Luxembourg’s new coat

So the election came and went. Luxembourg’s that is. It came early – some unfathomable scandal to do with phone tapping and the sorts led to the precipitating of ballot consultations – and finished quickly. For southerners like myself who are used to elections being dealt with like some enormous football match complete with hooligan behaviour on the stands, Luxembourg’s national elections was an exercise in sanitised efficiency of the most yawn-inducing kind.

The elections were held on Sunday (yesterday) which also happened to be Mantelsonndag (literally Coat Sunday). Mantelsonndag is the day in which Luxembourgers go out and buy their new winter coat – which means that all the shops have another excuse to open on Sunday. Did this interfere with the fervour of the electoral consultation? Not one bit. Those entitled to vote (it’s less of an entitlement more of an obligation here – you HAVE to vote in Luxembourg) had six hours to go to their allocated booth and pick their candidates of choice in one of four districts (North, South, Centre and East). Polls opened at 8 a.m. and were shut by two in the afternoon, which means you could only just make it for the last order in a restaurant in the city.

With many more parties contesting the elections than in our notoriously bipartisan (+1) home nation you’d expect an interesting level of tension – to say the least. Nothing. At least not outwardly so. Not even the hundreds of billboards (in wood I noticed, très environmentally friendly) with the robotic expressionless faces were subjected to the least of political vandalism. Police on the roads? Are you kidding? People just rushed to the sales in the great shopping centres and forked out some money from Europe’s highest wage packets to update their ski gear and buy the new manteaux. Silence. The four (yes, four) Fiorentina supporters at the Italian joint where we get our weekly fix of calcio probably made the most noise in the whole of Luxembourg on Sunday – and their purple was not for the Pirate Party.

By seven in the evening results started to trickle out and they all but confirmed the predictions with the ruling CSV losing three of its seats in the Luxembourg 60-member parliament and the Greens losing another. The big winners were the Democratic Party who had caused what one of the papers (wort.lu) enthusiastically described as a “wave of blue” (plus four more seats in parliament). Led by the erstwhile Mayor of Luxembour Xavier Bettel the liberal-democrat party made some substantial gains that would give them a strong hand at the negotiating table as Jean-Claude Junker will form a new coalition government – extending his party’s (and his) stay in power beyond the current 18 year record.

The socialist party and left did not make any particular gains while a very interesting development occurred with the newly formed Pirate Party which managed to garner close to 3% of the vote on the first attempt. No seats in parliament for the swashbuckling heroes of liberty but the amount of votes they obtained guarantees them state financing for their next attempt (are you watching Malta?).

Thusly, without too much of a fuss and without any excessive drama, the Grand Duchy got its new coat. The multi-party politics formula seems to work  – and work well – for this tiny nation. Not for them the mass meetings and the carcades… the only time Luxembourg gets to see those is during a World or European cup… then again there’s no Luxembourgers in those carcades – just those noisy southern guests from Portugal, Italy or Greece.

Ah Europe, Unity in Diversity.