General Elections 2007

There are elections coming soon. All positions - from local council members up to and including the presidency of this country - are to be voted on in April. The elections will be spread out over the course of a week. Voting registration has been going on for months and doesn’t appear to be going well. The registration machines are broken and can’t be used or political parties that are trying to manipulate the voting process to their favor steal them. Even the machines that have actually been used to register voters are looked upon with skepticism, as it is apparently hard to know if that data is true. There is the issue of actual balloting (see the picture); it is all done on paper, which is easy to duplicate, leaving the process wide open to fraud. Of course the government is taking precautions in an attempt to keep the elections as fair as possible. But there is already violence and fraud - we see it, hear it and read about it in the newspapers. Candidates must go through some government process to be declared eligible for running for office. The current vice president was disqualified from running for the presidency in the election. He (and many others) were indicted – but not charged – with fraud by the government’s fraud agency. Another government agency, in charge of conducting the elections, declared the VP and others as ineligible based on the indictments. If they haven’t been charged and brought to trial then it seems that the decision to run for office should be left up to the party that is carrying them as a candidate. That the government should have a say in who can run and who can’t run seems to be an undermining of the democratic process (remember this is the personal opinion of someone who does not know all the ins and outs of the laws of this country). Yet, ‘democracy’ is the word every political party and candidate uses as a rallying call. The word ‘democrat’ is in the name of many of the political parties. This is the first time that this country will pass the torch of power from one elected government to another. Think about that for a minute: the FIRST time that one elected government will leave office for another elected government. That is if all goes well. What a different world this is from what we are accustomed to. We take a peaceful transition for granted. There aren’t gun battles between political parties in our streets, those running against them don’t attack our politicians in their homes, and if we wish to change our political affiliation, we can do so without fear of reprisal. Of course, we don’t have 24 candidates running for the presidency. That alone is very interesting. How does anyone receive enough votes to win? There is a lot of unknown in this election. The world is sending in observers to watch at the polls to help ensure free and fair elections but maybe, just maybe, the oversight is needed now before the voting begins.