British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned. Days later, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. A few days passed and both the President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, resigned and fled the country. Today, with their ruling governments in a state of turmoil, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi have both tendered their resignations.
The collapse of each of these national leaders collapsing is not necessarily connected; however, the global political system is reverberating with tremors directly connected to the post-pandemic economic turmoil. It would be naïve not to see these governing issues as consequences. The legitimacy of the governing class is slipping; perhaps it would be fair to say, some have lost’ their legitimacy altogether.
Estonia is part of the EU and a member of NATO:
HELSINKI — Estonia’s president on Thursday asked Prime Minister Kaja Kallas to form a new government after she tendered the resignation of her one-party minority Cabinet, ending a more than month-long political stalemate in the Baltic nation.
President Alar Karis said in a tweet after meeting with Kallas that “I signed the resignation request of Prime Minister @kajakallas but also asked her to form a new government which could start working quickly and deal with all important issues of Estonian life.”
Estonia’s government crisis culminated in early June as Kallas, leader of the ruling center-right Reform Party, kicked out the left-leaning Center Party from the two-party coalition. The parties had substantial differences over spending and welfare policies amid increasing Estonian household costs because of high inflation. (more)
Italy is a member of the G7, a part of the EU and a member of NATO:
ROME — Italian Premier Mario Draghi offered to step down Thursday after a populist coalition partner refused to vote for a key bill in Parliament, but the nation’s president quickly rebuffed him, leaving one of Western Europe’s main leaders at the helm for now.
The rejection of the tendered resignation left in limbo the future of Draghi’s 17-month-old government, officially known as a national unity coalition, but with its survival sorely tested by increasingly sharp divergences within the coalition.
Draghi’s broad coalition government — which includes parties from the right, the left, the center and the populist 5-Star Movement — was designed to help Italy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. (read more)
The parliamentary coalitions are fracturing. New alliances are being formed. One recent example that stunned everyone in the EU was the far-right and far-left in the French parliament joining forced to defeat the coalition government of Emmanuel Macron as he tried, and failed, to extend an emergency for COVID rules.
FRANCE – It was the first bill in the new legislature, and the Assemblée Nationale has already embarrassed the government. On Tuesday night, the Assemblée rejected one of the key articles in the bill on Covid-19 aimed at extending certain measures for the fight against the pandemic.
During the debate, the coalition backing President Emmanuel Macron was outvoted several times by parts of the left-wing Nouvelle Union Populaire, Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES), the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). But the government, represented by Health Minister François Braun, adopted what was left of the bill at 1:45 am, which the help LR votes and Socialist abstentions. (more)
The COVID rules in France are set to expire on July 31st. The first parliamentary goal for President Macron was to extend the COVID emergency and keep his powers. However, the legislative effort was rejected by 219 votes to 195, destroying the goals of Macron. Both populist groups joined forces to defeat the Macron coalition.
Yes, amid all of the economic damage created by western leaders and their Build Back Better efforts, the geopolitical world is having spasms as the rulers are being rejected by the ruled.
In the parliamentary systems, the voices of the angry people are rising up. Those shouts are entering the halls of government through the direct representatives closest to the people. The ruling coalitions are no longer able to hold together as the people demand change. That is the connective tissue behind these resignations and departures.
Western government leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Jacinda Ardern have the audacity to stand atop a mountain of two years history of unilateral fiats, rules, regulations and mandates and then decry “autocracy” and threats to the “global order.” All of them have destroyed their own legitimacy by pretending to represent western democracy while carrying out two years of totalitarian power.
As the AP tried to spin it:
[…] “A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well. Another 38% said it’s working only somewhat well.
Other surveys reveal how many people in the United States now doubt the media, politicians, science and even each other.
The distrust has gone so deep that even groups that seem ideologically aligned are questioning each others’ motives and intentions. (more)
We the citizens of the ‘western democracies’ are in an abusive relationship with our own governments’. The Australian Unions, the Canadian Truckers and now the Dutch farmers are only the precursor tremors for seismic political shifts.
The western leaders have shown absolutely no desire to pull back and listen to the people. Quite the opposite is happening. Collectively they are charging head strong into their Build Back Better agenda, regardless of what that does to the global economy.
Inflation pressure has built up like a pressure cooker. People are growing increasingly desperate, and now, now the absence of food will change things.
The looming shortage of food could be the pressure point that fractures the tectonic political plates.
