A drug dominated election for election junies

It's hard for election junkies not to have withdrawal symptoms after that lengthy United States campaign so just a little something to be going on with. The people of the tiny west African nation of Guinea Bissau (population 1.7 million) go to the polls on Sunday to elect a Parliament after a campaign dominated by talk of drug trafficking.
Guinea Bissau, one of the world's poorest nations, was described in a recent Agence France Press report as an important transit point for cocaine coming from Latin America en route to the lucrative European markets. Bissau's biggest opposition party the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cap Verde (PAIGC) has accused political rivals of receiving campaign money from drug lords. "Only blind people cannot see that certain parties are financed with drug money," PAIC leader Carlos Gomes Junior told a October 29 rally.
The leader of the newly formed Republican Party for Independence and Development (PRID), former prime minister Aristide Gomes, a close ally of president Joao Bernardo Viera, boasted that it was during his tenure that the only seizure of cocaine was made in Guinea Bissau.
In September 2006 , 647 kilos of cocaine were seized by the police but the drugs disappeared while being transferred to the public treasury for security reasons.
A little bit of that should help someone have a real Don's Party.
Unfortunately for we election addicts the next poll on the list, that for president of the Ivory Coast scheduled for 30 November, has been postponed indefinitely because of delays in voter registrations and security concerns. We will now have to wait for Ghana on 7 December when drug trafficking will again be a major issue. Kwesi Aning, head of research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre recently said he was amazed at the amount of money being splashed around in Ghana ahead of presidential elections.
It is not known if the NSW Branch of the Labor Party has sent observers to West Africa to observe the latest election fund raising techniques.


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