Friday, December 04, 2009
A tale of two elections...
Elections around the world interest me. I'm always curious about how people around the world choose the lesser of two evils. Also interesting is the reaction to global elections.
Equatorial Guinea had an "election" recently. I put "election" in quotes because I'm too lazy to go get the picture of Inigo Montoya. "President" Teodor Obiang Nguema got "95%" of the "votes" in a race pretty much everyone in the world recognizes as "bullshit." At least, I presume the world recognizes it as bullshit, as I couldn't find any statements as such. It's not like Equatorial Guinea is unimportant, as it has a boatload of oil. The African Union seems to think the election was generally fair, although in their defense, actual fair elections are not things with which the African Union has a lot of familiarity, what with their theory that Robert Mugabe should be running Zimbabwe and not a prison gang. Neutral observers and foreign media were barred from covering the election, which is usually a good sign that somebody has stolen the thing. But, of course, this mostly speculative, because there has not been much international outrage about the "election" in Equatorial Guinea.
Which brings me to Honduras. International press was all over their recent election, and while plenty of people complained about it, the guy who lost the election accepted the result, which would seem to put Honduras well ahead of Equatorial Guinea. The big problem everyone had was whether the lame duck former President would get to hang out in whatever the Honduran version of the Oval Office for the next couple of months. (Because, remember, the whole reason this started was because said lame duck was accused of trying to illegally extend his term in office, which said lame duck assured us was absolutely not any part of his plan and he had no intention of trying to run things after January.) So...Honduras had an election, everyone agrees the guy who says he got the most votes got the most votes, and the only one with a beef is a guy who would have, at most, two or three weeks in office before the new guy took over.
Seems like Honduras' election merits less complaint than Equatorial Guinea. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Wonder why that is.
Equatorial Guinea had an "election" recently. I put "election" in quotes because I'm too lazy to go get the picture of Inigo Montoya. "President" Teodor Obiang Nguema got "95%" of the "votes" in a race pretty much everyone in the world recognizes as "bullshit." At least, I presume the world recognizes it as bullshit, as I couldn't find any statements as such. It's not like Equatorial Guinea is unimportant, as it has a boatload of oil. The African Union seems to think the election was generally fair, although in their defense, actual fair elections are not things with which the African Union has a lot of familiarity, what with their theory that Robert Mugabe should be running Zimbabwe and not a prison gang. Neutral observers and foreign media were barred from covering the election, which is usually a good sign that somebody has stolen the thing. But, of course, this mostly speculative, because there has not been much international outrage about the "election" in Equatorial Guinea.
Which brings me to Honduras. International press was all over their recent election, and while plenty of people complained about it, the guy who lost the election accepted the result, which would seem to put Honduras well ahead of Equatorial Guinea. The big problem everyone had was whether the lame duck former President would get to hang out in whatever the Honduran version of the Oval Office for the next couple of months. (Because, remember, the whole reason this started was because said lame duck was accused of trying to illegally extend his term in office, which said lame duck assured us was absolutely not any part of his plan and he had no intention of trying to run things after January.) So...Honduras had an election, everyone agrees the guy who says he got the most votes got the most votes, and the only one with a beef is a guy who would have, at most, two or three weeks in office before the new guy took over.
Seems like Honduras' election merits less complaint than Equatorial Guinea. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Wonder why that is.
