[EM] What if... (fwd)

[David Catchpole]

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History never repeats itself. It stutters.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 07:53:12 +1000
From: Jamie Thomas Alcock <jta at maths.uq.edu.au>
To: chat at maths.uq.edu.au
Subject: What if...

[pain]


What if this were to happen in the third world

1.    Imagine that you read about the elections in some third world
country where  the self-declared winner is the son of a former president
who had also been head of the country's secret police (CIA)

2.    Imagine that the self-proclaimed winner had lost the popular vote,
but won thanks to vestiges of the country's pre-democratic past.

3.    Imagine that the self-proclaimed victory was result of a handful
of votes won in the province governed by the brother of the
self-proclaimed winner.

4.    Imagine that the ballots in a district favorable to the rival of
the self-proclaimed victor were so poorly designed that thousands of
voters mistakenly voted  for someone who was their sworn enemy.

 5.    Imagine that the members of the racial group most oppressed in
the country voted in numbers without precedent and that they are opposed
almost unanimously to the self-proclaimed winner.

 6.    Imagine that hundreds of members of this racial group had
difficulties voting due to police interference in the province governed
by the brother of the self proclaimed victor.

 7.    Imagine, that of the 6 million people who voted in this province,
the difference between the self-proclaimed victor and his rival is less
than 500 votes. This is less than the margin of error in machine counted
ballots.

 8.    Imagine that the self-proclaimed victor and his political  party
oppose an inspection and hand count of the ballots in the province.

9.    Imagine that the self-proclaimed victor is also governor in a
province with the worst human rights record of any other province in the
country, and leads them all in the number of executions.

10.    Imagine that one of the major campaign promises of the
self-proclaimed winner is to designate other human rights violators to
lifetime posts on the Supreme Court of the nation.


Interesting What If's!
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