ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512110009
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES J. HANLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOTE: Below
NEXT SUNDAY IS a noteworthy date: Elections in Russia and Haiti will move those countries another step into a democratic future. But can democracy work everywhere?
In a blink of history's eye, a humble notion has swept the world: One person, one vote.
Now all that's left is the hard part.
They'll be lining up to cast those votes next week in Russia's snowy steppes and Haiti's steamy streets, choosing leaders for the years ahead. It's a notion even onetime champions of one-party rule now accept.
``Multiparty democracy is a normal thing,'' said Russian Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, whose party expects to score big in next week's elections. ``Any monopoly in politics leads to stagnation.''
But for all the progress the idea of political choice has made in the 1990s, democracy cannot yet be declared a winner. Around the world, in country after country, the early returns show that government of the people, by the people, for the people is under siege - by ``democracy'' for the few, in places where contrary voices are silenced, elections rigged, ``elected'' presidents enthroned.
``There's been a triumph of the democratic idea,'' said Carl Gershman, president of Washington's National Endowment for Democracy. ``But that does not necessarily produce democracy.
``Consolidating democracy is going to take a very, very long time.''
The ``triumph of the idea'' took very little time.
The number of nations formally espousing multiparty electoral systems almost doubled - from about 60 to 115 - in the past decade, riding a democratic wave that began in the mid-1970s when the military dictatorships of Portugal and Spain collapsed.
The wave rolled on to Latin America, where local ``generalissimos'' toppled like dominoes. By the late 1980s, east Asian regimes and the communist bloc were succumbing, and, finally, in the early 1990s, Africa fell into line.
Dictators by the dozen - the Duvaliers and Marcoses, Stroessners and Ceausescus who once scoffed at democrats - were marched off to the airport or, in some cases, the firing squad. The voters were in charge.
So much so, in fact, that by 1992 the United Nations, finding its membership mostly democratic, was bold enough to establish an Electoral Assistance Division, whose experts since have helped 64 countries organize elections.
Institutions like Gershman's are part of the campaign. Armed with $34 million in U.S. government funds, the Endowment this year supported pro-democracy publications, election monitors, political party development and other causes in 90 countries. Similar foundations operate from Europe and Canada.
The crusaders have even taken to the Internet. The Endowment will soon inaugurate an international computer bulletin board - a kind of ``DemIntern'' network that the party organizers for Lenin and Stalin could only have dreamed about.
But if the world, more and more, views democracy as a human entitlement, its leaders clearly differ on just what people are entitled to.
The disaster areas are well-known: In Nigeria, Burma and Algeria, the military in recent years have suppressed elections brutally. Much of the Arab world still adheres to authoritarian tradition. China's one-party state stands firm against the democratic wave.
But it's the quieter rollbacks, the little-noticed decrees, the tinkering with election laws that show how long the road is from idea to ``consolidation'' - and how much more democracy means than simply having a choice on a ballot.
Take Peru, for example, where democracy has become a sometime thing.
Elected President Alberto Fujimori shut down Congress and the courts in 1992, saying he needed a free hand to reform the economy and crush an insurgency. Opinion polls showed Peruvians backed him, and he was re-elected in April, to work with a Congress more to his liking.
He holds up East Asia's ``controlled democracies'' as a model, a model pioneered by Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, who explained in 1992 that the ``exuberance'' of democracy ``leads to indiscipline and disorderly conduct.''
Or take Azerbaijan.
The former Soviet republic went through its latest ``democratic'' exercise last month, giving President Geidar Aliev's followers a parliamentary election victory after most opposition parties had been banned and political reporting was censored.
Or take Ivory Coast, in west Africa, where protests in 1990 forced open a one-party system to political competition.
Now, just five years later, President Henri Konan Bedie has been re-elected with a 95 percent majority against a single token opponent. Bedie had rewritten election laws to disqualify a key rival. Opposition rallies were banned and dissidents arrested. International election observers pulled out in protest.
In Africa especially, said Michael Chege, ``they are using elections as a fig leaf, to sustain dictatorship in the disguise of democracy.''
The Kenyan political analyst said the continent has some ``leading lights,'' democracies that work, led by South Africa. But too many others fall into the ``democratic disguise'' category.
In October, Tanzania's first contested elections in three decades ended in chaos and charges of fraud. Ten opposition parties joined in boycotting follow-up voting. In Zambia, where Frederick Chiluba ousted Kenneth Kaunda in presidential elections in 1991, he is now trying to oust him from the country, on the pretext that he is an illegal alien.
``Democratic disguises'' come in many forms.
In Jordan, an inventive rewrite of election law undercut the strengths of the Muslim Brotherhood, a rising fundamentalist rival to King Hussein. In Egypt, before Parliament elections Nov. 29, President Hosni Mubarak dealt with his own Muslim Brotherhood opposition by arresting candidates and breaking up rallies.
In the former Soviet republic of Armenia, the government simply kept opposition party voices out of the news media.
``The U.S. tends to assume that holding an election is the sum total of what is required to be democratic,'' said Gershman. ``But it's all these other things.''
The other things include the law in the land. When unpredictable violence wracks a nation, as in Haiti leading up to next Sunday's presidential election, it strikes fear into voters and saps faith in government.
The other things also include an independent judiciary. When bribery is epidemic among judges, as in Venezuela, a country whose most recent president is on trial for corruption, it destroys confidence in democracy.
And they include strong political parties. Russian voters next Sunday must deal with an array of more than 40 parties vying for support. Even tiny African states spawn dozens of weak parties tied to a leader or region.
``The opposition in these countries is badly fractured by personality, ambition, ethnic lines,'' Chege said. ``They don't understand that the opposition must unify to constitute an alternative government in waiting.''
Old East-bloc Communists do understand this. The well-organized ``reformed Communists'' have bounced back into power in a half-dozen countries, benefiting from voter weariness with years of economic upheaval.
But for other new democracies, it may take a generation for the ``outs'' to mature into a winning force, political scholars say.
Meanwhile, the crusaders can turn the light of world attention onto what is happening on democracy's frontiers. And they say a bigger boost from the democratic powers would help.
Gershman complained that economic interest is keeping Americans, Japanese and Europeans from pressing hard for a democratic transformation in China. As for Africa, he said, ``I think there's a tendency to give up on Africa. And that's unfortunate.''
Adrian Karatnycky, whose New York-based Freedom House closely monitors democracy's ebb and flow, thinks its moment has gone - for now. The next democratic wave will build on economic growth in China, he said. ``It's after a period of pronounced growth, and the growth finally hits the wall - that's when you get revolution.''
Meanwhile, one veteran advises, don't despair.
Through years as a Czech dissident, Lubos Dubrovsky watched the democratic notion take hold in Prague. Now a top aide to President Vaclav Havel, he views democracy not as a formula - ``not a system like a sugar manufacturing process'' - but as something of an endless journey.
And the roadblocks on the way from ``idea'' to ``consolidation'' are part of democratic life.
``For me,'' he said, ``democracy's best defense will always be the permanent doubt people have in democracies that this thing is actually working.''
LENGTH: Long : 153 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by AP: Democratic consumers. color.by CNB