Europe

[Furunculus]

A good candidate? A European Sarah Palin I'd say, but with brains. Vaira has never held an elected office. She is a Canadian professor of linguistics, who briefly held the mostly ceremonial function of president of Latvia.

She may impress the Eurosceptic crowd with her demand that the position of EU chairman/president must be an elected office, an open process, but let's not forget that she herself was not elected president in a transparant election either, but appointed by parliament. As is the case in most European systems.

When's the last time Britain elected a PM? Never, of course, because that would mean a semi-presidential system.

So: know what you are asking for when demanding an elected EU president. Don't just mewl that the process is undemocratic, while simultaneously demanding that it be thus.

I have made it quite clear that i encourage the democratic deficit within the EU, because;
a) i wish a federalising europe to be hampered at every turn, by its own lack of legitimacy, as long as we are within it.
b) there is no demos that i recognise as sharing my interests
c) there is no kratos with whom I am happy to have act in my name.


as to VVF:

Mrs Vike-Freiberga, 71, studied in Canada and became Professor of Linguistics at the University of Montreal. She is the author of 11 books and the recipient of 16 honorary doctorates. Married with two children, one of whom works in London, she is fluent in English, French, German, Latvian and Spanish and also understands Italian and Portuguese.

Her brand of centrist free-market politics — she stood as an independent candidate for the Latvian presidency — is built on a hatred of dogma in all its forms, but especially the communism that enslaved her country for 50 years.

Her baby sister died as the family fled the advancing Red Army, which her stepfather, a fireman, had been forced to fight when he was drafted into the Latvian legion — the Waffen SS. The family eventually found sanctuary from Europe in French Morocco and moved again to Canada in the 1950s. “As a child I have seen Europe at its very worst,” she said. “I have seen two occupations of my country and the front line going back and forth over my grandfather’s farm.

“Nobody who has not been occupied by two opposing forces should get on their high horse and start spouting about supporting one side or the other. We wanted a free Latvia. We hoped that the Allies would prevent us from being occupied by the Soviets but we were betrayed, including by the British. That’s a fact.”

Mrs Vike-Freiberga, who was nominated by the Baltic states to be UN Secretary-General after the departure of Kofi Annan in 2006, said that her programme for the EU presidency would be guided by pragmatism, rejecting ideologies such as federalism. Since leaving the Latvian presidency two years ago she has joined a group of senior politicians drawing up plans for the EU and is a frequent visitor to Brussels.

there is a lot to like.