Time to be a little political and perhaps even add an opinion or two of my own, which doesn't happen too often.

As many of you already know, Japanese prime minister Fukuda resigned the other day. A surprise to many, and of course to me too (I do not claim to have any inside info of any importance). To be honest, I feel a little sorry for the man. Let's just say that things haven't really gone his way. He inherited the pension scandal, where some people's records of their pension were lost by the authorities. The Democratic Party has been on his back all the time, more or less saying no to things they really ought to support according to their political manifest.

So why did I like the man? Well, he was good with China and to some extent also with South Korea. He didn't go to Yasukuni Shrine. And he tried to lead the G8 group, and accomplish something with it. There are of course many opinions concerning him and most probably a few (or perhaps many) more negative ones, but mine is fairly positive, not being a supporter of the LDP in any way.

So who will replace him? Well, there won't be a new election from the looks of it, even though the Democratic party has called for one. There seem to be at the moment four candidates. The strongest is of course, Taro Aso, the secretary general of LDP (the ruling party) and then we have Nobutero Ishihara (son of Tokyo mayor Ishihara), Kaoru Yosano, the economy minister and Yuriko Koike, the former defense minister.

Aso is an arrogant bastard, who will only make the relationship with the neighbouring countries worse and spend too much money on meaningless things. Japan has today according to Wikipedia the second largest national dept (196 %)!! (I usually say 160 %) Ishihara, I don't know much about him but (and this he can't really be blaimed for) his father is an even bigger bastard than Aso. Yosano and Koike, I know very little about. Koike sat only two months as defense minister before resigning, but she is a reformist and as such she should be applauded.

So I guess my vote goes to either Koike or Yosano. But then again I don't get to vote so that won't count for much.

The birth of a new nation

Yesterday the world saw the birth of a new nation, Kosovo or Kosova. Kosovo used to be an autonomous province of Serbia, which in turn used to be part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro. Now to add to this is of course that all of the above mentioned three countries used to be part of, together with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and lastly Macedonia, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

I know that is quite a lot to take in, but please try, it might be important to some persons.

So 17 February, 2008, the birth of a nation. At least for some, among the important "countries", the EU and the US, Kosovo is likely to be recognised.* Russia and Serbia on the other hand does not recognise Kosovo and at least Serbia still sees Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia, a province of Serbia. This must be a fairly awkward situation for Serbia, administratively I mean, especially if they really see Kosovo as an integral part of its country.

For instance, the welfare system ought to be given to people in Kosovo if they so wish for it. Kosovo citizens can ask for money from the central government in Belgrade (capital of Serbia), since they are "citizens of Serbia". I am not sure how they will solve the border issue. I reckon that there will be a border on the Kosovo side, but there really shouldn't be any border on the Serbian side. One can have a situation with internal borders but I know of very few countries that do have that, especially concerning customs and tariffs. The obvious exception is of course a customs union, i.e. the EU, but no need to discuss that now.

Really what I wanted to say was, after my long rant, Kosovo, welcome! I wish you the very best!

*Now I did write important countries, which might sound a little subjective, but unfortunately the two mentioned countries do constitute the major players on the political world arena. Secondly EU does not recognise countries but this is done by the individual member states however the European Council makes a statement, a very influential statement.