Whats in a Color? Everything if it is about winning elections in Denmark. Or is the color only relevant in Denmark. Well, we too have our own color coding when it comes to elections in India. BJP is saffron, Congress is tricolor.

Yesterday though was all about colors - about the Reds and the Blues of Danish politics. After nearly 10 years of Blue politics (no pun intended!) at the stroke of midnight on 15^th September 2011, the sun rose once again for the red parties. Blue parties (a color universally denoting republican parties) experienced the exit blues in their painful defeat while Red parties perhaps saw red when the race to the checkered flag saw a photo-finish. It was no less exciting than watching a horror film in the middle of the night.

A short refresher course in Danish politics for us uninitiated Indians is perhaps relevant here. The now ex-ruling government was a coalition of Blue (rd. republican / liberal) parties namely, Venstre (Left), Conservative and Danske Folke Parti (Danish People’s party) with the outside support of Liberal Alliance and Christian Democrats. They were in power for nearly 10 years with Venstre on the driver’s seat and conservative as the co-driver. But the one who really held the steering wheel in the coalition was DF, riding over most of the government policies with their single point agenda of stopping the influx of foreigners especially from Eastern Europe and the Muslims from anywhere on earth.

Conservatives on the other hand had reasonable politics, especially seen from an Indian’s point of view as they supported foreign professionals, and rewarded production. However, they got into a trap so familiar to us Indians – power corrupts & absolute power corrupts absolutely. Some of their members were caught in cases of swindling, cheating and poor performance. Though their corruption by Indian standards would be no more than a clerk taking bribe to expedite a death certificate, they paid a heavy price unlike in India. They went from being a very large and respected party to being the smallest & least respected, last night. The only other party that scored worse than them was Christian Democrats, who scored a duck!!

Yesterday’s winners were SF, Radikale Venstre and Enhedslisten under the Red banner led by Social Democrats. They won by the thinnest of margins inspite of the spectacular showing by both Radikale V and Enhedslisten, who doubled and tripled respectively, the number of seats in the parliament. This kept the hopes of both the outgoing PM and incoming PM high, as well as kept them both from making public appearance until 98% of the votes were counted. Everything pointed to a no-confidence in the sitting government - the anti-incumbency factor, extremist position of DF, embarrassments of the Conservatives and the poor handling of economy by the government exacerbated by the recession. Yet, the finishing line was as far as the last counted vote. This, I assume with great certainty, must have made these parties see Red. How could they have not won with simple majority when there was almost everything against the ruling government? Yet, a majority is a majority as Helle Thorning said, however simple or complex it may be.

The exit was painful for almost the same reason. Venstre actually improved their own party’s performance both in percentage of vote and in terms of the number of parliamentary seats. They are the single largest party who improved despite all odds including in no small degree, the anti-incumbency factor. It was perhaps the same pain as felt by Caroline Wozniacki on being crowned world number 1 and yet losing grand slam tournaments.

The reason why color does matter is because the Danish political parties have understood the phrase “Whats in a name?” quite literally so. While Venstre (Left) is actually a Liberal right wing party, there is nothing conservative about Konservative as they are highly liberal and Christian Democrats have certainly been rejected by the Christians considering they have gone from 1 seat to 0 in the parliament. And there is absolutely nothing radical or leftist about Radikale Venstre as it is a socialistic party with liberal philosophy a party in the middle of the political spectrum. Therefore, it is then perhaps imperative to use color as an identity rather than names. Helle Thorning scraping though the final exam yesterday was all about the coordinated efforts of parties who decided to drape themselves in colour RED.

So at the stroke of midnight yesterday, it was about the COLOR – Red or Blue.