Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Election news

Excellent news in Sunday's European parliament elections, with both Vadim Tudor's bunch of far right extremists and Gigi Becali's even nuttier bunch failing to get enough votes to get into Strasbourg. Turnout was pretty low, except amongst Hungarians it seems, who turned out in enough numbers to support both the UDMR list and "reformed bishop" Tőkés László (standing as an indepedent) in enough numbers to get them both representation. In Csikszereda, the figures showed that Tőkés actually did slightly better than the UDMR in the towns, but was outvoted in the outlying villages, which might have some significance (Tőkés tends to be somewhat more nationalist in his rhetoric than the UDMR).

Anyway, it was a good result all round really. Vadim Tudor has even quit the leadership of the PRM, but he has done before, so I suspect his slimy loathesome presence has not entirely vanished from the Romanian political scene.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes. And the opinion of the (possibly unrepresentative sample of) forward-thinking Romanians I know seems to agree with you. Tokes, also a nationalist, is of course not exactly trusted; but at least he is a figurehead of the new direction this country has taken, and may have some linguistic ability that'll be of use in Strasbourg.