A Cup Of Tea?

End Of A Dream?

The Swedish Social Democrats are no ordinary party. If Mona Sahlin, their leader, loses tomorrow's election, as seems almost certain, she will become the first leader in the party's history never to have been prime minister. The party has been in government for 65 of the last 78 years, and in that time no non-socialist government has ever been re-elected. But today a far-right party that blames Muslim immigration for almost all the country's ills is poised to enter parliament and hold the balance of power. It already has members in local government across more than half the country. The local paper in Malmö, the country's third-largest city, publishes a Google Map marking all the shootings in the city – there have been 46 this year, though no one has been killed. What on earth is going on in this tranquil, ordered and progressive country?

If you believe the international rightwing press, the answer is simple, and has been since 2004, when Fox News made a special report on the subject: Sweden, and especially Malmö, has become a laboratory for the creeping Islamisation of Europe. The most common child's name there is now Muhammad; police dare not go into immigrant districts, where only sharia law is respected; and soon all the Jews will be driven from the city. All this, flecked with varying amounts of spittle, is recounted as fact on the net and in US papers.

Paulina Neuding, a neoliberal Swedish commentator, wrote in Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, "Too many of the country's Arab immigrants have brought anti-democratic values from their home countries; values that neither 'dialogue police' nor the world's most generous welfare system has been able to cure. And [Sweden] is also becoming a symbol of a western country that is prepared to compromise with those values."

The centre for all this fear is the Rosengård estate in Malmö. It is the nearest Sweden gets to a slum. "It doesn't feel like Sweden at all," said a horrified sociologist in a nearby university. "There are cockroaches there! People live 12 to a two-room flat. No one should have to live like that." In early September, police searched the bedroom of a local teenager who had been acting drugged in public, and found a submachine gun. Then they let him go, because he was only 15.

About 25,000 of Malmö's 300,000 people live on the estate; the actual figure is unknown because of overcrowding in the worst section, Herrgården, where adult unemployment runs at 90% (it is 30% on the estate as a whole). Thousands of new immigrants arrive every year. Of the 1,200 students in the secondary school, eight are native Swedes.

Like almost everywhere else that immigrants live in Sweden, Rosengård was built in the late 60s and early 70s as model housing for workers. But whereas most of these new settlements were located five or 10 miles outside the cities they served, and separated from them by belts of forest or farmland, Rosengård is an integral part of Malmö. It lies within the inner ring road. You can cycle there in 15 minutes from the station.

A 2008 government report, which drew entirely on the experiences of teachers, police and social workers, described a place where Islamic orthodoxy was enforced by young thugs; women were forced to wear headscarves and children segregated in religious free schools. There was a small riot after one of the 20 or 30 unofficial mosques in cellars was closed when its lease was not renewed, and nastier riots when the Israeli tennis team played a Davis Cup match in the city last summer.

But this isn't Beirut or Baltimore. It isn't even Tower Hamlets. I was told at Lund University that a foreign graduate student who lived in Rosengård for a couple of years couldn't understand why anyone would call it a ghetto. He came from Liverpool. Certainly, I can't think of another slum in Europe that has broad, well-signposted cycle paths on which stately middle-aged women in headscarves pedal their groceries home.

The houses are for the most part low blocks arranged in squares around playgrounds, on a familiar Swedish model. Even in Herrgården, where there are a few boarded-up windows, the play areas are clean and well-maintained.

The shops have Arabic signage as often as Swedish. The greengrocer's has a huge Ramadan calendar outside, but in the middle of a bright afternoon there are a great many people eating and drinking in public. In the middle of the estate is a shopping centre where a headscarfed woman is collecting for orphans in Iraq, Gaza and Pakistan. She came to Rosengård 16 years ago and says her children are happy on the estate, too. Her stall is an interesting mixture of Swedish and Islamic charity: the language is all Swedish, but the money referred to as zakat. All the distribution, the signs explain, will be handled by the Nordic aid organisation, which will guarantee the money ends up being used peacefully and responsibly.

The Islamology department at Lund University reckons the number of active Muslims in Rosengård and Sweden generally is greatly overestimated. "Most Muslims in Sweden are as unobservant as the Christians," says department head Leif Stenberg. "If you count the number of worshippers in the mosques, there are seldom more than 300 in the big ones, even at Friday prayers. The smaller ones will have 100, if that."

No one in Sweden believes there is any serious terrorist threat there, but Islam has become the symbol of all that is strange and menacing and un-Swedish about immigration. There is a film on YouTube that sums it up perfectly. In an industrial-looking warehouse, an old woman pushes her walking frame bravely across the floor towards two bureaucrats dispensing piles of cash. The camera cuts back to show that alongside her in the gloom are other figures – but these are swathed in burkas, pushing prams. You realise the old woman and the Muslims are all racing to reach red handles that hang from the ceiling, like the emergency brakes on trains. One is marked "Immigration", the other "Pensions". "You have a choice," says a woman's voice. "On September 19 you can slam the brakes on pensions or slam the brakes on immigration. Vote for the Sweden Democrats."

This is the banned party political broadcast for the Sweden Democrats, which the commercial television channel refused to show on the grounds that it was illegal to stand for election and be so flagrantly against ideals of equality. Instead, the Sweden Democrats may show an ad that directs people to their YouTube site. It's typical of the way in which this deeply conservative party has used new media to circumvent the old.

In another publicity stunt, the party released a report claiming to prove, from government statistics, that immigrants were five times more likely than native Swedes to be convicted of rape. What the statistics actually show is that they are five times as likely to be investigated for rape, but experts point out that this may be due in part to racism in the criminal justice system, and that the absolute numbers are very small: when the Sweden Democrats claimed that 10% of the rapists convicted in their survey were Iraqi, they were talking about 12 men. If 0.04% of native Swedes are investigated for rape in one year, the corresponding figure for immigrants is 0.22%."

Though rural Nazis are a staple of Swedish crime fiction, a few do, in fact, exist. Some years ago, one was pointed out to me on the island of Tjörn: "Look," my friend Rolf said as we passed an old man pushing his bicycle uphill, "there's the only Nazi on the island." The day was very hot, but the old man was wearing a heavy black suit, white collar and tie. "He really believes it," Rolf said. "He can argue it all out logically, though I have got him to admit Hitler went a little far with the Jews."

There has always been a streak of romantic nationalism in Swedish life. For most of the Social Democratic years, it took a paradoxical form: people here believed Sweden was the best country in the world because it was the most internationalist. This led to a fantastically generous policy on asylum and integration. Nearly a third of Sweden's population today are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. There are more Iranians living in Sweden than there are Danes. In 2007, one small town outside Stockholm took in more Iraqi refugees than the whole of the US. Professor Jan Ekberg at Linné University has calculated that unemployment among immigrants means the excess cost of their welfare payments over the tax they pay is at least as high as the defence budget, and possibly 50% higher. Although all measurements show that Swedish tolerance towards immigrants is increasing, it's not surprising that there has been a backlash.

Thirty years ago, the Sweden Democrats were a tiny fringe group of straightforward fascists – openly racist skinheads and a few old ideological Nazis. Anti-immigrant sentiment then was concentrated on a short-lived but successful protest party that entered parliament with nearly 7% of the vote in 1991 and soon after imploded and disappeared in the 1994 election.

Two years later, a group of four nationalist students at Lund University joined the Sweden Democrats. They all came from the backwoods of the province of Skåne, the country's southern tip – in Sweden, "backwoods" is a literal term. "There are really three countries here," says Peter Ekelund, a Stockholm businessman. "There is the region around here, with companies like mine where everyone speaks English in the office all the time. There is an international region around Malmö, and another around Gothenburg. And then there are the elk – that's all the rest."

The forest and farmland goes on for hundreds of kilometres in the interior, broken occasionally by farms and small towns. I lived in such towns myself for five years as a young man, and the sense of isolation from the outside world was very deep. Stockholm seemed like a foreign country, in some ways farther than small-town America.

This is the background from which the new Sweden Democrats emerged. The young men from Lund had taken over the party entirely within 10 years. By 2005, one of them, Jimmie Åkesson, had become the party leader at the age of 26. He moved the party away from Nazism and some forms of racism, but they were still pariahs. "No one would vote for them because they were seen as fascist yokels," says Niklas Orrenius, a journalist who has studied the movement for years. To be a known member was to risk sacking from any kind of job. Far-left activists beat them up, on one occasion breaking into a party gathering with iron bars. Last Friday two masked men attacked David von Arnold, a party candidate in Malmö, outside his flat and carved a swastika into his forehead. The respectable media largely ignored this as it ignores the party as a whole.

"Most journalists detest them, so they don't write about them seriously," Orrenius says. Sweden is still an extremely conformist, authoritarian society, where opinion formers and politicians move together like a shoal of herring. The whole shoal can change direction in a flash, but not one herring dares swim anywhere on its own.

In the elections of 2008, opinion polls gave the party only about 1.8% of the national vote. In the event, it got 2.9%, which represented a huge breakthrough, because any party above 2.5% is eligible for state funding. In Skåne, it became the fourth largest party, and part of local government in many towns, but it was still well below the magic 4% threshold that would get it into parliament. Today it is now above that level in all the polls.

The party owes its success to an appeal that seems to cross political boundaries. Hostility to immigrants, especially to Muslims, is certainly a very large part of it, but its slogan for this election, "Tradition and Security", represents two things the Social Democrats once delivered (they always carried the Swedish flag in their May Day parades), but that no party has been able to offer convincingly since the economic storms of the mid-80s when the "Swedish model" went bankrupt.

None of the people who runs Sweden thinks these things will ever come back. All the herring agree the free market is the way forward. The result can be bewildering to English ears: Swedish Conservatives sounding to the left of New Labour when they talk about social mobility, Swedish Social Democrats sounding to the right of Cameron's Conservatives when they talk about the benefits of competition.

Ekelund speaks with unusual frankness, but his views are common: "Sweden is an export-dependent economy, and that is why it is the most successful in Europe. A company like Ericsson does business in 180 countries. It's unthinkable for them to go along with a politics of prejudice. Actually, we need far more immigration, not less."

A few hundred metres from his offices in central Stockholm, the Sweden Democrats have set out their stall. It's an electioneering tradition: all the parties set little wooden huts in the city's central square, where they hand out sweets and leaflets, and talk to voters. Most are as ignored as chuggers, but the Sweden Democrats usually have an angry group of schoolchildren around them.

Ulf Oscarsson, a sturdy man in his late 60s, is minding the stall when I enter. Why has he joined the party? "My daughter was the victim of a serious attempted rape by a Muslim minicab driver. Here, in the centre of the city. He was a married man with three children. When it came to trial, he got a two-month suspended sentence and a £700 fine. They told us we needed to have a certain sympathy for his culture. Well, shit on that."

Behind him, a poster asks, "Which do you want: bigger locks on your front door or bigger locks on the prison doors?"

Oscarsson doesn't want new laws; he just wants the laws that exist to be enforced. Nor is he racist, he says, and I believe him. It's obviously not true of all party members, but the belief that everyone should play by the rules is fundamental to the Swedish sense of justice. He is just as angry about a scandal in provincial local government that did not involve immigrants. Oscarsson claims 20% of the party's membership are immigrants, and while this seems improbable, they certainly have some. I saw a young Indian man running the stall when I passed it on the way to Ekelund's office.

Outside the hut, a group of teenagers in from the suburbs for the day are arguing with the Sweden Democrat on duty. Parand Saumloo, a 17-year-old Swede with one Iranian parent and one Bulgarian, is furious. "Of course you're racists," she says. "This country is full of it." Jabbing her finger, she asks, "When did you ever see a Swede behind the counter of a pizza joint? The country absolutely depends on immigrants. It's lunacy to cut down immigration."

But later it becomes clear she doesn't see herself as a pizza seller: her father is a psychologist, and that is the profession towards which she is studying. "I can even understand that we have to do something about the ones who just live on benefits," she says.

The respectable parties have all said they will not cooperate with the Sweden Democrats should they get into parliament. But if, or when, they do, the party will almost certainly hold the balance of power between the centre-right parties and the opposing bloc of Social Democrats, Greens and former communists. If they are kept out, perhaps by the defection of the Greens to the centre-right, they can convincingly portray themselves as the only real opposition in the country.

But they have no real policies, only longings. A friend who works in Ystad on what would be Wallander's local paper sums up the Sweden Democrats' programme: "They want to move to a country where there aren't any immigrants."

I doubt they will even manage to drag Swedish politics towards xenophobia the way their Danish counterparts, who now sit in government, have done. A tougher sentencing policy is possible. Better enforcement of existing rules on immigration, coupled with measures to ensure immigrant mothers go out to work and don't just live on child benefit, is already the policy of the Burundi-born minister of integration, Nyamko Sabuni. But, in the end, the Sweden Democrats' dream of a world of "tradition and security" cannot be fulfilled. It is a longing for an illusory past to replace the illusory future of endless prosperity and justice into which the Social Democrats seemed for years to be leading their country.

Welsh V Londoner

George Into No 11...

Who in No 10?

Obama Year (almost) One

At an election night party during the primaries last year I made a throwaway comment disparaging those who believed Barack Obama's mixed-race identity gave him a unique understanding of America's racial problems.

"It does," said one woman.

I explained that I was joking. She was not. "It really does," she continued. "He knows how black people think and he knows how white people think."

"If that's what it took then Tiger Woods [whose father is of African American, Chinese and Native American descent and mother is of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent] should be president and Nelson Mandela should have stayed in the Transkei," I said.

"So why's he doing so well?" she asked. I suggested it was probably his stance on the war, the state of the economy and a desire to move on from the Clinton-Bush duopoly combined with his grassroots organising experience and use of new technology.

"There's more to it than that," she said. "It's him."

It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation about Obama. The problem isn't that people come to him with baggage. Everyone comes to everything in politics with baggage. It's that they refuse to check it in or even declare it. Any conversation about what he does rapidly morphs into one about who he is and what he might be.

In New Jersey more than a third of the conservatives literally think he might be the devil. A poll last month revealed 18% of the state's conservatives know he is the antichrist, while 17% are not sure. In Oslo, where he was last week awarded the Nobel peace prize, they think he might be Mother Teresa. A peace prize for a leader, nine months into his term, whose greatest foreign policy achievement to date is to wind down one war so he can escalate another, is bizarre to say the least.

Obama's particular biography, sudden rise and unflappable manner have certainly accentuated the contradictions between how different people understand his record. But the problem goes far wider than that. An obsession with celebrity, the cult of presidential personality and a culture of individualism (all of which long predated his election) have made understanding western politicians primarily within their political context a relative rarity.

We talk instead of "great men", who as Thomas Carlyle claimed, made history independent of the society and cultures that produced them. So tales of their moods, thought processes, psychological flaws and idiosyncratic genius become paramount. The emphasis shifts from policy to personality: their inability to trust, failure to lead or willingness to compromise become the questions of the day. The fate of the world lies not so much in their hands as in their gut and mind. Whether they take tablets or not sparks national conversation.

And so for all his individual talents, the fact that Obama is the product of a certain political moment and system, and therefore represents both its potential and its limits, is lost.

Nonetheless, the potential is not difficult to see. At home his election brought together a new coalition to transform the electoral landscape. He won the vote of 97% of black Americans, 67% of Latinos and white union members, 66% of those aged between 18 and 29 and 63% of Asian Americans. Black people voted in greater numbers by 14%, Latinos by 25% and young people aged between 18 and 29 by 25%. On his coattails came substantial Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.

He is now turning out to be the most progressive president in 40 years. The agenda he has set out of raising taxes on the rich, reforming healthcare, withdrawing from Iraq, softening the sanctions on Cuba, and boosting the number of student grants marks a far bolder vision of what government is for than either Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter did.

Internationally, he remains incredibly popular, not least for who he is not – George Bush. A poll released last week revealing which country is most admired around the world showed America leaping from seventh to first. "What's really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States in 2009," explained Simon Anholt of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. This is about as good a result as the left is going to get out of an American election.

But the limits are also all too apparent. Being the most progressive American president in more than a generation is not the same as being progressive. It's all relative. He has escalated the war in Afghanistan, continued rendition and maintained many of the most noxious presidential prerogatives that Bush claimed for himself.

The fact that Democrats have sufficient majorities in both houses of Congress to pass whatever they want but are struggling to pass anything that would make a decisive and conclusive break with the past suggests the problem in Washington is not "partisan politics". It's a political system and culture so crowded with corporate lobbyists, that it is apparently incapable of fulfilling the wishes of the people even when – as with a public option in healthcare – that is what they want.

The fact he is a product of that system does not mean he is not necessarily dedicated to reforming it. But we cannot measure his dedication, only his achievements. And so far those achievements have not been great.

Meanwhile, he has precious little to show for his global popularity. Nobody wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan or take in Guantánamo Bay prisoners. By the time his climate change efforts emerge from Congress they are unlikely to impress the international community. "The problem is he's asking for roughly the same things Bush asked for and Bush didn't get them, not because he was a boorish diplomat or a cowboy," Peter Feaver, a former adviser to Bush, told the New York Times recently. "If that were the case, bringing in the sophisticated, urbane President Obama would have solved the problem. Bush didn't get them because these countries had good reasons for not giving them." That's not quite true. He is asking for less and prepared to give more. But the fact remains that he wants similar things and his concessions seem insufficient.

Put simply, he doesn't seem to have the numbers to implement change on a scale necessary to relieve the pain of people and the planet. This risks great cynicism and even the possibility of a backlash. People will say we reached out and nobody reached back; we tried to reform healthcare but nothing much changed. Predicting these disappointments, from the left, has taken no great insight. Given his own politics and the range of institutions in which he is embedded, the limits have always been clear. It is the potential for overcoming them that has been an open question.

This should neither absolve Obama of his responsibilities nor ignore his considerable abilities, but simply place meaningful criticism of him here on Earth – as opposed to in heaven or hell. The fact that he is pushing the country in the right direction does not mean he is able to push it fast or far enough.

It seems the world may need more for its future health and wellbeing than what US politics can produce right now. His best may just not be good enough.

by Gary Younge

Elections Throughout Europe

In voting George Papandreou's Socialists back into power, Greeks bucked a Europe-wide trend currently favouring the political right that is likely to be capped by a Conservative victory in Britain next year. But in terms of issues that most influenced voter choices, Greece's general election seems to have largely followed the pattern of other European polls.

The common picture conjured by recent elections in Germany and Portugal, by Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon treaty, and by June's European parliamentary elections shows national electorates alarmed by international economic storms raging beyond their control. Their response, broadly speaking, has been a vote for stability and familiar faces – and the least amount of financial pain possible.

Greece's expected deficit this year of 6% of GDP, its ballooning national debt, and rising joblessness mirrors, in only slightly exaggerated form, the problems facing many of the EU's 27 member states. The Socialists' promises to raise taxes on the better-off, protect jobs and launch a €2.5bn stimulus package were preferred to the outgoing government's insistence on tough austerity measures.

Nor can Papandreou be easily portrayed as a fresh face wielding a new broom. A former foreign minister, he hails from a political dynasty reaching back generations; his father served two terms as prime minister. His big idea for dealing with Brussels, which views Athens as a chronic offender of eurozone rules, is an old-fashioned sounding three-year plan that will supposedly balance the books.

Last month's elections in Portugal saw another centre-left leader, prime minister José Socrates, fighting less successfully to stem the rightward tide. Although the Socialist party chief held on to power, voters clipped his wings, leaving him heading a minority administration. Their expectation appears to be that he will steer the country through a deepening crisis in the public finances without taking undue risks.

As in the EU parliamentary elections, and in past national elections in the Low Countries and eastern Europe, militant fringe parties did well in Portugal, at the expense of the larger, more established groupings. Big winners were the rightwing Popular party, which came third overall, and the Left Block, an alliance of former Marxists recalling Germany's Die Linke (the Left).

Portuguese apathy also reflected pan-European trends. Disillusionment with a lack of policy choices from main parties led 40% of the electorate to stay home.

Angela Merkel's powerful showing in last month's German election, and the collapse in support for the centre-left Social Democrats, suggested to many analysts that voters, primarily interested in stability and continuity at a time of global uncertainty were inclined to invest greater confidence in conservative politicians. In short, capitalism's crisis was best dealt with by pro-capitalists. At grassroots level there was no real stomach for a fight and no ideological base from which to mount one.

In France, where a rightwing president, Nicolas Sarkozy, dominates and the divided Socialist opposition is in disarray, author and thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy rattled cages last summer by declaring the end of socialism. Asked if the French Socialist party could survive, he said: "It is already dead. No one, or nearly no one, dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it."

A key factor in the advance of the right is said to be the way, like Tony Blair, it has stolen its opponents' political clothes and launched a determined occupation of the centre ground where most voters live. To this end, centre-right parties such as Merkel's Christian Democrats endorse "socialised" healthcare, welfare benefits, industry bailouts, and environmental causes, while simultaneously promising prudent, cost-effective governance and lower taxes.

Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform said that, broadly speaking, Europeans primarily wanted "economic competence" in their leaders. But this did not necessarily translate into support for the right, she said. "People are not in revolutionary mood, but at the same time, they have no particular trust in any particular party or political force … there is a sense of realism about what is possible. If somebody promises more, they don't believe it. They're looking for the tried and tested."

As usual, EU holdout Norway seems impervious to continental trends. In polls last month its Labour party leader and prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, won a notable re-election victory. His achievement may be linked to Norway's oil and gas riches. In Oslo, it seems, their biggest problem is what to do with the $400bn surplus currently stuffed in the nation's offshore piggy-bank. Now there's a dilemma.

The Lady Is Staying

Japan In Numbers

Japan loves counting things. The precise length of the noodles in rival brands of instant ramen; the average skirt lengths of high-school girls from the north or south; the number of words for “obsessive” — Japan doesn’t wonder, it tallies.

So when general elections come around, and official campaigning for the August 30 vote began yesterday, the armchair Japanologist is immediately squashed by statistics. You want a snapshot, but end up with the whole album. Each data point seems so exact and so significant: the fertility rate, the suicide rate, number of patents filed annually, the number of people over 65, the unemployment rate, the rate of GDP growth and a thousand more beautifully calibrated gauges.

The world’s second-richest nation is on the brink of its most spectacular political upheaval in 54 years but the excitement is lost in a sludge of numeracy. But the reality — the unspeakable truth that would bring down the Japanese statistics industry — is that the whole picture can be painted in just six numbers.

21,066 is the number of companies still operating in Japan founded more than a century ago. This tells you more or less all you need to know about Japanese corporate culture, management style and appetite for change. It tells you what the Japanese think about longevity and why they are less worried about being the fastest ageing society on Earth than everyone else is on their behalf.

When Western companies talk glibly of their “corporate DNA”, it is a management consultant’s metaphor. When Japanese do it, they are talking about actual chromosomes. Broken down further, the figure is even more astounding — it includes an Osaka-based construction company founded when London was still run by the Middle Saxons, and seven others established a century before the invention of the quill pen. Hundreds of the companies were doing business before the United States was founded. There is a reason Japan doesn’t like listening to patronising “how-to” lectures on capitalism and corporate governance, and it opened its doors to customers in AD578.

1 is the number of gifted civil engineering students who died this week in an Osaka river while testing a concrete canoe. Japanese technology has lost some of its lustre over the years, but never let it be said that its best and brightest have lost that mischievous spark of brilliance that makes them such formidable inventors.

49 is the age of Yo Onaga, arrested last week on the sun-kissed southern island of Okinawa after beating his 76-year old mother to death. He turned himself in and explained that he “just snapped” after she hid the TV remote control. It is the sort of vileness that feels almost comically out of place in Japan, where street crime is so low, people are polite and lost property offices receive a constant stream of valuables returned unransacked from train seats and café tables. These are not illusions, but they conceal a simmering anger that any new government will soon have to address. It is a fury that finds its expression in domestic violence, school bullying and a range of social pathologies that Japan is extremely reluctant to diagnose, let alone cure.

15 is the number of police officers of the Hachioji constabulary that it took to issue me with a 20,000 yen speeding fine at the weekend. Four manned the radar trap, two strolled into traffic and waved me to the side of the road. Another two guided me to a coned-off area where I was to park while four women officers processed my driving licence and two hefty bruisers glared menacingly from their Toyota Black Maria. At the end, a senior officer thanked me for my patience and warned me not to do it again. Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan has declared the civil service bloated and vowed to fight waste. I’ve no idea what he means.

1,200 is the number of new cars that, on average, hit the roads of Beijing every day — if only to sit for hours in their maiden traffic jam. The number is inspiring, terrifying and thick with messages about the vigour and ambition of the next great Asian economy. Don’t think for a moment Japan hasn’t picked up on all that.

24 is the number of times that a cotton shibori flannel — the sort that is soaked in water, heated up, sealed in plastic and offered to restaurant diners before they start eating — can be machine-washed before it dies in a heap of tatters and lint. It is a figure that defines both the meticulousness of Japan’s service industry and the consumers it serves. Diners want clean hands, but rather than simply showing them to the sink, Japan contrives a fabulously finicky, enormously wasteful system to make it minutely more convenient.

It is a retail and design attitude that has evolved over decades and is tilted in favour of the customer rather than the purveyor. It is certainly expensive, probably barmy and horribly vulnerable as Japan’s economy declines. When 24 washes seem like economic folly and the shibori goes, sensibility will have finally lost its glorious Japanese war with sense.

Elections: South Africa 2009

The struggles of a young democracy

By John Humphrys

“ Perhaps it is unrealistic to have expected all of South Africa's many problems to have been solved in a mere 15 years ”

It's an odd business returning to somewhere you lived when you were a relatively young man, bringing up children who now have children of their own.

I was in my late twenties when I first reported from South Africa. I moved here to set up a television news bureau in 1977 and lived here for three years.

Those were the dark days of apartheid when only white people were allowed to vote and the only black people you saw in the posh suburbs were servants.

I came back again for the Today programme in 1994 to watch that depraved system buried for once and for all in the first free elections. On the night of 2 May 1994, I was in the ballroom of Johannesburg's biggest hotel to join the party at which the guest of honour was Nelson Mandela - the first black president of this country.

So, 15 years later, here I am again. And what do I find? Well, on the face of it, many things seem unchanged.

I went back to my old house in the posh suburb of Saxonwold and just about the only black men I saw were walking the streets wearing bright yellow jackets with the word "security" printed in large letters on the back - private guards hired by the rich whites to help them sleep easier in their beds at night.

And in the houses - black maids, black gardeners and black chauffeurs. Nothing changed there then.

It was the same in the smart hotels and restaurants - almost all whites sitting at the tables and almost all blacks serving them.

Wrong colour

But when I left the city and drove out into the high veld towards Pretoria, I saw hard evidence that some things really have changed.

Rough squatter camps have sprung up - whole families living in tiny, tumbledown shacks with no running water and no decent sewage systems.

These sorts of places have existed in South Africa for as long as I can remember. The big difference is that it is white people living in these particular squatter camps now, not black.

One burly Afrikaner with a huge white, bushy beard told me with more sorrow in his voice than anger: "Yes, it's true. Everything is turned upside down. Now it's the blacks that are on top and we are on the bottom."

He told me that people like him needed help from the government to survive. I asked him why he couldn't get a job and help himself.

He looked as me as if I were stupid: "Wrong colour, wrong skin. Ja?"

I wondered if he accepted that hard-line whites like him had it coming - that the tables had been turned and they were now getting a dose of what they had been dishing out for half a century.

He shrugged: "Ja. I guess you could say so…."

Township squalor

Their camp was a pretty squalid place, but at least it was surrounded by grassland and trees.

For real, unimaginable squalor you need to go to the townships. Alexandra is home to more than 800,000 people, the majority of them living in shacks squashed so close together a rat can barely squeeze between - and God knows there are plenty of rats.

And yet, on the outer edges of this township are row upon row of brand new homes standing empty. In heaven's name why?

They may be modest but they are palaces compared with the shacks. They have plumbing for toilets, running water - unimaginable luxuries.

The local authority says they are still empty because they ran out of money to complete them. The shack dwellers say it's because of corruption - they are being saved for friends of the powerful and ANC party officials.

I spoke to a group of women who had taken over the homes and squatted there until they were thrown out by the police. They were planning another raid as I left them. They told me they would not be voting in the election.

"Why bother?" one tough old woman demanded of me.

"It changes nothing that we have the vote. If we want something, we have learned that we must take it."

She went further than that. She talked about the start of a new revolution to overthrow the ANC and give power back to the people.

I heard that from others, too, including the bishop of the Central Methodist Church Paul Verryn.

He has allowed his church to be used as a sanctuary by thousands of refugees from Zimbabwe who sleep there every night. We watched them crowding into the building as it grew dark - so many of them that they covered every square inch of floor, including the stone steps. That's where they slept, night after night after night.

And they were the lucky ones. Another couple of thousand can't get in. They have to find somewhere else to sleep. It is strange and deeply unsettling to see this expression of utter poverty in the heart of what is potentially the richest city on the continent of Africa.

Rewards of power

But perhaps it is unrealistic to have expected all of South Africa's many problems to have been solved in a mere 15 years. And there is no doubt that progress has been made - millions of new homes built, power and running water supplied to many more.

But the anger of the poor people I spoke to was made much sharper because they suspect that while they live in squalor, many of their leaders - the men and women who fought for their liberation - are reaping the rewards of power.

The man who will almost certainly become president, Jacob Zuma, has himself been under a cloud of suspicion for years, facing charges of corruption.

When the prosecuting authorities decided not to put him on trial there was a great deal of anger from people who suspected that political pressure had been brought to bear. He and his colleagues deny it fiercely.

I have known Archbishop Desmond Tutu for more than 30 years and I wanted to hear what he made of it all. Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the struggle for black liberation and has the respect of millions around the world.

They don't come more ebullient and charismatic than Tutu. His dynamism, energy and enthusiasm is infectious and his chuckle is enough to bring a smile to the stoniest face.

But he was strangely subdued when I met him. He once said - after Mandela came to power - that he expected to spend his old age sitting on the sidelines because his job had been done - democracy would do the rest.

Instead, he is clearly concerned that Zuma has not stood trial and faced up to the allegations in a court of law.

When I put that to one of the most senior figures on the ANC executive, she got very angry.

It was typical, she said, of the colonial attitude people like me bring to a country like South Africa. Her message was clear - we foreigners should keep our noses out of her country's affairs.

So, for my last interview, I went to see the man who made democratic elections possible - the last white president of South Africa, FW de Klerk.

It was he who freed Nelson Mandela and brought about the constitution under which he became president. Mr de Klerk, too, is clearly worried about the consequences of a Zuma presidency.

He hopes the elections will result in a sharp fall in support for the ANC which, he believes, is too powerful. But he told me he is not pessimistic for the future of South Africa.

Both he and Tutu believe democracy will survive. And so long as it does, there is hope. That, for what it's worth, is the message I take away from my visit here too.

Maybe I'll come back again in another 15 years and be proved wrong, but I hope not.

Elections: India 2009

India: Democracy's dance

Hundreds of millions of voters are expected to cast their ballots when India holds general elections over April and May. Ramachandra Guha explains what makes elections in the world's largest democracy special, and what is likely to happen this time.

“ The Indian elections of 2009 will be marked by colour, intensity and a mass involvement of individuals in democracy unmatched elsewhere in the world ”

In the first weeks of 1967, the Times of London dispatched a reporter to cover the Indian elections. Travelling around the country, he saw - or thought he saw - a mood of apathy and helplessness.

Some Indians he talked to had expressed a "readiness for the rejection of parliamentary democracy". The journalist himself was dismayed by the conflict and the corruption. He could spy "the already fraying fabric of the nation itself", with the states "already beginning to act like sub-nations".

He concluded that "the great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed". Indians would thus soon vote in "the fourth - and surely last - general election".

Unfounded fears

That was not the first such gloomy prediction about India, nor would it be the last.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, as the country lurched from one crisis to another, fears were expressed that it might break up into many parts, or come under military rule.

Only after India celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1997 did these prophecies of doom finally go away.

The country was still marked by extremes of wealth and poverty, and by myriad social conflicts. But no one doubted any more that it would survive as a single entity. And all agreed that it was and must remain an electoral democracy.

In the summer of 2009 Indians will vote in the 15th general elections since independence.

The ruling coalition, known as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), will have as its main challenger another patchwork of multiple parties, the National Democratic Front (NDA).

Each alliance is led by one major party - the Congress in the case of the UPA, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the case of the NDA.

Both are "national" parties, with a presence in most parts of India. However, there will be dozens of lesser parties in the fray, each seeking to represent a particular state, region or caste group.

Over 700 million Indians will be eligible to vote. Perhaps 400 million will actually exercise their franchise, making this the greatest exercise of the democratic will anywhere and at any time in human history.

But what will this election be about? Who or what are the voters being asked to choose from?

Personalities and issues

At one level, the election shall be about individuals.

Both major fronts have announced their candidates for prime minister in advance.

The UPA's man is the incumbent, Dr Manmohan Singh, a politician of exceptional integrity and intelligence, with a reputation however for being soft and indecisive.

The NDA has put forward LK Advani, who is best known for leading the campaign to have a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram built on the site of a mosque demolished in 1992, in the northern city of Ayodhya.

Mr Singh is a few years short of 80; Mr Advani is several years older still. So, while announcing their names, the two major parties have also indicated who would be their heirs apparent.

As and when someone has to succeed Mr Singh, the Congress will offer Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson and great-grandson of prime ministers. A handsome young man with charming manners, he is yet to show that he has the necessary will and drive to succeed in the harsh world of Indian politics.

The BJP's man-in-waiting is the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. A capable administrator, Mr Modi is nevertheless tainted by the pogrom against Muslims that took place under his watch (and, some would say, with his encouragement) in Gujarat in 2002.

At another level, the election shall also be about issues, most notably, the economy.

The NDA fought and lost the 2004 elections on the slogan of "India Shining". It gloried in the high rates of economic growth then prevalent, to be shot down by the opposition's claim that this growth had not percolated down to the aam admi, or common man (and woman).

The UPA, wiser by the experience, will seek to showcase its waivers of crop loans and its programmes of rural employment.

The NDA will answer that, far from helping the poor, these schemes have merely promoted cronyism and corruption.

Thirdly, this election shall also be about identities.

The BJP will subtly - and sometimes not so subtly - hint that the Congress favours the Muslim minority, and that they will instead consolidate the claims and the pride of the majority Hindus.

Other parties will break down these religious monoliths in terms of caste, class and region.

Who will win?

There are several powerful regional parties in the south, representing one or other linguistic group, each more powerful in their state than either the BJP or the Congress. In northern India caste-based parties are strong. And the Communists have a major influence in the states of Kerala and West Bengal.

With reference to the Times correspondent in 1967, one can confidently state that these elections will not be the last to be held in India. Predicting their outcome is another matter altogether.

Any one of three results is possible. The winner could be a coalition headed by the Congress, a coalition headed by the BJP or a Third Front featuring neither.

In the last eventuality, the prime minister is likely to be Mayawati, the present chief minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh. A woman from the Dalit or formerly Untouchable castes, she is admired for her courage and persistence but also feared for her vengefulness.

What we do know in advance is that the government that comes to power in the summer of 2009 will be a coalition, a weak coalition. This is not a happy augury for the interval between these elections and the next.

It is to the credit of democracy that millions of often poor and sometimes illiterate Indians vote freely and fairly. That said, the conduct of governments in India has tended to be capricious and arbitrary.

Having many parties in power at the centre is in one respect a reflection of democracy's deepening, a product of the representation of groups and regions previously excluded from government.

At the same time, the satisfaction of so many different interests leads to short-term rent-seeking rather than to rational policy. Smaller parties covet the most lucrative ministries, and the larger parties, simply to stay in power, are obliged to concede these to them.

Like the 14 others that preceded them, the Indian elections of 2009 will be marked by colour, intensity and a mass involvement of individuals in democracy unmatched elsewhere in the world.

But unless governance itself becomes more transparent and accountable, India will continue to be plagued by corruption and inefficiency of a scale unacceptable in a modern state presuming to speak for and serve the people.

Ramachandra Guha is the author of India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy. He lives in Bangalore.

A Major Issue

The Red

The Blonde

The Cop

Tovarich 1 - 0 Amigo

Vladimir Putin secured a landslide victory in yesterday’s Russian election. His United Russia party won 306 seats (64.1%) out of 450 in the Duma or the lower house of parliament. The Communists would have 57 seats, or 11.6% of the vote. The Liberal Democratic party (nationalists) won the 8.2% of the vote and the populist Just Russia, 7.6% - the threshold of 7% has left many critic voices out in the political cold. And, as you know, Russia is extremely cold, in all the senses.

The turnout was about 62%, up from 56% in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.

According to Russian constitution, Putin has to stand down after two terms as head of state (like in United States) - but now, with this spectacular victory he wants to become a “national leader”. What does this mean? No-one knows.

From the Siberian tundra to lake Maracaibo.

Hugo Chavez lost very narrowly his try to make substantial changes to the Venezuelan Constitution. So he will stand down in 2013 once his term expires. The opposition won the 51% of the vote and the Government position, the 49% - I call this a Quebec-style result… Chavez called it a “photo phinish” with a “microscopic” difference – but, hey, that’s democracy, pure maths, at the end of the day.

It seems that the apathy and some disillusion of “softer” chavistas is partly to blame for the unexpected result (remember this is the military man- changed in politician who has won 10 elections in 8 years, almost all of them by landslide). The turnout of 55%, low by Venezuelan standards, showed that many stayed home.

“Abstention defeated us” said Chavez, “it’s a lesson for us”.

“He has woken us up, the poor”, says Oscar Olachea, a member of an agricultural co-op.

So here we have, a victory and a defeat. But, paradoxically, Putin looks more like a dictator after his rigged farse and Chavez looks since yesterday more a democratically elected leader who recognizes electoral defeat and less the strong man than some western media tries to suggest he is.

Looking Around

Howard’s End

Good news from the Southern Hemisphere. After 11 years in office John Howard has been defeated by the Labor party and it seems that Kevin Rudd is going to be the next PM in Canberra. The Liberal coalition got 58 seats while Labor (not Labour, in this case) won 80 seats.

A couple of comments: first, significantly, like in almost all Anglo-Saxon countries, the Greens have zero seats – there is always a pocket of votes for them but it seems that they are not taken seriously enough in these business-minded societies. Second, about ideological profiles: if Howard is a “Liberal”, my god, what will a conservative be in Australia? The other day I read in a European paper the best description of the former PM: the clone of George Bush in Southern Pacific.

Now let’s hope Rudd keeps his promises and signs the Kyoto agreement (relatively easy) and pulls troops out of Iraq (easier said than done). G’day! to him.

Identity Socialism

Plenty of what is happening in Latin America, in my opinion, can not be understood without the parameter of identity. Formally the debate keeps being between the Right and the Left but then when you scratch just a bit the social surface of any of these countries, what do you see, historically? Very white people in parliament and business, marching in favor of Pinochet, defending the infamous Honduras Contra against the Sandinistas and backing the mafiossi-style Cuban exile community in Miami. And in the other side? Dark skinned people, Aimaras, Quechuas and other indigenous people (more numerous than we think) supporting Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and marching with the pictures of their relatives, kidnapped, tortured and shot by Pinochet’s Death Squads. There is a racial and ethnical cleavage that cannot be ignored. The current trend in Latin America is the Pay Back Day by the masses of poor and the invisible, the ones until recently ignored (if not massacred) hordes of humble but resilient peasants (and no-peasants, of course).

In this context, let’s see what happens in Venezuela this 2^nd of November as they are holding a referendum about constitutional changes. Chavez has won ten elections in eight years… if there is someone popular right now in his country, this is the Bolivarian leader.

Last night I saw with a very good friend of mine a documentary called The War On Democracy, by John Pilger. The director was there and made an intro about the film, with several questions afterwards. I really recommend to anyone who feels a bit interested in another point of view about Latin America, to see this piece of art. Impressive.

The Bull… or the Bully?

Spain will hold next March their next general elections. The Southern European country has been thru 13 years of Gonzalez (LOAPA, economical reform, NATO, EU, GAL and corruption) then 8 years of neo-totalitarian Aznar (the short guy with the moustache in the Azores island with Dubya; the guy who closed newspapers and radio stations, magazines and banned political parties in Europe in the XXI century but, hey, who cares – they are just crazy Basques!) and the last 4 years with Zapatero and his “talante”. The politician from Leon has showed that you can be as Spanish nationalist as any right winger… but with a smile. Now, after the collapse of the so-called peace process in the troubled northern provinces the socialist (Labour) party is trying to show to anyone who wants to see that they can be as tough as the populares (Conservatives) arresting people and banning political meetings and peaceful demonstrations. Let’s hope this craziness will change after March.

But who knows?

Hot, Cold, Warm

We have seen very different electoral outcomes in just a week. First was Scotland, the hot thing, with the Scottish National Party winning, at least in numbers of sits, the Scottish elections – and suddenly Number 10 has a Quebec in his own backyard. Will Alex Salmond’s SNP push for a self-determination referendum in this parliament? They really would like and maybe even try but is not likely. But the very fact that a pro-independence party is the single biggest party in part of the UK is more than interesting in political terms.

Scotland was on Thursday, then Sunday came and the conservative Sarkozy won the French elections, with a 53% of the share, against Royal’s 47% - she moved fast in recognizing her opponent’s victory. That was the “cold water” for any progressive soul in the Hexagon and in Europe in general. The son of emigrants who called “scum” to other son of emigrants is now the president of France.

And on Tuesday, came the hopeful picture that everyone was expecting: Ian Paysley senior (“Mr Never!”) and Martin McGuinness laughing together in the power-sharing Stormont government. If the darkest voice of Unionist supremacy and a former IRA commander can work together for a better future for the people of Ireland I don’t understand why in other European conflicts they can’t find the right formula with much less difficult parameters.