Canada's election campaign goes on apace, with The Green leader getting into the debates, but looking not to win any seats at all (not even her own) and the Tories (New Conservative Party) making an alarming surge in some of the polls. The Chief Whip in the British Labour party has been fired for announcing she's going to try to unseat Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the Prime Minister of Thailand has been fired by the Supreme Court for appearing on a cooking show (he got paid for it). Then our buddies Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are making silly gestures which might come back to haunt them.
More below the fold...
"The Canadian Press-Harris-Decima survey put the Tories at 41 per cent support, with the Liberals well back at 26 per cent..." For those who care anything about the rest of the world, this is a scary number. With Four and a half national parties getting enough support to make a difference, it's possible a mere 38-41% will give Steven Harper enough seats to win a majority government. With three leftist parties acting as a counterbalance, Harper hasn't been able to get anything bad done. With a majority, the West might be able to do all sorts of things... However the Harris poll might be an outlier.
In Great Britain, The government has a huge majority but is still on very shaky ground. Chief Whip Siobhan McDonagh, who's job it is to keep the back benchers in line, demanded that a leadership election take place and was promptly fired. Her firing was expected and justified (you don't want the opposition running the show for you), but McDanagh has a lot of support among the rank and file on this particular issue, as Labour has been getting creamed in all the by elections since Prime Minister Brown took over and they're way behind in the polls. The Annual convention technically will elect a leader, but a number of dissidents have complained that they haven't received the forms for said election. Seventy one signatures are necessary to trigger one.
It seems silly, doesn't it? The Prime Minister of Thailand being removed by the Supreme court for appearing on a cooking show. However there's something sinister going on. Prime Minster Samak Sundaravej, the leader of the People Power Party, is extremely popular with the people in general, but not with the powers that be, who have hired a number of mobs to stage a revolution. Generally, this doesn't work in Thailand, where the military reserves the sole right to do that sort of thing (there was a coup a couple of years back, which is how Samak got in in the first place). With the PPP having a large majority in parliament, elections for a new PM are stymied by a boycott of the session by the governing coalition, which was set to reelect Samak. This is a perfect time for Cambodia, which has had some border problems, to threaten war. Who says democracies don't fight each other?
To the Northeast, Japan's oxymoronic "Liberal Democratic party" is a week away from it's Presidential election, the winner of which is to automatically become Prime Minister. The front runner, former foreign minister Taro Aso, favors having a general election on October 26th. This could be a disaster for the LDP, which is behind in the polls.
The chances of Israel having a second woman prime minister as of next week are excellent. Tzippi Livini is well ahead in the polls.
Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark has called elections for November the eighth. She's expected to lose.