An Idea Whose Time May Have Come for America
Mozambique's Ex-President Wins $5 Million African Leadership Prize
By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, October 23, 2007; A10
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 22 -- Former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano won a $5 million leadership prize Monday that promoters hope will encourage other African heads of state to rule wisely, without overstaying their welcomes.
. . . Only former African leaders were eligible for the prize, which organizers billed as the world's largest cash award. The Nobel Peace Prize pays $1.5 million.
"We Africans, it's our duty to look after our own people," Ibrahim said by telephone from London. "This hopefully will help galvanize the debate. . . . It focuses people's minds on how important governance is."
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Actually pay Nancy Pelosi to either govern or go? What a break-through idea. Not very constitutional, but then not actually all that far from the current congressional relationship with lobbyists.
The article didn't say how much ex-president Chissano had salted away before this windfall, but we can expect that staying in and thieving is substantially more profitable than getting out and hoping for a prize.
Which is the international Achilles' heel to good governance, as America itself slowly sinks to the level of African national politics.