Word: votes
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Many Europeans are surprised that 53% of the Irish, who have done so well out of E.U. membership, should vote against the treaty. All their political leaders bar Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, and all the mainstream newspapers, called for a yes. But Ireland's voters reacted against the establishment telling them what to do by giving it a kicking. A slick no campaign played on fears that the treaty would lead to higher taxes (untrue) and deprive Ireland of its right to appoint an E.U. commissioner (true). The yes campaign failed to provide good reasons for supporting a document...
Richer and better educated people tended to vote for the treaty, while working-class Irish mostly opposed it. A similar social division over attitudes to the E.U. is apparent in many European countries. Euro-skeptics are right to portray the E.U. as an élite project that fails to connect with ordinary citizens. Yet pro-Europeans are also right to ask whether voters should have to pronounce on a highly complex legal text that would make no impact on their daily lives...
...hope that the Irish will change their mind. The E.U. could offer the Irish a protocol to clarify that the treaty does not affect national powers on taxation, and a promise to use the Croatian accession treaty to restore the one-commissioner-per-country rule. The Irish would then vote again on the Lisbon treaty next summer. But that would be risky: the E.U. would appear arrogantly dismissive of the June 12 result, and the Irish could vote no again...
...Irish did vote no twice, many countries would want to move ahead without them. Legally, the other 26 could renounce the existing E.U. treaties and recreate them with one fewer member. But that maneuver could not work unless all the members were firmly committed to pushing Ireland out of the E.U. Some of the more Euro-skeptic members, such as Britain and the Czech Republic, might thwart such an effort. But then the majority of the member states could try to create a two-speed Europe: the Irish, British and others reluctant to integrate would be left outside...
Such stories have become common in the run-up to the second round of Zimbabwe's election on June 27. The vote is deemed necessary because even though MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai came out ahead in the presidential poll on March 29, according to official results, he didn't get an outright majority. Earlier hopes that the vote might end Mugabe's 28-year rule quickly evaporated. Instead, the first-round results turned out to be a cue for Zimbabwe's security services and pro-Mugabe militias to rampage across the country...