Contempt for Democracy and People

According to the The Economist Magazine of January 2008, the mayhem that killed hundreds of people following Kenya's election on December 27th, 2007, completes a depressing cycle of democratic abuses in Africa's biggest countries. The magazine mentioned that Nigeria held its own mockery of an election last April. Scores were killed and observers pronounced it the most fraudulent poll they had ever witnessed. Congo held a more or less peaceful election in October 2006, but since then, the main opposition leader has been hounded into exile. And the year before that, flawed elections in Ethiopia resulted in the deaths of 199 protesters.The Economist concluded, "Needless to say, the incumbents all won". All of the above brings me to the point I have been trying to make that the promoters of democracy around the world turn a blind eye when the culprits of fraud are collaborators in the exploitation of natural resources and people on the African continent. It just blows my mind that the interest is not there in the United Nations, the European Union, the United States of America and last but not least, the African Union to devise a fool proof way of conducting elections. The peoples voices must not be forever silenced. The alternative to all this nonsense is hard to envisage.