Can you explain in very simple terms the current politics of your country?

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.