Sunday, February 27, 2011

The winner of the elections in Ireland renegotiate the EU rescue

"The bailout is bad for Ireland and bad for the EU." So said last night the leader of the center-right Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, winner of parliamentary elections on Friday according to exit polls and partial vote count. With nearly 80% of the 166 declared seats in play, the Fine Gael get 59 deputies, followed the Labour Party (31), the ruling Fianna Fail (14), Sinn Féin (13) and numerous independent candidates and minor parties ( 14).

The results confirm the collapse of the Fianna Fáil, the dominant party in Irish politics since independence, punishable by a deep economic and financial crisis in the country for three years. The Irish also have hit his partner in government, the Greens, who have lost six seats they had.

Voters have turned on Fianna Fáil largely responsible for a crisis that has ended the Celtic Tiger economic miracle and culminating in the rescue operation launched by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The rescue has been experienced as a humiliation in a country particularly sensitive to issues related to national sovereignty and that less than 100 years ago was part of the UK.

So, in an appearance last night after will confirm your victory, Enda Kenny, said that next week will initiate contacts with community partners to try to renegotiate parts of the agreement. "Europe must take the message of our electorate," said Kenny, and recognize that the terms of the bailout are "bad for Ireland and for Europe," Efe reported.

In his view, the future government will have "some leeway" to modify the interest rates to be paid by Ireland to repay the loan offered to the rescue, valued at 85,000 million euros. The most dubious victory is unquestionable and Fine Gael Enda Kenny will be the next Taoiseach (Prime Minister).

But given the complexity of the Irish electoral system, in which voters ranked the candidates according to their preferences and the seats are not attributed to the candidates they met the necessary quota in each constituency, made it very difficult to know if the Fine Gael will govern alone with the support of some independents or be forced to negotiate a coalition with Labour.

Both the percentage of first preference votes of the poll as projections of seats (between 72 and 75, far from an absolute majority in a chamber of 166 seats), the coalition became the most likely scenario. But the leaders of Fine Gael yesterday did not rule that transfers of votes were approached by an absolute majority.

Some analysts attribute the Labour Party 38 seats, Sinn Féin and 15 to less than 20 to Fianna Fáil, who won the 2007 elections with 77 members, followed by Fine Gael (51), Labour Party (20), Greens (6) Sinn Féin (4), Progressive Democrats (2) and independent (5), besides the speaker or president of the chamber, which also was the Fianna Fáil vote but only if we have to break a tie.

These figures varied along the legislature after defections and elections. The collapse of the Fianna Fail, which in 2007 got 42% of the votes and has led 19 of the last 26 Governments of Ireland, was particularly marked in the capital Dublin, where their votes could have fallen to 8%, according to polls , and the party could retain only one of the 13 seats it had until now, the Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan.

Labour seem to have passed in Dublin on 33% of the votes, ahead of Fine Gael (27%), and have doubled over 2007 votes in the whole country.

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