Monday, November 10, 2003
Ok, I heard a snippet of something on saturday that gave me pause. first things first is the story of the free elections in the country of Georgia. Apparently there have been protests surrounding the results which point to a victory by sitting president, Edward Shevardnadze. There were reports of widespread ballot stuffing, and voters names not showing up in the books in areas of the country thought to be strong supporters of the opposition party. Now, we're all familliar with this scenario thanks to our own 2000 presidential election. The interesting thing was that this election and our last election have more in common than just controversial results. According to a report by Natalia Antelava to NPR news they also have a U.S. official who was very interested in the results in common-former Secretary of State, James Baker. Now this was interesting since Baker was the same person who sat in Florida for the Republicans in 2000 to oversee the recount. Now he's allegedly reviving that role in a former Soviet republic. Why does the US care about Georgia's elections you may ask? The same reason we were interested in Afghanistan's-no, not the taliban, the Caspian Sea oil pipeline. Apparently, Shevardnadze isn't as sympathetic to the pet projects of the oilmen in washington as the opposition party is, so the Republicans are doing what they do best and stacking the deck.
