In theory, a secret ballot still had to be held, but the leaders were able to announce the winner in advance: a Polish former prime minister from the centre-right, Jerzy Buzek.
Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer and probable prime minister from this summer, preferred a chamber with 80% of its members elected.
Pierre Trudeau, who died in 2000, was prime minister from 1968 to 1979, and again from 1980 to 1984. He is considered the father of modern Canada.
"You could see, when the minister from Shanghai was speaking, everybody started to write notes," he told me afterward.
One senior government minister from the regionalist Northern League says the players represent the very worst of the spoiled cast of celebrity millionaires.
As to her policies (not that her adoring supporters care), she has promised to continue the populist economic programmes of her brother when he was prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
A junior minister from the former government was charged in February with fraudulently extracting cash from a Cuban scheme which supplied free energy-saving light bulbs to Jamaican households.
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