1. Hours after the polls closed the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, accused the interim government of having stolen the elections by widespread vote-rigging. 2. And he must do all this with one eye toward governing and another on critics who feel he is engaged in nothing less than stealing the election. 3. As he did Monday night when he described his brazen attempt to steal the election as a selfless and principled act that places democracy ahead of partisan politics. 4. Australia, a member of a Commonwealth task force monitoring the poll, said it feared violence if voters thought the election had been stolen. 5. At the same time, Republicans are increasingly united and upset over what some have termed Democratic efforts to steal the election from Texas Governor George W. Bush. 6. Both have filed official protests contending that Hun Sen stole the election and both have threatened to boycott the new Parliament. 7. But for now, Democrats cannot count on reminding voters about hanging chads and butterfly ballots to suggest that Bush helped steal the election for his brother. 8. But if he does so by stealing the election, outsiders must be ready to condemn it and reject the result. 9. But he reserves his true loathing for the smug phony who is trying to steal the election. 10. By acquiescing in a runoff, however, he would risk giving Milosevic a chance to steal the election for good. |