THE FINANCIAL TIMES: President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” has run into the Middle Eastern sand. The president himself will be the last to recognise this. Speaking in the United Arab Emirates on January 13, he hailed a “great new era” of “the advance of freedom”. “My friends,” he proclaimed to the assembled sheikhs, “a future of liberty stands before you.” Then Mr Bush flew on to Egypt and lavished praise on President Hosni Mubarak, who threw into jail the last man to run against him for the presidency.
As Mr Bush traipsed around the Arab world, Freedom House – which monitors political and civil liberties – issued its annual report. It lamented that “2007 was marked by a notable setback for global freedom”. The lobby group pointed to events in south Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. The bad news keeps on coming. The violence and instability surrounding the Kenyan and Pakistani elections has underlined the difficulties of holding democratic votes in relatively poor countries with deep ethnic and tribal divisions.
While Freedom House bemoans the setbacks to democracy in places such as Kenya, Pakistan and Egypt, there will be plenty of others who will shrug and say, in effect: “What did you expect?” The Bush administration has been naive. It is pointless – and often counter-productive – trying to push democracy in countries that are not ready for it. Stability and economic growth must come first.
The constituency for enlightened despotism is strong among businessmen, such as those now assembling in Davos for the World Economic Forum. They know that many of their best markets are countries that do not do well in the Freedom House rankings: China, Russia, the Gulf states, Singapore. Yet they can see these countries getting richer, often at spectacular rates.
Businessmen in rapidly growing autocracies will often enthusiastically endorse the line that authoritarian rule has its virtues. Peace and prosperity are what is needed; a premature move to democracy would invite only anarchy. The fact that both Kenya and Pakistan have enjoyed strong growth in recent years – now threatened by election-related instability – will only embolden the advocates of enlightened despotism. Let us not lose faith in democracy >>> By Gideon Rachman
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