Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Danes Are Voting

The latest word on the Danish elections comes from Steen: he says that VKO, the ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is leading in the exit polls.

Steen is at an election results party this evening, with other Danish bloggers, a wide-screen TV, and draught beer. I wish I could be there…


Yesterday Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, wrote in his PJMedia column about the election and the part that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid plays in it:

The strange alliance between the left and reactionary Muslims has taken center stage in the campaign leading up to tomorrows national elections for a new parliament in Denmark.

Asmaa Abdol-HamidAsmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 25 year old social worker and islamist, is running for the extreme left wing party Enhedslisten. Last year she was behind a lawsuit against Jyllands-Posten trying to have the newspaper indicted for blasphemy after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

I wonder how many leftists since the birth of socialism as a political movement have been involved in lawsuits against people offending the Christian faith? Not many, I gather.

If elected, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid will be the first Muslim woman wearing the veil to address Denmark’s parliament. At the same time, citing her faith, she refuses to shake hands with individuals of the other sex. When a female leader of the party was asked how she would react if a man refused to shake hands with her, she insisted that she would welcome it. Fortunately, this kind of hypocrisy is obvious to quite a few people on the left, and in opinion polls the party has dropped below the minimum 2 pct. of the votes required for representation in parliament.

[…]

The imam Abdul Wahid-Pedersen, who used to defend the practice of killing adulterous women by stoning, but nevertheless has been labeled “moderate”, has called on his fellow believers to vote for Asmaa Abdol-Hamid.

Here is what he wrote back in 2002 about the practice of stoning in Nigeria:
- - - - - - - - -
“The people has by majority decided to implement Islamic law, and the rest of the world therefore has to accept it. I agree that stoning is a cruel punishment, but it doesn’t change the fact that according to Islam the practise has been ordained by our Creator. We are not in a position to change this. Things that are stated unambiguously in the Koran or by the Prophet Mohammed are not open to debate among Muslims. The moment we would accept to discuss these matters, we at the same time would have declared that we do not believe in Allah and his messenger and in doing so we would have put ourselves outside Islam.”

Nice quote. What a moderate, what a liberal!

In the comments on his column, one Safia Aoude takes Mr. Rose to task for being “angry that Muslims participate in the political affairs of society”, which is an interesting take on what he had to say.

A vote for Asmaa is a vote for Al-Qaeda!
“A vote for Asmaa is a vote for Al-Qaeda!”


Steen sent me a reference to an article from Denmark’s TV-2 about the role of Muslim’s in today’s election. Our Danish correspondent TB was kind enough to help me understand the gist of it:

About the article Steen sent you, the most important point is this:

Direktøren for analysebureauet Epinion, Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, forklarer, at indvandrere næsten ikke figurerer i meningsmålinger og dermed kan udgøre en usikkerhed i forhold til målingernes resultater. “I princippet er det en gruppe, der er underrepræsenteret i meningsmålinger, og som på den måde kan udgøre en reserve,” siger Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen.

Han vurderer, at de manglende indvandrere i målingerne kan udgøre en forskel på omkring én procent i det samlede billede.


TRANSLATION:

The leader of Epinion [a bureau analyzing the voters], Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, explains that immigrants almost never participate in the polls and thereby contribute to some uncertainty in connection with the results of the analysis. “In principle it is a group which is underrepresented in the polls, and in that way they can constitute a reserve,” says Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen.

He estimates that the missing immigrants in the polls can consists a difference of the magnitude of around 1% in the big picture.

In other words, a heavy Muslim turnout today could swing the outcome towards Enhedslisten and the hard Left.

Stay tuned. I’ll be reporting the results as they come in this evening, assuming that my Viking contacts remain reasonably sober…

13 comments:

FluffResponse said...

GatesofVienna (also known as Internet Free Europe) does great work. Am looking forward to further details on the Danish election.

John Wheelock said...

The left and liberals no longer stand for human rights and freedom. They only stand for a distortion of reality and appeasement to any culture or ideology so they can prevent facing real world problems and focus on universal health care.

http://grizzlymountain.blogspot.com/

kepiblanc said...

Phew.....

Henrik R Clausen said...

The result so far (it's almost final) is pretty good. There's no doubt that the government can continue, Dansk Folkeparti advances slightly (that's much better than the polls), and Khaders party gets a meager 5 seats.

There is no swing to the hard left (Enhedslisten). Probably, most of the real communists turned to the softer Socialistisk Folkeparti, because they see a candidate with a strong religious background as a betrayal of hard-left ideals.

At the moment, Enhedslisten is to get four seats, but there's a narrow margin towards falling out completely. Even if they stay in, the current conservative government can continue.

That's a lot better than the polls. We're tired and fine :)

carpenter said...

As it appears now (Danmarks Radio, the current VKO (Venstre-Konservative-Dansk Folkeparti) gets 89 seats, which is one (1) from remain in charge with no support of Ny Alliance. That mandate, VKO can expect to get from Greenland or the Faroe Islands (who together have 4 seats represented).
To all appearances, our beloved south-west neighbor can remain in sanity - for at least 4 more years (which we in Sweden are far from, but I won't spoil these good news!)

Conservative Swede said...

23.35 from Politiken:
http://politiken.dk/politik/article428174.ece

Anders Fogh Rasumsen "opens up" for inviting Khader's party to negotiations for the new government coalition, even before the number crunching in completed. Even before it's clear that it's necessary.

Conservative Swede said...

Rasmussen is truly a politician. Suggesting a government coalition including both Khader's party and DPP, is almost like suggesting a coalition that is a square circle. Rasmussen knows this of course. But what does the matter to a politician? He will claim he tried his best to get a "broad coalition", and he will appear open minded and generous, and all that "crêpe".

This also shows that Rasumssen and Venstre won't be doing the right thing unless pushed in the right direction, by enough voters voting for DPP.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Funny thing this with the Khader party being 'against' DPP. I'm in DPP, and talked to various people from the Khader party. They're basically sensible blokes, and we can agree on a lot of stuff, like the all-important 24-year rule.

The talk of pushing us out is a bit childish. We're advancing slightly, will be 5X larger than the Khader party, and will be fine.

FluffResponse said...

the BBC repeats what a previous poster said about being 1 vote shy of an absolute majority:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7091941.stm

kepiblanc said...

Fluff, that's because the counting isn't over due to the different time zones. We expect two additional mandates = majority.

Anonymous said...

Congrats to our Danish comrades on this marvelous showing by the Danish People's Party. As I view the results, I am struck by two things:

1) As in Holland, it appears that as support for a forthrightly conservative and nationalistic party that speaks openly of the Islamist/immigrant threat grows, an almost identical growth occurs in its direct opposite on the left, with both the traditional centre-right and center-left parties losing support. If this continues, we end up with a "center cannot hold" situation, with forthright nationalists on one side and internationalist socialists and their Muslim allies on the other. That outcome is not bad for nationalists....

2) As an American, and specifically as someone who grew up steeped in California politics and elections, I am just constantly amazed at how small these vote totals are!

It reminds me how relatively small nations such as Denmark are..and re-doubles my insistance that they be protected at all costs.

Conservative Swede said...

Read Henrik's answer above and it becomes all clear what Kepiblanc has been talking about. While it is not fair to describe Khader as a Trojan horse, he's clearly the most substantive threat to the current Danish immigration policy. Henrik illustrated perfectly well why.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Hmm, I don't think my post explained it that clearly. I'll give it another shot.

The problem with Khader is that he's extremely opportunistic, in a messy kind of way. He's easily pushed around by members of the intellectual elite, and jumps to conclusions without taking time to study the problems to any reasonable depth. That makes him a favorite manipulation target for left-leaning media and pundits, and this is what makes him an indirect long-term danger to our strict policies on immigration.

I don't think he has an underlying principle or philosophy for his political agenda. He just seeks out what people tell him is popular.

Contrast this with Dansk Folkeparti, where we have some really clear fundamental principles, and a clear idea about the long-term importance of curbing immigration and confronting Islamism, and it's clear who deserves the title 'populist' and who doesn't.

Khader is a nice guy. His second-in-command Anders Samuelsen has some interesting points about tax reforms, points which have some systematic thinking behind it. But that's secondary to the real issues.

Anyway, with NA having a meager 5 seats, the problem largely dissolved spontaniously :)