Tuesday, July 25, 2006

The cleanest elections?

You live in a country where state surveillance and gathering of 'kompromat' on highly placed politicians has a long tradition; where blackmail has been regularly used as a political tool.

Your political enemies have a track record of bending the rules and cheating over several election campaigns.

You are in power and have [some] control over law enforcement agencies.

Fresh elections are to take place. Do you trust your enemies to be honest because they 'obitsyaly popravytysya?' [promised to mend their ways].

Or do you keep an eye [and an ear] open, to see what they are getting up to, just in case they cheat again?

Last time, it was the votes and the vote-counters that were 'bought'. Maybe this time they figured it would be easier to buy-out the newly-elected deputies?

Stories of bribes and 'slush funds' have been circulating for quite a while ..Will more evidence come to light soon, or used later, when the time is right?

Or maybe it's all being made up. What do you think?

1 comment:

DLW said...

I think candidates are more costly to buy out after they are elected and so the return is less...

I think $peech is pervasive in politics and that some $peech is usually needed to counter other $peech. This is why the union movements have been long associated with political reforms in Europe and the US.

It's probably best to get people to accept that some $peech is inevitable in politics and make it all more transparent, with voters able to use the relatives to vote strategically in elections.

Some public funding of campaigns also can be a good thing. Here in MN, anyone can give a candidate 50 dollars for their campaign and get the money reimbursed for the cost of a stamp.

I don't know, I think what matters most is to realize that all attempts to reduce the volume of $peech in politics is political jujitsu and needs to have reasonable goals set to both provide some hope for changes and to keep people from getting their hopes up too much and getting burned out and cynical. I am afraid the OR might have done the latter too much, which can really poison the popular activism needed for further reforms...

dlw