Recently an academic approached me for my opinion as to why the uprising failed in Bahrain and how improvements in their understanding of democracy depended upon the participation of experts around the world.
The academic explained that there was an ongoing consensus among social scientists, the project leaders, partners, and donors that required better empirical data on the diverse and complex components of democracy to better inform policy and research.
Such data, for example, would enable analysts to assess the effectiveness of targeted democracy promotion efforts and better understand how economic indicators affect and are affected by changes in political institutions.
My response was that I was very interested in the mechanism of democracy and the way it is promoted and the methods in which to achieve a better understanding of the Middle East and North Africa region however that have been and are still being used would never succeed.
I have never been a keen supporter due to the extent of the way it is promoted and because of the methods and individuals used to promote a theory of democratic change. Theory is one thing, practice is another.
The biggest problem I responded in the MENA region is that democracy promotion has always been exclusively promoted by the created "opposition" to governments in the region and around the world, which is one of the biggest mistakes as it ties democracy with opposing radical forces that do not have real democratic intentions but selfish gains.
We had seen the outcome in Egypt, Tunisia the silence on Libya. What more was there to prove? And then which labeled democracy ever made any changes towards people's lifestyles?
A Russia Today report from November 2010 briefly mentions U.S. government co-option of opposition parties in Egypt. It fails to note, however, the considerable presence, often in key positions, of those with a passionate attachment to Israel at "democracy promotion" groups like the NED, USAID, Freedom House.
The result of the wrong forces being used in the region is that it shuts doors for the theory or practice of democracy amongst the later built majority who initially were enthusiastic with the idea but with the approach have a different outlook on the situation due to non-peaceful movements attempting to enforce a façade of the term democracy for the wrong reasons.
A point I also felt the need to raise was that the theory of democracy doesn't work in practice as it is not a democracy that is achieved but a representative democracy which in turn does not really benefit the populace.
Washington's formula for regime change underwent a makeover in the 1980s. In a bid to ensure US political and economic interests were safeguarded, CIA backed coup d'états ousted democratically elected leaders from Iran to Chile to modern day Arab States. However in the case of Iran as previously mentioned, democracy was destroyed.
The West had been working at exporting an idea that they term democracy not for the sake of establishing a real democracy but in my mind to succeed in establishing a constructed chaos and a puppet government.
Mohammad Mosaddegh sets an example of a democratically elected Prime Minister in Iran and makes one question why when a democracy was in place, a coup d'État orchestrated by the British MI6 and the CIA ever occurred. It questions if it is democracy being exported or the Wests authoritarianism.
The constant support of radicals proves that the real intentions had little to do with the slightest theory of the term democracy.
We have seen the recent out comes of the failure in the term democracy in Egypt as we have in Tunisia, and again, let's not hold our breath for Libya.
The more honest the approach as to the benefits of the promoted democracy (if any) and the flaws the more it would be absorbed. However with the nonexistence of a product to prove and market, that would be very difficult.
The ways of achieving democracy promotion in the region is to concentrate and tackle the benefits that democratic change can apply on corruption, hierarchy etc which is one of the main reasons that leads to initial society unrest.
However as explained earlier, it would be wiser to implement first and foremost in the country that promotes the democracy that doesn't really operate back home. As for corruption, hierarchy, well corruption exists in so called democracies as does hierarchy. The only change is the people in charge and the people in charge will be one who suits Western interests.
Democracy can never succeed in reality as one man's freedom will always be another man's jail.
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The Arab Agenda
Non-FictionJust remember one thing, whenever you read headlines by the mass media and you see they are only writing one side of the story, assisting one voice... it's an agenda. It could succeed, but it can also fail. The poor man suffers, while the rich man t...
