Elections, elections, elections …

Who says that politics is boring? Not me. Granted that I am something of a political junkie, but the last few days have been absolutely fascinating for anyone remotely interested in politics or current affairs here in Europe.

First, on Thursday, we had the local elections in England, Scotland and Wales when the Labour Party did really well. In retrospect this might be seen as confirmation that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition will only be allowed to serve one term of office. I blogged about the results here.

Then, on Sunday, we had the election of a new President for France when the Socialist candidate Francoise Hollande – little known outside France until a year ago and the self-styled ‘Mr Normal’ – beat his Centre-Right  opponent Nicolas Sarkozy – the presidential incumbent who will now only have served one term. Sarkozy is the 11th European leader to lose office since the economic crisis in 2008 and Hollande is the first socialist President in France for 17 years. Hollande’s election will rightly force a reappraisal at European level of whether the fierce measures of austerity now need to be tempered with new policies promoting growth. You can read more about the French election here.

Meanwhile, in crisis-riven Greece, national elections saw the two main parties which agreed to the savage EU-imposed cuts – the New Democracy Party and the socialist party Pasok – lose huge numbers of votes, while the electorate turned to anti-austerity parties of left (Syriza) and neo-fascist right (Chrysi Avgi/Golden Dawn). This result will make a new government hard to form and clear policies very difficult to implement and the repercussions will be Europe-wide. You can read more about the Greek election here.

A regional election in Germany caused shock waves too. In the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, the two parties making up the national coalition – the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats – both lost support. This coming weekend, there is another regional election in Germany in a much bigger state, North Rhine- Westphalia, and again the Social Democrats and the Greens are expected to gain votes at the expense of the CDU and the FDP. This will undermine the position of Federal German leader Angela Merkel in her discussions with new French President Francoise Hollande.You can read more about the German election here.

In Serbia, this weekend saw the first relatively normal elections with votes for both the president and the parliament. We will not know the result of the parliamentary election until Thursday and the presidential election will go to a second stage on 20 May. But it is already clear that both contests are seeing closely-fought battles between Tomislav Nikolic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (DS).  You can read more about the Serbian elections here.

As if that was not enough of elections, in Italy yesterday and today town hall elections are being held and this is the first chance to assess support for the post-Berlusconi government of caretaker reformist Mario Monti.

Finally I should mention Russia. The presidential election there was held in March and, to nobody’s surprise, was decisively won by Vladimir Putin which gives him a third term as President which might well lead to a fourth term.  The highly controversial election has led to many street protests which have continued with Putin’s assumption of the presidency today. You can read more about the Russian situation here.

Fascinating times …


 




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