Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud is projected to place first in Israel’s parliamentary election with 31 to 33 seats, down from 37.
Yamina, a new right-wing party led by former economy minister Naftali Bennett, would hold the balance of power in the new Knesset with seven or eight seats, according to exit polls.
61 seats are needed for a majority. Read more “Netanyahu Rival Would Be Kingmaker in New Knesset”
Talks to form a coalition government are underway in the Netherlands, where Prime Minister Mark Rutte won the election on Wednesday but fell short of an overall majority.
Four parties will be needed to form a government. Rutte’s right-liberal VVD (of which I am a member) and Trade Minister Sigrid Kaag’s left-liberal D66 would be needed in almost any combination. The two have 58 seats. 76 are needed for majority. Read more “Liberal Parties Look for Allies in Netherlands”
Two days after parliamentary elections in the European Netherlands, voters on Curaçao, one of the three autonomous Dutch islands in the Caribbean, went to the polls on Friday.
The result was a resounding victory for the populist Movement for the Future of Curaçao (MFK), led by Gilmar Pisas, which won nine out of 21 seats in the island Estates. Read more “Curaçao Election Result Will Set Off Alarm Bells in Netherlands”
Catalonia’s separatist parties, which won a majority in last month’s election, have taken the first step to forming a regional government.
The Republican Left, the formerly center-right Together for Catalonia — which now presents itself as a big tent — and the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) have divided up five of the seven seats on the presidium of the new parliament, with the speakership going to Together’s Laura Borràs.
The Republican Left, the biggest party for the first time since the Civil War, has its eyes on the regional presidency. Read more “Catalan Separatists Close In on Post-Election Deal”
The Dutch government has intervened on Curaçao to break what it described as an “antidemocratic” impasse on the island.
The government of what is nominally an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands had requested the intervention to reconstitute the island legislature. “At the moment,” Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath said earlier this week, “democracy isn’t functioning on Curaçao as it should be.”
All ten opposition lawmakers refused to attend virtual meetings of the Estates, denying the ruling parties, who also have ten seats, a quorum to swear in a tie-breaking deputy: Emmilou Capriles, who succeeds Jeser El Ayoubi.
The Dutch government has now appointed Capriles by decree.
The same opposition lawmakers tried to use the death of a ruling party lawmaker to bring down the government last summer. They failed, but not before encouraging riots. Read more “Dutch Intervene to Break Stalemate in Curaçao Legislature”
Pro-independence parties are projected to defend their majority in the Catalan parliament on Sunday, but the regional branch of Spain’s ruling Socialist Party could place first in the election.
The Catalan Socialists, led by former health minister Salvador Illa, who resigned from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ cabinet two weeks ago to campaign, are polling at 21-23 percent, up from 14 percent in the last regional election and 20.5 percent in the last national election.
The Socialists and their allies in the far-left Podemos (We Can), who have 6-8 percent support, oppose Catalan independence but do want to give the region more autonomy. Although talks about transferring more power to Barcelona are still on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read more “Three-Way Race for First Place in Catalonia”
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has tendered his government’s resignation to King Willem-Alexander.
With only two months to go before elections, and the government remaining in a caretaker capacity to manage the coronavirus crisis, the resignation is largely symbolic.
But smaller parties in Rutte’s coalition felt they had to take responsibility for what an inquiry described as an “unprecedented injustice” in the tax service, which wrongly accused more than 20,000 families of fraud.
Lodewijk Asscher, who was the responsible minister in charge of social affairs in the last government, stepped down as leader of the now-opposition Labor Party on Thursday. Read more “Dutch Government Falls Over Child Benefits Scandal”
Joe Biden is planning to ask Congress for $1.9 trillion in the first weeks of his presidency to cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Matthew Yglesias and Punchbowl News, a new Capitol Hill-focused newsletter, have the details:
1,001 party delegates will elect the next leader of Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in a digital congress on Saturday.
The winner will succeed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the defense minister, who succeeded Angela Merkel in 2018. Merkel stepped down as party leader, but not chancellor, that year. Kramp-Karrenbauer quit two years later. She never approached Merkel’s popularity in the polls, nor her authority in the party.
Merkel’s approval rating is approaching 90 percent, but she is not seeking a fifth term. Whoever is elected CDU leader on Saturday will be the party’s presumptive chancellor candidate for the election in September (the Christian Democrats are polling at 35-37 percent), but that is not a given. Read more “German Christian Democrats to Elect Merkel’s Successor”
