The chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party Mike Francis even went so far as
The chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party, Mike Francis, even went so far as to call today “Stupid Tuesday”. “The taxpayers of Louisiana are going to spend$4m (£2.5m) so that maybe 40,000 people can show up to vote in a meaningless primary,” he said. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”Once again, southern voters had been deprived of their say simply because of the calendar, and despite their best efforts. The southern states had advanced their primaries by several weeks in the hope that the races would still be open. Butthe bigger states set their primaries even earlier and between them ended the hopes of Mr McCain and Bill Bradley before campaigning had really begun in the South.Newspaper letters columns and internet chat rooms were full of complaints from people in these states – and the mid-western states that voted over the weekend – that they had been bypassed.
Already officials of the two main parties were reported to be discussing a change for four years’ time that could place the biggest states late in the primary season or introduce a schedule of regional primaries.Not that a change in this year’s timetable would necessarily have changed the result. Mr Gore and Mr Bush were strong favourites to win most of the southern contests, with Florida the only question mark.. Days before the Pope is due to arrive in Nazareth during his ground-breaking visit to the Holy Land, the city’s mayor is threatening to fly to Rome to explain an unsavoury matter to His Holiness. Ramiz Jaraisy wants Pope John Paul II to know why the town of Christ’s childhood stinks. Days before the Pope is due to arrive in Nazareth during his ground-breaking visit to the Holy Land, the city’s mayor is threatening to fly to Rome to explain an unsavoury matter to His Holiness. Ramiz Jaraisy wants Pope John Paul II to know why the town of Christ’s childhood stinks.
The streets, far from being spotless in readiness for the arrival of the Pontiff, are lined with mounds of reeking rubbish, some as high as phone booths.
The lanes around the Basilica of the Annunciation, marking the spot where the Angel Gabriel revealed the immaculate conception to Mary, are themselves anything but immaculate.As the visit looms, Nazareth is in the grip of a municipal strike. Its rubbish collectors and street cleaners have not worked for a fortnight, in keeping with almost all the municipality’s workforce, because they have not been paid for two months.The mayor says the explanation is simple: Nazareth, a city of 68,000 Christian and Muslim Arabs, is broke, It is groaning under debts of more than $10m (£6.3m) and cannot afford to pay its workers. And this, he says, is because it is the victim of a racist funding policy by the Israeli government, by which the state systematically underfunds its Arab communities. He calls it a strategy of “national discrimination”.Mr Jaraisy says that, unless he is bailed out in the next few days, he will fly to the Vatican to see the Pope in person. “There is garbage all over the city, and this means a danger of diseases,” he said.
“If the strike continues, the city won’t be suitable or ready for such an important and historic visit. I feel a responsibility to explain this to His Holiness and the whole world, and to apologise.”The mayor, a good publicist, is unlikely to fulfil his threat But his message is no less in earnest. The Pope’s visit, he says, provides a telling example of the unequal treatment meted out to Arab cities within Israel. He says Nazareth – although home to one of Christianity’s holiest shrines – has received just 250,000 shekels (£36,000) to pay for preparations, while Jerusalem has been allocated nearly 11m shekels. And the Israeli government is spending eight times Nazareth’s allocation on levelling a large stretch of pasture on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee so the Pope can hold a televised mass there, with 100,000 pilgrims.Israeli officials express indignation. A spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said Nazareth had received “far more” money for the papal visit than the mayor claimed, anddenied the government routinely starves Arab communities of funds “The policy has been the opposite over the last few years. We are giving the Arabs more than the Jews – although I am not saying we could not do more,” he said.Local authorities throughout Israel face funding problems, and workers in most of them this week followed Nazareth’s example and went on strike.The Pope is due in Nazareth on 25 March.
