Australian elections by a foolish Brazilian

Hi,


This one is about the election process that just happened here in Australia. I must confess that it felt a bit odd the way things happened here, some because they were so surprisingly familiar and other because the were so uttlerly different...

- The prime minister can choose when he wants to call an election. He can do this at virtually anytime up to a time limit (in this case, the election must have happened in 2007). And the election is announced with only a bit over a month of advance;
- There's no budget spending lock-up prior to the election, so the government is free to increase spending in certain areas and benefit from it in the election;
- there's absolutelly no constrains on openly accusing and doing "political terrorism" about the other candidate/party. The campaigns are dirty, more focused on the downsides of the other than in the upsides of the oneselves. Though, very little (if anything) heard about corruption;
- In general the caimpaigns are ruled by fear. The politicians try to induce fear on people on what will happen if the other side gets to the government. This country is all about stability. Say that something will disturb the stability of people's life or the way they life and there will be people sreaming.
- There was, in my opinion, very few public movement about the election. Not many people commenting on the day-to-day, few ads and leafets, etc, promoting the candidates... It doesn't look like there was an election two weeks ago.

But above all, I think the most significant point of the election is that, when considering the proposals to run the country, it is not easy do differentiate the two main parties (Liberal and Labor). The proposals and ideas are worryingly similar and so the government plans. Despite some specific (but important) differences like the Kyoto protocol and the deploy of troops in Iraq, the main ideas are very similar.

That's all folks! Next posts I will try to write before I start sleeping. Then hopefully the text will have some sense....

Cheers

And so the Liberals are out... (reflections about politics)

Hi folks!

Recent times have been filled with a renewal of my old interest on politics. Many hot topics going around by this time and specially the discovery of 'The West Wing' series played a big role on this.

Last weekend Australia had a general election and just elected a new prime minister after 13 years of John Howard as the Prime minister. Now Kevin Rudd will lead the country, and this is not only a change of names after more than a decade. It's also a change in the party on the lead, from the Liberals (under the Coalition) to the Labor Party. Somehow (please bear in mind, somehow) we can draw a line between Liberals in Australia and Republicans in USA, and between Labor and Democrats. This means that the next government should (let's see now) give some attention to issues around climate change and be more open and less freaky on the "war on terrorism" and consequent immigration tightening (also means drop-out of troops from Iraq).

Given what was seen on the campaign (comments on the process of it below), I am not sure that all these changes will make it to Governor General desk. In terms of ideas and proposals both parties got a very similar tone. Labor saying that it would keep almost everything that the Liberals have been doing and Liberals saying that they will keep doing the same.

So in the end what I believe really elected Kevin Rudd wasn't his proposals for the country, but the fact that people felt that was time to change government. And in this sense there was something strange in the election. Beforehand John Howard announced that he would retire after one year if re-elected and put Peter Costello (his Treasury minister) as the PM. So in pratical terms, Howard wasn't really running for PM. Costello was, but he wasn't the one doing the campaign. Wierd...

Ah, and what was the result of the election in the end!?

Kevin was elected with a comfortable margin and to the surprise of many, John Howard not only lost the election for PM but also was defeated in his local electorate, not getting re-elected for the House of Representatives...

Next posts will also be dedicated to politics. Next one will have my comments on the election period here in the Land Down Under and the following one will see me throwing some ideas on how to work with politics.

Cheers,
Jhow