Ready for vote, bloke?

Tomorrow, the voters in the United Kingdom will head towards the polling station to decide what the next government will be like. Thanks to the single constituency first-past-the-post electoral system, and the surge of the third party, the outcome is anybody's guess.

Considering its declining economic prowess and political influence, the election in the United Kingdom doesn't deserve such attention from the rest of the world. But as the oldest parliamentarian democracy, United Kingdom has amazingly maintained its two-party system for so long. A change seems very likely to come, and it will possibly reshuffle the system once and for all. This will show that whether two-party system is possible in a parliamentary system, which is a very interesting question to think about.

But it is interesting to see that how obsessed the Iranian media are with Britain. Many Iranians still think it is Britain who is ruling the world, and the United States is simply manipulated by their former master. There is a book about how the British prime ministers influenced and manipulated the American foreign policy, but I don't think there are many people who would agree with this.

It seems the Gordon Brown hasn't been greatly affected by his "bigoted woman" comment, which, by the way, is in surprisingly proper but impolite language. This potential disastrous gaffe was followed by his timely apology. Spending one day with a voter he has offended probably is not enough, but it seems that most voters who lean towards Labor, according to the polls, have forgiven him. After all, that woman, who questions Brown why he doesn't stop immigration from Eastern Europe, is quite bigoted.

I was wrong in the last post to say that the internet is playing a huge role in this campaign. It doesn't seem so. Not many candidates have twitter accounts, and those who do only have an average of several hundred followers. The technology is still influencing this election, only in that TV is the new technology for the Brits. In this age, after the success of Tony Blair a decade ago, even for the most reserved British people, young and charmingly handsome politicians with good public speaking skills in front of the camera are the trend of the future leaders.

"Bigoted" woman begot it

For those who care about the UK election, it seems more and more interesting. As one of the first democracies in the world, and the example of political system for many countries, the UK election in this year is quite different, not only because of a possibility of hung parliament, but thanks to the tremendous influence of technology.

Because political aids are restricted limited on TV, online social media and networking websites are playing an unprecedented role, and Gordon Brown, who is ten years senior to the other two major candidates, looks much more clumsily under the never-ending limelight. His comment on a lady (calling her a bigoted woman, BBC) was caught by a microphone on his shirt, and the result is understandably disastrous. This will make the already-gloomy labor prospect even worse. On the contrary, the young, energetic, and multilingual (German, French, Spanish, Dutch plus English) Nick Clegg has taken advantage of the first ever television debate dramatically boosted the chance of his party, and the impact will be sustaining because of the electoral reform which will definitely benefit his party.

Technology does make a difference in politics, doesn't it? For leaders around the world, it's not too late to realize that. For those who can't even check emails (including Mr. John McCain), it's never too late to learn.

Hola? Hola? Hey, greeting to the United Nations

This year's UN General Debate finally ended. This year's conference attracted the most important leaders in the world. Obama did a good job as he spoke in this chamber for the first time. Gordon Brown tried to make himself closer to President Obama. Sarkozy demanded a permanent Security Council seat for African Union. Hu promised to cut CO2. Medvedev suggested Russia could support a fresh sanction against Iran. The only one missing is Chancellor Merkel, who is busy with the election celebration.

Many controversies made this year's conference interesting. Murmarr Qaddafi and Hugo Chavez's long speeches were real fun. Ahmadinejad continued his reputation built last year. Robert Mugabe even made an appeal to lift sanction against his extremely corrupt government. But most important, this year is not a good one for coup leaders.

Madagascar's coup leader arrived in the chamber, but was blocked to speak by African countries in a rare confusion of rule and chaos when the President of General Assembly wasn't sure what to do. The Southern African country bloc succeeded by getting 23 positive votes out of 192 members because the majority of them didn't understand what they are going to vote on and they are yet to receive instruction from the government. This shows African countries' determination to tackle the longstanding history of military coup, but how this could help Madagascar back to normal is anybody's guess.

On Monday, Honduran Foreign Minister used cell phone to let deposed President Zaleya make a speech in front of the world from Brazillian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he sneaked in unnoticed. He definitely is not a popular leader in the world, but he received the support because nobody could accept the way he was forced out of office -- fleeding in pyjamas. What he is doing now actually is worsening the situation, but the international community is in a dilemma of whether to support him. The puzzle of Honduras seems to have just started.

Hey, I took a picture with President Obama!

There was a news orgy about Obama snubbing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in both coasts of the Atlantic. It's said Obama refused to meet with Brown while he had meetings with Hu, Medvedev and other leaders. They questioned the spokespeople for White House and Mr Brown himself. Both governments seemed impatient for those questions and reiterated the special relationship between them.

The media suggested this was a result of U.S. anger over Britian's decision to release to supposedly main plotter of Lockerbie. This is very unlikely that U.S. government would try to display its anger by this kind of ignorance. Expressing disatisfaction to the most important ally can only be done by closed-door way in order not to be explosed to the enemies and the media. An open argument or embarassment would only hurt both sides. And what's more, I believe before releasing the Libyan, UK government had consulted the Obama administration and got a green light, but they simply cannot admit that for fear of angering those victims' families.

This incident also shows how desperate Brown's situation is right now. He is very likely to leave the office in the next election before June 2010. The media would very much like to make fun of this lame duck cabinet. Simply seeing the once-proud British PM trying to maintain his relationship with Pres Obama and claiming they had a meeting even if they only had a short chat and exchanged pleasantries is really funny.

But more importantly, this shows those 24-hour news networks really lacks substantial contents to report. Probably next time they will report the homosexual tendency when Obama spends too much time with David Cameron.