The BBC reports on the snap election to be held in the African nation of Guinea-Bissau.
As is apparently their custom, President João Bernardo Vieira had the head of the military, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, assassinated, and was then assassinated by annoyed members of the military.
The election should be in approximately 60 days.
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…apparently the ‘bloodshed’ part is the biggest difference between the concepts of democracy practiced in Guinea-Bissau and the United States of America…
Insensitive, I know, but the flu bug has made me more cynical than normal, as if that were even possible…
Well, it’s their country, but I think firing people and resigning is somewhat easier that assassinating them. It is probably linked to the “blood diamond” trade, because, since the end of slavery, Guinea-Bissau has been rather short of exports.
I really do understand, Jack. I have never been a “good patient”, and don’t intend to start now.
Reading about CPAC doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that we can exempt bloodshed. Those people are seriously twisted. It’s akin to stepping through a portal into another universe with different rules for reality.
Many, many moons ago, Little Lilac, when I was in high school I got caught up in a statewide “College Mock U.N.” thing. I wasn’t especially thrilled about role-paying a U.N. ambassador, but a girl I was interested in was doing it and so I thught it might bring us closer together.
Every participant was assigned to represent a different nation. We were to study the country assigned and come to an understanding of its domestic and foreign policies and the reasons for them. Then, on the appointed weekend we were to sit in a mock U.S. assembly and try to represent our country’s interests.
The object of my affections drew France. I drew Upper Volta, as it was then known. It was a former French colony and still very pissed off at France. Bad for Upper Volta; good for me since it meant I had a ready excuse to speak frequently with my counter-part from fake France.
Today, Upper Volta is called Burkina Faso. Sad to say, neither my own valiant efforts over the weekend nor those of every real-life government that has governed it since has brought about any improvements in the lot of the people there. Economically, politically, culturally and by just about every other measure there is, Burkina Faso aka Upper Volta is very close to dead bottom in the rank of the world’s nations. # 3 worst, last time I looked.
Despite my apparent failure as a mock ambassador, I did achieve my personal objective that weekend. The “French ambassador” and I got along famously. She was very nice and quite exciting in the sack.
The “countries” that the colonial powers created lack the unity of those that grow on their own, and they are invested with some level of the prejudices that individual nations brought to Africa.
As rich as many of the areas are in Africa, they are not able to advance because of the belief in the looting of resources by the ruling elite. The fact that the elite is now African instead of European doesn’t make the system any less corrupt.