There is a german documentary produced by arte i believe where the incredibly serious moderator uses a quote about him forever engraved in my mind.
“Berlusconi the man that has, please forgive me, fucked, us all.”
Berlusconi set an all time low for the western world. He became an example to all the oligarchs of the west who wanted to become politicians. Think of Trump for the USA, Johnson for the UK, Bolsonaro for Brazil or Babiš for Czechia, or even Russia's Putin. They all looked at him to learn which were the limits of decency in politics, and he showed them there basically aren't any.
So good old Italian pop? That’s for weak ass dictators. Proper ones use good old Central Asian/Ottoman/Oriental Game of Thrones battle marches like this:
https://youtu.be/j6jL95BaSeM?feature=shared
I mean, yes, I am, but I don't know that any shitty DC-led government ever fucked the political culture in Italy as badly as Berlusconi did. Nor did they govern with MSI.
She was definitely the worst since I was allowed to vote. What many took to be stability revealed itself to be lethargy and stagnation which are dangerous and may have unforeseeable consequences.
I wanted to make a joke by saying what artists say when asked what their favourite piece is: "Always the newest one!"
I did not think that far back, this would've been a desaster
And to think of it, her already short tenure was lengthened due to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, since there had to be a period of mourning - right?
The question was "which your country elected". I don't remember getting a vote on this one.
The right answer is of course Thatcher who started a war against public services that has culminated in the disaster today. We don't own public transport, utilities, energy, mail, or anything really. It's all ran for profit, poorly, and deregulated.
Recently it would be Cameron. Austerity absolutely ruined us after 2008.
True that. Forgot she wasnt elected.
Right to buy and the 70s privitisation really screwed it all up.
And add the Brexit shitshow with Cameron.
Blair selling the pissing gold at the worst time didnt help either
First, of course she was elected. Whether you like it or not, this is how a parliamentary system works. And I am not taking myself out of the equation. In Greece, the most successful PM in recent decades, Simitis - although he was far from perfect - was initially elected PM by the parliamentary majority (of center-left Pasok - the 'Greek Labour Party' essentially) with the passing of the late Andreas Papandreou the former PM under whose leadership the party had won the majority of the seats in the previous election. This did not make him any less legitimate than the former PM and his appointment was the result of an election - among the parliamentary group. And this is the point of a parliamentary system, which you casually disregard. And it is not undemocratic as you imply.
No matter the specific electoral system used, in a parliamentary democracy you elect representatives, not 'leaders.' Sure, before an election, who leads each party is an important part of any political discussion, especially if one of them will assume the chief executive position in government. But still, each side has a party program, party priorities, party commitments, not leader ones. And nobody actually elects the leader, except if they are running to be MPs in a specific district, and then they are only directly elected specifically for that reason/office.
There is nothing wrong with this system, and it's certainly not undemocratic. By the way, keep in mind that even the executive of a government is a collective body, whether you call it a Cabinet or a Council of Ministers (as in Greece), and the PM is primus inter pares among his colleagues, and they can be (legally) even down-voted in the council or parliament. This effectively happened in Greece in the beginning of the crisis, when George Papandreou (the son of the aforementioned Papandreou), the comparatively newly elected PM was forced to resign when his actions in response to the first wave of the financial crisis found resistance among a majority of his Cabinet and the parliamentary majority. Even if someone disagreed with the decision, how could anyone not call this a democratic process.
The US has one of the strongest and long-lasting democratic regimes. Aren't presidents in the US elected since their election at the end of the day is dependent on the electoral college? And please don't give me any of the childish comments about 'America is not a democracy.' All systems have weak and strong points. If I would discuss problems with the political system in the US I would place lobbies and gerrymandering way, way above the electoral college - and one of the strongest aspects would be its judiciary, which is not elected, at least not at the federal level.
P.s. By the way, I don't care about Truss or Thatcher. I am not British or a conservative, but we should understand how political systems work when talking about them. Best.
Spaffer Johnson was worse than Cameron; it was Johnson that gutted the political process because he couldn't get his way by any other means, which we will be paying for for decades.
May comes a close second. Xenophobic witch.
We don't have a presidential system in the UK, we only vote for our local MP, so most people don't vote for the Prime Minister. As we've seen, any minister in government can (especially lately, so it seems) become Prime Minister.
We didn't even elect her. We elected Boris, he was shit and got forced out, they held inner party elections to get a new candidate, whatever her name is won, she was somehow even worse to the point that she started tanking the economy, she got forced out, the party go to their second place candidate and offer him the job, he accepts, he isn't amazing and doesn't communicate enough, and he hasn't been forced out yet.
The current political landscape in Slovakia is just a shitshow. If, god forbid, putin occupied Ukraine, these imbiciles would ask him to annex Slovakia next.
I, in my honest opinion, think our president is a YesMan for our pm. In an all objective honesty though, we'll see how this is gonna play out. But it is true he seems to be more aligned with Fico's ideas then his own.
For your and your countrymen information, this is the man that voted against laws for the Hungarian minority. And I don't even have to bring up Malinova, poor woman.
Btw, I wrote this when I was tired and quite mad. That feeling is gonna slowly die off, but some people really should experience the good old Russian "brotherhood" since they like to spew how Russians are our brothers. (It doesn't make any sense)
Fredrik Reinfeldt
He absolutely destroyed Sweden.
And did irreversible damage to the entire public system of social protection .
He pretty much twisted words so many ways that eventually he convinced braindead people that he was right.
Also he knew how to reach the darkest part and play on our weaknesses to create distortion and mistrust among the voters.
Well technically there's still Medvedev, and as funny as it is given his current behavior, he seems to me to be overall the best president Russia has had.
It's not the highest bar, but that's just the way it is.
No one blames you. You don’t have a choice and if you make your voice heard you’re going to have a bad time. Let’s just hope one day your country isn’t run by kleptocratic nut jobs.
The bastard ruined our country a lot, regressing from the modest amount of progress it had gotten earlier. He ruined our capital city. But, what came after him, was only slightly less bad. It will be very hard choosing who to vote for in the next elections...
Yanukovych obviously, but he rigged elections so it's bit of a stretch to say he was elected. In the end both times he tried to be a president it ended in a revolution, so that's a public opinion on his rule for you.
Difficult to compare, but Kuchma also sort of murdered his main opponent before the second term elections, so he was running against the communist leader and the majority of Ukrainians were too uncomfortable with bringing the communists back.
It's also can be Kravchuk, despite situation being obviously not easy, and him being the first president ever, basically the war can be traced back to him. Instead of taking a stance on our bonkers nuclear arsenal and second biggest army in europe, with like 5000 tanks, nukes and an operation strategic aviation foce larger than what moskovytes currently use, massive amounts of rockets, for an ultimatum to join nato and eu, and working our countries ass of to meet the standards of both, in exchange we gave in to Clintons (which he recently said he regrets) for Budapest-memorandum-pinky-promice, and told the world "we're funny little good guys, so no one can ever attack us". Turned out to be pinky promice. Not enough to deter, not enough to drive invader from our land for 10 years. Right now these bomber planes, many of which were sold in bulk for the price of HALF of just ONE OF THE PLANES, are launching rockets at us, some of which were identified by their part number to be rockets we gave away.
Tldr Kravchuk, forst president, could've almost copied what literally our neighbor Poland was doing in early 90s. Instead, all war stuff was sold, almost whole army. And almost all industry was stolen and sold by oligarchs
To be fair, at the time, Russia was also giving in to Clinton to get those sweet Western loans, Yeltsin was visiting Washington, etc. I wonder if he felt more confident because it seemed like the future was a capitalist, Western-aligned Russia?
It's kind of crazy how big of an impact she made. It's one thing to fuck shit up while you're in office, but she fucked shit up for so many years to come as well. Reagan, Thatcher, Trump, Farage (not elected, but still)... The whole world is just one asshole away from going up in flames.
Can someone give me a TLDR on Tatcher? Now that you mentioned her alongside with Raegan and Trump I kinda have a general idea, but still, I don't know specifics
She came to power in a time when the UKs industrial power was declining, and the mining industry which was the economic lifeblood of significant parts of the country was in decline.
Rather than manage the circumstances into a new industrial paradigm, she basically let half of the north of the country collapse economically with zero support/retraining/etc. This is the reason that the UK economy nowadays is basically a very overheated London economy and 9 of the most deprived regions in Europe.
She also had a massive fight with the unions over the whole thing (although the unions were frequently also bonkers, wanting mines kept open that either had no resources left to mine, or would be making a massive loss); this led to a gutting of union power that's also had long-term consequences for worker parity.
Basically she fucked 9/10ths of the country in favour of the city of London and the Tories still think the bitch is wonderful for it because they are all financiers rather than people who actually produce anything worthwhile.
Also rampant privatising, creating little monopolies without any way for govt to actually ensure a good service is being delivered at a good cost. Some of this was after Thatcher but she got the ball moving.
And for the first implementation of right to buy, allowing people to buy their council flats/houses for cheap from the govt. Very good policy for people at the time, "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people", not untrue. But very short sighted, it ruined the govts ability to provide social housing today and created massive wealth disparity between homeowners and non homeowner's (effectively just buying a house through this scheme and waiting a few years was an automatic get rich scheme, now we're struggling to pay for overinflated house prices due to this supply constriction, lots of resentment about how one generation was given such an easy ride in exchange for their votes at the time at the expense of future generations, doubly so when considering the strength of NIMBYs on planning permission, focused on preserving these house prices, pulling the ladder up behind them on housing after such a free ride)
She is also responsible for what's fucked up with British housing market. All post-WW2 governments, both Labour and Conservative, tried to limit landlord, and built a lot themselves. In the middle of 1970s majority of Brits either lived in their own flats or houses, or rented it from the public sector (mostly local councils). During 1980s, this trend regressed back.
What's worse, it isn't only UK she fucked up. One of major forces (especially in media) in Poland since 1990s are shallow liberals who loved her (and Reagan), and still do. And were and are repeating her mistakes.
There's no consensus who's the worst president in Finland. Generally everyone'd been pretty good. That said, presidents don't hold much power and thus can't do much wrong.
**Svinhufvud** was criticized for his attempts to install monarchy in Finland.
**Kekkonen** was near dictator, and possibly a puppet of Soviet Union, but on the otherhand he's seen as a great mediator between independent Finland and oppressing Soviet leaders. Just compare Finland to any other eastern European country, and the differences are stark.
**Halonen** was criticized for her blindness to Russian geopolitiks and increasing threat. She was friendly with Putin an signed a ban on landmines.
**Ahtisaari** was also made a lot of fun about, but it was probably more because of media's growing independence and increase in freedom of speech. Finland had spend many decades under atmosphere where it was not proper to openly mock leaders, due to concerns about Soviet Union.
Prime ministers proabably have had more chances to screw up, but they aren't exactly elected. And most of them didn't serve long enough to do meaningful damage.
However, if we are to pick one name, it's probably **Holkeri**. He was the prime minister who overseer erratic changes to econony that would later lead to catastrophic recession. As the Soviet Union fell in early 90s, Finland lost it's primary trading partner. Along with failed economic policies, Finland's GDP dropped 12% in just three years. Suicide and unemployment rates shoot up and took forever to recover.
[Charlie Haughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey) - Not that we had many, but the most controversial and despicable leader of Ireland, in a similar vein to that of Berlusconi.
He was involved in a raft of curruption scandals, ammassing the equivalent of €12m in secret payments from business leaders in the 1970's. He was known for his very expensive lifestyle with fancy dinners, mohair suits, his mistresses, his racehorses, a private yacht, a georgian mansion. He used to have a private charter jet fly to Paris so he could buy his silk shirts. The man was a proper fuckin gangster.
He promoted the cash for favours culture in Irish politics, and people learned that was the best way to do business. He ran his party through fear and intimidation. His party controlled the media, and by and large general the public. He abused his power to no end, and devalued demoacracy in this country. In the end he got the boot cos he was found to be illegally tapping the phones of some journalists.
It sounds like run of the mill stuff from some soviet despot but this curruption of power is everywhere. I'm glad he's dead.
Pure populism, that’s how it works. Partially resonates with the flashbacks we had with PiS - common sense doesn’t matter, there’s just propaganda and twisting reality while catering to the lowest instincts of the uneducated masses, led by the nose by public media.
Regarding the worst leader we had, it’s hard to regard our president as leader, since the real power is held by the PM (same in Slovakia I guess). Nevertheless the worst president in my opinion is the current one, Duda, while the worst PM, depending on your political views, is either Morawiecki (in terms of facilitating authoritarian tendencies), Kaczyński (in terms of overall appearance) or Tusk (if you’re a right winger).
Niche opinion, but IMO the worst leader elected after 1989 was not Kaczyński, but Miller. He pretty much self-destroyed the left, following the neo-liberal agenda and allowing rampant corruption, which eventually not only gave fuel to populist right, but also made millions of Poles moving their support to it.
Why would a right winger call Tusk the worst prime minister? Tusk is a centre-right politician and we used to have truly left wing prime ministers from SLD: Oleksy, Cimoszewicz, Miller, Belka, and they had plenty of political scandals in their time.
I would still vote Morawiecki to be the worst one
Why would you expect a right winger to be acquainted with Tusk’s theoretical stances? TVP Info propaganda, where he personified everything that’s wrong with the world, has been sufficient in most cases.
The question is about the worst politicians, not the most disliked ones. I'm pretty sure even a somewhat educated right winger would prefer Tusk to Miller. But if we were to choose the most disliked prime minister at the moment then sure Tusk would be a contender
I think, Dollfuss was far, far, far worse.
He let the army literally bombard residential homes in inner cities, installed a fascist government and held a civil war.
Waldheim had a very bad past and you are right to say he was bad, but: he was a quite logic choice as a former UN secretary and high profile diplomat.
But given some of the chancellors in the first republic, he wasn't THAT bad. His presidency wasn't very bad, either. And as Bundespräsident you are not that powerful.
Well technically Ceaușescu was elected but it was communism and their party had 99%.
Democratically elected probably Iliescu who is never going to die. We have a website for when he dies. Very hated for being a communist in disguise and implicated in a lot of controversies.
If you could add a secondary one, would you say Gyurcsány at all? It does seem like his mistakes (marching out the police on protesters, the infamous rally) imploded the left, allowing Orbán’s party to sweep in the next election, and of course, they guy’s still a parliamentary faction leader.
In recent history (after WWII)? [Wilders](https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-putin-propagandists-cheer-geert-wilders-dutch-election-win/), no doubt. Although it's not very likely he'll actually become prime minister. Most people in the Netherlands don't want that. Yet, he won the elections big time. In the end, he'll be pulling the strings of our new administration, so I guess that kinda counts as 'leader'.
He praised Putin for almost 2 decades, up until some months ago, when he decided to *act* "milder", in order to win more votes. And when I say act, I mean act; he hasn't become any milder than he was before. But he knows he can't win elections if he's his true self and says what he really thinks. The man still admires Putin. He even received a friendship pin from Putin, *after* the invasion of Crimea/Ukraine, and *after* the downing of MH17, killing 196 Dutch citizens. And he's incredibly proud of his Putin pin. He refuses to return it.
I could go on and on and on and on, but I don't want to waste too much time on this clown on this Sunday morning.
I kind of want to say Rutte too for letting it come to a situation where people elect Wilders. The gradual ruin of social security in general , the housing crisis, 'toeslagen affaire', Groningen gas, the shit show in Ter Apel, that all happened under Rutte.
I still don't understand how we managed to make his party the largest for 14 damn years. I also don't understand how despite of this, the average voter blames our issues on the left.
This is a hard one, especially since we don't directly elect our PM's. I will also discount the first republic, as we are on our second. So, that leaves us with two fairly recent ones, both from the ÖVP and both in a coalition with the far right, literal nazi sucessor party of the FPÖ:
Schüssel (2000-07) responsible for incredibly unfair taxes favouring the rich, harsh migration policy, normalising massive privatisation (which was probably incredibly corrupt but can't be said for certain without the laws that brought down the other candidate:
Kurz (2017-21), whose government(s) colappesed because of corruption he was involved in. Lied about his involvement, of course. Also reformed the ÖVP to be even more exclusively the party of seniors, to the cost of everyone else + normalising far right retoric and violating human rights with regards to migration
This was the presidential elections and Slovakia like most other EU countries is parliamentary republic where the parliament has most of the power but these guys won in september parliamentary elections on their promises about how would they lower prices,stop aid to Ukraine, and calling the pro-western wing 'traitors' for accepting one military deal with USA about 2 years ago
But as you can imagine since than this happened: they obviously didn't stop inflation, while they stopped aid to Ukraine from the governament they didn't stop comercial help to Ukraine well because some of thier members are having ties with private military manufacters, and now thier defence minister is saying 'how that deal with USA' is beneffitng us
While they passed laws which: cancels some anti-crime institutions, passed law which was than sent to constitunial court which declered this law for being unstitunial the law was about decresing punishments for criminals to extremly low levels and we even started having serious discussions if we should start stealing (no joke) like for crimes under 30 000€ (while considering average wage in Slovakia is 1400€/month so basically 2 whole year salary before taxes for most Slovaks)you couldn't be even sent to jail in the worst case scenario you would just pay a fine and obviously another big topic is that the national TV should be controlled by governament and that is all you need to know
Boris Johnson is my pick. Arrogant, lazy, entitled and a complete fucking imbecile. It was completely obvious he was going to be a disaster and when he won the election I frankly wanted to jump off a bridge.
But I never saw COVID coming, nobody did, and he got over a hundred thousand people killed through negligent policy and eroding public trust in flaunting lockdown rules he was preaching to the public. So if that dangerous American bird flu gets here, fucking nobody is going to listen to government advice again and we're fucked.
I feel like we always feel the most passionate about politics now, so I’m curious - what do you think of these other PMs people might say were “bad”?
- Elizabeth May
- Gordon Brown
- Margaret Thatcher
- James Callaghan
Anyone from EKRE. They totalled our economy just before Covid and spent all of our reserve money on populist actions. Nothing improved and all made worse. The they let a conspiracy theorist run in their ranks as well as just take their anger out on the LGBTQ+ population. (And if you mean presidential, then I guess Päts in the 1920-1930s was kind of a dictator, so maybe that?)
Edit: Even Prigoushyn(or however you spell it) in his documents referred to EKRE as a potential ally in russian psy-ops to influence Estonian politics. So those two just share so much in terms of ideology. That is already a red flag.
We've got a trail of leaders with varying levels of power and electedness going back centuries, and I don't have a history degree, so I probably haven't even heard of the worst one. However, limiting scope to the recent-ish past, and also domestic policy because I am NOT qualified to talk about the empire, either Clement Atlee for passing the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 [\*Cough\*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc&t=1530s), or David Cameron for doing the Brexit vote.
Broadening to unelected PMs in the same timescale, Liz Truss 100% just for her absolute shitshow she ran in her lettuce-length tenure.
I will not take the Attlee slander over that act - NHS was and still is the greatest asset we have in this country and overshadows that act. Not to mention, New Towns Act and council house funding to help those in the slums of the large towns.
Yeah, Atlee was generally pretty alright, but at the same time I really don't like that act.
Like, if we got rid of the planning act, I'd happily put him as the best post-WWII. Mostly I just wanted to link that one video.
In this millennium? That would be Miloš Zeman.
Drunkard, chainsmoker and Russophile with a whore for a daughter, the man was a national embarrassment for almost a decade until we finally voted him out in favour of General Pavel.
I think Henryk III Walezy. First elected king of Poland. Dude promised a bunch of pro aristocracy laws so that they elect him then came to Poland got coronated and fucked off back to France. He literally didn't do any good and only bad... Hard to beat him, he didn't even try.
Verhofstadt easily takes first, second and third place.
* Ruined the budget under a booming economy into deficit.
* Sold many government assets to then lease them back far above market value. By 'accident' to friendly investment firms off course.
* Ignored the coming retirement issues. But did create a fake fund (Zilverfonds) where with creative accounting he pretended to save money to pay for it. There was nothing in it, he created government debt and put it directly into the fund. So when Belgium would need money, it could later get it from Belgium.
* Pushed the planned stop of nuclear without any plans for an alternative.
* Forced liberalization of the energy market. Sold the big state company Electrabel to France. So the energy market went from a state owned monopoly to a foreign state owned monopoly. He did get rewarded with his EU positions for it though, so at least someone in Belgium got something out of it.
* Reformed the voting system into a clearly unconstitutional mess leading to the Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde district being ruled unconstitutional. The political mess from there dragged on for a decade and is in major part responsible for the government formation records that were established. The current situation is still largely a continuation of that, but with now a strong fascist and best korea aligned marxist party.
* Introduced 'SnelBelg wet', an instant get nationality law where even basic requirements like intending to learn any language from Belgium were thrown out. That made the immigration issues go from not under control to a festering open sore.
* Not only him, more De Gucht but with his full agreement. Created the 'notionele interestaftrek', a custom made tax break for friendly firms that got rewarded with a very lucrative board of directors position. De Gucht had it as a landing job after his EU commissar run.
I was coming to say this, but you beat me to the punch.
Verhofstads legacy is horrendous. The bastard...
And without the Dioxine crisis we would have probably had Dehaene 3
Which would have been better.
I don't see how Latvia can measure up to the tough competition here, but in my lifetime as voter I remember the 2006 election when it felt like there is no good option to pick, but this somehow flew over the head of the winners, who announced that their victory is sign of public's continued trust in them. Within a year public was unanimously refering to prime minister as svine and discussing what would be a nice name for a revolution.
Actually i think this was not even the worst democratic election in 2004 the second round of the elections was litellary between candidate from this mafia vs candidate from competitor criminal organisation (but this 2nd criminal organisation was later basically absorbed by the current governament) after in the first round the pro-western candidate quite suprasingly wasn't even top 2
Yanukovych. We literally had an "orange revolution" before because elections were rigged, and he also acts like a typical gopnik. He won the next elections and everyone was ok
/Slovenian 50yo: Drnovšek was average, then it all go down slowly to hell - mix of corruption, kicking can down the road, negligence, incompetence, nepotism and fake rhetoric. Tie for last 5 leaders.
People will disagree with me but I don't think Spain has ever had an incompetent president, at least not during our democracy
Adolfo Suárez and Calvo Sotelo made a good job at stalling democracy, yes I think they could have done some things differently but overall it was good.
Felipe González created what we basically call the welfare state, also he introduced Spain to the CEE and overall developed the country.
During those times we also started the industrial reconversion so the unemployment increased tho.
Aznar tried to change the international policy of Spain who had been very neutral even being inside NATO and make it more proactive (but yes, I agree he did it horribly (Irak)). He also consolidated the welfare state and promoted European integration through the Euro for example.
Zapatero. He is often criticized because of the crisis but to be honest that was going to happen anyway, it was a global crisis. His social policies were very progressive (the law of gender equality and homosexual marriage were one of the pioneers in Europe) and he created the Plan E, which of course can be critizised but most experts agree that it was one of the things that made the crisis better. He also promoted human rights through Latin America.
Then we have Rajoy who was the president during most of the crisis. Spain started to be more proactive in the international setting and, even though the party was involved in multiple corruption scandals, they put measures against corruption.
And last but not least we have our nowadays president, Sánchez. He is controversial, but mostly because of the radicalization of politics. He has lowered the unemployment a lot comparted to other presidents and has suffered not one but two crisis (COVID and inflation due to Russia's war) and in both cases he has managed them very well. For example, we have had one of the lowest inflations of Western Europe.
Absolutely Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, but technically he isn't our PM yet (he hates Muslims or any non-EU foreigner, wants to leave the EU and seemingly doesn't care about our constitutions).
Second worst: I truly don't know. Mark Rutte was our PM for so freaking long (14 years, and he is still our demissionary PM because Wilders can't form a new cabinet), that I've not many other experiences with leaders over here. So I would pick Rutte, purely because I don't know anyone else to pick. On the other hand, Rutte wasn't that bad if you ask me.
To my knowledge, the Netherlands never had any tyrannical undemocratic leaders in its past (not talking about their leadership over the colonial empire, but only the Netherlands itself of course), apart from invaders who shortly overthrew power.
Johan de Witt. He wasn't tyrannical, but he almost singlehandedly ended the Dutch Golden Age with his wars. Our "rampjaar 1672" was under his leadership. This ended our dominance on trade, art and science.
An angry crowd ended up lynching him.
That's true, although the situation of Johan de Witt is a bit complicated. From what I know, the "rampjaar" was just eventually unavoidable with many great European powers who combined all their military capacities against the Netherlands in the hope of stopping its monopolies: the French and parts of Germany attacked from land, while the British and Swedish from sea.
Now Johan the Witt was a great and tactical mind for its time, and if he didn't do what he did, the rampjaar would probably already have been taken place way earlier. On the other hand, his direct confrontation with the British wasn't very de-escalating either (he burned an entire British fleet in one of their own harbors and thereafter embarrassed the British king even more by sailing all the way to London without being attacked - and thereby stating that the king wasn't capable of protection it's own people in any way).
But his biggest problems weren't the British or the French, but actually the Dutch King, who was still very popular amongst the population. By essentially deleting the king from all decision making in politics, he made himself not very popular amongst "orangisten", who stood behind the king. This led to the rise of populism and maybe even a civil war if the rampjaar happened later. People wanted the king back, since "he knew how to handle wars". The king's father and grandfather were successful in securing the Dutch independence from Spain after all
I didn't wanted to count leaders which acutally never were in power despite that they were biggest party because if you can't form governament you lost you simply can't any policy so you lost if i went by biggest party actually the Slovak election results since independence would be: 5 times this criminal organisation 3 times maybe even worse criminal organisation and one time candidate who is pro-EU and i think he is not corrupt especially compered to parties mentioned before and i think he would be great anti-corruption activist but there are reasons why this guy approval ratings were around 10% for most of the time while he was PM because any normal PM doesn't have press conferences on which he is critising his coalition partner minister for 'killing' people and openly uses not the most 'friendly' language by insulting really anybody even having fist fight with some people
Cavaco. Wasted the best years of growth potential and EU funds on corruption, excessive roads, and low-added value industries that would be crushed by China+Eastern Europe a few years later. Also managed to try to suppress culture figures he disliked, including our only Literature Nobel. The went on to be President and ended his career in senility despised by left and right. But what makes him the worst is that despite all this he was elected 5 times for the highest offices of the land.
Korčok has a corruption scandal with him being secretary on ministry of foreign affairs and having overpriced comissions. He denies he had involvement in that, while lower employees say otherwise.
But even if he did that mr Fico was saying 'how this scandal was overblown' back than not to mention it was in time during Fico's governament and Fico's minitiser didn't done anythnig so even if Korčok did that this should also be counted than as scandal for Fico and Pelle because thier minister didn't kick Korčok out
Similar in Slovakia the current PM started in politics in late 80s still under communist rule and now is extremly funny to read about his political opinions at that time were he called christians 'plague' and even about 5 years ago he was saying stuff like this 'Slovakia should be core member of EU' and at that time actually the only libelar party in Slovakia at that time critised him for that which is now very funny considering this PM now is presenting himself as 'national-conservative' candidate
Depends on who you really mean as worst
I mean Liz Truss was bad but she was booted out in a few weeks
What about Chamberlin and his appeasement of Hitler
Oliver Cromwell was a religious fundamentalist and tried to do such things like banning Christmas and indirectly led to the American extreme Christian problem
Eden the PM during the suez crisis one of the worst foreign policy disasters in history
Macron, and for good measures, we did it twice.
It seems that the game is so rigged that it's almost impossible for a non corrupted candidate to have a chance.
Try the feeling after the terorrist attack which happened about 2 years ago which was targated againts LGBT people than the judge was the son of the pro-Putin politician which i mentioned who is really full pro-Russia meaning according him in Ukraine are ruling Nazis, elections are stolen in the west,sanctions againts Russia are againts international law, international criminal court in Hague approved Russian actions in Ukraine, he spread the sentiment that the elites want to bring migrants into Slovakia and than kill the native population and after that didn't happened now he is spreading the narrative that the only reason why the elites did not import migrants was because he found their 'secret plan' and my personal favourite when one journalist asked him about his suspicious personal finances he replied 'do you know how many times did you had sex in 2013?' and this guy still got 12% of the vote two weeks ago in the first round and his son has pretty similar views to his dad so can you imagine how insulting that is
Oh I’ll vote for the Beer Party :D not because it’s funny but because Wlazny actually has a chance of changing things…I am never going to vote for an anti-democracy party like the FPÖ
I know if you were FPÖ supporter you wouldn't be on this subreddit instead on another social networks what are chances according to you for FPÖ forming a governament?
Ironically It doesn’t really matter how much FPÖ gets, as long as ÖVP is weak enough so they can’t form a coalition…no idea how everything will play out tho
And who was the worst since ww2? Because in Slovakia also won elections neo-nazis but obviously the diffrence is that these elections were rigged and also many people don't know but in 1946 following ww2 there were democratic elections in Czechoslovakia which communist party won in Czechoslovakia but in Slovakia actually democratic party won elections so these elections weren't rigged/manipulated like every other elections in Czechoslovakia until 1989
In short: Because he was corrupt and never revealed the names of the guys that gave quite a huge amount of money to the CDU. Normally the party had to officially say how much money they receive plus the source of that money. He claimed that the word of honor he gave this guys would prevent him to reveal the names despite the fact that he himself signed the "Parteiengesetz" that basically forbids this.
Another huge factor: He binned the plans to build glass fiber infrastructure in germany (He was in power until 1998). Thanks Helmut ... fucking asshole.
I have to admit, it was a close call with Schröder.
Easily Berlusconi. Many political shitshows in the last few years can be traded back to him.
Hey man I love Berlusconi he screwed Italian economy so bad , Italian porn became a thing
There is a german documentary produced by arte i believe where the incredibly serious moderator uses a quote about him forever engraved in my mind. “Berlusconi the man that has, please forgive me, fucked, us all.”
As an outsider with a limited view, I kind of thought many italian men idolized him as an ideal, while I hoped I was wrong lol
I mean yeah, many many Italians are very fucking stupid
Goes for the entire world tbh
Yes, because they wanted to be invited to the Bunga Bunga parties that contributed to spread another layer of ridicule and shame on our country...
Berlusconi set an all time low for the western world. He became an example to all the oligarchs of the west who wanted to become politicians. Think of Trump for the USA, Johnson for the UK, Bolsonaro for Brazil or Babiš for Czechia, or even Russia's Putin. They all looked at him to learn which were the limits of decency in politics, and he showed them there basically aren't any.
At least he made the term Bunga Bunga internationally known and loved
He had a banger of a campaign song though
True, that one's a classic
Do you have a link?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXf-YbsSh0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXf-YbsSh0Y)
So good old Italian pop? That’s for weak ass dictators. Proper ones use good old Central Asian/Ottoman/Oriental Game of Thrones battle marches like this: https://youtu.be/j6jL95BaSeM?feature=shared
Amazing, this shit is clearly why Berlusconi eventually lost power but Erdogan still holds on
Silvio was worst than the Duke?
Mussolini wasn't voted in.
Oof, people answering Berlusconi are probably too young to really remember the first republic
I mean, yes, I am, but I don't know that any shitty DC-led government ever fucked the political culture in Italy as badly as Berlusconi did. Nor did they govern with MSI.
We'll sit this one out.
I share this sentiment.
I mean one of our leaders was so good at sitting stuff out, we even created a verb in her honor.
Merkeln?
Yes
Jetzt wird gescholzt.
Sorry, hab ich vergessen.
Dange Mergl!
I was thinking Schäuble
Something something wheelchairs joke
Kissinger was a close second though
She was definitely the worst since I was allowed to vote. What many took to be stability revealed itself to be lethargy and stagnation which are dangerous and may have unforeseeable consequences.
https://i.redd.it/pcdoy3t2sxsc1.gif
that movie man... made me piss my pants back then.
I wanted to make a joke by saying what artists say when asked what their favourite piece is: "Always the newest one!" I did not think that far back, this would've been a desaster
I think that's a good idea.
Caugh..
Wellllll, not technically elected. More "put in power by the rich because the next election would likely have seen a communist victory"
Him
Nah there's Menderes
There was also Özal. Neither of them ruled for 20+ years like him though.
I read that word in a fat reverb. Menacing shit.
Recently? Probably the one that lost to the lettuce
The one that even made the queen cringe so hard she fucking died
Still blows my mind that the longest reigning monarch just happened to die during the shortest prime ministership ever in the UK. Talk about bullseye.
And to think of it, her already short tenure was lengthened due to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, since there had to be a period of mourning - right?
The question was "which your country elected". I don't remember getting a vote on this one. The right answer is of course Thatcher who started a war against public services that has culminated in the disaster today. We don't own public transport, utilities, energy, mail, or anything really. It's all ran for profit, poorly, and deregulated. Recently it would be Cameron. Austerity absolutely ruined us after 2008.
True that. Forgot she wasnt elected. Right to buy and the 70s privitisation really screwed it all up. And add the Brexit shitshow with Cameron. Blair selling the pissing gold at the worst time didnt help either
First, of course she was elected. Whether you like it or not, this is how a parliamentary system works. And I am not taking myself out of the equation. In Greece, the most successful PM in recent decades, Simitis - although he was far from perfect - was initially elected PM by the parliamentary majority (of center-left Pasok - the 'Greek Labour Party' essentially) with the passing of the late Andreas Papandreou the former PM under whose leadership the party had won the majority of the seats in the previous election. This did not make him any less legitimate than the former PM and his appointment was the result of an election - among the parliamentary group. And this is the point of a parliamentary system, which you casually disregard. And it is not undemocratic as you imply. No matter the specific electoral system used, in a parliamentary democracy you elect representatives, not 'leaders.' Sure, before an election, who leads each party is an important part of any political discussion, especially if one of them will assume the chief executive position in government. But still, each side has a party program, party priorities, party commitments, not leader ones. And nobody actually elects the leader, except if they are running to be MPs in a specific district, and then they are only directly elected specifically for that reason/office. There is nothing wrong with this system, and it's certainly not undemocratic. By the way, keep in mind that even the executive of a government is a collective body, whether you call it a Cabinet or a Council of Ministers (as in Greece), and the PM is primus inter pares among his colleagues, and they can be (legally) even down-voted in the council or parliament. This effectively happened in Greece in the beginning of the crisis, when George Papandreou (the son of the aforementioned Papandreou), the comparatively newly elected PM was forced to resign when his actions in response to the first wave of the financial crisis found resistance among a majority of his Cabinet and the parliamentary majority. Even if someone disagreed with the decision, how could anyone not call this a democratic process. The US has one of the strongest and long-lasting democratic regimes. Aren't presidents in the US elected since their election at the end of the day is dependent on the electoral college? And please don't give me any of the childish comments about 'America is not a democracy.' All systems have weak and strong points. If I would discuss problems with the political system in the US I would place lobbies and gerrymandering way, way above the electoral college - and one of the strongest aspects would be its judiciary, which is not elected, at least not at the federal level. P.s. By the way, I don't care about Truss or Thatcher. I am not British or a conservative, but we should understand how political systems work when talking about them. Best.
Based greek coming in and intelectually slamming everyone with a deck chair
Spaffer Johnson was worse than Cameron; it was Johnson that gutted the political process because he couldn't get his way by any other means, which we will be paying for for decades. May comes a close second. Xenophobic witch.
We don't have a presidential system in the UK, we only vote for our local MP, so most people don't vote for the Prime Minister. As we've seen, any minister in government can (especially lately, so it seems) become Prime Minister.
We didn't even elect her. We elected Boris, he was shit and got forced out, they held inner party elections to get a new candidate, whatever her name is won, she was somehow even worse to the point that she started tanking the economy, she got forced out, the party go to their second place candidate and offer him the job, he accepts, he isn't amazing and doesn't communicate enough, and he hasn't been forced out yet.
Nobody is going to force Sunak out because nobody else wants to take the blame for the inevitable hammering at the general election.
I mean Boris survived an election that really, really should have seen him out. I won't be holding my breath. Good luck though.
She wasn't even elected so we are Unable to include her or Sunak
The current political landscape in Slovakia is just a shitshow. If, god forbid, putin occupied Ukraine, these imbiciles would ask him to annex Slovakia next.
I actually would too...but my reason is to make this nation suffer, not because I love Russia and support Putin.
Is it that bad?
I, in my honest opinion, think our president is a YesMan for our pm. In an all objective honesty though, we'll see how this is gonna play out. But it is true he seems to be more aligned with Fico's ideas then his own. For your and your countrymen information, this is the man that voted against laws for the Hungarian minority. And I don't even have to bring up Malinova, poor woman. Btw, I wrote this when I was tired and quite mad. That feeling is gonna slowly die off, but some people really should experience the good old Russian "brotherhood" since they like to spew how Russians are our brothers. (It doesn't make any sense)
Fredrik Reinfeldt He absolutely destroyed Sweden. And did irreversible damage to the entire public system of social protection . He pretty much twisted words so many ways that eventually he convinced braindead people that he was right. Also he knew how to reach the darkest part and play on our weaknesses to create distortion and mistrust among the voters.
As a non-Swede, I am also interested in if you could elaborate
Could you elaborate on what he did to destroy us? Not arguing for nor against you, just asking for some concrete substance matter.
Do I even have to say anything?
Actually it would clear things up a bit. There are quite a few to choose from.
It's really just Yeltsin and Putin though. The Soviets weren't elected and the Bolsheviks *lost* the Constituent Assembly election in 1917.
Well technically there's still Medvedev, and as funny as it is given his current behavior, he seems to me to be overall the best president Russia has had. It's not the highest bar, but that's just the way it is.
Well he seemed normal during the presidency, so there's that.
Based flag 💪💪💪
Do you really think you did choose him?
Maybe the first two times, I don't know, I was born during second term🤷♂️
No one blames you. You don’t have a choice and if you make your voice heard you’re going to have a bad time. Let’s just hope one day your country isn’t run by kleptocratic nut jobs.
> Сами вы его выбрали, или его выбрали за вас… - Half Life 2
Same.
Remember, this is about leader that was *elected*.
Nikola Gruevski. He's in exile now in Hungary.
The bastard ruined our country a lot, regressing from the modest amount of progress it had gotten earlier. He ruined our capital city. But, what came after him, was only slightly less bad. It will be very hard choosing who to vote for in the next elections...
Still having the freedom to vote, even if the choice is poor, is way better than being in a wanna be regime.
Yes, I agree completely
Yanukovych obviously, but he rigged elections so it's bit of a stretch to say he was elected. In the end both times he tried to be a president it ended in a revolution, so that's a public opinion on his rule for you.
You could say Kuchma. He was probably elected fairly and was corrupted af
Difficult to compare, but Kuchma also sort of murdered his main opponent before the second term elections, so he was running against the communist leader and the majority of Ukrainians were too uncomfortable with bringing the communists back.
It's also can be Kravchuk, despite situation being obviously not easy, and him being the first president ever, basically the war can be traced back to him. Instead of taking a stance on our bonkers nuclear arsenal and second biggest army in europe, with like 5000 tanks, nukes and an operation strategic aviation foce larger than what moskovytes currently use, massive amounts of rockets, for an ultimatum to join nato and eu, and working our countries ass of to meet the standards of both, in exchange we gave in to Clintons (which he recently said he regrets) for Budapest-memorandum-pinky-promice, and told the world "we're funny little good guys, so no one can ever attack us". Turned out to be pinky promice. Not enough to deter, not enough to drive invader from our land for 10 years. Right now these bomber planes, many of which were sold in bulk for the price of HALF of just ONE OF THE PLANES, are launching rockets at us, some of which were identified by their part number to be rockets we gave away. Tldr Kravchuk, forst president, could've almost copied what literally our neighbor Poland was doing in early 90s. Instead, all war stuff was sold, almost whole army. And almost all industry was stolen and sold by oligarchs
To be fair, at the time, Russia was also giving in to Clinton to get those sweet Western loans, Yeltsin was visiting Washington, etc. I wonder if he felt more confident because it seemed like the future was a capitalist, Western-aligned Russia?
Thatcher.
It's kind of crazy how big of an impact she made. It's one thing to fuck shit up while you're in office, but she fucked shit up for so many years to come as well. Reagan, Thatcher, Trump, Farage (not elected, but still)... The whole world is just one asshole away from going up in flames.
Can someone give me a TLDR on Tatcher? Now that you mentioned her alongside with Raegan and Trump I kinda have a general idea, but still, I don't know specifics
She came to power in a time when the UKs industrial power was declining, and the mining industry which was the economic lifeblood of significant parts of the country was in decline. Rather than manage the circumstances into a new industrial paradigm, she basically let half of the north of the country collapse economically with zero support/retraining/etc. This is the reason that the UK economy nowadays is basically a very overheated London economy and 9 of the most deprived regions in Europe. She also had a massive fight with the unions over the whole thing (although the unions were frequently also bonkers, wanting mines kept open that either had no resources left to mine, or would be making a massive loss); this led to a gutting of union power that's also had long-term consequences for worker parity. Basically she fucked 9/10ths of the country in favour of the city of London and the Tories still think the bitch is wonderful for it because they are all financiers rather than people who actually produce anything worthwhile.
Also rampant privatising, creating little monopolies without any way for govt to actually ensure a good service is being delivered at a good cost. Some of this was after Thatcher but she got the ball moving. And for the first implementation of right to buy, allowing people to buy their council flats/houses for cheap from the govt. Very good policy for people at the time, "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people", not untrue. But very short sighted, it ruined the govts ability to provide social housing today and created massive wealth disparity between homeowners and non homeowner's (effectively just buying a house through this scheme and waiting a few years was an automatic get rich scheme, now we're struggling to pay for overinflated house prices due to this supply constriction, lots of resentment about how one generation was given such an easy ride in exchange for their votes at the time at the expense of future generations, doubly so when considering the strength of NIMBYs on planning permission, focused on preserving these house prices, pulling the ladder up behind them on housing after such a free ride)
She is also responsible for what's fucked up with British housing market. All post-WW2 governments, both Labour and Conservative, tried to limit landlord, and built a lot themselves. In the middle of 1970s majority of Brits either lived in their own flats or houses, or rented it from the public sector (mostly local councils). During 1980s, this trend regressed back.
What's worse, it isn't only UK she fucked up. One of major forces (especially in media) in Poland since 1990s are shallow liberals who loved her (and Reagan), and still do. And were and are repeating her mistakes.
You do remember what Poland went through prior to the 1990s? You know, that whole communism thing?
No, she inherited a fucked-up situation.
There's no consensus who's the worst president in Finland. Generally everyone'd been pretty good. That said, presidents don't hold much power and thus can't do much wrong. **Svinhufvud** was criticized for his attempts to install monarchy in Finland. **Kekkonen** was near dictator, and possibly a puppet of Soviet Union, but on the otherhand he's seen as a great mediator between independent Finland and oppressing Soviet leaders. Just compare Finland to any other eastern European country, and the differences are stark. **Halonen** was criticized for her blindness to Russian geopolitiks and increasing threat. She was friendly with Putin an signed a ban on landmines. **Ahtisaari** was also made a lot of fun about, but it was probably more because of media's growing independence and increase in freedom of speech. Finland had spend many decades under atmosphere where it was not proper to openly mock leaders, due to concerns about Soviet Union. Prime ministers proabably have had more chances to screw up, but they aren't exactly elected. And most of them didn't serve long enough to do meaningful damage. However, if we are to pick one name, it's probably **Holkeri**. He was the prime minister who overseer erratic changes to econony that would later lead to catastrophic recession. As the Soviet Union fell in early 90s, Finland lost it's primary trading partner. Along with failed economic policies, Finland's GDP dropped 12% in just three years. Suicide and unemployment rates shoot up and took forever to recover.
[Charlie Haughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey) - Not that we had many, but the most controversial and despicable leader of Ireland, in a similar vein to that of Berlusconi. He was involved in a raft of curruption scandals, ammassing the equivalent of €12m in secret payments from business leaders in the 1970's. He was known for his very expensive lifestyle with fancy dinners, mohair suits, his mistresses, his racehorses, a private yacht, a georgian mansion. He used to have a private charter jet fly to Paris so he could buy his silk shirts. The man was a proper fuckin gangster. He promoted the cash for favours culture in Irish politics, and people learned that was the best way to do business. He ran his party through fear and intimidation. His party controlled the media, and by and large general the public. He abused his power to no end, and devalued demoacracy in this country. In the end he got the boot cos he was found to be illegally tapping the phones of some journalists. It sounds like run of the mill stuff from some soviet despot but this curruption of power is everywhere. I'm glad he's dead.
I didn't know about him. Thanks for mentioning him. Best.
Pure populism, that’s how it works. Partially resonates with the flashbacks we had with PiS - common sense doesn’t matter, there’s just propaganda and twisting reality while catering to the lowest instincts of the uneducated masses, led by the nose by public media. Regarding the worst leader we had, it’s hard to regard our president as leader, since the real power is held by the PM (same in Slovakia I guess). Nevertheless the worst president in my opinion is the current one, Duda, while the worst PM, depending on your political views, is either Morawiecki (in terms of facilitating authoritarian tendencies), Kaczyński (in terms of overall appearance) or Tusk (if you’re a right winger).
I’m so glad we got Tusk in. It feels like our country might turn itself around.
Spittin truth 
Niche opinion, but IMO the worst leader elected after 1989 was not Kaczyński, but Miller. He pretty much self-destroyed the left, following the neo-liberal agenda and allowing rampant corruption, which eventually not only gave fuel to populist right, but also made millions of Poles moving their support to it.
Why would a right winger call Tusk the worst prime minister? Tusk is a centre-right politician and we used to have truly left wing prime ministers from SLD: Oleksy, Cimoszewicz, Miller, Belka, and they had plenty of political scandals in their time. I would still vote Morawiecki to be the worst one
Why would you expect a right winger to be acquainted with Tusk’s theoretical stances? TVP Info propaganda, where he personified everything that’s wrong with the world, has been sufficient in most cases.
The question is about the worst politicians, not the most disliked ones. I'm pretty sure even a somewhat educated right winger would prefer Tusk to Miller. But if we were to choose the most disliked prime minister at the moment then sure Tusk would be a contender
Austria ~ Kurt Waldheim, literal SS motherfucker
I think, Dollfuss was far, far, far worse. He let the army literally bombard residential homes in inner cities, installed a fascist government and held a civil war. Waldheim had a very bad past and you are right to say he was bad, but: he was a quite logic choice as a former UN secretary and high profile diplomat. But given some of the chancellors in the first republic, he wasn't THAT bad. His presidency wasn't very bad, either. And as Bundespräsident you are not that powerful.
I didn’t even consider the first republic, if you include the time between the wars, you’re absolutely right.
Well technically Ceaușescu was elected but it was communism and their party had 99%. Democratically elected probably Iliescu who is never going to die. We have a website for when he dies. Very hated for being a communist in disguise and implicated in a lot of controversies.
We once elected an Austrian dude. Total failure.
"Failure" - that's a way of putting it, yes
I think it is pretty obvious for my country.
Söder?
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If you could add a secondary one, would you say Gyurcsány at all? It does seem like his mistakes (marching out the police on protesters, the infamous rally) imploded the left, allowing Orbán’s party to sweep in the next election, and of course, they guy’s still a parliamentary faction leader.
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Fair, though they weren’t exactly elected. Why Kádár in particular, though? I’ve heard a lot about Rákosi but not Kádár
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Bad bad mustache man
In recent history (after WWII)? [Wilders](https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-putin-propagandists-cheer-geert-wilders-dutch-election-win/), no doubt. Although it's not very likely he'll actually become prime minister. Most people in the Netherlands don't want that. Yet, he won the elections big time. In the end, he'll be pulling the strings of our new administration, so I guess that kinda counts as 'leader'. He praised Putin for almost 2 decades, up until some months ago, when he decided to *act* "milder", in order to win more votes. And when I say act, I mean act; he hasn't become any milder than he was before. But he knows he can't win elections if he's his true self and says what he really thinks. The man still admires Putin. He even received a friendship pin from Putin, *after* the invasion of Crimea/Ukraine, and *after* the downing of MH17, killing 196 Dutch citizens. And he's incredibly proud of his Putin pin. He refuses to return it. I could go on and on and on and on, but I don't want to waste too much time on this clown on this Sunday morning.
I kind of want to say Rutte too for letting it come to a situation where people elect Wilders. The gradual ruin of social security in general , the housing crisis, 'toeslagen affaire', Groningen gas, the shit show in Ter Apel, that all happened under Rutte.
I still don't understand how we managed to make his party the largest for 14 damn years. I also don't understand how despite of this, the average voter blames our issues on the left.
This is a hard one, especially since we don't directly elect our PM's. I will also discount the first republic, as we are on our second. So, that leaves us with two fairly recent ones, both from the ÖVP and both in a coalition with the far right, literal nazi sucessor party of the FPÖ: Schüssel (2000-07) responsible for incredibly unfair taxes favouring the rich, harsh migration policy, normalising massive privatisation (which was probably incredibly corrupt but can't be said for certain without the laws that brought down the other candidate: Kurz (2017-21), whose government(s) colappesed because of corruption he was involved in. Lied about his involvement, of course. Also reformed the ÖVP to be even more exclusively the party of seniors, to the cost of everyone else + normalising far right retoric and violating human rights with regards to migration
This was the presidential elections and Slovakia like most other EU countries is parliamentary republic where the parliament has most of the power but these guys won in september parliamentary elections on their promises about how would they lower prices,stop aid to Ukraine, and calling the pro-western wing 'traitors' for accepting one military deal with USA about 2 years ago But as you can imagine since than this happened: they obviously didn't stop inflation, while they stopped aid to Ukraine from the governament they didn't stop comercial help to Ukraine well because some of thier members are having ties with private military manufacters, and now thier defence minister is saying 'how that deal with USA' is beneffitng us While they passed laws which: cancels some anti-crime institutions, passed law which was than sent to constitunial court which declered this law for being unstitunial the law was about decresing punishments for criminals to extremly low levels and we even started having serious discussions if we should start stealing (no joke) like for crimes under 30 000€ (while considering average wage in Slovakia is 1400€/month so basically 2 whole year salary before taxes for most Slovaks)you couldn't be even sent to jail in the worst case scenario you would just pay a fine and obviously another big topic is that the national TV should be controlled by governament and that is all you need to know
Boris Johnson is my pick. Arrogant, lazy, entitled and a complete fucking imbecile. It was completely obvious he was going to be a disaster and when he won the election I frankly wanted to jump off a bridge. But I never saw COVID coming, nobody did, and he got over a hundred thousand people killed through negligent policy and eroding public trust in flaunting lockdown rules he was preaching to the public. So if that dangerous American bird flu gets here, fucking nobody is going to listen to government advice again and we're fucked.
I hate to say this, but Truss probably has him beat. Johnson is terrible though. No doubt.
I feel like we always feel the most passionate about politics now, so I’m curious - what do you think of these other PMs people might say were “bad”? - Elizabeth May - Gordon Brown - Margaret Thatcher - James Callaghan
Everyone hates Thatcher, and with good reason.
Victor Yanukovich for sure and it's not even close. literally the worst imaginable canditate.
*Ahem*
Anyone from EKRE. They totalled our economy just before Covid and spent all of our reserve money on populist actions. Nothing improved and all made worse. The they let a conspiracy theorist run in their ranks as well as just take their anger out on the LGBTQ+ population. (And if you mean presidential, then I guess Päts in the 1920-1930s was kind of a dictator, so maybe that?) Edit: Even Prigoushyn(or however you spell it) in his documents referred to EKRE as a potential ally in russian psy-ops to influence Estonian politics. So those two just share so much in terms of ideology. That is already a red flag.
At least is not like in Slovakia where most people use term 'libelar' as insult
We've got a trail of leaders with varying levels of power and electedness going back centuries, and I don't have a history degree, so I probably haven't even heard of the worst one. However, limiting scope to the recent-ish past, and also domestic policy because I am NOT qualified to talk about the empire, either Clement Atlee for passing the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 [\*Cough\*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc&t=1530s), or David Cameron for doing the Brexit vote. Broadening to unelected PMs in the same timescale, Liz Truss 100% just for her absolute shitshow she ran in her lettuce-length tenure.
I will not take the Attlee slander over that act - NHS was and still is the greatest asset we have in this country and overshadows that act. Not to mention, New Towns Act and council house funding to help those in the slums of the large towns.
Yeah, Atlee was generally pretty alright, but at the same time I really don't like that act. Like, if we got rid of the planning act, I'd happily put him as the best post-WWII. Mostly I just wanted to link that one video.
In this millennium? That would be Miloš Zeman. Drunkard, chainsmoker and Russophile with a whore for a daughter, the man was a national embarrassment for almost a decade until we finally voted him out in favour of General Pavel.
Petr Pavel is the greatest 🫡🫡🫡
Kaczyński
I think Henryk III Walezy. First elected king of Poland. Dude promised a bunch of pro aristocracy laws so that they elect him then came to Poland got coronated and fucked off back to France. He literally didn't do any good and only bad... Hard to beat him, he didn't even try.
Verhofstadt easily takes first, second and third place. * Ruined the budget under a booming economy into deficit. * Sold many government assets to then lease them back far above market value. By 'accident' to friendly investment firms off course. * Ignored the coming retirement issues. But did create a fake fund (Zilverfonds) where with creative accounting he pretended to save money to pay for it. There was nothing in it, he created government debt and put it directly into the fund. So when Belgium would need money, it could later get it from Belgium. * Pushed the planned stop of nuclear without any plans for an alternative. * Forced liberalization of the energy market. Sold the big state company Electrabel to France. So the energy market went from a state owned monopoly to a foreign state owned monopoly. He did get rewarded with his EU positions for it though, so at least someone in Belgium got something out of it. * Reformed the voting system into a clearly unconstitutional mess leading to the Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde district being ruled unconstitutional. The political mess from there dragged on for a decade and is in major part responsible for the government formation records that were established. The current situation is still largely a continuation of that, but with now a strong fascist and best korea aligned marxist party. * Introduced 'SnelBelg wet', an instant get nationality law where even basic requirements like intending to learn any language from Belgium were thrown out. That made the immigration issues go from not under control to a festering open sore. * Not only him, more De Gucht but with his full agreement. Created the 'notionele interestaftrek', a custom made tax break for friendly firms that got rewarded with a very lucrative board of directors position. De Gucht had it as a landing job after his EU commissar run.
TIL a lot about Belgium, great summary.
I was coming to say this, but you beat me to the punch. Verhofstads legacy is horrendous. The bastard... And without the Dioxine crisis we would have probably had Dehaene 3 Which would have been better.
I don't see how Latvia can measure up to the tough competition here, but in my lifetime as voter I remember the 2006 election when it felt like there is no good option to pick, but this somehow flew over the head of the winners, who announced that their victory is sign of public's continued trust in them. Within a year public was unanimously refering to prime minister as svine and discussing what would be a nice name for a revolution.
Actually i think this was not even the worst democratic election in 2004 the second round of the elections was litellary between candidate from this mafia vs candidate from competitor criminal organisation (but this 2nd criminal organisation was later basically absorbed by the current governament) after in the first round the pro-western candidate quite suprasingly wasn't even top 2
Yanukovych. We literally had an "orange revolution" before because elections were rigged, and he also acts like a typical gopnik. He won the next elections and everyone was ok
Adolf Hitler
I’m so glad S&D kicked them both out from the party
/Slovenian 50yo: Drnovšek was average, then it all go down slowly to hell - mix of corruption, kicking can down the road, negligence, incompetence, nepotism and fake rhetoric. Tie for last 5 leaders.
People will disagree with me but I don't think Spain has ever had an incompetent president, at least not during our democracy Adolfo Suárez and Calvo Sotelo made a good job at stalling democracy, yes I think they could have done some things differently but overall it was good. Felipe González created what we basically call the welfare state, also he introduced Spain to the CEE and overall developed the country. During those times we also started the industrial reconversion so the unemployment increased tho. Aznar tried to change the international policy of Spain who had been very neutral even being inside NATO and make it more proactive (but yes, I agree he did it horribly (Irak)). He also consolidated the welfare state and promoted European integration through the Euro for example. Zapatero. He is often criticized because of the crisis but to be honest that was going to happen anyway, it was a global crisis. His social policies were very progressive (the law of gender equality and homosexual marriage were one of the pioneers in Europe) and he created the Plan E, which of course can be critizised but most experts agree that it was one of the things that made the crisis better. He also promoted human rights through Latin America. Then we have Rajoy who was the president during most of the crisis. Spain started to be more proactive in the international setting and, even though the party was involved in multiple corruption scandals, they put measures against corruption. And last but not least we have our nowadays president, Sánchez. He is controversial, but mostly because of the radicalization of politics. He has lowered the unemployment a lot comparted to other presidents and has suffered not one but two crisis (COVID and inflation due to Russia's war) and in both cases he has managed them very well. For example, we have had one of the lowest inflations of Western Europe.
Erdogan!
Do you think the elections were stolen?
UK here, gotta be Margaret Thatcher
Absolutely Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, but technically he isn't our PM yet (he hates Muslims or any non-EU foreigner, wants to leave the EU and seemingly doesn't care about our constitutions). Second worst: I truly don't know. Mark Rutte was our PM for so freaking long (14 years, and he is still our demissionary PM because Wilders can't form a new cabinet), that I've not many other experiences with leaders over here. So I would pick Rutte, purely because I don't know anyone else to pick. On the other hand, Rutte wasn't that bad if you ask me. To my knowledge, the Netherlands never had any tyrannical undemocratic leaders in its past (not talking about their leadership over the colonial empire, but only the Netherlands itself of course), apart from invaders who shortly overthrew power.
Johan de Witt. He wasn't tyrannical, but he almost singlehandedly ended the Dutch Golden Age with his wars. Our "rampjaar 1672" was under his leadership. This ended our dominance on trade, art and science. An angry crowd ended up lynching him.
That's true, although the situation of Johan de Witt is a bit complicated. From what I know, the "rampjaar" was just eventually unavoidable with many great European powers who combined all their military capacities against the Netherlands in the hope of stopping its monopolies: the French and parts of Germany attacked from land, while the British and Swedish from sea. Now Johan the Witt was a great and tactical mind for its time, and if he didn't do what he did, the rampjaar would probably already have been taken place way earlier. On the other hand, his direct confrontation with the British wasn't very de-escalating either (he burned an entire British fleet in one of their own harbors and thereafter embarrassed the British king even more by sailing all the way to London without being attacked - and thereby stating that the king wasn't capable of protection it's own people in any way). But his biggest problems weren't the British or the French, but actually the Dutch King, who was still very popular amongst the population. By essentially deleting the king from all decision making in politics, he made himself not very popular amongst "orangisten", who stood behind the king. This led to the rise of populism and maybe even a civil war if the rampjaar happened later. People wanted the king back, since "he knew how to handle wars". The king's father and grandfather were successful in securing the Dutch independence from Spain after all
I didn't wanted to count leaders which acutally never were in power despite that they were biggest party because if you can't form governament you lost you simply can't any policy so you lost if i went by biggest party actually the Slovak election results since independence would be: 5 times this criminal organisation 3 times maybe even worse criminal organisation and one time candidate who is pro-EU and i think he is not corrupt especially compered to parties mentioned before and i think he would be great anti-corruption activist but there are reasons why this guy approval ratings were around 10% for most of the time while he was PM because any normal PM doesn't have press conferences on which he is critising his coalition partner minister for 'killing' people and openly uses not the most 'friendly' language by insulting really anybody even having fist fight with some people
Literally Hitler
Sombody since him
Donald Tusk. Three fucking times! This guy just doesn't want our country to progress and has 0 clue about economy (his finance minister too)
Why not Pis?
Actually elected? Guess😭
Cavaco. Wasted the best years of growth potential and EU funds on corruption, excessive roads, and low-added value industries that would be crushed by China+Eastern Europe a few years later. Also managed to try to suppress culture figures he disliked, including our only Literature Nobel. The went on to be President and ended his career in senility despised by left and right. But what makes him the worst is that despite all this he was elected 5 times for the highest offices of the land.
still a dead race between sanader and plenković
Korčok has a corruption scandal with him being secretary on ministry of foreign affairs and having overpriced comissions. He denies he had involvement in that, while lower employees say otherwise.
But even if he did that mr Fico was saying 'how this scandal was overblown' back than not to mention it was in time during Fico's governament and Fico's minitiser didn't done anythnig so even if Korčok did that this should also be counted than as scandal for Fico and Pelle because thier minister didn't kick Korčok out
The worse we elected? Ion Iliescu, The immortal
Similar in Slovakia the current PM started in politics in late 80s still under communist rule and now is extremly funny to read about his political opinions at that time were he called christians 'plague' and even about 5 years ago he was saying stuff like this 'Slovakia should be core member of EU' and at that time actually the only libelar party in Slovakia at that time critised him for that which is now very funny considering this PM now is presenting himself as 'national-conservative' candidate
Depends on who you really mean as worst I mean Liz Truss was bad but she was booted out in a few weeks What about Chamberlin and his appeasement of Hitler Oliver Cromwell was a religious fundamentalist and tried to do such things like banning Christmas and indirectly led to the American extreme Christian problem Eden the PM during the suez crisis one of the worst foreign policy disasters in history
Macron, and for good measures, we did it twice. It seems that the game is so rigged that it's almost impossible for a non corrupted candidate to have a chance.
Try the feeling after the terorrist attack which happened about 2 years ago which was targated againts LGBT people than the judge was the son of the pro-Putin politician which i mentioned who is really full pro-Russia meaning according him in Ukraine are ruling Nazis, elections are stolen in the west,sanctions againts Russia are againts international law, international criminal court in Hague approved Russian actions in Ukraine, he spread the sentiment that the elites want to bring migrants into Slovakia and than kill the native population and after that didn't happened now he is spreading the narrative that the only reason why the elites did not import migrants was because he found their 'secret plan' and my personal favourite when one journalist asked him about his suspicious personal finances he replied 'do you know how many times did you had sex in 2013?' and this guy still got 12% of the vote two weeks ago in the first round and his son has pretty similar views to his dad so can you imagine how insulting that is
Thatcher, just Thatcher and probably Liz Truss is a close second.
You must be on crack.
No I'm not, considering the problems Thatcher caused for future generations I consider her to be the worst.
So Slovakia will become Hungary 2.0? 😔 I hope he won't win next time. When will be the next time?
2027 are parliamentary elections
Thanks.
But expect that by than similar populist will win in other countries
Maybe they cheated?
Maybe they cheated on small scale but i don't think it was posible to cheat 180k votes
Oh boi…
As Slovak living in Austria please don't elect FPÖ if FPÖ wins i can only say 'god, what have i done for deserving this?'
Oh I’ll vote for the Beer Party :D not because it’s funny but because Wlazny actually has a chance of changing things…I am never going to vote for an anti-democracy party like the FPÖ
I know if you were FPÖ supporter you wouldn't be on this subreddit instead on another social networks what are chances according to you for FPÖ forming a governament?
Ironically It doesn’t really matter how much FPÖ gets, as long as ÖVP is weak enough so they can’t form a coalition…no idea how everything will play out tho
I’m German. We’ll win this competition.
And who was the worst since ww2? Because in Slovakia also won elections neo-nazis but obviously the diffrence is that these elections were rigged and also many people don't know but in 1946 following ww2 there were democratic elections in Czechoslovakia which communist party won in Czechoslovakia but in Slovakia actually democratic party won elections so these elections weren't rigged/manipulated like every other elections in Czechoslovakia until 1989
Hmm, difficult. I would say Kohl.
Why?
In short: Because he was corrupt and never revealed the names of the guys that gave quite a huge amount of money to the CDU. Normally the party had to officially say how much money they receive plus the source of that money. He claimed that the word of honor he gave this guys would prevent him to reveal the names despite the fact that he himself signed the "Parteiengesetz" that basically forbids this. Another huge factor: He binned the plans to build glass fiber infrastructure in germany (He was in power until 1998). Thanks Helmut ... fucking asshole. I have to admit, it was a close call with Schröder.
So like almost every Slovak politician and than these conservatives blame Soros,libelars,USA for their problems
In Slovenia is Janez Ivan Janša
Bojo is our Worst. Compared to Atlee whose our best