News of the sleaze: televangelists and ethnicity-based elections

You may remember our dear friend Pat "Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Meteor Showers" Robertson, from his recent idiocy related to a certain Haitian pact with Satan (it sort of rhymes!). Now, at the war crimes trial for Charles Taylor -- that's right, the war crimes trial -- it has come out that the good reverend offered to lobby U.S. officials on the venerable Mr. Taylor's behalf. Now which is worse? A national pact with Satan to overthrow systemic slavery (which somehow included paying reparations to the enslaving party), or a personal pact between a real, live, actively-slaughtering-innocent-people war criminal and one of Amer'ca's finest lobbyvangelists?

In other news, the NYT has a decent run-down of the complexities of holding an election in Cote d'Ivoire, wherein one must be a bona fide Ivorian to vote. Of course, determining who is what is clearly a tumultuous and easily corrupted process, quite possible leading to a powder keg.

Hat tip to Chris Blattman for the first piece.

Electoral problems you don't hear about every day

We typically hear lots of stories about problems with running elections in developing countries: lack of technical expertise, lack of transparency mechanisms, lack of cash, erroneous voter rosters, etc. Of course, these problems lead to voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and the like. But sometimes things are worse than that.

First, in Zimbabwe, this story of how opposition supporters are concocting elaborate ruses as pro-Mugabe citizens in order to maintain their own security.

More disturbing is this piece from Cote d'Ivoire, about the increase in child abductions in the run-up to elections there, as candidates seek to perform human sacrifices to enhance their chances of winning.

Just goes to show that sometimes the basic problems just barely scratch the surface.

Peace deal for Cote d'Ivoire?

Color me skeptical, but I'm not quite sure of Cote d'Ivoire's new peace agreement. The main parts of the settlement were agreed in early March, and over the weekend another agreement was signed that would make Guillaume Soro, head of the rebel group Forces Nouvelles (FN), prime minister within five weeks.

While it is satisfying that Ivoiran president Laurent Gbabgo has seemingly fulfilled his promise to unilaterally seek a peace deal, without United Nations or African Union mediation, I'm still not sure of what all has gone on behind the scenes. You see, the negotiator for this current deal was the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore. What does that matter? Compaore has been implicated in financing (or at least conducting transactions for) and equipping rebel movements under Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone and Liberia, respectively. Thus I just don't really trust his peacemaking overtures.

Furthermore, Cote d'Ivoire is two years overdue for presidential elections, which have served to continue Gbabgo's rule. While the UN Security Council basically installed a powerful prime minister last year, Gbabgo has remained and loves to give reasons for why elections can't occur (ok, so yeah, the country is divided into two parts, but surely something could have been worked out). Both FN and government leaders have also violated a series of peace agreements within the past three years.

So now they're setting up shop together to prepare for these long awaited elections? I think something shady is going on here, but I can't quite put my finger on it quite yet. I guess time will tell.