Sunday, June 19, 2005

The Elections in Lebanon     Elsewhere in the Middle East, corruption is also being alleged, but somewhat less plausibly.  In Lebanon, all sides are claiming vote-buying by their opponents; and where there's so much smoke, there's probably a smoke machine.  But one Syrian collaborationist, former Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh, claimed that his opponents have spent $35 million campaigning against him.  I'm not saying he's a liar, but that would amount to about $700 per person in his district, and with turnout estimated at around 50%, something like $1700 per voter.  You'd think for that kind of money, you could at least buy higher voter turnout. If Mr. Franjieh isn't a liar, though, you do have to think he's sort of a gibbering lunatic. 6:36:21 PM    comment []

Fraud in Iran's Elections   The leading reform candidate in Iran claimed fraud in the presidential elections.  He appears to have a very good case.  The election results, as announced by the Interior Ministry, reported a voter turnout of 55 percent, with former President Rafsanjani in first place, and the reformist former speaker of the Parliament Mehdi Karroubi in second place.  Abruptly, the Guardian Council, which has a veto over the voters, announced that hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had come in second, and would be in the runoff election.  The Interior Ministry abruptly announced that voter turnout had been 62%, which means that in four hours they "discovered" and counted a little over 3 and a quarter million extra votes.  That isn’t discovering a missing voting box.  That's like discovering a missing warehouse full of voting boxes.  In earlier polls, Tehran Mayor Ahmadinejad had placed no higher than fourth among the six candidates.  The two reformer candidates had been shown in polls running neck and neck for second place; instead, they came in third and fifth.  The missing building of votes could explain how a figure who had no power base outside of Tehran, and hardly monolithic support there, could get 5.7 million votes...I guess all three million of those people voted for Ahmadinejad. The next day, the Guardian Council claimed voter turnout was at 70% (evidently they discovered another warehouse full of votes overnight); such a high turnout is considerably at odds with the lack of lines at the polling places, let alone the two wildly varying reports from the Interior Ministry, which actually counted the votes.  It must be nice when you can just pick the number of votes for each candidate.  It should be hard to convince the Iranian people that this election was conducted legitimately, and popular disillusion with the government is likely to increase further. 3:57:24 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 6/19/2005   "Don't do it, Casey, she has an agenda." "You think she wants a job on Sports Night?" "I think she wants to rule all of Metropolis."   -Josh Charles and Peter Krause, Sports Night, "Smoky" 4:11:45 AM    comment []