2024 is known as the year of elections because in these 12 months, more voters in more countries than ever before will exercise their right to vote to choose who governs them.
That is the march of democracy – even if nobody was convinced when President Putin was elected again in Russia.
The UK is in the throes of a general election campaign that could end 14 years of Conservative rule. In November, Americans will decide whether Donald Trump returns to the White House.
In India, a victorious Prime Minister Narendra Modi is licking his wounds after his Hindu nationalist BJP underperformed in the world’s largest election.
Right now, the world’s second-largest election is taking place this weekend, just over the seas surrounding Great Britain.
It has attracted little attention here, even though the UK took part in it right up until 2019. Previous elections of this kind kept Nigel Farage alive as a political force. And its outcome may be the most directly consequential for the UK, at least in the short run.
This election is also part of a unique experiment. Voters in many countries are electing members of the world’s only functioning trans-national parliament in which MEPs from different countries come together in blocs according to their political ideologies.
Since Thursday, nearly 400 million citizens in the European Union’s 27 member states have had the chance to elect a total of 750 members to the European Parliament (EP).
Appropriately, the EP election started on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, 6 June, in the Netherlands. Ireland voted on Friday, and most other member states voted at the weekend, including Belgium, which is also holding a national election on Sunday.
This seems appropriate because the parliament is designed to be a peaceful unifier of democratic Europe. It is ironic that some of the parties expected to do well this year have links to Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler.
