Vote Rigging and India.

My greatest fear came to be. The USA went on to shoot the poor Somali Pirates to rescue their beloved Captain. The French killed them too. All this happened over Easter, a time we should all have been "celebrating" the Death of Christ! Death begets Death! The Pirates have vowed to "kill" any captured US or French seamen. I told you so. It will get worse, not better.

So I will take you all to India this week. The World`s Oldest Democracy is going to the polls. And guess how many elligible voters are there? Yep, a cool 700 million. SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION VOTERS! God! Just imagine what African incumbent leaders who like to rig their way through would have done. They would have declared 100% victory, all 700 million voters claimed to have voted for them.

Mobutu was once asked about a 100% vote he had just amassed in poor Congo, and he replied that some people wanted to vote for him 110%, some 120% and so on, if the electoral laws had permitted them. The man was chased out of Congo like a dog barely 18 months later.

There is a cruel joke I heard from a Zimbabwean friend. The joke goes like this: One day Robert Mugabe, his wife and 3 kids decided to play a game of voting. To be fair he called in his Registrar General, who was then the Chief Elections Officer, to administer the election and count the votes. After casting the votes in a simple hat, and the RG went into the next room to count, he came back a few minutes later and announced that Mugabe had won a landslide with a total of 7 votes. There were 5 voters in the room!

We should look, listen and learn from India.