Archive for December, 2009:

The Concertación (C)—the Concert of Parties for Democracy—the broad electoral coalition of center-left parties that defeated the military regime in Chile in a plebiscite called in 1987 by strongman Augusto Pinochet to determine whether or not he should remain in power, is in serious trouble of losing La Moneda in the December 13th elections as a result of three undeniable reasons: 1) the unappealing candidacy of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle its presidential hopeful 2) the erosion over time of a sustaining raison d’être for a coalition that has held power for two decades, a stretch longer than t…

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On the eve of the second round of presidential elections in Romania, the New York Times dedicates the article “Grim Romanians Brighten Over a German Connection” to the presumptive next prime-minister, Klaus Johannis, the mayor of Sibiu, a mid-sized Transylvanian city that has enjoyed an unlikely era of prosperity under his two successive mandates. Johannis is actually not German, but a Translylvanian Saxon, but that difference is of little importance to Romanians who have always been in awe of German efficiency, prosperity and orderliness, a fascination manifested main…

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