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Elections: don't expect too much

Simon Tisdall

AS THE international political year begins anew, the democratic election season has arrived with a vengeance. This fact would not necessarily please the playwright, George Bernard Shaw. In his view, "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

George W. Bush, the beneficiary of a 2000 election that opponents deemed both incompetent and corrupt, may have a marginally stronger claim to speak for the contemporary world (Shaw died in 1950). The United States President is all in favour of democratic representation, which for him is synonymous with liberty. "The advance of freedom is the great story of our age," Mr. Bush declared in Latvia last May. "We have learned that governments accountable to citizens are peaceful, while dictatorships stir resentments and hatred to cover their failings."

But whether incompetent or virtuous, idealistic or gullible, millions of voters will nevertheless head towards polling stations in the coming weeks from Poland, Afghanistan, and Haiti to Liberia and Azerbaijan. And nowhere will the process and the outcome be more closely watched than in Germany, Japan, and Egypt, which all vote this month.

These latter polls, while differing in numerous respects, have three salient points in common. One is that in each country, a powerful and long-established incumbent is facing unusual challenges from would-be usurpers. In Germany, the two-term Social Democrat Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is being squeezed by Angela Merkel's conservatives and a revitalised Left-wing alliance. Opinion polls suggest he is destined to lose.

In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is primarily engaged in a personal tussle with members of his own Liberal Democratic party and Japan's self-lubricating political machine, rather than the Opposition. Determined to break the grip of the "reactionaries," Mr. Koizumi has all but turned the poll into a referendum on himself. Gratifyingly for him, polls currently suggest he will win.

In Egypt, meanwhile, the chances that President Hosni Mubarak will fail to gain a fifth and final six-year term seem remote. But what is different this time around — indeed, what is unprecedented in modern Egyptian history — is that Opposition candidates are contesting the poll. Mr. Mubarak is not exactly fighting for his political life, as is Mr. Schroeder. But like Mr. Koizumi, his personal prestige is on the line to an unusual extent.

The idea of reform is the second shared characteristic of these three countries' elections. In Germany, the Merkel-Schroeder battleground sets economically vital labour market, welfare and tax reforms against the irreducible social right of citizens to adequate levels of state provision and protection. Similar arguments are currently raging in France, over "Blairite" neo-liberalism versus social justice.

In Japan, Mr. Koizumi has staked his future on his thwarted efforts to privatise the Japanese postal service, a $3 trillion business that fuels Japan's money politics. It was the opposition of 37 members of his own party that led him to call a snap poll. Now Mr. Koizumi has turned his guns on "the forces of resistance" and sacked the rebels. His campaign slogan? "Don't Stop Reform!"

In Egypt, by way of contrast, everybody is in favour of reform. The problem is what is actually meant by the term. Were he to be elected, Mr. Mubarak's principal opponent, Ayman Nour, might begin by curbing the state's powers of arbitrary arrest, to which he personally fell victim earlier this year. The President's campaign website meanwhile promises all manner of enticing changes such as enhanced powers for parliament and reform of the hated emergency law.

But as students of democracy everywhere know only too well, election promises are made to be broken — which leads to the third similarity between these three poll contests. If she wins, Ms. Merkel's policies may not ultimately differ greatly from those of her predecessor. Whoever is in charge of the economy, Germany has only limited room for manoeuvre.

If Mr. Koizumi wins, will there be a Japanese revolution? Hardly. His privatisation plan has already been so watered down that it may not make a fundamental difference.

While such outcomes may smack of anti-climax, they also represent peaceful continuity — one of democracy's great strengths. As for its shortcomings, the poet Oscar Wilde issued his own health warning long ago by parodying Abraham Lincoln. "Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people," he wrote. In other words, do not expect too much. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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