Good news from other lands

The US national election is still almost half a year away, but two other major democracies have just now wrapped up theirs.  The results are encouraging.

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Mexico:  Much is being made of the fact that our southern neighbor and largest trading partner (yes, it is) has just elected its first woman president.  But Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will be an unusual national leader in several other ways.

To begin with, though her family is of Jewish origin and she identifies with Jewish culture, she is non-religious and states that she grew up without religion.  It's still hard to imagine an openly non-religious person being elected president here in the US, but it didn't seem to be a major issue in Mexico, which the media here still insist on describing as "overwhelmingly Catholic", although like most countries today it is actually rapidly becoming more secular.

Sheinbaum strongly supports abortion rights, gay rights, and same-sex marriage, views which are widely accepted in Mexico today, although she has avoided endorsing trans ideology, which in Latin America is rejected even by much of the left.  She opposes the blind cult of the free market and favors a strong welfare state to combat poverty.

Perhaps most important, her background is in science and engineering, with an emphasis on energy and climate change.  Most politicians come from the legal profession, which foments a mentality that word-games can shape reality.  We need more leaders from science and engineering, who understand that physical reality is "hard" and immutable and needs to be understood and dealt with the way it really is.

Our own religio-wingnuts are not happy about her.  Check out the comments on that article too -- you'll be startled at the blatant anti-Semitism (it's a hard-line Catholic site).

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India:  Six hundred and forty-two million votes were cast in the world's most populous country.  When the counting was done, the result was a serious and unexpected defeat for prime minister Modi and his religio-nationalist party, the BJP.  Modi has been in power since 2014 and has taken India some ways down the road of Hindu supremacy and of marginalization and even persecution of religious minorities (of which Muslims are the largest, though India also has Sikhs, Christians, and many other small religious groups).

Democracy, however, remains vigorous, as this election showed.  Voting is done over a six-week period, region by region, with voting machines transported from place to place so that every voter gets the chance to use one.  Every tiniest offshore island and remote village is visited, and the elderly and disabled are able to vote at home.

The BJP won just 240 seats out of the total of 543 in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) -- far short of a majority, even though it remains the largest single party.  Modi will almost certainly remain prime minister, but will have to form a coalition government with other parties to do so, and his mandate will be far weaker.  As one political commentator observed, "He made this election about himself.  Today, he is just another politician, cut to size by the people."

One can hope that this result is the start of a real repudiation of Modi's religio-nationalist ideology.  India's huge and youthful population, its open society, and its rapid economic growth and development, make it likely to become a leading global power in the future.  The world needs it to remain a secular democracy.