Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Populists are capable of being defeated, but only under one condition: a unified opposition.
Whether protests can bring about real political change in 🇦🇺 remains to be seen,

but civil  movements such as the GLBTIQ, BLM, Climate Change, March For Justice, feminism etc can unite opposition forces against populist leaders like Morrison & his increasingly authoritarian government.

It was the mass street protests following the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak that propelled Caputova to power.
nytimes.com/2018/02/28/wor…

“The murders immediately sent shockwaves across Slovakia and triggered mass demonstrations—the largest the country has seen since the 1989 Velvet Revolution.”

Prior to their assassination, Kuciak attempted to expose high-level corruption within the ruling Direction-Social Democracy or Smer Party, which involved allegations of tax evasion and embezzlement of EU funds.

Protesters, many of them young Slovaks, gathered under the banner “Movement for a Decent Slovakia” and forced then-prime minister Robert Fico to resign.

Kuciak’s murder prompted Caputova to run for office. To her credit, Caputova skillfully tapped into the wave of public anger against the corrupt political establishment, framing her presidential bid as a battle against corruption.

This strategy helped her win a victory against all odds. A complete political newcomer, Caputova was seen as an unlikely challenger to Maros Sefcovic, vice president of the European Commission and Smer’s endorsed candidate.
nytimes.com/2019/03/15/wor…

Though few voters even recognized her name six weeks before the first public debates, she won the run-off against Sefcovic with a near 20 percent lead, gaining 58 percent of the votes.
theguardian.com/world/2019/apr…

Key to her victory was capitalizing on the 2018 protests. Studying political movements, Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth found that peaceful civil campaigns, such as protests, boycotts, and strikes, are surprisingly successful: with a 53 percent success rate-

campaign success being defined as the state’s willingness to make political concessions to the opposition movement.

These campaigns are quite effective at challenging entrenched political power, challenging the conventional wisdom that violent resistance campaigns, such as terrorist attacks and military insurgencies, are more effective at achieving political goals.

In Slovakia, the resignation of Robert Fico during the 2018 protests indicates the success of the public resistance campaign and further demonstrates that popular movements can be an effective way to resist democratic erosion and empower democratically minded leaders.

Slovakia is not a unique case. In Romania, after two years of mass anticorruption protests, the country’s most powerful politician, Liviu Dragnea of the Social Democratic Party, was sentenced to jail for a corruption conviction.
bbc.com/news/world-eur…

In fact, populist leaders in Central and Eastern Europe have faced significant backlash recently:more than 250,000 Czechs marched against their prime minister, Andrej Babis
politico.eu/article/czech-…

a populist billionaire accused of corruption; even the Hungarian populist strongman Orban is unable to stop the mass protests against his autocratic policies that began last winter.
washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

Whether the protests can bring about real political change in 🇦🇺 remains to be seen, but these civil movements have united opposition forces against populist leaders in other countries, and their increasingly authoritarian governments.

For truly liberal candidates and activists, the time has come to ride the tide of democratic resistance.