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Health care reform legislation cleared an important hurdle on Nov. 21, when the U.S. Senate voted to open full debate on a proposed 10-year, $848 billion overhaul of the industry. Democrats relied on a coalition of centrists and liberals to advance the measure with a filibuster-proof 60-to-39 vote; all the nays came from Republicans. Maintaining the fragile Democratic alliance could mean weeks of legislative haggling and debate: four key moderate Senators oppose the inclusion of a public-insurance option, which some colleagues on the left consider nonnegotiable. A final vote is probably a month or more...
...President Karzai Can Be an Effective Partner Aside from the serious allegations of ballot fraud in the recent vote, the bigger legitimacy problem in Hamid Karzai's re-election was that only 1 in 4 registered voters actually turned out on election day. In the absence of any credible alternative, Washington will use Karzai's dependence on the West for funding and security to pressure him to deliver the sort of governance that can win popular support. But Karzai's government is widely seen as corrupt, ineffective and a tool in the hands of a foreign invader, and Afghans...
...Elections here are high-spending, festive occasions that are good for the economy. But cheating and violence are also par for the course. Commission on Elections director James Jimenez says the debut of electronic voting in 2010 should eliminate two major sources of election crime: trying to fix the outcome by threats of violence again election officials during the vote-counting period, and the practice of dagdag bawas, or padding and shaving votes. "Both should be rendered extinct by an automated vote count in which there will be no opportunity to change the outcome," says Jimenez...
...cynical electorate hopes so. The outrage still brewing over the Nov. 23 election-related massacre on Mindanao echoes the public sentiment felt in during 2007 mid-term polls when three poll watchers were burned alive after armed men torched a school building holding ballot boxes during the manual vote-count...
...corruption surveys. And Aquino's bid for the presidency taps a yearning for the honesty in government demonstrated during his mother's terms. To be sure, the economy peaked under Arroyo's leadership, expanding 7.2 per cent in 2007 before being punctured by the global recession. But allegations of vote-rigging in 2004's polls and corruption controversies over government contracts have overshadowed that achievement...