South Korea's COVID election

How will COVID-19 impact on national elections?  At the start of this crisis I wrote that elections this year, and next, would:

• favour incumbent governments if held near the start of the crisis - because of the initial 'pull-together' instinct in an emergency, already visible in most (but not all) countries.
• go against incumbents if, with the passage of time, they are perceived to have handled the crisis badly - this is worrying Trump, Bolsonaro and others, and explains Trump's efforts to place blame elsewhere.
• favour more economically 'left' parties rather than parties seen as economically neo-liberal - the latter will be less trusted to avoid placing place the burden of recovery onto the poorest and most vulnerable.
• produce some radical electoral surprises and some radical policies, mainly (but not only) in a 'left' direction.

The South Korean election yesterday seems to confirm these expectations.

It returned the incumbent centre-left Minjoo (Democratic Party), led by President Moon Jae-in, in a landslide.  It gave Minjoo an unprecedented majority in Parliament.  It also saw a record turnout by voters, despite strict physical distancing measures at the polling stations.  At the beginning of this year Minjoo was widely expected to lose the election. by a significant margin.

The South Korean government has been widely praised for its COVID-19 response both at home and internationally.  Preparation, widespread testing, and fast action appear to have been the key ingredients of their strategy.

President Moon has been quick to reshuffle the policy board of the Central Bank and announce an intention to boost household incomes, curb soaring property prices, and boost aggregate demand through stimulus measures.   The right-wing opposition is licking its wounds.

Let's see if my predictions come true in the elections to come, or whether my predictions are simply wish fulfilment desires.

Although nationally and locally-specific factors will be important, upcoming elections to watch include:

• Bihar, India - one of the largest and poorest states with a population over 100m.
• Poland - Presidential
• France - Senate
• Mexico - local
• United States
• Bolivia
• New Zealand

Lockdowns and why one size doesn't fit all

Much of the COVID-19 press coverage has focussed on the difference between lockdown strategies in various countries.  Less attention has been paid to whether lockdowns are the appropriate dominant strategy.

Lockdowns in the global South are manageable for the rich and even the middle class.  Many in Delhi, for example, are also barricading the so-called 'colonies', areas where the wealthier citizens live, to keep people out (at least barricading them more than they already do).

But lockdowns are not workable for the majority of the urban population where there are often many people sharing a room, where access to a tap may involve a walk to the shared standpipe, where there is not enough money even to stock up on supplies for a week, let alone think about buying internet bandwidth or a Netflix subscription.  In such an environment a lockdown is neither sustainable nor just.

Enforcing lockdowns in such a context becomes war on the poor.

Read this account from South Africa by a journalist visiting Masiphumelele, a township to the South of Cape Town.

Or this one looking at the dense low-income settlements (often called 'slums') in Mumbai, India.

Dharavi, Mumbai

COVID Justice: Is the lockdown strategy the right one for all countries?

In many 'developing', countries the lockdown strategy seems to be taking the form of war on the poor, in the interests of the wealthy and the urban, 'modern' middle-class, and with the aim of protecting them from infection by the poor.  I say this reluctantly as I know the governments of these countries are stuck between a rock and a hard place and they have no easy options available.

I get the epidemiological case for lockdowns.  Cut the number of physical interactions sharply, encourage hand-washing, surface cleaning, face masks etc, and the rate of increase of COVID-19 can be slowed down.  This, in turn, can ease pressure on hospitals (Italy certainly needs that) and make space for more proactive test, trace, track and quarantine strategies.

Singapore, and to a lesser extent South Korea, are rare exceptions to the lockdown focus.  As I understand it, they have highly effective test, trace, track and quarantine programmes without having adopted a generalised lockdown.  Their schools and businesses largely remain open, although not their borders, and the pandemic is largely being managed.

Australia, like much of Western Europe, has locked down to a significant extent with more on the way.  It is too early to say if this strategy is working.  Even so, the partial lockdown implemented has come at a massive cost to jobs, livelihoods and the national budget.  To save the system, the centre-right government has in part suspended capitalism in order to save it.  The government's expressed aim is to hibernate the system and return to business-as-usual once the virus is under control.  It has committed about A$300 billion, and rising daily, in the space over little over a week, to various safety net measures antithetical to its neoliberal stance.  These measures include bailouts and loans for business, the state guaranteeing a proportion of the salaries of all private sector employees, the de facto incorporation of the private hospitals into the public health system, a doubling of unemployment benefits and making these much easier to claim, free childcare provision, and so on.  New measures are announced daily!

Australia is, generally speaking, a rich country with a sophisticated public health system and a healthy public balance sheet.  Most of its citizens live a modern, middle-class consumer existence.  Even so, the effects of the lockdown are felt more harshly by some than by others: the homeless, remote indigenous communities, those in irregular and casual employment, families in small or crowded accommodation, those unable to homeschool their children, families with limited savings and assets, non-citizens, backpackers, tourists unable to return home, and more.

By contrast, the lockdown picture in developing countries is very different, and already highly disturbing.  The regulations and their enforcement make it relatively easy for the better-off to stockpile supplies, shut their doors and watch Netflix, whilst the majority carry the real burden of the lockdown.  In India, a nation of over 1.3 billion people, early accounts show devastation for the poor - for example here, here and here.  Little by way of food and support is available.  Many have effectively been driven from the cities, and police actions have often been unnecessarily harsh and inhumane.  On a positive note, some states (such as Kerala) seem to be avoiding some of these problems.  Stories of apartheid-style enforcement and repression are emerging elsewhere, such as in The Philippines.

In South Africa, a similar pattern is already evident.  A strict lockdown is being enforced by police and the military, with numerous abuses of power already evident.  Here's a video I received from a friend a couple of days back. The viewer should know that the lockdown includes a ban on alcohol sales.  It is not clear if the person in the video is drinking a beer of his own (allowed) or selling beer (forbidden).  Whatever the case, a 'people versus the authorities' dynamic is evident.  This is not an isolated example (see here) although it is still unclear how widespread such police/military actions are.

The South African state has little capacity to provide significant additional support, such as food, to the poorest citizens, although its existing social security grant system is extensive, albeit modest.  Its fiscal condition is weak - the ratings agencies downgraded the country's credit-worthiness to junk bond status this week meaning a capital flow from the country to the rich world at this moment of crisis.

Structurally, a lockdown doesn't make sense for the majority of South Africans, even as it makes sense for the wealthier citizens.  Apartheid-era spatial divisions persist and the rich (of all races) have erected high walls around their enclaves.  The lockdown intensifies this division. There is no public transport system to speak of:  the minicab taxi system which the poor depend upon relies on the sort of over-crowding and cost models which are incompatible with physical distancing.  Street traders who make and sell food at the roadside have been shut down, as have Somali and other foreign-owned small township 'spaza' shops (xenophobia by police in interpreting the regulations is reportedly widespread).  The poorest citizens have to make their way to the large supermarket chains which are more expensive and have had their shelves emptied by wealthier stockpilers.  Housing is crowded, many people to one room, and many have no access to taps and soap for regular hand washing.  One could go on.  The lockdown will only be enforceable with extreme violence and at high human cost.  And South Africans are not passive in the face of repression.

Here's an excellent analysis, by a well-respected NGO, examining the South African lockdown through the prism of food availability.  The lockdown has revealed the societal divisions and exacerbated them, even though there are pockets of hope in the Collective Action Networks (CAN) which some have set up, and the work of some charitable organisations.

Nigeria, a country of over 200 million people, and only days into a lockdown, finds ordinary citizens complaining it is impossible to comply and food is scarce.

It is probably too soon to be definite, but there seem to be a number of different strategies emerging internationally for tackling COVID-19.  Four broad strategies are evident so far.  Of course, this crude and hasty typology is very tentative and will also be dependent on the leadership given by each country's rulers.  And there are strategies, not covered here (Brazil and Sweden spring to mind).  But here's my first bite at understanding the range of strategies:

1. There are those with pandemic experience and advanced healthcare systems, which have gone hard and gone early and gone autocratically.  They seem to be succeeding in getting the virus under control.  Mainly these are East Asian countries.
2. There are those with little pandemic experience, which have gone hard but belatedly and with massive state support for their citizens facing rent and income stress and at great economic cost.  They are not yet succeeding in controlling the virus.  These are mainly the rich European countries. The USA seems to be shuffling in this direction.
3. There are the middle-range developing countries trying to go hard and using lockdowns.  Their deep-rooted social inequality places an unreasonable burden on the poor.  It is hard to see how they will succeed, although they may manage wealthy critically-ill citizens.  Hard too to see why popular discontent might not erupt.  Here we should expect that COVID-19 will work its way through the society, at great cost to human life amongst the poor, until so-called 'herd immunity' is reached (or a vaccine arrives soon).
4. Finally, it will be important to watch those poorer countries with experience of deadly pandemics, such as in parts of West Africa.

Developing countries adopting lockdown approaches will soon find these turn into war against the poorest.  I hope I am wrong about this.

[UPDATE: After this was written South Africa relaxed some of the lockdown rules, and disciplinary action has been taken against some police officers.]