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Dakar, Senegal.- In photos taken on March 24, 2024, Bassirou Diomaye Faye (photo), leader of the main opposition party casts his vote during the presidential elections.
Opposition candidate Faye wins Senegal’s presidency in landslide
Preliminary results on Monday showed opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye winning Senegal’s presidential election outright with 53% of the vote. Incumbent party candidate and former Prime Minister Amadou Baconceded to Faye ahead of official results, meaning the country will avoid a runoff vote.
Faye is a close ally of the popular opposition figure Ousmane Sonko, who was barred from standing because of a defamation conviction, but is expected to play a major role in Faye’s administration. Outgoing President Macky Sall delayed elections from their intended February date, in part to buy time to improve his party’s standing against Sonko, but was checked by the country’s Constitutional Council.
Tochi Eni-Kalu, a Eurasia Group analyst, says the delay backfired. “Strong turnout from Sonko's base, anti-establishment sentiment among voters in part driven by the election delay, and the eleventh-hour endorsement from the fellow opposition Senegalese Democratic Party” were what pushed Faye to victory.
Now, Sall will be expected to hand over power when his mandate ends on April 2. If all goes peacefully, it will underline Senegal’s reputation as the most stable democracy in West Africa, and run counter to the trend of military control and weakening democratic institutions from Mali to Niger.
However, Faye’s victory portends changes for Senegal, who like Sonko champions a more nationalist path. We’re watching how Faye approaches foreign relations, particularly with former colonial overlord France, which Sonko has criticized heavily.
FILE PHOTO: A supporter of Senegalese presidential candidate Amadou Ba holds a poster during his campaign rally in Guediawaye on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal March 10, 2024.
Election delay fuels close contest in Senegal
Voters in Senegal face a choice between continuity or a new direction for West Africa’s most stable democracy as they head to the polls Sunday.
The country’s reputation for fair and peaceful transitions of power looked like it was at risk last month when President Macky Sall called for a 10-month delay of elections scheduled for Feb. 25. The move was an attempt to buy time to bolster support for his party and its candidate, Amadou Ba, but it backfired, according to Eurasia Group analyst Tochi Eni-Kalu.
"The Constitutional Council pushed back against proposals to delay the election beyond the end of Sall's mandate on 2 April, leaving him with no choice but to accept their rulings in the face of opposition and public pressure" he says.
Opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye is now riding a wave of momentum thanks to anger over the delay, but it likely won’t be enough to get him over the 50% mark he needs to win outright. If Ba also falls short, they go to a runoff, and that’s where it gets interesting. Unlike other close elections in Senegal, in 2000 and 2012, the opposition isn’t necessarily unified against the incumbent.
“The key thing to watch is how the other big fish align,” says Eni-Kalu.
If Ba and his BBY party remain in power, Eni-Kalu expects broad continuity with Sall’s administration. A Faye victory could see Senegal take on a more nationalist tack, though it’s not clear how far he can push the most radical proposals, like leaving the CFA Franc currency union.
AI will upset democracies, dictatorships, and elections
There’s no mistaking it: Artificial intelligence is here, and it’s already playing a major role in elections around the globe. In a year with national elections in 64 countries, the world’s governments are seeing the immediate impact of this nascent technology in real time.
In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan – behind bars, with his party banned – used deepfake technology to simulate his voice and image to galvanize supporters. Khan’s allies (running as independents) took the greatest share of the vote, shocking the military-political establishment in Islamabad.
In Indonesia, Defense Minister Prabowo Subiantoused a “chubby-cheeked AI avatar” to appeal to younger voters on TikTok — and it worked. Official tallies are still pending, but Subianto is the presumed winner of the race, and watchdogs have criticized the conduct of the polls.
Meanwhile, another political party supporting Subianto used deepfake technology to portray former Indonesian dictator Suharto – who’s been dead for 16 years – urging citizens to vote. Fellow candidate Anies Baswedan got it going both ways: He deployed an AI chatbot to communicate with voters, but he was also the subject of an AI-made audio falsely portraying a political backer chastising him.
In the US, there have been AI-generated images used in political campaign videos from the Republican National Committee attacking President Joe Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting former President Donald Trump. And in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, voters received a robocall featuring a fake Biden voice telling them not to vote – a call we’ve since learned came from an associate of longshot challenger Dean Phillips.
“Politicians have to win the AI race before they win the election,” says Xiaomeng Lu, director of geo-technology at the Eurasia Group. Some of that work is defensive: Taiwan reportedly used AI tools to debunk disinformation campaigns coming from China ahead of its election in January.
Of course, AI isn’t just a factor in elections but in activism and pro-democracy movements as well. That means autocrats worldwide have to watch their digital backs.
In a recent GZERO panel conversation at the Munich Security Conference, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill said that there are innovative ways for the technology to be used in protest movements. “Someone like Alexei Navalny … would have been able to use AI in extraordinarily creative ways, in the case of the Russian elections, which is something of a foregone conclusion,” she said, saying we need to consider how these technologies can be used for good by legitimate opposite leaders.
But in countries like Russia, the immense power imbalance means those trying to use AI for political reforms still face a dangerous, uphill battle, according to Justin Sherman, founder, and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies. “Dictators certainly may worry about AI’s implications for their rule, but the reality of AI in those contexts is much more complex and messy.”
With regulation lagging far behind the spread of cheap, high-quality generative AI, look for voluntary commitments from AI firms to predate the passage of effective regulation. In February, a group of 20 leading tech companies — including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — pledged to combat election-related misinformation. These are voluntary commitments, but commitments nonetheless: The companies promised to conduct risk assessments for their models; develop watermarking, detection, and labeling systems; and educate the public about AI.
Will it be enough? We’re about to find out.
Protect free media in democracies, urges Estonia's former president Kersti Kaljulaid
In recent years, numerous reports and studies have emerged warning that democracies around the world are backsliding and autocracy is on the rise. A free media could be the key to reversing this trend, according to former Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid.
The former Estonian leader said supporting free media is part of defending democracy. “Democracies indeed are always voluntary. You always have to go and vote and sustain our democracies, and every nation finally has the right to ruin their country as well. We've seen countries… give up on democratic path,” Kaljulaid said during a Global Stage panel on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last month.
But when democracies that have begun to crumble manage to turn back, it’s often because there is “some extent of the free media remaining in the country,” Kaljulaid said.
Watch the full conversation: How to protect elections in the age of AI
Watch more Global Stage coverage on the 2024 Munich Security Conference.
- Ukraine is fighting for all of us, says Estonia's former president Kersti Kaljulaid ›
- AI, election integrity, and authoritarianism: Insights from Maria Ressa ›
- AI vs. truth: Battling deepfakes amid 2024 elections ›
- Ian Bremmer: On AI regulation, governments must step up to protect our social fabric ›
- How to protect elections in the age of AI ›
Yang Yang, the giant panda that China loaned to Zoo Atlanta, looks on in its enclosure in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Dec. 7, 2023.
Hard numbers: Panda diplomacy returns, Biden’s dog’s bites revealed, Global democracy wanes, US cell service flickers out
24: In less friendly, fuzzy, and frolicsome animal news, it has been revealed that Joe Biden’s famously foul-tempered dog “Commander” bit US Secret Service agents at least 24 times. The incidents all occurred between October 2022 and July 2023. The German shepherd was removed from the White House last fall.
7.8: How much of the world’s population lives in a “full democracy?” Just 7.8%, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Meanwhile, flawed democracies and authoritarian regimes are each home to about 40% of the world’s people. The study finds that overall, the strength of the world’s democratic institutions is at its lowest ebb since the study began in 2006, as a number of partial democracies slide towards authoritarianism.
100,000: More than 100,000 users of major US cell phone service providers were without signal for part of Thursday in a massive outage that has yet to be explained. Subscribers of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Cricket were affected. Was it a malicious attack? Nobody knows yet, but Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio made a point of warning that a “Chinese Cyberattack” would be “100 times worse” than Thursday’s outages.
2024 is the ‘Voldemort’ of election years, says Ian Bremmer
Critical elections are occurring across the globe this year, with a record number of people — roughly half the global population — set to head to the polls in dozens of countries.
During a Global Stage panel at the Munich Security Conference, Eurasia Group Founder and President Ian Bremmer described 2024 as the “Voldemort of election years.”
“Voldemort is the name that should not be spoken in the ‘Harry Potter’ series … This is the year that people have been very concerned about but have kind of hoped that they could push off,” says Bremmer. This is not just because there are so many elections occurring amid historic levels of distrust in key institutions, but also because the United States — the most powerful country in the world — is also “one of the most politically dysfunctional,” he explains.
Bremmer says the 2024 US presidential election is “maximally distrust-laden,” adding that this is “driving a level of concern that borders on panic from American allies all over the world.”
The conversation was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
Watch the full conversation here: How to protect elections in the age of AI
Naming names: The nonprofit tracking corruption around the world
What is the least corrupt country in the world? According to a Berlin-based nonprofit called Transparency International, that would be Denmark. Finland is close behind. At the very bottom of the list is Somalia, dead last out of 180 nations.
Founded in 1993 by a retired World Bank Official, Transparency International operates in more than 100 countries, promoting accountability and exposing public sector corruption.
The team, led by CEO Daniel Eriksson, attended the 2024 Munich Security Conference last week with a warning about the rise of “strategic corruption,” a geopolitical weapon involving bribes and disinformation to attain a political goal in another nation.
“Our definition of corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain,” Eriksson told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis.
This year is critical for democracy as dozens of countries head to the polls for elections that could determine policy and politics for the remainder of the decade. Among other projects aimed at rooting out political corruption, Eriksson’s team tracks foreign funding meant to influence the outcomes of campaigns or get certain candidates elected.
Check out the complete rankings list for 180 countries published yearly in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
See more coverage of the Munich Security Conference from Global Stage.
- The Graphic Truth: The World Cup of graft ›
- David Miliband and Ian Bremmer discuss the Atlas of Impunity ›
- Hard Numbers: Kenyans march against femicide, Corruption costs Ukrainian defense, Germans protest far right, Evergrande tries to avoid liquidation (again), Say more than ‘Oui’ to Paris! ›
- The Graphic Truth: Where corruption is rising, falling ›
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, takes part in a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium February 19, 2024.
Navalny’s widow continues his fight for freedom
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, vowed to carry on her late husband's activism in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she blames for Navalny's death.
"Vladimir Putin killed my husband," Navalnaya said in a heartrending video message. "Putin killed … half of my heart and half of my soul … But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up. … The main thing that we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting.”
Navalny died at an Arctic penal colony, allegedly from “sudden death syndrome.” But his mother has been denied access to his body, and his widow has accused authorities of waiting for the Novichok nerve agent – the same poison used on Navalny in 2020 – to dissipate from his corpse. The UK and the US have called for Navalny’s body to be released, and the EU has called for an independent international investigation into his death.
What’s next. The European Union is considering imposing further sanctions on Russia, and Britain has also threatened unspecified consequences. President Joe Biden said it was clear Putin had killed Navalny and the US was looking at a "number of options." In contrast, Donald Trump’s first public comment on Navalny’s death did not blame, or even name, Putin.