Warsaw's tower of babble
Editor's note: "Government Watch" columnist Marek Matraszek will return next week.
Sometimes you have to hand it to the French. Of all the delegations gorging themselves on feel-good platitudes at the much-hyped democracy binge in Warsaw two weeks ago, only theirs had the sang-froid not to sign the conference's final declaration, accusing organizers of seeking to stir up an international crusade against countries they happen to not like the looks of.
In the modern age, of course, we're all democrats. Even hard-core dictators (quite a few of whom were represented at this gathering of around 100 foreign ministers from around the world) have to feign a commitment to free elections and human rights. But only since the end of the Cold War has it become fashionable and now compulsory to crack down on miscreants of this kind, and effectively wrest their states away from them.
Perhaps that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. The problem starts, though, as soon as you start trying to say where these universally-accepted (ho-ho) rules have been broken, and by whom. One of the star turns in town, for example, was Peru's opposition leader, who pulled out of that country's recent elections once it became clear that the incumbent was sure to win and who has since been calling on the international community to put him in power on the grounds that the results were rigged.
Here in Central and Eastern Europe, Sali Berisha fairly won the Albanian 1996 elections hands down. But several Western governments held various grudges against him, so their ever-willing proxies the liberal media (headed by CNN), the multilateral financial donors and a slew of NGOs were called upon to demonize him as a vengeful tyrant. Even the country's old secret police were pressed into service, and, sure enough, within a year Berisha had been forced into holding fresh elections that he conveniently lost.
Similar scenarios (sometimes it's the other way round, as genuine tyrants like Georgia's Edward Shevardnadze are allowed to trample their populations into the ground) have been played out over the last ten years from Baku to Bratislava. And the French whose own parliament, by the way, is a famously flimsy institution has been involved in these intrigues every bit as much as the other major Western powers. But at least their refusal to play along might help highlight the fact that the battle is not over democracy, but different political agendas and interests.
Speaking of interests, it's enough to know that the main attraction (and indeed, funder) of the parallel bash going on in Warsaw for the champions and cheerleaders of "civil society" was George Soros. Following his mea culpa published earlier this year in the New York Review of Books, in which the great financier confesses to breaking both American and Russian law to expand a business empire in conjunction with his then-partner Boris Berezovsky (not someone normally thought of as an archetypal democrat), it may be considered incredible that his apparently altruistic vision of a global open society is still taken seriously.
But disagree with him and other self-appointed spokesmen for the international community at your peril. Conspicuous in their attendance at the World Forum on Democracy were yesteryear's dissidents: figures like Poland's Adam Michnik and Hungary's Janos Kis who, true to their Marxist backgrounds, have always found the day-to-day business of democracy organizing parties, taking part in elections, observing their outcome unsatisfying.
However, according to another of their number, Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, future states that fail to guarantee citizen human rights should have their functions "taken over by external bodies." This brings us back to the question of who defines these rights and decides when they have been broken. The hundreds of eager activists assembled in Warsaw have an answer to this. Your fate is in their hands.
Johnathan Sunley is a political consultant and lobbyist in charge of the Budapest branch of CEC Government Relations. His bi-weekly column, "Political Pest," appears in the Budapest Business Journal and bbj.hu. His e-mail address is: sunley@qwerty.hu"
