“What’s so good about having the vote?” is the teasing sub-title to BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawksley’s even more eye-catching title: DEMOCRACY KILLS. As a starter, he quotes Churchill’s famous dictum: “It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

And contrasts it with (President) Obama’s, reference to Iraq:  “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other”. Yes, you heard right! He did say

He then poses this question: if the world were destroyed except for Cuba, with its repression and excellent public health, and pre-quake Haiti with its elections and free air-waves, which would you choose? Dubai, where you can buy anything you want – the world’s service centre and shopping mall – provided you keep your political mouth shut; or Baghdad?

Hawksley fearlessly treads the no-go areas of our planet, where democracy has been tried and found wanting. He starts his tour in the cocoa plantations of Ivory Coast where the multi-nationals are primarily responsible to their shareholders and not to the moral values of the consumers. This allows the chocolate companies to turn a blind eye to the slave labour of children, the soles of whose feet are cut to prevent them escaping.

Next continent of call: Middle East and Islamic Asia. First, obviously, Iraq. In the words of an Iraqi technician he interviewed as they both watched a military convoy pass carrying huge concrete blocks to make anti-blast walls, with a soldier in the leading vehicle swinging his machine-gun towards them:

“Democracy means military occupation and politicians who steal money and support terrorism”. And quoting Usama, his Iraqi translator: “You know what they say? Be nice to the Americans, or they’ll punish you with democracy!”

Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, much of a muchness. Little democracy, much wealth. Compare them to Bangladesh, with its democratic debate, and squalor; or India –“democracy’s contradiction” – with enduring photo-impressions of poor, homeless people. Yet Singapore and Malaysia were a mixed relief, with their well-paved roads and working telephones and repression of political freedom.

In Latin America he found a definite move towards the Left: Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and most famously Argentina. In 2002 its economy collapsed and money became worthless overnight. The West took no notice, until 2008-9 when its own financial system almost came tumbling down.

It tore up the rule-book so often used to lecture poor countries and bailed out its own people to cushion the fall and retain social stability. In Serbia and Kosovo, he discovered how the post-Soviet era and the new “freedoms” have emphasized the cultural and political fault-line dividing West from East.

But in tiny Taiwan, democracy of a kind does work. How come?
What does democratic success depend on: right leader at right time, proper institution-building, trade and the right “mentor”, the political friend/nation who can guide a country’s development over the years? All of these.

- April 07, 2010 by Martyn Drakard

The Observer, Bookreview

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"Democracy Kills"

by Humphrey Hawksley
Publisher Macmillan, 2009
397 pages, price Shs 29, 600

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Source: www.observer.ug/index.php (accessed on 13.04.2010)