Edits as space fillers

You don¿t say!

Darius Nakhoonwala

Edit writers had a hard time last week. They were required to write 10, 11, or at worst 12 edits depending on how many edits they carry each day. Most carry only two but some carry three. When nothing of major consequence happens, readers are served up space- fillers. Since this is in the nature of the business, I can understand the attendant mediocrity of the edits.

But last week there were two Big-deal events – the Super Tuesday election that saved Hillary Clinton¿s bacon and Dmitry Medvedev¿s election as the Russian President to replace Vladimir Putin. Since Indian papers do not write very often on foreign policy, I thought we would get some top class edits with some fresh angles.

No such luck. Everyone wrote pretty much the same things, though the Telegraph did try a bit harder: it wrote three, and the first two lines of its third edit -- which was the second on Medvedev -- read "Elections are a necessary condition for the functioning of a democracy but the holding of elections cannot be taken as a sufficient condition for defining a polity as democratic."

Why was this point not made in the first edit on Medvedev which was just a rehash edit anyway? Where was the need to compare Russia and Pakistan in another edit? Here, read this: "Technically, an election has taken place in Russia, but it would be foolhardy to say that Russia has made the transition to being a democracy. In Pakistan too, elections have been held and the popular will has asserted itself. This, however, has not meant that the shadow of military dictatorship has disappeared from the politics of Pakistan." I can only attribute it to the paucity of subjects.

In sharp contrast was The Hindu which, as its wont, took a passing pee at the West and also used the word ¿ideologue¿ as a sort of denigration. "Western ideologues might cavil at the crushing victory of 42-year-old Dmitry Medvedev… which European observers have intriguingly characterized as "more of a plebiscite" than a proper democratic election. But there can be absolutely no doubt that this triumph over three rivals is an overwhelming endorsement of the policies Russia has pursued under Putin and a mandate to carry these policies forward." Since that includes muzzling the media, controlling the political system through the police and threatening smaller neighbours, one wonders what the editor thinks is bad.  It even called the two a ¿dream team. "Putin¿s experience makes them a ¿dream team¿ that will lend new dynamism to Russia¿s further resurgence." Wow!

Even the Pioneer said the same thing. "But it would be both incorrect and unfair to suggest that Mr Putin¿s men in black fixed the election to ensure his protégé¿s victory in much the same way they are known to have fixed political dissidents and oligarchs who thought Boris Yeltsin¿s successor could also be pushed around."

What I cannot understand is this: why should the fact that the Putin world view is hard on the West which we like, should also make it all right for him follow an illiberal domestic political policy?  

The Super Tuesday thing was the lesser of the two elections and again the edit writers got into the intricacies of the US Democrats nomination process and outcomes so far. It was most boring for the reader. I think he would have wanted to know what this did to the Democrats chances against the Republicans. No one obliged, except in passing.

Thus: The Hindu wrote as the last sentence that "…the Democratic Party must get ready to overcome any bitter internal division, considering that the Republicans are already closing ranks behind John McCain, their presidential candidate."

The Telegraph said, also as the last two sentences that "The flip side of this indecision is the time it gives Mr McCain to consolidate his position and to have a head-start in the actual campaign for the presidency. The attention of the media is focused on the battle between Ms Clinton and Mr Obama. Meanwhile, Mr McCain is slowly inching".

The Pioneer also made it the last line but of the first paragraph. "Given that they began 2008 convinced this was an election they could not lose, Democrat partisans will probably be wondering if it is turning out to be the mother of all lost opportunities.