Watching the American political scene from abroad is very interesting. We had the opportunity to watch the first debate last week and hope to see the Palin/Biden this week. However, sometimes I think we could just look up the most recent 60 Minutes interviews and see exactly the same thing that was said in the debates. They certainly stay on message, don't they?
Anyway, here in Ecuador we also saw an exciting political week. Sunday the entire country voted on a new constitution. It was just modified in 1998 and now they were seeking the voters' approval to modify it once again. Every adult citizen in the country is required to vote. They enforce this somehow through the tax structure, I think, so you must have certification that you voted or you are penalized. I wonder how different things might be in the U.S. if everyone was required to vote. The other oddity was that from Friday until the close of polls on Sunday, all alcohol was forbidden to be sold. I heard that if a citizen shows up drunk to the polls they can be imprisoned; and if an establishment gets caught selling alcohol during this dry period, they can lose their business permanently. They sure want people to make a clear headed decision. Even so, the decision must be a very difficult one because there were many changes to the 476 articles of the constitution. A person may agree with some of the changes (e.g. opening up possibilities for gay marriage and abortion) but disagree with others (ceding more of the power to the Executive branch or President and reducing Statewide power), but they have to vote "Si" or "No" to all of the proposed changes.
As you can see from the pictures, we had the opportunity to hear the President, Rafeal Correa,(he's the guy in the white shirt walking to the stage in the picture) speak in the Colosseum near our apartment about two weeks ago. It was like a rock concert, well there was a rock concert both before and after his speech. He is a young (well, our age) President with Socialist leanings, just like our own President. We couldn't understand a word he said (and wouldn't have even if he spoke in English because the acoustics were pretty bad). Anyway, we all enjoyed the dropping balloons and the fog machine. The vote passed easily on Sunday and now we will see the results of the changes, well maybe not by the time we leave.
We started work this week. So far so good, but this will have to be another post.
Chao for now.
1 comment:
Interesting stuff.
I'm not a fan of requiring people to vote. I believe we are better off because some people stay home on election day.
There are some pretty dumb people in the US.
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