Some Retorts to U.S. Election Arrogance

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Excerpts from several AP Reports:


In Moscow, where elections are often questioned by outside observers, the
head of Russia's Central Election Commission sniffed: ``Our presidential
elections are conducted in more (of) a democratic fashion and are more
easily understood by voters'' than the U.S. elections that brought no clear
winner two days after the balloting.

Less officially, the Russian Web site www.anekdot.ru joked that Russian
election commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov had flown to the United
States to help straighten out the election mess.

**********

In Rome, home of ``opera buffa'' politics and governments that can change as
fast as the seasons, there was open gloating over the U.S. election
non-result.

``A Day as a Banana Republic,'' the Rome daily newspaper La Repubblica wrote
in a headline about the U.S. vote.

``The first election of the new millennium has brought America into the
realm of the surreal,'' the newspaper said.

Its banner headline ``For a Fistful of Votes'' -- was a play on the title of
Sergio Leone's famous ``spaghetti Western'' film ''A Fistful of Dollars,''
with Clint Eastwood.

``Forty-eight hours after the vote, the most powerful nation on earth is not
able to tell its citizens and the world who the 43rd president of the United
States is,'' said Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper.

**********

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Roque Perez, in New York on Thursday for a
U.N. visit, drew a link between the election's outcome and frequent U.S.
advice to other nations.

``I believe that those in the United States who have always tried to become
judges of elections that take place elsewhere must be receiving a lesson of
modesty and humbleness,'' Perez Roque said.

He added that Cuba would gladly send monitors for a new election if asked by
U.S. officials.