Canada: Green Leader officially opens Central Nova office
Canada: Green Party leader hopes progress is made between Campbell and Schwarzenegger meeting
Canada/Ont: Green Party says $200 deposit under Ontario Election Act is unconstitutional
Canada/PEI: May hails Green Party results
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Ireland: Rebel TD threatens to pull the plug on Ahern
Yesterday, Fianna Fail opened channels of communication with the Green Party, who Mr Ahern last week named as his second choice for a coalition. The move to open talks with the Greens may indicate that Mr Ahern is not satisfied that his first choice of a coalition with the PDs and Independents will give him a sufficiently comfortable majority to last a full term. So Fianna Fail, with 78 seats of its own, is seeking an insurance policy in testing the waters with the six Green TDs on what their policy demands might be. It also opens up the possibility that Mr Ahern may try to tie all three groups - the Greens, the two PDs and Independents - into a broader coalition to ensure his next government can survive close votes.
Czech press survey
The Czech parliamentary Green Party (SZ), an originally rebelling entity, is developing into a political party as any other, Petr Novacek writes in elsewhere in Lidove noviny. He says that even though the party has only six out of 200 lower house of parliament deputies, thanks to PM Mirek Topolanek's (ODS) generosity its chairman Martin Bursik has succeeded in pushing into the government programme an unprecedented portion of the "green" agenda. Bursik is thankful and he does not press on Topolanek to dismiss deputy PM Jiri Cunek (KDU-CSL), accused of corruption, he allows for a reduction of the European constitutional treaty thouhg the Greens would prefer progress in integration, and he has not sent the ODS to hell with the U.S. radar to which the Greens are fundamentally opposed, Novacek writes. He says that the Greens will one day have to make a clear decision on all these and other issues. It will then show whether "the almost 'universal' attractiveness of the Greens does not only rest in their elegant ambiguousness," Novacek writes.
Europe Reacts with Reserve to US Climate Plan
Jürgen Trittin, who heads the German Green Party in parliament, also took a strong stance against Bush's initiative. "The US's new, so-called 'climate strategy' is really just a strategy for hindering climate protection," Trittin told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Without the participation of the countries most affected by climate change, Bush just wants to "sit down together with the biggest polluters, in order to delay any binding emissions reductions targets for as long as possible."
EU/Turkey: CHP is not leftist, chauvinist nationalist
Cem Ozdemir, a member of the European Parliament (EP) Greens Group, blamed the Republican People's Party (CHP) for using language that degrades the left and said that CHP has a chauvinist nationalist policy, wrote daily Yeni Safak. Upon the questions of Turkish reporters in the EP building, Ozdemir, EP's Turkish descent member, criticized CHP and said that CHP is not a representative sample of the left in the rest of the world. “It is impossible to accept the mentality that left in Turkey is different from the universal left,” said Ozdemir. “Looking at their daily politics, we feel closer to the Justice and Development Party (AKP),” said Ozdemir. He added that they found AKP's policies more satisfactory. “We can sit together and drink wine with the CHP members. However when it comes to thorny issues, like the reopening of Halki Seminary, different issues are emerging in our dialogue. The people who are supposed to have a closer position to my stance start using language that is not compatible with leftist politics,” said Ozdemir. Underlining that leftist understanding of politics does not change from one country to another, Ozdemir said that CHP's policies are remote from the left in the rest of the world, reported Yeni Safak.
New Zealand: 'Three-way marriage' problems for Dunne
United Future leader Peter Dunne has sown doubt over his continued support for Labour after accusing it of holding stronger feelings for the Greens than for his own party. In a speech last night to Tawa Rotarians, Mr Dunne, who is also the revenue minister, said United Future and the Government had worked constructively. Yet in Parliament, Labour's eyes drifted toward the Greens. "To use the analogy of a marriage, there comes a time in even the most stable and productive of relationships when the wandering eye of one partner ceases to be just an annoyance and becomes a major problem," he said. [..] Green sources speculated he may be preparing the ground to switch support to National. Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said she had received no overtures that would have prompted Mr Dunne's jealousy. "I have to say we haven't noticed Labour's charm offensive. "Comparing a confidence and supply arrangement to a marriage is a very strange metaphor, which I think devalues marriage. "Political relationships are not my idea of a marriage."
