Liberty's
expansion in a
turbulent world
By
Jonathan
Power
December 31, 2002
LONDON - It always feels nice to open a New Year with
good news. But that indeed is the message on the
democracy front this week. It began in Kenya with the
defeat last Sunday of the hand-picked candidate of the
long time corrupt autocrat of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi. On
Friday, January 3rd, the election winner, Mwai Kibaki
takes over as president and there is some hope that this
clever ex-finance minister will be skilled enough to
start to put the country back on its feet and to release
the wealth of talent and energy that it has in abundance.
Despite the gloomy headlines that speak of war and
dictatorship, Africa is in fact becoming more democratic.
A decade and a half ago few African countries held open
elections. Now most do.
On January 1st the working class hero, Luiz Inacio
Lula da Silva, will be sworn in as president of Brazil.
In an interview I made with him 25 years ago when he was
a young leader he spoke of his vision of a new Brazil
where terrible disparities in wealth would be reduced
enough for the poor to be at least able to eat three
times a day. Against most of the predictions of the last
decades, he has finally won the presidency, supported by
a majority that encompasses rich, poor and the middle.
His mandate, in part, is to implement this long held
vision, while enabling the vast Brazilian economy to grow
at a steady pace. Also on Wednesday, Greece, not that
long ago a brutal military dictatorship, takes over as
president of the European Union and on Sunday, the 5th,
Lithuania, until quite recently a submissive corner of
the Soviet Union but now proudly independent, will vote
on whether its president deserves a second term. Also on
this day, Milan Milutinovic leaves office as president of
Serbia and is likely voluntarily to surrender himself to
the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague where he has been
charged with brutal offences committed in Kosovo.
All this is to remind us that despite the rattling of
sabres over Iraq, growing fears of North Korea's nuclear
weapons program, the absence of true democratic rights
for the Palestinians and the ever present threat of
terrorists who abjure democracy, the world, in the round,
is moving forward. A new report from the authoritative
Freedom House speaks of "significant worldwide progress
in 2002" in expanding freedom and democracy. "Real gains
outnumbered setbacks by a nearly three-to-one-margin".
Notable improvements were made in parts of the world
where terrorism poses a direct threat, including in
majority Muslim and Arab countries. Muslim Senegal
entered the top category in Freedom House's league table-
Free, meaning it has a full and open democracy and free
expression. Bahrain moved from Not Free to Partly Free
and there was significant pro-democracy ferment in Iran,
Kuwait and Qatar. Muslim Afghanistan, Albania, Comoros,
Tajikistan and, perhaps most important, already
democratic Turkey took significant strides toward
allowing more political and personal freedoms.
Contrary to much loose thinking there is no
unchangeable correlation between democracy and religious
persuasion. Of course it is a historical fact that
democratic expansion first took place in the Protestant
world. But as recently as the 1970s commentators were
arguing that there could never be an equal explosion in
the Catholic world. But it happened in the 1980s, as it
did in the authoritarian-inclined Orthodox world in the
the 1990s. Hindu India has long been democratic and the
concept of "Asian Values", whereby it was argued that
tradition bound societies, influenced by Confucianism and
Buddhism, could never accept democracy, has shown to be
so much nonsense by the remarkable steps taken by Taiwan,
South Korea and Thailand.
It is true that the Islamic world remains a democracy
backwater but it is difficult to argue that there is some
kind of inexorable link between tyranny and Islam. The
Islamic world has been dominated by two extreme
ideologies &endash;secular Ba'athism (best known in Iraq)
and revolutionary or jihadist Islamism. Both were shaped
in the 1930s at a time when totalitarian movements
dominated the European landscape. Tragically, as a high
official in the Bush administration Richard Haass
recently admitted in an unusual speech, the U.S. has made
a grave historic mistake in supporting many of these
tyrannical regimes for its own short term needs. If that
could change, much else could change in the Islamic
world.
According to the Freedom House survey, 89 countries
are now Free, up from 43 in 1972. 56 countries are judged
to be Partly Free, up from 38 in 1972. Of the 2.2 billion
people in the world who live in the Not Free countries
60% live in China. The message for the world's
enlightened democracies is that they must make sure that
China never decides to set about undermining free Taiwan
and that the freedoms inherited by Hong Kong are not
wheedled away. These two outposts of freedom must be
encouraged and preserved if mainland China is ever to be
persuaded that openness and democracy would be better
ways of governing the mainland's complex society. Change
China and the world will take a great leap forward! That
and real democracy and independence in Palestine are the
two departures the world of 2003 badly needs.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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