-Caveat Lector-
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 13 December 2000
> *Viewpoint: DEMOCRACY ... US STYLE
>
>The magnitude of the political scandal that has hit the world's
>only super-power has sent reverberations around the world. The nation
>that lectures the world on how to run a democracy -- including
>elections -- has been shamed into admitting that its problems are
>similar if not worse than those of many of the Third World countries
>whose electoral systems it criticizes. Tuesday's decision by the US
>Supreme Court took a full month after the nation's presidential
>elections took place. It has effectively put an end to the political
>battle, opening the way for the Republican candidate George W Bush to
>enter the White House in January. But it also helped put an end to
>any notion that the system was "Democratic."
>
>This is not the first time in the history of the United States that
>a candidate has won the election without gaining a majority of the
>popular vote. This time, however, the very credibility of US so-
>called Democracy is on the line.
>
>Democracy that involves a national voter absentee rate of 50 percent.
>
>Democracy that, consequently (and given the vote that Al Gore
>received), allows the man who takes over as president in January to
>do so with the support of less than 25 percent of the electorate.
>Democracy that refuses to allow a serious alternative contender for
>the presidency to publicly debate the other two principle candidates
>on national TV.
>
>Democracy that allows a state legislature such as Florida's to ignore
>the vote of its people and decide for themselves who will or will not
>be given the electoral votes so essential to win this election. Thus,
>for the first time in its history, a state legislative body of a
>little over 100 representatives has effectively elected the US
>president.
>
>Democracy that allows two US Supreme Court justices to vote on such
>an important issue when they both have clear conflicts of interest in
>doing so. Justice Thomas's wife being directly involved in the Bush
>campaign, and Justice Scalia's two sons hired as attorneys for two
>law firms representing the Bush campaign in its arguments to the
>Supreme Court (and thus, their father) itself.
>
>Hardly the notion of the true democratic representational system
>Washington pundits and politicians are forever lecturing the rest of
>the world about.
>
>Most of the countries that Washington roundly criticizes for not
>having "democratic" elections have a second round of voting when the
>first is contested so closely -- but not the self-proclaimed champion
>of Democracy. The U.S. Supreme Court is the country's highest
>judicial body and an appeal against any of its rulings has little
>chance of success. The electoral votes of the state of Florida have
>been stolen from the people by their so-called representatives and
>apportioned along strictly partisan lines in a winner-take-all system
>that defies every notion of Democracy.
>
>A new chapter of U.S. electoral history will begin with Bush's
>inauguration on January 20th 2001. It is too early to say if the
>status quo that passes for US Democracy will be maintained in the
>light of this election scandal, but most experts say that once the
>dust settles everyone will get back to living the same routine.
>However, there will be many who will nonetheless recall that the man
>in charge of what he calls the "Greatest Democracy on Earth" for the
>next four years, will have to come to terms with the fact that he won
>the election on the political whim of the legislature of his
>own brother's state without the support of the vast majority of his
>people.
>
>(c) 2000 Radio Habana Cuba
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