Modi In India Loses Majority —Keeps Government While Mexico’s Ruling Party Gets Super Majority.

In a surprising result PM Modi loses his majority in Parliament and will have to rely on allied Parties to pass legislation.

Few saw this coming—so much for the polls there.

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board opines:

“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is poised to keep power for a third term even after voters dealt the Hindu nationalist a stunning setback by denying him an outright majority following an election dominated by high unemployment and inflation.

Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will now have to rely on allies in his coalition to cross the 272-seat threshold for a majority in the lower house of parliament to form a government. It is the first election since 2014, when Modi won his first term as prime minister, that the BJP hasn’t scored an absolute majority on its own.

Modi would be only the second leader after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, to return to power for a third straight term. Official results show the BJP winning around 240 seats. It won 303 seats in 2019.

Modi, speaking in the evening local time, didn’t acknowledge the upset and claimed a historic victory. “In our third term, the country will write a new chapter of big decisions,” he said. “This is Modi’s guarantee.”

The opposition hasn’t conceded defeat. The Congress party, which ruled India for decades but had seen its popularity plunge in recent years, was set to nearly double its seat count compared with the last general election. Its opposition alliance gained well over 200 seats, far surpassing the performance of the opposition bloc it led five years ago.”

Many saw the Mexico result coming  with out going  President ‘s  picked successor , a woman, the first for Mexico,  sweeping to a large majority. The Wall Street Jounal’s Editorial Board has this to say :

“Who says democratic landslides aren’t possible anymore? Mexico on Sunday delivered one for the ruling left-wing Morena party and its presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum. The question is whether this democratic sweep will create an opening for anti-democratic constitutional changes.”

The Paper goes on to say :

Ms. Sheinbaum is a protégé of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Mexican presidents can’t run for re-election, but AMLO remains popular. Real wages have grown and the peso has strengthened as the country has become a mecca for manufacturing aimed at the North American market. 

AMLO has also spent lavishly on entitlements for the poor and middle class.

With 99% of the vote counted, the former mayor of Mexico City had won 60% against former National Action Party senator Xochitl Gálvez with 28%. 

The sweeping victory also appears to have given Morena close to two-thirds majorities in the legislature.

This means Morena has the votes to pass AMLO’s constitutional amendments designed to consolidate the party’s power at the Supreme Court and eliminate independent regulatory bodies. 

Because the new Congress takes its seats a month before AMLO leaves office on Oct. 1, he could push for passage before the end of his term. That prospect explains the peso’s 4% decline on Monday, while the Mexican stock market was down some 5.7%.

Markets will be looking to see which Claudia Sheinbaum emerges in office—the ideologue or a more pragmatic deal-maker. Mr. López Obrador and Ms. Sheinbaum are left-wing populists who want to put the state at the center of the economy. She has a doctorate in energy engineering, and during the early 1990s lived in the San Francisco area.

In her acceptance speech, Ms. Sheinbaum took a conciliatory tone, promising to “respect business freedom and facilitate with honesty private investment, national and foreign.” 

While charting her own course, Ms. Sheinbaum will face problems left behind by AMLO. The public-health system is broke and there’s a large fiscal deficit. Pemex, the state-owned oil company, has some $103 billion in debt outstanding and owes suppliers more than $20 billion.

Ms. Sheinbaum has promised to put the poor first, but that means Mexico’s economy will need to keep growing. Her challenge will be to square her socialist bona fides, and her history of climate activism on the United Nations climate panel, with policies that attract foreign capital to expand prosperity.

An early test will be whether Ms. Sheinbaum continues AMLO’s campaign to have government control electricity generation and oil exploration. Shutting out private investors violates the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the revised free-trade pact signed in 2018. President Biden has failed to enforce the new agreement’s energy chapter, but a second Trump Administration probably would.

She will also have to address the collapse of internal security. 

Cartels control large parts of the country, and extortion is routine. 

Human smugglers run the caravans that bring migrants by the millions to the U.S. border. Recovering the authority of the state won’t be easy. But a closer relationship with U.S. law enforcement could help.

The U.S. has a huge stake in a stable, prospering Mexico that continues to expand its middle class. The drug trade won’t subside as long as demand in the U.S. stays high, but neither country can afford to let trans-national cartels dominate the border and murder with impunity. Americans wish the new President well for the sake of her country and our own.”