The Bush Definition of Democracy

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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20005/

 

The Bush Definition of Democracy

By Rahul Mahajan, AlterNet

 

Posted on September 28, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/20005/

 

When Vladimir Putin used illegal tactics to engineer the election of

his hand-picked subordinate Ahmad Kadyrov as president of Chechnya

last October, Western pundits were quick to condemn the election as a

farce. Yet the same media talking heads have expressed little outrage

the series of equally farcical " elections " organized by the Bush

administration in the name of exporting democracy, be it to

Afghanistan or Iraq.

 

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani recently expressed his unhappiness at

the plans of the main U.S.-affiliated political parties to negotiate a

" consensus slate " of candidates for

 

the upcoming U.N. Security Council-mandated elections in Iraq.

 

In some countries, with a well-established parliamentary system and a

history of active political parties and an inclusive public discourse,

alliances between political parties are not necessarily a problem. In

India, for example, such electoral alliances may be necessary to get

smaller parties some degree of parliamentary representation. In Iraq,

however, the effect may be extremely damaging.

 

According to a recent New York Times editorial, such a " consensus "

slate could create " essentially a one-party election unless Iraq's

fragmented independents manage to organize themselves into an

effective new political force. " Without adequate safeguards, wrote the

Times, in an uncharacteristically direct manner, " Iraq's first free

election may look uncomfortably like the plebiscites choreographed to

produce 98 percent majorities for Saddam Hussein. "

 

While the Times neglected to mention the fact, the Bush administration

has established a track record of managing elections to produce such

lopsided results for its favored candidates first in Afghanistan and

later in Iraq.

 

During the June 2002 Afghan loya jirga, roughly 1500 delegates

assembled to pick the interim president of the country. Although all

delegates were under a great degree of pressure from U.S.-backed

warlords (who did everything from killing delegates before the

assembly to controlling the floor at the assembly), over 800 signed a

statement in support of Zahir Shah, the exiled monarch. Omar Zakhilwal

and Adeena Niazi, delegates to the loya jirga, told the New York Times

that the United States then stepped in and " the entire loya jirga was

postponed for almost two days while the former king was strong-armed

into renouncing any meaningful role in the government. " When the

assembly resumed, delegates were given a choice between Hamid Karzai

and two unknown candidates thrown into the field purely for symbolic

value (For example, one of them was a woman).

 

More recently, the Bush administration has been busy altering the

timetable of Afghanistan's elections to meet its own needs. It has

pressured the Afghan Electoral Commission to delay the parliamentary

elections until next April but push through the presidential elections

in October. The plan is clearly to ensure that there will be no time

for anyone to emerge as a national-level alternative to Hamid Karzai

as the president.

 

Of the current 18 candidates, only Yunus Qanooni is enjoys significant

name recognition and no one considers him to be pose a credible

challenge to Karzai. Even so, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (who is

closely linked with neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Paul

Wolfowitz) has using coercion and bribery to pressure candidates – be

it Qanooni or Mohammed Mohaqiq who represents the minority Hazaras –

to drop out of the race. Qanooni and 13 other candidates recently came

together to devise strategies to deal with Khalilzad's bullying.

 

The U.S. record in Iraq is not much different. The administration has

touted the local elections held under the aegis of the U.S. occupation

as evidence of its democratic intentions. But the rhetoric far

outstrips the reality. In many instances, the " election " consisted of

the appointment of the mayor and/or city council members by the local

U.S. commander, sometimes to disastrous effect. For example, the U.S.

appointed a Sunni from Baghdad to be mayor of the mostly Shi'a Najaf,

cancelled an election he would surely have lost, but later had to

remove him from office because of charges of corruption and Ba'athist

links.

 

In Basra, British and U.S. forces appointed local officials to power

only to get rid of them later, deciding instead to allow Iraqis to

only fill technocratic positions rather than award them political

power. In Kirkuk, only 300 delegates, all hand picked and vetted by

U.S. forces, were allowed to vote in the " election. "

 

In late June, U.S. commanders ordered a halt to all local elections.

The problem: people and groups opposed to the occupation were expected

to win in many of the races. A few days later, Paul Bremer approved

resumption of elections, but allowed U.S. commanders to choose between

appointing local officials, electing them by specially vetted

caucuses, or holding a real election. Not coincidentally, the new

policy allows U.S. authorities to choose the form of " election " based

on the likelihood of getting the result they want.

 

Of course, irrespective of method of selection, the U.S. commanders

can always countermand any city council decision and dissolve a

council if they so chose.

 

At the national level, the situation in Iraq has been similarly

manipulated. To begin with, elections have been postponed repeatedly,

even though it would be easier to create voter rolls in Iraq than it

was in Afghanistan (For example, the ubiquitous ration cards could

have been used as a basis for voter identification and registration).

If now a definite date has been set for January, 2005, its only

because other countries on the Security Council made it a condition

for approving Resolution 1546, on the so-called " transfer of sovereignty. "

 

Meanwhile, however, numerous other aspects of the political process

have been either eliminated or undermined. In the immediate aftermath

of the U.S. invasion, Paul Bremer canceled an assembly of members of

the Iraqi opposition – mostly U.S.-designated, exile groups – planned

for June 2003. His reason: the " opposition " was not representative of

the country. A month later, Bremer would handpick 25 people, 16 of

whom were exiles, to form the Iraqi Governing Council.

 

In August, a national conference of nearly 1300 delegates met to

determine the makeup of the 100-member interim National Assembly,

whose formation was mandated by the " transfer of sovereignty " process.

Ostensibly picked by democratic processes by their local districts,

the delegates certainly did represent a wide variety of parties and

views, although major groups opposed to the occupation were

under-represented (Moqtada al-Sadr, whose organization was battling

the U.S. military in Najaf at the time, boycotted the conference).

 

However, the delegates at the conference soon learned that the entire

process of selection was a giant sham. They would be presented with a

pre-selected slate of 81 candidates (the 19 members of the IGC having

been given automatic membership in the assembly), chosen as a result

of back-room negotiations between the major U.S.-affiliated parties.

Attempts by small parties to form an alternative slate fell through.

In the end, the U.S.-backed slate was not even presented to the

delegates for formal approval.

 

We Americans tend to use words like " freedom " and " democracy " in a

purely talismanic manner, without attaching any actual meaning to them

– only thus could the coups in Guatemala in 1954 or in Haiti in 2004

be hailed as advances for democracy. But the current White House takes

this attitude to an unprecedented extreme. Time and again, the Bush

administration has shown that it is willing to hold elections in

Afghanistan or Iraq, but only when it can control the outcome beyond

the shadow of a doubt. There is no reason to believe that the January

elections in Iraq will be any different.

 

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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