Comments on: Monitor Lizards

By: rebecca

rebecca — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 07:15:22 +0000

Oops…forgot I commented here. Okay….that explains it a little. I know the OSCE has been ineffectual, but that just makes them even less scary.

I still sort of see it like this:

wrongheaded motives for seeking invitation + ineffectual organization + laws protecting sovereignty = not much of anything

By: Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:02:14 +0000

Rebecca, you’re right about the OSCE monitoring countries that have fair elections—and it’s not really the OSCE that I’m worried about (although the OSCE has monitored but accomplished little in some countries with less than fair elections).

Those that prompted the invitation of the OSCE (a group of Democratic lawmakers) invited them under the premise that our elections were unfair.

So, my “outrage” is not directed so much towards the OSCE, but to those who would seek to use them to subvert the sovereignty of our country (which by law couldn’t really happen).

By: rebecca

rebecca — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 03:47:11 +0000

It is really weird how differently these stories can be reported in the different countries. I was under the impression (from the news reports I get here) that in the past few years, these monitors had been monitering elections in countries that they consider to have fair elections in order to learn from their good examples, hoping to learn what they can about ways to run fair elections in more fragile democracies. I thought that it was under this program that they were invited in–that they weren’t monitoring the election to see if it’s fair, but under the assumption that it IS fair.

I don’t know enough about it to really have an informed opinion, but my dopplar radar is reading “possible tempest in a teapot”.