Comments on: Washington Post slams DI’s efforts in Pakistan

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:04:28 +0000

Agreed. I endorsed Jack’s comment on washingtonpost.com (jucci, right?) and would like to encourage others to do the same.

Still, I’m glad that there are articles like this. It’s good to call attention to the way that this was handled because, as DI agrees, this is not a good way to do election monitoring. That being said, I would have appreciated a little more emphasis on IRI backing out at the last second and creating this godawful mess instead of going after DI.

By: andrew g. mandelbaum

andrew g. mandelbaum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:10:03 +0000

I don’t think that Wright’s article is all that bad, even if it does belittle DI, which we all know is a very capable and dedicated organization. We should be so lucky to have private firms that are in this for the democracy as opposed to the dollar.

That said, Wright’s problem extends from the point of view from which she confronts this story. If you were at State and your election observers peaced out at the last minute, what would you do? The question becomes: is having an election team better than having no election team?

The answer turned out to be ‘yes,’ and DI got a great team together. I will bet that DI’s final report will reflect the constraints that were faced, but will ultimately conclude that the will of the people was reflected in the vote. Would this have occurred if election monitors – regardless of their preparation – did not show up? I’m glad we don’t know the answer to this question.

By: Anand

Anand — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:27:26 +0000

I also object to the implication in the article that since DI is employed by the US government, that it is somehow forced to endorse the elections as free and fair. For one, if DI were unable to provide objective assessments of US government activity, then its position as a primarily technical, evaluation-based organization (which evaluates NDI and IRI programs) within the democracy bureaucracy would have been called into question long ago. Secondly, by conflating the Bush administration’s strategic interests with its interests in promoting democracy through measures like election monitoring, Wright echoes the rhetoric of people like Putin: American organizations cannot be fully trusted to assess foreign election fairness because of the neo-imperialist aspirations of the US government. While excursion like the iraq war have done the administration no favors in improving this image, implying that DI is a lapdog to such agendas is irresponsible.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:11:48 +0000

The claim that ‘real’ election monitors could have done something about this ‘pivotal’ election is naive. The other claim, that DI are “electoral tourists,” was baseless and insulting.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:51:38 +0000

I saw that story as well, and thought it cast DI in an unfair light. Ms. Wright also failed to mention that Eric Bjornlund actually wrote the book on election monitoring (that would be Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy). The story also does not explain what sort of report DI is expected to issue – presumably quite limited – or how the European delegation’s assessment will figure in analyses of the outcome.