For the Labour party in this area, though, represented by a ruling group of councillors on the coalition East Dunbartonshire council, this has not been their finest hour.
Hamas has since taken over control of Gaza and the Palestinians are divided between Hamas and Fatah, the ruling group on the West Bank.
The advent of a Labour government will not necessarily help: over the past two years the (New) Labour Party has been locked in a feud with the (Old) Labour ruling group in Glasgow.
And no communist ruling group in history has ever managed to regularize successions.
Charles Krauthammer, an avowed agnostic on the Greenhouse Effect, is typical of this currently ruling group.
In this respect he represents the meritocratic middle class's challenge to the declining power of the traditional "establishment" or ruling group, which is shown to be vulnerable to a determined assault from this source.
The freedom to create opposition political parties or other alternative political groupings with which to compete for power with the ruling group is either limited or nonexistent in authoritarian regimes.
But people who are not in some way beholden to the ruling group are exceedingly nervous at the thought of another five years of rule by Mr Moi and his cronies.
The ruling group is trying to reassert control".
But only with the goal of neutralizing it, and strengthening the control of the ruling group".
In the 1980s and '90s political repression and competition for power within the ruling group intensified.
