In Europe, today’s election resulted in dueling headlines. From Reuters: “Centre-right wins EU vote, turnout hits record low.” From AFP: “Brown suffers, as far-right surges in EU vote.” Far right, center right–who can tell the difference? Probably no one in the far-left media. Any way you slice it, though, the EU elections have had a good outcome, with relatively conservative parties gaining across Europe. England’s Labour Party has reached a nadir, being outpolled today by the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants to take the UK out of the European Union.
In Lebanon, the results seem to have been good too:
An anti-Syrian coalition defeated Hezbollah in Lebanon’s parliamentary election on Sunday in a blow to Syria and Iran and a boost to the United States. …
“We have lost the election,” conceded a senior politician close to the bloc of Shi’ite groups Hezbollah and Amal and Christian ally Michel Aoun.
“We accept the result as the will of the people.”
The vote will be viewed as a stinging setback to Aoun, who held the biggest bloc of Christian MPs in the outgoing assembly and had hoped to seal his claim to speak for the Christians.
A source in Hariri’s campaign predicted a decisive victory, with his bloc taking at least 70 of the assembly’s 128 seats.
One depressing feature of Middle Eastern politics has been the tendency of some Arab “Christian” leaders to align themselves with Muslim terrorist elements. In today’s election, it appears that most Christians refused to go along with such an alliance.
So: good news all around. Maybe our own voters will take a hint.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.