In Greece, both Conservatives and Socialists got punished with heavy losses for the financial mess they created in turn over the last decades; the Socialist actually fell to third place, with the radical leftist party prominent in the public protests of the last months coming in second; they, of course, want to renegotiate the cost-cutting plans forced upon Greece by the EU. Fourth party in parliament will be from the extreme right; it's currently not clear whether the two former governing parties will even have enough seats to form another grand coalition government.
Less surprises in Serbia, where President Tadic and his moderate party are expected to be re-elected; the controversial point is that communities in Serbian-majority Northern Kosovo again participated in the elections in defiance of Pristina's claim to sovereignity. The German-Austrian KFOR operational reserve battalion, deployed last year due to the unrest over the takeover of border checkpoints to Serbia by the Kosovo government and relieved only a couple weeks ago by an Italian force, has been redeployed in anticipation of heightened tensions, leading to complaints about bad planning by soldiers and the Bundestag's defense ombudsman.
Lower on the scale, the Northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein also held elections today, foreshadowing those in Germany's most populous state of Northrhine-Westphalia next week. Preliminary results are bearing out predictions that the rise of the Pirate Party (an outgrowth of the internet generation defying classic left-right definition, in many respects libertarian but also representing that generation's sense of entitlement) makes traditional coalitions within the left and right camp difficult, and grand coalitions might be the order of the coming years. 16 months from national elections, it appears likely that Angela Merkel will stay chancellor next year, but with the Social Democrats instead of the free-market Liberals as junior partner.
Edited by BansheeOne, 06 May 2012 - 1540 PM.
