This view in headline has come from a six-time British parliamentarian (George Galloway) around the Democracy Summit the United States has hosted (March 28-30).
Well, you won’t dismiss this claim out of hand if there is still an ongoing debate if Joe Biden won the elections fairly.
The “right of choice” might appear inseparable from democracy but in the US, abortion is not legal in 17 states even when 85% American adults favour abortion rights.
Mass public shooting and the US is almost synonymous but the “right to life” won’t matter even if a new Constitution is drafted since hundreds of millions of guns are in circulation.
One-voter-one-vote might be a cardinal rule in most democracies, including India, but in the US some voters matter more than others. The way the electoral college works, a resident of Wyoming in a presidential elections counts 3.6 times more than someone in California. And we are not talking about votes denied to four million Americans residing abroad.
BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean BlackVotesMatter. Redistricting makes the vote of a Black citizen amount to little. Fortyeight out of 50 states either ban those once convicted, people in prison or on parole from voting.
The voters choice in the US is limited to only two parties: Democratic or Republican even though some 62% Americans are looking for a third or more option. Or why would US have one of the lowest voter-turnout in the world?
That’s not all. Smaller parties are hurt by draconian ballot-access laws. Silly lawsuits are slapped on them to drain them off their resources. They also can’t take part in presidential debates.
But then this Democracy Summit in the US was less about situation at home.
The United States was holding court to 120 out of the 193 nations in the world largely to hang “authoritarian regimes” out to dry in public.
It goes without saying China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba were not extended the invitations.
It’s not to say they were not central to the Summit’s agenda since we had advocates of “Uyghur rights”, Russian dissidents, rebel academics etc being feted and lauded.
And since a large slice of invitees were from Global South, it was evident who would be the attention of US’ charm or charade in coming days.
The Summit talked of peace even though we know how overtures to peace in Ukraine have regularly been spurned, including the recent one from Xi Jinping, not to say the Zelensky presidential decree last October which made any peace talks with Russia illegal.
The dichotomy of Climate Change agenda also hangs heavy in the air since one is witness to the ecological disaster in blasting the Nord Stream pipeline allegedly by the United States itself.
What purpose such Summits serve?
As per Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, promoting democracy US style is actually meant to offer imaginary assistance to people of “autocracies” bypassing the regimes in their own nations.
It is nothing but “weaponizing” the democracy card to push the globalist agenda of domination. If you look at invitees, said Lavrov, “there are countries…whom the Americans have never ranked as democratic states.”
It is nothing but an agenda to develop the confrontation between so-called “democracies” and so-called “autocracies,” said Lavrov.
Voices from the Global South
Meanwhile we gather from the Global Times that:
Zambia’s Socialist Party president Fred Mmembe says if one is trying to subjugate the other, it can’t claim to be a champion of democracy. And that the Global South is beginning to resent and detest US hegemonic democracy.
Kugiza Crispin Kaheru, commissioner of the Uganda Human Rights Commission, feels not one-size-fit-democracy US style could be imposed on the rest of the world. “Each society ought to have democracy that resonates with its past, present and future it wants,” said Kaheru.
Back to Galloway: “Nobody any longer believes that the American form of democracy benefits the people, not even its own people..the US purpose of democracy is hegemony.”
Pakistan, incidentally, wasn’t invited for the Democracy Summit. Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistan Senate Defense, said: This Summit for Democracy is actually about weaponizing democracy and human rights. The US idea of democracy is about confrontations and clash of civilizations.
Championing democracy, you see, is nothing but appointing oneself as the dictator of the world in Washington’s playbook.
Or why would own NATO allies, Turkey and Hungary, go uninvited for not sanctioning against Russia?
Or what’s democratic about invited France putting down protests violently on pension “reforms”, rammed through the parliament?
