Today’s Washington Post announced that Galbraith “Is Fired in Clash Over Addressing Afghan Vote Fraud”.

When Peter Galbraith was considering a run for Governor in Vermont in 2008, many critics wondered if he would have any name recognition with Vermonters and if he would be able to articulate and stand up for issues critical to all Vermonters.  At the time Galbraith seemed so – well – academic.  In 2008, GMD had a post entitled “Galbraith leads Pollina in WCAX poll”. http://greenmountaindaily.com/…

Galbraith gave up a possible run for Governor in order to accept the position of Ambassador to Afghanistan and use his diplomatic skills to help stabilize Afghanistan’s political frontier.  A resident of Townshend, Galbraith, is a former ambassador to Croatia.  In 1995 Galbraith was instrumental in creating the 1995 Erdut agreement, which the war between Serbia and Croatia.  

Most recently, according to the Washington Post,

Galbraith had pushed the U.N. special representative in Kabul, former Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, to forcefully address the claims of fraud, and the disagreement culminated in Galbraith’s abrupt departure from Afghanistan this month.

“I think there was massive fraud in the elections — no doubt about that,” said Galbraith, who is now in the United States. “It undermines the credibility of the election process. I took seriously the mandate to support free, fair and transparent elections.”

Galbraith is showing himself not to be a pushover to hidden agendas and determined to fight for open government with “free, fair and transparent elections”.  Wish he would have been monitoring the US 2000 presidential election.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office issued a statement Wednesday saying he had decided to end Galbraith’s appointment as Eide’s deputy to serve the “best interest of the mission.”

In an interview, Galbraith said his dismissal sent a bad signal about the United Nations’ commitment to fair elections.

Galbraith ongoing dispute with former Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, the U.N.’s special representative in Kabul had been rocking diplomatic circles for weeks and allegedly causing U.N. staff members to take sides.

According to the Post and citing a reliable source who spoke upon the condition of anonymity,

“Peter was championing the values that the U.N. stands for here, and almost all of us supported him.

Last month, my son, Eric Gundersen, (developmetseed.org) spent several days in Afghanistan working with the computer infrastructure created to count votes.  Voter fraud or not, in my opinion, the country is a mess.  Several suicide bombings took place while Eric was in Kabul, and even in the center of Kabul, everyone wore bullet proof vests, helmets and rode with armed guards if they went outside in public, just traveling to the airport for example.  How does one even contemplate fair elections in a decisive country filled with armed camps?

Finally according to the Post,

Karzai and his major challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have called for the election review process to be carried out fully and have said they would respect the results.

Abdullah, who has accused Karzai’s government of orchestrating “massive state fraud” in the election, said Wednesday that it would be “unfortunate” if Galbraith’s removal was due to his push for a “vigorous look” at the allegations of electoral fraud.

Galbraith’s political future is anyone’s guess, but he has stood up for what I consider to be traditional Vermont values in showing that honesty, integrity, openness, and government transparency matter more than political muscle, ego, and vested financial interests.  Sounds like Obama should consider giving him an appointment to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The whole story at the Washington Post may be found here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/…