The International Club ~ We're back!

[Lady Vulpix]

Political situations are always complicated. I'm not going to go into too much detail here. We have a president who is elected every 4 years (there's always some fraud, but with any luck it won't make too much difference). The president can be re-elected, but can't rule for more than 2 periods in a row. This year we will have a presidential election and I really hope our current president (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) doesn't get re-elected, and that we don't get someone worse either.

We also have a congress with 2 chambers: deputies and senators. They're also elected, but through what we call "blanket lists": we vote for a party which proposes a group of about 20 people, and the number of people from each party who get a chair depend on how many votes the party receives with respect to other parties. We cannot vote for individual candidates for deputies or senators, which is why I really dislike blanket lists.

Our judicial power is not elected by the people, but by the president. Yes, our president has too much power. However, judges can't be replaced until they retire (short of political trial, which is very uncommon), so the president has to deal with the judges chosen by the former president.

The president also chooses the ministers, and each province chooses its governor and legislators. Each city has a mayor and a city council which are also elected. Buenos Aires is a special case because it's the capital, so we have a head of government instead of a mayor but as far as I know it's the same thing with a different name.

The main goal of our politicians is to get as much power as they can for as long as they can, so they'll do whatever it takes to achieve it. That should give you an idea of what our political situation is like.

Oh, and elections are compulsory, but you can always make a null vote if you don't want to vote for any of the candidates. I personally prefer to choose conciously rather than throw my vote away, but it's very common for people to make null votes out of anger.