Elections - lessons from Belgium and South Korea

This is a very brief outline of some things I have learnt in the last couple of days about political activities elsewhere. Of course like in most things in life, political similarity trends only exist to a
certain extent (nature is hardly ever comfortable with exact copies)

South Korea
* The current President is a man that has been self made (including being a human rights lawyer who initially sat for bar exams as a private candidate), who fought against corruption during a time when the country was undergoing immense political turmoil
* He ran for presidency and lost one election but was able to mobilize grassroot institutions into supporting him for the 2002 elections.
* Just before the elections, a political ally defected, a plan that backfired and he was elected president on a "narrow margin".
* Because he was new to governing the country, it meant that he could come in on a clean slate (no baggage).
* However it also meant that he was vulnerable to sabotage from, among others, some existing civil servants that served the previous government.
* Grassroot institutions that supported him were elated he won and had high expectations. These were unmanageable considering that government bureaucracy couldn't move as fast as people expected.
* 2 years into his term, his opponents tried to and failed to impeach him.
* Because of the constitution, he is only going to serve one term that ends December this year (2007),
* It's been a tough term for him including trying to deal with regionalism (equivalent to Kenya's ethnic tensions) which has meant that his country has been very polarized country


Belgium
*In terms of "ethnic tensions" this country probably is the worst in Western Europe. The Dutch (aka Flemish) and French societal extractions have made it very difficult for the country to make cohesive strides.
*Infact sometimes Brussels is fought over to a similar extent Jerusalem is (Jews vs Muslims).
*Then there are the (statistically insignificant 70,000) Germans who have ensured that German is a 3rd official language, in a country that has 10million people! Writing every government law and regulation in Dutch and French is bad enough, having to do it in German so that either one of the small number of Germans can read it in their home language is distressing to even think about!
* Of course they also have a ghostly past with King Leopold who committed some of the worst atrocities in human history and got away with it.
*Many countries have coalition situations but the Belgian situation is truly mind-boggling. There were elections in June this year. The rules on how to win the elections combined with the coalition makeup meant that the narrow margin win made it impossible to have a government.
*What happened? The winning coalitions started negotiating on the makeup of the future government, meanwhile the previous government "remained in power" under extra-ordinary provisions.
* This is the October and there is still no new government!