Countries with cursed politics

I had to stop following Adam Creighton on Twitter because he is just too intensely annoying.  Of course, he may also just be an attention seeking troll much of the time - something we all like to see in allegedly serious economic/political commentators for allegedly important papers [sarc] - or is it that we can fairly imagine Adam if he had lived in the 1930's would have been telling us that Hitler and Mussolini should be given a fair chance, even though they're a little Right of centre?:

Mind you, as explained in this article in The Conversation, strongly Right wing politics in Italy have not exactly ever disappeared, and this woman has the problem of trying to work in a coalition of fellow Right wingers which may not be sustainable.  I didn't even realise this until now:

Enter Berlusconi. He was pushed to resign in 2011 during the sovereign debt crisis in favour of technocrat Mario Monti and was convicted on a number of charges related to prostitution and tax fraud.

He completed community service and was banned from Parliament, but this ban was lifted by a judge in 2018. 

He may be poised to be the kingmaker of the coalition. Running as a more responsible, pro-EU statesman and centrist than his partners, he could have a large say in the direction of governance and policy if the election results are tight, and could threaten to remove his support at a moment’s notice.

Given that there has been relatively recent interest in the USA politics as to the moderating political effects of voting systems other than First Past the Post, I wondered if this had something to do with Italy's terrible politics.  I'm not the only one:

But, the situation is very complicated there.  As AP notes:

FEWER LAWMAKERS

Many lawmakers won’t be reelected — regardless of their legislative record — simply due to math. Since the last election, a reform has been passed aimed at streamlining Parliament and make its operation less costly to taxpayers. In the upper chamber, the number of senators drops from 315 to 200, while the lower Chamber of Deputies will number 400 instead of 630.

PINBALL POLITICS

Just about everyone agrees Italy’s electoral law is complicated, including lawmakers who created it. Of the total seats, 36% are determined by a first-past-the post system — whoever gets the most votes for a particular district wins. The remaining 64% of the seats get divvied up proportionally, based on candidate lists determined by parties and their alliances.

Lawmakers have likened the proportional part of the electoral system to a game of pinball, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies. Under the “pinball effect,” a candidate who, say, came in first in a specific district could see another candidate who finished second elsewhere suddenly shifted to her or his district, knocking the first-place candidate out of a seat.

Confused? So are many voters. Except for in the first-past-the-post contests, many Italians are essentially voting for alliances and parties, not candidates, and don’t have a direct say in determining their specific representative in the legislature.

What an awful system!  

The other countries that I keep thinking about their cursed politics are the United Kingdom and Malaysia.   I mean, in the UK, FFP seems largely to blame, but how unlucky was the entire country to have such a strange and dubious character as Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Labour while Brexit was being debated.   (He's now an ineffective "having it both ways" weirdo on Ukraine too, I see.)  

As for Malaysia - one day I will get around to trying to understand why its politics is so cursed, too, but not today...