Elections in various countries

[Vijay]

A fellow Malayalee in India was recently saying something to the effect of: You think the situation in Hong Kong is bad? The situation in India right now is ten times worse. The government has released the army onto the streets to deal with the protests. In New Delhi, the cops are setting buses on fire.

[Pabappa]

biggrst shakeup of Putin's career as the whole government resigns ... apparently this is more ho-hum than it sounds, because Putin is trying to reform the gov't to reduce the power of the president ... this will affect Putin himself but since he is near the end of his career he doesnt seem to mind. Some are even saying its a sly attempt to increase his power *after* he resigns, since whoever succeeds him will then be weakened, but Im not sure that is really going to make much of a difference.

Im vaguely aware of the situation in India because a lot of people i follow on Instagram live in India, but a lot of their political posts are in some language I dont understand .... honestly I have no idea if it's Hindi, Marathi, or something else .... I'm not sure they're even in the same language. I just go to Instragram for cartoons & photos so I dont have to understand every word I see.

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Ruler_of_Russia <---- Putin is now talking about reviving this title to replace "president", t hough stories suggest the idea came originally from somewhere else, possibly Zhirinovsky, who is unlikely to ever become Supreme Leader himself.

[MacAnDàil]

THe French municipal elections are on in March. I am on a list of candidates for the town hall of Saint-Denis. We include yellow jackets, Unsubdued France members and activists. Despite including both the most important movement of the Macron presidency and the msot popular movement in Réunion at Macron's election, we got excluded from the debate tonight.

[tiramisu]

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[Pabappa]

only makes sense if Putin is planning to become prime minister yet again after he resigns in 2024. i dont expect him to do that

[tiramisu]

Why not? It would follow a 20-year pattern.

[Ares Land]

THe French municipal elections are on in March. I am on a list of candidates for the town hall of Saint-Denis. We include yellow jackets, Unsubdued France members and activists. Despite including both the most important movement of the Macron presidency and the msot popular movement in Réunion at Macron's election, we got excluded from the debate tonight.

That's really depressing. Sorry to hear about that.

(LREM - Macron's party -- have figured out how to lose the elections in Paris, where they probably have the strongest support anywhere...)

[Ares Land]

Griveaux (LREM candidate for Paris City Hall) finally quit. A well-intentioned friend released a video of him masturbating, sent to someone that wasn't his wife, and that was the final straw.

[Raphael]

Griveaux (LREM candidate for Paris City Hall) finally quit. A well-intentioned friend released of video of him masturbating, sent to someone that wasn't his wife, and that was the final straw.

People in France have interesting definitions of "well-intentioned".

[Raphael]

Oh, and I should probably report that the woman whom Angela Merkel had wanted to succeed her, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKA AKK), has resigned as formal chairperson of her party, probably because of widespread discontent with her among the party's base.

[Ares Land]

Griveaux (LREM candidate for Paris City Hall) finally quit. A well-intentioned friend released of video of him masturbating, sent to someone that wasn't his wife, and that was the final straw.

People in France have interesting definitions of "well-intentioned".

Oh, apparently, the person who I thought was responsible -- that would be Joachim Son-Forget, complete madman and LREM MP -- did not actually find and release the video. Though he did help it find the audience it deserves. (Note to self: no more Twitter in the morning. I wasn't really prepared to have a good look at a politician's genitalia over breakfast).

[Ares Land]

Oh, and I should probably report that the woman whom Angela Merkel had wanted to succeed her, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKA AKK), has resigned as formal chairperson of her party, probably because of widespread discontent with her among the party's base.

Does that mean (as I've heard) that Merkel will carry on for a few years more?

(I wouldn't mind, myself. I'm not a conservative, but she's the one sensible ruler that's still around, or at least it looks that way)

[Travis B.]

Merkel to me is one of the few conservatives I actually have a good amount of respect for, and would not mind their staying in power too much.

[MacAnDàil]

THe French municipal elections are on in March. I am on a list of candidates for the town hall of Saint-Denis. We include yellow jackets, Unsubdued France members and activists. Despite including both the most important movement of the Macron presidency and the msot popular movement in Réunion at Macron's election, we got excluded from the debate tonight.

That's really depressing. Sorry to hear about that.

(LREM - Macron's party -- have figured out how to lose the elections in Paris, where they probably have the strongest support anywhere...)

I was sure I'd already replied to you.

Thanks for your comment. Thankfully, after Younous Omarjee (Réunionese FI Eurodeputy)'s intervention, we're getting more media coverage now. But we still don't have the finances or the availability of the main candidates.

[tiramisu]

.

[MacAnDàil]

Merkel is certainly among the right-sing politicians that have improved things, even if I would still never vote for her. She's conservative, or at least right-wing, compared to modern Germany.

[Raphael]

Oh, and I should probably report that the woman whom Angela Merkel had wanted to succeed her, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKA AKK), has resigned as formal chairperson of her party, probably because of widespread discontent with her among the party's base.

Does that mean (as I've heard) that Merkel will carry on for a few years more?

Very unlikely. In fact, I've heard speculation that the next party chair, whoever it will be, might push her out of the chancellorship before 2021.

[Kuchigakatai]

This is not about any particular elections really, but this dankest of meme songs by some Argentinian guys, adapting Dragon Ball Z's Chala-Head-Chala to fawn on Peronism, has had me laughing for a good hour now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5timjebmr8

[Raphael]

Meanwhile, in Germany, a long drawn-out saga of parliamentary intrigue has apparently come to an end. That kind of thing is pretty unusual in Germany these days. More on that later.

[Raphael]

Ok.

Hm.

Let's see...

Back on October 27, there had been a state legislature election in the state of Thuringia. The results were:

The Left 31 percent and 29 seats in the legislature, CDU 21.7 percent and 21 seats, AfD 23.4 percent and 22 seats, SPD, 8,2 percent and 8 seats, Greens 5.2 percent and 5 seats, FDP just barely above 5 percent (5.0066) and 5 seats.

So there wasn't really any way to get a majority coalition out of that. No one wanted to govern with the AfD, and CDU and FDP didn't want to govern with the Left, and the CDU, SPD, Greens, and FDP combined would have been far from a majority.

After a while, the Left, SPD, and Greens agreed that they would try to govern together as a minority government coalition. Left leader Bodo Ramelow, who had been State PM before the election, would try to get re-elected as State PM by the legislature. The election was scheduled for February 5.

This brings us to the specific details of how the state constitution of Thuringia provides for the election of State PM by the State Legislature.

There are, at most, three ballots. On the first two ballots (or should it be "in the first two ballots"? The whole thing is pushing me to the limits of my English), the votes of a majority of all members of the legislature are needed to get elected. If no one gets that majority on these two ballots, then, on the third ballot, a plurality is enough. All ballots are secret.

On the first ballot, the Left, SPD, and Greens nominated Ramelow, the AfD nominated a certain Christoph Kindervater - not their leader in the state, and not even a party member - and the CDU and FDP didn't nominate anyone.

On the first ballot, Ramelow got 43 votes - one more than he could have expected - Kindervater got 25 votes - three more than he could have expected - and there were 22 abstentions - most of the CDU and FDP.

On the second ballot, Ramelow got 44 votes, Kindervater got 22 votes, and there were 24 abstentions.

Before the third ballot, the FDP formally nominated their leader in the state, Thomas Kemmerich. He would get the votes of the FDP and CDU on the third ballot.

But.

On the third ballot, the AfD didn't vote for their own nominee, who got zero votes. Instead, they joined the CDU and FDP in voting for Kemmerich, who got 45 votes. Ramelow got 44 votes, and there was one abstention. Kemmerich accepted the election and became State PM.

That was the first time someone was elected state PM anywhere in Germany with the votes of the AfD. A taboo had been broken. It's a big understatement to say that a lot of people got very angry.

On the next day, before he had even formed a government, Kemmerich announced his resignation. Constitutionally, he would stay Acting PM until a new PM got elected. This lead to new rounds of negotiations, statements, proposals, counterproposals, and so on.

Then, two weeks later, on February 19, in Hanau in the state of Hesse, a right-wing terrorist murdered ten people - 9 people from migrant families, and his own mother. He then killed himself. This led to even more discussions about the far right, the AfD, racism, and where the country was going.

Then, on February 23, in a different part of the country, the city-state of Hamburg held a legislative election. Hamburg is one of the few remaining SPD strongholds in Germany, and originally, it wasn't expected that people elsewhere would pay much attention - the results would almost certainly be very different from the nationwide polls, and the main question would be whether the red-green city hall coalition would continue as expected, or turn into a green-red coalition if the Greens got more votes than the SPD. Now, however, people started to wonder how the Thuringia shenanigans and the Hanau terrorist attack might impact the results of the AfD, the FDP, and the CDU.

In the end, the SPD in Hamburg lost votes but state the strongest party, the Greens gained enough votes to become second strongest party, the coalition could continue, and the CDU fell behind the Greens. Both the AfD and the FDP were close to the 5 percent threshold. At first, it looked as if the AfD would get thrown out of the city legislature, while the FDP would just barely stay in, but when all the votes had been counted, it turned out that it was the other way around. (The FDP will keep one seat in the city legislature, though, because their leader won one district seat directly.)

Meanwhile, back in Thuringia, The Left, CDU, SPD, and Greens had agreed that the CDU would, in a new State PM election, act in ways that would enable Ramelow to get elected, and in turn, the other parties agreed to hold new state legislature elections in April 2021. The year-long delay was agreed on because state polls taken in between had looked disastrous for the CDU, and they hoped to be able to restore their standing during that year.

The new Thuringian State PM election was held today, March 4. Yesterday, March 3, one CDU member of the legislature had to be tested for Corona after having had contact with infected people. If the results had come back positive, the election would have been cancelled, because all the CDU members of the legislature might have been quarantined, but the results came back negative.

The Left, SPD, and Greens nominated Ramelow, while the AfD nominated their state leader Björn Höcke. Höcke is known for believing that Hitler shouldn't just be seen as a bad guy, and Ramelow had tweeted something nice about Stalin once.

On the first two ballots, Ramelow got 44 votes, Höcke got 22 votes, and the remainder were abstentions. Then, before the third ballot, the AfD withdrew Höcke's nomination. Therefore, on the third ballot, the options were yes to Ramelow, no to Ramelow, and abstention. This led to the question of would would have happened if there had been more no votes than yes votes. Ramelow would still have had more votes than any other candidate - after all, there were no other candidates left - but it would not at all have been sure whether he would have had "the most votes" in terms of the state constitution. That might have led to a constitutional crisis. But in the end, there were 42 yes votes, 23 no votes, and 20 abstentions. The FDP completely boycotted the third ballot, didn't vote at all, and didn't even abstain.

So Ramelow is PM again, and the CDU gets to argue over whether, by abstaining instead of voting no on the third ballot, they violated the national party's long-established policy of never cooperating with the Left at the state or federal level.