Elections: Mexico, South Africa and heating up for Venezuela

It is a pleasure to receive a Mexican Election Update Report from Mexico City from Ramin Mazaheri. But the content is probably not so pleasurable. The election is on Sunday, June 2nd.

They’re killing one another something fierce this election season. Over 30 candidates were murdered in the most violent Mexican elections ever. (I cannot embed a PressTV video but it is on this page from Ramin).

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/05/31/726560/Over-30-candidates-murdered-in-most-violent-Mexican-elections-ever

These Mexican elections have a local impact but do not seem to be building up to any bigger type of impact. The possible winner, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, is close to AMLO and is expected to follow his policies.

And then we have elections in South Africa and they’ve finished voting. The count is still going on and it looks like we’ll know the results on Sunday. These are important elections and strangely by orders of magnitude so far less violent than Mexico.

This is the first time that the ruling ANC (since the 1994 freedom election) has dropped their over 50% majority, and not a little bit, but when I last looked in the line of 10% and heading down, for a bigger loss. The issue here is BRICS but this is not an election issue. It is though, for the RoW. In South Africa, there are other parties where BRICS is not as important as it is to the current administration, although I’ve often thought that they are using BRICS for their own political fame. So, the ANC will have to make a deal with another party, or a coalition to keep ruling because they need a majority of 50% plus.

According to preliminary results released by the country’s National Electoral Commission as of Friday afternoon, the ANC won 41.84% of the vote, the Democratic Alliance 22.64%, the Economic Freedom Fighters 9.51%, and the newly formed uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) 12%. The results are based on the processing of 66% of the polling stations. The turnout was 58.62%.

The newly formed party (MK) is the one of Jacob Zuma who seemed to want to rule like old-style African rulers do, until he fell off the throne, but he was removed by his party and jailed. He built a whole village for himself from government funds. The EFF is the party of the firebrand Julius Malema with the red beret as a trademark. He is the one who loves to sing the song: Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer and Pass me my Machine Gun. So, it is good that he is being brought back to some limits.

Oh Africa, how I love the place but oh how different it is.  We wait until Sunday to see what happens and how the interface with BRICS will shape up into the future.

I’ll update you on Venezuela closer to the time. They are being attacked as always. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuela-Rejects-US-Statements-on-Presidential-Elections-20240531-0002.html

India is on a last round of polling.  I did not pay attention to this one as the system is confusing.

This voting and elections in its current myriad of forms, is about one of the stupidest things that mankind could have come up with.   I still think China with its tiered approach does it better.