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Published Thursday, April 26, 2007
The race for power, be it democratic or totalitarian, is a human cycle set on repeat. The democratic version assumes that the race is conducted fairly and freely, and ends with an accepted outcome. As a crop of elections this week showed, though, the results can be much stickier. Thuggery and corruption marred the credibility of Nigeria's presidential vote, while in France candidates entered the final stages of a tight contest that's as much about gender politics as policy platforms. To the east, Russia laid to rest its first freely elected president amid questions about how much good he'd actually accomplished. Even citizens from diminutive Bhutan got a primer in the art of ballot dropping, practicing for their first election next year by staging a mock vote — albeit for their favorite colored dragon instead of a political candidate.
But politics aren't everything. Money helps, too. In the United States, two reports about who's earning and who's not hinted at another kind of contest altogether. Setting aside Rousseau for a moment, a simian cycle seems to be successful at last, as the population of the endangered mountain gorilla rebounds from poaching and encroachment.
Nigeria's presidential election, expected to peacefully transfer power from one government to another for the first time in the country's history, was marred by hundreds of deaths, shoddy polling conditions, and stories of voter intimidation. At the end of Saturday's voting, the ruling party's candidate, Umaru Yar'Adua, claimed a blowout victory with 72% of the vote, but observers for the EU and Nigeria's Transition Monitoring Group called the election process a sham.
The African press voiced outrage over the proceedings, as the opposition called for a new vote. Considerable uncertainty remains about Nigeria's immediate future; some fear that if the current election results hold, the new administration will have trouble governing.
