Warning: Uneducated Political Commentry Ahead!

Just looking at some news this morning. It's been reported that the Prime Minister-elect of India, Sonia Gandhi, has decided not to accept the position after all. Now it would appear to me that the party she was involved in was quite happily riding on the Gandhi name, and understandably the voters are devastaed that she didn't take the position.

Now parties being voted into power due to a popular leader or figure is nothing new, but generally you'd at least get a few months of leadership out of them. To not accept the position at all seems to be a bit of a farce to me.

It seems that we may be presented with a similar dilemma here in Australia in the next election as well. Our current PM John Howard, while not being the most popular guy in the world is considerably more popular than his second-in-charge Peter Costello. This year is an election year and there has been much speculation regarding the Prime Ministers age and the possibility of his retirement. This would of course result in Peter Costello becoming the new PM, which many people seem to think as a bad thing. I personally don't think he's such a bad guy or would make a lousy PM, but this raises the point that we might think we're voting for John Howard, when in fact we're really voting for Peter Costello.

Luckily for us Mr. Howard says that he has no intention of retiring just yet! And he wouldn't lie to us!