There has been no shortage of elections during the year just past, ranging from the more or less meaningless to the momentous. In terms of global significance, it would be hard to deny first place to the process whereby George W. Bush found himself assured of a second term in the White House, followed by the Spanish poll that unexpectedly terminated the tenure of Jose Maria Aznar.
The end of the Bharatiya Janata Party's days at the helm in New Delhi was also a consequential event, albeit chiefly in the domestic and regional contexts. But in terms of sensationalism, all these contests are easily eclipsed by recent events in Ukraine.
The fact that large numbers of Ukrainians evidently refused to accept the official result for the second round of the presidential election was interesting enough, even though it offered a classic example of a situation to which there is more than meets the eye. For instance, mobilizations outside the former Soviet republic's capital, Kiev, received little coverage internationally, because they did not fit the West's preferred narrative of a popular revolt.
The degree of orchestration involved in the globally televised gatherings in Kiev is difficult to determine, but there can be little question that western diplomatic missions and visitors were deeply involved in opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, while the government and neighbouring Russia favoured Viktor Yanukovich. However, while the international media picked up readily on instances where Yanukovich was credited with a ridiculous proportion of the vote amid unrealistic turnouts, it tended to overlook similar results for Yushchenko in other parts of the country. Yushchenko eventually won the right to a repoll, which is fairly remarkable.
But none of the above accounts for Ukraine's pre-eminence as a headline-grabber. That extra zing was provided by the dramatic change in Yushchenko's appearance shortly after he attended a dinner hosted by the chief of his nation's secret police. It was literally a Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde metamorphosis, with the handsome and otherwise healthy 50-year-old suddenly developing pockmarks, scars and lesions. The Viennese doctors he consulted were initially perplexed by his predicament. It eventually turned out that the level of dioxin in his body was 1000 times higher than normal. It is now suspected that Russia - which, like the US, keeps stocks of chemical and biological weapons - may have collaborated in poisoning the candidate, although this thesis hasn't thus far been substantiated by any firm evidence.
Did the perpetrators seek disfigurement, or death? Either way, Yushchenko - whose features are expected to revert to their original state after a year or two - may qualify as the only presidential candidate to ever have faced such an ordeal. Although attempts to hobble or even eliminate political rivals are hardly unknown, seldom do they yield such bizarre results. John Kerry should count himself lucky that all he faced was innuendoes and smears.
Did they cost him the election? It's hard to say to what extent the doubts cast on Kerry's patriotism as a soldier and subsequently as an antiwar activist may have affected voter opinion. However, the stress on his military record was largely Kerry's own fault: it was intended to offer a contrast with Bush's dereliction of duty during the same period. Combined with his dismal failure to adopt a coherent position on the gratuitous invasion of Iraq, and a perception of him among a sizeable segment of Americans as too haughty and aloof, it may well have contributed towards limiting popular enthusiasm for the challenger.
There is also evidence of efforts to restrict voter turnout in pro-Democrat precincts, particularly in crucial swing states such as Ohio. But presidential adviser Karl Rove's masterstroke was to mobilize the evangelical vote on behalf of his born-again boss. As a bonus attraction for fundamentalists, several states offered a simultaneous referendum on gay marriage.
On the other side of a deepening divide, liberal activists too didn't leave many stones unturned in their determined quest to limit Bush to a single-term presidency. The Internet was widely utilized to mobilize support. One of the most interesting components of the anti-Bush campaign was filmmaker Michael Moore's superb polemical documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme d' Or at Cannes and did remarkably well at the box office stateside despite initial distribution problems.
In the end, Rove's strategy triumphed. However, although Bush received more votes than any previous presidential candidate, his 51-48 victory against Kerry doesn't exactly add up to a huge mandate - particularly in a country where endorsement by about 30 per cent of eligible voters translates into a landslide.
Nearly half the Americans who voted chose not to endorse Bush - and their presumed post-electoral depression was replicated across the globe on a much larger scale. It was reported that even Britain's Tony Blair was secretly praying for a Kerry victory, which would have relieved him of the debilitating burden of being perceived as George W.'s poodle.
The post-election exodus from the upper echelons of the Bush administration was only partially surprising, given that the likes of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage had already hinted that they wouldn't serve for more than four years. While Condoleezza Rice is to take Powell's place, the replacement for rigidly fundamentalist attorney-general John Ashcroft is a presidential counsel who has expressed disrespect for the Geneva Conventions, and homeland security chief Tom Ridge's supposed successor has fallen by the wayside on account of having hired an illegal immigrant as a servant. More ominously, Donald Rumsfeld remains defence secretary - possibly at his buddy Dick Cheney's insistence - despite an appalling record.
Less than a month before the US debacle, Australia's devotedly pro-Bush government was returned to power with an increased majority, despite widespread community unease over its token supporting role in the aggression against Iraq. This, too, could be put down to the opposition's incompetence and the incumbent regime's expertise in peddling a mixture of fear, lies and false morality.
Besides, there was little reason, beyond wishful thinking, to hope that Australians would follow the example the Spanish electorate had set in March by booting out the government of Jose Maria Aznar three days after terrorists killed 191 people in Madrid. There was widespread criticism of Spaniards through much of the West for allegedly allowing themselves to be intimidated by Al Qaeda. However, although Aznar had contributed troops to Bush's war in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, the electoral rebuff appears to have been prompted mainly by another outrage: the government's initial attempt to pretend that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible for the bombings.
Last month, Spain's Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero - who kept an election promise by quickly withdrawing troops from Iraq - revealed that his predecessor had wiped out all computer records of his days in office following the bloodshed. Which could hardly be a coincidence.
The year's most devastating and despicable terrorist act, however, had nothing to do with Iraq - although it did reinforce the impression that Islamists are by far the leading non-government perpetrators of mass murder. In the Russian town of Beslan, the victims weren't only civilians - at least half of the 330 who died amid a botched rescue operation were schoolchildren. The incompetence of Russian special forces may have pushed up the toll, but that takes nothing away from the culpability of the Chechen perpetrators - who, Moscow claims, were assisted by Arab terrorists.
Then again, the almost unbelievably bloodthirsty act of barbarism in Beslan ought not to blind anyone to the reality of what has been going on in Chechnya for the past decade. Shortly before Beslan, Chechen suicide bombers detonated themselves on two Russian planes and at the entrance to a Moscow metro station, claiming about 100 lives, in the wake of yet another rigged election in their homeland. The poll, in turn, was prompted by the assassination earlier in the year of pro-Russian Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov.
It's a vicious circle, and Vladimir Putin has done his nation no favours by responding with stepped-up security measures ... and nothing else. He bristled at Western criticism of his one-dimensional, anti-democratic approach, pointing out with some justification that the US wasn't exactly going out of its way to engage Al Qaeda in a dialogue. But then, neither side deserves kudos for refusing to recognize that terrorism can most fruitfully be tackled by addressing its causes rather than only responding to its symptoms.
But for this blinkered approach to reality, chances are the US wouldn't have so thoroughly been bamboozled by the events that unfolded following the capture of Baghdad. It still has only a vague idea of what is going on amid the continuing anarchy. The so-called hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government in June had little meaning beyond appearances, given that the administration of Iyad Allawi relies entirely upon the US military presence for its existence. Major combat operations, such as the bloody affair in Fallujah, continue to take place 18 months after the US commander-in-chief announced they were over. As do random acts of terror that cannot be conflated with the resistance, for instance kidnappings and beheadings.
Perhaps the most prominent victim of this depressing tendency was long-term Iraqi resident and aid worker Margaret Hassan, the identity of whose killers has never conclusively been established. Most beheadings, however, have been attributed to a group supposedly led by the Jordanian freelancer Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. On the other hand, contrary to official US propaganda, it would appear that the broader resistance is chiefly powered neither by Islamists nor by Saddam supporters. Elections are scheduled for later this month, but whatever their nature and results, Iraq will remain unstable and under the American thumb for a long time to come.
The year's most atrocious images, depicting the torture and humiliation of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, will meanwhile remain etched on many a memory. It's worth noting that the worst pictures were never made public. That inhumane practices weren't restricted to Abu Ghraib - they are reported to be routine across detention centres in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. And the torture didn't stop after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, even though Bush apologized to Arabs at the time for what he misleadingly described as the actions of a few wayward recruits.
In contrast, he remained completely unapologetic about his refusal to lift a finger to encourage Israeli negotiations with Palestinians for as long as Yasser Arafat remained their elected president - a stance that incorporated a refusal to condemn targeted assassinations by the Israelis, including that of handicapped Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. The former guerilla leader's death in a Paris hospital led to a flurry of moves aimed at facilitating an agreement, presumably in the hope that Arafat's likely successor, Mahmoud Abbas, will betray fewer qualms about Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza while retaining control of the West Bank. Sharon himself was in strife until he reached a coalition deal with the Labour Party's Shimon Peres. Arafat failed to win a homeland for his people but, contrary to much western commentary, prospects of a coherent Palestinian state have diminished rather than brightened with his demise.
The first presidential election in Afghanistan led predictably to a victory for the US-imposed incumbent, Hamid Karzai, but failed to significantly alter his status as a puppet. Efforts continue, meanwhile, to combat the twin menace of opium production and the Taliban, but the Osama bin Laden trail is said to have grown cold. American commanders in Afghanistan remain convinced that he is hiding somewhere on the Pakistani side of the border, but repeated military assaults on the area have yielded few results beyond large-scale devastation and civilian deaths.
In elections elsewhere, India's Congress party returned to power after a decade by capitalizing on the inherent absurdity of the BJP's "Indian shining" campaign. And, after a few days of confusion, party leader Sonia Gandhi wisely opted for a backseat role, endorsing economist Manmohan Singh for the prime ministerial post. In Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri made way for former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
One of the most interesting poll results was obtained not in an election but in a referendum - in Venezuela, where the populist Hugo Chavez had been under tremendous pressure from the middle classes (and the US) to submit to a recall vote. A loss would have obliged him to step down. But he won overwhelmingly in an exercise witnessed with approval by international observers, including the omnipresent Jimmy Carter.
In Haiti, meanwhile, elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile in a coup that involved US-French cooperation, notwithstanding their differences over Iraq. While the disaster that continues to unfold in Iraq inevitably dominated international headlines for much of the year, evidence of possible genocide in Sudan's Darfur region also attracted sporadic interest. Despite conflicting reports, it seems that large-scale atrocities have almost certainly been inflicted on the local population by the so-called Janjaweed militias, apparently with Khartoum's connivance. A humanitarian disaster has also been unfolding in Congo, with barely a flicker of international interest.
Closer to home, Iran has been under pressure over its nuclear programme, with the US apparently dissatisfied by European and International Atomic Energy Agency efforts to assess and curb Tehran's suspected interest in nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding the mess in Iraq, some of the hotheads in Washington favour hostilities against Iran, and Syria also remains at the receiving end of barbed comments. An attack on either of these countries is unlikely this year - unless Israel desperately requires a distraction.
Perhaps the situation in Saudi Arabia merits greater concern. Osama Bin Laden recently renewed his call for the overthrow of the monarchy, and throughout the past year the kingdom has witnessed terrorist attacks as well as clashes between militants and security forces. Although prospects of a popular uprising are not particularly high, a further rise in the frequency and scale of violent incidents could provoke the US to "secure" the world's largest reservoirs of oil.
Perhaps it won't come to that, but recent trends indicate otherwise. And the year just past hasn't been kind to institutions either. The BBC faced decapitation followed by regime change in the wake of a row over Iraq with the Blair regime, while the Bush administration would love to subject the UN to similar punishment for a similar reason. But perhaps the oddest phenomenon has been the decimation of the CIA. The reasons again relate to Iraq, with experienced analysts ignored or rebuffed for producing opinions at odds with neo-conservative priorities. But they go beyond that to almost an ideological dissonance.
Since the late 1940s the CIA has been Washington's preferred instrument of covert warfare and intervention. Not many of us could have imagined we'd live to see the day when Americans voted in a government that found the CIA too liberal for its tastes. That day has dawned, and its hardly necessary to spell out what that portends for the state of the world.
There has been no shortage of elections during the year just past, ranging from the more or less meaningless to the momentous. In terms of global significance, it would be hard to deny first place to the process whereby George W. Bush found himself assured of a second term in the White House, followed by the Spanish poll that unexpectedly terminated the tenure of Jose Maria Aznar.
