When I commenced grad school at GW, new-to-DC-me spent a lot of time in “J street”, a food court so egregiously expensive and depressingly mediocre, I have NEVER complained about airport food since. One night, while gagging down waffle fries from Chik-fil-a, I was yanked away from my deep-fried poo by a popular Bangladeshi kid whom Sajit probably remembers. 😀
“Come on, come with me, RIGHT now!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, but I need your help!”
Intrigued, I closed my textbooks and followed him, chucking Chik-fil-ewww on the way. Within minutes I was somewhere I had never been, looking at super hot boys in soccer togs.
“What is this?”
“IM soccer. You’re on our team.”
I chortled, but he was serious. Since he was heading a co-ed team, he needed a certain number of women on the floor and they were one short. Never mind that at that point in my life, I was more of a futbol spectator than a participant, I was suddenly a player. They told me to just stand there, so that they wouldn’t have to forfeit. I stayed in my corner while the footie fiends whom I had befriended kept the ball far away from me. Their efforts were wasted; the other team destroyed them.
I’ll say this much for my friend– at least he used a “live” woman to achieve his ends.
:+:From the BBC:
Police in Pakistan have launched an inquiry into complaints that two dead women were elected in last month’s local elections.[link]
The women were elected in two separate constituencies of Upper Dir district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), reports say.[link]
In an attempt to increase the number of women elected, a quota was established; in an attempt to prove just how much they love and respect females, shady people drafted a woman who had passed away over a decade ago to run for office with another woman who has been dead for three years. I think election officials are mulling a do-over.
Supporters of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claimed victory in the local elections, in which individual political parties did not take part.[link]
But opposition parties, and groups such as Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, said the elections were marred by extensive vote-rigging.[link]
That’s not all they were marred by…for shame. When you consider more background information on the area of Pakistan where it all went down, it’s actually not surprising that they acted so disrespectfully (Thanks, Dhaavak):
Upper Dir is a deeply conservative region where tribal elders backed by radical Islamist clerics in July banned women from standing in the election or casting votes. [link]
But hundreds of women defied the ban after the central government said it was unconstitutional and vowed to support women taking part in the election.[link]
Good for them. If only the media had similar guts:
Newspapers did not speculate on the reason why two dead women may have been nominated or suggest it was a case of mistaken identity.[link]
Indians please note. You can do the same in the constituencies reserved for women.
that’s not funny.
i have a penchant for sarcasm, but i’m going to have to go with ANNA, NOT FUNNY
Sorry about that but the first year they had reservation for women in the Bangalore Local Body elections, I happened to live in a reserved constituency. All the candidates were mothers and wives of local goons. They even came door to door asking for vote minus the candidate. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the candidtates were fake.
Ok Indians. Is Rabri a sweet or an ex-CM?
Sloganmurgan — Not a problem limited to South Asians. Look up “Ma Ferguson”, first woman governor of Texas, elected after her husband, Governor “Pa Ferguson” was impeached.
Me, I like Rabri Devi. But I like Laloo better.
another satirical reference … gogol‘s dead souls . – btw, has the webadmin thought of adding a widget above the comments box to automatically link highlighted text to a wiki entry – can any SM reader volunteer on how to make this happen?-
Women candidates being wives and daughters of local bigwigs: that’s how it always begins, but over time the “logic” of measures such as thes ebegins to assert itself. In the early Indian elections, there were widespread reports of peasants voting the way former and current landlords told them to; nowadays one still hears such reports, but to a much reduced extent (reflected in the splintering or weakening of “broad based”/”national” parties in favor of smaller grouoings more targeted to particular constituencies)…
So Umair, there’s hope for Bihar 🙂
Actually, there IS hope for Bihar. Or more accurately, the Bihar of today offers more potential for optimism than the Bihar of 1951…that’s the modest claim I am making, that we miss the point if we dismiss measures simply based on what has happened in the most recent election (by that yardstick, one might have concluded democracy in the USA was a failure just from the famed “dead men voting” elections in Chicago and other cities)…
Democracy in India and other countries in south asia is a joke. The illiterate and poor don’t care and vote along the caste lines or on some short term things like saris. No wonder crooks like laloo prasad yadav have a field day. (for those fans of laloo, he says things like flooding is good because people can catch fish and bihar don’t need roads and highways because people there don’t have cars). My chinese friends cite the pathetic state of india as a reason for not going prematurely democratic. The Chinese clearly understand that economic freedom should come first since freedom from poverty is the most important freedom. We should follow the chinese example and have a benevolent dictatorship like the brilliant Deng of China.
the chinese example perhaps is not the best one for india to emulate, given the growing “inequality of opportunity” and the disparity in economic freedom in that country.
I find it curious that those typically in favor of a benevolent dictatorship “for the sake of the poor” are not from the masses sought to be protected. To put it another way, it is precisely the poor who feel themselves empowered by democracy to a certain extent that they would rather not do without it– those in economically privileged positions are (at least in India) far more likely to espouse such views.
Anyway, who is to decide whether a dictatorship is benevolent or not; if you decide later on that it isn’t, how is one to get rid of it? Taking China’s example, even if Deng is accepted as a benevolent dictator, it’s not like there was any recourse when the not-so-benevolent dictatorship implemented the Cultural revolution…
“The illiterate and poor don’t care and vote along the caste lines or on some short term things like saris”
Is that so? How come Indira Gandhi was voted out of power, then Janata Party voted out of power, and many years later BJP.
In all cases, the poor (economically disadvantaged) were the swing voters. India and South Africa have higher voter turnout than US of A.
Anywhere, democracy is not perfect, yet the best the system.
etc. troll alert.
rl writes: >>Democracy in India and other countries in south asia is a joke.
Indian democracy works. I agree about other countries in South Asia – except SL.
M. Nam
rl writes: >>Democracy in India and other countries in south asia is a joke.
Indian democracy works. I agree about other countries in South Asia – except SL.
M. Nam