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Arab News Editorial: Democracy Games

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  • Arab News Editorial: Democracy Games

    Arab News
    Dec 1 2004

    Editorial: Democracy Games


    The political drama in Ukraine is being replicated across the Black
    Sea in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia. There too, Moscow has
    been deeply involved. There too, its candidate faces defeat but is
    busy pulling as many strings as possible in order to turn the
    democratically expressed will of the people on its head - with
    Moscow's full support.

    In last month's presidential elections, opposition candidate Sergey
    Bagapsh was widely thought to have defeated the Kremlin-backed
    candidate, Raul Khadzhimba. That was recognized by the region's
    Supreme Court but it then reversed its decision because of pressure
    from the outgoing government. The government has demanded a repeat
    election and the outgoing President Vladislav Ardzinba now refuses to
    step down until one has taken place. Bagapsh, however, intends to
    have himself inaugurated this Saturday and he has a massive army of
    supporters to back him.

    Last Friday they stormed government buildings in the capital,
    Sukhumi. The next day, perhaps sensing the direction things were
    moving, Parliament recognized him as the new president. But matters
    are getting messy: Moscow has threatened to intervene in Abkhazia
    despite the fact that the province is part of an independent country.
    Were that to happen, it would trigger a major international row.

    Moscow of course cares not at all. It has done it before. It backed
    the occupation of the disputed Armenian-majority region of Nagorno
    Karabakh to weaken Azerbaijan; it supports the Russian-dominated
    breakaway region of Transdniester to undermine Moldova; it supported
    the Abkhaz breakaway from the very start to punish Georgia for
    leaning toward NATO and the West. Now it is busy stirring up threats
    of secession in Ukraine if the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko becomes
    president.

    On Saturday, the Ukrainian representative to the EU said that Ukraine
    was an old nation but a very young democracy. He could just as easily
    have been talking about Abkhazia or Azerbaijan or any of the other
    former Soviet states that are experiencing so many difficulties with
    democracy. Not that being `a young democracy' is any guarantee of
    things working well, as the row over who won the US election four
    years ago proves.

    There are lessons to be learned about democracy in places where it
    does not have roots. Before condemning Russia for its own retreat
    from democracy or its unashamed meddling in its former empire,
    however, we should not ignore the evident hypocrisy of the rest of
    us. In 1996, when Boris Yeltsin defeated the renascent communists in
    the Russian elections, most of us breathed a heavy sigh of relief
    - because we did not want the communists to win. But the election was
    fixed. Likewise, the world said nothing in 1991 when the Algerian
    elections were quashed after the Islamists had won.

    Definitions of democracy, it seems, are not unlike definitions of
    terrorism. They can too easily depend on where we stand and who else
    is involved.
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