United States:
Fractured. Desperately in need of another worthy and capable outside force to unite us.
The
dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of The Cold War took away
the main thing that united us during the “golden era” of American
growth: the 50s and 60s. The domestic policies that divide us now would
never be this divisive in a world where there was a real threat to our
country from outside forces.
The being said, the main fractures in politics in the US come down to different answers to variations of one question:
Whose problem is this?
One side wants problems to be solved as close to the individual level as possible.
“Sounds like a personal problem to me.” The other side wants problems to be solved on the federal level as much as possible. “Let’s make a new bureaucracy to fix this problem for you and anyone else who might have the same problem.” To some, one side sounds cold and heartless. To some, the other side sounds woefully detached from reality.
United Kingdom.
Well
let’s put it this way. We shocked the international scene by voting out
of the world’s biggest political and economic union. So you would think
that with 18 months to go until we formally exit the EU, that the
information about our ongoing exit would be the only thing in the news.
Nope. It’s barely mentioned.
It’s barely
mentioned because of the way that Brexit has effected the country. It’s
been surprisingly positive economically with many nodes of the British
economy performing very well - particularly finance and manufacturing.
In
more internal matters the ruling Conservative party has happily
undergone one of the biggest political collapses in recent history,
mainly due to the indecisiveness and poor image of Prime Minister
Theresa May. This has allowed the Labour
Party, the current opposition party, to cement its place at the top of
the polls, meaning that Britain is at serious risk of having a far left
Socialist in Jeremy Corbyn as it’s next Prime Minister. This is a man
who has had NINETY-FIVE front bench shadow ministers resign since 2015. And his party is barely viewed as divided.
Ah the fun and games of British politics.
Brazilian
In
2013, the country had demonstrations against the increase of bus
tickets. They were very succesfull in attracting millions of people to
the streets. People quickly started making other demands. Nobody was
more confused than the media. At first, they were a violent minority.
Some time later it was the police who was out of control, beating people
up without cause.
Congress
was in a rush to approve bills in what they called “Agenda Positiva”.
They wanted to represent “the voice of the streets”.
One of the recurrent topics was protests against corruption. A month
after the events, then President Dilma Rousseff sanctioned a new law
creating colaboração premiada for criminal organizations.
Colaboração premiada
wasn’t created by that law. What did change was how transparent the new
rules were. Finally, one criminal could take down an entire mob,
identifying other criminals and their wrongdoings, in exchange for a
reduced sentence. Older laws weren’t so clear about how whistleblowers
could benefit.
In two years, 49 high executives and politicians made colaborações premiadas
in Operation “Lava Jato”. They helped uncover a massive bribery scheme
dedicated to steal from state-owned oil company Petrobrás. R$ 2.9
billion were already recovered by 2016 out of an estimated R$ 21.8
billion.
Can
you imagine the political turmoil this kind of change causes? We have
no idea what’s next. How is this going to affect Congress composition in
2018’s elections? What kind of President will be elected? Will
oldschool politicians be replaced by newcomers? Can the corruption
become more elaborate to survive?
You know a country has a lot of corruption when politics is exciting.
Spain.
After
the Civil War, 1939, Franco’s dictatorship kept the country united.
After his death, 1975, the country was divided into 17 little countries,
each with President, Parliament, etc.
The
corruption and the inefficiency were multiplied by 17 approx. They
ruined the industry and converted Spain in the funfare of Europe. They
encouraged uncontrolled immigration by about 15% of the population, with
the result of cheap labour for some, unemployment for others and social
unrest for all. All the new rulers cared
only about their own interests; they increased the number of Civil
Servants by four times. The number of people living from politics rose
to nearly 500.000 (much more than Germany, UK, etc.) Also,
they brainwashed the population and the children at schools to hate
Spain, which has resulted in the present separatist movements. The
separatism is, also, used to cover up the corruption of the local
leaders. The Central Governments, also
corrupt and inefficient, and weak, are permitting all. The result is
that Spain, that was be one of the best places in the world to live, is
being disintegrated, ruined and invaded.
Pakistan
Economy is improving despite political setbacks.
After
a long and arduous process including processions and rallies by the
opposition leader Imran Khan of the Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI),
our 3 time Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif was ousted from
office by the Supreme Court.
The decision
came after a call from Imran Khan to investigate Sharif’s assets in the
wake of Panama Leaks. An investigation committee was formed by the
Supreme Court which investigated the case and concluded that Sharif did
not fulfill the Article 62 and 63 of the Constitution of Pakistan under
which the Prime Minster must be “Truthful” and “Honest”.
PML(N)
and Beijing share very friendly relations and the CPEC projects, which
were already on the table, were initiated during Sharif's tenure. There
were concerns regarding how Beijing would react to possible change in
government in Pakistan, but so far they have kept out of it.
The
ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N) has lost credibility, but is still
leading the polls to win the upcoming general election in March 2018.
As expected the markets did not react well to these series of events, but it is expected to rise.
Kenya.
After
our Supreme annulled the August 8th election we are headed to another
election on 26th October. However I feel that nothing will change but
rule of law must be applied and nobody can overturn the Supreme Court
ruling. Personally I loved the ruling because it showed the world how
democratic Kenya can be sometimes. Repeat
elections comes at a cost and the main one is the public funds. We used
480 millions US dollars on the last election and we may use more than
half the money on the repeat elections. This is wastage of tax payers
money to me, if the electoral body did their work according to the
constitution this could have never happened. The
opposition want the Electoral body officials to resign and they have
vowed to continue weekly demonstrations to push for this. Even today
October 2nd we had protests and riots in many parts of the country
pushing for the same. This has resulted in business closing, police and
protests clash and one death so far. A protestor collapsed and died amid
chaos. All these are ugly pictures. Right
now the Government and opposition keeps throwing shades at each other.
Every side is criticizing another side’s action. Its al blame game and
no positive politics to ensure growth.
Germany
German
politics at the moment are pretty interesting, as you may or may not
know we had our elections recently, which despite big losses were still
won by a certain someone you might know
However the interesting part is that no government has been formed yet. You
see, to rule Germany you must have more than 50% of the total seats in
our parliament, the Bundestag, and if your party alone can’t manage
that(it only ever happened once that a party got more than 50% alone)
then you better find someone to make a coalition with, so you can still technically be the majority in the Bundestag. Right now a so called “Jamaica” coalition is in the talks, consisting of Merkels Union:
Such
a coalition is called Jamaica since the Union is associated with the
color black, which together with other two parties makes up the colors
of the flag of Jamaica.
A coalition like
this, in my eyes, isn’t the best, since the Greens and the Libertarians
don’t have that much common ground and probably won’t be really stable.
However this was only one out of two options for the governing
coalition, the other one was with the Social Democratic SPD.
They
however opted out, since they were in a great coalition(what we call
coalitions between the SPD and the Union since they always have been the
biggest parties) the last legislative period, And they had their worst
result of all time in the most recent election.
