Well, too much opportunism is not something suitable for prime minister, although
OK for some small party or some odd politicians with little responsibility and power.
This was first time with a new constitutional system for forming the government, the party
with most votes will be the first to make an attempt, coalition,etc.
Earlier the process was started by the president negotiating (or not) with the parties to
reach a consensus and support from the parliement. (slightly difficult mechanisms
for 2-party systems which do not have this process)
That is, the prime minister could earlier be any experienced politician from a majority
coalition, but now the election turned into a "prime minister election" as two of our regular, major
parties were clearly very close, appr 25% (center and dems). Earlier +/- 1-2% would
have had less drastic results.
The center party "attacked" from a position of the opposition to the earlier government,
and unluckily somebody decided to "play it dirty", mix foreign policy with domestic
policies. What was worse, use, or actually abuse, some confidential documents and
somehow hoping to get away with it..
That is, it is one thing that top leaders know "confidential stuff", another thing to use it
for attacking others, especially the last few days before the election.
Technically and linguistically it was a question of two variations on selecting words
- did the old gvmt support Bush in terms of Iraq, or
- did the old gvmt support UN, and thus indirectly Bush (as long as he had the support of UN)
Hopefully such cheap tricks won't be used for another generation politicians??
(OK for domestic politics, but not very smart playing tricks with very important
foreign policy issues)
Ilmarinen
PS In terms of "legal lies" one could claim it was a question of playing tricks with undefined
sentences, what that "it" was when used in that specific sentence and was "it" a fact
only "that" afternoon, the whole day or for many weeks...
However, sad that our first female prime minister would mess up like this
(while our first female president has a support of something like 85% of the
population) |
