2012 will have its great share of election drama in the classic democracies of the USA and France with presidential elections in both, but what about Central and Eastern Europe. Lets have a look at some of the less followed elections:
February: Turkmenistan elects a president. Truly I am only mentioning this on the margin of the blog since we all know that it is not a true election. There is only one party running with one candidate ... no more has to be said.
March: In this month we have for ourselves two interesting elections. The 4th of March is the presidential elections of the Russian Federation. The results are of course already forseen with Vladimir Putin former president and current prime minister running again backed by the United Russia party. To allow his run the country even amended its constitution letting someone, who already had two terms as a president be elected again. The only other candidate who has formally announced to run is Gennady Zyuganov from the communist party, while Dmitri Medvedev has declined to run in favor of Putin, who he says is his mentor.
On the 10th of March another exciting election will take place in Slovakia's parliament after Radicova's gamble last week. While nothing is certain yet in this situation we can bet on one thing noone will get an absolute majority. Coalitions are what we will have to follow closely in this ballot.
May: Serbian parliamentary elections are to be held in May. The question is if Boris Tadic's party, which is working toward an accesion in the EU will be able to defend its position in the National Assembly. Also important to watch are the radicals who are currently the second biggest party in parliament. Other important groups are the minorities the Hungarians, the Bosniacs and the Albanians and their share of the votes.
July: Albania elects its president indirectly in the Assembly of Albania, this election with most of the indirect presidential elections in Europe will possibly be an easy one especially if current president Bamir Topi runs for reelection since the coalition that has supported him is still in power.
August: Just like Turkmenistan Kazahstan is not a real democracy. There is one dominant party and guess what at the last election it gained all the seats.
October: More info to come on these since they are far far wawy in time: Slovenian presidential elections will take place. The question is who will run which is not clear year since current president Danilo Türk had some serious health issues in 2011.
Lithuania will hold parliamentary elections in October. Here Adrius Kubilius will probably run again, he has held the office before at the turn of the century we must wait and see if he will survive another election.
Also voting in October are the Ukrainians. Here of course the outcome is currently unpredictable. With the enorme scandal of the trial of Yulia Timoshenko and schemes of breaking the support of her party nothing is certain. Especially with the great foreign (EU) pressure on Ukrainian decision makers to try and change the verdict.
To finish the year we will have the legislative elections of Romania. The question once again seems if the current government will stay. With votings of no confidence and economic cuts we can not be sure ... of course since I am a Hungarian I must mention that it is an election that is important for the Hungarian minority, whose representatives are currently part of the coalition.
No comments:
Post a Comment