Autocrats and Democracy

Jul 23, 2010 Editorial

Commenting on ex-dictator Desi Bouterse’s accession to the presidency of Suriname (“Return of the Strongman”, July 20th 2010) we posed the question, “What does it say for democracy, when Surinamese can overlook Bouterse’s chequered past and place the future of their country in his hands?” What it says, at a minimum, is that while democratic government – based on selection of leaders through voting by “the people” – may be premised on a “rational” populace it is more frequently influenced by emotions.
Since the “Third Wave” of democracy was inaugurated after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 we have to concede that its institutionalisation in most former autocratic states have been a bit messy. The reality that the political changes demanded by democracy were accompanied by the simultaneous introduction of a free-market economic system did not make it easier. Russia is a good case in point.
In the early 1990s, under Yeltsin’s watch, the government freed prices from state control and privatized tens of thousands of state enterprises in consonance with the neo-liberal orthodoxy.
It should have surprised few that a handful of Kremlin-connected insiders raped the state’s most valuable assets – especially oil. When even regulated capitalism descends almost invariably into crony capitalism (USA), its unregulated variant stands no chance of being any different. While those insiders were getting rich, however, skyrocketing inflation wiped out most ordinary Russians’ savings.
Organised crime and killings became endemic under the new regime of freedom that had curtailed the power of the old dreaded secret police.
By the end of the decade, most Russians began to equate democracy with rising poverty, homelessness, crime and unemployment. Yeltsin may have picked former KGB head, Putin, as his successor in an effort to save his skin, but the latter exploited the popular feeling that democracy has brought chaos to reinstitute draconian measures of control without much protest from the average citizen.
How could he have failed to appreciate this sentiment when Stalin, who had killed some 20 million of his subjects, had become a hero? As former generations of Europeans had excused the anti-democratic excesses of the fascists because they “made the trains run on time”, so too Russians overlooked Putin’s autocratic style of rule.
Almost every other new democracy has flirted, or is flirting, with their “Putin”. The economic success of China, under its old single-party Communist rule has encouraged this move. It would appear that few citizens of countries that have been mired in poverty for centuries are willing to put up with the “muddling through” approach that has worked to institutionalise democracy in the older, stable democracies.
They want economic revolutions here and now and are evidently prepared to risk their democratic gains. In this respect, the example of India is salutary.
In the late seventies, India was economically moribund and Indira Gandhi used the general dissatisfaction to seize unprecedented power and muzzle the opposition while promising an economic turnaround. Fortunately for India, Indira’s dictatorial measures galvanised the opposition and she was voted out at the next elections.
India then made the reforms that were needed to unshackle the economy and today, many commentators believe that in the long run, India’s combination of democracy with economic progress will prove more stable than the Chinese focus on their economy while ignoring democratic reforms.
And this is the lesson that we believe that should be imbibed by the people of Suriname – and in Guyana, for that matter. While the strongman may appear capable of cutting through the seemingly intractable squabbles that hinder progress to quickly catalyse development, history has demonstrated repeatedly that the greater danger is that the strongman will accrete power for himself and a few cronies. This is the lesson that even an astute critic as Fareed Zakaria missed when he encouraged the selection of “benign autocrats” such as Pinochet. In the long run, they turn out to be anything but benign.
As the Economist pointed out, it is ironic that as much of South America are placing their former dictators behind bars. Suriname has chosen to elect one as their president. We hope that it is only ironic and not tragic.