Portugal limps into election that could tilt EU further to the right

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Portugal goes to the polls on Sunday under the yoke of a painful €78bn bailout and with socialist prime minister José Sócrates set to become yet another leftwing casualty of Europe's economic crisis.

Polls this week showed the opposition centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) of Pedro Passos Coelho between five and eight points ahead as Portuguese voters choose a government to see them through dire economic times.

Passos Coelho is expected to seek the support of the rightwing Democratic Social Centre (CDS) party to form a government if predictions that the two parties will jointly win almost 50% of votes prove true.

If Socrates is ejected the 27-member European Union will be left with five left-led governments: in Spain, Greece, Slovenia, Austria and Cyprus. Spain's socialists suffered a 10 percentage point defeat in municipal elections last month, suggesting they will also lose power at a general election due by March.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/03/portugal-election-poll-leftwing-exit

[LiberalLovinLug]

1. The Right have learned from the past

Since they mostly control the flow of wealth in a country, its not too difficult to get their stooges in office.
When/If miraculously a left leaning government is voted in the establishment goes into action...or inaction. They stop investing in jobs and new plants etc...in their home country at least, instead if they do have money to expand they either horde it, or do it in third world countries with business friendly labor and environmental laws. Meanwhile they "downsize" at home claiming to be victims of the very same downturn that they have a part in fomenting.

All the time they shout on corporate friendly media networks how the country needs Conservatives in power to steer the country back to economic stability because the lefties are so obviously incompetent.

In Canada it played out brilliantly for them. Con Prime Minister Harper now has gone from a minority to a majority government. The recent world economic problems largely have evaded Canada. Mostly to do with the previous Liberal governments rules and regulations on Banks and the investment community. Of course Harper takes credit, even though if he had been in power in the decade before he would have slashed regulations much like BushCo. and Canada would be in dire straights. But hey, he's a Conservative. He gets a pass because EVERYONE knows how adept Conservatives are at managing the business side of the economy....at least that's the perpetual myth that astonishingly gets regurgitated no matter what the evidence shows. Because of this, people get scared into, sometimes holding their noses to do it, voting for politicians that rob them while assuring them that the voting in the other side would be a disaster. And in effect they are right, because they make sure of it.

I don't know how to fight that. Its rather depressing. This shift to the right has been moving forward for a long time now. Cheney and Rove may have been wrong about a permanent Republican majority, but they have achieved basically the same thing. In America and abroad corporate dictated governments are increasing and those that were once more moderate are bending further to the right to accommodate them. ie. the Democratic Government in the US