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Democracy is not
a Fairy Tale
By David Kilgour
Representatives
from about 120 nations, including 73 parliamentarians and more than 200 leaders
from a range of non-government organizations, recently met in parallel meetings
in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to discuss the prospects and challenges for democracy
worldwide. Many
of the participants were from restored and new democracies seeking ways to
consolidate themselves, but those of us from traditional ones probably learned
as much-or more-about the evolving cultures of democracy as anyone. Democracy
in myriad forms is ascendant these days-with more than 140 multi-party ones
functioning among approximately 200 sovereign countries-compared with probably
less than 35 as recently as the 1970s. A message sent by the UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan stressed his own personal commitment to this form of
government. Never before in history has democracy enjoyed such a wide presence
worldwide, he added, but then stressed that it is no time for triumphalism.
Annan judges that the rule of law is essential to a properly working democracy.
He worries about declining voter turnouts in some countries, asking if the cause
might well be feelings of "exclusion and marginalization" among men
and women choosing not to vote. Enemies
of Democracy
The
delegates at the government conference appeared to be virtually unanimous that
unemployment, poverty and bad governance (including the cancer of corruption)
are in the first tier of the enemies of democracy today. One official drew a
direct link between terrorism and unequal (or no?) opportunities for the four
billion poor of the world. There
was no dissent to the expressed view-even after the news of the attack on Anna
Lindt, Sweden's much admired foreign minister, who was well known to many of the
ministers and diplomats present, swept through the hall-- that democratic
governments in combating terrorism should not retreat a single centimetre from
the best practices of open societies. Mongolia
was well placed to host the Fifth International Conference of New or Restored
Democracies. Following almost two centuries of Chinese domination-long after
Ghengis Khan had sacked Beijing for a full devastating month during 1211 before
going on to establish a Pax Mongolica stretching from Korea to Iran-and almost seven decades as a Soviet republic,
it opted for democracy and full independence after 1990, evidently without a
single pane of glass being broken during the transition. Mongolian
History
It
was to the government's credit that on the premises of the conference a History
of Mongolia by Baabar, published by Cambridge University, was on sale. The work
covers the country from earliest times, including the phenomenon of forcing the
Chinese to build their Great Wall and the conquest of half the known world by
Genghis Khan and his sons, down to its independence referendum in 1945.
Mongolia's years from 1924 to 1990 as a puppet republic of the Soviet Union were
brutal almost beyond belief. Joseph Stalin's Great Terror at home was applied
just as mindlessly - or more - in
the neighbour, with tens of thousands of Mongolians drowning in blood. The
heroes were present and the book documents their difficult, usually short-lived,
roles too. Prime
Minister Enkhbayar in his welcoming address said the renaissance included
harmonizing the legal system with democracy, allowing about 2500 NGOs-
astonishingly one for every thousand Mongols living within the country-to spring
up, ending indoctrination in schools and the state-controlled media, attacking
corruption, and permitting the private sector to account for nearly four fifths
of the economy. Civil
Society Forum
A
report heard from the civil society forum, which ended just before the other
event began, noted the importance of better involving women, children and other
institutionally often excluded communities in every society in democratic
governance. Democratic governments must respect fully the autonomous role and
nature of their respective civil societies.
The threat of terrorism, the parliamentarians stressed, must not be used
by governments to stifle respective civil societies. At
a session on democratic governance and civil society, the issue of the asymmetry
between the relatively affluent and well-informed members of "old"
democracies and the poverty and general lack of information in many new and
restored ones was raised. Are the
voices of new democracies yet being really heard in the Development Round of the
WTO trade negotiations? Proportional
voting was praised as giving better representation to citizens than the
first-past-the-post-winner-takes-all systems used in many democracies. Everyone
appeared to concur that democracy is everywhere and always a long-term process. Akouété
Akakpo-Vidah of the Canadian NGO, Rights and Democracy, who participated in both
meetings, pointed at the unfortunate tendency of new (and old?) democracies to
morph from one party to several and then back
essentially to one. The
better access which parties in power have to government resources, he noted ,
often leaves opposition parties at a competitive disadvantage.
The qualitative difference between lobby and citizen groups, especially
in the face of declining memberships in political parties, was flagged by
various speeches. Parliamentarians
The
discussions among parliamentarians was reported upon by the Speaker of
the Namibian parliament. Their
recommendations were blunt: legislatures must play a vigorous role in overseeing
the executive branch; women and minorities must be encouraged to play larger
roles in parliaments; free and independent media are essential to providing
substantive information to voters everywhere; racial and religious profiling is
in practice counter-productive in combatting terror; there should be better
links between parliaments and their respective civil societies; parliamentarians
should help formulate democratic indicators. The
news of the attack on Anna Lindt arrived at about this point, but at least she
was still alive. Sweden's senior
delegate, ambassador Bengt Save-Soderbergh, took the floor to say that his
minister was a strong supporter of the democracy movement and that we should
continue our work with renewed vigour. The
drafting of the final declaration and work plan was completed only after many
hours with the help of about forty delegates.
The final gavel came down about two hours after the death of Ms. Lindt
had been announced and a moment of silence had been observed. In a final act,
delegates adopted a strong declaration about democracy and plan of action to
secure it better wherever it exists. Sitting
in the vast hall, I thought back to September 11, 2001, when, approximately two
hours after the two passenger planes struck the World Trade Centre, delegates
from the governments of virtually every nation in the Americas (except Cuba)
unanimously adopted the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American
States (OAS) in Lima, Peru. Despite
the violence that cast such large shadows on both meetings, the participants at
each seemed determined that democracy, including the well-known features of our
cherished open societies, must continue to be points of inspiration across the
world. -30- |
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