By Muhammad Bashir

Abuja, June 22, 2007 – The democratic world couldn't have been wrong for looking up to the United States of America as its ultimate champion. For if Washington's huffing and puffing about democracy around the globe could not make it a leading force, its unmitigated rush to topple autocratic regimes in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa with a view to installing democracy would, at least, make it a considerable factor. Among others, the Bush administration launched the deadly war against Iraq under the pretext of the need for democratisation. Saddam Hussain, according to the White House, was an oppressive tyrant ruling Iraq and had to quit the stage for an elected, popular president. For Saddam, however, the rest is now history.

Not withstanding, the United States continues to be - with its actions and inactions - a mysterious factor in democratisation around the world. Some of its moves and policies do not only seem to negate the liberal democracy it professes to promote, but also constitute a big threat to its development. More so, the weight it continues to throw behind the forced adoption of neo-classical economic theories in developing countries discounts any commitment by Washington towards liberalism.

Accusing these policies of undermining democracy, Brendan Martin said "the people of Costa Rica have got to tackle the enormous contradiction of having two governments at the same time - one which they voted in at the 1990 elections and one of Don Thelmo - IMF. His power and arrogance are such that he dares to undermine the authority of the opinions and decisions of the President of the Republic, acting practically like a parallel president." Since April, the president has used his new dictatorial power to push forward reforms that Congress would not accept. He has unilaterally imposed laws to privatise the public health and pension systems. Because the CUT/IPSS (the social security workers' union) has defended these public institutions, Fujimoro has attempted to destroy the union."

Similarly, the US has demonstrated no more than symbolic commitment to support the termination of authoritarian regimes where the status quo presupposed the protection of its political and economic interests. This has been more obvious in the Middle East where most of the governments have been ruling autocratically since the end of the Cold War with the tacit endorsement of the White House. For instance, the Bush administration declined a proposal for ending the tyranny in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War in 1991; refused to support the emerging forces of liberal democracy in Iran around the late 1990s, preferring to label the country a 'terrorist state' and kept mute over the glaring abuses going on in other Gulf states as well as Saudi Arabia. Elsewhere across the Atlantic Ocean, it grossly maintained a tacit approval for the suppression of democratic process by the Algerian military in 1992, touching off a long era of bloodbath and repression.

"But perhaps," in the words of Harry Shutt "the most conspicuous betrayal by the US government of its own professed commitment to upholding democracy and human rights in the post-Cold War world has been in relation to the People's Republic of China.

This is all the more striking in view of both the latter's high profile abuses (notably the Tianamen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989) and the powerful rhetoric denouncing them emanating equally from Congress and from President Clinton himself, particularly when he was first running for office in 1992. It is of course quite understandable, in terms of traditional great power realpolitik, that a large and important state (in both military and economic terms) such as China should be treated with greater deference than countries such as Burma, Sudan or Cuba. "Yet inevitably," he continues "in an age when the world's sole superpower feels it must purport to uphold an internationally-established code of human rights, such blatant and sustained inconsistency tends to undermine international respect for its foreign policy and give encouragement to the many actual and aspiring national leaders round the world who seek to revalidate the traditional precept that 'might is right."

Furthermore, the US reaction to last April elections in Nigeria is close to cementing the widely-held view that Washington is dedicated to promoting any project but democracy around the world. The polls according to a report by the International Republican Institute (IRI) delegates from China, DR Congo, Hungary, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Namibia, Poland, Somaliland, Uganda and the United States of America "did not measure up to those observed by the members of IRI's international delegation in other countries, whether in Africa, Asia and Europe. In other words, this observer group which monitored more than 100 polling stations in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Katsina, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Oyo and Plateau states concluded that "the elections fall below the standard set by previous Nigerian elections and international standards witnessed by IRI around the globe."

Not left behind was the constellation of local observer groups in Nigeria under the auspices of the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), all of which deployed an aggregate of 50,000 trained election monitors in and around the country. Its verdict was however no less condemnatory than previous ones by the IRI, NDI amongst others. At a press conference in Abuja, its chairman, Festus Okoye, remarked: "The Federal Government and the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC have failed woefully in their responsibility to conduct free, fair and credible elections. We do not believe that any outcome of the elections can represent the will of the people. A democratic arrangement founded on such fraud can have no legitimacy".

Alas, in what seemed to be a great disservice to its international credibility and a confirmation of the fears of its critics about its intention towards the developing world, the US sent in its felicitations through a White House official immediately after authorities in Nigeria had declared Umar Musa Yar'Adua, the ruling party (PDP) candidate winner by landslide. It later followed with an official reassurance of co-operation with the new administration. Britain soon made the same gesture (though the British Labour Union had rejected the outcome) and, in close succession, the governments of Canada and Japan each designated their envoys for congratulatory talks.

Indeed, the US's tacit approval for the 2003 elections after attesting to its multiple flaws and gross subversion of the people's will is what bolstered the criminal propensity of Nigeria's political leaders to revisit similar, but larger scale electoral fraud during the 2007 exercise. In the aftermath of the former, the White House did no more than issue symbolic and highly theatrical threats of sanctions against the country; and sooner than later made diplomatic overtures to the illegitimate government. Consequently, the Nigerian people had to grapple with an illegitimate regime under excruciating living conditions for the next four years led by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

In my view, therefore, the US position on these elections is as untenable as it is self-serving. Nigerian political class cannot be relied upon to reserve this trend in future encounters. Already, the blatant deterioration of the electoral process between the 2003 model and this year's has confirmed these fears.

To sum up, the outcome did not reflect the mandate of the Nigerian people. And the US bears the responsibility of exerting economic and diplomatic pressures on the authorities and closely supervises the administration of justice in the country's election petition tribunals until the people's right is protected.

Three years ago, the Bush administration together with NATO and the EU chief, Javier Solana, condemned similar fraud in Ukraine and demanded its review. Otherwise, the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, warned that the country "would be internationally ostracised." In those polls, however, the difference between the two candidates was a marginal 46.6 percent to pro-America's Viktor Yushchenko and barely 49.5 percent to the Russian-backed Yanukovich.

In Nigeria, the ruling party's candidate was officially allotted 26.6 million while the other two presidential candidates followed him with 6.6 and 2.6 million votes respectively. In this represented about 80-20 percent vote differential between the declared winner and the other candidates put together. Unless the US pushes forward for the cancellation of Nigeria's elections and a re-run of fresh, credible ones in the next coming months, its much-touted commitment to democracy around the globe will remain trapped within the confines of falsehood and deception.

Source: Daily Trust