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Adrian Hamilton: Democracy is not anend in itselfThe West's desire to show progress makes it reluctant to call a dud election a sham

Thursday, 8 April 2010

While we embark on our own scrappy election, elsewhere democracy doesn't seem to be goingquite so smoothly. The withdrawal of the main opposition party in southern Sudan has thrownthe elections there into crisis. Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to allow her democratic party totake part in the vote in Burma. In Afghanistan the head of the Independent ElectionCommission and his deputy have been forced to resign after an election which nobody thinkswas conducted fairly and few believe President Karzai won, while the recent poll in Iraq has left

that country's government paralysed by an indecisive result.

And that is not to mention the troubles in Egypt over the prospect of a genuine challenger toPresident Mubarak, the bloody confrontations in Iran over its disputed elections and the tense,not to say oppressed, parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka after the civil war there.

Not that the British can exactly boast about their Mother of Parliaments, with expensesscandals tarnishing the brand and voter participation heading below 60 per cent in elections(far lower in local polls and the European Parliamentary votes).

In all the somewhat patronising talk about how it takes time to root democracy in emergingcountries, and even how it is not always appropriate to other cultures, it is sometimesforgotten that we, who have been at it over 700 years, seem to be losing faith, or at least

popular enthusiasm, for it back here.

But then that may be the best thing to remember in the post-Bush discussion about democracyand its suitability around the globe. Too often it has been presented and was certainlypresented by Bush and Blair as a sort of civilising gift from the white man to the developing

world which would ensure them peace, prosperity and freedom. Enforce free elections, andauthoritarian regimes would be overthrown, belligerency would be abandoned and a spirit ofrationalism and conciliation would draw even the most fractious states together.

If only it did work like that. But it doesn't and it hasn't. Democracy, like any other politicalsystem, is ultimately about power. And for those with power it becomes a means of retainingtheir position. For authoritarian regimes in particular, with control of the registration and votingprocedures, elections are used as a means of asserting their authority not a way of challenging

it. It is what is happening in Sudan and in Burma. It's how President Karzai saw it inAfghanistan and how President Mugabe took it in Zimbabwe. Far from being threatened by thevote, they see it as a stick with which to beat back domestic opposition and foreign criticism.

The trouble is that so much of Western pressure on countries to introduce democracy actuallyaids authoritarian regimes in this approach. Elections are made the condition of approval of aidor diplomatic relations. They are then seized on as a useful gesture by the governmentsconcerned, who see that they can turn them to their own advantage, while other power groupslook to them as a means of furthering their own interests.

Of course the outside world tries to ensure fairness with observers and rules. But they areinevitably caught up in the politics of place which they don't usually understand and have littlecontrol over. Worse, the desire by the Western world to show progress and open up

communication means that they are very reluctant to call a dud election a sham.

Take Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has come under some criticism for boycotting the elections, notleast from an international community desperate to try and get some kind of movement fromthe military junta there. Any vote is better than none, they argue. But the reality, from theNational League for Democracy, is that none is a great deal better than a complete charade in

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8/2/2019 Adrian Hamilton_ Democracy is Not an End in Itself

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which they are expected to accept a negation of their victory a decade ago and to participate ina vote that they know is stacked up against them.

So too with Sudan. Anxious to draw the Sudanese regime back into the international fold, andto cement the peace agreements in the south and in Darfur, the outside world has tended todismiss the actions of the main opposition party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, toboycott the presidential elections and remove itself from most of the parliamentary ones as

self-interested and unhelpful to the wider interests of peace.

But democratic politics is about self-interest and outside intervention only intensifies theconflicts by interposing another element to be called upon in the power struggle.

Democracy is rule by the majority and, in a deeply divided society, that majority uses it tosuppress the minority. That is what happened as the Shia took power in Iraq and it hasoccurred in Kenya and much of Africa. If outsiders then move in to prevent that happening, orto favour one candidate over another, as they have in Afghanistan and Iraq, it only makesmatters worse.

That does not negate the idea, or the benefits, of democracy. Clearly it did work in EasternEurope with the fall of the Soviet Union. And it seemed to be working in Ukraine and Georgia.But that only lulled the world into a false sense that it was easy. It hasn't been so, as theexperience of the Caucuses, central Asia and Africa have shown.

Democracy is a mechanism for resolving competing interests and giving a voice to those whowould otherwise have no stake in the system. At the very least it's a lot better than tyranny. Atit's best it can bring a resolution to the internal strains of a country.

But it is not an end in itself. The West has made a mistake in presenting it as such. It hasmade an even greater mistake in wrapping it in the clothes of a Western ideal that is beinggifted to the world at large.

In doing so we downplay the values which are universal and which make democracy work free speech, equal opportunity, the protection of minorities and the rule of law. If wehammered on about those and talked less of the "spread of democracy", we might well getfurther.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk

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