See, Pinochet was right. Democracy leads to Communism.
The newly elected president of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias, is from the Progressive Party of the Working People. I happened to notice at Adam Carr’s report of the results a note to the effect that the winner’s party is “in fact a Communist party.” Click on the party’s website and you will see that it evidently is.
So, earlier I suggested two ways in which this election was rare, if not unprecedented,1 and now I have another question for the visitors:
Is there another case of a Communist being elected president of a democratic country? By an absolute majority of the votes cast?2
Meanwhile, the Progressive Party of the Working People has 18 of 56 seats in the country’s legislature, elected in May, 2006. It won that on 31.1% of the vote, or only about two percentage points less than what Christofias won in the first round of this month’s presidential election. In that election, the party of the now-defeated incumbent also won 18 seats (on 30.3% of votes), while the party of the candidate Christofias has just defeated in the runoff had just 11 seats (on 17.9%, which he personally nearly doubled as a presidential candidate in the first round).
This should be entered into the annals as one of the classic cases of a president (as well as his defeated runoff opponent) building a quite different electoral coalition from that of his party.
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The president of Moldova.
San Marino had also a kind of communist party in power in the 50s
Seed planted by Miguel Madeira — 26 February 2008 @ 14:55
The Democratic Labor Party. No, not Chris Curtis’s posse. The Lithuanian one.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 26 February 2008 @ 17:45
Right about Lithuania and Moldova. I suppose we could quibble about whether post-authoritarian communist parties winning democratic elections belong in the same category as communist parties winning in already established democracies.
I believe the Lithuanian one was quite “domesticated” by the time it won a democratic election (and the Moldovan one probably less so*). I know nothing about the Cypriot version, other than that it just won in a country that has been democratic for some time, and where the Party had never ruled before. So, that still stands as “unprecedented” to me, until someone comes up with a similar case.
Correct on San Marino, and we could add Nepal, as other countries where democratic elections have put Communists in power, but those were not, of course presidential elections.
And in case anyone is thinking of Allende (given my Chile reference), his electoral and governing coalitions included the Communists. But Allende himself was the candidate of (and had long been a Senator for) the Socialist Party. (And he famously won only 36% of the vote, and needed confirmation by congress to become president.)
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* Interestingly, the direct election for the presidency was subsequently abolished!
Seed planted by MSS — 26 February 2008 @ 18:20
What about Communists in India ruling states like Kerala on and off, and West Bengal and Tripura for a long time? They are currently proping up the Congress led minority coalition government at the center.
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 29 February 2008 @ 03:40
Yes, in South Asia there are several examples of Communist parties winning parliamentary majorities in democratic elections. And, as others have noted, there are examples of post-authoritarian communist parties remaining in or returning to power, and even winning democratic presidential elections.
So far, however, no one has come up with another case of a communist party that was not a prior authoritarian ruling party and that elected a president in a democratic election. I think Cyprus is a first, and I think that is significant. After all, his party’s vote was less than 1/3 (measured by either the last legislative election or the first round of the presidential elections), but he had to win an absolute majority. Without actually checking, I am quite certain that few (perhaps none) of the South Asian ruling communists have won majorities of the vote.
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As for Communists “propping up” the Congress-led minority government of India, I prefer to say that the Left Alliance (which includes several regional communist parties) has a confidence and supply agreement with the Congress and its pre-election allies.
Seed planted by mshugart — 29 February 2008 @ 16:03