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COMMENTARY
December 11, 2004
D for democracy
Salama Nimat an Arab journalist writing from Washington for the London-based Al-Hayat is shocked and awed to realize that the first two free and general elections in the whole history of the Arab nation will happen in January in Iraq, under the auspices of the American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation . Makes him feel almost warm and fuzzy towards Western imperialism. He is the latest of several prominent Arab journalists bold enough to point at the obvious. He is so indiscreet as to mention that the only places in the Arab world where the press and media are truly free are now -- Iraq and Palestine. (Though the truth is Palestinian media are under the thumb of the Palestinian Authority.) Which is why he must file his articles from a considerable distance. As one of my own Arab correspondents put it If one has been occupied for some time by the Saud family, or the Assad family, or the Mubarak family, let alone the Hussein family, one begins rather to envy the sort of people who get to be occupied by the Bush family. (He is far from alone but the fact I cannot use his name without imperilling his life suggests he is a long way from power.) The new voices are muted and while there are not yet demonstrations as on the streets of Kiev demanding free honest and general elections in Riyadh Damascus Cairo and elsewhere I do nevertheless sense a changing tone in even state-controlled Arab media. Call it a new curiosity about what democracy might entail. I cannot quantify it but I can smell it. The thing itself ("democracy") is frankly a Western export and has been accepted as an import from the West -- in Japan South Korea Taiwan and no w all along that Pacific Rim. It was carried in their baggage by the British to India and by Europe's Jews to the Levant. The Americans airlifted it to Afghanistan recently. It is presently pushing and shoving across the Steppes. Yet even where it is imposed it is warmly welcomed. (See Afghanistan.) There is no question it is in demand. Why then are we only interested in whether Ukrainians may vote freely? Why aren't we equally engaged -- emotionally intellectually and morally -- when freedom independence and democracy are at issue in many other countries? I will tell you but you won't like the answer. It is because the Ukrainians are white people and the other candidates for democratization are yellow and brown. This is especially so in Western Europe and nowhere more than in France: where the whole idea of spreading democracy beyond "our common European home" is characteristically met with anti-American sneering. Even the Ukrainians depended on quick thinking and response from the Bush administration to build international pressure. From Europe they could only expect "mediators". For the people struggling to make or preserve democratic gains in more exotic climes it's the Bush administration or nothing. There is no huge Western media uproar about Zimbabwe for instance. Or about Taiwan where the election for the Legislative Yuan is taking place today in which there is a good chance the "Pan-Green" coalition which wants a free and independent Taiwan may edge out the "Pan-Blue" coalition consisting of the descendents of the old Kuomintang whose leaders increasingly advocate appeasement of and political integration with mainland China. There are spooky resemblances to the situation in Ukraine. The incumbent President Chen Shui-bian is the Yushchenko of this piece himself a moderate bourgeois politician trying to gain what independence he can for his country against constant Chinese threats. His rival Lien Chan who leads the Pan-Blue is the Yanukovich -- prepared to serve Beijing's interests even by stirring up domestic ethnic divisions that Beijing may exploit. The Putin of the piece is Hu Jintao the Chinese President who is prepared to throw around his weight quite crudely to intimidate Taiwan demanding subservience. In the time since I last wrote about this issue the Red Chinese have added at least another hundred surface-to-surface missiles on the other side of the Taiwan Strait pointed at the island's cities and infrastucture. It is a very crude weight indeed. But do we care about this? Not that I've heard. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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