ELECTION MANIA

And now I’m back thrust into the mix of politics around the world. Mugabe said (according to a friend as I didn’t hear him say this) that if he lost he would not concede anything. He also said what happened in Kenya won’t happen in Zim if he does win.

Well, the government is not releasing the results of every region even though the election was Saturday. Some observers say it was fair. But it appears that Mugabe did not win the required 50% so we’ll see. In my opinion, if he will win it will be do a run-off. I think his voting base plus his rigged voting base isn’t enough to reach the 50%. But we’ll see. South African is trying to put pressure on the UK to step in that this delay of results release is ridiculous.

I usually only focus on Africa because I’m operating under the assumption that you don’t get much African news, at least not as much as we get, but a friend brought to my attention the situation in Taiwan. It happened right before I was notified by the Economist of the event. Taiwan voted and elected its first nationalist president (as opposed to a democratic progressive president) who supports stronger ties to China. I think this is mostly due to the past 8 years of bad rule by Chen. Ma Ying-jeou (new president) will be replacing Chen Shui-ban (who made it hard for Hsieu the succeeding democratic progressive party candidate, similar to Bush making it hard for McCain to win the presidency). Ma wants to increase trade in general and with China, open up transportation routes between Chin and Taiwan, increase the service sector in tourism, health, and finance. He wants to reopen dialogue with China and get a new peace treaty between the two, one of “mutual non-denial” as he calls it. Regardless of which party is in power, I think it’s good to move in the direction of recognition and peaceful relations with China. We’ll see how he does.

In other African news, the head of Botswana stepped down (after 20 years) for a new successor. It's one of the top 3 least populated countries (I believe this is measured by population density).