Democracy in danger

What with postal fraud and dodgy demographics, next month’s poll is loaded in favour of the government. Rod Liddle says it’s about time Robert Mugabe started to send election monitors to Britain

Isn’t it about time we got a little angrier and a little more scandalised? On 5 May we will troop up to the polling booths having endured four weeks of unfathomably banal soundbites, platitudinous drivel and vapid party political broadcasts — and we will do so because we believe it is our duty and because we have faith in the process. General elections and the whole notion of parliamentary democracy is as British as steak-and-kidney pie. We have it and many others do not, much to their disfavour. We trust it and we have implicit trust in ourselves not to abuse it. ‘Vote early, vote often’ is nothing more than a little joke, isn’t it? — unless you’re speaking from Harare or Chittagong or Kiev.