Fruits and Votes » Prof. Shugart's Blog

News in recent days from presidencies…

In Ukraine’s runoff, it appears that Viktor Yanukovych has now won (probably legitimately, despite the protests of the runner-up/incumbent premier) the presidency that he was initially (but fraudulently) said to have won in 2004. It was a relatively narrow win, so by now he has earned the name Landslide Viktor.

In Nigeria, power has finally been transferred to an Acting President while the elected one remains hospitalized in Saudi Arabia (for two months now, and counting). His name offers something his country’s politics surely require: Goodluck.

Recently re-elected Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has, as expected, dissolved parliament. (Elections will be only about two months ahead of when they needed to be held in any case.) Meanwhile, the candidate Rajapaksa defeated, former army commander Sarath Fonseka, is apparently under arrest. What was it that Juan Linz said about “zero sum” presidentialism?

In better news for presidentialism and representativeness, Costa Rica has elected its first woman president and first Jewish vice president.

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Let’s hope Liberia fares better than Tasmania http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2010/02/the-battle-for-franklin.html with electing Goodlucks.

Seed planted by Tom Round — 02 March 2010 @ 10:25

Badluck:

Nigeria’s ruling political party has said it wants a Muslim from the north to stand as its candidate for the oil-rich nation’s presidential election next year, blocking the country’s Christian acting president from seeking the office.

The announcement by Vincent Ogbulafor, national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, late Tuesday appears to cut acting President Goodluck Jonathan adrift as he manages a nation that saw its elected president disappear into a Saudi Arabian hospital for three months. The country of 150 million people still have yet to see President Umaru Yar’Adua, who apparently returned to Nigeria’s capital last week in an ambulance during a nighttime military convoy.

Nigeria splits roughly in half between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north. Under a power-sharing agreement in the PDP, candidates for the presidency must alternate between the two faiths. Yar’Adua, a Muslim, is still in his first four-year term. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former dictator who became the civilian elected leader in 1999 and preceded Yar’Adua, is a Christian who served two terms.

“The south had the president for eight years and it is proper to allow the north to have the presidency,” Ogbulafor told reporters late Tuesday night….

- Jon Gambrell (AP)“Christian Nigerian VP cannot run for president,” The Iconoclast (Wednesday, 3 March 2010)

Seed planted by Tom Round — 04 March 2010 @ 00:46

“Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan sworn in as president.” Yar-Adua finally passed away: he never actually wrote that letter to the Nigerian Senate delegating the Acting Presidency to his Veep.

Seed planted by Tom Round — 06 May 2010 @ 12:01

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