On Sunday, the people of Belarus will vote to elect their new president, who will be the same as their old president, Alexander Lukashenko. The incumbent will win about three-quarters of the vote because, I’ve been reading, that is the share that he wants to receive. Which only shows that he is a slightly more sophisticated autocrat than his many late and unlamented predecessors in Eastern and Central Europe. (Or Western, for that matter.)
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Monthly Archives: March 2006
Serbs snub Milosevic
I never thought the manner or timing of his death, while disappointing, would in the end make any difference.
Only a thousand turned uptp pay respect to Milosevic.
Whatever fears there were that Mr. Milosevic, in death, would provoke a nationalist outpouring did not come true today: There were flowers, candles and free lapel pins showing Mr. Milosevic’s face, but no huge numbers and, amid the white hair and canes, no unrest.
The coffin — not opened with a view of Mr. Milosevic’s body — was laid out in the Museum of the Revolution in the suburban Dodinye section of Belgrade, after much wrangling of how to handle Mr. Milosevic’s burial. Serbia’s leaders, negotiating for the nation to join the European Union and under much pressure to produce top war crimes suspects, had rejected a state funeral for Mr. Milosevic or his burial in the cemetery reserved for national heroes.
This part’s quite remarkabele (my emph.)
Also missing today were members of Mr. Milosevic’s family: A warrant for the arrest of his widow, Mirjana Markovic, who lives with her son in Russia, was temporarily withdrawn on Tuesday, and leaders of Communist Party here said today that they expected her to arrive in time for the funeral on Saturday.
After the Revolution
Germany – Süddeutsche Zeitung. On March 15 the Ukrainian author
Yuri Andrukhovych was awarded the prize for European
Understanding at the opening ceremony of the Leipzig Book Fair.
In a sensational speech, he attacked EU Commissioner Günter
Verheugen who opposes Ukraine’s entry into the EU. The
newspaper publishes extracts of the speech: “European dialogue
has not taken place,” Andrukhovych notes bitterly, and makes an
appeal to EU countries: “It is crucially important for me that
you help this cursed country, in whose language I write and
address you in. And it wouldn’t be so terribly difficult for
you to help this country. It would simply be a matter of not
saying anything that will kill our hope.”
Hat tip: Eurotopics. Original article unfortunately in pay-per-view. Annoying and expensive pay-per-view at that.
Italian Elections 2006 IIIa
Well we’re having a fairly lively discussion on the original post about the future of Italian democracy, so I thought it might be useful, as a sort of side plate, to link to this analysis from Morgan Stanley’s Vincenzo Guzzo. He highlights the recent changes in Italian election law, and the impact they may have on the final outcome of this year’s poll. In particular he suggests that:
“these new rules have encouraged the main parties on both fronts to seek alliances with a large number of miniscule formations, thus exacerbating the risk of political fragmentation within each of the two coalitions and possibly diluting the content of the two platforms“.
Well rather than diluting, the word hijacking comes more to mind, expecially if I think about the influence Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya has been able to have on the implementation of the Zapatero programme here in Spain. I don’t know if anyone indside Italy has any views on how the new balance could affect political agendas?
Update: Hans Suter has just mailed me making this point (which is also partly touched on by Guzzo):
It’s usually forgotten that there aren’t only political elections, a month later there will be administrative elections (mayors etc). There will at the same moment the election for a new head of state, and shortly after there will be a referendum about the changes the center right government has made to the constitution. For rest:the coffers are empty and the mess immense. Wish us good luck.
German Demographics
The Berlin Institute for Population and Development published a study this week detailing falling population in certain parts of Germany, particularly economically depressed parts of eastern Germany, the Ruhr valle and the Saarland. In eastern Germany one of the developments that has been discussed on afoe it becoming clear: Deferred or deterred childbirth in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism will have an echo around 2015, as children who were not born around 1990 fail to enter prime reproductive years about age 25. Shortly after German reunification, birth rates in the former East Germany fell as low as 0.77 children per woman. The present rate for all of Germany is 1.36, which the study says is the lowest in the world. (I’m not completely sure of that; I’ve seen very low figures for Spain, Italy, Latvia and Hungary, but don’t have them at hand to check.)
The German newspaper whose website has moderately improved quotes the head of parliament’s Committee on Families as saying the main problem is balancing work and family. No kidding. And about 20 years late.
The accompanying graphic tells another tale: People are leaving poor areas and heading where the money is. Almost all of the big drops–10 percent or more–are in rural parts of East Germany. Can’t keem ’em down on the farm, even the old collective farm. This is a hundred-and-fifty-year trend and should not be fought. People are also moving to the suburbs; just look at the belt around Berlin.
Wisdom of the Ages
The Roman Empire has won significance, and its rulers became famous and mighty, because numerous nobles and sages from various countries congregated there […] As settlers come from various countries and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various instructive concepts and weapons, which decorate and glorify the royal court, but intimidate foreign powers. A country which has only one language and one kind of custom is weak and fragile. Therefore, my son, I instruct you to face [the settlers] and treat them decently, so that they will prefer to stay with you rather than elsewhere, because if you were to destroy all that I have built and squander what I have collected, then your empire would doubtless suffer considerable loss.
Thus King St Stephen I of Hungary, to his son, in an exhortation probably drawn up by a German monk. As quoted in The Hungarians by Paul Lendvai. Emphasis added.
Italian Elections 2006 III
Well Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi finally got to meet up in front of the TV cameras last night, even if they didn’t exactly enter into face to face combat. The poll consensus seems to be that Prodi won it on points.
The debate seems to have centred around economic themes, and Euractiv has a summary of it here. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti has been trying to put a brave face on things, by claiming that Italy is now “on the right tracks” and that the situation of Italy’s “public finances is good”. Mario Draghi, the new governor over at the Italian central bank does not seem especially convinced, since he was claiming only last week that the Italian economy had run aground.
Again unsurprisingly a poll held shortly before the debate showed that a large number of Italians are still undecided about how they will cast their vote, even if there is some evidence that the Prodi coalition may be hanging on to their lead.
Roberto over at Wind Rose Hotel has the third of his election posts now up. He draws our attention to the latest contributor to the ‘great debate’, semiologist and erstwhile novelist Umberto Eco (link in Italian). Eco has indicated he might consider leaving Italy were Berlusconi to be re-elected. Democracy, according to Eco, is in danger in Italy. Angelo Panebianco, writing in Corriere della Sera (which has remember endorsed the Prodi coalition), takes issue with Eco and asks: why so much theatrical drama?:
For two reasons, I think. The first is that such dramatisation is exactly what attracts the kind of ‘intellectual’ audience which has chosen Umberto Eco, and especially Umberto Eco, as its very own champion and reference point. The hate for Berlusconi among this section of the public is palpable and evident, we have surely all of us found this in recent years in scores of private conversations and in the fascinating phenomenon of collective psychology. …..
The second reason for the dramatisation, I think, is to do with a problem which is typical of our (Italian) culture. It is an ancient legacy here, for many, to mistake democracy, which is a method of resolving conflicts by counting heads instead of breaking heads them……..(to mistake this process) forthe realisation of their own ideals. To mistake the victory or defeat of their political views for the victory and defeat of democracy: this is a kind of childhood illness of democracy.
Well it seems that Italy is a society which is rapidly ageing but where ‘childhood illnesses’ abound. Reading the piece by Panebianco I could not help but think, not of Umberto Eco, but of Nanni Moretti, whose films I thoroughly enjoy, but whose perceptions of contemporary Italian society have always struck me as being ‘warped’ to say the least. Democracy is not in danger in Italy in this election, it is not even in doubt. What is in danger, and about this there should be no doubt, is the Italian pension system and the mid-term economic well-being of Italian society. Far from the Italian pension system having been reformed and fine-tuned to the extent which Tremonti alleges, the necessary adjustment has only recently started on the road, and this small step was taken only after the last minute tussle and haggling (in part with represantatives of Berlusconi’s insurance industry interests) which was needed to salvage at least one piece of reforming legislation from 5 years of a decidedly ‘reform unfriendly’ government. What Italy needs at this point in time is a government which is serious about introducing the Lisbon agenda in Italy. This would not be a Berlusconi-lead government. Will it be a Prodi-lead one? This is what remains to be seen. If it turns out that neitherof the alternatives are up to the task, then Eco may well, in a certain sense be right: Italy will then have a crisis of democracy, but not, I think, the one he has in mind.
Escape From New York
Montenegro III: Am Not, Are So
Continuing AFOE’s first point-counterpoint debate between two posters, here’s my final post on Montenegrin independence.
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Enlargement Fatigue
Heard the news from Salzburg?
If so, you must have been listening very carefully, for the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers held there this weekend was very quiet, and not just because of the extra dumping of snow the region received, in what has been a very snowy winter.
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