What do Christine Gregoire and Viktor Yanukovych have in common?
They're both trying to steal an election.
Gregoire, Washington's three-term attorney-general, lost the governor's race by 261 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast in the November 2nd election. The mandatory machine recount (plus unauthorized hand recount in King County that Secretary of State Sam Reed should have disallowed) narrowed the margin to a microscopic 42 votes, but former GOP state senator Dino Rossi is still the winner, and will be certified as such next week.
Or maybe not. Gregoire and the Dems are going to demand a second, Florida-style cherry-picking hand recount in precincts favorable to them. They have to pay for it, but if they overtake Rossi, the state has to do a full-blown hand recount that could last past Christmas.
Do I even need to point out the Florida 2K parallel?
Of course, there is a difference in scale. The stakes in the Evergreen state do not include civil war, or invertention by a large, menacing neighboring power.
Pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko won the Ukrainian presidential election. Exit polling (by Western observers who had no interest in skewing it) showed Mr. Yushchenko with a 54%-43% lead over Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Yet the government-announced results indicated a Yanukovych upset, 50%-47%.
Do I even need to point out the...oh, never mind. Besides, the difference here is that the election theft has, so far, been successful.
Yushchenko isn't taking it lying down. He took the oath of office (unofficially), and has hundreds of thousands of supporters taking to the streets to rally and protest. Though the outgoing regime of Leonid Kuchma certified the aforementioned official result, now the Ukrainian Supreme Court is saying, as SCs are want to do, "Not so fast." Some are raising the spectre of nationwide strikes, and even civil war.
Now perhaps this next thought is a tad Machiavellian, but this crisis seems to be tailor-made for Vladimir Putin's little-concealed ambition of rebuilding the old Evil Empire. It might be an overstatement to say that Putin is orchestrating Ukraininan events, but they're certainly working in his favor. By ensuring the ascension of a Kremlin-approved puppet regime in Kiev Putin would be effectively restoring the key component of the old Soviet Union. And if a civil war did break out, what better pretext could their be for making said restoration literal by intervening militarily to "restore order" and maybe even on the pretext of preventing exploitation of the crisis by "terrorists"?
That sure seems to be the thinking underlying the surprisingly strong U.S. reaction to the Ukrainian situation.
"Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the United States cannot accept the results of elections in Ukraine, which the opposition says was marred by fraud.
"Powell warned 'there will be consequences' for the United States' relationship with Ukraine as a result of the developments in the former Soviet bloc nation. ...
"Powell said he spoke with outgoing Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma and urged that his government not crack down on demonstrators. He also spoke with other regional leaders, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Powell did not elaborate about his conversation with Lavrov, but said he advocated a solution to the crisis in Ukraine that is 'based on the law, using legal procedures.'"
The message to Putin appears clear: Back off, and let honest diplomacy function.
Of course, Secretary Powell didn't specify what "consequences" to which he was making reference. But Putin is not yet in a position to drop all pretense of rapproachment and cooperation with the United States in favor of a new Cold War.
He does, however, have a notable advantage: his man is, officially, the president-elect of Ukraine. As long as that remains the case - as it probably will - he can wait out the life cycle of Ukrainian outrage and American "objections," and then move on to the next piece on the world chessboard.
Hopefully the Bush Administration's policy is an indication that it knows "the game is [already] afoot."
And hopefully Mr. Yushchenko's efforts to regain what was stolen from him will be as successful as Governor-elect Rossi's to prevent that same fate.
Gregoire, Washington's three-term attorney-general, lost the governor's race by 261 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast in the November 2nd election. The mandatory machine recount (plus unauthorized hand recount in King County that Secretary of State Sam Reed should have disallowed) narrowed the margin to a microscopic 42 votes, but former GOP state senator Dino Rossi is still the winner, and will be certified as such next week.
Or maybe not. Gregoire and the Dems are going to demand a second, Florida-style cherry-picking hand recount in precincts favorable to them. They have to pay for it, but if they overtake Rossi, the state has to do a full-blown hand recount that could last past Christmas.
Do I even need to point out the Florida 2K parallel?
Of course, there is a difference in scale. The stakes in the Evergreen state do not include civil war, or invertention by a large, menacing neighboring power.
Pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko won the Ukrainian presidential election. Exit polling (by Western observers who had no interest in skewing it) showed Mr. Yushchenko with a 54%-43% lead over Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Yet the government-announced results indicated a Yanukovych upset, 50%-47%.
Do I even need to point out the...oh, never mind. Besides, the difference here is that the election theft has, so far, been successful.
Yushchenko isn't taking it lying down. He took the oath of office (unofficially), and has hundreds of thousands of supporters taking to the streets to rally and protest. Though the outgoing regime of Leonid Kuchma certified the aforementioned official result, now the Ukrainian Supreme Court is saying, as SCs are want to do, "Not so fast." Some are raising the spectre of nationwide strikes, and even civil war.
Now perhaps this next thought is a tad Machiavellian, but this crisis seems to be tailor-made for Vladimir Putin's little-concealed ambition of rebuilding the old Evil Empire. It might be an overstatement to say that Putin is orchestrating Ukraininan events, but they're certainly working in his favor. By ensuring the ascension of a Kremlin-approved puppet regime in Kiev Putin would be effectively restoring the key component of the old Soviet Union. And if a civil war did break out, what better pretext could their be for making said restoration literal by intervening militarily to "restore order" and maybe even on the pretext of preventing exploitation of the crisis by "terrorists"?
That sure seems to be the thinking underlying the surprisingly strong U.S. reaction to the Ukrainian situation.
"Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the United States cannot accept the results of elections in Ukraine, which the opposition says was marred by fraud.
"Powell warned 'there will be consequences' for the United States' relationship with Ukraine as a result of the developments in the former Soviet bloc nation. ...
"Powell said he spoke with outgoing Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma and urged that his government not crack down on demonstrators. He also spoke with other regional leaders, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Powell did not elaborate about his conversation with Lavrov, but said he advocated a solution to the crisis in Ukraine that is 'based on the law, using legal procedures.'"
The message to Putin appears clear: Back off, and let honest diplomacy function.
Of course, Secretary Powell didn't specify what "consequences" to which he was making reference. But Putin is not yet in a position to drop all pretense of rapproachment and cooperation with the United States in favor of a new Cold War.
He does, however, have a notable advantage: his man is, officially, the president-elect of Ukraine. As long as that remains the case - as it probably will - he can wait out the life cycle of Ukrainian outrage and American "objections," and then move on to the next piece on the world chessboard.
Hopefully the Bush Administration's policy is an indication that it knows "the game is [already] afoot."
And hopefully Mr. Yushchenko's efforts to regain what was stolen from him will be as successful as Governor-elect Rossi's to prevent that same fate.
posted by JASmius at 11:13 AM
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