A country holds an election. The exit polls state one guy will wins. When the votes are counted, the other guys have won. But this time, outrage!
The US State Department, with absolutely zero sense of irony, is protesting electoral fraud in the Ukraine.
From
Bloomberg:
"These charges need to be thoroughly investigated and cleared up before the international community can have confidence that the results of the Ukrainian elections reflect the will of the people," U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said yesterday...
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said polling didn't meet international standards and U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, monitoring the vote in the capital, Kiev, said the government helped rig the election.
Yushchenko, 50, wants to strengthen the former Soviet state's relations with the European Union, while Yanukovych seeks closer ties to Russia.
"We call on the Ukrainian authorities to curb additional abuse and fraud, to uphold its international commitments to democracy and human rights, and to act to ensure an outcome that reflects the will of the Ukrainian people," Ereli said, according to the transcript. "Should, in the final analysis, this election prove to be fundamentally flawed and tarnished, we would certainly need to review our relations with the Ukraine."
What would happen if another country said that about US? More from Lugar.
"It is now apparent that there has been a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse enacted with the leadership of cooperation of authorities." Lugar said according to the statement.
From the Washington Post Nov 23 editorial:
According to exit polls, the democratic opposition won handily, by 54 to 43 percent in one survey. But yesterday the government revealed its intent to steal the election, announcing that Mr. Yanukovych had a decisive lead in the vote count. Tens of thousands of outraged citizens filled the center of Kiev last night to oppose this authoritarian coup. The United States and other Western governments must do everything possible to support them.
For the Bush administration, the responsibility starts with stating the unvarnished truth about what has happened in an election that some -- including those employed by a large Ukrainian lobbying operation in Washington -- have falsely portrayed as flawed but free.
The United States should do everything possible to help those who seek to reverse the fraud...
President Bush must also end his administration's passivity in the face of massive and malign Russian intervention in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, who has been consolidating an authoritarian regime in Moscow, now seeks to install a client government in Kiev; he channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into Mr. Yanukovych's campaign and personally traveled to Ukraine before each of the election's two rounds. Yesterday Mr. Putin brazenly issued a statement congratulating Mr. Yanukovych, even though Ukraine's election commission had not finished counting the vote or declared an official result. To its credit, the administration summoned the Russian ambassador in Washington to a meeting with a State Department official, Assistant Secretary A. Elizabeth Jones, who expressed concern about Mr. Putin's action.
The next step is for Mr. Bush to clearly and publicly challenge the Russian president on his neo-imperialism -- and to design a U.S. policy to check it.
Do as I say, not as I do.