So Ukraine is set to have another “election”. Is there any question as to the outcome? By keeping the same candidates, the election seems to have been given to Yushchenko by virtue of sympathy vote and that the modern world condemned the win by Yanukovych.
Now I realize that the vote was apparently rigged but to keep the same candidates for the re-run, the world might as well have said that we recognize Yushchenko as president and forget the elections.
Why would you allow other candidates to stand, who had a chance to nominate before, but didn’t? The only case where I think a new candidate should be allowed is if one of the candidates dies. Then people who would not have wanted to run against the dead candidate (perhaps because they were in the same political party) should have a chance to nominate. But this is just a second ballot, where the first ballot was flawed.
This is a thread for Great Debates, not General Questions.
I don’t know how much the world opinion is going to matter. Look at the US: worldwide anti-Bush sentiment seems to have helped Bush, not hurt him. If Ukranians react the same way, it might cancel out the sympathy Yushchenko gets due to the attempt to kill him.
Both candidates should have been replaced because the situation appears to skewed by the actions of the first ballot. They can vote for a guy who won’t die or the guy who thought he needed some extra help at the ballot box.
How is this supposed to be a fair election under these circumstances?
I thought this would be GQ worthy because the supreme court of Ukraine ruled against replacing the candidates, as proposed by Yanukovych. What reasons were given?
Is it really fair to consider the candidates invalid because one candidate might have sympathy in their advantage? At some point you need to let the electorate make their own decisions. I feel that one would need to show something like voter intimidation or fraud – something that gets in the way of having the electorate making a free decision – before declaring candidates invalid.
Otherwise it seems a bit silly. One wouldn’t claim “Oh, candidate X has more sound policies. That gives them an advantage, so they should be considered invalid.”
Obviously, that is a ridiculous example. But what is the defining difference between that and the sympathy issue? Surely the sympathy issue does not prevent any individual voter from making their own free-from-intimidation decision? What would be the criteria for deciding what was a fair advantage and what wasn’t?
According to this fellow, quite a few rural Ukrainians genuinely like Yanukovych, with reason. He also posits that Yushchenko’s rotten health may be the result of his own awful diet, which I seriously doubted until I read his article… still not convinced of the latter point, but I’m open to it.
As for what might or might not be fair in the election, we might refer to the OSCE mission in Kiev, although being composed of western and pro-western elements I should that organization would love to roll the dice again and oust Yanukovych.
You’re asking if something is fair. There is no factual answer.
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator