RSS 2.0 FeedApril 2010 Vol 12, Featured Articles, UK and Europe
What the foreign press is saying about the UK's coalition talks
How does the foreign media view Gordon Brown's resignation and the backroom deals to form a new government in Britain?
Politics hasn't been this much fun since the fall of Thatcher. And it's not just Britain that is enjoying the spectacle. Foreign journalists have been relishing the unfolding drama with a mixture of delight and disbelief.
The shenanigans in Westminster have been seized upon in Zimbabwe by president Robert Mugabe's mouthpiece, the Herald.
When Mugabe clung to power in a disputed election two years ago, Gordon Brown was one of his harshest international critics. Now Mugabe's supporters in the Herald have decided that it is Zimbabwe's turn to lecture the British.
"The mother of all elections in the United Kingdom is showing us the darkest side of democracy," writes Nomagugu M'simang. He adds:
Isn't it ironic that Gordon Brown, who has called President Mugabe names over the years, has suddenly forgotten that he is supposed to vacate No 10 Downing Street in order to give room to the new prime minister ... Are they still willing to export democratic values, and who in their right senses would accept to be lectured by them?
In a similar vein Nathaniel Manheru wrote:
Let Britain know today that democracy can create real governance headaches. Not because it is being implemented by Robert Mugabe or some such third world leader, but because it itself expresses human imperfections. Voters can be fickle.
Peter Ganya, writing for the Herald from London, focused on the trouble at the polling stations.
From widespread allegations of postal-vote fraud, to the hugely unreliable electoral register, to the scenes of mutiny outside polling stations that were closed before hundreds had cast their ballots, the vote was a total slap in the face of the self-serving British politicians.The Daily Nation in Kenya, where there was a disputed election in 2008, carried a cartoon of Britain's political leaders being given a talking to by the former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.
"When it comes to coalition government, don't be ashamed to borrow from your former colonies like Kenya," says the speech bubble from Annan's mouth.
Malaysia's New Straits Times likens Britain's political leaders to contestants in a game show.
Its spoof commentary says:
Wow. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is quite a stalemate. When we come back, more public posturing, more secret meetings, more toing and froing. Just how will this all end? Who will be prime minister? Will there be a revival of the House of Windsor? Stay tuned, and grab a soda; this might take a while.
Hasan Suroor, writing in India's the Hindu, is struck by the position of Nick Clegg.
Were it not for a hung parliament which has catapulted him into the position of a kingmaker, Mr Clegg would have struggled to keep his job. Some of his predecessors were sacked for lesser offences. He has been forced to acknowledge the party's pathetic performance but has blamed it on the quirks of the current first-past-the-post system.Theodore Dalrymple for Canada's Globe and Mail is unimpressed with David Cameron:
Mr. Cameron is the apotheosis of public relations, the opinion poll made flesh ... Compared with mere truth, the focus group has seemed to him a fount of profundity. The only consolation to be derived from the election is that ... millions of people have understood both the appalling incompetence of Mr Brown and the insufficiency of the focus group as a guide to life.
As "an outsider" Peter Hartcher, international editor for the Sydney Morning Herald, argues the British electorate weren't brave enough to smash Gordon Brown in the polls. He says the result has left Britain living in "suspended reality".
Iain Martin, blogging for the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, is worried how about investors will be viewing the "farce" of Brown's attempt to "stay on" by resigning.
"One can only conclude that Britain – or much of its governing class – has lost its collective marbles in the face of an economic crisis," he writes.
But EJ Dionne in the Washington Post is fascinated, saying:
Britain is offering the world a live seminar on some of the most important questions of democratic theory and practice. What's happening is a test not only of Nick Clegg but also of whether popular middle-ground politicians have the nerve and clarity to make hard and inconvenient decisions, even if they cost them their purity.
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