The world mocks as America squirms By Anton La Guardia
THE world's newspapers revelled in the embarrassment of the American political system yesterday, making comparisons with "banana republics", "spaghetti westerns" and the endemic corruption of Indian and Italian politics.
The most caustic mockery came from countries whose democratic failings have been criticised by Washington. For many writers America had received its comeuppance for holding itself up as a model for others to emulate.
Nepotistic dynasties, a dead man elected and scandals over ballot boxes were not just confined to the Third World, they said. A "great victory for democracy, desi-style (India style)", is how the Times of India gleefully described the debacle.
The Indian Express, noting the vicissitudes of the Bush and Gore dynasties, urged readers to stop "moaning about how we alone in the world have been loaded with politicians whose fathers or grandfathers, mothers or grandmothers, uncles or aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts or plain cousins also happen to be politicians".
La Reference Plus, published in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the chaos in Florida only encouraged African dictators. It asked: "If this happens in the United States, how do you want everything to be clean and transparent in the poor African continent?"
Zimbabwe's state-controlled daily, The Herald, said: "Analysts questioned whether the Americans would have accepted a recount in African elections if the ruling party candidate had been beaten, as happened in Florida."
Iraq, which had previously dismissed both the American presidential candidates as equally pro-Israeli and hostile to Iraq, yesterday took the side of George W Bush. It said the delay in announcing the result was a Jewish plot to control America through Al Gore.
Babel, a newspaper controlled by the eldest son of President Saddam Hussein, Uday, said the Jews in America wanted Mr Gore to win in order to give more support to Israel in its confrontation with the Palestinians. Babel said in a front page editorial: "If they (the Jews) succeed in making Gore win the election they will become the real leaders of America."
Italians, whose own politics have been compared to an "opera buffa" after 58 post-war governments, had a field day.
The Rome daily, La Repubblica, ran the mocking headline: "A Day worthy of a Banana Republic". The columnist Bepe Severgnini wrote in Milan's daily Corriere della Sera: "The other night when I went into a restaurant in Santa Monica, there was one president - Clinton.
"When I ordered a pizza there was another one - Gore. When I paid the bill there was a third president - Bush. When I walked out on to Ocean Boulevard there was no president because Bill is now the husband of a senator from New York."
German newspapers were more sanctimonious, with several arguing that America's electoral system was outdated and undermined the legitimacy of the eventual winner. Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the next president would be "a king without a kingdom."
The conservative Die Welt said: "This is not a cheap novel, not a soap opera but a debacle that may reach the level of comedy and will be, in hindsight, an anecdote of a time in which politics had to painfully grasp how unfair it is to voters.
"What a macabre spectacle: a giant empire with 280 million citizens sends voters to the polls to decide who should be the next American president and both candidates remain in a dead heat in a way we have not even seen in elections in Uzbekistan or Switzerland."
In Moscow, an elections official said the disarray in America demonstrated the superiority of the Russian system. Alexander Veshnyakov, chairman of the Russian Central Election Committee, told the business daily Kommersant: "I think we should never adopt their electoral college system . . . Russian elections are more democratic and easier to grasp for the voters."
Cuba's President Fidel Castro did not pass up the opportunity to lampoon America. State television showed him walking along the beach in his olive green uniform and boots. He ran into an unidentified American tourist and told him: "Like the majority of Americans, you have gone to the beach."
The Lebanese daily, Al-Safir, had to apologise to its readers for incorrectly reporting that Mr Gore had won, but used the occasion to needle Arab dictators who stage overwhelming election victories for themselves.
The paper's owner and editor Talal Salman wrote: "We offer our apologies to our readers for deciding on something that was still under way. Perhaps it is because of our deep-rooted experience of Arab democracy, particularly in Lebanon, where results are given before the poll, which is then held only to confirm the correctness of the declaration."