Blogging the democratic revolution
It’s a hectic last week of school. Lots of essays that I have to B.S. for tomorrow.
Egypt has now completed the first round of the the third stage of its three-stage parliamentary elections, and is now completing the run-offs for the third stage. Egypt’s electoral system is complex and sometimes confusing to outsiders because the same election involves three stages, each for a specified geographic region of the country, followed by run-off votes in districts where no candidate received a majority. So there are six total election days. Following the first two stages, with roughly 300 out of 454 seats determined, the ruling National Democratic Party had 195 seats, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, running candidates as…
Blogging live from Caracas, Venezuela today, I found myself stuck in an hours long taxi line at a mall in Chacao, an upper middle class neighborhood in Caracas. Amid the prettily decorated mall trees, people were carrying red and green cello-wrapped baskets of Bimbo-brand Panettone and bottles of Concho y Toro wine, something nice for the holidays but certainly not rarified upper class delights. The line moved unbelievably slow and darkness fell after a couple hours. I started asking people around whether they voted, what they thought of their president and what they thought the future held. I had expected…
Burmese officials loyal to the regime are all meeting (read: getting drunk) at a convention that is supposed to put the country on the path to democracy. At least, that’s what the government spokesman are saying. Mad about not being invited to the party are every concerned democratic country on earth, the overwhelmingly popular opposition, and anyone else who might have an inkling of desire to reform the country. I know I didn’t get my invitation! Myanmar’s ruling generals on Monday opened a round of talks on drafting a new Constitution and steering the isolated country toward what the junta…
Russia, for some reason allowed to be a part of the OSCE, is fighting tooth and nail to dismember the best election monitoring team in the world. Why? Because behind Russia’s supposed concerns that the monitors are politically motivated, it is actually worried that the unveiling of more phony elections in its backyard will spark further pro-West revolutions. Instead, it would prefer that the OSCE monitoring team be complacent and say that elections are free and fair when they really aren’t. Charming, no? Well, we can’t have that. Ljubljana, 5 December 2005 (RFE/RL) — U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns…
Here’s the untold story of the tiny country of Tonga, with a population of 100,000 spread over 171 islands and a monarchy that refuses to reform itself. The past several months have been tense. Thousands of people are organizing and protesting for democracy. The government is coming under intense pressure, but the church is serving to prop up the regime. Oppositions MPs demanded the king begin reforming the government by Dec. 5, which would include popular election of all parliamentary deputies, choosing of the prime minister by the parliament, and the reduction of the king to a ceremonial role. When…
You may have noticed a lack of updates today. While it’s partially due to end of semester term papers and finals (oh, you should see my last-ditch effort at putting together a piece on Lebanese consociationalism as a model for Iraq), it also has to due with a very special project I was putting together. The Venezuelan blogosphere scooped the mainstream media when it came to the phony elections held on Sunday, but the problem was that nobody was really telling the story. Well, problem solved. Read the special report at Pajamas Media here, which gives well deserved press coverage…
Publius has been nominated as a finalist for the Best Group Blog category in the 2005 Weblog Awards. You can vote by clicking here, and you can vote every 24 hours. So please do that! It’s quite an honor to be a finalist, after less than a year of blogging, and on the same level as other legendary blogs . And it certainly wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions of A.M. Mora y Leon, Kirk H. Sowell, Daniel Holt, and Daniel Berczik. They’ve been here since the beginning with me and this blog would never have come so far…
That????s what happened in Venezuela today. I????m blogging live from Caracas, and today I saw utterly empty polling stations, one after another, guarded only by tinpot military men with big guns and the occasional red-t-shirted chavista troll on the street corner, standing around looking mean and intimidating for voters. On and off it rained, as if to signal the end of Chavez????s fortunes. A news story about the fiasco is here. Miguel Octavio and I went across the entire city of Caracas in search of a polling station full of people. Or half full. Or people at all! We targeted…
People are voting in presidential elections today in Kazakhstan, though the winner is a forgone conclusion. Oil-rich Kazakhstan, the most prosperous country in ex-Soviet Central Asia, voted Sunday in a presidential election widely expected to give Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has led the country for the last 16 years, another seven-year term. Amid allegations of both official and opposition misdeeds, Nazarbayev was so confident of victory over his four challengers that he scheduled a gathering with supporters at a sports complex in the capital, Astana, on Monday morning, just minutes after election officials planned to announce preliminary results. Many opinion polls…
Hong Kong is like no other place on earth. It’s a sanctuary on an island, ceded to the British in 1842 and ruled by China since 1997. The city is a frothy blend of these two cultures in what has matured to be one of the most liberal economies and societies in the world. It is an outpost of Western ideas on the flank of communism. Perhaps that’s why it is the only place in China where tens of thousands of people can march for universal suffrage on a Sunday afternoon without fear of reprisal. Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) — Tens…
With the Muslim Brotherhood gaining an unprecedented amount of seats in this month’s parliamentary elections, the authorities in Egypt clamped down to the point of surrounding polling stations with riot police and knifing down voters. These voters, in turn, went as far as using ladders to sneak into polling stations so as to simply cast a ballot. But there is another group that factors into this electoral equation: judges, who are at every turn ruling against the regime on a number of electoral issues. In this case, the court has decided that NGOs can monitor the electoral process through video…
Sorry about the lack of updates everyone. My birthday was on Thursday and people had plans for me that apparently didn’t involve a computer screen. I’ll make it up over the weekend!
02.12.05 ö Diplomatic sources in Caracas report about an opinion trend that appears to be gathering force. The “electoral boycott” hypothesis, peddled by Venezuela’s officialdom and its OAS sidekicks, has it that the decision of opposition political parties to withdraw from Assemblymen elections on December 4 constitutes, at best, a “boycott” and at worse “an electoral coup.” Chavez opponents also stand accused of having, irresponsibly, broken an agreement with the OAS whereby participation in the race was a given. Let me be real clear about the reason that prompted such a reaction by the opposition. On Wednesday 23 an audit…
As Bolivia’s Dec. 18 presidential campaign, one that will influence the entire direction of a continent kicks, into high gear, Eduardo Avila has compiled a comprehensive roundup of what’s being said in the Bolivian blogosphere. There are the usual good analytical blogs, but he’s found some photo blogs and new names we’ve not seen in the past. The whole this is on Global Voices and is well worth a click here.
Val Prieto at Babalu has found the most incredible Italian film quietly describing the always constant move toward democratic revolution. Just to see it is light and edifying – its charm and creativity and emotion capture the spirit perfectly. See the whole marvelous thing here.
The Primero Justice party has pulled out of the coming Venezuelan election Sunday, leaving just Hugo Chavez’s MVR party all by its lonesome to run for Congress. This news comes from Marta Colomina, a well-known journalist in Venezuela. This pullout represents the full unification of the Venezuelan opposition, something never seen in Venezuelan history. They have all decided together to refuse to acquiesce to electoral fraud through a rigged election. All of the parties who can make a statement by pulling out have done so now. They are demanding free and fair elections or they won’t participate at all. This…
This past Sunday, Egypt completed the run-off to the second of three rounds of parliamentary elections. The system is set up such that roughly a third of the 444 seats are up for contest in each round. Because the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is legally banned, they run candidates as independents and so ascertaining their strength, as well as that of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), lies partially in how many independents end up aligning with them. The results now available are that the NDP won 75 seats bringing its total to 195, while the MB won 29…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a brilliant – and I mean a most brilliant – essay, both in original thought and in exquisite writing – on Bolivia and the dangerous role of Evo Morales. He points out that Morales’ problem is not globalization, as Morales so drearily claims, but something most people don’t realize: U.S. subsidies and dictator-coddling, something that propped up Bolivian tinpots for years and encouraged them to nationalize their countries instead of listen to reason, pay their way, and engage markets. These sad layers of U.S. policy have ended all possibility of economic growth. He’s right. It beautifully…
Agencia EFE has the first reports on a clash over bus fares. Alek Boyd has more preliminary reports of riots in three cities over the stacked, rigged, fraudulent election here. GATEWAYPUNDIT has a major roundup, with photos of the week’s multiple events here. UPDATE: Miguel has riot photos here. UPDATE: Scott has a terrific roundup of choice quotes here.
Speaking from Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa really gave it to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The short news account is here. It follows recent condemnations of the Venezuelan dictator by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, here.
…except Hugo Chavez’s MVR party, exiting because the electoral setup is utterly tainted. It lacks transparency, it lacks secrecy and it lacks integrity. By doing this, the opposition is saying: No more participating in fraud. It’s amazing that whole political machines can operate in unity like this. It is the first time I’ve ever seen the Venezuelan political opposition ever agree on anything. Now they have, and now they finally have power. The move comes five days before the scheduled Dec. 4 election day for congressional seats. The only remaining opposition party now is called Nuevo Tiempo, and it’s running…
A Saudi national studying at Arizona State University, a party school by all counts and from my own recollection, thinks that the school should sanction the possibility of expelling students for wearing any clothing with the ASU logo when posing for dirty, dirty magazines. The ASU Web Devil reports! If one student leader has his way, ASU students will no longer be able to grace the covers of Playboy and other sexually explicit magazines without consequences. Undergraduate Student Government President Yaser Alamoodi is hoping to pass a rule that would prohibit males and females from posing in magazines he believes…
Carlos Alberto Montaner always gets it right, but he’s done it this week with special brilliance. He warns that Bolivia is on a suicide path with the likely election of Evo Morales, but also notes that the failure of the current ruling class over so many decades is to blame, something I believe too. It’s certainly how Hugo Chavez got a foothold. He is hearing the same things I am hearing: that Bolivia will become a drug haven under Morales, that Brazil will be the first victim, that a breakup of the state is likely, and that a war with…
On Dec. 4, Venezuela will hold Congressional elections. They are expected to be the final nail in the coffin of the Venezuelan opposition as dictator Hugo Chavez consolidates power and installs a Marxist regime. There are pretenses of them being legitimate as a vote however and therein lies the farce. A test of the Smartmatic voting machines and the Cogent Systems fingerprint machines showed that not one ballot had ever been secret when the matter was put before European Union election observers, who indeed were not fooled. That led to a threatened boycott of the election and this morning, the…