Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza

World Politics and Elections 2023

(1/8) > >>

Jubal:
For those places that don't have a separate thread.


We start the year with déjà vu news of the hard right storming the capitol - but this time we're in Brazil, where supporters of Bolsonaro have tried to attack the presidential and parliamentary buildings in Brasilia. Not yet clear what the outcomes will be.

Jubal:
Petr Pavel has beaten Andrej Babis in the Czech republic for the presidency. It's not a powerful executive presidency or anything, but it's a pretty strong result for the much more pro-western of the two candidates.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64438955

Jubal:
In Nigeria, despite a big showing from the Labour Party, previously a tiny party but now led by a popular defector from one of the two larger parties, Peter Obi, the ruling APC (a big tent party-of-power) seem to have held the presidency though with just 36% of the vote.  Obi's Labour Party have also made some gains in the Senate and House and by the looks of the BBC results readout may yet have deprived the APC of a majority. It will be interesting to see if they can continue building on this success. Tomorrow there is a large round of gubernatorial elections as well.

The agrarian-populist-rightwing party BBB seems to have done very well in Dutch regional elections, mostly at the expense of the far right but also at the expense of the governing coalition who apparently might now find it very difficult to get agriculture reforms (intended to reduce nitrate pollution) implemented.

In Estonia the right-liberal party of Kaja Kallas absolutely stormed their election last month, with far-right EKRE and Russian-minority party Center doing rather poorly. It looks like the Social Democrats and the liberal E200 are likely coalition partners.

In the Berlin local elections the CDU got a very impressive first place, at the expense of basically everyone else. It's hard to imagine big European cities in some other countries being run by conservatives - in the anglosphere we're very used to urban areas being bastions of the left nowadays. The CDU/CSU are also now well ahead in national polls, with Scholz's social democrats really rather struggling.

Jubal:
Two key elections tomorrow!

Finland has the far right, centre right, and centre left in a tussle to be the lead party in the next government and see who will deal with Finland entering NATO. PM Sanna Marin is generally well thought of, I think, though the centre right are slightly higher in the polls.

Bulgaria has the centre-right GERB neck and neck with a bunch of anti-corruption parties in an alliance: it's been unstable politically for a while now, and I'm not sure this election will bring a stable government either. The next two parties down are the Turkish-minority liberals DPS, and the extreme-nationalist Revival, probably both unpalatable coalition partners for the two larger players.


Outside Europe: in Australia, the Liberal Party became the first opposition party to lose a by-election in over a century. Generally in a lot of the Anglosphere it seems like the suburbs have shifted sharply to support soft centrist centre-leftists (Biden, Albanese, Starmer). Unlike in the US, Australia's division of seats and territories doesn't give the right a big bonus for its rural seats. Unlike in the UK, fractures on the left damage the Australian Labor Party far less due to the Alternative Vote - I suspect the progressive parties in the UK would often do a bit better if there was a preference voting system, though I'd really like a proportional preference system like STV.

It looks like the Labour Party of Nigeria only won one governorship, Abia. Though there are some interesting posts on this blog by a Labour supporter about vote rigging in the presidential election.

dubsartur:
So Erdogan did not lose in the first round of the presidential election, which is bad news for Turks, their eastern and southern neighbours, and the EU ... but Moldova is talking about leaving the Commonwealth of Independent States (one of the Russian puppet organizations).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page