Nigeria, Indonesia

Nigeria, Indonesia

The most populous nations of Africa and Southeast Asia are poised precariously in transition from decades of dictatorship to would-be democracy. Success could reverberate far beyond the two countries, setting examples that might prove contagious. Failure could prove just as discouraging.

Nigeria held its presidential election on Saturday. Indonesia is scheduled to vote in June. It is far too soon to predict the outcome of transition in either country. If we have learned anything in this decade of falling dictators, it is that elections alone are not enough to guarantee democracy. Democratization depends on the involvement of citizens before, during and after elections, and that can be corroded by corruption, intimidation and apathy.

In both Nigeria and Indonesia, long years of repression crippled the institutions that could provide a sustained check on those in power and a sustained voice for the otherwise powerless. Such institutions cannot be created, or re-created, in an instant.

Their absence helps explain the worrying level of cheating in Nigeria. Only the loser so far has charged that such cheating alone was responsible for the winner's 63 percent result, but no independent observers have certified the voting as fair. The Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigerian nonprofit organizations, said that in some areas "the incidence of electoral fraud was great enough to completely distort the election result".

Such charges are unlikely to prevent former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo from assuming power on May 29, but charges of fraud should be investigated. More to the point, they should discourage him from "any triumphalist insistence on a 'winner- take-all' stance", as the monitoring group said. "The incoming civilian government must therefore begin to make determined and sustained efforts to cultivate democratic norms and values".

There are reasons for worry in Indonesia, too. Ethnic and religious based violence has broken out in many parts of the country, some of it allegedly instigated by military groups. The transitional government has devised election rules that are only partly democratic.

But in neither country is it time to write off the attempted transitions. If elections are not sufficient to create a democracy, they are nonetheless essential. In both countries, players across the political spectrum so far seem willing to participate and fight for improvement in the rules and a deepening of civic society. In those efforts, they merit support from overseas, with an attention that stays focused long past election day.

-- The Washington Post