PoliticsCanada: 2nd & 3rd parties switch: Conservs still in lead, but chance of majority very shakey

Reuters (Apri30,2k11)

Pollsters have calibrated the prospects of Canada's Conservative Party, now the governing party based on a leading minority status in the House of Commons, the party having inched back into a 38% status 3 days before the May 2 national elections.  This leaves them 2 percentage points short of the 40% threshold that ordinarily results in a majority of seats in the Commons, and thus into stable full term governance.  The Conservs had dipped to 36.4% yesterday.

These minute fluctuations come after an amazing upsurge of voters turning to the New Democrat Party, which had held a perennial 3rd place status in the total national vote and in the Commons.  One outstanding proposal tending toward greater electoral justice in the Canadian federation has been its present leader's advocacy of proportional representation; but another stand registers as on the deficit side of the goal toward stable democracy that has long been advocated by the Conservs -- namely, an elected Senate (instead of simply enduring forever the serious flaw in the repatriated Constitution that provides only for Senators by appointment of the Prime Minister).  The NDP erroneously wants to steer the country into instability by abolishing the Senate.  Still, there's the NDP's advocacy of PropRep; in refWrite's opinion, that's an advance beyond present Constitutional arrangements.

The main surprise of election trends is neither the statistical path in the polling thru-out the campaign toward a minority Conserv govt again (it woud be the third such, each time headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper), nor the upsurge of the NDP (which is more clearly socialist than the other two left parties in the Commons), as startling as that NDP upsurge has been in the polls. But the real shocker is the now obvious degeneration of voter support for the Liberal Party at the federal level.  Two Liberal leaders now have, in succession, failed to capture the imagination of voters sufficiently to carry their party into even a minority-governing status.  Besides the long history of fraud and other scandals attached to the Liberals before the latest phase of that party's leadership by eggheads (Stéphane Dion and presently Michael Ignatieff), motivated by grandiose Green schemes, ever increasing spending and national debt (etc), there has been the recent gaffe by Iggy where he at least attempted to balance his promises of spending splurges with a resolute proposal to increase sales taxes.  He thus set himself off from Jack Layton, the NDP leader, who insists no increase in sales taxes.  The amazing thing is that Layton woud instead increase taxes on "the rich" -- and thus on those among them are the main source of job creation.

Were we only to concentrate on one factor like economic policy, we can now risk saying with reference to the latest polls that voters are leaving the Liberals in large part for New Democrats, and the country is polarizing into a clearer left vs r+t split.  But some nuances of such a judgment and forecast are necessary.  One of them being that the Liberals have always had centrist and mild-r+t tendencies among its "big tent" membership and parliamentary representatives.   Some voters for Liberal candidates are moderates or left-of-center on fiscal policy, but social conservatives on family, r+t to l+f, sexuality/marriage, transgender use of women's washrooms in public places, etc.   These voters may be trending to switch support to the Conservs, who are not the raving ideologues the left parties try to paint them to be -- the main concern of the Conservs has been to stabilize the economy, encourage investment within Canada, job creation, ease the tax burden on all wage-earners, stop the rise in government indebtedness, and actually pay down the debt to free up the oncoming generations.

In  closing, I can only note that the Green Party has not yet found a seat in Parliament.  It's 900,000 segment of the voters in the last federal election was denied representation in the Commons (Canada's constitutional flaw) due to the dispersal of its voters across the country; on the other hand, the Bloc Québecois whose voters are much more densely concentrated in one province and who had less than Greens in total votes gained over 50 seats federally for their separatist cause.  Ironically, the rise of the NDP which peaked this time around at 31.2%, and now has slipped a bit to 29.6%. The separatist Bloc Québecois, on the other hand, does not gain from the federalist Liberals in Québec where Libs are losing voters to the NDP (up to a whopping 39% there!, leading the field) and to a lesser extent to the Conservs.  It's possible that the expected 2nd (NDP) and 3rd (Libs) parties in the federal Commons will unite to try to deny the expected 1st place Conservs the role of forming the new government, altho in the electoral campaigns the NDP and Libs both parties swore each woud never enter a coalition govt with the other.  In 3 days time we'll know where all these mysteries take us.  Long live Canada!

Politics: France: UMP under Sarkozy set to win increased representation in parliamentary elections

Javno carries a Reuters story about France's upcoming parliamentary elections, Sarkozy UMP Extends Lead -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP political party could win up to 460 seats in parliamentary elections to be held later this month (Jun2,2k7):

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP political party could win up to 460 seats in parliamentary elections to be held later this month, four times as many as the opposition Socialists, according to a poll on Saturday. The IFOP poll for Sunday's Journal du Dimanche newspaper put support for the UMP and Socialists steady at 41 percent and 27 percent respectively, but movement in support for other parties meant Sarkozy's UMP was forecast to win more seats than before.

France's parliamentary elections are due to be held over two rounds on June 10 and 17. A big win for the UMP would cement Sarkozy's grip on power after he was elected president on May 6.

The survey projected the UMP could win 420 to 460 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly compared with a projected 410 to 450 in IFOP's previous survey and 359 currently.

The Socialists were seen winning 80 to 120 seats compared with a previously forecast 90 to 130 and down from 149 now.

The Socialists are having their own fierce internicene battle, with some of their candidates standing firm for orthodox Socialism-by-peaceful-means and others seeking seats on the basis of a turn of the Party to social democracy which accepts capitalism but seeks to control it and promotes a a strongly welfarist-capitalism under a social-democratic government and an all-powerful all-responsible state (little sphere sovereignty or sphere-responsiblity for other societal spheres), as in many other European countries. In France, one could well imagine that in due time the present SP will split in two (SP vs. SDP).

The main loser in the poll was Francois Bayrou's new centre-right Democratic Movement, with support falling to 9 percent from 12 percent.

Europe > France

Bayrou's party said it would distribute thousands of orange flowers in Paris on Sunday -- Mothers' Day in France -- in an effort to drum up support.

Another story, this time from a marginal Trotskyite websource Indymedia Bay Area offers a telltale report, in its own desultory way, on Sarkozy's deft navigation among the splintered vote-pools of the French political panorma, "France: Guy Môquet, Sarkozy and the Stalinist school of falsification" (Jun2,2k7):

"After his official installation as French president May 16, Nicolas Sarkozy’s first engagement was a memorial ceremony to fallen Resistance fighters against the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War.

Sarkozy used the event to issue his first presidential decree: the obligatory annual public reading in schools of Guy Môquet’s letter to his family shortly before his execution by a Nazi firing squad on October 22, 1941. Sarkozy intends this to serve as an example of “heroism” and “sacrifice” for the “nation.” The 17-year-old Môquet was a member of the Young Communists.

The visit to the memorial ceremony and his proclamation about the letter brings to light an important historical episode that reveals the counter-revolutionary essence of French Stalinism.

The latter expression is Trot-speak for France's Communist Party which at one time commanded 20% of the vote, while in the last election the orthodox Communists garnered 1.6%. However, together with the half-a-dozen other small ultraleft parties that have picked up refugees from the Commies, the total of the whole farleft wing is about 10%--who largely voted against Sarkozy in favour of the mainstream Socialists.

The initial indignation of French Communist Party (PCF) leader Marie-George Buffet at Sarkozy’s cynical use of Môquet’s death to promote nationalism during his election campaign was short-lived. “The reading of Guy Môquet’s last letter before his execution is a strong message,” she declared, after Sarkozy had pronounced his presidential decree, “because this young man was a patriot through his engagement in the Resistance, but also because his combat for the emancipation of humanity had a goal, that of constructing a Republic of rights and liberties in a democracy.”

Buffet’s servile falling into line with Sarkozy reinforces the latter’s attempts to present himself as president of “all the French.”

With such gestures, Sarkozy seems intent on chipping away at his opposition to win more seats in the Parliament than even Jacques Chirac could muster. For his interim cabinet, Sarkozy has named at least one Socialist to an important ministerial portfolio.