How to deal with an uncomfortable vote

(1) You could not hold it.
(2) You could hold it, but make the conditions for campaigning and voting very unfair. (Egypt 2006, Florida 2000.)
(3) You could hold it and then toss out or try to burn many boxes full of your opponents’ ballots. (Haiti, right now.)
(4) You could hold it, and then tie the post-election government-formation process up in knots for several months (US-occupied Iraq, Jan. 2005 and currently– see today’s DDI counter here, now at ’62 days’.)
(5) You could hold it, and then threaten the duly elected leadership with “economic starvation” (occupied Palestine, currently.)
(6) You could hold it, and then send your goons in to beat up and terrorize the entire electorate (East Timor, 1999.)
(7) On the other hand, you could hold the election, allow for fair and equal campaigning and an orderly and transparent voting process, and then undertake to work in good faith, good order, and decent respect with whatever leadership emerges. How revolutionary is that?
(God help the peoples of Haiti, Palestine, and Iraq.)

22 thoughts on “How to deal with an uncomfortable vote”

  1. The multiple post-election shootings of wandering and unarmed Palestinian women and children by goggled IDF gunslingers, in the past week or so, powerfully suggest we will see an twisted and vicious Israeli refinement of the methods to “deal with an uncomfortable democratic vote” by an imprisoned electorate under the military boot: assassinate, assassinate and assassinate more and more wandering women and school kids with the design to provoke a (justified) response which Israel can label as “renewed terror” to attack the legitimacy of newly-elected Hamas and a Hamas-led government. We have already seen the beginning of this Israeli campaign of terror.

  2. Or you could support a terrorist proxy army of roaming death squads for another 5-6 years until the victims finally give in and install the regime you want (Nicaragua, 1984).

  4. Let’s say for the purposes of discussion that Hitler really was put into power by a simple democratic election. We’d still have had to fight him, no? As I said, you may have to respect the democratic choice of the people while you are at war with them. The conditions are not mutually exclusive.

  5. (8) You could claim fraud, have your supporters riot in the street, and force international observers to agree to a “political solution” before the vote is fully counted and alleged irregularities are investigated.

  6. This “starve the Palestinians” scheme reminds me of a U.S.-instigated famine against Bangladesh after its revolution.
    The U.S. did not like their new president so they withheld food shipments that Bangladesh had purchased from America. The resulting famine led to a military coup and a dictator more to U.S. liking.

  7. that Bangladesh had purchased from America.
    “purchased?”
    Food aid shouldn’t be used as a political weapon. by anyone. that includes you.

  8. Just off today’s Ha’aretz: Israeli prime minister Dov Weissglas doesn’t want to see hungry Palestinian children, he just wants to “make them much thinner, but not enough to die”.
    Hm, I guess in Hebrew that translates into “Starve them and cry”.
    How may ribs have to show, Mr. Weissglas, before you cry?

  10. First question about elections is whether there are any conditions when they make sense and can be fair – or elections are a magic bullet which is always for the better. Yes, sure, anyhow reasonably, this question needs to be considered before, not after the fact.
    My understanding is, elections make sense when there is already certain level of political and economical stability, national sovereignty is also important. From this prospective, the magic bullet view of elections is absurd, elections by themselves do not change much.
    This explains what is going on in WBG, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since there were no proper condititions for the elections, they did not work properly.
    In fact, if conditions were right for WBG elections then when they are not right – maybe, in the middle of nuclear war?! Anyway, as I already pointed out, now it is too late, all this had to be considered before, not after the fact.

  11. Timothy L, those incidents don’t suggest anything since you blurted those incidents out without explanation or context and you oversimplified them by characterizing the IDF troops involved as “goggled gunslingers” instead of human beings. You think the goggles will turn them into comic book villains?
    ————————————————–
    Joshua, well some fraud did seem to have happened, as there really were spoiled ballots in those garbage heaps. The violence was very tragic. But that aside I wonder if Preval simply did the same thing that Yuchenko did. The legitimacy of an election was called into question. The candidate apparently damaged by fraud led a popular revolt in protest of the results, and the authories ultimately capitulated. Saakashvili vs. Shevardnadze in Georgia, Yuschenko vs. Yanokovich in Ukraine, Bakiev and Kulov vs. Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. Now Preval in Haiti. The outcome in Haiti arguably fits into the scenarios of the so-called “colored revolutions”. Now I’m a strong suppporter of the revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. I admire the people that marched for them. I want to be just as hopeful for Preval in Haiti.

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