Tag Archives: referendum

Scotland, United Kingdom

Scots to vote on independence in 2014 as Salmond and Cameron seal referendum pact

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They’ve certainly screwed their courage to the sticking place now.

UK prime minister David Cameron has agreed with Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond on the terms of a referendum, to be held in Scotland in autumn 2014, as to whether Scotland should seek independence or remain part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

With a newly elected sovereigntist government in the French-speaking province of Québec in Canada, and with the separatist-minded Basque Country set for regional elections this Sunday and the even more separatist-minded Catalunya going to regional polls next month, regional autonomy seems to be mounting somewhat of a comeback on both sides of the Atlantic.

Under today’s ‘Edinburgh agreement’ between Salmond and Cameron, Scottish voters will have the opportunity to vote for independence, ending 305 years as a single nation united with England after the 1707 Act of Union.

The agreement marks a tactical victory for both Salmond and Cameron.  Salmond, who had hoped to put off the referendum indefinitely and perhaps beyond the next scheduled general election in 2015, will nonetheless get a delay for nearly two years to make his case for independence, and 16- and 17-year olds will be permitted to vote as well (so 14-year-old Scots, start following Suffragio now).

For his part, Cameron will have succeeded in getting a straight up-and-down vote on the independence question, not a multiple-question referendum on greater autonomy for Scotland, which polls show would be much more likely to succeed than full independence.

Salmond, who is Scotland’s ‘first minister’ — the leader of the regional Scottish government — and whose Scottish National Party in 2011 secured the largest mandate of any regional Scottish election since the 1998 devolution established the Scottish parliament, will lead the campaign for the ‘yes’ vote.

Cameron, the Tory prime minister who won just one seat and a grand total of 16.7% in the 2010 general election in Scotland (finishing last among the four major parties), will lead the campaign for the ‘no’ vote, but he will certainly be joined by Labour leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democratic leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, whose party serves in the United Kingdom’s governing coalition with the Tories. Since the days of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who tried to use Scotland in 1989 as a testing ground for the much-derided ‘poll tax’ that was set to apply nationwide in 1990, Scotland has greeted the Tories with antipathy.  So it’s not without some legitimacy that Miliband has argued that only Labour can keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.

As Alex Massie writes for The Spectator, in calling the entire ‘phony war’ leading up to today’s event  a queer process (and quite rightly), he notes that Cameron himself, quite a fish out of water in Scotland, may lose the general election currently scheduled for May 2015:

David Cameron slinks in to Scotland almost as though he were the leader of a foreign country already. You would not think he’s merely visiting territory for which he presently holds some responsibility. The optics – as the media handlers say – will favour Mr Salmond today. Why, there will even be signing and swapping of papers further bolstering the impression this is a meeting of equals….

The difficulty is that it is not yet clear what a No vote actually means. It will not necessarily settle the matter, not least since the Prime Minister is on record as being open to “more powers” for Holyrood after the referendum.

That, however, is a discussion upon which he may have little influence. The next Westminster election must be held just six months or so after Scotland’s referendum. David Cameron may – just may – not win that election. Which means that at some point we will need to know what Ed Miliband thinks about Scotland too. What a happy thought that is!

On the surface, then, Salmond seems well placed in the next 24 months to turn around polling data that shows, on a straight ‘union vs. independence’ referendum, Scots support union (as of an Oct. 8 TNS-MRNB poll) by a 53% margin, to just 28% in favor of breaking from the United Kingdom.

Scotland, under Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s devolution policy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, achieved its own parliament after a successful 1997 referendum, and the Scottish parliament came into being in 1998.  The parliament, informally known as Holyrood, the name of the Edinburgh neighborhood in which it is located, is a 129-member unicameral legislature, essentially shares legislation power with the UK parliament in Westminster.

Cameron’s victory in the ‘Edinburgh agreement’ was to limit the options to strictly independence or remaining in the union, rather than allowing for a ‘devomax’ option — maximum devolution that would provide the Scottish parliament even more powers currently reserved for Westminster.  Indeed, Cameron seemed to dangle the possibility of further devolution earlier Tuesday in his remarks on the agreement:

Mr Cameron said: “All those who want to see not only the status quo but further devolution from the United Kingdom to Scotland must vote to stay within the United Kingdom.  Then it’ll be for all the parties to decide what proposals to put forward, but I’ve always taken the view we have to answer this prior question first. We have to answer the question: does Scotland want to stay in the United Kingdom? If the answer is Yes we do want to stay in the United Kingdom, then obviously further devolution is possible.”

In some senses, though, the limitation to a simple yes-or-no vote raises the stakes — Scots will be bloody well certain to demand guarantees from the parties supporting the ‘No’ vote that additional devolution will result from a successful ‘No’ vote in 2014.   Continue reading Scots to vote on independence in 2014 as Salmond and Cameron seal referendum pact →

Romania

Aftermath of Romanian referendum leaves both sides with victory

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Romania’s president Traian Băsescu narrowly survived a referendum on Sunday that would have removed him from office, but his meager support in the referendum will only further encourage his political rival, prime minister Victor Ponta. 

Although 87.52% of those who voted supported Băsescu’s impeachment (just 11.15% voted against it), only 46.23% of eligible voters turned out to vote on the referendum — lower than the 50% threshold required to remove the president.

In many ways, the vote may be the best situation for Ponta, whose social democratic Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, the Social Democratic Party) has formed an electoral union with the free-market liberal Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, the National Liberal Party).  Băsescu, who belongs to the rival center-right Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, the Democratic Liberal Party), will remain in office, but with significantly less political standing.

Ponta, whose electoral union won a landslide victory in recent local elections, is now the undisputed top mover in Romanian politics, and he will go into November elections with a very strong hand, given that Romanian voters blame the PD-L for austerity measures designed to bring Romania’s budget down to just 3% of GDP (as required pursuant to the terms of a loan from the International Monetary Fund that originated in 2009).

Ponta also remains another potential troublemaker (alongside Hungary’s Viktor Orbán) for the European Union to worry about.  He may have gone too far in the past three months since becoming prime minister — the European Union has been sounding the alarm at top volume for the past couple of weeks that it is not happy with Ponta’s efforts to undermine Romanian democracy and already-fragile legal institutions — calling the referendum, limiting Romania’s Constitutional Court, stacking Romania’s parliament with his own hand-picked leaders.

That he called the referendum was bad enough, but European leaders had made clear that Băsescu’s removal would have not been looked upon kindly.  Ponta and his allies therefore will emerge from Sunday’s vote having punished Băsescu, but not enough to bring the full force of EU ire upon them.

Romania

Romania votes today

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Romanians go to the polls today for a special referendum to determine whether to remove Traian Băsescu, Romanian’s president since 2004, from office.

Voters will be faced with one question:  Sunteți de acord cu demiterea Președintelui României, domnul Traian Băsescu?  (Do you agree with the dismissal of the President of Romania, Mr. Traian Băsescu?)

If over 50% of eligible voters turnout, and if a majority answer “Yes,” then Băsescu will be removed from office.  Such a dismissal would be a massive political victory for Victor Ponta, Romania’s new prime minister since May 2012.  Ponta (who belongs to Romania’s leftist Social Democratic Party and whose allies include the free-market National Liberal Party) is looking to consolidate his power before heading into parliamentary elections on November 25 — his alliance currently seems much more popular than the Democratic Liberal Party to which Băsescu belongs and to which Emil Boc belongs — Boc was Romania’s austerity-minded prime minister from 2008 until February of this year.

Ponta and his allies have accused Băsescu of overstepping his constitutional authority as president, despite a ruling by Romania’s Constitutional Court to the contrary.

Ponta been accused by European Union officials of undermining democratic institutions in Romania — the removal of Băsescu, however unpopular he may be, will only reinforce doubts about the direction of Romanian rule of law.

As we wait for word from Bucharest, here are some of the first movements of Romanian composer György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata:

European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity

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The concept of a ‘democratic deficit’ has long plagued the European Union — the EU’s history is littered with grand, transformative schemes planned by EU leaders that voters have ultimately rejected as too sweeping.  As recently as 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed EU constitution, smacking the EU elite for getting out too far in front of an electorate that clearly did not approve.

Sure enough, the story of the last three days — in the UK, in France and in Greece — will go down in EU history as a similar pivot point against German chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempt to impose strict fiscal discipline across the continent, even as additional electoral hiccups await in the North-Rhine Westphalia state elections later this week, the Irish referendum on the fiscal compact later this month and French and Dutch parliamentary elections due later this summer.

French president-elect François Hollande will now immediately become the face of the EU-wide opposition to austerity and is expected to challenge Merkel with a view that advocates more aggressive spending in a bid to balance fiscal responsibility with the promotion of economic growth — a distinct change in Franco-German relations after the ‘Merkozy’ years.  In his victory speech, Hollande called for a ‘fresh start for Europe’ and laid down his gauntlet: ‘austerity need not be Europe’s fate.’

It is an incredible turnaround from December, when Merkel and deposed French president Nicolas Sarkozy single-handedly pushed through the fiscal compact adopted by each of the EU member states (minus the UK and the Czech Republic), which would bind each member state to a budget deficit of no more than just 0.5% of GDP.  The treaty followed in the wake of the latest eurozone financial crisis last November, during which both the governments of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Georgios Papandreou in Greece fell, to be replaced by Berlin-approved technocratic governments, each tasked with the express purpose of making reforms to cut their governments’ respective budgets.

Continue reading Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity →

Ireland

Irish referendum to be held May 31

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Mark your calendars: the Irish referendum on the European Union fiscal compact will take place on May 31.

If the Merkel-led austerity doesn’t take any hits following the French presidential election or the Greek parliamentary elections, it will still face the gauntlet of a feisty Irish electorate that might not be too keen on institutionalizing budgetary limits into the fabric of the EU, although the threats lurking behind any “No” vote — no further access to EU bailout money and higher interest rates — might well be more disastrous.