Election Dispatch: History's Lessons on What Comes Next
Sunday, November 08, 2020
The next 10 weeks could be rocky … even rockier than the rest of 2020. President Donald Trump has yet to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden, and the transition to the 46th U.S. presidency will be anything but smooth. But fear not: Plenty of nations have survived these kinds of democratic potholes in the past.
 This OZY Special Dispatch takes you through modern history’s most tumultuous global political transitions.
 OZY Editors
run until you win
Joe Biden lost his two previous presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008 before triumphing this year. But he’s not alone — others before him have had similarly challenging paths to power that have been decades in the making.
 Mexican Maverick
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared victory on the night of the presidential election before the results rolled in. Then, after he narrowly lost the vote, he told millions of supporters he had been defrauded, led giant protests through the capital, demanded a recount and — in front of his followers — declared himself the country’s “legitimate president.” Sound familiar? In fact, you could think of Obrador as Trump in reverse. AMLO, as he is widely known, was the opposition leader, not the incumbent, in 2006 when he challenged his narrow loss on the streets of Mexico City for a period of months. Then in 2012, he again came in second in the presidential race and alleged that the winner, President Enrique Peña Nieto, had bought votes. In 2018, AMLO would no longer need to level such charges; he won without dispute. The moral of the story? Don’t count Trump out in 2024.
Brazil’s Poster Boy
The markets were terrified when former trade unionist Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva won the Brazilian presidency on his fourth attempt in 2002, after losing in 1989, 1994 and 1998. Brazil was in the middle of a debt crisis and the leftist leader had dithered on committing to a resolution. But Lula moderated his position, while also ushering in some of history’s biggest social welfare programs, such as the Bolsa Família cash transfers for 50 million low-income Brazilians, spawning copycat initiatives in multiple nations. By 2009, Lula had an unlikely fan: U.S. President Barack Obama. America’s 44th commander in chief described Lula as the “most popular leader on earth.”
Indian Ocean First
Perseverance pays. No one knows that better than Wavel Ramkalawan — and the small nation of Seychelles. The popular Indian Ocean island country was long a democracy in name only. A military coup in 1977, a year after the country gained independence, led to one-party rule under the Seychelles People’s Progressive Front. Even after other parties were allowed to contest in the 1990s, the SPPF repeatedly won presidential elections. Ramkalawan, a priest and the nation’s principal opposition leader, fought and lost the presidential vote five times — in 1998, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 — before finally winning this year in what was the nation’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power.