© 2004 UrbisMedia
I have expressed opinions on democracy earlier in these pages, but mostly with regard to the dreamy ambitions of the Bush neo-cons about establishing (installing) oil-friendly “democracies” in the Middle East (cf. postings 9.6 and 12.8) The irony of such desires coming from an administration that installed itself by election theft should not be lost on anybody not from a “red state.”
Elections have always been subject to rigging, probably beginning when voters palmed an extraostrakon or two in those first Athenian elections. Since then methods of diverting of the “will of the people” have taken on the machinations of the likes of Florida’s attorney general, Justice (?) Antonin Scalia, Texas congressional, redistricting, or sleazy election officials. Alas, the people are governed more often by hypocrisy than by democracy.
Perhaps it is a pandemic of Republican electoral skullduggery that afflicts the world’s democratic dreams, or perhaps it is the exposure that light brings to the dark and inveterate practices of subverting democracies, but elections everywhere see in disrepute and dispute these days. In no particular order and by no means exhaustive in number are the current throngs in the streets on Ukrainian cities in protest of questionable results of their national elections that installed a pro-Moscow toady as head of state. Not that Mr. Putin’s own overwhelming victory could be held to even the lowest democratic standard, not when any real opposition is shown the gulag or placed in it. Not much protest there.
In spite of the “democratic” appearances it is almost impossible to conduct free and fair elections in almost any African, South American, and Asian nation. Even on the rare occasions when the results might approximate the will of the people, there is no guarantee the results will be respected by nations that have the power to meddle in the outcomes. In this regard America’s hypocrisy toward others’ exercise of democracy is a sorry record. Messing with Central and South American governments has long been a privilege America has arrogated to itself. Recently is seems that Haiti’s Mr. Aristide, once a darling of Uncle Sam, fell into disfavor and was “urged” out of power and out of his country. Venezuela managed a free and fair election of a candidate in disfavor with the Bushies in spite of US meddling. Now Mr. Chavez has to hope he doesn’t end up getting the treatment Nixon and Kissinger gave Chile’s fairly elected Salvador Allende.
For a long time America’s meddling other countries elections was “justified” by the putative purity of its own plebiscites. Any semblance of that notion is a joke after the 2000 presidential theft, and now an aftermath of grave doubt that the 2004 election was conducted in a free and fair manner. Missing ballots, disqualified voters, returns that are greater number than district voters, and a host of remaining irregularities have resulted in challenges, lawsuits, and the distressing necessity of bringing more judges into the process. A cottage industry of scrutinizing the electoral process at all levels of government now rivals the second guessing of the Kennedy assassination and UFOs in Roswell, New Mexico. The values greasing the moral slide down to the principle that winning justifies any means are conveniently excluded by the righteous right. Our republic is slipping on the banana peal of its own hypocrisy.
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©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.26.2004)