Democracy, a concept worth dying for?


Recent events in Pakistan and Kenya show that democracy is not only something to be cherished and used wisely but it is also something that people who do not trust it will do anything to prevent its acceptance and adoption.

2008 is a big year for elections across the world, not just the United States, who knows, if David Cameron continues to build on his current 9 point lead there may well be an announcement in the U.K before the years out regarding our very own General Election. This year there are elections in the following countries: Pakistan, Serbia, Sierra Leone and Angola (to name the four 'hotspots' that come to mind), Taiwan, Lebanon, Armenia, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Bhutan, Belize, Spain, South Korea, Mongolia, Iceland, Rwanda, Swaziland, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Slovenia, Russia and Belarus. There are also referenda in Ireland, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Now the thing that strikes me about the list of countries where there will be Parliamentary and/or Presidential elections is that with the exception of Iceland each one of those countries has been affected by either military intervention, military rule, civil war or a conflict with a neighbouring state during my lifetime. I don't think we can count the 'Cod War' of 1973 between the U.K and Iceland as a threat to democracy. In Europe, well the Western part anyway, we take democracy and elections for granted and yet it is only within the last thirty five years that democracy has been allowed its head in both Spain and Portugal. Belgium has taken the concept of democracy to its logical extent and is going to split itself in two, either that or cease to exist again.

Back in the days when I was an idealistic, hot headed, full of hair headed, young man who believed that democracy would cure all the world's evils there was a guy in the local Labour party that I belonged to, who would greet the mentioning of the word democracy with a well rehearsed speech, "Ah yes," he would opine, "democracy from the word dimokratia, Greek, literally meaning rule by the people." We would all nod politely and then back to debating whether or not we should start buying melons from Israel and what could we do to heighten public awareness about the brutal Apartheid regime. I seem to recall that we didn't buy the melons and the South African's killed Steve Biko, thereby raising the profile a lot more than a bunch of hairy arsed and hairy faced reds could ever do.

In Britain we generally hold General Elections every five years or when Rupert Murdoch gets bored. In between elections we moan if our party didn't win, if our party did win we spend five years feeling like Derby County's goalkeeper, no matter how much money you spend you know it's going to end in tears. But look around the world at where elections are taking place or will take place and you should feel grateful that we have that right to moan.

If the elections in Pakistan should go by without a hitch then the good old USA will back anybody who says they will do their bit to fight terrorism, if Musharraf wins then the USA will sit on him and make him a well remunerated overseas ambassador in the same way they have done with Hosni Mubarek in Egypt - as Napoleon said, "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer."

Six of the countries I've listed above are in Africa, as is Kenya which has just witnessed a complete abuse of the democratic process. To a jaundiced western European or American there is probably a natural knee-jerk (over) reaction which would go something like, "Of course these countries just aren't ready for democracy, the old colonies, they can't handle it." But they can. What they have in common are internal factions who want nothing to do with Mrs Thatcher's old phrase of 'self determination', there are people with self-interests that they want to remain closed to prying eyes. At a lunch at the White House in June 1954 Churchill coined the phrase: 'to Jaw-Jaw is always better than to war-war.' The democratic process is the first part of that quote and is much better than the alternative.

There is of course mistrust in countries where young democracy appears to be a sop and nothing more than an excuse for the elected leader to behave in exactly the same way as he did before the elections - think Mugabe, look at Putin in Russia. Pakistan has been led down the democracy road by a west obsessed with introducing its politics into a region that isn't necessarily ready for them, look at Iraq and Iran and ask yourself if that's really the best alternative we, as in the west, can offer the population. Politicians of course will lie and connive their way to power whatever system you follow, it just suits the 'chaps' if you can be seen to be doing something in the 'correct' way.

Of course democracy doesn't come cheap, whichever way you look at it. The last US Presidential election campaign in 2004 cost, including the midterms, a staggering $3.9-4.2 billion dollars, and the number of lives lost in various military campaigns around the world cannot really be measured in terms of votes won or lost.

We've grown up with the concept of democracy in the west, we've fought wars in far flung places to defend it but we have to remember that whilst other countries may well be ready for it as a concept, some are not quite ready to accept the reality of putting it into practice.