Sunday, May 25, 2014

Historic European & Indian Elections: As Found On Twitter, In Comedy: May 25, 2014

From Dublin, Glasgow and London, from Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Athens, Kiev and Donetsk, voting results have been trickling in all night. It was really a mixed bag of outcomes. The French National Front and the UKIP won many seats and have overlapping views on the right-end of the spectrum, but their winners all seem to be pulling in different directions.

The vote in Brussels gained a great number of farther right representatives but this result, in the larger view seems difficult to interpret, with regards to outcomes. The pundits will spend all next week talking about that, gnashing on about immigration issues, along then, with the views of those abroad and the consequences this 'rightward lurch' will mean for them.

But the traditional right, conservative party in Britain lost big.


A Sinn Fein advocate Lynn Boylan will represent Dublin for the EU.


In Spain a rising People's Party helped repudiate the recent Socialist-led coalition, along with a number of smaller moderate left-leaning parties. They seem determined to throw-off the shackles of economic austerity.

Yet in Greece, elections there brought the leftwing party to power who are also seeing their victory as a repudiation to budget cuts and fiscal strangulation.
Still with all this fissuring division across the continent, the most fervently anticipated results was from the vote in Ukraine today. There they were not electing a representative to send to Brussels but to choose a new president. In what seems to be, so far, free and fair votes and tallies, the overwhelming winner seems to be Poroshenko, the said to be, western-leaning 'chocolate billionaire'. So far, there have not been any announcements of any factions contesting the results in Ukraine, which is a good sign since civil war has been looming for months. An official from Donetsk said they would not contest results. Perhaps, east and west can now move forward.

Last week (19May), elections in India brought them a new Prime Minister from a new party. Of course, despite being the biggest election on the planet, probably the best way Americans could find out about it was through watching a completely farcical Canadian comedian, Jason Jones explain it on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. First some stereotypes have to be dispensed with. Then he learns that even the illiterate and homeless get to vote, everywhere. They have their issues like those in the west, as in the presentation of polls or candidates made by the media. But who is this Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi that won?
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