BBC World Service – World Briefing – November 10, 2000 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Election 2000 – days after votes were cast, votes were being counted, re-counted, re-re-counted and pored over with such meticulous thoroughness that Florida officials told reporters an accurate picture of the vote from Florida wouldn’t emerge until a week later.
Needless to say, the news was met with nail-biting anxiety and if the prospects of this thing dragging out another week meant another week of sleepless nights, the entire country would be on a crash-course with one terrific nervous-breakdown.
One thing was clear in Tallahassee, the Florida state capital. The confusion over the ‘election results had paved the way for a stealthy and vapid seizure of power in the US. The lawyers had truly taken over. They were everywhere in Tallahassee, patrolling the normally sleepy streets in uniform charcoal suits and colourful ties for the men, the women in earth tones. They huddled in hotel lobbies or on street corners, and marched in and out of the courthouse with the heady sense of purpose of people who had been waiting all their careers for just such a moment.
Following them everywhere was a spiky huddle of journalists, bristling with cameras and tripods, the television networks’ star legal correspondents to the fore. On the sidelines, and emitting constant background noise, were rival protesters.
As well as assurances of another week . . .
In other news – A day before leaving for Washington and President Clinton’s final salute to the peace process, Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, was unrepentant over the assassination of a Palestinian militant, laid to rest amid the peal of church bells and the rattle of gunfire. Nuns and gunmen, middle aged businessmen and Islamists in flowing robes turned out in their thousands to bury a leader of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party and two elderly women cut down by Israeli helicopters in a wealthy suburb of Bethlehem. Thursday’s attack galvanised Palestinians, erasing divisions of religion, class and political affiliation, and uniting a population in grief and anger. But Mr Barak, undaunted by a growing Palestinian resolve to continue their intifada, said Israel was committed to an aggressive new policy of pre-emptive attacks.
And a huge gathering in Banda Aceh which called for a referendum on ties with Jakarta, was expected to draw several hundred thousand people. The rally’s organiser, Muhammad Nazar, said he was now asking villages to hold their own meetings to reduce the risk of further casualties. “We are not violent people,” he said. “We are not calling for a war or an armed struggle. All we want is for the Acehnese to be able to decide their own future.” Hundreds of Acehnese demonstrated in Jakarta on Wednesday, including outside the British embassy, to demand international intervention.
Indonesia’s senior security minister, Susilo Bambang Yu-dohoyono, said that next week’s talks in Geneva “will discuss two alternatives for Aceh wider and special autonomy or accelerated development.”
And while the Election in America was grabbing all the headlines, that’s just a small slice of what went on in the world, this November 10, 2000 as reported by The BBC World Service.
