The LNS is not so convinced that the OSCE monitoring
will be a whitewash of a Bush cabal "re-election"
theft, because the Bush cabal can no longer control
significant elements with the US foreign policy
estabslishment, the US military and the US
intelligence community...There are too many patriot
professionals who understand the foolish military
adventure in Iraq for what it is, a Mega Mogadishu and
a staggering historial mistake, and there are too many
patriot professionals who know more than is
acknowledged about the Bush cabal's pre-9/11
incompetence (at best) and post-9/11 blunders in the
botched, bungled, mis-named "war on terrorism." No,
OSCE monitoring could well back-fire on the Bush
cabal...The Allies know what time it is, NATO knows
what time is it, much of Beltwayistan itself knows
what time it is...There are many forces at work in
this struggle who would be quite comfortable with a
whitewash in Georgia that will not allow one here for
the very same overarching reasons, national security
and global security...Nevertheless, this bloggers
cautionary tale about the OCSE is very important, and
could turn out to be prophetic. Of course, it would be
better if not only the OCSE, but also the UN and the
Csrter Center were involved...Russo's article on the
OCSE in Georgia (the country) is particularly
poignant, since Georgia (the state)is one of those
that has been severly compromised with "electronic
voting." The LNS does not believe that Max Cleland
lost his US Senate seat in 2002 by the will of the
voters. Of course, the LNS doesn't think that bad
weather took the life of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
either.
Tim Russo: Reality check, folks. The State Dept.
jumped at this because it isn't a threat.
Anyone who has participated in any OSCE election
observation mission (I've been on three) knows that
the verdict of the mission will be written by OSCE
member state ambassadors, who have political agendas
to grind. Guess who is the most important member
state of the OSCE - the US. Guess who appoints the
ambassador to the OSCE - GW Bush.
In January, I wrote a piece for the London Sunday
Times on the impending OSCE election observation
mission in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia,
warning of a whitewash (which happened.) It's a good
primer on the OSCE's internal processes...
The OSCE will then have a choice between issuing a
statement, the first draft of which is likely already
written, that reports what actually happens, or one
that will predictably refer to these practices as not
having `affected the outcome', that despite these
shortcomings, the result will have `reflected the will
of the people'. It is a crucial moment for the OSCE,
an organization that appears to be attempting to
rehabilitate its credibility. Perhaps the OSCE will
finally get the timing right.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/8/10/101655/478
OSCE Mission Will Whitewash US Election
by grassy
Reality check, folks. The State Dept. jumped at this
because it isn't a threat.
Anyone who has participated in any OSCE election
observation mission (I've been on three) knows that
the verdict of the mission will be written by OSCE
member state ambassadors, who have political agendas
to grind. Guess who is the most important member
state of the OSCE - the US. Guess who appoints the
ambassador to the OSCE - GW Bush.
In January, I wrote a piece for the London Sunday
Times on the impending OSCE election observation
mission in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia,
warning of a whitewash (which happened.) It's a good
primer on the OSCE's internal processes.
I pasted it here (you can't get it online unless you
subscribe to the Sunday Times.)
Georgia vs. the election observers.
By Tim Russo
"You're joking," my British friend whispered to me
as he came to a stop after racing into the building
with urgency.
We stood at the back of an old auditorium, packed with
international press, government officials, embassy
staff, and observers of the 1998 presidential election
in Armenia. The head of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) international
observation mission sat at a table in the front,
calmly reading the delegation's preliminary statement
on the conduct of the election the previous day. I
looked down at the ground in stunned silence.
"I just got back from my count," my friend said in
disbelief.
"Have you even showered?" I asked.
"Haven't showered in a day and a half," he said. "We
went to the OSCE office, they told us to come here,"
he said. "I just got out of the car after an eight
hour drive," he finished, panting.
I feared what was coming.
He'd just been an observer at a late night vote count
in a remote, mountainous border region where military
manipulation of the election was expected, and turned
out to be particularly egregious. "Where do I take
these?" he said waving a stack of notes and documents
in the air, his voice now frustrated. I just looked
at him and shook my head, having spent the previous
night at an equally farcical vote count myself until 9
a.m. that morning.
He started looking around for someone in charge.
"What is going on here? Why is the statement being
issued, I haven't even reported from my assignment?"
I just rubbed my forehead as my friend kept charging
about the back of the room with his documents, his
desperation telling it all about how the election must
have gone where he'd observed it.
Then we heard from the podium, "...a step forward for
democracy..."
My friend lost it. He stopped in his tracks. I
walked over to try and calm him down, but he just
looked at me in shock, shoving my outstretched arm
away. "What a fucking joke...," he said with one last
wave of his notes, then he threw them to the floor
angrily, turned around, and marched out of the
building in disgust, as the head of the delegation
calmly continued reading his verdict of approval.
Since the soviet collapse, it seems every new election
in the post soviet republics deteriorates into more of
a sham than the one before it, 2003 proving a banner
year for post soviet electoral fraud. This year, the
OSCE, post soviet international election observers of
record, condemned various elections in Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, and even Russia, whose December 7
parliamentary election it described in its preliminary
statement as `overwhelmingly distorted'.
The people of Georgia, however, finally refused to
accept yet another fraudulent election. Helped along
by the condemnation of election observers (OSCE as
well as domestic observers), the people power in the
streets of Tbilisi in November forced out the
president, Edward Shevardnadze. Enough had become
enough, and now there is great hope for a new era in
Georgia of elections free of manipulation, beginning
with the presidential election January 4.
As my British friend would agree, Georgia need look no
further than its rugged southern border for guidance
in the days ahead. In 1998, Armenia faced very
similar circumstances. A president who relied on
electoral fraud to stay in power was forced to resign.
A new election was scheduled, the OSCE descended en
masse to observe. And a similar hope for a future of
free and fair elections was in the air. But Georgians
should watch the OSCE as carefully as they watch their
election processes, for the OSCE's recent boldness in
the aftermath of this year's many sham elections is
very recent indeed.
Run by member states, OSCE observation missions exist
in a diplomatic no mans land; on the one hand
dedicated to promote integrity in the democratic
process, but on the other, representing the political
and economic policy interests of the member states.
The result is that far from being disinterested
guarantors of democratic integrity, OSCE election
observation missions, and especially the statements
they make in the immediate aftermath of an election,
are not unblinking verdicts by a referee, but more
often are delicate balancing acts of high diplomacy.
It is a balance the OSCE has often gotten exactly
wrong at precisely the wrong moment. As the new
democracies of the former Soviet Union were finding
their feet, and member states of the OSCE were
assessing the new geopolitical realities, OSCE
election observation missions found ever more creative
ways to gloss over the ever more fraudulent elections.
Whatever the competing interest, the commitment to
helping these new democracies create fair electoral
processes regularly took a back seat, with the
perverse result that messy elections were not only
ignored, but made even messier by the OSCE and the
increasing caricature of their increasingly
predictable whitewashes.
Armenia's presidential election in 1998 was a prime
example. As an observer within the OSCE mission at
the time, I had a front row seat to not only observe
the pervasive electoral fraud, but also the OSCE's
delicate balancing act between the compelling
observations the observers kept reporting, and the
member states' interest in ignoring them. The
resulting OSCE verdict, a masterfully acrobatic
navigation of statements and reports that managed the
least amount of honesty when it was most needed,
rubber stamped an election widely described by
experienced observer delegates at the time as perhaps
the most sophisticated electoral fraud they'd ever
witnessed.
The timing of the OSCE's abdication of its
responsibility in Armenia in 1998 could not have been
worse. After years of preceding electoral
manipulation, as a chance arose for democracy to
change the course of a troubled country, the OSCE
hailed a thorough fraud as a `step forward' for
democracy, writing off the blatant joke of precincts
reporting 300% turnout as not causing them `to
question the result'. The result in the years since
has been the rapidly accelerating rot of Armenia's
democracy.
The OSCE should be applauded for its honesty in 2003,
but perhaps with a slow hand clap rather than a
standing ovation. Its talk this year is quite cheap.
For when it mattered most, when a credible
international organization's verdict on the conduct of
an election could have affected democratic processes
for the better, the OSCE too often has blinked.
Elections in Armenia, Russia, Georgia, or the other
former soviet republics, did not suddenly become
`overwhelmingly distorted' overnight and in secret;
they've been deteriorating predictably and in full
view for more than a decade. The OSCE's sudden, too
little, and far too late honesty about electoral
processes which are rotten to the core - processes
the OSCE itself has had a hand in perpetuating - might
actually be comic if it weren't so tragic.
Georgia in 2004 may be different. The OSCE did have
an effect on the November election. And if they are
willing and able to stay as honest about the next one,
Georgia may finally find the courage to not only
refuse their legacy of electoral fraud, but work to
eradicate it.
It is likely, however, that the OSCE balancing act is
in full swing already. The likely next president,
Mikhail Saakashvilli, is a friendly protégé of the
OSCE member states. He will likely win in a
landslide, whether or not there is any fraud, and the
OSCE will want nothing to taint his victory. Clean
reporting of electoral manipulation may already be
taking a back seat to the rise of a friendly new ally
in a difficult and unstable region.
Fraud there will certainly be. It is tempting to
think that the people power in Georgia that refused
the latest fraud can herald a new interest in fair and
clean processes, that somehow the disappearance of a
corrupt figurehead will result in the disappearance of
the deep rooted structure of electoral manipulation
that kept him there.
But the practices of looking the other way while a
ballot box is stuffed, or taking advantage of
miserably inaccurate voter lists, forging a signature
here or a vote total there, bribing or blackmailing
voters with meager amounts of money that are many
times their monthly salaries, have a way of sticking
around and metastasizing into a permanent cancer if
ignored for too long.
The OSCE will then have a choice between issuing a
statement, the first draft of which is likely already
written, that reports what actually happens, or one
that will predictably refer to these practices as not
having `affected the outcome', that despite these
shortcomings, the result will have `reflected the will
of the people'. It is a crucial moment for the OSCE,
an organization that appears to be attempting to
rehabilitate its credibility. Perhaps the OSCE will
finally get the timing right.
For Georgia, though, much more is at stake than
institutional credibility. It will soon have a new
president who will likely bring hope for a new future.
Whether or not his election will herald a new, freer
democracy, is an open question.