Michiel 2005's photos with the keyword: politics

Luigi Brugnaro is the mayor of Venice, also leader of the Corragio Italia party, a party on the centre right. The party got one seat in the 400 seat parliament. Zitto fascista (shut up fascist) is written over the poster of the party of Salvini, Lega Nord (Northen League). Lega got 66 of the 400 seats.

For people who are interested in Italian party politics, the wiki article on CI has an explanation on the origin and split-offs of this party. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coraggio_Italia

Marc-Antoine Brekiesz is a former basketball player, now a politician. He is deputy mayor of Compiègne.

D66 is te koop of te huur.

The second purple cabinet was created after the elections in 1998. It consisted of three parties: the socialists, right-wing liberals and left-wing liberals. The left-wing liberals with 14 seats in parliament weren't necessary for a majority, but they were included anyway because they were part of the first purple cabinet. They wanted a constitutional change to allow referenda. During the first stage of the constitional change a bill has to pass both houses of parliament with a simple majority. The second stage requires an two-thirds majority of both houses. Senator Wiegel, seen here in the picture, old popular liberal leader and deputy prime minister in the 1970s, voted against the second reading and caused the bill to fail, even though his party in the lower house committed itself to the change. The left-wing liberal party withdrew its support of the cabinet, threatened to withdraw its ministers too, and the cabinet was forced to offer its resignation. The row was settled and the second purple cabinet stumbled on for another three years.

Dutch politics could be explained to foreigners by saying that there was a socialist party, who wanted to increase the top rate of tax to 80% of income; a liberal party who wanted to lower the taxes to 78% of income and a party who were against the French Revolution. Things have changed a bit: the party who were against the French Revolution merged with the catholic party to become christian democrats. In the early 1990s the liberals and the socialists formed a government together, because they were fed up with the christian democrats. The christian democrats (or the seperate christian parties) positioned themselves in the middle of Dutch politics and were part of every government since times immemorial, choosing between the liberals and the socialists depending on their mood and the election result. The liberals and the socialists are on the opposite sides of the Dutch political spectrum (at least in the 1990s) so it was quite a strange coalition. In order to make this coalition possible, some things had to happen. More in particular, a leadership crises (the old one, mr. Ruud Lubbers of UN fame, didn't like the new one, mr. Elco Brinkman. In the end, the Dutch didn't like Brinkman too) in the christian democratic party and several general scandals. This is a newspaper of the last days of the socialist-christian democratic coalition, just before the purple government (liberal-socialist) came to power. The IRT-scandal was about the police. It turned out the police was heavily involved in crime in order to catch criminals, especially drugs criminals. The minister of justice then is again minister of justice now.

Dutch politics could be explained to foreigners by saying that there was a socialist party, who wanted to increase the top rate of tax to 80% of income; a liberal party who wanted to lower the taxes to 78% of income and a party who were against the French Revolution. Things have changed a bit: the party who were against the French Revolution merged with the catholic party to become christian democrats. In the early 1990s the liberals and the socialists formed a government together, because they were fed up with the christian democrats. The christian democrats (or the seperate christian parties) positioned themselves in the middle of Dutch politics and were part of every government since times immemorial, choosing between the liberals and the socialists depending on their mood and the election result. The liberals and the socialists are on the opposite sides of the Dutch political spectrum (at least in the 1990s) so it was quite a strange coalition. In order to make this coalition possible, some things had to happen. More in particular, a leadership crises (the old one, mr. Ruud Lubbers of UN fame, didn't like the new one, mr. Elco Brinkman. In the end, the Dutch didn't like Brinkman too) in the christian democratic party and several general scandals. This is the newspaper about the result of the local elections, just prior to the national elections. That gave enough indication that it the people didn't like the christian democrats and the socialists.

Dutch politics could be explained to foreigners by saying that there was a socialist party, who wanted to increase the top rate of tax to 80% of income; a liberal party who wanted to lower the taxes to 78% of income and a party who were against the French Revolution. Things have changed a bit: the party who were against the French Revolution merged with the catholic party to become christian democrats. In the early 1990s the liberals and the socialists formed a government together, because they were fed up with the christian democrats. The christian democrats (or the seperate christian parties) positioned themselves in the middle of Dutch politics and were part of every government since times immemorial, choosing between the liberals and the socialists depending on their mood and the election result. The liberals and the socialists are on the opposite sides of the Dutch political spectrum (at least in the 1990s) so it was quite a strange coalition. In order to make this coalition possible, some things had to happen. More in particular, a leadership crises (the old one, mr. Ruud Lubbers of UN fame, didn't like the new one, mr. Elco Brinkman. In the end, the Dutch didn't like Brinkman too) in the christian democratic party and several general scandals. This newspaper is about the election results of the national elections. Enormous defeat for the christian democrats and socialist government.

I didn't have a television at that time, so I didn't see Michael Portillo losing his seat. I listened to the radio, and I remember one commentator saying: "This is the biggest loss for the Tories since...since...since...the Duke of Wellington". I'm not a great fan of socialists, but it was a breath of fresh air after the scandal-ridden Tories. And I always liked Tony Blair's eloquence. Soon after Labour came to power the BBC made a documentary about Robin Cook, who became Foreign Secretary. He removed a portrait of an Indian prince from the Foreign Office building because it was "to politically incorrect". No sense of history these socialists.