French exotic cuisine with an international catering. This
recipe has for ingredients the world geopolitics
beginning in Haiti. And it is not a coincidence because it's the first
African sovereign nation outside the continent which has once again become the
first state to lose its independence since the presence on its territory
of UN (catering service by excellence) being an ancient French colony with links known to the French West Africa.For
those who believe that the UN and the entire international community should be trusted please check :
All these incidents do not prevent the head of the UN mission in Haiti, Edmond Mulet, to ensure that everything goes well. "The atmosphere is peaceful, tranquil, serene and violence in Haiti on the circumstances," he said at a press conference yesterday.However, in the street, this optimism is nonexistent. And suspicions of fraud are raising tensions on the eve of a vote where the regime of President René Préval feels threatened. They also fuel the skepticism of voters, many of whom summarize the electoral process in a single word: scam ....... The remake of the scenario in Ivory Coast ....and yet there are still those who continue to speak of the recognition of the so called international community or the UN certification .. ..... if we add Afghanistan where the UN was in collusion with the ambassadors of USA and France and some EU diplomats we can see the same fraud and certification in Ivory Coast ..
The international community has two good reasons to vouch for an impeccable legality of the (rigged) vote.The first is the need to legitimize the military intervention in Afghanistan to the public opinion of NATO won by fatigue. The second also affects the legitimacy of its presence in Afghanistan, but with the Afghan opinion this time. "If the international community condones fraud Karzai warns Fahim Dashty, the editor of Kabul Weekly, while Afghans think:" What is the reason for his presence here, why do not we be fighting? '"Electoral fraud: Karzai against attack
Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Independent Election Commission in Kabul, April 1, 2010.REUTERS / Ahmad Masood RFI
President Hamid Karzai, constantly pressed against corruption that plagues Afghanistan to its government, returned Thursday 1 April 2010 on the ropes the international community, accusing him of having organized themassive fraud during his re-election in August 2009. At the forefront of accusations by Hamid Karzai, the offices of the UN and the European Union in Afghanistan and some embassies, the Afghan president has not identified (in some media the ambassadors are identified as those of the USA, and France, just like in the Ivory Coast).His accusations are far-reaching: Karzai says that there has been fraud in the elections last August, the "massive fraud", "very solid," he insisted, during a meeting with members of the electoral commission. More importantly, it criminalizes the office of deputy representative to the UN, Peter Galbraith (the same one who exposed the fraud to the media), and that of Philippe Morillon, the French general who headed the observer mission of the European Union in this election.So what the international community and the UN in the same scenario with the usual four players (USA, France, EU, UN) are different when it comes to the Ivory Coast? So to achieve their goal for the Ivory Coast multinationals preparation started it there over 25 years and the stuffed elephant was invented. The stuffed elephant is certainly a new culinary French specialty , but it has always been a Gallic reputation internationally recognized to the extent that the international community, or more specifically the multinationals in their project of the new world order have made the French the spear head.
When electoral fraud is met by congratulations
By Stephen Gowans
November 03, 2009 - what's left
It has become standard practice in many parts of the world for opposition candidates to decry as fraudulent election results that favor the incumbent. Charges of vote fraud are routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments.
For example, after (and even before) Zimbabwe's last set of elections, the governing Zanu-PF party was accused of vote fraud, but the evidence for the opposition's claim was gathered by organizations funded by the United States, a major backer of the opposition movement. Washington makes no secret of its desire to drive the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, from power, by hook or crook, not because he's corrupt, despotic or a human rights abuser, as Washington alleges, but because he has done what all foreign leaders back to Lenin have done who have fallen astray of Washington – failed to honor contracts and safeguard private property. (That's not to say Mugabe and Lenin are alike in any way other than having committed what in Washington's view is the supreme crime.) A cooked exit poll is not beyond the motivations and capabilities of US and British-backed anti-Mugabe forces, but that's largely beside the point. Mugabe's Zanu-PF did poorly in the election, and Mugabe, himself, failed to win a first round victory in the presidential election. If Zanu-PF rigged the vote, it blundered badly.
Similarly, the outcome of the last Iranian presidential election, which saw the return to power of the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was denounced by the opposition as a fraud. The charge was taken up by Western politicians, journalists and a substantial fraction of the Western left, despite the opposition's failure to produce a single jot of credible evidence that the election was stolen. Worse, the sole methodologically sound public opinion poll taken prior to the election – funded by the international arm of the Republican Party, the IRI – predicted that Ahmadinejad would win by a wide margin – wider, it turns out, than the margin he actually did win by. This was a case of widespread distaste for Ahmadinejad and Iran's Islamic Revolution leading to the collective dulling of critical faculties. To be sure, if one hated Ahmadinejad and fundamentalist Islam (or fundamentalist religion, period), witnessing Iranians embrace secular Western enlightenment values was bracing indeed. The only problem was there was no evidence it actually happened.
We might expect, then, that charges of vote fraud will be routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments, and that the Western media will accept the charges uncritically. This happens regularly.
But what of cases in which the weight of evidence points to an incumbent, backed by the US government, winning an election by fraud? How might we expect Western politicians, Western media, and even the UN, to react? One would predict that they would try to cover it up, and failing that, minimize its significance. Conspicuously absent would be the indignant denunciations that attend the electoral losses of parties backed by Western governments.
In Afghanistan's August presidential elections, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, who had initially been installed in his position by the US government, failed to win a first round victory. This we know now, largely owing to the efforts of the UN's former number two man in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, who blew the whistle on extensive fraud perpetrated by the Karzai-appointed Independent Electoral Commission. [1] Also involved in the fraud, according to a recent New York Times report, was the president's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. [2]
Galbraith charged that the Karzai appointed electoral commission abandoned "its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff." Galbraith estimated that "as many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent." But when he "called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing" Galbraith of foreign interference. Galbraith's boss, Kai Eide "sided with Karzai", effectively concealing the electoral fraud. [3] Eide told Galbraith that "the UN mandate was only to support the Afghan institutions in their decisions, not to tell them to hold an honest election." [4]
At the centre of the fraud were ghost polling centres (1,500 inaccessible locations that were physically impossible to confirm the existence of), a corrupt election commission, [5] and the president's brother. Ahmed Wali Karzai, "a suspected player in the country's booming illegal trade" receives "regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency." He "orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots" [6] and "is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots." [7]
In other words, the UN was involved in an attempt to cover up vote fraud, while the CIA, through the president's brother, was at least indirectly involved in perpetrating it.
Some US news analysts, dismissing the affair as of little consequence, insist the runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah, stood no chance against Karzai in a fair vote anyway. But an honest account of the initial vote "would have had Karzai at 41% and Abdullah at 34%," [8] putting Abdullah well within striking distance of victory in a run-off election. Abdullah, however, refused to participate, arguing that there was no reason to believe the run-off would be any less corrupt than the initial vote. He has a point. While Karzai's electoral commission was asked to eliminate "the ghost polling centres and to replace staff who committed fraud," Karzai increased the number of centres and rehired the authors of the initial fraud. [9]
The sole concern of officials in Washington – who, when their favored candidates abroad fail to win elections, present themselves as champions of fair elections and lead the charge to have the allegedly fraudulent election overturned — has not been that the Afghan election was stolen, or that Abdullah withdrew because the prospects for a fair run-off were slim. On the contrary, with Karzai winning another term as president only because Abdullah withdrew over legitimate fears the run-off election would be unfair, the official US response has been to "congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him." [10] Instead, Washington's sole concern has been the exposure of electoral fraud, and its effect in undermining the legitimacy of their man in Kabul (who never had much legitimacy in the first place.)
Contrast the US reaction with the sharp Western criticism of Robert Mugabe after Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off round of Zimbabwe's last presidential election, claiming the conditions were not conducive to a fair vote. The difference is as wide as night and day.
Where are the stern lectures, the US-government and ruling class foundation-assisted nonviolent pro-democracy activists, the blanket mass media coverage of Afghanistan's stolen election, the denunciations of Karzai as a dictator – all which attend the defeat of US-backed opposition movements in elections where the charges of fraud have become routine and the evidence for fraud bare to non-existent?
The reaction to electoral fraud, then, depends on the answer to a single question: Does Washington back the beneficiary of the alleged fraud or not? Or more fundamentally, does the beneficiary promote the sanctity of contracts, private property, free trade, free enterprise and free markets? If the answer is no, the reaction will be one of indignation and outrage, even where the evidence of fraud is thin to absent. If the answer is yes, the reaction will be muted, even where the evidence of fraud is voluminous and incontrovertible. Between Zimbabwe and Iran on the one hand, and Afghanistan on the other, official outrage, and therefore the outrage of the media, and therefore the outrage of the people, including a substantial part of the left, has been inversely proportional to the weight of evidence that fraud has actually occurred.
Washington cares not one whit about democracy — only about the interests of the corporations, investors and banks that dominate its policy-making. If "democracy" comports to those interests, well and good. If not, there are no phoney allegations of electoral fraud Washington is not prepared to take a hand in propagating, and no genuine electoral fraud it is unwilling to live with.
Notes:
1. Peter W. Galbraith, "What I saw at the Afghan election," The Washington Post, October 4, 2009.
2. Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, "Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on C.I.A payroll," The New York Times, October 28, 2009.
3. Galbraith, October 4.
4. Peter Galbraith, "Karzai was hellbent on victory. Afghans will pay the price," The Guardian (UK), November 2, 2009.
5. Ibid.
6. Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen, October 28.
7. Ibid.
8. Galbraith, November 2.
9. Ibid.
10. Statement of U.S. Embassy in Kabul, reported in Michael Muskal, "U.S. congratulates Afghan President Karzai on another term in office," Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009.
Source: what's left
Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com
Visit: Zimbabwe Watch
So were the elections in Ivory Coast :
The reaction to electoral fraud, then, depended on the answer to a single question: Does Washington or Paris as well as the so called international community and multinational corporates back the beneficiary of the alleged fraud or not? Or more fundamentally, does the beneficiary which in the case of Ivory Coast was Ouattara promote the sanctity of contracts, private property, free trade, free enterprise and free markets? The answer was yes since he's in Africa on behalf of the IMF and all the multinationals, so the reaction has been muted, even where the evidence of fraud was voluminous and incontrovertible. The UN special representative a that time Mr Choi said that the incidents(frauds were insignificant and even if there were to be taken into account Ouattara still the winner ...Yet he and the international community as well as their backing candidate refused the recount of the ballot to prove their point ...very strange for people who claim promoting democracy to chose bombarding the incumbent president(who asked for the vote recounting) residency and count the death toll rather than recounting the ballot of a disputed election result as any democratic country would do....And that was previously done in the US and even Iran as well as others countries and recently in Haiti .... But that was refused to the Ivorian people that's how the elephant was stuffed catered by the "international community " in Ivory Coast now transformed into a vast elephant grave.
Haiti's sham election shames US
Washington
cannot confer legitimacy on this flawed election that does nothing for
Haitians living under tarps, menaced by cholera
UN soldiers from Sri
Lanka at the Haitian election tabulation centre in Port-au-Prince. The
elections ended in confusion on Sunday, as 12 of the 18 presidential
candidates denounced 'massive fraud', although international observers
insist the eventual result will stand. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
The election in Haiti shows, once again, how low Washington's
standards are for democracy in countries that they want to control
politically. And there is no doubt who is in charge there. There is a
government, to be sure, but since the elected government in 2004 was
overthrown, and even more since the earthquake, it is the "international
community" that calls the shots – Hillary Clinton's code for the US
state department.
The election was a farce to begin with, once the non-independent CEP (Provisional Electoral Council) decided to exclude the country's largest political party from participating, along with other parties: Fanmi Lavalas is the party of Haiti's most popular political leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It has won every election that it has contested. Aristide himself remains in exile – unable to return since the US-sponsored overthrow of his government in 2004.
Imagine holding an election in the United States with both the Democratic and Republican parties prohibited from participating. If we look at other troubled elections in the world – Iran in 2009, or Afghanistan more recently – Haiti's is even less legitimate. It is perhaps most comparable to the recent election in Burma.
But the United States government paid for this election, and was determined to go ahead with it and get the usual suspects to endorse it. The pleadings of 45 Democratic members of Congress, who sent a letter to Hillary Clinton on 7 October asking for a real election with all political parties included, were ignored. So, too, were the objections of President Obama's Republican foreign policy mentor, Senator Richard Lugar.
By Sunday, the day of the election, 12 of the 18 presidential candidates – basically, every prominent presidential candidate except the current government's choice, Jude Celestin – had publicly called for the elections to be annulled. They were backed by thousands of demonstrators in the streets.
The conduct of the elections turned out to be even worse than expected. There were widespread reports of people being unable to vote because they were not on the voter lists, incidents of ballot-stuffing, and other irregularities.
Despite all of this, the Organisation of American States issued its statement on Monday: "The Joint Mission does not believe that these irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the process." No wonder the leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean met last February and decided to create a new regional organisation without the United States and Canada.
Haiti, of course, has bigger problems than a bogus election. And, in fact, that was a complaint heard on the ground – why was money being wasted on an electoral circus when people do not have access to drinking water, and the country is in the middle of a cholera epidemic? The latter crisis seems to have been pushed off the world's radar screen by the election, despite the fact that the United Nations has been able to raise only around 10% of the $164m they need to treat an epidemic that is estimated to grow to 400,000 cases of cholera in the next year.
And then there is the unbelievable failure of the reconstruction itself. Nearly a year after the earthquake, less than 2% of the rubble has been cleared, and less than 10% of the 1.5m people made homeless by the earthquake have shelter. Most of the rest are living under tarps, with the earth beneath them turning to water and mud when it rains. The "international community" could not even get them tents.
Yet the bogus election does matter because, if allowed to stand, it will foist an illegitimate government on Haiti. For most of its existence, and until quite recently, Haiti was ruled by illegitimate governments that relied heavily on violence to maintain power. Aristide was the first democratically elected president, in 1990. He was overthrown seven months later, but eventually re-elected in 2000. Because his government was legitimate and did not have to rely on violence, he abolished the army – which was the main instrument of political violence. Washington never forgave him for this, and organised an international cutoff of aid to the country, while pouring tens of millions of dollars into the opposition, thus toppling the government.
In April of 2009, an election that also excluded the largest political party resulted in a boycott of about 90% of the electorate. Participation in this latest election appears to have been higher (although lower than the previous presidential election), but it will not be seen as legitimate. This has already increased social unrest. There is no longer a Haitian army, but there is a badly-trained national police force and a UN military force (MINUSTAH), which is widely seen as an occupying army and is notorious for its violence and human rights abuses. Its standing has fallen even further as it appears to be the source of the cholera epidemic.
Haiti needs a government that can contribute to the reconstruction of the country, its public health and the institutions necessary to promote economic development and employment. An illegitimate government won't meet any of these needs, and only raises the risk of increasing political violence.
• Editor's note: A typographical error meant that this article originally stated that Aristide's government was re-elected in 2004; this has been amended (at 13:30 EST on 2 December 2010) to 2000. As stated elsewhere in the article, 2004 was the year Aristide's government was deposed.
Mark Weisbrot
The election was a farce to begin with, once the non-independent CEP (Provisional Electoral Council) decided to exclude the country's largest political party from participating, along with other parties: Fanmi Lavalas is the party of Haiti's most popular political leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It has won every election that it has contested. Aristide himself remains in exile – unable to return since the US-sponsored overthrow of his government in 2004.
Imagine holding an election in the United States with both the Democratic and Republican parties prohibited from participating. If we look at other troubled elections in the world – Iran in 2009, or Afghanistan more recently – Haiti's is even less legitimate. It is perhaps most comparable to the recent election in Burma.
But the United States government paid for this election, and was determined to go ahead with it and get the usual suspects to endorse it. The pleadings of 45 Democratic members of Congress, who sent a letter to Hillary Clinton on 7 October asking for a real election with all political parties included, were ignored. So, too, were the objections of President Obama's Republican foreign policy mentor, Senator Richard Lugar.
By Sunday, the day of the election, 12 of the 18 presidential candidates – basically, every prominent presidential candidate except the current government's choice, Jude Celestin – had publicly called for the elections to be annulled. They were backed by thousands of demonstrators in the streets.
The conduct of the elections turned out to be even worse than expected. There were widespread reports of people being unable to vote because they were not on the voter lists, incidents of ballot-stuffing, and other irregularities.
Despite all of this, the Organisation of American States issued its statement on Monday: "The Joint Mission does not believe that these irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the process." No wonder the leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean met last February and decided to create a new regional organisation without the United States and Canada.
Haiti, of course, has bigger problems than a bogus election. And, in fact, that was a complaint heard on the ground – why was money being wasted on an electoral circus when people do not have access to drinking water, and the country is in the middle of a cholera epidemic? The latter crisis seems to have been pushed off the world's radar screen by the election, despite the fact that the United Nations has been able to raise only around 10% of the $164m they need to treat an epidemic that is estimated to grow to 400,000 cases of cholera in the next year.
And then there is the unbelievable failure of the reconstruction itself. Nearly a year after the earthquake, less than 2% of the rubble has been cleared, and less than 10% of the 1.5m people made homeless by the earthquake have shelter. Most of the rest are living under tarps, with the earth beneath them turning to water and mud when it rains. The "international community" could not even get them tents.
Yet the bogus election does matter because, if allowed to stand, it will foist an illegitimate government on Haiti. For most of its existence, and until quite recently, Haiti was ruled by illegitimate governments that relied heavily on violence to maintain power. Aristide was the first democratically elected president, in 1990. He was overthrown seven months later, but eventually re-elected in 2000. Because his government was legitimate and did not have to rely on violence, he abolished the army – which was the main instrument of political violence. Washington never forgave him for this, and organised an international cutoff of aid to the country, while pouring tens of millions of dollars into the opposition, thus toppling the government.
In April of 2009, an election that also excluded the largest political party resulted in a boycott of about 90% of the electorate. Participation in this latest election appears to have been higher (although lower than the previous presidential election), but it will not be seen as legitimate. This has already increased social unrest. There is no longer a Haitian army, but there is a badly-trained national police force and a UN military force (MINUSTAH), which is widely seen as an occupying army and is notorious for its violence and human rights abuses. Its standing has fallen even further as it appears to be the source of the cholera epidemic.
Haiti needs a government that can contribute to the reconstruction of the country, its public health and the institutions necessary to promote economic development and employment. An illegitimate government won't meet any of these needs, and only raises the risk of increasing political violence.
• Editor's note: A typographical error meant that this article originally stated that Aristide's government was re-elected in 2004; this has been amended (at 13:30 EST on 2 December 2010) to 2000. As stated elsewhere in the article, 2004 was the year Aristide's government was deposed.
Mark Weisbrot
All these incidents do not prevent the head of the UN mission in Haiti, Edmond Mulet, to ensure that everything goes well. "The atmosphere is peaceful, tranquil, serene and violence in Haiti on the circumstances," he said at a press conference yesterday.However, in the street, this optimism is nonexistent. And suspicions of fraud are raising tensions on the eve of a vote where the regime of President René Préval feels threatened. They also fuel the skepticism of voters, many of whom summarize the electoral process in a single word: scam ....... The remake of the scenario in Ivory Coast ....and yet there are still those who continue to speak of the recognition of the so called international community or the UN certification .. ..... if we add Afghanistan where the UN was in collusion with the ambassadors of USA and France and some EU diplomats we can see the same fraud and certification in Ivory Coast ..
The international community has two good reasons to vouch for an impeccable legality of the (rigged) vote.The first is the need to legitimize the military intervention in Afghanistan to the public opinion of NATO won by fatigue. The second also affects the legitimacy of its presence in Afghanistan, but with the Afghan opinion this time. "If the international community condones fraud Karzai warns Fahim Dashty, the editor of Kabul Weekly, while Afghans think:" What is the reason for his presence here, why do not we be fighting? '"Electoral fraud: Karzai against attack
Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Independent Election Commission in Kabul, April 1, 2010.REUTERS / Ahmad Masood RFI
President Hamid Karzai, constantly pressed against corruption that plagues Afghanistan to its government, returned Thursday 1 April 2010 on the ropes the international community, accusing him of having organized themassive fraud during his re-election in August 2009. At the forefront of accusations by Hamid Karzai, the offices of the UN and the European Union in Afghanistan and some embassies, the Afghan president has not identified (in some media the ambassadors are identified as those of the USA, and France, just like in the Ivory Coast).His accusations are far-reaching: Karzai says that there has been fraud in the elections last August, the "massive fraud", "very solid," he insisted, during a meeting with members of the electoral commission. More importantly, it criminalizes the office of deputy representative to the UN, Peter Galbraith (the same one who exposed the fraud to the media), and that of Philippe Morillon, the French general who headed the observer mission of the European Union in this election.So what the international community and the UN in the same scenario with the usual four players (USA, France, EU, UN) are different when it comes to the Ivory Coast? So to achieve their goal for the Ivory Coast multinationals preparation started it there over 25 years and the stuffed elephant was invented. The stuffed elephant is certainly a new culinary French specialty , but it has always been a Gallic reputation internationally recognized to the extent that the international community, or more specifically the multinationals in their project of the new world order have made the French the spear head.
When electoral fraud is met by congratulations
By Stephen Gowans
November 03, 2009 - what's left
It has become standard practice in many parts of the world for opposition candidates to decry as fraudulent election results that favor the incumbent. Charges of vote fraud are routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments.
For example, after (and even before) Zimbabwe's last set of elections, the governing Zanu-PF party was accused of vote fraud, but the evidence for the opposition's claim was gathered by organizations funded by the United States, a major backer of the opposition movement. Washington makes no secret of its desire to drive the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, from power, by hook or crook, not because he's corrupt, despotic or a human rights abuser, as Washington alleges, but because he has done what all foreign leaders back to Lenin have done who have fallen astray of Washington – failed to honor contracts and safeguard private property. (That's not to say Mugabe and Lenin are alike in any way other than having committed what in Washington's view is the supreme crime.) A cooked exit poll is not beyond the motivations and capabilities of US and British-backed anti-Mugabe forces, but that's largely beside the point. Mugabe's Zanu-PF did poorly in the election, and Mugabe, himself, failed to win a first round victory in the presidential election. If Zanu-PF rigged the vote, it blundered badly.
Similarly, the outcome of the last Iranian presidential election, which saw the return to power of the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was denounced by the opposition as a fraud. The charge was taken up by Western politicians, journalists and a substantial fraction of the Western left, despite the opposition's failure to produce a single jot of credible evidence that the election was stolen. Worse, the sole methodologically sound public opinion poll taken prior to the election – funded by the international arm of the Republican Party, the IRI – predicted that Ahmadinejad would win by a wide margin – wider, it turns out, than the margin he actually did win by. This was a case of widespread distaste for Ahmadinejad and Iran's Islamic Revolution leading to the collective dulling of critical faculties. To be sure, if one hated Ahmadinejad and fundamentalist Islam (or fundamentalist religion, period), witnessing Iranians embrace secular Western enlightenment values was bracing indeed. The only problem was there was no evidence it actually happened.
We might expect, then, that charges of vote fraud will be routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments, and that the Western media will accept the charges uncritically. This happens regularly.
But what of cases in which the weight of evidence points to an incumbent, backed by the US government, winning an election by fraud? How might we expect Western politicians, Western media, and even the UN, to react? One would predict that they would try to cover it up, and failing that, minimize its significance. Conspicuously absent would be the indignant denunciations that attend the electoral losses of parties backed by Western governments.
In Afghanistan's August presidential elections, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, who had initially been installed in his position by the US government, failed to win a first round victory. This we know now, largely owing to the efforts of the UN's former number two man in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, who blew the whistle on extensive fraud perpetrated by the Karzai-appointed Independent Electoral Commission. [1] Also involved in the fraud, according to a recent New York Times report, was the president's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. [2]
Galbraith charged that the Karzai appointed electoral commission abandoned "its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff." Galbraith estimated that "as many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent." But when he "called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing" Galbraith of foreign interference. Galbraith's boss, Kai Eide "sided with Karzai", effectively concealing the electoral fraud. [3] Eide told Galbraith that "the UN mandate was only to support the Afghan institutions in their decisions, not to tell them to hold an honest election." [4]
At the centre of the fraud were ghost polling centres (1,500 inaccessible locations that were physically impossible to confirm the existence of), a corrupt election commission, [5] and the president's brother. Ahmed Wali Karzai, "a suspected player in the country's booming illegal trade" receives "regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency." He "orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots" [6] and "is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots." [7]
In other words, the UN was involved in an attempt to cover up vote fraud, while the CIA, through the president's brother, was at least indirectly involved in perpetrating it.
Some US news analysts, dismissing the affair as of little consequence, insist the runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah, stood no chance against Karzai in a fair vote anyway. But an honest account of the initial vote "would have had Karzai at 41% and Abdullah at 34%," [8] putting Abdullah well within striking distance of victory in a run-off election. Abdullah, however, refused to participate, arguing that there was no reason to believe the run-off would be any less corrupt than the initial vote. He has a point. While Karzai's electoral commission was asked to eliminate "the ghost polling centres and to replace staff who committed fraud," Karzai increased the number of centres and rehired the authors of the initial fraud. [9]
The sole concern of officials in Washington – who, when their favored candidates abroad fail to win elections, present themselves as champions of fair elections and lead the charge to have the allegedly fraudulent election overturned — has not been that the Afghan election was stolen, or that Abdullah withdrew because the prospects for a fair run-off were slim. On the contrary, with Karzai winning another term as president only because Abdullah withdrew over legitimate fears the run-off election would be unfair, the official US response has been to "congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him." [10] Instead, Washington's sole concern has been the exposure of electoral fraud, and its effect in undermining the legitimacy of their man in Kabul (who never had much legitimacy in the first place.)
Contrast the US reaction with the sharp Western criticism of Robert Mugabe after Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off round of Zimbabwe's last presidential election, claiming the conditions were not conducive to a fair vote. The difference is as wide as night and day.
Where are the stern lectures, the US-government and ruling class foundation-assisted nonviolent pro-democracy activists, the blanket mass media coverage of Afghanistan's stolen election, the denunciations of Karzai as a dictator – all which attend the defeat of US-backed opposition movements in elections where the charges of fraud have become routine and the evidence for fraud bare to non-existent?
The reaction to electoral fraud, then, depends on the answer to a single question: Does Washington back the beneficiary of the alleged fraud or not? Or more fundamentally, does the beneficiary promote the sanctity of contracts, private property, free trade, free enterprise and free markets? If the answer is no, the reaction will be one of indignation and outrage, even where the evidence of fraud is thin to absent. If the answer is yes, the reaction will be muted, even where the evidence of fraud is voluminous and incontrovertible. Between Zimbabwe and Iran on the one hand, and Afghanistan on the other, official outrage, and therefore the outrage of the media, and therefore the outrage of the people, including a substantial part of the left, has been inversely proportional to the weight of evidence that fraud has actually occurred.
Washington cares not one whit about democracy — only about the interests of the corporations, investors and banks that dominate its policy-making. If "democracy" comports to those interests, well and good. If not, there are no phoney allegations of electoral fraud Washington is not prepared to take a hand in propagating, and no genuine electoral fraud it is unwilling to live with.
Notes:
1. Peter W. Galbraith, "What I saw at the Afghan election," The Washington Post, October 4, 2009.
2. Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, "Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on C.I.A payroll," The New York Times, October 28, 2009.
3. Galbraith, October 4.
4. Peter Galbraith, "Karzai was hellbent on victory. Afghans will pay the price," The Guardian (UK), November 2, 2009.
5. Ibid.
6. Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen, October 28.
7. Ibid.
8. Galbraith, November 2.
9. Ibid.
10. Statement of U.S. Embassy in Kabul, reported in Michael Muskal, "U.S. congratulates Afghan President Karzai on another term in office," Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009.
Source: what's left
Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com
Visit: Zimbabwe Watch
So were the elections in Ivory Coast :
The reaction to electoral fraud, then, depended on the answer to a single question: Does Washington or Paris as well as the so called international community and multinational corporates back the beneficiary of the alleged fraud or not? Or more fundamentally, does the beneficiary which in the case of Ivory Coast was Ouattara promote the sanctity of contracts, private property, free trade, free enterprise and free markets? The answer was yes since he's in Africa on behalf of the IMF and all the multinationals, so the reaction has been muted, even where the evidence of fraud was voluminous and incontrovertible. The UN special representative a that time Mr Choi said that the incidents(frauds were insignificant and even if there were to be taken into account Ouattara still the winner ...Yet he and the international community as well as their backing candidate refused the recount of the ballot to prove their point ...very strange for people who claim promoting democracy to chose bombarding the incumbent president(who asked for the vote recounting) residency and count the death toll rather than recounting the ballot of a disputed election result as any democratic country would do....And that was previously done in the US and even Iran as well as others countries and recently in Haiti .... But that was refused to the Ivorian people that's how the elephant was stuffed catered by the "international community " in Ivory Coast now transformed into a vast elephant grave.
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