lol, nice one. However,they didn't exactly elect a socialist president, things don't work like that in mainland europe. The socialist party won and was the biggest party after the elections, but they didn't win with an absolute majority (like the Partido Popular had before) so they'll need support from other parties to come in power. After the elections the biggest party can make the "first step" in the negotiations with other parties in order to make a coalition which will grant them a majority. But, it's absolutely possible that the biggest party doesn't get to govern.* Usually the biggest party delivers the president/prime minister as a matter of tradition, but it's also imagineable that a smaller party gives up a LOT of power just to be able to deliver the PM/president.** Mostly with populist parties that.



*In my city, for example, there's a far-right party which is at large the biggest party. (33%) However, since most of the other "larger" parties refuse to negotiate with them they are being systematically pushed out of the city council by a coalition of just about all the other parties ("rainbow-coalition") socialists (19%), liberals (17%), conservatives (11%), nationalists (3%) and green party (11%) all govern together. Really hard to agree over things obviously, but it is possible.

**In Holland for example, there was the party of the populist Pim Fortuyn. He was shot just before the actual elections, but he often said that he'd trade a whole lot of minister posts in exchange for that he'd become prime minister instead.


w00t, i felt like talkiiiiiiing. So bored.

Heh, Fortuyn wanted to be president. It would have been a good idea to trade those seats, because the rest of his party were henchmen, Fortuyn was the party.
I think the Belgian approach to extremists is wrong, when we bought Fortuyn's party in the government, they were gone in a few months. Maybe that's worth a try in Antwerp too.

I dunno really, on the one hand i agree but on the other it ain't the same eh, like you said, the LPF was actually already disbanded with the murder of Fortuyn. The Vlaams Blok is a well-structured party with strong party discipline and a history, LPF was a bunch of dorks with a charismatic leader that exploded out of nothing.

I can't remember how the CD (Centre Democrats) were handled, it was before my time, but I believe it was treated like a normal party, and nothing is left of it either (it's leader is dead now but th CD's demise came ealier).

hehe, i never even heard of them, so i guess they're from a while back yeah. I'll try and find some stuff on them on the net.