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| Europe |
| Portugal's Socialists win outright majority in early vote |
| 2005-02-21 |
| LISBON - Portugal's opposition Socialists won their first outright majority in parliament since the country returned to democracy in 1974 in a snap weekend election as voters swung left for a new government and looked for answers to rising unemployment. The party, led since September by pro-market former environment minister Jose Socrates, won 120 seats in the 230-seat assembly, interior ministry figures showed. Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes' centre-right Social Democrats, in power since 2002, won 72 seats, their lowest showing in over two decades. The Socialists won 45 percent of the vote in an election marked by higher-than-usual voter turnout compared to 29 percent for the incumbent Social Democrats (PSD). |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #7 Z, cross-border comparisons are interesting. European social-democrats are similar to openly leftist "Democrats" in the USA. European social-democrats do not believe in individual rights -- they use the word "rights" as a club to confiscate property (for the sake of the needy and the homeless) and undermine the right to self-defense (ask them about gun ownership). And Swedish social-democrats (+ their trade unions) are more marxist than the communist party in Switzerland. |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-02-21 3:40:53 PM |
| #6 No because of the revolution in 1974 everyone needed to have a leftist name. PSD is a soft Republican party maybe a RINO:) they sent 150 policemen for Iraq in agreement with Socialist President they would came back after elections. PS is like a the German SPD or every other social democrats in Europe. They are against privatisation of health services for example but will not vouch for nationalisations for example. We have Communists of course, worst Trotskystes grow from 3% to 6,5% due to help from journalists and the failing scholar system. Personal infighting inside PSD and the extreme innability of hadoc prime minister (he earn the place after Durão Barroso went for European Commission) So we are heading for a thirld world country with 60% of left votes. President helped when he demissed the government something that never happened before when there was a majority in national assembly. Expect news from Portugal in 1-2 years, they wouldnt be pretty. |
| Posted by: z man 2005-02-21 3:07:24 PM |
| #5 The third-way, or middle-way is what Thatcher so aptly described as the dangerous location that will get you run over by traffic going in both directions. It's also a Marxist construct (revolutionary forces arise out of the merger of contradictions). This is part of why leftists are so prone to holding contradictions -- they have no problem with that. They want to have their cake, and eat it, too. They think it's better thinking -- things are not what they are, therefore they're free to make up whatever they feel like, and the world will magically obey (if enough people believe in it). |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-02-21 11:40:49 AM |
| #4 Portuguese socialists defeat Portuguese social-democrats. Hmm. Only in Europe can Social-Democrats be called "center-right". Fact is that Socialists are Communists who want to enable the dictatorship of the proletariat, but let's not start the revolution today. Tomorrow, maybe, or after it stops raining. Social-democrats are Socialists who want to enable the dictatorship of the proletariat, but let's get there by vote instead of a revolution. In the end, they all believe in Marxism. Consider the fall of Spain and Portugal to dedicated socialists, and the likely coming return of France to socialist rule (their only real alternative to Chirac) -- how long until the EU is officially renamed Union of the Socialist European Republics? |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-02-21 11:34:15 AM |
| #3 Yeah. Like the way a horse and rider work together. However, they view capitalism as the horse, and they as the rider thereof. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2005-02-21 10:00:56 AM |
| #2 Sounds like your common-or-garden 'Third Way'er, same as Clinton, Blair, Schroeder, Zapatero, etc. "Hillary Clinton once reportedly portrayed the Third Way as 'a unified field theory of life' that will 'marry conservatism and liberalism, capitalism and statism, and tie together practically everything: the way we are, the way we were, the faults of man and the word of God, the end of communism and the beginning of the new millennium.'" Mussolini liked to use the phrase to describe fascism as something between communism and capitalism. P J O'Rourke describes it as "a sort of clarion call to whatever". |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-21 9:50:52 AM |
| #1 "...led since September by pro-market former environment minister Jose Socrates..." If he's a socialist, how "pro-market" can he be? Or does he simply give lip-service to a free economy, all the while destroying it (like our Democrats)? |
| Posted by: jackal 2005-02-21 9:32:49 AM |