Parliamentary Election – finally!

http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1372153/election-september-15th/

So the Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has called for parliamentary (general) election about 2½ hours ago. The election is on Thursday, September 15th – thus only three weeks from now.

There has been press meetings with both PM Løkke and the leader of the opposition, Helle Thorning-Schmidt of the Social Democrats. Thorning-Schmidt had some beautiful points in her speech, generally centered around finding common ground and cooperating across the middle. There has been comments from a lot of politicians, and I find that the best comments have been from politicians from the left wing.

But there still is mudthrowing. I’m not 100 % certain whether or not it’s because I haven’t followed the news as well as I could, but it seems like several politicians are throwing mud at the opposition, thus making them look bad enough to have the voters not wanting to elect the opposition. But listening to politicians from the opposition, I have heard some of them do the exact same thing. In periods it just seems to be throwing mud and pointing fingers across the board – which is the very reason why I can’t take politics seriously and don’t always trust politicians, even within my own party.

As it is right now, the present government believes that they have the responsible solution for our economy – and the opposition will only leave us in uncontrollable debt. But the opposition seems to think the exact same thing: that they have the responsible solution, and the present government will only ruin us in the end.

I have no idea who is right. I’m not an economist. Personally I think it’s very unpredictable (I find that the most trusworthy understandable/agreeable statement on that point came from Bertel Haarder (V) – yeah, I know, that’s actually a surprise coming from me – that, as I understood him, we can’t know whether to invest now or later, depending on whether the economic crisis continues or not). But I think that the statements and comments from the left wing seem to be the most uplifting.

To those who know me, it’s not surprising that my vote will be placed somewhere on the left wing (thus indirectly to Thorning-Schmidt as the first female PM of Denmark). I agree that we should all take part the load – and those who have more should give more. When the present government made their tax cuts, I suddenly had 500 kr. (≈US $97/GB £60/€67) extra available per month – and that’s a lot to a student. But I would go without them in an instant if it meant paying off national debt and better conditions for those who have less than I do (and remember that taxes in Denmark pay for neat stuff like free education and free health care, thus free visits to the doc and the hospitals).

I genuinely do hope for cooperation across the line – I find that the entire block politics, mud-throwing, finger-pointing thing is ridiculous. It’s seen that two parties of each their color have similar opinions of what to do, and instead of focusing on cooperation, people focus on one party stealing the policy/ideaology of the other. I only have two things:

1. Socialist People’s Party or The Red-Green Alliance?
   I’m a member of the former, but find that they have moved towards the middle, thus away from where I stand. Populist much? Oh well. At the same time, though, will the Red-Green Alliance get enough votes to matter? I do want to have a leftist PM!
2. Villy Søvndal as Minister of Foreign Affairs?!
   Villy, honey, you’re the leader of my party, and I have a deep affection for you, but you need to practice your English.

If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch the following video. The speech itself is actually pretty good, and I do think that he gets his point through – but I have seen worse than this (although I’m not certain where).