The largest Sunni party in Iraq is very careful to state that is withdrawing from the election, not boycotting it. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean either. With barely a month left, Americans are still talking about tinkering with the system so that the Sunnis won’t feel left out. They might have seats set aside in the “transitional assembly” (which in practice would give vastly disproportionate influence to the few Sunni voters who were both willing and able to vote, like they were Vermont or something), or they might be given a share of seats in the administration, in which case why bother having an election at all? Either way, January 30 is likely to be run on the basis of an election law written on the back of an envelope the night before, which doesn’t inspire that much confidence, even if it’s a really nice envelope.
Yanukovich is refusing to accept that he lost the Ukrainian election, claiming there were at least 5,000 irregularities, not counting the ones he was responsible for. He’d be a bit more credible if he hadn’t announced before the first vote was cast that he wouldn’t accept any results which didn’t show him winning. He clearly thinks he can do the “people power” thing that Yushchenko did, but he lacks a color. Orange did so well for Yushchenko, but he doesn’t even seem to have thought about his color.
Maybe he can hire Tom Ridge; he’s got a lot of free time now.
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