(or "take that Iraq! We're more screwed up then you are!")
Please below, a little snippet of a NY Times article originally posted on The Salon.
Congo, With Iraq in Mind, Faces Voting and Threats
BY MARC LACEY
Published: March 26, 2006
"Compared to the Congo, Iraq's elections were a walk in the park," said Ross Mountain, the United Nations official who helped run Iraq's elections and is now organizing a similar operation in Congo, a country more than five times as large, more than twice as populous — with scores more tribes and languages — and relatively few usable roads.
Mr. Mountain rattles off the many nightmarish difficulties he faces: getting ballots to remote villages, protecting voters from armed men who still prey on them and encouraging onetime warring parties to compete and, if the results do not go their way, to accept defeat.
The day of reckoning is June 18 — unless, that is, the date to elect a president and members of Parliament is postponed a third time.
Source:www.nytimes.com
5 comments:
Thanks for the redirect, Lady D!
Did you see that? I mean Ross Mountain is a veteran of this stuff, but (wo)man! Talk about a blow to the Congolese self-esteem, no? I mean it's more than likely true, it's very hard, but that was still a shot to the heart.
Gee, that's definitely not a very flattering comparison for Congo. Still, isn't Congo a lot less violent?
-Ammo
Amen, 007. We've got no roads, no history of elections, no history of government and a largely illiterate rural population spread across a jungle.
Iraq? Total cakewalk.
See you tonight, kiddo.
How many times do I have to say that there is no jungle in Africa?
;)
The comparison to Iraq is silly AND one has to question what real impact the U.N. had in organizing elections in Iraq. The U.N. did have a helluva a lot of help from the U.S., the U.K., and a handful of other nations including the Iraqis themselves. Then there was the Syria and Iran factors at work as well.
It is a bit disturbing that certain political party members in the DRC are threatening violence before or after the elections, but I think that can be held in check at least in the major population centers. I thought the article was well written and provided a good overview of the political situation in the DRC before the upcoming elections in June.
Iraq, that's a whole 'nother can of worms (and snakes).
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