Tyrants tighten hold in year of the strongman
It was the year tyrants tightened their grip on power, or were felled only by the ravages of age. It was the year global elections results were cast into doubt, or whose results were so bitterly divided the future seemed to be hung. This was the year of Trump, Xi and Putin: the year of the strongman.
Amid it all, 2017 also showed us New Zealand has much to lose.
In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping consolidated his power, having built a personality cult to rival that of Communist Party of China founding father Mao Zedong. Xi has helmed China’s ambitions to move beyond its region and become a global power, girding the earth with a belt of foreign investment, its own people with an electronic surveillance net, and literally reclaiming the South China Sea.
Muscles are also being flexed in Russia, where Vladimir Putin signalled his intent to run for his fourth term as President. This is a race with a foregone conclusion, with opponents handicapped by hounding and spoiler candidates. Putin has treated his country’s term limits as a mere inconvenience. When he hit them in 2008 he installed a caretaker President while he served as Prime Minister before re-entering the Kremlin.
The former KGB agent has not returned Russia to glory, but merely a caricature of greatness based on regional sabre-rattling and made-for-television military adventures in Syria. His rise should alarm anyone who holds freedom dear.
The departure of Robert Mugabe — at age 93 and after nearly four decades — is a warning for strongmen who refuse to concede. Defeated this year more by age than opposition, Zimbabwe drifted, then decayed under his rule.
Democracies in 2017 also faced problems, with the United Kingdom and the USA wracked by discontent and bitterness — over Brexit and Donald Trump — that has begun lowering their machinery of state into a quagmire.
Trump’s myopic outlook, seemingly playing the strongman to boost ratings with his base, has reduced the USA’s global leadership role to that of dysfunctional observer.
Theresa May’s foolish gamble for a general election to consolidate support for Brexit has seized up the United Kingdom as it staggers in withdrawing from the EU and the world.
The decline of traditional allies as antidemocratic ones rise is cause for concern. So, then, it has been heartening to see New Zealand — which also had a close election in 2017 — refused to succumb to these ills. This is despite the new Government having nearly as many opponents as supporters.
And while opponents may not have been thrilled with an outcome, given MMP, reliant on coalition formation, they are at least willing to give the new Government a chance to prove itself. This acceptance and support for a fair go is something we can be proud of, and should fiercely protect.
If discontent builds and the Government fails to take its chance, New Zealand will deal with it as we always have. Not with a surveillance state or military adventures, but at the ballot box in 2020 and with another peaceful transfer of power.