Sunday, January 27, 2008

We are family

There are, of course, strong political family clans in most countries, but in Chile it is especially marked. A few months ago, Adolfo Zaldívar was kicked out of the Christian Democratic Party after he voted against Transantiago funding, and now many of his family members have signed a letter of resignation from the party in protest. I don’t believe I’ve heard of a family resignation before.

At the time of Zaldívar’s expulsion, five members of the Chamber of Deputies also resigned from the party. Now we have to start asking ourselves what will happen to these former Christian Democrats. It is hard, though not necessarily impossible, to imagine them formally moving to the right. But if they don’t, the logical step would be to form another party. The Christian Democratic Party itself was formed in the late 1950s from splinters of other parties.

7 comments:

Bosque 7:24 PM  

That's what happens when countries are run like feudal Japan.

Bosque 7:26 PM  

I think all countries should become socialist for 1 year just ti get rid of "the families". After that, each can move forward to a political system of their choosing.

Greg Weeks 7:51 PM  

You mean no families like Cuba?

Greg Weeks 7:52 PM  

Or North Korea.

Anonymous,  11:07 PM  

That's too much (the family letter).

Let's not forget that this is not exclusevely a Latin American thing: Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, the list of American political dynasties is kind of long. Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_U.S._political_families

Anonymous,  11:07 PM  

Actually Greg makes the point.

Bosque 8:35 PM  

Yep, no families anywhere.

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