America is in no position to preach to anyone about democracy

Jan 07, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Yesterday marked the 1st anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol in the United States, an event widely seen as representing a threat to American democracy. That insurrection has also smeared America’s reputation as a model of western democracy.
Instead of President Biden using the opportunity since assuming office to restore America’s democratic credentials, he has instead sought democracy as a means of isolating America’s new enemies: China, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Biden recently organised a Democracy Summit, the focus of which ended up being more about isolating these three states than about restoring credibility in democracy. Many observers have pointed to the real rationale behind that Summit: to isolate Russia and China and to muster support for US distancing itself from governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Charity begins at home. Biden should have used the Summit as a prelude to restoring confidence in America’s democracy.
Guyana’s President, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, ill-advisedly attended that summit.
He may have done so out of a sense of obligation for the role which America played in ending the attempt to rig Guyana’s 2020 elections. The Donald Trump administration imposed travel sanctions on unnamed government officials of the APNU+AFC. No doubt the PPP/C feels a sense of gratitude for the strong defence which the Americans played in rebuffing the attempts to re-impose political dictatorship in Guyana.
But the Summit, the first of many, is likely to become part of a larger US foreign policy aimed at isolating states which America views as undemocratic, particularly China, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Biden has not reversed Trump or Obama’s polices in regard to Venezuela. He has followed Trump in terms of relations with Cuba and the aggression against Nicaragua is less about democracy than ideology.
While America is trying to showcase itself as a bastion of democracy, the fact is, American democracy is in bad shape. This sentiment was echoed yesterday by former President Barack Obama who noted that American democracy is at greater risk today than it was one year ago. He observed that leading figures in America’s two main political parties were undermining democracy at home.
Former President Jimmy Carter was quick to point out that the idea of winning at all costs – an idea which should be familiar to the APNU+AFC – is taking root in America and that democracy has become very fragile in America.
It is against the backdrop of such criticism that America and its sidekick the Organization of American States (OAS) are attempting to hoodwink the people of the western hemisphere into condemning elections in Venezuela and Nicaragua. America has gone as far as recognising an Opposition personality, whose support is waning rapidly, as the country’s President. Both America and the OAS have successfully isolated the regime in Nicaragua claiming that Opposition figures were jailed and therefore prevented from contesting the recent elections, without providing a shred of evidence that the persons concerned were even going to contest those elections. And Guyana bought that narrative hook, line and sinker.
America’s opposition to Cuba is based on the hegemonic idea that the world is to follow its model to become a democracy. It has refused to accept that each sovereign state has a right to determine its own path and that Cuba had chosen its path. It has never dawned on America that, had it not tried to topple the Castro regime, and restrained itself from imposing sanctions, the political trajectory of that country may not have been a one-party state.
America is in no position to preach to anyone at this stage about democracy. American democracy is in crisis.
America should focus on fixing its own system which has now been overrun by nationalism and political fanaticism. Instead of trying to assert itself as the enforcer of democracy around the world, it would be better advised to repair its own tattered and fragile democracy at home.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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