Challenges to Democracies
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 27th Feb. 2018
The changes to the Chinese constitution may pose additional challenges to constitutional democracies especially in the Afro-asian region. The reason may be extension of the Chinese economic interests and an active role of its diplomacy to defend these interests. It now seems to be progressed by these diplomats even when the rulers of countries in the region tinker with the basic tenets of constitution and governance. The example of Maldives, Zimbabwe etc. are just a few cases in point. Unlike the normal media, the impact of the Chinese investments on the general public amongst competing investment-projects is ‘not’ being questioned here. What is being underlined is that often the bad decisions of the ruling party/ruling classes in these countries is clouded by their ability to get foreign investments, often coming in bulk from the Chinese. And when the impact of some of their bad decisions become too visible and an electoral defeat or political change becomes imminent, then tenets of constitution and governance start to get tinkered with. Non-democratic set-ups seems to thus be getting propped–up as a result, with the Chinese often reiterating support to such political forces in order to support/defend their investment-projects. The CPC opting to do away with the limitation of Presidential-tenure is likely to bolster the Chinese investments on Belt and Road projects, thus likely to deepen this malady. What might have be needed is a rise of a greater number of activists in support for democracy in these nations including celebration of political changes, rather than spread of fear of democratic change, based on business-interests alone.
The liberal media’s role including from the West which has often criticized the Chinese investment-projects more than the level of corruption and mis-governance in these countries also needs to be explored. The additional challenge for these nations is that democracy and related change in government is seen as political instability by agencies in credit-rating field, which advise investors. This complicates investor’s perception of the likely foreign investors to these countries and colours the investor’s expectations about/from the rulers in these countries. While the media blames the Chinese investment-projects, however the impact of investment-projects from other sources has not been criticized. The only difference perhaps has been on how government’s and diplomacies from democracies interact, and this is being a little bit more tolerant of the democratic set up and change, although such tenets aren’t necessarily on display from the businesses/investors from these countries. The inability of these democracies to rein in corruption and deliver upon people’s needs in spite of political competition as well as a ‘free media’, is putting pressures on these political systems. The businesses in other countries, have looked at self-interest and rooted for ‘stability’ to support their projects. That hasn’t bode too well for democracy in these countries, which has remained skin-deep in nature, if at all being able to maintain itself. In such scenario, criticizing the Chinese without castigating the ruling classes or other existing projects seems to be of little help. Also the businesses in these countries whether local or foreign, have generally shunned competition or even innovation and these aspects are also in need to be checked and questioned however this calls for media to be 'truly free'.
With ever-larger projects in particular in infrastructure in focus, long-gestation development models are being formulated. And arriving at any democratic consensus for these is becoming a challenge including lack of institutional mechanisms to identify and deal with such challenges. This is even more a challenge, when commitment to democracy amongst the political leaders of different parties is itself skin-deep and the same is seldom tested by the ‘independent media’ in these countries. The role of media to take sides of the promoters of the investment-projects without evaluation of other consequences makes its role, highly suspect. There might be a need to evolve institutional mechanisms to identify and deal with such challenges, including to ensure that the leaders in these countries are more open to criticisms. The open reiteration of some of these leaders to tom-tom their ability to get away without giving any answers, needs to be curbed. There might also be need to ensure that ‘exact nature of charges’ as well as ‘fixing of responsibilities’ on charges of corruption on the leaders are investigated by neutral mechanisms in expeditious manner. Weakening of such investigative mechanisms as well as judiciary hasn’t really helped and lack of commitment of the leaders for such a move, should be seen as lack of commitment to democracy itself. However, what is often seen in media is a focus on ‘security’ and obsequiousness towards ‘current leadership’ and this is a sign of weakening of the democratic systems rather than a belief on internal strength of the culture and democracy in these nations. The lollypop for support for projects tending to change the nature of press/media as well as political opinions in key ruling classes in other countries further tend to complicate the situation and these tendencies need to be checked. Let the ‘Game’ evolve…..