The electioneering and the political wheeling and dealing are over for now. Brown has resigned and Cameron is the new Prime Minister. The Conservatives have, to my joy, decided on going with a full-on coalition with the Liberal Democrats, with Clegg as Deputy PM and four other Lib Dems promised cabinet seats.
This is the best possible scenario for now. The Tories need to be in now, obviously, as they have the most votes and the most seats. This is owed to them. Many policy areas the two parties already agree on, such as reform in education, cutting government budget and reducing the deficit, fixed-term parliaments, and even a referendum on the alternative vote. Plus, the numbers to get to a majority only added up between the Tories and Lib Dems. A "left" alliance could never have attained a stable majority, and would be decimated in the next election, when the Tories could have rightfully claimed that their right to power had been squandered. As it stands now, both the Cons and the Libs have a lot to gain from this power-sharing agreement.
Gordon Brown was never a terrible man. He had many good ideas and knew the political process as a pro should, but was simply never a good leader. I hope he finds something out there that he is more capable of doing at this point. There's always a tinge of sadness present when leaders surrender power to the next person.
A job well done to David Cameron. I hope he turns out to be as great and fair a leader as the Conservatives already believe him to be.
On an unrelated note save for it also happened today, on the bus ride home from school, traffic was held at a stop light by police so that an escorted motorcade could have the right of way after leaving an army base nearby. The bus driver knew Uribe was in this city today, and so told me when I asked him what was happening. As the cars began to pass, I caught in a fraction of a second the sight of President Uribe sitting in the passenger seat of an SUV, his window rolled down.
Later, we were told that Antanas Mockus was having a campaign rally in the center of town at five o'clock. We got there early and waited for two hours in our Partido Verde t-shirts until finally he came and spoke and made me appreciate him all over again. My favorite line from tonight: "The next chapter of Colombia's history will be written with a pencil, not with blood."
Melody and I are standing somewhere near the front of the audience in this picture!
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