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Matriarchy hopes dashed: Women will NOT take up majority
of seats in Icelandic parliament after vote recount
27 Sep, 2021 04:17 / Updated 14 hours ago
An election poster from the Social Democratic Alliance, saying "green attack" in Reykjavik, Iceland,
Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. © AP Photo/Brynjar Gunnarsson
While the initial election results put Iceland on course to become the first European country with a female-majority parliament, making international headlines, the new tally shows the female MPs fell short of the mark.
Multiple media outlets (including this one) reported on Sunday that Iceland’s parliamentary elections propelled more women into the country’s legislature than men in a first for Europe. Reports citing local electoral officials put the number of would-be female lawmakers at 33, and men at 30.
Icelandic public broadcaster RUV called the election historic, while numerous public figures rushed to congratulate Reykjavík for the results, which were portrayed as a victory for gender equality.
Some drew parallels between Iceland’s parliament and less women-dominated legislatures in other developed countries, such as Canada and the US.
According to projections, Iceland is about to elect the first majority-woman parliament in European history. It's expected 52% of their legislative body will be women. By comparison, 27.4% of the U.S. House and 24% of the U.S. Senate are women, both records.
— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) September 26, 2021
The updated tally, released late Sunday, however, showed that men will retain their fragile majority in the 63-seat parliament with 33 seats, AFP reported, citing the head of the electoral commission in one of the six Iceland’s constituencies, Ingi Tryggvasonmen.
Tryggvason said the decision to hold a recount, which robbed Iceland’s female lawmakers of their chance to enter the history books, was made because the “result [of the elections] was so close.” The official said that no party had requested the recount.
The recount did little to change the political make-up of the future parliament. Iceland’s ruling left-right coalition of three parties led by Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir received the majority of votes, and is expected to renegotiate the tripartite deal.
It remains to be seen if Jakobsdottir will continue to serve as prime minister, after her Left-Green Movement won 8 mandates as opposed to 11 in the 2017 election. She could be replaced by the leader of the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson, whose party retained its 16 seats.
Conservative wing of Merkel’s bloc says party leadership
must resign after ‘debacle’ in Germany’s general election
27 Sep, 2021 08:44
Workers remove a campaign poster showing Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union’s candidate for chancellor,
in Bad Segeberg, Germany, September 27, 2021. © Fabian Bimmer / Reuters
The conservative wing of Angela Merkel’s center-right CDU/CSU union said the party’s leadership is responsible for the historic failure in Sunday’s parliamentary election in Germany.
“The board of directors and party leaders of the CDU and CDU must draw the conclusions from the election debacle in the federal elections on September 26, 2021 and resign immediately,” the party’s informal conservative wing, the Values Union, said in a statement.
The group argued that Armin Laschet, the CDU’s leader and candidate to replace Merkel as chancellor, and Markus Soeder, the head of the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), bear personal responsibility for the loss and must step down as well. The Values Union called for the new leadership of the CDU to be elected directly by all party members, rather than through a system of delegates.
The Values Union was formed in 2017, mostly by longtime members of the CDU and CSU, according to their website.
In Sunday’s vote, the CDU showed its worst result since the first democratic vote in the postwar era in 1949. The CDU/CSU bloc came in second with 24.1%, trailing behind their main rivals the Social Democrats (SPD), which received 25.7%. According to official projections, Merkel’s party lost 49 seats, while the SPD gained 53, becoming the biggest party in parliament.
The Values Union argued that the CDU took “a fatal turn to the left” during Merkel’s long tenure as chancellor. “For the first time in a long while, the [party] is clearly not the strongest force and has fallen to a second place.”
Values Union chairman Max Otte said the CDU and CSU must return to their conservative roots. “A large part of the [party’s] base shares conservative values. The task of the CDU and CSU is to represent these values on political stage. Instead of marginalizing such members, they must be put back where they belong – in the center of the party.”
The CDU has been bleeding support over the past several years, as Merkel oversaw the influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, and most recently the economic downturn due to the harsh lockdowns amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before the general election, the CDU/CSU bloc and SPD ruled together in a coalition government. Germany’s leading parties will now have another round of negotiations to determine whether they want to continue working with each other or form a government with other parties.
The 2021 German Bundestag election was a blow to the Left Party and Alternative for Germany (AfD), showing a massive increase in support for the Greens. The Left lost 30 seats from the last election, while AfD lost 11 seats. The Greens gained 51 seats for a total of 118, making them the third-biggest party.
10 Albanians arrested in Kosovo after attacking Serbs
as ethnic tensions flare, drawing in Serbia & NATO
28 Sep, 2021 09:30
Police in self-proclaimed Kosovo say they have arrested 10 Albanian citizens for attacking ethnic Serbs. Ethnic tensions have escalated in the breakaway Serbian region, with Serbia, Russia and NATO getting involved.
The 10 Albanians were detained on Monday in the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, after they attacked a group of Serbs visiting a government building on official business, the police reported. The city itself is predominantly Serb, but the incident happened in the southern part, which is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians.
Eight detainees were kept in custody and charged in connection with the alleged attack, while two others, identified as minors, were released, the report said. The police pledged to hold the underaged assailants accountable for their actions.
The incident highlights the ongoing escalation of ethnic tensions in Northern Kosovo, which ratcheted up last week due to a row between Kosovo and Serbia over the issue of the opposing sides’ non-recognition of the legitimacy of each others’ vehicle licence plates. Kosovo authorities decided to no longer recognize plates issued by Serbia, forcing drivers of vehicles who want to cross the border to buy temporary Kosovo-issued plates instead.
Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence and never treated its licence plates as legitimate, so it has been issuing temporary plates for cross-border traffic for a long time.
The Kosovo move was perceived as discriminatory by the local Serb population even as the authorities insisted it was reciprocal. Many Kosovar Serb truck drivers responded by blocking border checkpoints in the north in a gesture of protest. The Kosovo government deployed special police forces to the border in response, further fueling resentment of the Serbs.
As tensions in Kosovo grew, Belgrade got involved too, with President Aleksandar Vucic ordering a military bulid-up along the border and saying that troops would intervene if Kosovar Serbs were targeted with violence. Serbian military planes and helicopters were reported flying along the border in an apparent show of force.
Russia, Serbia’s long-time ally, showed its support by sending officials to inspect Serbian troops in the border region during the weekend. It also stated that the responsibility for the latest escalation was with the Kosovo side and called on them to return to the status quo.
Meanwhile, NATO’s KFOR mission in Kosovo on Monday ramped up patrols along the border, touting it as an attempt to de-escalate the situation. NATO played a key role in helping Kosovo split from Serbia in the late 1990s amid a bloody civil war. The breakaway region declared itself an independent nation in 2008 in a move that was not recognized by two members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China.
Yeah, right, NATO de-escalating - oxymoron!
The row over licence plates is just one aspect of the festering conflict over Kosovo’s status. Kosovo authorities want to resolve the stand-off by having both sides drop the temporary licence plates scheme. Serbia rejected the proposed solution and demanded a withdrawal of Kosovo troops deployed to the border before EU-mediated talks on the issue could take place.
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