Since Denmark is the de facto leader of the Counterjihad in the West, we are fortunate that the good guys won. Anders Fogh Rasmussen will remain prime minister, heading the VKO (Venstre-Konservativ) coalition. Dansk Folkeparti (the Danish People’s Party) gained in strength, and the Social Democrats hit a historic new low. The New Alliance did not live up to expectations, despite being puffed up to the maximum by the Danish MSM.So here’s to the Vikings — Skol!
According to my Danish contacts, the parties in Copenhagen went until the wee hours on Wednesday. The next afternoon CG emailed me and said, “I have a headache. But it is a happy one!”
The latest news, from today’s Jyllands-Posten, is the announcement by Rikke Hvilshøj that she will be stepping down as the minister of refugee, integration and immigration affairs. It’s not clear whether her departure is connected with the election — after all, Ms. Hvilshøj has been on the receiving end of leftist ire for several years, and could have other compelling reasons for resigning:
Hvilshøj herself got caught in the crossfire when activists firebombed her home shortly after she became minister in 2005 to protest the government’s tightened immigration policies. And since then, she has been one of the few ministers followed by bodyguards.
The Danish blogger Mikael left a succinct summary of the election results in the comments to my post:
The fat lady has finished the song. We made it! VKO got the magical 90 seats that make a majority.- - - - - - - - -
Here’s the most important numbers:
New Alliance, the new joker in the game, polled at around 12 seats and ended at 5, after running a campaign hell-bent of keeping Danish Peoples Party (DPP) from any influence (A point pretty much every other party repeatedly made during the campaign). Instead the party is in reality without influence themselves!
Far from being kept from influence, the DPP gained a seat with 13.8% of the votes.
Social Democrats got a lousy result, but it is nevertheless celebrated as a great victory. Party members are full of moxy and optimism. They are still a force to be reckoned with.The far-left Unity List clung on with their fingernails and made the 2 percent that is required to get representation in the Parliament. Asmaa Abdol-Hamid was not elected. Ha!
The biggest winner was the Socialist Party which nearly doubled its number of seats (13 percent). However, the party is irrelevant. It’s what we in Denmark call a “Hammock Party”, a safe place for bleeding hearts and artists to place their votes, as everybody knows the party’s influence will be minimal.
The real winner in my opinion is the DPP. Despite all the demonization from the left side, eagerly supported by the MSM, they stood their ground.
And here are some excerpts from Flemming Rose’s report at PJM on the night of the election:
Denmark’s Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen scored a historic victory in today’s national elections. In spite of opinion polls speaking to the contrary the coalition that has governed Denmark for the last six years will be able to continue at the helm of power.
Mr. Rasmussen is the fist European head of government who has been reelected twice after having supported the war in Iraq and supplying Danish troops to the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Rasmussen is also the first leader of his conservative party (this isn’t a conservative party in the American sense. Mr. Rasmussen’s party is supporting a welfare state that Bill Clinton never would have signed on for) to be reelected twice as Prime minister, and his conservative party has turned out to be the biggest party in three national elections in a row, i.e. 2001, 2005 and now in 2007. This is also a historical achievement. It never happened before.
[…]
The Danish People’s party that over the last ten years has been demonized as racist by the left once again improved its standing, and they did so against all odds. They insist on keeping strict immigration policies, and have been reluctant to support lower taxes, and it is now up to the Prime minister to find out if the Danish People’s party and New Alliance can be part of the same coalition.
Another big winner was the Socialist party that almost doubled their number of seats in parliament. They did so due to the successful economy, one of the best performing in Europe with growth rates around 3-4 pct. The good economy has increased political pressure for social benefits and welfare, and the socialists have gone all the way. Almost any demand from any group has elicited support from the Socialists, so it is fair to say that they have been cashing in on the success of a conservative government.
The Social Democrats, the founding fathers of the welfare state, have definitively lost their monopoly as the sole guardian of the welfare. In the nineties the Social Democrats usually would get around 35 pct. of the votes, but now they have been permanently reduced, and I doubt that they ever again will cross the limit of 30 pct. Today they received 25 pct., which is a historical low figure. Ten years ago the party leader would have been forced out of office after an election result like this, but today the Social Democrats leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt is being perceived as successful.
Finally, it seems that the Islamist Asmaa Abdol-Hamid didn’t receive enough votes to get a seat in parliament, though her party of the extreme left did pass the threshold of 2 pct., but they lost 2 seats. She may, though, get a seat if she receives more than 10.000 personal votes. On election night Asmaa Abdol-Hamid indicated that she may leave politics, if this doesn’t materialize, so this time around it looks like Denmark will not have to deal with a Muslim member of parliament wearing the veil while addressing the nation.
And now to add some local (Virginia) color to this story. The day after the election, Dymphna and I received an email from an acquaintance in an adjacent state:
I have been meaning to tell you of the recent appearances and relationships Prime Minister Rasmussen has with denizens of your fair Commonwealth. When my older son matriculated at Hampden-Sydney College [located just outside of Farmville, in the heart of Southside Virginia], one of his classmates was a young man with the surname of Rasmussen. Young Rasmussen was involved with the Army ROTC, as well, which is where my son met him.
It turned out that subsequent developments caused Rasmussen to have to leave the ROTC program — something concerned with his being a citizen of Denmark. Of course, his father is the then and current Danish PM, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In May 2005, PM Rasmussen was the keynote speaker at H-SC graduation.
9 comments:
What's with the 90 seats? According to Wikipedia VKO got 89 seats (one away from majority). Did they get support from the Eskimos?
CS --
I know that I've read 90 in more than one place, but I can't find the links.
I don't know how good your ability to understand spoken Danish is (mine is virtually nil), but here is an interview with Anders Fogh, with the headline "Fogh says 90 is not enough".
Maybe some Vikings will show up and tell us what he says. :)
Skol to my Danish friends!!
Looks like your Northern European allies are also awakening to the threat of Islamisation - England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Austria.
We all need to remember our warrior past & our tribal roots. And if the great tribes of Europe band together we can stop Islam in its tracks.
The way our system is set up in Denmark calls for 2 of the 179 seats in parliament to be reserved for candidates from Greenland and 2 from the Faroe Islands (both self governing parts of Denmark).
The coalition got 89 seats from Denmark proper, and one of the "North-Atlantic" seats to get to "the magic ninety".
Interestingly enough; because the majority is as small as it is, a major newsstory here in Denmark today has been the story that a group of lefties has set up a website so people can donate money to give to the first member of parliament from the coalition bloc, to switch to the socialist side.
So far they have gotten nothing but scorn, but it does indicate that someone is taking this defeat VERY bad, so we must by definition be on to something very good here:-)
Oh, and by the way, Baron. Fogh Rasmussen says simply that he feels that 90 seats is such a slim majority that he will seek to get as many parties to support his goverment as possible.
This in other words means that he still wants to work with Naser Khader and his New Alliance, since no one else would be willing to participate.
For anyone interested, I have posted my writeup of Stanford's Ethnicity in Europe conference at zarxos.blogspot.com.
Pictures will be up soon.
90 seats would include one from the Faroe Island. All cool, usually one of these guys is conservative and joins Venstre.
However, a majority of 1 seat invites anyone with fringe ideas to start power plays and plots. the Faroe Island guy already made some moves in that direction. That's a somewhat unstable situation.
Naser Khader and Ny Alliance is outside of this. They demand that the rejected asylum seekers (many of which are chronical tax evaders in the first place) get better conditions. It's absurd, but it's one of the fundamental principles of that party. Tax reforms and other stuff be damned, they want to benefit these people who have no reason to be in Denmark in the first place.
It's power play, and sign of a very immature political party with no fundamental principles, resorting to populism.
This is somewhat unstable and might implode to fresh elections any day.
In any case, the most important outcome of this election was that the Islamist candidate Asmaa Abdol-Hamid got a solid defeat, along with the extreme left party she was running with. Islam is not a healthy democratic platform, and we defeated it at the polls. That's good.
On the homepage "Flytetmandat.dk" (flyt et mandat= move one mandate) one can not only read how bankrupt the Danish left seems to be, but also how they're EXPLICITLY saying that they want to "buy" a parliamentary seat to make the re-elected government fall.
I translate (perhaps incorrectly, Swedish as I am):
Four more years with Pia [Kjaersgaard - leader of DF]? No thanks! How much do you want to pay for a regime change?
Here, on the homepage flytetmandat.dk, you can give a sum of money that will be paid to the first MP who betrays either Venstre, Konservative or Dansk Folkeparti, in favour of one of the opposition parties or Ny Alliance. Such a change, will break the six years of bloc politics and force Venstre and Konservative to cooperation from across the mid-line of the parliament
Danes; I don't know, so I'm asking you: IS THIS LEGAL?!
Carpenter:
No, it can't be legal. Danish law clearly states that anyone inciting to corruption (and a politician taking money for moving his vote is of course corrupt)will face up to 3 years in prison.
I hope somebody reports the people behind the site to the police.
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