From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERwhile Benin and South Africa opened the floodgates to a further waveof regime change in Africa in 1990. More than two-thirds of Africansnow live in countries with democratic, multi-party election systems –and African governments took the lead in opposing an anti-democraticcoup in Togo in 2005. 99However, much of what passes for democracy is a pale reflection ofthe term’s etymological origins in ‘people power’. In many countries,democracy exists as a thin veneer of Western concepts, a set of formalinstitutions that do not translate into real democratic practice orculture on the ground. Multi-party elections can provide a smokescreenthat obscures overbearing executive power, limitations on pressfreedom, and human rights abuses that strip democracy of its meaning.These so-called ‘exclusionary democracies’ are deeply unpopular:only 10 per cent of 50,000 people polled worldwide in 1999 thoughtthat their governments ‘responded to the people’s will’. 100 The indignityof political exclusion was memorably summed up by a peasant farmerin Baluchistan, Pakistan, who told researchers, ‘During elections, they[the politicians] visit us individually to pocket maximum votes, butafterwards they avoid us and we feel evil-smelling. First they hug us,and later our sweat and grime repels them’. 101Yet poor people persist in their support for elected governmentover any alternative, echoing Winston Churchill’s aphorism that‘democracy is the worst form of Government … except all those othersthat have been tried’.DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENTDemocracy is desirable in itself. An international survey in 2005found that eight out of ten citizens in a cross-section of countriesbelieved that democracy was the best system of government. 102 Otherregional surveys found that 69 per cent of Africans and an increasingproportion of Latin Americans believe that democracy is ‘alwayspreferable’ to other political systems. 103Such preferences are reflected in international law.Article 21 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights grants every individual ‘theright to take part in the government of his [sic] country, directly orthrough freely chosen representatives….The will of the people shall80