Blogging the democratic revolution
Boz has a fascinating collection of polls from around the Americas in several countries signalling the political temperatures in assorted hot spots like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and others, all put together in a clean roundup of news. Don’t miss the weird Argentine soccer poll at the bottom. Well worth a click here.
Francisco Toro has an interesting item about the growth of the ‘ni-ni’s in Venezuela’s political system. These are the people who are neither for Chavez nor for the opposition to Chavez. They are sort of fence-sitters, or, as Francisco suggests, the political center. As a group, they are growing, and new parties like Venezuela de Primero (he has a link) are trying to cater to them. With an election approaching on Dec. 4, this trend will be well worth watching. Read it here.
Transparency International’s famous corruption perceptions index for 70 countries of the world was released this morning. Notice those nice Estonia and Barbados ratings! Notice those hideous Burma and Belarus ratings! The press release and the list of rankings is here. UPDATE: Veneuzela’s Aleksander Boyd has some additional commentary here.
Given its terrible wars and fearsome rebel groups, you might not think anything good could come out of Liberia. And, you would be wrong. Liberia has held its first successful free and fair elections this week. Long live the democratic revolution! Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit has a full roundup and video well worth seeing here.
Both Venezuela and Bolivia will hold watershed elections this December 4. Political pictures, and the outlook for democracy, could change as a result. Venezuela will elect National Assembly members ahead of dictator Hugo Chavez’s planned “changes” to the constitution. Bolivia will hold long-anticipated presidential elections after the leftist street-mob toppling of their second president in two years, the work of activists linked to Castro ally Evo Morales. Both elections are showing signs of crisis ahead of the vote. Here is a brief roundup: In Venezuela: Francisco Toro at Caracas Chronicles writes that the opposition, which has now united, must deal…
The difficulties that Iraqi Shia, Sunnis and Kurds have had in governing their country following their elections have given the world lots of headaches, especially for the United States. But if you really want to see a group of political parties having a difficult time putting together a stable coalition, look to Germany. The best headline I’ve seen in a while comes from the English version of Der Spiegel: Germany Loses Its Own Election. Here are some other English language links from the same publication: Merkel’s Bitter Defeat Who Want’s to be Germany’s Chancellor? Preliminary Results Show Schroder, Merkel Stalemate…
Daniel has a good thorough roundup of the ongoing electoral mess in Venezuela, which faces congressional elections on Dec. 4. This will be one hell of a fateful day for this country’s ‘democracy.’ Chavez is likely to totally consolidate power and end elections forever more in Venezuela after this. There’s the interesting problem of his government’s internal disorganization though and Daniel does a skillful job explaining it all out for us here.
Marvelous Miguel Centellas of Ciao! blog had just what I was looking for, commentary on the news here showing that Marxist Evo Morales has taken the lead in the presidential polls. Miguel cautions us not to despair, Bolivian voters tend to break away from the frontrunner at the last minute so in this regard, maybe the news is not as bad as it looks. He also has other insightful commentary here. Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog has additional background on the state of this coming election Dec. 4 right here.
“I am very confident ÄthatÅ on the 19th of September, the day after the elections here, we are all going to wake up and realize that the heroes of Afghanistan were the people that went out and cast their vote for their own future.” — The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commenting on Afghanistan’s 18 September parliamentary elections. Witness the face of the young, emerging Afghanistan. Both young and old have joined in the refounding of their nation. This post will serve as a comprehensive roundup for the elections in Afghanistan. It will include links…
The signatures that led to a recall referendum in Venezuela last year have since become Hugo Chavez’s blacklist against his political enemies. Aleksander Boyd has a stunning collection of screenshots showing how Venezuela’s increasingly freedomless regime has used the latest technology to perpetrate low-tech vengeance. It’s a don’t miss because there’s something mind-changing about the images. You won’t look at the issue the same way after you see these photos. See it here.
Japan’s politics, like its economics, has been sclerotic for ages. Bureaucrats, comfy pork barrel politicians and socialism have kept that economy on ice for a long long time. Until now. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an authentic revolutionary who is taking untold radical steps to shake Japan from top to bottom, reforming the giant postal savings program, getting rid of bureaucrats, setting the markets free … has just won a MASSIVE unexpected electoral victory in Japan, way bigger than he thought he could get … after a ballsy move to call new elections, effectively telling Japan’s voters and legislative creatures that…
Here is a superb Bolivia update by someone who knows the real score going on in Bolivia. The short story is this: Evo Morales is winning as December’s election approaches but he can’t win except through Congress. If he does, he’s going to nationalize the energy and make Bolivia the third member of the Axis of Marxism, destabilizing every country in the region and giving the FARC a new home. If he doesn’t, he’s going to destabilize the country through street protests, same as he’s been doing, toppling presidente after presidente. This is clearly scary stuff. This guy needs to…
Egyptians voted on Wednesday in the country’s first ever multi-candidate presidential elections. They no longer had to choose between yes or no for Mubarak, but between ten different candidates. Despite this, however, the day was marked with intense voter apathy. Egyptians are casting their ballots in the country’s first ever presidential election. And no-one in Egypt doubts who will win. The incumbent – Hosni Mubarak – who’s been in power for 24 years and is running for another six-year term, faces no real competition from the nine other candidates, most whom are virtually unknown. The better known ones, such as…
Sandmonkey has an update on the Egyptian elections taking place very soon. In sum, the NGOs want to monitor the election, the electoral commission said no, the courts said yes, the commission said “screw you,” and for some reason a delegation from the House of Representatives doesn’t mind. It goes back to the judicial rebellion a couple of months ago, when somewhere around 4000 judges all demanded that they be given complete oversight of the election process, not limited to just the polls as the government has tried to do. Most of the fraud will occur behind the scenes, after…
Miguel Buitrago at MABB in Bolivia has a truly marvellous election update complete with biographies of all the players in the upcoming election in December. That is going to be a BIG one – so it’s best to get up on these characters. Miguel has done a fantastic job well worth reading here.
A young Mexican politician, Gabriela Cuevas Barron, 26, is fighting the onslaught of Hugo Chavez-style communism in Mexico by opposing the candidacy of leftwing PRD presidential contender Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. She continually exposes his sorry record – the bribes, the payoffs, the padded invoices, the neglected police services, the welfare handouts, and the corruption. She dogs him with lawsuits, press briefings, photographs, inconvenient questions in congress – and anything else that will expose his way of business. What is she doing? Something called democracy. Mexico’s angry voters need to understand the extent of the existing corruption with AMLO so…
Voting opened in the ethnic Somali region of Ethiopia, while a partial re-run vote was held in other districts where irregularities were too high back in May. Not that it matters, at this point. JIJIGA, Ethiopia — Voting in eastern Ethiopia ended peacefully Sunday, as elite forces, pro-government militia and police patrolled streets to secure the region’s delayed elections. Voters in the mostly ethnic Somali region, some armed with assault rifles, gathered at sunrise at polling stations to elect 23 federal lawmakers and 168 regional legislators. Some voters said they hoped the election would bring a way out of poverty…
Perhaps another confirmation of what we may see in the future of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah promised Condoleezza Rice that the kingdom would be sufficiently liberalized to hold national elections within 15 years. Saudi King Abdullah promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a series of reforms that could give the desert kingdom an elected government within 10 to 15 years, says a senior U.S. official who was present when the two met in June. “He professed to transform his country and talked about having a representative government within a decade or a decade and a half,” said the official, who…
After local and provincial officials chose new members for half of the country’s Senate, the constitutional court set in stone the date of the country’s next presidential elections. President Nazarbaev’s term runs dry in the beginning of 2006, but elections weren’t expected until December of that year — over a year from now. But the court, which is hardly independent, has set it for this December instead. Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court has set the first Sunday of December as the date for presidential elections, ending a lengthy debate between the government and the opposition over the timing of the vote. President…
Even with the winner a foregone conclusion, the unprecedented multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt started today. The official campaign period for Egypt’s landmark presidential election opened Wednesday. Ten men, including sitting President Hosni Mubarak, are vying for the presidency in the country’s first multi-candidate election. The three leading contenders for the presidency all scheduled rallies for Wednesday to launch their election campaigns. Incumbent President Hosni Mubarak decided not to wait for the rally and took out a full-page ad in Egypt’s largest newspaper, the government-run Al-Ahram. A private television station bought space on another page, trumpeting its exclusive coverage of…
And they’re off! There is exactly one month before parliamentary elections are held in Afghanistan, meaning that official campaigns between some 6,000 candidates for 249 assembly seats and and positions in 34 provincial councils are now underway. An essential element to any successful election, free media coverage, is present in large quantities and will be the deciding factor in who wins and who loses given the plethora of contenders. This won’t be decided necessarily on the media’s bias, but by how each candidate’s message resonates with the voters, as JEMB is allowing every single person running the opportunity to run…
The Florida register of companies contains details of the board of directors of Smartmatic Corporation, which is formed by Antonio Mugica, Alfredo Anzola, Antonio Mugica Rivero, Roger Pi????ate, Antonio Mugica Sesma and Luis Feliu Ä1Å. Its principal place of business is 1001 Broken Sound Parkway, NW, STE D, Boca Raton, FL 33487. The company’s history in Venezuela dates back to seven years ago when the venture was “the Research and Development Unit of Panagroup in Venezuela” (sic) and in “2000 we realized the true impact of our technology in the growing device-networking market, and we emerged as an independent company”…
Daniel at Venezuela News and Views has a STUNNING piece about what the Venezuelan opposition should do now in the wake of Venezuela’s failed municipal elections this past weekend. It’s is AWESOME, beyond Daniel at his finest to something quite godly. He’s like Alexander Hamilton in his suggestions for the opposition of what arguments to use, what tactics to take, what strategy to follow now, in these conditions. It’s truly awesome. Daniel’s rapier diagnosis: The other fact is that at way more than half of your voters, those that usually vote for you, did not bother to vote this time.…
It has almost been three months since Ethiopia held its parliamentary elections, and the results have been delayed over and over and over. And the results aren’t all that surprising, especially after all the lack of transparency in the counting process, the putting opposition leaders under house arrest, the banning of protests, and the beating and shooting of student protestors. The government is really after Jimmeh Carter’s naive little heart (who, by the way, certified the elections after walking around a bit even when EU observers would not). Even after all of this, who still wins? You guessed it. Ethiopia’s…
They are edging in, and splattered all over the election commission’s Web site for non-easy reading. Miguel has an absolutely fascinating description, which suggests this was a disaster for the Chavistas they are trying to hide. Check out the Zulia numbers – Zulia is where the oil workers live. It’s here. Daniel has more excellent stuff here.