While Americans sit watching television, listening to the talking heads in order to figure out this mess of an election, the rest of the world has been making its own judgements. The world is seeing not only the hypocrisy of the U.S. elections but an even clearer example of blatant anti-democratic practices:
Imagine that our U.S. politicians, corporate media and ruling class observe elections in an “emerging democracy� be it in the third world or a former socialist country, finding ...
*That the self-declared winner is the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation’s secret police (CIA).
*That the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some 200-year-old colonial holdover from the nation’s pre-democracy past.
*That the self-declared winner's 'victory' is based solely on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!
*That at least 100,000 votes in this disputed province were thrown into the trash as void.
*That the maybe intentionally confusing, poorly drafted ballot of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate or make a mistakes that would cause their vote to be thrown out.
*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.
*That hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by provincial police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother .
*That the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by- hand inspection and recounting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.
*That the self-declared winner, also a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his country and during his tenure as governor had overseen the most executions in the history of the country.
*That a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the highest court of that country.
Finding these facts to be present in any other country, the U.S. media pundits would quickly define this election as power mongering and democracy a farce. The president, along with Congress, would be the first to denounce the elections and refuse to recognize the self-proclaimed winner.
Over the years U.S. imperialism has toppled governments in the name of democracy, whether on the basis an election for not reflecting the people’s will or flatly disagreeing with its political or economic system. So now that the tables have turned, the people of Nicaragua, Indonesia, Chile, Yugoslavia, Grenada and Russia--just to name a few--know what the idealized U.S. democracy really looks like.
– This article has appeared in various emails via the internet. Edited by Shane McEvoy of the New York City Club of the Young Communist League.
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