The problem with Western democracy, Bahrain Tribune

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

The problem with Western democracy

Ramzy Baroud -Doha: A recent online poll carried out by the Arabic website of Al Jazeera satellite television found that more than 80 per cent of respondents distrust “Western democracy.” The results simply restated the obvious. The query, of course, hardly meant to question “Western democracy” in its own right, but rather its imposition on the Arab world.

Needless to say, one needs no poll, scientific or otherwise, to conclude that the majority of Arabs are in desperate need of democratic measures. But they need democracy for their own sake, not for the sake of one who wishes to legitimise an occupation and to tout the virtues of a superpower. If Al Jazeera tested its readers’ views on democracy, as a model without the word “Western” trotting along, the overwhelming votes would probably have been cast in favour of democracy – that honourable value first coined by the ancient Greeks as “citizenry rule.” The impressive turnout in Iraqi elections – and the Western spin that it suggests a vote of satisfaction for the post-Saddam Hussein US occupation notwithstanding, the prevailing sense in the Arab media continues to be that the Iraq experiment is a charade democracy that still has little to do with rule of the citizenry.

Arabs covet democracy because they are disenfranchised and have very little control over their individual as well as collective destiny. But most Arabs find it difficult to make a choice between the governance of theocratic and totalitarian regimes, on the one hand, and a spurious, foreign-imposed democracy, which they perceive as a US invention, on the other. The choice would be difficult for anyone, and it is anything but fair.

Despite President Bush’s constant exhortations that he, too, wishes to set the Arab masses free, his words resonate nowhere in the Middle East, save perhaps Israel. For ordinary Arabs, Bush is simply a hypocrite; for the politically savvy, his mission of “freedom” is a disguise of his corporate drive for power.

Most Arabs see the paradox of Western democracy in practice, in the West and in their region. In fact, they live the paradox. If you find yourself engaged in a heated political conversation with an Arab – and most likely you will with the first one you meet – you’d be surprised to learn of a deep admiration for Western democracy – in the West.

<snip>

http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp