From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,soc.culture.latin-america,talk.politics.misc
Subject: De-mythification #1: "Free" Elections in 1990
Date: 16 Aug 92 04:45:45 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

Chomsky writes:

    Suppose that the USSR were to follow the U.S. model as the Baltic
    states declare independence, organizing a proxy army to attack
    them from foreign bases, training its terrorist forces to hit
    "soft targets" (health centers, schools, etc.) so that the
    governments cannot provide social services, reducing the economies
    to ruin through embargo and other sanctions, and so on, in the
    familiar routine.

    Suppose further that when elections come, the Kremlin informs the
    population, loud and clear, that they can vote for the CP or
    starve.  Perhaps some unreconstructed Stalinist might call this a
    "free and fair election."  Surely no one else would.

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    Topic 267       De-mythification #1: "Free" Electio     Response  2 of  2 
    demon 
    alt.activism    12:02 pm  Aug 10, 1992 
    (at desire.wright.edu)  (From News system) 

	In article <36651@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, robarr@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (Robert O'Barr) writes: 
	> In article <9208080327.AA03687@poly.math.cornell.edu> harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai) writes: 
	>>On the "free" Nicaraguan elections of 1990: 
	>  
	> A bunch of crap deleted: 
	>  
	> The funny thing, Harel, is how fast the Sandinistas and friends 
	> changed their tune!!!! 
	>  
	> The night before the elections, they were bragging about how fair 
	> and open the elections were going to be and already celebrating 
	> the new legitimacy that the people were going to give them at the 

To make sure they have a good excuse to continue the war against
Nicaragua in the even of a Sandinista victory, the advocates of
Washington's terrorists hedged their bets by going to great lengths to
find procedural flaws with the elections process.

The left pointed out that the '90 electoins process, like the '84
elections process wiped out of Official History by these advocates and
the Free Press, were proceedurally clean and fair and free elections
by regional, or international, or any reasonable standards.

In this technical (though important) sense, the 1990 elections were
certainly free. Since a gun was pointed at the heads of the Nicaraguan
voters, however, they were not "free and fair" in any sense meaningful
to Stalinists and their "convervative" equivalents of the
O'bar variety.

Either Robert O'bar is too stupid to understand the difference between
the two, or else, by ideological necessity, he refuses to allow
himself to undersand this difference, any more than the Free Press /
Washington Party Line allow these ideolgues to see that Washington's
war on Nicaragua, matching the State Department's own defninition of
"Terrorism" (per reports of the major human rights groups), is, for
this, and other equally weighty reasons, terrorism

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A thorough documentation of the 1984 Nicaraguan elections is
obtainable by sending the 1-line email message

GET NICA-84 ELECTION ACTIV-L

to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET or LISTSERV@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU


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                    C   O   N   T   E   N   T   S
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(I)   A Free and Fair Election
(II)  Attempts to Disrupt and Discredit the Election:
                "Encouraging" Boycotts -- Money Talks
(III) Trying to Discredit the Election: "Cruz Control"
(IV)  Attempts to Disrupt the Election: Contra Terrorism
(V)   The Electoral Law: Equal Access and Fairness
(VI)  Two Elections, Two Standards: Nicaragua versus El Salvador

Appendix : Election results:
B i b l i o g r a p h y