(CNN Spanish) — 2024 will be a year full of elections on all five continents. According to the Center for American Progress, more than 2 billion voters in 50 countries will go to the polls in a record number of elections around the world. Therefore, this election is likely to define the future of the planet and humanity for the coming period.
Paradoxically, the results of that election may be a demonstration of the growing danger to the health of democracy rather than its strength.
In January, Taiwan’s presidential elections could open a phase of new tensions with China. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to edge toward a rare third term in the world’s largest democracy. And the Russian election will be a formality, with Vladimir Putin seeking to hold on to power until 2030, even amid mounting military losses in Ukraine. On the other side of the trench, Volodymyr Zelenskyj could also measure his own popularity and that of his military strategy at the polls. Finally, in the United States there will be elections in which a Donald Trump surrounded by controversy – and so far banned from the primaries of at least two states – will seek electoral revenge after his defeat in 2020.
Here’s an account of elections that could change the political course of the world in the coming years:
A Donald Trump surrounded by controversy seeks his revenge in the USA.
The United States will have a series of elections in 2024: several primaries during part of the year, to define the candidates of the two main parties – Republican and Democratic – and the presidential elections, in November.
Donald Trump, the favorite in the Republican race, will try to represent his party, facing multiple legal battles, including two federal indictments. Additionally, for the time being, he is out of primary elections in the states of Maine and Colorado, following recent decisions regarding his role in the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. These state decisions have been challenged by the office Trump’s lawyer.
On the Democratic side, Joe Bien is the current president and has already announced that he will seek re-election, thus becoming the incumbent candidate. However, there are some Democrats who could challenge him in the primary, including Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and author Marianne Williamson. But they have not yet garnered much support, at least in opinion polls.
Whatever happens, Mexico will have a president
Mexico will elect its first president in June 2024, after Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez became the favorites in the electoral competition. While they are not the first women to aspire to the presidency of Mexico (six others have already done so), they are the first to gain consensus support from the country’s main political parties.
Claudia Sheinbaum will compete for the governing National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and its allied parties, Labor (PT) and Green Ecologist of Mexico (PVEM). On the opposition side, Xóchitl Gálvez will be the candidate of the Broad Front for Mexico, a coalition that brings together the National Action (PAN), Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) and Democratic Revolution (PRD) parties.
This is an open-ended election in which drug trafficking, organized crime and immigration into the United States will dominate the political agenda.
Bukele is aiming for re-election in El Salvador, despite criticism from the opposition
El Salvador will go to the polls on February 4, in an election in which Nayib Bukele will run for re-election, despite questions from the opposition, which assures that at least five articles of the Constitution prohibit the candidate from running for a second term.
The Supreme Court, with a pro-government majority, has ruled that, to prevent a president who opts for re-election from prevailing in office, he must leave office six months before the start of the new term. For this reason Bukele has requested leave starting from November 30th to dedicate himself to the electoral campaign.
After four years in office, Bukele is aiming for re-election with a high level of popularity, built mainly around his security policies, according to some polls such as that of Cid Gallup. However, human rights defenders at home and abroad question their methods as a violation of human rights.
There are no certainties about the candidates of the ruling party and the opposition in Venezuela
Venezuela will also vote in 2024, although the date of the elections and who the candidates of the governing party and the opposition will be are yet to be defined.
On the side of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), it was recently Nicolás Maduro himself – in power for 10 years, since the death of Hugo Chávez – who questioned his candidacy, stating in an interview that it was “premature. ” this definition.
But there are no greater certainties on the opposition side. In October 2023, Venezuela’s National Primary Commission (CNP) proclaimed María Corina Machado the winner of the opposition primaries heading into elections scheduled for 2024.
However, Machado is disqualified by an order imposed by Venezuela’s Comptroller General for allegedly failing to include food bonus payments in her affidavit of assets. The opposition leader insists the disqualification is illegal.
The European Parliament will be the only supranational election
After five years, the European Parliament will go to the polls between 6 and 9 June 2024, for a new reconfiguration that could change the fate of the bloc. The nine countries that will vote for their MEPs this year must expect, according to experts, that the trend towards political fragmentation and difficulties in building majorities will continue.
Disenchantment with traditional parties and politics in general will also generate, as has happened so far, the emergence or strengthening of fringe parties, many of them extremist, as in the case of Vox in Spain. It is also possible that, paradoxically, Eurosceptic positions will advance in the next Parliament of the European bloc.
Specifically, these elections will provide an opportunity for the rise of anti-immigration populist and far-right parties in France, Germany and Belgium, among other countries.
Russia and Ukraine, elections on both sides of the trench
Russia’s war in Ukraine will turn two years on February 24, and elections in both countries will serve as a thermometer for both sides to determine the course of the conflict from now on.
In the case of Russia, presidential elections are perhaps the closest thing to a kind of political theater. Putin has no serious rivals, as his most prominent opponent, Alexey Navalny, is in a prison some 65 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, and the sympathetic media portrays the incumbent president as Russia’s indispensable man. But this spring’s vote will be an important public ritual for the Kremlin leader, who will hold power until the end of the decade.
Although 2024 was the planned year for presidential elections in Ukraine, there are still questions about the importance of holding them in the midst of a conflict that is about to enter its third year.
In any case, President Volodymyr Zelensky will face a shortage of ammunition and equipment as he tries to overcome the difficulties of a world that has added a new conflict – that of Israel and Hamas, in the Middle East – and divisions in his countries Western allies, mainly in the United States and Europe.
Elections in the largest democracy in the world: India
In the months of April and May, India will host the most important elections in the world, from a demographic point of view.
Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is expected to win a third term with popular but religiously divisive policies. Despite problems with inflation and purchasing power, Modi enjoys broad support among India’s Hindu majority, based on patriotism and a confident foreign policy. Critics respond that the founding spirit of India, once secular and democratic, is fading into the background and that minorities feel insecure.
Elections in Taiwan and cross-strait conflict
The 2024 election agenda will open with elections surrounded by tension, when Taiwan votes, setting the tone for China for the next four years. If Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party, previously an uncompromising supporter of Taiwanese independence, wins, relations with Beijing are expected to deteriorate or remain frozen. Rival candidates from the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party promise to create less friction with China, even though all three parties oppose the “one country, two systems” principle promoted by Beijing.
With reporting from CNN’s Bianca Nobilo, Stephen Collinson, Nathan Hodge, Ivonne Valdés, Merlin Delcid and Krupskaia Alís
2024-01-05 15:01:00
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