying to fuel a resumption of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. “Be careful in the Balkans,” he said. Believe me, Russia has a long-term plan: after the Middle East, the second distraction [pour éloigner les regards de la guerre en Ukraine] will be the Balkans. If the countries of the world do nothing now, such an explosion will occur again. »
A new war in the Falklands?
We thought the question of the Falklands had been settled, after a lightning war which cost the lives of 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers, 41 years ago, and especially a referendum held in 2013 which confirmed that 99.8% of the inhabitants of these South Atlantic islands located off the coast of Argentina wanted to remain under the British crown. But populism has been there.
The inauguration of Argentina’s new president, self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, in December has now cast new uncertainty over the Falkland Islands, as they are also called, a territory that the far-right politician has promised during the electoral campaign to bring it back into the fold of Buenos Aires.
“We have to see how we are going to recover them,” he said in an interview given several weeks ago to the Argentine daily The Nation, while affirming that these islands “are part of Argentina”. “What we are proposing is to move towards a solution like the one that England had with China on the question of Hong Kong”, i.e. a handover, an option which London however seems in no way inclined to consider. .
In the wake of Milei’s election, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned the new president that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands was not a subject open to negotiation. This issue was “resolved decisively some time ago” by the 1982 conflict, and the United Kingdom has “no intention of returning to it,” its official spokesperson stressed, although adding that the country would “proactively defend” the islanders’ right to self-determination.