How To Govern From the Clink - Lessons for Marwan Barghouti

Slate.msn -- By Brendan�I.�Koerner: "Marwan Barghouti has decided to run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, even though he's serving five life sentences for murder. The popular Fatah leader stands a good chance of beating the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO's current chairman. If Barghouti does win the election on Jan. 9, he will have to govern from prison, since there's zero chance that Israel would allow his release. How many politicians have won elections while in the clink, or actually carried out their governmental duties while incarcerated?

Most recently, imprisoned ex-Congressman James A. Traficant Jr. tried to regain his Youngstown, Ohio, seat in 2002. (He ran as an independent and garnered just 15 percent of the vote; at least he gets to keep his congressional pension.) Perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche ran his 1992 campaign from prison, and Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs did the same in 1920. Needless to say, neither man came within sniffing distance of the White House.

But some imprisoned candidates win. During the nation's infancy, fiery Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon won re-election in 1798 while serving a four-month jail term for violating the Sedition Act. He made his way to Washington upon his release, and he eventually cast the deciding vote in the House of Representatives that gave the presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

Overseas, incarcerated politicians have had good luck in India of late. Two current members of Parliament, from the northeastern province of Bihar, are in prison for a host of alleged crimes, including murder and kidnapping. Mohammed Shahabuddin, the more famous of the pair, was re-elected this past spring and was even allowed to go to Delhi to be sworn in as an MP. (The judge who granted bail to Shahabuddin has since been sacked.)

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, currently incarcerated in the Netherlands as his war-crimes trial moves forward, won a seat in Serbia-Montenegro's parliament last December. "