The long road to democracy

The long road to democracy

By Terry Russell

JAKARTA (JP): In Indonesia, as in my own country, Australia,
we cannot question democracy. We have all been told that
democracy slayed communism in 1989 and that nowadays only
fascists and fundamentalists question democracy.

Western governments are now pushing harder for
democratization, abandoning dictators like Saddam Hussein,
Soeharto, Pinochet and Mobutu, whom they supported during the
Cold War. In the spirit of democratic debate, it is time to open
our eyes and question whether western democracy is suitable for
developing countries like Indonesia.

Let us define democracy as the right of citizens to speak
freely and to vote in free elections. We will then ask whether
democracy has worked in developing countries, and whether it is a
system which developing countries can suddenly leap into or a
system which must be built up over many years?

Has democracy worked in developing countries? India and the
Philippines have had democratic elections and freedom of speech
for many years. Indeed, excepting the occasional assassination of
rivals and ongoing struggles with separatists who do not feel
well served by their elected governments, these countries have
had relatively peaceful democracies.

But this peace and freedom has not led to economic prosperity
for the general population, so can we really call them successful
democracies?

Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea now have prosperity
and some sense of democracy. South Korea even jailed one of its
former dictators.

Their prosperity was, however, established under
semiauthoritarian governments and supported by United States
subsidies and military protection during the Cold War.

Malaysia, Brazil, Poland, Argentina, China, Thailand and Chile
have made recent economic gains without great concessions to
democracy. The latter four indulged in massacres of their own
people in the 1970s and 1980s. It will be interesting to observe
whether they choose the western prescription of immediate
democracy to complete the transition to prosperity. If so, will
this prescription work?

And what about countries less developed than the above seven.
Can they make a sudden leap to successful democracy? Elections in
Nicaragua in 1984, in Burma, now Myanmar, in 1988, and in
Cambodia and Algeria in the 1990s, were deemed to have been
reasonably fair. Unfortunately the results were promptly ignored
by the losers, plunging these countries into war and vicious
clampdowns. This would suggest that these countries were not
ready for democracy.

The above survey suggests that countries are more likely to be
prosperous and to enjoy lasting democracy if they first pass
through a phase of semiauthoritarianism. If the government during
this phase is sensitive and farsighted rather than corrupt, the
country may, like Singapore and Japan, move peacefully to
democracy and consolidate its prosperity.

This suggests that we need to stop looking at governments as
either democratic or undemocratic. Let us accept that there are
stages of democracy. Let us accept that a developing country may
benefit from minimizing freedom of speech, hopefully for only a
short period, allowing it to focus on socioeconomic issues rather
than internal political ones.

Here then are the five stages of democracy. Indonesia has just
moved to the third stage. Its media censorship is at stage three,
but may regress to stage two when its elites reunite. If we look
at the above examples of successful democracies, Indonesia now
needs to develop a more independent judicial system and possibly
a wealthier, more educated public, before it can progress
peacefully to the fourth stage. The final utopian stage is
included to remind westerners that their own governments are
indeed still on the same journey as all other governments toward
full democracy.

1. Authoritarianism: Ruling elites are immune to prosecution.
No criticism is allowed.

2. Semiauthoritarianism: Ruling elites are immune to prosecution.
Criticism is allowed, provided it is directed against ministries
or is only minor personal criticism. Demonstrations are allowed
in areas approved by the police.

This stage provides feedback to governments, allows people to
let off steam nonviolently and develop their skills in debating
rationally without feeling or inciting hatred.

Elections provide an opportunity for limited debate but are
engineered to ensure the ruling party always wins.

3. Hijacked Democracy: Ruling elites may be prosecuted but not
successfully. Any criticism is allowed, but harsh personal
criticism will be directly censored by the government regulated
mass media. Demonstrations may be held anywhere. Elections are
free but influenced by vote-buying, intimidation, missing ballot
boxes and the above censorship of the mass media.

4. Western Democracy: Rule is by law, with no military, financial
or political elites immune from prosecution. Criticism is allowed
and publicized without direct censorship of the mass media by the
ruling elite. However, informal censorship still exists due to
mass media owners' choices of moderately pro-elite editors,
editors' fears of a backlash from wealthy advertisers and
reporters' frequent reliance on government sources of
information.

Elections are free, but campaigns focus on personalities and
one or two oversimplified issues.

5. Full Democracy: Criticism is allowed and publicized without
direct or indirect censorship. This stage of democracy can only
arrive when everybody makes daily use of the internet or other
mass media which are not dependent on advertisers, and when all
government sources of information are truly free of elite
interference.

Communications technology makes it cheap and efficient to hold
frequent referendums, with voting for particular policies as well
as traditional elections. Greater voter education leads parties
to focus their election campaigns on a wide-range of issues.

The writer is an English language instructor with a B.A.
(Hons) in world history.