I have commented in the past weeks frequently on the alleged Iranian presidential election fraud and my growing anger about the ruthless response of the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had maneuvered himself in a hopeless situation when prematurely and most probably unjustified supporting his hardliner populist ‘principlist’ president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the June 12 election.
Although I am still pretty convinced that rigged election results cannot be proved from outside the country by statistical means or by pointing at irrational results from certain ethnical groups; and that their correctness can definitely not be confirmed by telephone polls from a neighboring country three weeks before election day, the brutal crackdown and rounding up of the regime after the mass demonstrations with dozens if not hundreds of casualties, torture and show trials have severely undermined the willingness of most western commentators to let the Iranians settle their domestic disputes in their own rights.
The present power struggle seems now to take place without contribution of ‘the people’. Whether Rafsanjani, Khamenei (or his son Mojtaba), Karroubi or Mousavi finally prevails, who cares? There has probably never been such an analysis bywestern commentators of a third world’s country election than that in Iran 2 months ago.
Tomorrow’s Afghan election is already a charade, or political theater, as Eric Margolis put it in Information Clearing House. Who will win? The candidate chosen by the US and its NATO allies: corrupt and incompetent Hamid Karzai and his warlords, war criminals Mohammed Fahim and notorious Rashid Dostam.
“[All] parties are banned; only individuals are allowed to run. This is a favorite tactic of non-democratic regimes, particularly the US-backed dictatorships of the Arab world.”
As the BBC informs us, thousands of voting cards have been offered for sale and thousands of dollars have been offered in bribes to buy votes. There will be no free and fair election for the war-torn country. We will see whether Karzai will make it in the first round.
“But as international forces fight and die to allow this election to go ahead, serious questions are raised about the credibility of the process and the balance between sacrifice and reward.”
Freelance 
“Afghanistan’s “emerging democracy” has instead exposed astonishing corruption, fraud and violence on the part of the U.S.-backed government.” and folks actually still manufacture outrage over this. The US is rapidly turning into another Afghanistan or Iran, where elections are stolen, voter fraud is rampant, and the populace is either blind, uncaring or protest are suppressed. I think we should concentrate on repairing our own political process first, then maybe we would have a moral leg to stand on when demanding that other countries clean up their election process.
it does seem to be a mess over there (with respect to representative democracy). My concern is that the Obama Administration will, in effect, enable the Afghan electoral fraud by accepting a political deal in Afghanistan in place of a run-off.