FOREIGN PRESS QUESTIONS U.S. ELECTION
>>Please note that this is not a statement of opinion, but a news item
>>that communicates the facts as they are being reported abroad.
As unofficial recounts of the disputed Florida election make it more and
more clear that Al Gore won the state, the foreign press is beginning to
question the legitimacy of the new administration. Florida sunshine laws
mean that the press has free access to the disputed ballots, so a full
and complete recount will be done by any number of different news
organizations.
The legitimacy of the recounts will be questioned, but as Florida law
mandates a hand recount in close races, and such a recount was prevented
by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, foreign opinion is
already shifting in the direction that the new administration is not
legitimately constituted.
This is going to damage the ability of the United States to project its
influence abroad, especially at a time when many American positions,
such as continuing the isolation of Cuba and Iraq and refusing to join
world environmental efforts are perceived as outdated and unproductive.
At the present time, the new administration is only being questioned in
the left-of-center press, but as more and more far-right appointments
are proposed, the more moderate press is likely to join the outcry.
Foreign governments will react to an administration that is perceived to
have acquired power by questionable means in ways that will be hard to
predict, as such an issue has never before arisen in the context of the
American presidency. However, there is a recent precedent among world
governments of isolating illegitimate regimes as far as possible, a
precedent that has developed, ironically, out of American post-cold war
policy toward such regimes.
Domestically, the new administration is likely to be the weakest in
history, especially, as now seems the case, that a man voted for as a
moderate Republican is going to appoint some of the farthest-right
figures in American politics to some of the most powerful positions in
government, and this without even a clear mandate to govern as a moderate.
Christy Todd Whitman, recently appointed by Mr. Bush as EPA
administrator, has proposed that Florida's sunshine law be amended and
that the ballots be impounded for a period of ten years to prevent any
unofficial recounts.
Such an action would probably end any claim that the new administration
has to legitimacy elsewhere in the world, and would create a
constitutional crisis of an unknown kind in the U.S.
For an example of foreign press reporting on this subject, go here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/0,2763,415400,00.html
