It's Come to This: Pakistan is More Civilized than Russia
Filed under: Europe ~ Pakistan ~ Russia ~ South Asia
Andrei Illarionov has been conclusively proven right: Pakistan is more civilized than Russia.
An election has just occurred in Pakistan and that county's military dictator Pervez Musharraf has allowed not one but two viable opposition parties, both dedicated to ousting him from power, not merely to contest the election but to win the overwhelming majority of seats in parliament. As the New York Times reports: "Benazir Bhutto's the Pakistan Peoples Party was on pace to win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, while a second rival party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the faction led by Nawaz Sharif, like Ms. Bhutto a former prime minister, was looking to take 100 seats. Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats." They could kill Bhutto, but they could not stop her from winning a plurality of seats in the new legislature.
Meanwhile, Russia has already held parliamentary elections where not one real opposition party was permitted to take a single seat, and will hold presidential elections the first week in March in which all the real opposition candidates, including former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, have been excluded.
Vladimir Putin: Less democratic than a military dictator. Is that because he has more to fear from the voters?
How is it possible that country that is less democratic than a military dictator is a member of the G-8, one of the most significant democracy organizations in the world?
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