Politics

In Poland, Right-wing parties (PiS) won the parliamentary elections on 25th October, leaving the centre-Right coalition (PO and PSL) that led the country for eight years in the opposition, and the Left out of the Parliament completely. But elections do not tell the whole story. The Polish political scene is changing. Parties of change and changes of parties animated the elections of this year. Citizens cast their complaints in the ballot box. Greens will need to draw lessons and determine their angle of attack for the future.

Although Greens in Austria have made considerable electoral breakthroughs, the recent municipal elections in Vienna showed that a considerable portion of this support is liable to abandon Greens when circumstances change and the discourse becomes more polarised. If Greens are to cement their place in the political landscape, they need to consolidate this support base and expand it in a way that is sustainable.

It’s election time in an unstable Turkey. The people in Turkey go to the polls on 1st November despite a series of violent attacks targeting the HDP. How can free and fair elections be expected to take place in a political climate where parties cannot campaign without fearing for their safety?

The Labour Party leadership in the UK is over. Confounding the critics and the bookmakers (the odds for Corbyn to win were 100-1 when the campaign began!), the maverick left-winger Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as Labour’s leader, and by a thumping majority!

For Americans, much more so than for Europeans, security trumps freedom. The NSA is beyond the control of the President and of Congress; and the US, in the role of the benevolent protector, imposes its own ethical standards onto its allies in order to extract both economic profits and strategic political information. These differences between the US and Europe do not call into question the continued viability of NATO, but they do, however, negate both the desirability and the feasibility of forming a “Transatlantic Internal Market”.

The Spanish citizenry has organised the so-called “convergence list of candidates” for the local elections in May 2015. These lists have integrated political parties, civil society and independent citizens aiming to regenerate the local policy from a political, social, economic and ecological point of view. What are the common points of such lists?

It was a pleasure to keep counting the Green vote and realising that we have a lot to celebrate: Caroline Lucas’ well-deserved win, Darren Hall’s massive increase in the Green vote, and the fact that the #GreenSurge held fast and delivered over 1 million votes for the Greens across the UK in spite of an electoral system stacked against us.

It was just the four of us: all women, Mediterranean, and “differently green.” The purpose of our trip was to better understand the inner workings of the newly elected Greek government, and to see how the Greek Greens were faring as junior partner in the Syriza government.

Halfway between a structured party and an explosive grassroots movement, Podemos remains a difficult-to-describe political UFO.

Since 2000, the EU has deployed about 140 election observation missions. Below you can read my experiences as EU EOM-Chief Observer for the 2013 general elections in Honduras.