Preview of the Seoul Conference on The Community of Democracies
The Future of Democracy - Regional Views
Transcript #3
CHAIR: HERMAN COHEN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AFRICAN AFFAIRS
PANELISTS: ADEL ABDELLATIF, UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM; GAUTAM ADHIKARI, SENIOR CONSULTANT, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY; GWENDOLYN MIKELL, DIRECTOR, AFRICAN STUDIES PROGRAM, SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY; AMBASSADOR CARLOS PORTALES, MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, REPUBLIC OF CHILE

HERMAN COHEN: Okay, good afternoon. I hope you’ve enjoyed your lunch, those who had lunch here. My name is Herman Cohen, and I will be the chairman of your panelists today – this afternoon, to talk about the future of democracy. I am not making a presentation. My background is in African Affairs, but we – we have a presentation by Professor Gwendolyn Mikkel on that.

I just want to make one remark about the conventional wisdom that the flood of democratization in the world coincided with the end of the Cold War. I disagree with that. I think if you look at the area where I have spent most of my time in Africa, and I believe Latin America as well, the decline of authoritarianism began well before the end of the Cold War, I would say in the early ‘80s, and what you saw in the early ‘90s is an explosion of multi-partyism. But that was not the beginning; it was just something in a line of evolution with the end of authoritarianism. And I would say the democratization progress and process in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere ran parallel with the decline of the Soviet system. It was not caused by the decline of the Soviet system. Okay, I would be willing to argue with that at some other point, but that’s not what we’re here for today.

We’re talking about the future of democracy. Democracy is a process. It’s moving, it never stands still, although in some cases I guess it does and we want to see which way it’s going. I have a tendency to look back and say, well, are we better off now than 10 years ago? It’s a very annoying thing sometimes but I think it’s a good way to do that.

So let me introduce our panelists as they’re seated here. We have Dr. Gwendolyn Mikell on my far left, chairman of African studies at Georgetown University and senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has extensive experience living and working in Africa and is one of the leading experts on Africa, not only in Washington but in the entire United States.

On my immediate left is Mr. Gautam Adhikari, who has a career in journalism on the Times of India, and has spent time here as a Nieman fellow at Harvard and at the Kennedy School, and is now heading up the program, the Asian Center for Democratic Governance at the National Endowment for Democracy.

On my immediate right is Dr. Adel Abdellatif, a career diplomat in the Egyptian Foreign Service, specializing in Middle East policy, who is now with the United Nations Development Program as regional program coordinator on Governance in the Arab Region.

And on my far right is Ambassador Carlos Portales, the director general for Foreign Policy at the Chilean Foreign Ministry; essentially the highest-ranking diplomat in the Chilean Foreign Ministry.

And we will be starting today with Dr. Abdellatif, who has a PowerPoint presentation on the state of democracy in the Middle East.

DR. ADEL ABDELLATIF: Good afternoon. I am honored to be with you today in the Woodrow Wilson Center, and I’m honored also to be in a panel chaired by Herman Cohen, whom I heard about him a lot. I worked in Africa and his name is very well known there, and this is the first time for me to meet with him.

Much has been said this morning about Islam and democracy and the state of democracy in the Arab countries. What I am going to talk about today is the future of democracy in the Arab region. I will focus on the Arab countries, mainly the members of the Arab League. These countries, as you will see, what we mean – first of all, what we define as the Arab countries. Arab countries are the members of the Arab League. We are not going here to define who is Arab and who is not Arab, because in the Arab countries you will find also many ethnic groups who may not speak the language, and many also who may not share Islam in the region, like countries in Egypt and Lebanon.

I will not speak about countries like Israel, Iran and Turkey. Of course they are part of the Middle East, but part of our work that has been done on the Arab Human Development Report was focusing on the Arab countries, but occasionally I may refer to countries, particularly to Turkey.

The counties that constitute the Arab League, as you will see here, are 22 countries. Some of them, they may not be known to many of you as Arab countries, like Mauritania or Djibouti or Somalia. These are also members of the Arab League, and they have been included in our Human Development Report.

I will give you a glimpse of the population because we speak a lot about these people of the region and don’t know how many they are. Currently there are 281 million that live in this region, and with the prospects, the number may increase in 2020 either to 459 million or 410 million. It depends on the fertility rate and the growth rate in the region. But this gives us an impression that you have almost a country with the size of the population of the United States, now the 281 million, and give you also an impression that you will have around 400 million Arabs living in the southern part of the Mediterranean, very close to Europe.

Most importantly, the number of the population under the age of 14 -- you will find that currently there are around 150 million under the age of 14, and it gives you an impression that there is – the future of this region lies on how – on education, of course, of those who are around 14, and the chances and options for them to find employment.

Although we talk a lot about the Arabs, you know, and we intend to put all of them in the same place, but of course there are many differences. The differences -- if we take the Human Development Report Index you will find differences among the Arabs. You will find very rich countries, like in the Gulf countries, and find very poor countries, like Somalia or Djibouti, but there are also many differences. I said here the income, the population, the political structure, and empowerment of women. I will speak very briefly here about political structure.

Although the Arab countries, they share the same history, but this history also they differ because many countries they have old civilizations, like Egypt, Iraq or Syria or Yemen or Morocco, and others, you know, they don’t have – they don’t share the same depth of history. The political structure -- as we will see, there are monarchies and republics, and inside most of the monarchies you will find many differences. The Kingdom of Morocco is not like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So although we tend to put many indicators that may gather all these countries together, but we have to take into consideration the history of these countries and the political structure.

Points of similarities. Although the history makes some differences, but the Arabs, since the birth of Islam, have been sharing more or less the same history. They have been more or less governed by the same government or center of power either from Syria or from Egypt, and lately by the Ottoman Empire, since around the 1500’s most of the Arabs have been governed by the Ottoman Empire, except Morocco. Of course, also the control of the Ottoman Empire on the Arab countries was not the same. It was very strong in countries like Iraq, Syria and Egypt, but it was less strong in countries like Yemen, for example, or the Gulf countries.

The language and the religion – all the Arab countries, most of them, they speak the same language, which is Arabic, but of course you will find ethnic groups, like the Kurds in Iraq, they don’t speak the Arabic – they speak the Arabic, but it is not their mother tongue. You have also the Berber in the Maghreb countries. They have their own language. And Islam is shared by most of the Arab countries, but still you have minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, and you have also some very small Jewish minorities still there in Yemen and Morocco.

Well, something they share also: the region and its stability. You will find in most of the Arab countries is where the Arab countries that have bordered with Israel, of course they have been facing the war since 1948, but also you have the instability in other regions, like in Algeria, like in Yemen between the South and the North, and the same thing in Iraq.

So you will find in the last 50 years, this region has known many wars, not only the Arab-Israeli war but the war between the North and the South in Yemen. There was also countries like Libya involved in war with Chad. There is also the civil war in Algeria, and there is also the conflict between Morocco and Algeria on Western Sahara.

I will put some facts about human poverty in the region. A lot of progress has happened since 50 years in the region about an education and in infant mortality, but still you will find that we have 65 million others that cannot read and write, and most of these are women. We have 10 million out of school. Population growth is very high in the region, and 65 million, as we said before, cannot read and write.

The problem here, when it comes to education, is mainly the problem of education of women. If we go to the economy, we all – some of us may think that it is a very rich region, but in fact it is not as rich as we think. We will find the GDP of all Arab countries combined is maybe around the same size of a country like Spain, which has 60 million population only, while the Arab countries, as I’ve said, 281 million. And at present growth it will take the average Arab citizen more than 40 years to double his or her income because lately, since the ‘80s and the ‘90s, the economic growth in this region was slowing down.

If you go to facts about – the indicators on governance and democracy in the region, which we have – it was been compiled by the Global Human Development Report -- you will find that the region has – most of the countries have the lowest score among the other regions, either in quality scores, civil liberties, political rights, press freedom or voice and accountability. The same thing as you see here from Freedom House, out of seven world regions, the Arab region has the lowest average score for civil and political freedoms. You will see also on political stability and lack of violence, law and order, rule of law, government effectiveness, the Arab countries have very low scores. I'm going very fast here because I would prefer that we focus at the end on the question that we are addressing here, which is the question of the future.

Here is also some indicators about corruption, and you will see that very few countries actually are represented in the Perception Index of the Transparency International. We have only three countries. These are also the indicators on voice and accountability, and you will see the gap here between the region and other regions of the world.

On women empowerment, this is one of the real deficits that we have, of course, identified in our Arab Human Development Report in addition to knowledge and freedom. You will find women are suffering, particularly from the lack of same status as men when it comes to citizenship. And you will find, for example, that a lot of women in most of the Arab countries, in fact, women cannot even pass nationalities to their children if they are married to a non-Arab. If an Egyptian woman is married to a Palestinian, she cannot pass the nationality to her children, and this is making a lot of, of course, family problems and employment problems in many countries of the region.

Without exception, all the countries of the region, a woman does not have the same nationality rights as men. And of course, because of the refugees, that movement in the region and because of mixed marriage among the Arabs, you will find a lot of women in the region, they suffer because of this fact, although many countries, they talk about Arab nationalism, but even any Arab woman married to an Arab man but not from the same country, she will not – her children will not enjoy the same rights.

As we said also on political participation, you will find the lowest score in the world when it comes to seats in parliament. It has been improving a little bit, and lately, in the last elections in Morocco, 35 women joined the parliament, which may improve a little bit this score. Before the last elections in Morocco there were only three women in the parliament of Morocco. This is also the gender empowerment measure, which is developed by the Global Human Development Report.

Here is the status of ratification of the principle international human rights treaties, the six conventions. You will find that since the ‘90s, a lot of Arab countries have been acceding to this convention, and you will find still there are gaps when it comes particularly to the CEDAW, which is the Convention for the Discrimination Against Women. Still there are around seven or eight Arab countries that didn’t accede to this convention.

In somewhere the region stands – and in fact you will find very weak political participation in the region, and the executive branch is almost controlling everything. Even if there are parliaments or there is a judiciary, you will find that the judiciary is lacking independence and the parliaments are only there in order to rubber stamp the laws that are enacted by the government.

And the most important thing – the last point is that there is a demand for democracy in the region. Since the independence of all Arab countries, there were a lot of confrontation and demonstrations in most of the Arab countries, with few exceptions, but the supply of democracy is lacking. So, in fact, what happened in the ‘90s, you will find people, they don’t have any interest in expressing their needs because they don’t feel that the other part is replying to their needs, and it created a status, what do you call it, of apathy and discontent.

The region -- of course, after September 11^th you will find that the situation, although it has raised many questions, did not improve, and I will be here quoting a report that was issued by the Arab Organization for Human Development that since September 11^th, restrictions were still the norm for the course of general freedom in most Arab countries. During the last year, restrictions were made even more severe in both legislation and procedures in several Arab countries. This phenomenon increased as a direct result of the September 11 attacks.

So, what are the facts and the challenges facing the region? Well, we have here, if the status quo will continue, the situation of course is – again, it’s the will of the people. And when we say, what does it mean, the status quo, it means that there is not political will for change, and if sometime there is a political will, there are vested interests against change. It happens that we have a younger generation coming to power and the younger generation sometimes is not able to do any change because there are still the old guard for the vested interests. And if there is a political will, what we will face in the institutional deficiencies in many countries where there is a political will from the leadership, you will find there is a lack of experience of those in the decision-making positions. And you find also that the political structures will not be able to respond to the needs of the people, so if in case that we have this political will, that’s the role where the international community can help in strengthening the institutions that can work for good governance or democratic governance.

While there is also the option of a total fundamental change -- and what I mean in fundamental change, I'm not referring only to the fundamentalists in the region, because the forces that are opposing the governments are not only Islamic movements. There are also other movements, of course less – they don’t enjoy the same strength but they are not necessarily sharing the democratic values. And that’s where we find most of the time there is a problem when there is a political will, like in Algeria in the early ‘90s, and the government felt that the Islamic will – of course they gained elections, the government of course withdrew, and they did not continue the course of democracy as it would have been planned.

In fact, many Arab countries use this argument that any fundamental change may not get democratic government in position as a way to stay in power. And we don’t know in fact if there is a free election in any country who will come into power. And this leaves a void for a new leadership. There are no options in front of many countries in the region of the people who will replace the current leaders who are in power.

The only positive change that took place in the ‘90s, and until now happened in Morocco when King Hassan -- the late King Hassan in fact invited the opposition party of the Socialist Union to be the prime minister, Abdul Rahman El-Youssefi, and this was the only managed kind of transition from complete control of the king to get another political power to share with him this power. And in fact, it paid a little bit in the last elections because we have seen that there are many political parties that have joined the political process. We found that even some Islamic movement, the Party of Justice and Development, came to the elections and they shared -- and they had, of course, a lot of seats, you know, but they were not the majority.

So I think the possibility of having a managed transition will pay, but it will take some time. Of course, in the case of Morocco, the government is placed in a very good position because the king himself is the commander of the believers. He is accepted by all the people as representing, of course, even the – he has also descended from the prophet, so he is a figure that is accepted, and it permits him to take some decisions, you know, to get other factions or other parties to share with him power. But it may not be the same case in other Arab countries, like the case in Algeria, like the case in Egypt or like the case in Syria. So it will be interesting in the future to see what will happen and what decisions will be taken and what will happen if anything happens in Iraq.

I would like to finish this by a photograph that I have taken from the Al-Jazeera website and from a French newspaper called Le Courier. We have two options here. Either the situation will continue, so we will have exclusion and apathy, or this photograph from the last elections in Morocco, we will have women participating and we may move to a situation of inclusion and participation.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. COHEN: Thank you. That was very interesting. I guess if one looks at the Middle East and tries to sum up the state of democracy in one word, you can use the word emerging, as that sort of signifies that people are talking about it at least.

Okay, now we’ll go to Mr. Gautam Adhikari to talk about Asia.

GAUTAM ADHIKARI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The chairman privately told us that we’ll get the technologically competent out of the way first before we start us. So, may I – (chuckles) – may I shut this down?

MR. COHEN: Yes.

MR. ADHIKARI: Okay. I’m not only technologically challenged, I’m also intimidated by the fact that I have to speak in about 15 minutes about the future of democracy in a region of the world that has a little over one-fifth of the world’s population, and they don’t speak one language. So, therefore, in a way I’m glad I don’t have a PowerPoint presentation, because it’s difficult to put down to try and capture the complexity of the various cultures, the various ethnic groupings, the various religious groupings and the various tensions that exist in this region that stretches from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in one format. So what I shall try to do is to highlight a few, what to my mind are interesting points, and then of course I hope there will be some discussion, which I would be happy to join.

I would start by saying that this region is a crucial testing ground for democracy, or for the future of democracy, and yet today is at a critical juncture. From Afghanistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, inhabitants of this region have nervous eyes turned towards the future. Will the turmoil in so many parts of the region turn into widespread chaos or are there real prospects for sustainable liberty and prosperity? Is more democracy the answer to people’s aspirations or is it, as some suggest, and continue to suggest in the region, irrelevant and unhelpful for stability and growth?

We are still debating democracy. I mean, for a lot of people who live in the advanced industrialized societies and urbanized societies, the debate is behind you. But not in the region that I’m talking about, where there is still a debate going on – and this is not even the Asian values argument, but it’s an argument that has not been resolved and people are still evaluating the efficacy of democracy as a means of growth, of poverty alleviation, and of producing stability for the long run. Of course, you know which side I come from, but still – and I’m not trying to preach to the converted out here about efficacy of democracy -- I’m just trying to highlight a point that this debate is going on, and therefore underlies much of the uncertainty over the prospects of democracy in the region, a point that I’ll come to in a moment.

So what I shall do is quickly go over the state of democratic functioning in some of the countries in the region. I’ll start with Sri Lanka and Nepal in one group because these are countries which, in the case of Sri Lanka, has continuously functioned as a democracy; in the case of Nepal, has recently started being a democracy all over again. Both have been affected by internal secessionist or revolutionary movements. In the case of Nepal, it’s the Maoist movement which has very recently led to the dismissal of the democratically elected government by the king, and a suspension of democracy for a temporary period – it’s always for temporary periods, or that’s what people say -- but that’s one setback that we have had in the region in the recent past.

In the case of Sri Lanka, from the year 1983, if I’m not mistaken, there has been a continuous movement, violent for the most part, a guerilla movement for secession of the northern part surrounding Jaffna, by the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE as it’s known, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Now, that is a movement that has also disrupted the normal democratic functioning of Sri Lanka. Sir Lanka and India have been two countries in the region which have been continuously democratic, but at the same time, the normal functioning of Sri Lankan democracy has been affected for a long period by the civil war that has plagued that country for close to two decades now.

But there’s hope there because currently there is a peace movement on. There are talks on, and the current democratically elected government of Sri Lanka has begun a process, with the help of the Norwegians, where talks are currently going on to arrive at some kind of a settlement. However, there are problems within Sri Lanka’s democratic framework right now which might actually impede those talks and lead to instability again if they’re not resolved, which is that Sri Lanka’s president, who has considerable constitutional powers, Chandrika Kumaratunga, belongs to one party, and the prime minister belongs to another, and they have been rivals for a long time. So in a way, the democratic process, as it’s being fought out in the Sri Lankan political sphere, might actually delay peace talks. There is some talk now of the current government, that is the prime ministerial side of it, calling for early elections so that this problem can be resolved, but on this depends the future stability of the island of Sri Lanka.

To talk about Afghanistan, one needn’t spend too much time. All of you are familiar with the situation out there. It has never really been a democratic nation. Some would say it’s never been a nation, and it still isn’t. So there are really two tasks out there. One is nation building. I think the task is sort of going on -- I don’t know how successful it will be -- but the other is nation building within a democratic framework. At this point of time, what we have is the semblance of a democratic framework and a democratic government operating out of Kabul, but outside Kabul it would be very hard to argue that Afghanistan is operating either as a nation or as a democracy, though the situation in Kabul, and to an extent, Kandahar and some of the larger urban areas, is infinitely better than what it was under the Taliban. Certainly the Afghan women would testify to that, and they have made enormous gains. They can once again go to school and college. They can once again work in radio stations. And there are women who are now ministers in the current Afghan government.

So it’s made considerable progress since last year, but at the same time the prospects of Afghan democracy depend on the prospects and the ability of Afghanistan to first congeal into a nation. We shall wait and see, and I think the input of the international community in this respect is of crucial importance. It’s of critical importance because I think the withdrawal of the international community, particularly the United States, at a certain critical time in Afghanistan’s history in the late 1980s, caused enormous problems for that nation, or for that budding nation, and I hope that same mistake will not be repeated.

To talk about Bangladesh, which has been mentioned earlier by Mr. Omar Noman as one of those Muslim majority countries which can be classified clearly as at least a partial democracy, I would say it is certainly more than a partial democracy. Bangladesh’s problem I see as one of governance rather than of democracy. It has a lot of positive features. Nearly 75 percent of registered voters always turn out in its elections, and the last one was held in October 2001. These are remarkable figures of popular involvement in the democratic process. Add to that the fact that Bangladeshis have, in the three parliaments since 1991, chosen women to be their prime minister, and a bright picture emerges of a functioning democracy in an impoverished nation.

In fact, the picture is more blurred. But there are a number of positive aspects to the functioning of democracy in Bangladesh, which is one of only a few predominantly Islamic nations trying out democracy. It’s almost 90 percent Muslim, with the rest of the population being largely Hindu. It’s the third-largest nation with a predominantly Islamic population. It has a free and feisty press. It has evolved in its process of political competition broadly into a two-party system in which the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party have alternated in power, with support from coalition partners.

In 1991, after a popular upset, the politicians of Bangladesh did a remarkable thing. They managed to push the military back into the barracks and put the country’s security efforts under tight civilian control. This is something remarkable, not just because it’s an Islamic country but because it’s a new democracy, which until then had been plagued by the phenomenon of democracy interrupted, which is that the military kept coming in to set things right and of course made a mess of things all along. It is also a relatively homogenous country, with few linguistic or cultural issues dividing the people, though occasional conflicts have disrupted an otherwise harmonious coexistence of the main two religious groups.

The problems really begin with Bangladesh’s confrontational style of politics. That is a tendency for the party which is elected to power to consider itself literally as a ruling party that does not see much of a consultative role in government for its own coalition partners, leave alone the opposition. Well, the opposition, more often than not, prefers to boycott parliament. Today the situation is a little different, the opposition has gone back into parliament, butever since ’91, when Bangladesh established a constitutional civilian rule permanently, this has been a major problem. The opposition has mostly not been in parliament.

Although elections now are more or less free and fair, the losing parties never seem to accept the results. As a result, democracy for the most part has remained sort of on one leg in Bangladesh -- crippled. Governance has suffered; corruption has thrived. Transparency International calls Bangladesh “the most corrupt nation on earth,” not something that the Bangladeshis are proud of, but they’re aware of it. And with the self-imposed blockage of a legitimate outlet in parliament, the party in opposition takes to the streets much more often to further its political agenda than to follow legitimate democratic means to voice its opposition to what the government is doing, or its criticism, which is a very necessary part of the democratic exercise.

Then if we add the influence of illegitimate money and muscle power in political campaigning and a recent trend of businessmen and traders to enter government for personal profit, it is possible that Bangladesh will one day again witness popular disenchantment with democracy, as it has in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and people hankering after the supposed stability of authoritarian regimes run by the military, as in fact has been happening in Pakistan, to which we shall come a bit later.

To briefly mention one development that is a very recent one -- which I learned about only this morning through my friend from Bangladesh sitting in the audience out here -- is that the civilian government, for the first time, has actually called out the army again two days ago to keep law and order because things are spinning out of control, for a variety of reasons, and there’s a suspicion that the al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are operating within Bangladesh. Two days ago the army was asked to go and round up as many people as possible and they’ve rounded up 3,000. If I am not mistaken, that's the figure I heard. And while this does happen in other countries – I mean, you take the army’s help to do a lot of things – the Pentagon is helping the people who are trying to get the sniper out here – but once you let the army in again in a basic civilian function of maintaining law and order, you do open up a chink through which they might again start getting out of the barracks. However, this is a recent problem and it may not lead to any kind of alarming outcome.

I’ll come to India first and talk about it briefly because, once again, I think India is pretty well known – its democratic functioning – to most of you out here, and I’ll deliberately leave Pakistan for the last because that’s the most difficult case.

India, from its inception, has had an ongoing debate about its identity. Some have asserted that it should be a Hindu nation, giving due recognition to the wishes of the 82 percent majority of its population. Others, notably the founder of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, and the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the majority of the framers of the Indian constitution felt it would be a mistake, in contrary to the realities of India’s diverse cultural makeup, to turn it into a nation based on Hindu nationalism. Instead, they thought it should be a secular liberal democracy, tolerant of all faiths and ethnic groups.

Contrary to the view of those who say that liberal democracy is not appropriate for a developing nation looking for stability and growth, India, in a number of ways, demonstrates how democracy can work in the long run for the long-term sustainability of social, political and economic development as, again, Omar Noman pointed out -- he actually said a lot of what I wanted to say. But anyway, he mentioned that India’s rate of growth right now, of the economy, is one of the fastest in the world. And this is after 50 years of democracy, so it would be difficult to draw a correlation between democracy and stagnation, as many people used to do, but of course, mercifully, today those arguments are on the defensive now. A half-century ago when India was gaining independence, Winston Churchill was one sage who had said that India had very little chance of surviving. I think merely by existing, India has proven such predictions wrong, but the main point is that it has survived not despite democracy, but because of it. Given its diversity, given its complexity, I think it’s remarkable that it has realized – and most of its leaders, including the leaders of its military, have always accepted -- one fact, that it is not possible to rule India as a dictatorship, to run India as a single authoritarian regime, because its sheer diversity will lead to an explosion at some point of the other. In a way, democracy has let out that steam and has helped India survive.

Critics of India’s democratic viability often say that India’s relative failures in achieving sufficient economic growth and social development are one cause for complaint. As I said earlier, this has changed from 1991 onwards. The thing is that for a long time India was a limited democracy. While political democracy was legislated from day one of the republic, the case for making greater economic rights available to the people – I don’t want to call it economic democracy, but it’s really economic democracy – by allowing more open markets, encouraging enterprise, de-licensing the license-permit raj, as it used to be called, and enabling the huge Indian masses to participate more meaningfully in the economy and in the market process with increased purchasing power and spending growth, didn’t come into play until around ’91, and that, too, from ’91, it has been coming only slowly into play.

But the results so far are already remarkable. As I said, the rate of growth today is one of the fastest in the world, and more importantly, the rate of poverty in India in the last 10 years has come down dramatically. It’s from about 36 percent of the population to 26 percent of the population. Now, in percentage terms, that is only, you know, 10 percentage points, but in terms of people, it comes to, you know, one of the largest nations in the world being taken out of poverty. Let’s say 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty into the middle class, and that is a remarkable achievement that was done within a democratic framework.

I will now end by talking briefly about Pakistan, which of course is the most difficult case in South Asia at this point of time.

Like in India, Pakistan too has had a debate about its identity from its very inception. There was the view of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was the founding father of Pakistan, who saw it as a homeland for Muslims. That was the basis of the two-nations theory under which the Indian sub-continent was divided into two countries. But he saw it as one that would be a democracy, not an Islamic state nor an authoritarian one, and he said as much in many of his speeches. This approach of course was interrupted in the late ‘50s, first by Ayub Kahn, the then chief of army staff in the Pakistani army, and subsequently by many other generals.

But the key turn in Pakistan’s debate over identity really took place under General Zia ul-Haq, who assumed power in 1977. And he said – and I quote here – he said, “Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam, will continue to survive only if it sticks to Islam. That is why I consider the introduction of an Islamic system as an essential prerequisite for this country.” He also saw, like other military rulers before and after him, the armed forces as the only institution capable of guaranteeing Pakistan’s stability in the future, and was ready to allow limited democratic freedoms such as closely supervised elections – as Musharraf is allowing right now -- as long as he could ensure that the military would remain in overall command of the nation’s destiny, once again like Musharraf is doing. Before the last round of elections that were held recently, what Musharraf did was he passed 29 amendments to the constitution and made sure that the military would remain in power, regardless of who won the parliamentary elections.

A brief word on the parliamentary elections that have just taken place in Pakistan, because they’re of great consequence out here, which is that the King’s Party, as it was called, which is the Musharraf-backed party, did not win an overall majority. It came out as the largest party with 77 seats. But the most significant victory was that of the religious fundamentalist alliance of parties, known as the MMA, who got about 55 seats. They have already put forward a candidate for prime minister. Mr. Norman said earlier that the Taliban have won. Well, in a way, yes, if you take the pure sense of the word, taliban, which means students of Islam, they have won. And they have, (a), made a demand that Musharraf should quit, and (b), that the Americans should get out of Pakistan.

But the point is how much of a say they will have and whether Musharraf is himself happy with this outcome or not. I don’t know, but the end result of this election should not, I think, be seen as in any way a result of democracy. It is really a result of democracy interrupted, once again. It is a result of the Pakistani army repeatedly intervening in the process of democratic functioning in this nation of 140 million people, neglecting the needs of its, well, what should I say, it’s women, its poor, its majority, and essentially enriching a ruling elite with which it was in alliance, and preventing the experience of democracy from building in that nation over 50 years. I mean, two nations became independent at the same time, India and Pakistan. There was not much of a cultural difference between the two countries, and the ethnic diversities and the linguistic diversities that existed -- perhaps religious diversity didn’t really exist in that sense, but even Pakistan has some religious diversity. The Sunnis and Shias are in contest in many parts of the country. But they are both similar, and yet one survived over half a century and is now actually flourishing as a democracy -- with many drawbacks which we can discuss during question time -- while the other has been lurching between civilian government and military government., civilian government and military government. It has come to a stage where a majority of its people don’t bother to vote anymore. Only 35 percent came out to vote in this last election. And I would even suspect that the majority of people feel that it is, at this point of time, not probably correct to ask the military to get out of the way because it might be the only stabilizing force in that country, as they like to believe themselves to be.

There’s a lot to be discussed about Pakistan, and I think the main factor that has to be borne in mind is that in the South Asian context, at this point of time it’s the crucial country for the democratic experiment. If Pakistan can be democratized, if Pakistan can be made into a functioning institutionalized democracy with the help of outsiders, both multilateral institutions as well as outside powers with great influence such as the United States, then the long-term future of that area can be assured. If Pakistan fails to remain a stable democratic nation or develop into a stable democratic nation, that will have enormous negative consequences, as happened in the ‘80s and ‘90s in that region.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are not disconnected. There is a lot of connection between the two, as we all know, and therefore it is extremely important for the democratic experiment in Pakistan to succeed. How it will is really up to the Pakistani people, and to a large extent to the outside – to external authorities such as the multilateral organizations and the United States. In sum, in my view, democracy should not be blamed for the problems of governance that the region faces. On the contrary, many of the problems can be traced to a relative lack of the democratic experience and of of the quality, scope and depth of that experience.

Overall, I think the picture is positive for the region. Most people in the region do live under some form of democracy, and the future of most of them is reasonably bright, not just politically but also in economic terms, even though it has not been so good in the past. Now the question is how to make that democracy work, and I think that is an issue that will have to be examined closely by anyone interested in stability and peace for the region, and it can only be done through greater democracy and not by constant interruptions of the democratic process.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. COHEN: Thank you very much. Now we will go on to Africa with Dr. Gwendolyn Mikkel.

DR. GWENDOLYN MIKELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, am technologically challenged, so I won’t even attempt to use the overheads and all of that.

Africa as a region, many of us know, has been moving systematically in the direction of democracy over the last decade, with obviously a number of problems along the way.

A decade ago, many of you will have read the work that Richard Joseph and those at the Carter Center did in the booklet on “The Promise of Democracy.” And there they were talking about the democratic trends, the movement toward democracy across the continent, and they were spelling out the difficulty of the process. A decade later as we look at it, I suppose I’d use the term now, “incipient democracy.” We are still moving in that direction, perhaps at a faster clip, but having seen how many problems can occur in the democratic transition along the way.

In the 1990s, the beginning of the ‘90s, Namibia was just entering independence and a decade of colonialism was ending, and it was clear that that was helping to push forward the movement toward democracy. South African elections in 1994 gave another push to the democratic movement. And so when, in 1995, they did that coverage of democracy, they talked about over 30 democratic elections having taken place across the continent just between 1990 and 1995.

The elections were taking place but the question was, was it a focus just on elections and not on the outcome – not on the creation of institutions and processes, on parliaments, on things that would sustain democracy along the way? But what is clear is that there was systematic support, popular support for elections, for democracy, and those things were pushing every country forward. There was a consensus that there should be an end to military rule, and so all across the continent militaries were being challenged to step back and to allow political leaders emerging from parties to move forward. There was a focus on an end to corruption, but that proved and still is proving to be a difficult process.

So, in general, these were difficult transitions and handled differently in different places. Chris Fomunyoh, who might have been here if he wasn’t traveling, talked about “democratization in fits and starts,” as he looked at the Francophone world. And he pointed out that some of the countries had used the National Conference as a mechanism to move toward democracy to engage the population in a dialogue, and were moving toward consolidation – elections and then consolidation, and others were having great difficulty moving along. And then there were backsliding in some countries. And so he named a number of those countries, Benin being one of the ones sort of leading the trend toward democracy. And you do see a difference in experience between the Francophone countries and the Anglophone and Lusophone countries in terms of the way in which they were moving down the road toward democracy. But everybody seems to be sort of moving along the same trend.

Problems along the way. Nigeria brought out the issue of federalism, a tortured federalism, and how that was supposed to be worked out; what happens when ethnic and regional constituencies attempt to carve out regions and control over regions as a way of guaranteeing their control over the political process. We could see problems with political party development. Although elections were taking place across the continent, political parties remained weak. And the ability to control the electoral process often lay with the leader in power, so that military leaders who managed to metamorphous into a president often had the ability to continue to sustain themselves in power in some countries.

Corruption was a problem in a number of areas, but all of these problems in the transition were offset by countries that moved well through it. Ghana is an example of a country that managed to move through that military transition early and to – the opposition managed to gradually gain in strength until they could move into a period of consolidated democracy in the late ‘90s. So you have now a democracy that is moving along in a way that is extremely positive.

So the background is one of a continent where you could see some of the unresolved issues from colonialism challenging the democratic process, making it difficult for the democratic process in the beginning, but you see a systematic movement to overcome those difficulties, and to build the institutions that were necessary. Nation building was one of the major concerns. It became obvious that you could not have democracy if you did not have the ability to balance off the historical military dominance with strong parliaments, with strong police, with all of the institutions that a democracy needs.

Some of the difficulties. If I could name just a few of them that persist, I would say that the incipient democracy now is challenged by the struggle to overcome ethnicity. Ethnicity and diversity have proven to be divisive issues, and in many cases it wasn’t with the first election, but subsequent elections you began to see that. In the case of Nigeria, which had both regional problems, problems with federalism and ethnicity undergirding those problems, the democratic elections did not resolve the issues of the competition between ethnic groups and regions for control of the country. But one has to also see that ethnicity and diversity, when they surface in the electoral process, probably has something else underneath, and so the issue of resources is there underneath the democratic problems where ethnicity is at the core in many areas.

Some of us have looked at the Great Lakes area and have focused on the ethnic conflicts and the problems that have surfaced throughout there. And yet, underneath that, underneath Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, are also ethnic competitions over resources – population density and resources. So, to a large extent, the success of democracy in many countries will depend upon the ability to address and begin to resolve some of the ethnic differences which have economic resource competitions at their cores.

I though maybe I would just simply move toward some of the lessons that have come out of the democratic experience and focus on that as a way of moving through rather than going country by country.

One of the lessons, I think, is that democracy and development have to proceed hand in hand, that economic restructuring was not sufficient to lay a basis, a solid basis, for democracy, but you also needed to have a way to have growth, and therefore investment and trade, and the kinds of economic development that would undergird the democratic process. And we’re seeing that in many countries, that where there is abject poverty the movement toward democracy becomes a little bit more difficult.

A second issue, I think, is security, that security is of crucial important in keeping democratic transitions on track. But that security is a sort of a two-pronged kind of thing. On one side, the military is important for security -- militaries under civilian control. And so, the process of moving the sometimes bloated, sometimes ill shaped militaries into a dialogue with civilians and placing them under control of civilians is an important step. But achieving a balance between the military and other institutions of the state is a major challenge in many African countries now. A balance then with parliament, meaning strengthening all of the other institutions so that there is no longer the possibility that militaries can move in the way in which they moved in the past. There is no longer the desire within most militaries to move in that direction, but will circumstances push them? And so, the need to balance off the institutions to prevent that is important.

The importance of broadening security and peace by drawing more people into the democratic process becomes obvious. And in many cases, this means drawing women into the process. One of the positives that we’ve seen is that women have begun to emerge as parliamentarians, and it’s fairly striking when you compare the numbers of women in African parliaments to – well, even to the United States -- to many other countries, you see a very positive movement. And as women have come into parliaments they have increased their concern for security interpreted in a different way; security not interpreted in a military sense, but in terms of how it is you limit conflict and limit the capacity of armed forces to wreak havoc within the country.

A third issue is regionalism and continental unity. When I started off by saying that incipient democracy was characteristic of this phase, I probably should have gone on to say that one of the things pushing it forward now is the movement toward the African Union and NEPAD. The increasing determination on the part of African leaders and, increasingly, African countries to create a continental forum within which they could deal with many of their own issues is creating another support for democracy across the continent. I think some of us will remember the Algiers Declaration in 1999 when a number of presidents got together. Bouteflika, Canare (ph), Obesanjo, Mbeki got together to pass a resolution saying that no head of state should be able to join the club if he came to power through a coup, and that leaders should have three years within which to get the democratic process on track if they had come to power through a coup.

And so, the AU provides the hope, the possibility of a community which will reinforce -- and certainly the development of NEPAD and the developmental program for the continent is emphasizing the importance of democracy for the movement forward.

A fourth thing is the strength of civil society – and I know I’m probably running out of time here. Civil society has proven to be an enormous support for democratization throughout the continent. In many countries, when the military looked as if it wanted to remain, or when the leader, the president, tried to manipulate the constitution so as to remain, the emergence of NGOs, the increasing activism of NGOs conveyed a message that there was popular sentiment against that sort of thing. And so we’ve seen the participation of women’s groups, of democracy forums that made a major impact on democratization: the Mano River Union, the Women’s Association, the Pan-African Women’s Conference for a Culture of Peace. And we could go on and on and talk about the ways in which non-governmental organizations, women’s organizations at the core of many of those, have reinforced, and that’s a positive for the future.

We’ve seen, as a fifth one, that as democracy falters, development may falter and domestic violence can become – meaning national violence can become regional violence. And certainly the situation of Congo at the core of the Great Lakes conflict I think is one major example here. But that conflict has not been a source of terrorism. Africa does not suffer from many of the problems that we’ve seen in other areas with the instability creating support for al Qaeda or other groups, which doesn’t mean that other groups cannot use the situation of conflict for their own purposes. Certainly in the case of Somalia you have an example of where that conflict could provide a breeding ground to be used for others.

But lastly, I’d probably say that the global community has a role to play in the success of African democracy. It is extremely important that Western countries live up to international agreements that were negotiated on the eve of independence, or that were negotiated to push along democracy. And the failure to live up to these agreements in some cases becomes the excuse provided – Zimbabwe is a classic example – an excuse provided for the movement away from democracy. So in the case of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is arguing that the failure to deal with the land issue is the reason why he has to remain in power, move more carefully, strengthen himself against the opposition to do all of these things.

The international community then can be instrumental in providing supports that prevent that kind of movement. Equally, the G-8 and the international community can be instrumental in providing the kind of development support that undergirds societies that are moving in a democratic direction.

I have not talked about civil war, except in the case of the Great Lakes, but where there is not the international support, and where conflicts -- and what I call ethic entrepreneurs are able to move in and stop the democratic process, then an entire region suffers. So I suppose I would say that the future for democracy in Africa is positive. The incipient democracy is probably going to move systematically in the direction of much more consolidated democracy, not just because of the domestic support for it, but also because of the continental support for it. And that’s where I’ll stop.

(Applause.)

MR. COHEN: Thank you, Dr. Mikell. Dr. Mikell’s discussion of some of the underlying problems with democratization and reasons why democratization has difficulties in taking hold in some places reminds me of another seminar that I attended where we were talking about the same thing, and I said – I asked the panelist, “Is it possible that some of the problems are caused by nasty people?” I said, “Do you academics have a category for that?” And he said, “Yes, it’s called leadership pathology.” (Laughter.) But anyway, thank you, Dr. Mikell. I think that was a very good review of the various issues.

Okay, now we will finish our regional look with the Americas with Ambassador Carlos Portales.

AMBASSADOR CARLOS PORTALES: Thank you very much, Ambassador Cohen. I will focus mainly on Latin America, just to cover part of the Western Hemisphere.

Despite a long history of political instability, military coups, strong economic crises and social and ethnic conflict, democratic principles in Latin American are considered the legitimate foundation of the political process in our political culture. Even authoritarian characters that prevailed in the previous decades in the region tried to preserve at least a façade of democratic institution in order to legitimize their governments.

Today, most of the countries in the region embrace representative democracies on a permanent basis, and they remain so despite particular setbacks, problems and frequent economic and social crisis. Today in Latin America the debate is no longer about democracy and dictatorship, but rather how to improve democratic institution in a consistent fashion with the challenges of the modern and globalized world. I should add that today the critics of globalization are increasing in the public medium. Look at the recent Brazilian election.

A recent survey showed a low level of satisfaction with democracy in the region. Low level of satisfaction with democracy does not necessarily mean a weak support for democratic principles. Low level of satisfaction often means that institutions are weak or government performance is mediocre. The problem in the region is not democracy but rather the way the system is managed. Most people are dissatisfied because of unequal access to representation. In most countries, a substantial segment of the population are socially excluded, although formerly democratic regimes, many Latin American political systems, in fact have not been able to overcome patterns of exclusion.

Second, people do not get appropriate responses from government. Economic stagnation not only affects the excluded, but the middle classes in a time of rising expectation.

Third, politicians and political parties have not been able to respond and reconcile diverse political demands. I’m referring to the traditional problem of articulation of demands, the ability of the political party system to create such political problems. And we have to add the transnational threat of drug trafficking, particularly in some parts of the region, and also internal problems like in Colombia and the potential effects on other countries.

People’s frustration with democratically elected government are related to economic stagnation, corruption, insufficient social services, unequal access to justice, ethnic discrimination, which in turn reflects institutional shortcomings in the political system of the region. We do have elections, but we do not have well functioning domestic political systems in all countries of the region.

Many Latin American countries embraced market reforms in the 1990s and before, hoping to boost economic growth and improve living conditions. However, a few countries in the region were able to advance in democratic consolidation while achieving a sustainable economic growth. In general, democratic rule in the 1990s did not translate into faster paced or fair and more egalitarian societies. According to a recent ECLAC report, income distribution in Latin America remains still very unequal, with the exception of Costa Rica and (unintelligible) in the region, the wealthiest 10 percent of the households received over 30 percent of the income. In most cases, that percentage reaches over 35 percent. Moreover, during the 1990s, in half of the Latin American countries surveyed by ECLAC, economic inequity actually increased. ECLAC’s conclusion is clear: Latin American is still one of the most unequal regions of the world.

We have to add that growth is essential for the eradication of poverty. Even Chile, which has been successful in diminishing by half people living in poverty, has not been able to diminish unequal distribution of income. I would have to say that the economic model of success is, well, economic reform, but not strictly, in the case of Chile, the consensus of Washington. We started with economic reform, privatization, fiscal austerity, but at the same time, proper relations were established for the financial sector, and at the beginning of the ‘90s there was a modest tax increase, and we devoted part of our resources to social expenditure, particularly in irrigation. So the social side was considered, and the result was the diminution of poverty, although no diminution of the unequal income distribution.

In terms of political freedom, the latest Freedom Health survey shows, as was shown in the morning, that nearly 50 percent of the Latin American countries are considered partially free. The survey measured the existence of democratic institutions, elected political leaders, the presence of a reliable judiciary, an active media, public discussion of policies, elections fairly contested, et cetera. This assessment clearly indicates that we have to work hard in order to consolidate democratic institution in the region.

Corruption seems to be one of the worst foes of democratic consolidation in Latin America. Corruption not only weakens institutional control over political and administrative actions, but also cultural framework or permissiveness. Corruption affects government ability to provide, efficiently, social service while increasing costs of doing business, discouraging investment. According to Transparency International, of over 102 countries surveyed, only one country was in the first third, and four countries over the half of the survey.

As I noted in the morning, another institutional weakness in Latin America is the poor performance of the judiciary and the lack of access to justice for millions of people. Human rights are effectively protected by a well functioning judicial system who have to remember that international institutions are only a subsidiary element in the protection of human rights. Therefore, we still have to work on reform of the judiciary. Administrative inefficiency, outdated laws and judges poorly trained are part of the many shortcomings affecting this power in the region.

What we have done collectively in the Americas to defend and promote democracy -- and here I think it is very important to stress and to remember what has been said in terms of the World Bank through the Organization of the American States, and also collectively through the Summit of the Americas. We have established important international support for the electoral system, through electoral observation missions in the Organization of the American States. We have worked in the strengthening of institutions through the unit of promotional democracy, of democracy of the Organization of the American States.

There are established institutions for the promotion of judicial reform, the Center of Justice of the Americas. We have been working on transparency in the Organization of the American States and also in the drug problems through CICAD, and recently in terrorism. So there are institutional cooperation that are working well, but still need to have more tasks to perform.

Collective reaction to democratic breakdowns and to threat to democracy has been developed in the Americas. In 1991, the Resolution 1080, passing the General Assembly of the organization in Santiago, established the first collective reaction toward breakdown of democratic regime. This was incorporated into the charter of the American States in the middle of the 1990s in the protocol of Washington, and resulted in a more comprehensive set of principles and institutions in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, approved September 11^th, 2001. This institution has been useful in many cases – Guatemala, Peru, Haiti, Venezuela -- not always having been completely successful, but always have helped in terms of supporting the democratic trend, and in some cases allowing the countries to overcome the problem of their democratic process.

In sum, the Americas have institution problems of promotion of democracy, problems of institutional reform, but still have a lot of things to do in terms of institutional reform that should be accomplished in terms of having a more well accepted democratic political culture in the region.

Let us turn to the relationship between the economy and democracy. Government needs to produce results. The capacity of the system to deliver and to distribute is important in the long run for the legitimacy of the system, but economies are not isolated. Domestic reforms are needed, and in many cases they have not been done. But on the other hand, you have to look also to the global perspective. And here, two elements are very important. One is the international financial flow, and we all know exactly the effect of the instability in financial institutions. This was one of the subjects that Latin American countries placed very high in Monterrey, and I think this is still a very important element in the long-run performance of our democracies.

And the other term is trade. And trade is very important because it’s the opportunity for growth. And here, while we have the possibility of free trade agreements, that I think we have to take care of the real opportunity of access, vis-à-vis the protection of many developed countries. The problem of agricultural subsidies is very important, and this is directly related with the capacity of the productive system of Latin American countries to export. Therefore, what happen in terms of financial institutions and in terms of trade will have an effect in the performance of government. This is not all. We need internal reform, but internal reforms are not enough for having sustainable growth in the long run. Therefore, we think that we have to evolve democratic institutions, but this is not enough for having a stable domestic system. And we are, in one way or another, very linked to the international system.

The lack of growth does have domestic impact and may lead to social unrest and at the end impinge upon the stability of the system. In the morning it was said, correctly, that the Argentinean case seen some years ago led to a military coup, and now there is no prospect of a military coup. But on the other hand, we know that systems, in some capacities will resist, and therefore the capacity of the international system to allow countries to develop exports I think is very important in the long run in the stability of democracy.

Successful democratic government not only needs to preserve basic elements of democracy, but also of course requires an efficient management of government apparatus. Economic growth does not guarantee for itself social peace and political stability. Without appropriate policies intended to reduce the income gap, a democratic regime will be eroded. The problem of social policies is very important, and in small countries, like most of Latin American countries, the question of violence is very real, and the need to have social policies, and the effect of international environment over domestic society is high. We are societies more vulnerable than the big ones, and I think that always should be remembered if we are thinking about the future of democracy.

There is no doubt that a sound economy provides a healthy environment for a stable and successful democracy, but it’s not a sine qua non requirement. We have to come back to our starting point. Democratic consolidation rests on basic consensus, the acceptance of institutional rule and democratic practices for a relatively long period of time. And therefore, what we can do in the community of democracies, and also in the Americas, and also internally in each country for creating a stable institution is also very important, and the permanence, the future of democracy will depend at the end on the creation of such institutions. And therefore, we have a glass half water, half empty. We are advanced but we still need to fill the glass.

Thank you.

Applause.)

MR. COHEN: Thank you very much.

We’ll now open this to discussion. Since we would like questions, but since the audience is not as big as it was this morning, if you feel like making a speech, you will have one minute. (Laughter.)

In the back row there, go ahead.

Q: My name is Clayton Lillienfeldt. I’m a research fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Quick comment. Prior to 1994 in South Africa – and that’s where I’m from – with the ANC, the African National Congress, moving into power, a lot of agencies contributed to the capacity building, preparing the ANC to govern. With the 1994 elections -- two years after elections you find the EU and a number of agencies contributing to build the structures in South Africa. For example, the EU was very involved in legislation development at the national level and the provincial. And the amount of donor assistance was just amazing, to see all of the money come in to help the transition period.

One of the processes that I was involved in as a young person in university was the developing of a new constitution. The year I was born, in 1967, the Freedom Charter was developed in Cape Town with a whole range of people. In 1996, a similar process where, as a young person, we went out into the rural areas, popularizing what is it that people wanted to see in the constitution. And I’m proud to say that, you know, I walk around with this document because we consulted broadly, but also, money was made available to go into those areas to popularize a document that's now known as the People’s Constitution.

Two questions. One, how do we support opposition politics of opposition groups to strengthen their capacity so that we do have strong oppositions in countries versus where military dictatorship will take over? The second question is, why do we only fund – why do foreign donors and foreign countries only support the country up until elections? Post elections they are left on their own because now democracy is in place. And one can compare South Africa to what’s happening in Afghanistan in the amount of money that’s been pumped in, but if you look at countries like Nepal, East Timor, and even currently DRC would lack funds to support the process. I think fundamentally the national community is disappointing in one meeting after meeting coming up with really good reports about how we support democracy, but at the same time do not support the same kind of talk of helping these countries move to democracy.

So if the panel can just touch on the two aspects around strengthening opposition, and in the second component of donor funding only up until democracy vis-à-vis elections.

MR. COHEN: Mr. Gillespie, did you want to ask a question too?

Q: Yes, later.

MR. COHEN: Okay. Anyone who wants to comment on donor funding issues. Anyone here?

MR. ADHIKARI: About the funding part of it, of course, as I said, that in Afghanistan’s case the withdrawal by the United States at a certain crucial point in its development led to a disaster, the consequences of which we are still facing. I hope that will not be repeated.

But you see, there is a basic problem I think – and a lot of people are waking up to that fact – that when you link democracy to foreign policy, when democracy becomes an objective of foreign policy, then it’s really a new component. Hitherto, foreign policy was dependent on real politik, strategic considerations and various other issues. Democracy was never really a component of that. It’s a new element.

So the definition of democracy is always, I think, generally taken as the bare minimum. Okay, you have elections; fine, you are a democracy, we are off. I think that’s unfortunate, but as democracy becomes more and more a component of foreign-policy making around the world, and it’s recognized that democracy has to be sustained for the long-term peace and stability of a particular region in the national interests of all countries involved in that region, until then I think we’ll have to live with this problem that you’re talking about.

MR. COHEN: Yes, sir.

MR. PORTALES: Thank you very much. I will add only to your question a testimony that I heard from President Violetta Chamorro after her term. That is exactly what you said.

MR. COHEN: Yes, Gwendolyn.

DR. MIKKEL: I think we’re looking at something that is very controversial here, having to do with administration policy and with the way in which that policy has shifted over time.

Unless it’s a situation of an area being seen as being in our strategic interests, then there usually is not a willingness to fund nation building. And after the transition is considered to have taken place with the first elections – of course, we know that it’s not until the second election or the third election that it’s consolidated, but often the American administration is working with the notion of nation building afterwards and they don’t want to get involved in nation building.

And so the real issue seems to be whether the U.S. thinks it’s in its strategic interests to do that in a particular country. South Africa perhaps it was done more than any other country in Africa. Nigeria is perhaps the second-best example of contribution toward democracy, but with Nigeria we began to realize that there were regional repercussions should we not support the democratic process past elections. And so, for security reasons, for resource reasons – diamonds, gold, oil – for a variety of reasons, it’s an easier argument to make in the case of Nigeria than it was for South Africa. South Africa is supposedly rich without the, quote, “regional problems” that Nigeria has.

So I think there is a subtle change that’s taking place in our consciousness of the need to continue assistance until the process of consolidation begins, but I don’t think there is agreement within the administration on that yet.

MR. COHEN: Okay, Mr. Gillespie, go ahead.

Q: I would like to address my question to Mr. Portales, but I invite all of the panelists to respond to it as well because it applies to all of you in many ways.

Those of us who had our first experience in Latin America working 25 to 30 years ago have been somewhat – have been very pleasantly surprised in the course of the last two or three years, especially the past year, as we have watched crisis after crisis after crisis without tanks in the street. It has been a change that is not only positive but wonderful. And I know your own country especially has made really remarkable progress in terms of civilian control of the military. Could you comment on that? Would the other panelists perhaps respond to the relationship of the civilian government to the military in their area?

Thank you.

MR. PORTALES: Well, I think that one of the important trends after the 1990s has been that the military have diminished the possibility of causing political trouble in our society. It has to do with changes in the international environment, the end of Cold War, of course. They have to do with the lack of supposed threat to the system. They have to do with the legacy of the past human rights situation, which developed into a sort of (unintelligible) part of the ongoing process of what happened in the past in Latin America, and therefore – and with change of policies in the countries and in the United States and other countries.

So I think now there is a consistent common view that the military should be where they have always should have been, as only support of the government, subject to civilian control. And that, I think, is a policy -- is a thing that – and at least in the case of Chile, my impression is that – I will not say deeply, but this increasingly is rooted in the military itself, which is the most important partner of all. So I think in this sense – but we are happy that in spite of the crises, there has not been a military coup or military move.

Saying this, well, I think we have not paid attention too much on the system. So we have to work on the political side and the economic side because, well, the situation will lead to chaos in any country and anything could happen. So the trend should be reverted in terms of crises, and that’s a challenge for civilians of all sorts. And here I think the role of the political elite, political parties is crucial. In some countries the ability to reach consensus is still very high. And if you look at the Bolivian situation, and you compare Bolivia of the last 20 years with Bolivia of the past, the most amazing thing in Bolivia, the most positive thing, is that still the political elite has been able to reach agreement, even within a dramatic situation, and make some responses to the population. And that explains the political factor, very much what is going on. But there are -- even in the same Bolivian situation, in the last election the extra-electoral system candidates got a very important percent of the vote.

So the big question is how much the system is going to recede if there is no tendency toward growth and some – this situation. I think that’s the problem. And we have to add the problem of expectation. And I will say that in Chile, where we have growth, growth, growth, we are now growing at 2 percent, which is low for Chile. As a standard, that is not very low in the world’s standard, but people became frustrated, and I don’t think we have any problem with the system. That frustration is, people compare with himself and not with others – not with other countries. And that’s important. And in this sense, the world crisis is hurting the region as a whole because if we cannot grow, that’s a problem.

In terms of the military, to finish, I see a very positive tendency now. Next month there is going to be a new meeting of the ministers of Defense of the Americas. This has been a very important development, and all are committed to their role and distinguish very clearly the role of the armed forces from the role of government. And I think this is a very, very positive element, and I think here we all take interest in the Americas working together in that direction.

MR. COHEN: Okay, I think basically it sums up that it’s the people with rising expectations that are the most vulnerable to instability when these expectations are frustrated.

The gentleman here. Please identify yourself.

Q: Thank you. I’m Ahmed Mansour, independent scholar, NED. First of all, I have two questions, one for Dr. Adel Abdellatif, and another to my colleague.

Actually, about the Middle East, there are dictators and oppositions. The oppositions should be a democratic trend, but actually they are religious movements that in their own innermost beliefs they are against democracy. The only solution is the secular trend that upholds human rights and democracy and peace and everything, but the problem is this trend is so weak because it is under the pressure from the dictators and from the oppositions that control the masses.

The question is, what about the ability of the United Nations to foster and to protect the civil society trend in not only Middle East, but all over the globe, not only by a solution or decisions, but by enforcement? I think we should say goodbye to the concept of the state domestic issue. Now, after September 11^th, what is going on now, it is a matter that concerns the international community to face the terrorists, and the United Nations should interfere – interfere to foster and to help and to protect the civil society inside these communities.

This is for Dr. Abdellatif.

As for my colleague, I think one of the most dangerous mistakes in the 20^th century is creating Pakistan. Pakistan, as a so-called Islamic state, it proves the failure of this concept itself. But the problem is that, through Pakistan, the culture of terrorism upheld by Saudis came to Pakistan, and from Pakistan spread out to Asian countries. What about facing this culture, this religious culture? How about facing this culture from inside Islam, because after 25 years of being specialized in the Islamic field, I came to the conclusion that Islam as a religion is against terrorists, is against persecution, is against dictatorships, is against all of these things. So, as ordinary Muslim people, you can convince them, through Islam, not, as Jefferson said, or someone from Western culture said, but when you say to him, Allah – God says in Koran, so and so, he has to believe you.

Thank you.

MR. COHEN: Okay, well, we’ll ask Dr. Abdellatif to respond first.

DR. ABDELLATIF: Well, that was a statement, not a question, inviting the United Nations to intervene in other countries. But let me remind you that the United Nations actually is representing governments, so the United Nations is not isolated, you know, of the reality in all the world. The United Nations cannot intervene without decisions taken by member states, and the member states are represented by the governments. So what you are referring to is that some governments have to war against other governments.

And that is not, in fact, the solution, saying that the United Nations should intervene to protect the civil society. Some groups in civil society, they don’t believe necessarily in democratic governance. And let me remind you also that not all the secular trends in the Arab region are democratic. The Ba'ath Party in Iraq and Syria, these are also secular groups. We have the military in Turkey, who are upholding, you know, the secular state, and they intervened when the Muslim Movement, you know, they gained in elections.

So it is much more complex than what you are stating. And let me remind you also that we tend all the time to think – I mean, according to European model, that you have religion, again, as, you know, a secular trend. Maybe the policy in the Arab world and the Muslim countries may not necessarily take the same course of action, maybe because – you know, if you break down what are the representations, for example, of the religion itself in the current governance of the state in the Arab world, you will know very well that it is confined to the question of the family law, where Islam is really represented in the legal instruments, and of course in the penal code, and of course sometimes in the question of freedom of expression you cannot say anything against religion or you cannot have a critical vision about the history of Islam.

So I think the role of outside powers coming to fix a problem inside, that will not help. People of the region, they have to take care of themselves, and if there is no democracy in the region, this is not because the international community is not taking care of it; this is because the society itself has not been able to work on this issue.

And this also – I would like also to respond to what has been said about the role of the international community. I don’t think the international community can create the situation of democracy. It can help, but it cannot create the situation of democracy or conditions of democracy.

MR. COHEN: A quick interjection, Dr. Abdellatif. Can one say there is something in Arab culture, apart from Islam or non-Islam, but Arab culture, that tends to reject democracy?

DR. ABDELLATIF: Well, what can I say is there are practices of course that have been quite often -- particularly under the Ottoman Empire that governed the region for a long time – of course it has been governed without any participation for more than four centuries. The colonial powers came and they didn’t do much better. Somebody referred in the morning to the elections in Iraq, 100 percent, but I just remind you, under the British control in 1924, the British got Faisal the First to be the king of Iraq, and they made a referendum, and in this referendum he had 96 percent. (Laughter.)

So, I mean, we have to go a little bit back to history and to see the practices. The Arab countries received their independence – some of these countries, they came into life without any history of statehood, like Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine -- whether Israel or the Palestinian Authority now -- and all the Gulf countries and Yemen, these countries did not have – the state didn’t exist in these countries. The practices of the Ottoman Empire and the colonial powers were inherited. I’m not saying that the Arabs – that the Ottomans or the British and the French and the Arabs are better than them. Of course, there was a continuity of practices, and the legitimacy was all the time how to control the country itself, the country vis-à-vis the colonial powers, which was the practice of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was all the time facing the European powers and trying to hold its control on the territory without giving any kind of participation or expression for its own population, not only in the Arab countries but even in the current country which is Turkey now.

So this is about history. It doesn’t have anything about Islam. I’m not saying that Islam is for democracy. Again, Islam is like any other religion. You can have many interpretations for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but the practices in the region has never been practices of democracy. Well, you find some countries like Morocco, for example, you find some positive signs going to democracy, but let me just say, the leaders in the region, they should have interest to go for democracy.

And there is a very interesting book written by John Waterbury, the current president of the American University in Beirut, and Ghassan Salame, who is the minister of Culture. It was in 1994, and the title of the book, “Democracy Without Democrats,” that it is possible that if there are leaders who will find an interest to consolidate their power by going to democratic practices, this may be the solution in the region. I mean, what we are working actually in UNDP is how to provide an open space to get all the stakeholders around one table. Let the people express themselves and look about the future, rather than imposing something on them.

MR. ADHIKARI: Thank you. I will take up the two parts of your statement. One is, or course, your dramatic opening statement, which is that one of the most dangerous mistakes of the world was creating Pakistan. Let me, an Indian, defend the concept of Pakistan.

I think as a concept, what Mohammed Ali Jinnah founded was – as I said in my talk, it was a homeland for Muslims. It was not an Islamic nation. Pakistan did not start out as an Islamic nation. And there’s a crucial difference between that because it became an Islamic nation later, and that was under military rule, actually, with General Zia, making that – the early military dictators like Ayub Kahn or Yahya Khan were also secular. They did not declare Pakistan to be Islamic. Zia needed that because Zia was fighting the support of Zulfiqar Bhutto, who he had executed.

Bhutto’s support came also from a strong community of radical Islamists, who were very small in proportion of the population in numbers, but they had an important voice because, again, when you create a land for Muslims so – okay, and Islam has to be the central ideology, but that was the debate that was taking place at that time. Zia capitalized on it because he needed popular support, and he used it and the Islamicized not only just the society by introducing aspects of shariat law, he also Islamicized the army – I mean, permitted the keeping of beards, for instance, in the army.

This was a very complex process, and it happened because of specific political reasons and the support that Zia received from the international community because of the exigencies of Kahn, the first one at that time, that he could get away with a lot, including creating the so-called Islamic bomb. I mean, people think Pakistan went nuclear in ’98. That’s nonsense. In my view, Pakistan went nuclear in ’89, as recognized by the U.S. Congress when it stopped giving aid to Pakistan because it was just one turn, or a screw away from the bomb. And it had it in its basement, so to speak.

So that’s the first part. In short, Pakistan has a concept – well, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, it could have been a great idea if it had been a homeland for Muslims, which was secular and democratic, as Jinnah wanted it to be. And it was for the first seven years. When the army first intervened and took over, Pakistan had had two years of surplus budgets, and the army took over in the name of stability. But anyway, that’s one aspect.

The other one is that how about, you know, facing this radical culture from inside Islam? In short, how about reforming this from within the religion? Again, I have to go back to Pakistan and its central problem there. And this, if I may carefully raise this issue, which is that there is a central problem in Islam which was there in Christianity up to a certain point, which is that the Koran has to be read in Arabic and Mecca is the center of Islam, and they both happen to be – both the language and the center of Islam happen to be in Arabia, which is owned – it’s the only country in the world named after a family, Saudi Arabia, because the British just gave it to them, like in Iraq, I suppose. The British, they love parceling the world around -- so it’s all right. It is in a certain way; they drew lines all over the world.

So having done that, they also – and I agree with you 100 percent that a tiny fraction of Islam, Wahabis with enormous money power, which the Saudis want to use to counter not necessarily the United States, but Iran to start with, that’s how it began, the spread of the madrassas. The spread of the so-called radical Islamic culture was to fight Khomeini and the Shia culture that they thought would be spreading and taking over the influence over the Middle East as well as in the Islamic community as a whole, and of course over the whole economy.

So, given all these factors, I think the role played by Saudi Arabia is something that people from within the religion will have to ask. I mean, the Christians also had Rome. Catholicism and the church services were only in Latin at one time. As you know, the Koran can only be read in Arabic. There was a reformation. There was a Protestant movement, which was not so much religious really. It began because of economic and political reasons. I suspect that that might happen sooner or later within Islam when there are communities like the Indonesians, the Bangladeshis, who don’t speak Arabic and who are culturally totally different, and they keep on, you know, asserting themselves. And Indonesia also has oil.

MR. COHEN: Just as a corollary, the Islamization of politics for the enhancement of power of certain individuals is now happening in northern Nigeria in certain states.

MS. MIKKEL: That's right.

MR. COHEN: It’s exactly the same things as happened in Pakistan.

Okay, well, I think we’ve run out of time, and I want to thank you. It’s been very enlightening, and I felt that I learned a lot and I hope you did too. Thank you.

(Applause and end of event.)

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