US symbol of democracy

FE Team | Published: June 15, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, June 14: The United States of America is the symbol of democracy. The entire world where representative forms of government are in vogue look towards the United States not only for perfection in their own systems by emulating what America does but also for a clean chit certificate that adds credence to the flawless polls.
The United States is also not immune from the practice of the ruling party packing such sensitive areas like the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission with people chummy to them. This is a practice so widespread in the developing countries.
The row over Attorney General Robert Gonzales being instrumental in the dismissal of the eight federal prosecutors who stubbornly refused to falsely implicate the Democratic party nominees of wrongdoing to favour the ruling Republican party candidates in the last midterm congressional polls is not yet over.
It is now clear that most of the Republicans in the Senate stood by Gonzales subordinating the interest of the nation, a letter writer in the New York Times (NYT) wrote today. "I find it repulsive that this administration stands behind a man who abused his power and lied to Congress and the people", another letter writer said.
Now comes the news of the White House installing a person, a staunch supporter of the Republican Party to the all important position in the Federal Election Commission (FEC) which oversee all national elections. Hans von Spakovsky is alleged to have promoted Republican Party initiatives to crime the ballot power of the minorities and the poor who typically favour Democratic Party, New York Times in an editorial said today. Spakovsky is a recess appointee and would require Senate approval to stay in office. The Democratic Party now has the opportunity to strike a blow against electoral skullduggery with a blunt rejection of Spakovsky's nomination for full six year term. If he wins the nomination, which is highly improbable, he will preside over the next presidential election due in November 2008.
The FEC is too important to be left in the hands of political hacks or to be sacrificed for the sake of a political deal.
In a separate development, a graft case largely emanating from the scandal in German corporate giant Siemens, a Judge in Italy has ordered instituting legal actions against world's four top most banks, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and UBS and 13 of their employees on charges of market manipulation that led to Italian Dairy Company Parmalat to file multibillion dollar bankruptcy.
The case is one of the several under way as the prosecutors try to unravel a series of events that led to the collapse of the Parmalat with a debt of about $19 billion. The banks and their employees are accused of lining up financing for Parmalat through sales of bonds and other financial instruments while knowing that the company had been falsifying its accounts and was in financial difficulty. In some cases, the banks secured funds for Parmalat through bond sales just months before it collapse, the NYT said.