Philadelphia Inquirer - Democracy is more than just voting

Sun, Jul. 23, 2006

It seems a distant memory now, but only a year ago, the Arab Middle East appeared poised for a democratic transformation. Even some of Washington's harshest critics grudgingly conceded that an "Arab Spring," inspired by American support and intervention, had began to flower. Change was indeed coming to the least democratic region in the world.

Lebanon had seen a "Cedar Revolution," with massive popular protests forcing Syria to loosen its grip and pull its troops out of the country in time for new elections. Egypt's seemingly eternal president, Hosni Mubarak, announced he would allow other candidates to compete against him in the next election. Kuwait finally agreed to let women vote and run for office. And Saudi Arabia opened the polls for municipal councils. The world took notice when Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt described what he called "the start of a new Arab world."

"The Syrian people, the Egyptian people," Jumblatt noted, "all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

If so, someone quickly rebuilt much of it. Today, such optimism is not much more than a memory. Little more than a year after the Arab Spring, the blossoms are wilting in the summer heat. Israel and Hezbollah trade bombs, missiles and threats of all-out war, while the impotent government of Lebanon looks on, the country's army a sad irrelevance.

Iraq has a parliament but also chaos. In the Palestinian Territories, elections brought to power Hamas, a radical Islamic organization considered a terrorist organization by most Western nations. In Iraq, secular parties barely registered in elections against much better-organized religious parties. There, too, the sword looks mightier than the poll.

In Egypt, a questionable election turned members of the Islamic Brotherhood into the second-largest bloc in parliament. The government has indefinitely postponed the next elections, and repression is again the order of the day. For democracy advocates in Cairo, euphoria has given way to something bordering on despair.

"The country is falling apart in front of our eyes and we can't do anything about it. It's like watching a train wreck." That's the mood according to one progressive Egyptian, known by his blog name, SandMonkey.

Not that pushing for democratic change in the Mideast was itself a mistake. After all, the Mideast's entrenched autocracies produced staggering economic, educational and political stagnation in the Arab world. They turned the region into a lab for extremist ideology spreading around the globe like a toxic oil spill. When government does nothing for its people and forbids participation in any organization except the mosque, fundamentalism by definition becomes the only alternative.

America's mistake lay in stressing elections while ignoring other indispensable elements of democracy. That let sly regimes trick the United States (again) into fearing that democracy would inevitably bring extremists to power.

Instead, America - and the world - should push for the basic requirements of democracy, the freedoms without which elections don't really mean very much: political parties, a free press, freedom of assembly, an independent judiciary, and other elements of civil society and human rights.

Beyond that, no democracy can survive with assorted militias using force to pursue objectives not shared by the elected government. As Lebanon painfully demonstrates, a government needs more than democratic elections to establish its credibility and authority. An essential requirement for a functioning sovereign state, as philosophers and political scientists have long noted, is that the government must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.

A government that claims to rule, while armed militias it cannot control run amok, risks becoming a bystander in the kind of chaos and instability we now see in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq. When militias take their orders from another government and foreign forces enter the scene, the will of voters becomes collateral damage - no matter how heartfelt the excitement on election day.

Elections alone are not enough. When I asked Alhamedi Alanezi, a Saudi, if he ever participated in political activities, he told me he would do it "only if I wanted a little time to myself, away from the family, in a prison cell somewhere." Alanezi recently moved to London, where he writes the blog The Religious Policeman.

Iraq was unique, since the alternative to elections was keeping an American-appointed government in power. Elections were the only way to begin building a new system. But, just as in the rest of the region, years of political repression meant that only religious organizations have had the chance to promote their views. Hardly surprising, then, that they did so well in the polls.

Arab regimes have long argued that allowing people to vote would bring radicals to power. To prove this, countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia made sure any democratic test brought gains only to extremists. The most egregious example was Mubarak's imprisonment of his progressive opponent Ayman Nour. Nour, a liberal who challenged Mubarak for the presidency last year, today languishes in jail on trumped-up charges.

Democracy activists say they value and need America's help. Most - not all - think the Iraqi war was a terrible way to force democratic change. America, they say, should be firm and supportive, but it is the countries themselves that must take the lead.

Despite the reverses, it's not all brushfires and wilted flowers along the path to democracy. In some places, the United States has applied pressure in just the right spots.

I reached Lulwa al-Mulla, a democratic activist in Kuwait, during an unforgettable election day in the emirate. For the first time in history, women could run for office and cast their vote. Exhilarated and proud as she watched women streaming to the polls, she told me, "We fought for our democracy." Americans, she said, proved extremely helpful - not only by freeing Kuwait from Iraqi invaders in 1990, but also by pushing for women's rights and helping with democratic training and education.

The region remains in desperate and urgent need of change. Accepting entrenched dictatorships will not help. Democracy remains the only solution. The last year proves only that achieving it will require much more than simply calling voters to the polls.