EU-DIGEST

On the eve of an election that Republicans believe will affirm their growing popularity in Miami-Dade County, Spanish-language social-media influencer Alex Otaola led another of his patented caravans across the county on Saturday, rallying Republicans on behalf of GOP candidates and against Democrats. Otaola, whose Cubanos por el Mundo YouTube channel has 253,000 subscribers, live-streamed the event, held on the final weekend of early voting before the Nov. 8 election. 

He stood halfway through a sunroof at times, shouting “¡Vamos!” through a bullhorn as a parade of cars adorned with American flags and Trump 2024 banners trailed behind him, blaring their horns in the eastbound lanes of Southwest Eighth Street. Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, running for reelection against Colombian-American state Sen. Annette Taddeo, was among the participants. 

She rode inside a brightly colored Colombian Chiva bus and encouraged her supporters to go out to vote early rather than wait for Election Day to cast a ballot. TOP VIDEOS × “It’s very important that people get out to vote,” she said. “It’s the only way ... to cut off the head of the political class that isn’t doing what you need” to address problems like inflation or the rising cost of housing and gasoline.

Monitoring misinformation: What’s being said on Spanish radio in Miami before election? Otaola, whose caravans became fodder for national news during the pandemic and 2020 election — a contest in which former President Donald Trump significantly improved his standing in Miami-Dade County, particularly in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods — called on his viewers during recent shows to participate in what he described as an effort to “save America from communism and socialism.” 

“Say no to negotiations with dictatorships. Say no to open-border policies implemented by the Biden administration and all the insecurities that are all over the American nation,” Otaola said during a brief interview outside the early voting center at the former museum of science in Coconut Grove, where he stopped to take photos with fans at the caravan’s endpoint. 

Social media, influencers are Cuban Americans’ main source of Cuba news, FIU poll finds Critics have blamed Otaola and politicians like Salazar for exaggerating the influence of socialism on the Democratic party. Otaola has accused Democrats of  spreading hateful rhetoric — a charge often lobbed at him by his own detractors, who accuse him of frequently promoting misinformation. Saturday afternoon’s caravan took place one day before Trump is set to rally with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republican officials at the Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition in west Miami-Dade. Republicans believe they’ll continue to improve their performance this year in Miami-Dade County, which has in recent history been a Democratic stronghold for top-of-ticket candidates.

 Hundreds of South Florida Residents joined influencer Alex Otaola on a ”Salvemos America” (Let’s save America) caravan along the streets of Miami from Krome Avenue to Coconut Grove, in support of all Republican candidates On Saturday, November 05, 2022. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com As of Saturday morning, state data showed that Republican voters had cast several thousand more votes than Democrats in Miami-Dade County, due to a strong showing at early voting centers. This article is part of a project on misinformation in Spanish-language media by the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald and researchers at Florida International University. It is funded by Journalism Funding Partners, which received support from the Knight Disinformation Fund at The Miami Foundation. The Miami Herald retains editorial control of the content.

Read the full Miami Herald report at:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article268307547.html

 

Joe Biden wins Democratic nomination for presidential polls 

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Joe Biden officially nominated as party's candidate to take on Donald Trump in November race for White House.

 Trump is growing anxious that the plummeting stock market could cost him his re-election bid, according to the Washington Post. The president ha...

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https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-us-economy-afraid-tanking-stock-market-coronavirus-report-reelection-2020-3-1029024616

A serial liar. A campaign of online disinformation. The risk of foreign meddling. Sound familiar?


Read more: Opinion | Britain’s Dirty Election - The New York Times

Boris Johnson should be careful what he wishes for. The people could reject him - and if they don’t, Brexit will destroy his party, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/28/election-boris-johnson-tories-labour?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Firefox

Boris Johnson has announced he will ask parliament to support plans for a snap October general election after suffering a humiliating defeat in his first House of Commons vote as prime minister.

Former cabinet ministers including Philip Hammond and David Gauke were among 21 Tory rebels who banded together with opposition MPs to seize control of the parliamentary timetable on a dramatic day in Westminster.

The move was aimed at paving the way for a bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Hilary Benn, which is designed to block a no-deal Brexit by forcing the prime minister to request an extension to article 50 if he cannot strike a reworked deal with the EU27.

Johnson lost the vote by 328 to 301, a convincing majority for the rebels of 27.

The PM had earlier described the legislation, drawn up by a cross-party coalition including the senior Tories Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, as “Jeremy Corbyn’s surrender bill”.

After his defeat, Johnson said he would never request the delay mandated in the rebels’ bill, which he said would “hand control of the negotiations to the EU”.

If MPs passed the bill on Wednesday, he said, “the people of this country will have to choose” in an election that he would seek to schedule for 15 October.

Read more at: Boris Johnson suffers Commons defeat as Tories turn against him | Politics | The Guardian

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Britain's new Prime-Minister Boris Johnson suffered the first serious blow to his leadership on Thursday when his ruling Conservative Party lost a seat in Wales, cutting its working majority in parliament to just one.

The seat in Brecon and Radnorshire was won by Jane Dodds, the candidate for the Liberal Democrats, who overturned a majority of more than 8,000 votes to beat Conservative Chris Davies.

The by-election was triggered when 19% of voters signed a recall petition after Davies was convicted over a false expenses claim.

In her acceptance speech, Dodds said her "victory must be a turning point not just for our communities here in Brecon and Radnorshire but for the whole country too."

"My very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Boris Johnson, wherever he's hiding and tell him loud and clear: stop playing with the future of our communities and rule out a no-deal Brexit now," she also said.

Davies came in second with the Brexit Party helmed by Nigel Farage securing the third place. The main opposition labour party, meanwhile, finished fourth.

Several smaller parties including Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Independent Group for Change had decided not to field candidates in order not to split the Remain vote.

Adam Price, leader of Plaid Cymru, said on Twitter on Friday morning that "the single most important thing in this byelection was to put party politics aside, and deliver a pro-Remain MP" and called for People's Vote — or second referendum on Brexit.

"But if Boris Johnson is intent on a general election, he should know that Plaid Cymru and the other pro-Remain parties are committed to cooperating so that we can beat Brexit once and for all," he also wrote.

For Boris Johnson, who stormed to the Prime Ministership in a Conservative leadership contest last week, the election was a first electoral test and ultimately a blow.    

Read More at: Boris Johnson's Commons majority cut to one as Conservatives lose Welsh seat to Liberal Democrats | Euronews

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The Czech Republic's pro-Russia president won a second five-year term Saturday after beating a political newcomer viewed as more Western-oriented in a runoff vote.

With ballots from almost 99 percent of polling stations counted, the Czech Statistics Office said President Milos Zeman had received 51.6 percent of the vote during the two-day runoff election.

His opponent, former Czech Academy of Sciences head Jiri Drahos, had 48.4 percent.
Mr Drahos conceded defeat and congratulated Mr Zeman on Saturday afternoon. The career scientist and chemistry professor said he planned to stay in politics, but did not provide details.
"It's not over," Mr Drahos said.

Mr Zeman, 73, a veteran of Czech politics and former left-wing prime minister, won his first term in 2013 during the Czech Republic's first presidential election decided by voters, not lawmakers.

Read more: Czech Republic: Pro-Russia Zeman wins Czech Republic election  

Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland's new PM

Leader of the Leftist-Green Movement, Katrin Jakobsdottir, will become Iceland's first Green prime minister on Thursday (30 November), after agreeing to form a coalition government with the liberal conservative Independence Party and the centre-right Progressive Party.

Together the three parties hold 35 seats out of 63 in the Althingi, Iceland's parliament.

Two members of the Leftist-Green Movement are set to vote against the coalition in Thursday's parliamentary approval, technically giving the new government only a single-seat majority.

Katrin Jakobsdottir will become the country's first Green prime minister and the only ruling Green PM in the world, following in the footsteps of former Iceland president Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who became the world's first elected woman president in 1980.

Iceland is ranked top by the World Economic Forum as having the smallest gender gap among 144 countries in the world indexed.

The news will come as a welcome message to over 300 women political leaders from around the world meeting in Iceland this week for an annual summit aimed at promoting gender equality inside and outside of the political sphere.

Jakobsdottir, 41, is a former journalist and served as education minister in Iceland's first left-leaning government which took power after the country's 2008 economic collapse.

In a recent poll 49.5 percent said that they preferred her to become the next prime minister.

Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the Independence Party and outgoing prime minister, will become finance and economy minister in the new Icelandic government, a position he held between 2013-2016, before becoming prime minister.

The deal comes four weeks after snap elections were called in October, when a scandal involving PM Benediktsson's father prompted a government ally to drop out of his ruling coalition - after less than a year in government.

Increased taxes on capital gains, maternity and paternity leave, and infrastructure development are among the key issues for the new government.

The Left-Greens want to finance spending by raising taxes on the wealthy, real estate and the powerful fishing industry, while the Independence Party has said it wants to fund new infrastructure by selling state-owned shares in the country's banks.

Iceland was hard hit during the financial crisis when all three of the country's major privately owned commercial banks defaulted in 2008.

Now the Nordic country is experiencing an economic boom driven by record tourist arrivals, leading to shortage of labour and Icelandic workers demanding pay rises.

Note EU-Digest: Iceland is on the right track and can be an example to many other countries,specially when it comes to closing the gender gap  around the world.

Read more: Iceland gets first Green prime minister

In Britain the Conservatives have recognised this more consistently than have their opponents, though the left in the Twentieth Century had a readily demonisable, and readily demonised, target in Margaret Thatcher. In campaigning attacks the Conservatives have gone for the player, not the ball, and still have as well a residue of ruling class disdain for anyone who lies outside either their own charmed circle or beyond the frontiers of currently dominant narratives and ideology. Even to wear the ‘wrong’ clothes can provoke a sneer. They have concentrated on personal attacks on potential rivals, and on presenting a narrative of their opponents as marginal, untypical, out of touch with the mass of voters. This story, like the story about markets, liberal economics, and austerity, has been sustained by the power of ideological carpet bombing, and the marginalisation of alternatives in the tyranny of received opinion.

This goes a long way to explaining one of the many curious features of the 2017 General Election. When the decision to go to the country was made, the predominant media narrative was of a Labour Party doomed to virtual extinction, massively behind in the polls, likely to virtually disappear from parliamentary politics. And if nothing changed, and the current narrative were both correct and unchallenged, that would be true. But things do change, choices are made, and the impossible becomes possible by someone choosing ‘unrealistic’ policies and making ‘unrealistic’ claims and giving ‘out of date’ or (and that’s the alternative) ‘fantastic’ narratives.

But once campaigning began, something happened which took this dominant and pervasive account by surprise. Up until then, the prevailing account of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been of an unrealistic, extremist, out of touch and old-fashioned.

Once the campaign began, and some account had to be given of the Labour manifesto, and some reporting on the Labour leader’s speeches, it was difficult for a predominantly right wing media entirely to ignore Corbyn, whose values and aims – a simple rejection of austerity on both moral and economic grounds, a belief in the central importance of properly funded public services from health to railways, a rejection of a taxation system which let large corporations off lightly and prioritized making thing better for the wealthy – suddenly seemed sensible and modest not just to actual and potential Labour voters, but to ordinary citizens beyond the left. Corbyn slowly but transformingly was presented and could be seen as someone who, at last, attacked an entire system of privilege and inequality and extreme economic ideologies. He was no longer the impractical leader of an out of date party, but a champion of public services in health, education, and transport, services which were valued by ordinary voters, the many not the few, and a fundamental context for their wellbeing. A manifesto which had been anticipated as a recipe for disaster became the prospectus of a party which seemed every day to narrow the gap.

Read more: mThe UK General Election: Tales of the unexpected | Euronews

The combined results of the EU-Digest and Almere-Digest Poll on the question : Is the election of Donald Trump good for the EU  which ran from the day Donald Trump was declared the winner of the US Presidential Election was closed on January 27 showed skepticism in Europe about Donald Trumps election as it relates to the EU..

Only 2 % of those polled considered his election favorable for the EU, while 78 % polled considered it unfavorable,. 10 % had no opinion either way and another 10% had a variety of opinions ranging from extremely critical to neutral -"wait and see".

EU-Digest
 

Chancellor Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has won reelection as the leader of the Christian Democratic Union.

It will be her ninth term as chairwoman.

The only candidate in the running, Merkel gained 89.5 percent of the votes cast at the CDU congress – her worst result as chancellor and her second-worst performance in a vote concerning her.

Ahead of the ballot, she made an effort to appease the conservative wing of the party.

“We do not want any parallel societies, and where they exist we have to tackle them. Our laws have priority over honor codes, tribal and family rules, and over Sharia law…

That also means that with inter-personal communication, which plays a crucial role, we show our face. This is why the full-face veil is not appropriate and should be outlawed wherever it is legally possible – it does not belong to us.”

Read more: Germany's CDU reelects Angela Merkel leader with lowest support since she became chancellor

With days to go until general elections, the fairness of Turkey's voting system has come under international scrutiny. When compared with other democracies, the Turkish voting system appears to be designed to leave underdogs in the lurch.

The British daily newspaper The Guardian reported that Turkey had "the world's most unfair election system." This was based on the fact that a 10 percent threshold kept smaller political movements from entering parliament - forfeiting dozens of seats to their rivals under the country's d'Hondt voting system, which allocates parliamentary seats proportionally according to vote totals.

The Guardian's primary criticism is that Turkey only allocates seats to parties that win at least 10 percent of the vote.

Though such a barrier is not exclusive to Turkey, 10 percent is the highest threshold of its kind. German politics employ a 5 percent threshold, and many other countries - the United Kingdom, France and Portugal among them - don't feature any such hurdle.

The Turkish voting system is also regarded as unjust for facilitating minority governments. Under certain circumstances, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) could manage to gain a majority of parliamentary seats with merely 45 percent of the popular vote, in which case the wishes of 55 percent of the electorate could effectively be ignored.

These guidelines could create an unpredictable outcome at Sunday's polls. While AKP has managed to grow support in its 13-year-reign, taking full advantage of the 10 percent threshold, the latest polls suggest that its luck may change. The Konda Research and Consultancy institute in Istanbul gave the party of President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu only about 41 percent of the vote.

Read more: Turkey′s election system the ′most unfair′ in the world | News | DW.DE | 04.06.2015

 Voting has closed in the UK’s tightest general election in decades. Exit polls suggest The Conservatives will come out on top, with a predicted 316 seats. Labour are expected to come out second, on 239 and the Scottish SNP third, with some 58 seats.

Read more: [LIVE] #GE2015: exit polls suggest Conservatives will win but without a majority | euronews, world news