Tag Archives: Governments and parties

Britain goes to the polls

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After several months of ‘phony war’, the worst-kept secret in British politics was finally revealed today – the next UK General Election will take place on May 5th, just four weeks away.

I’ll try and find the time to post on Fistful during the campaign if none of my colleagues manage it, but I’m also posting on a new blog during the election campaign where we’ll be trying to provide (from Monday), daily roundups of blog coverage of the election, which will hopefully be a good resource for people looking for election reports.

Iberian update

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Only time for a wuick update, but in case you haven’t been paying attention over the weekend, Spanish voters have voted in favour of the Constitution in a non-binding referendum. This now means that Zapatero will put the Constitution up for a vote in the Cortes – he had said he would only do so if the voters approved of it.

And Portugal has a new government after the opposition Socialists won an overall majority in their election at the weekend. As well as meaning that President Sampaio will work alongside a fellow Socialist, it also means that Europe will have a country led by Socrates – Socialist leader Jose Socrates.

Sometimes it’s who you don’t vote for that counts

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As many Fistful readers will be aware, it’s widely expected that there’ll be a General Election in the UK this May. Of course, because of the way our system works, no one can say for definite when it will be until the Prime Minister actually goes to the Queen and requests that she dissolve Parliament but all the signs on the Magic Political 8-Ball point to an election on 05/05/05 (for once, a date we can all agree on regardless of how you order days, months and years).

The UK remains the only country in the EU to use the First Past The Post electoral system which means that, thanks to the vagaries of the system, we can have electoral results that seem somewhat odd to an external observer. Since 1945, no party has won more than 50% of the national vote (the Conservatives came closest in 1955 and 1959) but only one election – in the February election of 1974 – has seen neither of the two main parties (Conservatives and Labour) achieve a majority of the seats in Parliament.
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Who is Roberto Frimigoni ?

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Google thinks that means Roberto Formigoni and so do I. One year ago FreeRepublic.com
posted an effort to translate the list of people who got free (but not valueless) rights to buy oil from Iraq under the oil for food program. The list was published by an Ahmed Chalabi affiliated newspaper in Iraq. Chalabi to freerepublic is not exactly the most reliable sourcing. However I was interested that the
list included one Roberto Frimigoni, who does not, as far as anyone can tell actually exist.

8 months ago I guessed that Roberto Frimigoni was Roberto Formigoni president of Lombardy. A week ago confirmation was all over the papers.

So who is Roberto Formigoni ? He is the founder and leader of “communione e liberazione” a very devoutly catholic organisation which has a history of dubious financing. As such he became a rather prominent Christian Democratic politician. When the party collapsed he went with a splinter that was un-alligned then a sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi and finally a sub-sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi. In this capacity he was elected and re-elected president of Lombardy.

For some reason which I can’t understand, Formigoni uses every available opportunity to attack Rosy Bindi formerly health minister in the Prodi government. The obsession is particularly irritating, since he begins his attacks by saying that she divides the world into good people like her and bad people like her opponents. Aside from that, my most vivid memory of his service as president of Lombardy was when he said that Bindy was profiting from tragedy when she noted (correctly) that responsibility for inspecting a high preassur oxygen chamber which burned killing patients belonged the region. Formigoni insisted that the chamber had been inspected thoroughly. He had to revise his assertion when it was noted that the facility included two pressure chambers of which only one was licensed and that the thorough inspectior had failed to notice the second chamber (which is roughly the size of a beached wale).

In his capacity as a very devout catholic he followed the Pope in denouncing desert storm and then sanctions on Iraq. He was, in 1991, perhaps the most prominent and eloquent Italian opponent of Desert Storm over shadowing the Italian left which was divided and confusing Needless to say, like 80% of Italians he was opposed to Bush Jr’s invasion.

The sudden explosion of evidence and allegations against Formigoni is, for him, unfortunately timed since he is up for re-election in two months. My original post in Italian below the fold.
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Shaped Like Prague

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Just when you thought the Czech Republic had finally turned into a normal, boring European country…

Prague blogger Doug Arellanes has re-capped the Czech PM apartment scandal story thus far, saving me the trouble. (Frankly Arellanes has told the story better than could have.) As he rightly says, the story “is taking on magical-realist tones.” It’s worth reading, just to give you a taste of what passes for High Politics in the Czech Republic these days — and, for that matter, all other days. As Matt Welch notes, “This story is somehow shaped like Prague.” (And he hasn’t lived here since, what, 1995?)

Read the story first, then click on the clickie for more goodies…
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Gerry Adams’s Gambit (or “I’m Just Asking”)

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They say the Troubles are unlikely to return to Northern Ireland. They say the Irish Republican Army doesn?t have the option of returning to war. The IRA has the guns, the IRA has the men, the IRA has the capacity ? but they Just Won?t Do It.

In a post-Sept. 11 world, so the thinking goes, no Western paramilitary organization wants to be lumped in with Osama bin Laden. Especially not the IRA, which after years of struggle has gained (one hesitates to say ?earned?) a certain badge of respectability ? a seat at the negotiating table alongside major powers. So don?t count on a ?spectacular.?

At the risk of sounding overly contrarian (not to mention alarmist) I wonder if circumstances might prove the conventional wisdom wrong here.
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The Greens and Die Gr?nen

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Via Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber, an interesting article by Matthew Tempest in Spiegel Online (in English) comparing the rather contrasting fortunes of the German and British Green Parties. Both were founded at around the same time (the article does make an error in saying the Ecology Party renamed itself as the Green Party in the 70s – the change didn’t take place until the 80s, partly to link in with the increased use of the name Green across Europe and the rest of the world) but while the German party is now part of the Government with a number of representatives in the Bundestag, the British Party (or parties, given that the Scottish and Northern Ireland Green Parties now organise separately from the England and Wales Party) still seems some way from a breakthrough into Parliament, let alone government.

The article highlights two main reasons for the different levels of success achieved by the two parties – firstly, and most obviously, the different electoral systems in Britain and Germany and secondly, the way internal divisions were resolved in the two parties. Where the realists (‘realos’) won the internal party debates in Germany, the fundamentalists (‘fundis’) won in Britain, preventing the move towards mainstream politics that benefited the German party.
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Go directly to jail, do not pass go…

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After much public outcry over his pardoning of Miron Cozma, Iliescu today revoked his decision. Cozma was arrested again in Timisoara today. Apparently, he tried to flee the country after hearing that his pardon had been revoked. There’s a clip that’s been playing over and over again on the news — it shows Cosma grabbed, surrounded by police and (protesting vigorously) herded into the paddy wagon.

He had huge, rock-star hair, great curly masses of it. Maybe he just let it grow in prison? I didn’t know that was allowed.

Anyway. One bad guy down, good.

The voice of the people has been heard and acted upon, also good.

The public mess and the impression this must leave in the international community, not good at all.

This whole affair has turned into a farce but nobody is laughing. Romanians wonder what has gotten into Iliescu. All my acquaintances today were outraged or depressed by the news of the pardon, confused and bewildered by the revocation. Wild rumors are flying but since they change every hour, it’s no use documenting them. Can you revoke a pardon, anyhow? Or are they claiming that the pardon wasn’t issued properly? That’s still not clear — at first it seemed the latter (Nastase said he didn’t counter-sign it?) but now it seems the former. Maybe we will know more in a day or two.

Then again, maybe not.