Elections in various countries

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Looks like over in Canada, Justin Trudeau got reelected, but without an outright majority. For someone who doesn't know that much about Canadian political traditions, it's interesting that once it became clear who would get how many seats, the CBC announced that there would be a Liberal minority government, as if it would be obvious that the idea of a coalition government is too weird, strange, and outlandish to even consider the possibility.

He may have gotten reelected, but he will be the prime minister over a deeply divided country. The regions of Canada are now crystal clear unless you are willingly blinding your political sight. Quebec minus Montreal is back blockading, the Prairies (Southern Ontario included) are full Conservative, the Pacific and Arctic Rims are Progressive (NDP or Green), and the Liberals are really only strong in the Eastern Cities + Vancouver, with most of the Atlantic Rim, English New Brunswick excluded. Almost completely monolithic blocs. It's gonna be a nightmare.

[Raphael]

He may have gotten reelected, but he will be the prime minister over a deeply divided country. The regions of Canada are now crystal clear unless you are willingly blinding your political sight. Quebec minus Montreal is back blockading, the Prairies (Southern Ontario included) are full Conservative, the Pacific and Arctic Rims are Progressive (NDP or Green), and the Liberals are really only strong in the Eastern Cities + Vancouver, with most of the Atlantic Rim, English New Brunswick excluded. Almost completely monolithic blocs. It's gonna be a nightmare.

Is that really that unusual? I'm not sure about Canada, but in many countries, it's pretty much standard that this party is very strong in some parts of the country while that party is very strong in some other parts of the country.

[MacAnDàil]

So Macron has come to Réunion, having got major roads shut off to all traffic, dogs and cutlery 10 hours before his arrival. Major roads that block most of the traffic on the north and west of the island when they're shut. On his arrival, protesters get gassed by the 1000 gendarmes he brought with him. So bin or car fires are being started in a few areas in protest at the treatment of the protesters.

[Vijay]

"Dogs and cutlery"???

[MacAnDàil]

"Dogs and cutlery"???

And that's an incomplete list! The complete list of restricted things include also alcohol, mobile sound devices, crockery and glass bottles. The restrictions on guns and fireworks were a bit more explanatory. https://www.linfo.re/la-reunion/politiq ... irculation

[MacAnDàil]

On closer inspection, the restrictions on dogs appears to focus on 4 breeds, including rottweilers. Oh and inhabitants of the area concerned needed ID to get home. http://www.ipreunion.com/conseil-genera ... 09667.html

[tiramisu]

.

[Pabappa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Boug ... referendum <--- new country coming soon?

[Raphael]

Exit poll results for the state legislative election in Thuringia, Germany:

The Left: 29.5 percent; AfD: 24 percent; CDU: 22.5 percent; SPD: 8.5 percent; Greens: 5.5 percent; FDP: 5 percent (may or may not make it)

That makes it basically mathematically impossible to form a coalition - no combination of parties that would be willing to govern together has a majority. Unless the CDU and FDP go against their pledge not to govern with the AfD, which seems unlikely, given that the Thuringian AfD is even farther to the right than the AfD in general.

[MacAnDàil]

Ouch. That's an unfortunately high score for Höcke, who complains about being compared to Hitler when he shouts about 'lebensraum' for Germans in beerhalls and his own supporters can't tell the difference between his speeches and Hitler's (here's one of the articles mentioning this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... jorn-hocke). The results have ever so slightly changed since you posted: slight tens-of-perecentage-points gains for Left, CDU and SPD and slgiht losses for AfD and Greens.

Another likewise unlikely possibility is that the CDU could go into coalition with the Left.

Fortunately for stability's sake, as far as I heard, Thuringia has a rule stating that former Ministerpräsidenten can stay in power if no replacement government can be found.

[hwhatting]

Left/CDU would also be possible, but I don|t think the CDU is psychologically ready for that... I predict a minority government led by the Left, tolerated by the CDU, or new elections in a couple of months.

[Raphael]

Fortunately for stability's sake, as far as I heard, Thuringia has a rule stating that former Ministerpräsidenten can stay in power if no replacement government can be found.

Having the previous government stay in power in an "acting" capacity until they get replaced is pretty much standard procedure in Germany, but I'm not sure whether that's what you mean. Also relevant: If no candidate for Ministerpräsident gets an outright majority in the first two ballots, in the third ballot, a plurality is enough.

I pretty much agree with hw.

[MacAnDàil]

Maybe I misunderstood what I had heard then.

I also consider those scenarios most likely.

Is there no possibility to do people like Höcke for hate crimes or anticonstitutionality?

[Raphael]

Is there no possibility to do people like Höcke for hate crimes or anticonstitutionality?

Anticonstitutionality can only be applied to whole parties, not individuals. As for hate crimes, politicians in the more "established" parts of the German far right tend to be relatively careful about not technically violating the respective laws.

[MacAnDàil]

But why can anticonstitutionality only apply to parties? Such people should never be candidates, whichever party they stand for.

[Raphael]

But why can anticonstitutionality only apply to parties?

That's the current legal situation.

[MacAnDàil]

Of course, but what led to that being the current legal situation?

[Raphael]

Of course, but what led to that being the current legal situation?

I don't know. Has been the case since the Federal Republic was founded, I think.

[Whimemsz]

So there's presidential (and other) elections in Argentina today, which have not been mentioned yet. As is traditional, Argentina is in the midst of an economic crisis, which adds an extra little spice to the elections.

The only two viable candidates are the current president Mauricio Macri, running for a second term, and Alberto Fernández. Macri is a center-right businessman representing the coalition Juntos por el Cambio ("United for Change," formerly Cambiemos "Let's Change"), and Fernández is a left-wing lawyer representing the coalition Frente de Todos ("Everyone's Front"). Frente de Todos is the Peronist ticket, but "Peronism" in Argentina basically doesn't mean anything at this point.

This is slightly more complicated, though, because Fernández's running mate is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, was president from 2003-2007, and she was president from 2007-2015. "Kirchnerism" as a political ideology (basically social democracy with significant state interference in the economy, protectionism, nationalization of some industries and funds, alliances with other left-wing governments in Latin America, social liberalism, and a focus on prosecuting those responsible for human rights abuses during the Dirty War, plus a touch of cult of personality) remains quite popular in Argentina, but Kirchner herself has some teensy issues, namely being horrifically and comically corrupt (plus some other problems like being awfully amiable with Hezbollah and Iran regarding the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in 1994, the mysterious death of a prosecutor who had accused her of misdeeds related to the AMIA investigation, and a history during her presidency of attempted muzzling of press outlets that were negative toward her government, excessive attempts to influence the judiciary, and more). She has something like a dozen corruption cases pending against her, but since she's a sitting senator she has immunity so they haven't gone anywhere yet. Rather than risking trying to win the election at the head of the ticket, she chose Fernández -- who was Néstor's chief of staff for many years but more recently had become somewhat of a critic of Cristina Kirchner -- to run instead. Everyone basically knows that she's the actual one running for Frente de Todos, but Fernández is a convenient mask/shield and lackey. What I'm still unclear on is what, officially, Frente de Todos's platform is; Fernández usually just spends his time criticizing Macri for being a bad president who's a liar liar pants on fire, and saying how super awesome Argentina is going to be under new leadership. Will they nationalize various industries again? Try to cozy up with Venezuela and Cuba and Iran and anyone who is anti-America again? Menace the media again? Or will Fernández genuinely be his own man and go the more moderate route that Frente de Todos is hoping people are assuming he represents? One of Juntos por el Cambio's main campaign talking points, at any rate, is that Argentina will "turn into the next Venezuela" if Fernández and Kirchner win.

Macri, meanwhile, came to power promising neoliberal economic reforms to help encourage foreign investment and salvage the economy after the Kirchners spent money like there was no tomorrow and instituted currency controls and refused to pay back Argentina's debt. Many of the measures he took were probably necessary, but have resulted in the economy being significantly worse than when he took office. It's likely that some of his reforms and the free trade agreement he helped broker between Mercosur and the EU (assuming it actually is ratified, which is in some doubt) will/would eventually lead to improvements in some areas in the long term, but that obviously doesn't help him, or regular Argentines, right now. (At least he has razor sharp political skills, so when he suffered a major and shocking defeat in the primary elections in August and the markets panicked and the value of the peso and Argentine stocks plummeted, he initially reacted by blaming the voters for being such dumbasses, before a day later realizing his mistake and trying to walk that back.) Socially, Macri is also kind of center-right; his platform is fine with LGBTQ rights, but opposes legalizing abortion (which is a huge political topic in Argentina at the moment; Fernández supports legalizing it).

All the polls, as well as the result of the primary elections, suggest that Fernández will beat Macri comfortably -- voters may distrust Kirchner's bald corruption, but they care more at this point about being able to eat -- but the question is whether he can win outright or if it will go to a runoff. Either way, ironically, Fernández winning is almost certainly going to lead to the markets once again panicking, resulting in the peso's value once again crashing further and the economy getting even worse (though the peso has weakened a fair bit over the last week, so that may be the markets pricing in Fernández's win already? idk). At least Argentina doesn't have a history of horrific economic failures! (And this is of course also happening in the context of various massive protest movements throughout the continent; of course these are due to different causes, but it's still probably not helpful, if the Argentine economy completely collapses to like, 2001 levels, to have the example of Chile sitting right there for everyone to be inspired by.)

There are a few other candidates in the presidential election but they have no shot at winning. I don't know much about them beyond watching them in the two presidential debates and very briefly reading up on them, but these are my EXPERT TAKEAWAYS based on that:

• Roberto Lavagna is a centrist whose basic position seems to be "can't we all just get along?"
• José Luis Espert is an economist whose basic position is that Macri is not nearly neoliberal enough
• Juan José Gómez Centurión is an insane Falklands/Malvinas veteran (and one of the members of the Carapintadas mutinies in the early years of Argentine democracy following the dictatorship, which led to the amnesty laws protecting the perpetrators of the Dirty War from any consequences for years; he's also denied that there was any concerted plan by the junta to suppress and murder leftists, although at least he has said he thinks the coup was a terrible idea and the members of the junta were inept...) whose basic position is that the REAL problem in Argentina is that some people are in favor of abortion and that all the other problems derive from this moral rot
• Nicolás del Caño is an insane leftist whose basic position seems to be "I'm a stereotypical hippie" and also that the IMF loans shouldn't be repaid, because of course it worked out so well the last time Argentina humiliatingly defaulted on a massive debt, and would surely lead to lots of foreign investment in the country for years to come!

[Raphael]

Meanwhile, on the official election page - which, unlike the media outlets' "extrapolations" ("Hochrechnungen"), presents "raw" rather than "processed" percentages - with 2975 of 3017 precincts reporting, the FDP is currently at 4.9985 percent of all votes - apparently a handful of actual votes below the five percent threshold. It's relatively rare in Germany to have an election where you can't just tune in at 5:59 pm, watch the exit poll results, and tune out at 6:01 pm, knowing basically all you need to know about the results. But this time, there's an actual reason to keep refreshing pages.


EDIT: Thank you, Whimemsz!