As Senegal prepares for the March 25 presidential runoff, here’s your latest ditty — “Le Vote,” a charming little number from Ousmane “Ouza” Diallo.
The song, which is in French, advises voters to accept money, if offered, from candidate representatives, but simultaneously advises voters to vote however they wish, no matter who provides them money or handouts.
The song warns voters, however, not to sell their election cards required to vote at the polls.
More background from Reuters.
Alors on flippe!
This one, a parody from the Canal+ French presidential election coverage, will be a little difficult to follow for non-French speakers, but delightful for Stromae fans.
Join François Hollande, Ségolène Royal, Lionel Jospin, Martine Aubry and the whole Parti socialiste gang flip out about blowing another French election despite leading the polls.
The language may be French, but the whistle-past-the-graveyard feeling is instantly translatable to any campaign that’s watched a once-formidable lead slip away in electoral disaster, especially when the campaign is riding high and has six weeks left until voting day. See Jospin, 2002. See Royal, 2007.
Sings Hollande in the parody:
en 2012 c’est mon tour [In 2012, it’s my turn]
faut qu’je passe le premier tour [I must make it beyond the first round]
sinon comme Royal et Jospin [otherwise like Royal and Jospin]
je vais passer pour un crétin [I will be taken for a fool]
Since the landmark 1996 election when Benjamin Netanyahu first became a world figure by defeating Shimon Peres to become Israeli prime minister, I’ve been fascinated by his ability to remain in the center of Israeli politics for nearly two decades — in his bellicosity and in his tenacity, he reminds me of Israel’s version of Richard Nixon.
Not to make light of the deadly serious three-way dance going on among the United States, Israel and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program (and the potential US and Israeli military response to it), which could have wide-ranging impacts on the politics of all three countries and the world beyond, I found this video fabulously hilarious, which mashes up Netanyahu’s speech yesterday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with Daffy Duck.
File it alongside the Putin/Mr. Burns parody from last week.
BBC News explores the duck analogy in greater detail here.
Your Russian election eve mash-up of Putin and The Simpsons. Enjoy.
In my ongoing series of odd campaign video from Russia’s upcoming presidential election vote, here’s ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky flogging a donkey from earlier this month. It’s unclear what exactly the point is here.
Zhirinovsky is one of the truly scary clowns of Russia’s political scene. In 1995, he threw a box of juice at an opponent on television. In 1996, he called for recreating the Russian Empire and expanding it to the Indian Ocean and reclaiming Alaska from the United States. He once promised free vodka to all Russians if elected. He’s anti-Zionist, anti-Caucuses, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Western, anti-African, and you really could fill a book with outrageous Zhirinovsky quotes. Much, much more here, and that’s just for starters.
From a 1994 article:
In numerous speeches and articles, Zhirinovsky has promised to bury radioactive waste on the borders of the Baltic states, turn Kazakhstan into Russia’s back yard,” provoke internecine wars between the clans and the peoples of Russia’s so-called near abroad (the former Soviet Union) and occupy what will remain of it when the war is over. The masthead of his movement’s magazine, Zhirinovsky’s Hawk, displays a map of Russia that includes Finland, Poland and Alaska, in addition to all of the former Soviet republics.
Of course, his importance as a figure in Russian politics has long since ebbed from its high-water mark in 1995-96. But I’ve considered him for over a decade the personification of Russia’s nationalist id, which can sometimes be quite ugly and dark indeed.
Not to be outdone by Putin’s sexy ads targeting younger Russian voters, Mikhail Prokhorov campaigns in rap yesterday in Russia. If neither the New Jersey Nets and the presidential election don’t work out for Prokhorov, maybe he should team up with Jay-Z?
With the latest survey showing that Putin will win the first round of the March 4 presidential election with 66% of the vote (with Communist Party rival Gennady Zyuganov picking up just 15% of the vote for second place), it’s becoming clearer than ever that Prokhorov is not the serious candidate he perhaps once claimed.
The latest from Putin’s campaign.
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez has launched a rip-snorting fusilade against opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles with some, ahem, choice words (video with subtitles below compliments of The Guardian):
My mission… (will be) to take off the mask, you low-life, because no matter how much you disguise it, low-life, you have a pig’s tail, a pig’s ears, and you snort like a pig.
Chávez apparently also refers to Capriles not by name, but by reference to el majunche, or “the crappy one.”
So glad to see that the race is off to such a promising start.
While we await Nicolas Sarkozy’s formal reelection announcement in a post-Valentines’s haze, a new poll shows that former prime minister Dominique de Villepin has leaped to the head of French polls… Continue reading Who’s winning the beauty contest?