posted on November 24, 2000 08:32:40 AM
This is from a newspaper in Zimbabwe where a local leader asked students
>to study the US election.
>
> 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third
> world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime
> minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of
> that nation's secret police (cia).
>
> 2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won
> based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the
> nation's pre-democracy past.
>
> 3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on
> disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!
>
> 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district
> heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of
> voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
>
> 5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste,
> fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to
> vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's
> candidacy.
>
> 6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
> intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under
> the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
>
> 7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and
> that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer,
> certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.
>
> 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party
> opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the
> ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed
> district.
>
> 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a
> major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in
> his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
>
> 10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner
> was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions
> on the high court of that nation.
>
> None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything
> other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I
> imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad
> tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange
> elsewhere."
posted on November 24, 2000 09:36:28 AM
Wow, that certainly is a different view to be considered.
At our Thanksgiving dinner of course the conversation got around to the election. My daugher in-law is from Indonesia. I was interested in her point of view, and it is similar to the above. She compared the Bush family to the corrupt government of Indonesia. She doesn't understand why Americans would vote for Bush (and family) when her people are fighting to end the tyranny and corruption brought about by a "family" as the government in her country.
A young man from China was also at dinner and he gave us an earfull of Bush and human rights. It was very interesting to say the least.
posted on November 24, 2000 10:35:47 AM
Gosh, if we haven't had that 200+ year tradition of freedom and democracy, with a (fairly) solid constitution, three separate branches of government, 50 states, 300 million very diverse, freedom loving people (yet sharing a largely common culture), free and open media, I'd be awfully frightened when you put it that way.
posted on November 24, 2000 10:39:51 AM
That is just fabulous. Thanks so much for posting it.
I'm not keen on a Bush presidency (which is, of course, why I voted for Gore), but I do know we'll survive it (more or less). However, the one thing that keeps running through my mind about a Bush presidency, and which simply horrifies me, is how a President Bush can face the rest of the world as the winner who insisted legal votes not be counted.
The only thing this piece left out was the *henchmen* family friends.
posted on November 24, 2000 02:40:58 PM
Where are the Republicans? I was hopeing to hear what they have to say about this. Maybe that's the point there is no defending it.
I doubt they have even had a conversation with someone from a Third World Country, or even an American who is in the minority.
posted on November 24, 2000 02:54:11 PM
Err, chococake, I am a Republican, a minority, and lived outside of the US for years, some of those in the Third World.
But I voted for Gore,
Fascinating analogy!!! Sounds like a bloodless coup to me. Ah, the memories...
posted on November 24, 2000 04:44:44 PM
Clevergirl: Check the very first item in this thread--a professor friend in New York State received it from a family member with ties to Zimbabwe. From a Zimbabwe newspaper. I don't usually include the name and address of friends in a thread like this for fear of reprisal.
posted on November 25, 2000 07:41:53 AM
Roadsmith - thanks for the additional info. I DID, btw, reread your original post in case there was more attribution info than I'd remembered before posting my question. And I found that the original information you provided told its purported origination, but not where YOU got it, which is what I asked. Again, thanks for answering my question.
