Thursday, October 30, 2008

Voter Fraud in Africa

I decided to look up voter fraud in Africa because of the upcoming elections here in the U.S.. I found an interesting article from the New York Times about how opposition in Ethiopia stopped inquiries into voter fraud there. After reading the article it sounds like there was a lot of violence both on the part of the political parties involved and the police that were trying to investigate the actions of the political parties.

I found another article about voter fraud in Zambia from the Fairfax Digital and the Sydney Morning Herald. This article mentions the opinions of voters in Zambia and tells about their suspicions that the police are involved in rigging the elections. The article also talks about the fears that people in political parties have about what will happen when the polls close, fearing that there will be violence. It alsos quotes one of the men running for office and he says that he will not accept a loss if he suspects vote fraud.

A final article that I found is about the elections in Zimbabwe from CNN. It has pitures of the current president (on the left) who has led the country for nearly three decades and those running against him: his former finance minister, Simba Makoni (second image on left); and Morgan Tsvangirai (bottom right)of the Movement for Democratic Change. After explaining Mugabe's position in Zimbabwe from the time that it was called Rhodesia, the article then continues to talk about how Mugabe plans to rig the election so that he can stay in power until he dies.
*If you want to see Mugabe on the campaign trail via CNN, check out the video.

1 comment:

Peter Larr said...

I remember that election happening, everything was drawn out because you are right the loser claims fraud.