How Portugal voted and not voted.
international |
politics / elections |
other press 
Monday February 21, 2005 21:34
by iosaf & julia
Portugal celebrated as its right as a democratic state and member of the family of civlised nations a general election Sunday last February 20th 2005.
The result was a foregone conclusion, José Sócrates won an outright majority returning his state to socialist rule with the lowest recorded abstention in Portuguese democratic history.
The 47 year old engineer came to lead the Portuguese socialists and accept the poisoned chalice when his predeccesor died of a heart attack during the last general election campaign.
José Sócrates is well qualified for the job.
His name is José. That generally goes down well with us for starters.
He is also very popular with the pre-platonic crew of corruptors of youth.
He also at the moment stands very low in the international insurance stakes on doing a John Smith (a technical expression we in the know use for pre-election tragic heart attacks).
To what can we attribute his meteoritic rise?
Well as a commentator in the Sunday Preview article on the newswire commented, all eyes were on Spain on Sunday "coz the portuguese suck". Attentive readers will also know that the traditional right wing voters of that land had been smuggled into the spanish state by Manuel Fraga on false papers to abstain in the Spanish ratification of the European Constitution.
The final results there were also a foregone conclusion. 10,804,464 yes (76.7% of votes) 2,428,409 no, (17.3% of votes) and 849,093 spoilt.
There was a resounding 67.7% abstention.
For those of you interested in numbers the pecentages 76.7 and 17.3 mean something.
The results of the Portuguese mass exercise of the franchise, which let us reflect a moment as mature and clever types mostly with jobs and stuff, are the result of many centuries of struggle-
Oh yes, indeed sure there was once a neo-platonic time when Geraldine Kennedy wouldn't have got a vote, on account of being-
a woman - a catholicke - being untitled.
But don't let that get in the way of your appreciation of modern civilisation.
So those results of centuries of struggle brought the Portuguese be they catholicke or dissenter, black or white, male or female to a voting section of 61.5% of the population from the Azores to Fatima from the Algarve to Lisbon.
Of which over 45% went to Mr Socrates.
and the rest went to his opponents.
Jolly good show.
Mr Socrates operates a "pink" colour party, as the more traditional strugglers for democracy in the post dictatorship Portugal which is very european (everyone drinks milky coffee and you can go there on ryanair and easyjet) are the "reds".
The last people to sport "pink" as their party colours were the prime minister and chums of Georgia.
They died from carbon monoxide which are more common molecules than the complex fatty quickly dissolved even in post mortem type things that cause heart attacks.
check the "introducing Julia article" for details.
So what can we say?
Be very good @ your job Mr Socrates, for there are verily more things on this planet than ever you dreamt of in your philosophy, and you have permission to approve the constitution coz it would be more stylish that either the richest states or even France reject it instead. But you go corrupting the youth, or even hinting at a return to "non-democracy" and the molecules will get you.
We are very very serious, and by the time the penny drops it will be too late to even think "they told us so".
oh and
Well Done!
http://economia.eluniversal.com/2005/02/21/int_art_21110DD.shtml
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=83225
(you'll be glad to know all Spanish and Portuguese markets are delighted with the results of Sunday -the rich have even more money in their computers now)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3194918a12,00.html
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5551461