A float depicting "Uncle Sam" spanking US President George W. Bush takes part in the annual Halloween Parade, New York, Oct. 31, 2004. (AFP File Photo)

The Bush administration has put expansion of democracy at the centre of its foreign policy. This is a far nobler calling than simply expanding American hegemony. The question is, does Bush really mean it, and does he genuinely understand what democracy means?
The Bush administration is right to emphasise the importance of elections, without which democracy is inconceivable. But democracy entails more than periodic elections, and the legitimacy of elections depends on the public’s confidence in the electoral process itself. In this respect, the last two American presidential elections have hardly been models for the world.
Beyond elections, citizens can provide an effective check on government only if they are well-informed. That is why right-to-know laws are so important. Of course, politicians prefer to work in secrecy, without oversight. No one can imagine hiring a worker, but allowing him not to inform his employer about what he is doing on the job. Politicians work for the citizenry, which has the right to know what their employees are doing.
My research has focused on the consequences of asymmetries in information for the functioning of the economy. But a lack of accurate information has equally, if not more, severe consequences for political processes.
The decision to go to war in Iraq is the most dramatic example of this, but there have been many others in America under Bush. Providing drug benefits under Medicare, America’s health-care programme for the aged, may have been the right decision. But restricting government’s ability to bargain with the drug companies was a pure give-away, and nothing justifies providing grossly distorted information about the costs--now estimated to be in excess of $1.1 trillion over the next decade. This is three times the amount originally projected by the Bush administration.
Good information requires not just the right to know, but also the right to tell--a diversified media. There are, as we noted, justified complaints about the lack of diversity in television broadcasting in Russia, yet Bush has not opposed efforts by America’s Federal Communications Commission to weaken laws on media concentration.
Democracy also requires recognising the rights of individuals. Undermining any individual’s rights jeopardises everyone’s rights. Yet under Bush, the US has undermined basic civil rights, such as habeas corpus, which guarantees individuals’ recourse to judicial review when the state detains them. The extended detention of dozens of individuals in Guantanamo--without charge and without trial--is a basic abrogation of this right. Fortunately, even if Bush does not understand such basic principles, America’s courts do, and they are now, albeit belatedly, forcing his administration to abide by them.
Finally, of what value is the right to vote without recognition of the right to a certain minimal standard of living, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? In countries where much of the population lives below subsistence level, buying votes is all too easy. But the only economic rights the Bush administration recognises are intellectual property rights, putting the interests of drug companies ahead of those with life threatening diseases, and the free mobility of capital, which has had such devastating effects on many countries.
America’s democracy remains the envy of much of the world, and it is good that the Bush administration now champions the expansion of democracy forcefully. But the administration would be far more credible, and have far more success, if it took a closer look at home, if it examined its own practices more honestly, and if it engaged in a broader discussion of what democracy really means. DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

Perhaps the most beautiful achievement of political life in the late twentieth century was the international movement for democracy that brought down several dozen dictatorships of every possible description--authoritarian, communist, fascist, military. It happened on all continents, and it happened peacefully.
The actors in this benign contagion acquired a name: civil society. “Civil“: they were peaceful, meaning that the bomb in the cafe, the assassination of the local official, the paratrooper invasion of the Parliament building, were not their tactics. “Society“: they expressed popular will, not the will of governments. The movement broke or made governments. It was their master.
Recently, however, the movement has undergone a change both at home and abroad.
Civil society groups in the more prosperous societies began to lend welcome assistance in poorer ones. But governments also joined in.
Unlike private civil groups, governments are in their nature interested in power, and the civil society movements clearly exercised it. Here in America, the National Endowment for Democracy was created in the early eighties. Funded by Congress and governed by a board that includes active and retired politicians of both parties, it nevertheless calls itself a “nongovernmental“ organization. Its declared mission was to support democracy per se, not any political party, but the distinction was soon lost in practice. Most of the $10.5 million handed out in Nicaragua during the elections of 1990 went to the opposition to the Sandinistas, who were duly voted out of power. In 2002, the Endowment funded groups in Venezuela that backed the briefly successful coup against President Hugo Ch‡vez, in which the Venezuelan Parliament, judiciary and constitution were suspended.
Something similar was meanwhile happening within the United States. Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley summarized the process in a March 30 op-ed in the New York Times: Large donors founded partisan think tanks more interested in propagandizing than in thinking; then proceeded to establish seemingly independent but actually politically subservient news organizations such as FOX News and the Rush Limbaugh show. Recently, some new wrinkles in the process have emerged: the use of fake newscasters, pretending to report from an independent news station while actually working for a department of government, and fake reporters, such as “Jeff Gannon,“ the imposter permitted by the White House to ask sycophantic questions of the President at White House press conferences.
The strategy of faking civil activity has a long tradition in the foreign sphere. For example, the CIA virtually cut its teeth manipulating popular and intellectual movements in Europe in the late 1940s and 󈧶s. (Indeed, historian Allen Weinstein, who was the National Endowment’s first acting president, has commented, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.“) But the domestic practice is more recent. One of the lesser-known points of origin is the presidency of Richard Nixon, who once ordered his aide Charles Colson to firebomb the Brookings Institution, then called it off.
But he also had some more workable ideas. He told Patrick Buchanan, then his communications director, that he wanted somehow not only to cut off existing “left-wing“ foundations “without a dime“ but also to found a right-wing institute that would seem to be independent but actually be managed by the White House. As Buchanan commented in a memo, “some of the essential objectives of the Institute would have to be blurred, even buried, in all sorts of other activity that would be the bulk of its work, that would employ many people, and that would provide the cover for the more important efforts.“ In this matter, as in so many others, today’s Republican Party is the legatee of Richard Nixon.
Some Democrats want their party to respond in kind. For urgent and understandable reasons, they want to level the playing field. But the cost could be high. In such a world, nothing would be what it seemed. Behind every blogger would lurk the PR spinmeister, behind every reporter would stand the political hack, behind every charming demonstrator holding her banner--rose, orange, purple, or cedar--would lie the cold hand of the state. In the name of civil society, civil society would be spoiled.
OUTLOOKINDIA.COM

At the dawn of the Internet Age, many visionaries predicted that the rising tide of global interconnectedness would gradually eliminate sovereign borders and nationalism. The experience of China, which today is more open than in anytime in the past, however, belies that expectation. Highly connected and Internet-savvy Chinese youth today have emerged as virulent nationalists, hampering the government’s attempt at better relations with Japan. Meanwhile, rising Japanese nationalism is adding fuel to the fire.
Anti-Japanese sentiment among younger people here is unprecedented--and increasing significantly. Ironically, China’s opening up and the Internet are playing a key role in this trend.
The best illustration is the ongoing cyber-roots campaign against Japan’s bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Organisers of a petition, which started among Chinese in the US, originally hoped for one million signatories. However, due to Internet popularity in China, the figure, the organisers claim, has already surpassed 22 million. Petitioners hope their pressure will force Beijing to keep Japan out of the Security Council--a move that would seriously damage already worsening relations. Chinese nationalists have taken advantage of the limited free space on the Internet to express their anger toward Japan. They have advocated boycotts of Japanese goods, denounced Japan in chat rooms, and sought to alter the government’s policies toward Japan.
The Western media has been quick to point an accusing finger at the Chinese government for failing to rein in anti-Japanese sentiments, accusing it of fanning the flames of nationalism in an attempt to shore up its own legitimacy. Experts on Sino-Japanese relations insist that the government is, indeed, worried about the current trend, but fears that appearing weak-kneed vis-ˆ-vis Japan will damage Party legitimacy. The web is closely monitored by the government, which has shut down sites for going beyond permissible limits. But curbing anger against Japanese poses a new challenge.
While the government routinely deals harshly with dissident behaviour, the Japan question appears to be its major vulnerability. Last year, anti-Japanese outbursts on the country’s fiercely nationalist web sites led Beijing to reluctantly take a tough stance when Japan arrested seven Chinese activists for illegally sailing to one of the contested Senakaku Islands. Angry postings flooded the Internet, calling for a hard-line approach against Japan.
The government hoped that the case would fade quickly and allowed protesters to demonstrate in front of the Japanese consulate for several days. When a nationalist web site actively protested a hefty purchase order for high-speed trains from Japan, it was shut down. But the deal seems to be in trouble.
Jiang Wenran, professor of political science at the University of Alberta, Canada, says that while Beijing has not made an effort to shut down the online petition drive, the government is not encouraging it. “The order is out to lead it in a moderate way“, he says.
Chinese observers say there’s no real incentive for the government--or Japan, for that matter--to allow relations to further deteriorate. The Communist Party is well aware that nationalism can be a double-edged sword: Should petitioners force Beijing to veto Japan’s Security Council membership, the energy could then be easily turned inward, to sensitive domestic issues.
YALEGLOBAL.YALE.EDU

Bangladeshis have much to be proud of. They achieved independence and a pluralistic state after a hard-fought war. Nearly twenty years later they took to the streets dissatisfied with military rule and stood united for democracy. Lately Bangladesh has gained notoriety for the spread of extremism, but jihadis don’t spring from the ground like mushrooms.
In October 2001, a large majority voted the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) in a four-party alliance into office. The alliance included two hard-line Muslim parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islami Oikyo Jote. Since then, the existence and growth of a radical Islamist movement has been officially denied by the BNP. Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman called the rise of extremists “a fake issue,“ and “foul propaganda.“ The denial went on for years.
But extremists have spread their ideology, primarily among the disadvantaged poor, using over 700 mosques built across the country by the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society. In 2002, US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said the society “had been stealing from widows and orphans to fund Al-Qaeda terrorism.“
The January assassination of former Finance Minister Shah AMS Kibria sparked turmoil in Bangladesh. A leader of the center-left opposition, the Awami League (AL), Kibria was murdered in a bomb blast.
Apparently the assassination of Kibria finally got the attention of Bangladesh’s Western donors, who called an informal meeting to discuss the deteriorating law and order situation and rise of terrorist activities in Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi officials were pointedly not invited to attend several meetings. Reportedly, EU officials considered cutting Bangladesh’s aid portion. Just as this meeting was about to convene, the Bangladeshi government took action against the terrorists, banning two Islamist groups and arresting several people.
Among those arrested was Dr. Muhammad Asadullah Al-Galib, head of an Islamist militant group. Dr. Galib is a Rajshahi University Arabic teacher. The banned groups, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Jamaatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), are said to be complicit in the series of bomb attacks and murders throughout Bangladesh. In a rather startling turn, the ban was not applied to Harkat-Ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI), which has confirmed ties to Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front. Terrorist mastermind Bangla Bhai is still at large.
While demonstrating the impact Western pressure may have, many observers see the ruling was late, half-hearted, and toothless. “Had the government been really sincere and not complacent about the rise of fanaticism and extremism, it would have acted long before instead of issuing a press note...hours before the Washington meeting,“ parliamentary opposition leader Saber Hossain Chowdhury said.
Politics in Bangladesh has nearly ground to a halt, with the AL boycotting Parliament, and many BNP members not bothering to show up either. A series of AL-sponsored hartals (nationwide strikes) has exhausted the population and damaged the economy.
Bangladesh is light years ahead of some other nations in achieving representative government. The issues it faces today may be a telling indication of tomorrow’s concerns in other regions.
The rise of extremism in Bangladesh is a cautionary tale of the dangers of a democracy in form more than substance, and of social constructs that work daily to inhibit democratic growth.
A government-controlled media, everywhere it exists, is an anti-democratic institution. Similarly an executive branch that wields influence in the judiciary or bureaucracy poisons democracy. An educational system that does not teach economically viable skills is a disservice to the nation. Corruption denies citizens their equality, and it prevents achievement-based social mobility. Fringe parties cannot be permitted to undermine the law, the political system, or the centrist consensus.
ARABNEWS.COM