Skip to main content

Europe walks a tightrope ( thehindu)



As 2016 draws to a close after Brexit in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., it is tempting to label it the Year of Resurgent Nationalism. Yet in its dying gasp the global season of elections has produced two surprise results, in Austria and Italy, which give pause. Last weekend Austria rejected far-right candidate Norbert Hofer in its presidential election, instead placing confidence in Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Green Party who has said he would be an “open-minded, liberal-minded and above all a pro-European president.” In Italy a more mixed result was delivered, with voters resoundingly defeating a referendum driven by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to change Italy’s constitution by reducing the numbers and power of the Senate. While some in Italy’s political right have seized upon the result as a big victory for anti-establishment forces, the vote defies the simplistic narrative of a “populist revolt against globalisation and elites” that has been applied elsewhere. It is evident that the focus of the vote was Mr. Renzi’s own record in office and the relative merits of the constitutional reforms he was proposing, which also explains why he resigned. The debates leading up to the vote, similarly, hardly touched upon burning issues such as immigration writ large in Britain or America. Instead they thrashed out questions on the potential of the reforms to be anti-democratic and capable of altering in-built constitutional checks and balances.

Despite the election outcomes in Europe being at odds with the broader global surge in pro-majoritarian national politics, there is one common thread that binds the two: a hatefully bitter polarisation of the electorate of each country. In Italy, while the opposition to Mr. Renzi’s plans came from mainstream political figures, including members of his Democratic Party, former prime ministers and academics and judges, the far right Northern League and the Five Star Movement left an indelible mark on the No campaign. These groups and their anti-immigrant rhetoric have thus received a boost. In Austria the flip side of Mr. Van der Bellen’s win was that Mr. Hofer’s Freedom Party managed to pull in some 2.2 million votes despite standing stoutly against the Social Democrats, the Popular Party and the Green Party, besides several among the establishment media. The fact that French far-right leader Marine Le Pen assured Mr. Hofer that he would win the next legislative election is a signal of confidence in the power of the rising anti-establishment mood. As the divide between “elites” and “the forgotten man and woman” widens, the need to rethink liberal politics has become imperative.
Post a C
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

"ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »