The two men vying to become the next Dutch prime minister played down the option of governing together in a televised debate on Monday night as each made a last-ditch attempt to win over undecided voters two days before a general election.
However, the tone of the debate between caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Liberal Party leader, and Diederik Samsom of the moderate left opposition Labor Party, was less confrontational than during the preceding weeks.
The duo — who found common ground on issues from the euro to international affairs, but haggled over immigration, welfare and the housing market — are widely expected to be in coalition talks by the end of this week.
According to the latest opinion polls, the Liberals and Labor are in a dead heat after the leftist party made a surprising rebound in less than a month and would need just one other party to form a coalition government together.
The run-up to the election has been dominated by the eurozone crisis, and is considered a microcosm of the wider European debate over austerity versus stimulus as a solution.
In his election campaign, Rutte promised voters Greece would not get any more money, whereas Samsom, who wants the Netherlands to be given more time to meet its own EU budget targets, said Greece may have to be given more time if it is to have a chance of staying in the euro.
Samsom, Labor’s new leader, has emerged as the star of several televised debates over the past two weeks, propelling his party from fourth to joint first place.
To loud laughter from the audience, Rutte praised Samsom for winning so much ground saying he was now “the man in the polls who is breathing down my neck,” while Samsom said he “doesn’t know of another prime minister who faces problems so cheerfully — and that’s a good thing because he creates a lot of them.”
Some analysts predict Labor could even overtake the Liberals on election day.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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