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COMMENTARY
The cultivation of Middle
Eastern democracy
By Ian Urbina
The proponents for an invasion of Iraq have
argued that a regime change will be the first step in
bringing democracy to the Middle East. But the recent
sweep of elections in Morocco, Bahrain, Turkey and
Pakistan raises the question of whether democracy,
albeit in small increment, has already begun arriving to
the region, and whether the US is prepared for what it
may bring.
In many of these contexts, the
elections were precedent-setting. Morocco held its first
fully transparent vote last month, and while many Arab
nations block women from office, Morocco set aside 30
seats in the lower house expressly for females, thereby
ensuring their inclusion in politics. Bahrain, which
sent its citizens to the polls for the first time in 30
years, likewise saw a small step forward for women's
political involvement. None was ultimately seated in
parliament, but eight female candidates made it to the
final round. The elections marked the first time that
Bahraini women ran for office and voted in a
parliamentary race.
A voter turnout of more than
50 percent in all four countries was also a hopeful
sign. By comparison, the last midterm elections in the
US saw only a 36 percent participation. In some
contexts, the elections faced considerable adversity.
The leadership of the Shi'ite party in Bahrain, for
example, announced a boycott of the election in the days
leading up to the vote. Though the Shi'ites are the
majority population in the country, few heeded the call
and 53 percent of the country turned out. In Morocco,
the nation's 45 percent illiteracy rate was a logistical
obstacle. Despite there being 26 political parties
running for office, the ballots were successfully
designed with an elaborate though user-friendly system
of visual symbols. Few irregularities resulted.
The elections in the Indian-ruled portion of
Kashmir were clouded by violence, and even though 46
political activists were killed in the days prior, voter
turnout at the polls was 40 percent. International
observers reported that the process was relatively fair.
These were far from the first votes held in the
region. Turkey initiated its democracy in 1923 after the
fall of the Ottoman Empire, and women hold political
office there as they also do in Iran. Elected
parliaments exist in every Arab country except Saudi
Arabia and a few other small Gulf states. In countries
like Iraq and Syria, of course, the parliaments are
nothing but a rubber stamp for the regime, but
elsewhere, parliaments are developing modest checks on
centralized power. In Kuwait, for instance, the
parliament can block legislation and recall ministers.
Nevertheless, democracy is hardly a fait
accompli in the region as repressive monarchies are the
reality in most of the Gulf states and electoral farces
are not limited to Iraq, where a 100 percent turnout
voted 100 percent for Saddam Hussein to continue in
power. In Uzbekistan, a close US ally, President Islam
Karimov, the nation's leader since before its 1991
independence, has not only jailed religious leaders
without trial and exiled virtually all opposition
leaders, he also engineered a referendum extending his
term to 2007. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt conducts similar
referenda, which have made him de facto
president-for-life.
But aside from the relative
fluidity and transparency of many of the recent
elections, the bigger surprise was the success of the
Islamists. In Pakistan, an alliance of religious parties
finished third overall, taking 45 parliamentary seats.
In prior years, the most they have ever won was 10.
Turkey witnessed a huge upsurge as its main religious
party took 363 seats of the 550 total, sweeping out the
secular majority. In Bahrain, the Islamists took almost
half of parliament, while in Morocco they tripled their
numbers from last year. Indonesia is due to go to the
polls next month and current surveys predict a strong
showing there as well.
These parties are,
however, far from uniform. Politically they span the
gamut from radical to moderate. The more radical
variety, such as those in Pakistan and Morocco, openly
support the implementation of sharia or Islamic law. The
more moderate ones, such as that in Turkey, are
committed to respecting their countries' secular
traditions.
The reasons for their recent success
also varies. In the case of Pakistan, the vote for the
Islamists was as much an indicator of dissent against
President General Pervez Musharraf's involvement with
the US war in Afghanistan as it was a sign of opposition
to his gutting of the nation's constitution and the
increasing encroachment of the military in politics.
In Turkey, the Islamists cashed in on popular
frustration with high unemployment and International
Monetary Fund-imposed austerity plans. Both the Turkish
and Pakistani cases offer an important lesson about how
not to handle elections: repressing disagreeable parties
backfires. In Turkey, the government disqualified the
leading Islamist candidate from eligibility for the
office of prime minister; far from disappearing, his
popularity soared. In Pakistan, Musharraf banned his two
main opponents from running, only proving the point that
he was repressive and wholly unconcerned with the will
of the population. In both of these cases, the US
carefully looked the other way while its allies made
their fateful mistakes. In the end, conservative,
religious and, in the case of Pakistan, anti-US forces
reaped the rewards.
If the US is serious about
more than top-down regime change, and it really hopes to
promote bottom-up democracy in the region, it will have
to learn from the lesson of recent elections. Where
repression and exclusion is more likely to radicalize
and popularize oppositional groups - be they secular,
Islamist, anti-American or otherwise - opening elections
to their involvement is not only a prerequisite to any
true democracy. It also demystifies them by eliminating
their outsider status. Elections provide the ultimate
test. Either parties produce substantive improvements
for their voting constituencies or they take a walk.
In the case of the Islamists, religious piety
and a conservative social agenda alone will not sustain
their support without real advancement in the quality of
life for average citizens. But the reverse is no less
true. Secular and government forces will only be able to
siphon off the support of the Islamists and other
oppositional parties when there is a concerted effort to
address the core concerns that drive increasing numbers
of voters to fringe. The US might consider this latter
point as it considers the military versus non-military
weighting of future aid packages to the region.
Ian Urbina is based at the Middle East Research and
Information Project in Washington DC.
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