Piqued by the debates around the internet, including here and also over on Nick Robinson’s blog, on whether the American elections are getting undue coverage in the UK, I thought “fair’s fair, let’s write something about the next elections coming up anywhere in the world”.
Alas for me (and for you too, dear reader of this post) it turns out they are in the Faroe Island, not my area of electoral speciality. [Update: actually, Barbados comes first. But the election listing website I used didn't say that. Bloody internet. Wouldn't trust a word of what you find on it.] So what can I tell you about them? Somewhat to my surprise, it turns out these elections may be of some importance to the UK…
The Faroe Islands are self-governing – they elect their own Parliament, though also elect two people to the Danish Parliament. The Prime Minister comes from Parliament whilst the High Commissioner is appointed by the Danish Queen.
The next Faroe Parliament elections will take place on Saturday, 19 January. Advanced voting at Danish embassies around the world has already taken place and the ballots closed on those.
PR will be used to elect 33 members using the d’Hondt list method with just the one list for the Faroe Islands. This will be the first outing for that electoral system, replacing the previous practice of d’Hondt in seven constituencies along with largest remainder national top-up lists to ensure proportionality overall.
Possibly though the public are more excited by the other big electoral change – the news that residents of the Faroe Islands will – for the first time – be able to vote in the Danish qualifying round of the Eurovision song contest this year.
The outcome of the Parliamentary elections may actually matter quite a lot for the UK, because an international agreement on which country gets the oil rights where in part of the North Atlantic has been postponed pending the outcome of the elections. Ireland, Iceland, Britain and Denmark have been in talks, but are yet to reach agreement and the talks were postponed until after the Faroe elections.
My tip for the result? Another close contest between those supporting and those opposing independence from Denmark.
4 Comments
What about the Barbados parliamentary elections on Tuesday? Looks pretty close between the ruling Barbados Labour Party and the opposition Democratic Labour Party.
Oh the shame of it! You are quite right of course – PM bidding for fourth term of power versus opposition saying “it’s time for a change” does sound rather familiar to UK ears… It’s a tough one to call as the opposition appear more popular, though their leader isn’t as personally popular as the Prime Minister.
I was living in Barbados during their 1999 General election. I was a project manager for an international bank, delivering my first major project, with some really tight timelines heading into implementation. I do not have fond memories of the election(Grrr)!
First thing, everybody in Barbados gets the day off on polling day, even those not able to vote; clearly, it would be too much to expect a Bajan to wander up the hill to their polling station and go to work on an island that only take a couple of hours in a car to circum-navigate on the same day.
Needless to say, nobody had mentioned this to me and one valuable project day was lost to politics….
Secondly, in the run up to the election one of the two parties (I don’t remember which)pledged that if elected that they would make the day after polling day a one off national holiday.
Clearly, this pledge was going to have so much effect on the result that the other party had to match it! So, the good people of Barbados had secured another day off whoever won.
Cue rookie project manager with steam coming out of her ears!
The opposition won in Barbados:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7191375.stm