Making the world safe for democracy

 

Making the world safe for democracy

The US President Joe Biden held a two-day virtual Summit for Democracy on December 9 and 10,2021, attended by leaders representing nearly 100 countries. Addressing the world leaders at the first ever Summit, Biden warned that the world was at an inflection point in history to arrest the backward slide of democracy.

 

He invoked Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela while acknowledging that “democracies are not all the same...we don’t agree on everything…but the choices that we are going to make today together are going to define the course of our shared future for generations to come.” Concluding the Summit, he said: “As the leaders of government, we have responsibility to listen to our citizens, to strengthen the guardrails of democracy, and to drive reforms that are going to make transparent, accountable governments-governance more resilient against the buffering and – the buffeting forces of autocracy and those who want- and the naked pursuit of power ahead of the public good…We all need to constantly improve our democratic practices and systems. And we all need to continuously enhance inclusion, human dignity, responsive grievance redressal and decentralization of power.”

 

And he announced the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, for which the US will provide $424.4 million aid in 2022, to roll out several initiatives, including funding for bolstering independent media, combating corruption and defending free and fair elections and political processes, so as to make the world safe for democracy. The Summit was an attempt to rally democracies against authoritarianism, in the face of newest democratic entrants, Myanmar and Afghanistan, reverting to autocratic regimes and setback to democracy in Hong Kong. The 2011 Arab Spring failed to replace dictators with functioning democracies in the Middle East.  In Myanmar, in a military coup, the military junta  seized power on February 1,2021, and refused to acknowledge the massive  victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Party, imprisoned her on trumped up charges, preventing her staking claim to form  an elected democratic government.

 

The Summit was attended among others by Narendra Modi, France’s Emmanuel Marcon, the UK’s Boris Johnson, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australian’s Scott Morrison.  Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping were not invited. Imran Khan of Pakistan skipped the Summit to express solidarity with his country’s ‘all-weather ally’ China. The Ambassadors of China and Russia to the US wrote a joint opinion piece in a US magazine fuming that the Summit was ‘anti-democratic’, missing the irony that such critical commentary would not be allowed in their own press.

 

China accused the US of a ‘self-styled beacon of democracy’ and claimed itself as the ‘largest democracy’ as it claimed that “in 2016 and 2017, more than 900 million voters participated in elections to people’s congresses at the township and the country-levels”, conveniently ignoring the fact that these are one-candidate elections, with no other party or candidate allowed to contest against the nominees of Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping is the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission and the President of China --all rolled into one. 

 

Narendra Modi addressing the Summit said: “There is much we can learn from each other. We all need to constantly improve our democratic practices and systems...India would be happy to share its expertise in holding free and fair elections, and in enhancing transparency in all areas of governance…” This is ironical- projecting to the world as champion of democracy, while adopting authoritarianism and divisive politics at home.

 

Democracy is not just winning elections and capturing power. It means upholding human dignity and guarding civil rights; freedom of press and independence of judiciary; tolerating dissent and criticism of public authorities and public policies and programmes. Democracy proved to be the most powerful political idea in the 20th century, because the alternative, as the people saw it, was absolute dictatorship of one kind or another. Its outward appearance through elections must be undergirded by individual liberties, freedom of expression, spirited civil society, checks and balances of power, transparency and accountability in governance; independent institutions and the rule of law.

 

Both America and India- the two leading democracies of the world-are not secure democracies. Biden’s critics charge him of preaching to the world at a time democracy is in peril at home and pro-Trump ideologues charged with imperiling democracy accusing him of belittling America with the outreach. This is in the face of new disclosures that former President Trump aides had prepared a power point presentation to overturn the November 2020 election results. Political Scientist David Rothkopf writes, “When Biden talks about the battle between pro-democratic and pro-autocratic forces in the world, he is not just thinking about China and Russia, but also about Trump and his GOPs’ efforts to undercut democracy here.”

 

Democracy in India is on notice. The Swedish V-Dem calls India an ‘electoral autocracy’; others lump India with Hungary, Turkey and the Philippines where authoritarian leaders rule the roost. In a Review of the book Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy’ by the French writer Christophe Jaffrelot, Ananya Vajpeyi makes a very forceful argument to demonstrate how the Indian democracy collapsed since Modi came to power in 2014 (The Hindu 12/12):

 

“India has changed, perhaps irreversibly, from a liberal secular democracy less than a decade ago to a majoritarian ethnic democracy today…Those of us who have lived through the lynching of Muslims and Dalits, the assassination of nationalist intellectuals, the trolling of scholars, the detention of activists , the harassment of movie stars, the evisceration of the media, universities and courts, the decimation of the opposition, the destruction of the economy, the persecution of the minorities, the erosion of fundamental rights, the gutting of the public sector, the targeting of NGOs, the silencing of civil society, the distortion of history, the usurpation of social media by hate speech, fake news and propaganda, the defiance  and denigration of Parliamentary procedure by the ruling party, the demonisation of dissent, the encouragement of vigilantism, the garrisoning of the Kashmir Valley, the battering of the Constitution, and the forsaking of truth…explain the swift collapse of Indian democracy.“

 

 

And “Once the world’s largest, liveliest and most interesting experiment in equal citizenship, universal adult franchise, regular elections, representative government, minority protection, a free press, and popular self-rule, India always had problematic enclaves of exception like Kashmir and the North-East.  But before Modi, its basic commitment to diversity and pluralism seemed genuine…Yogi Adityanath communalises governance, runs a militia State, and makes Islamophobia an item of official policy. Campaigns of gauraksha, love jihad and gharwapsi make for a deadly cocktail of privileged caste orthopraxy and social conservatism, reinforce patriarchy and continually bully, shame and terrorise Muslims …”

 

The liberation of Bangladesh, December 16,1971, was the most glorious chapter in the history of Indian democracy. This could be possible because of Indira Gandhi’s indomitable spirit and decisive leadership, displaying a grand strategy encompassing all the organs of State power- military, diplomatic, economic and administrative. Speaking at the inauguration of the ‘Swarnim Vijay Parv’, December 12, 2021, commemorating 50 years of the Liberation War of Bangladesh, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, described the 1971 war as the most decisive in the world after the two World Wars. He said, “it was a classic example of the morals and democratic traditions of India. It will be rarely seen in history that after defeating another country in a war, a country does not impose its dominance but hands over power to its political representative. India did this.”

 

The liberation, in a way, was restoration of democracy in Pakistan and newly born Bangladesh. Had Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan People’s Party and General Yahya Khan honored the people’s verdict in the first general election held in Pakistan, since its independence, in December 1970, that gave a massive majority to the Awami League in the National Assembly and allowed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to form the national government, the history of Indian subcontinent would have been different.

 

We cannot make the world safe for democracy so long as the forces breeding authoritarianism, racism and religious extremism, hyper nationalism and the culture of intolerance, hatred and violence, remain unchecked.