So what do elections in the Third World really accomplish?
Of course it's preferable to give an electorate the opportunity to "turn out the rascals" every two or four or five years -- depending on a country's electoral cycle -- but how many rascals do we truly toss out? In many of the Third World's democracies -- and here I return to India as a prime example -- felons and assorted thugs, once elected to legislatures, rarely get dislodged. That's because of the privileges that power can fetch: the pork barrel, the natural deference that significantly illiterate constituents accord to people in power, and the mystique that surrounds a parliamentarian who, once in office, conveniently forgets that he's a servant of the people who trekked to voting booths for him, often walking miles on dustry roads in heat and humidity.
And even when they lose elections -- as, of course, occasionally happens in Indian federal and state elections -- the losers are simply replaced by others of their ilk.
Am I sketching a case for abandoning elections altogether? No. But I do want to stress that the entire democratic process carries a huge responsibility for constituents and candidates alike. Constituents need to do more "due diligence" on candidates; candidates should be required to offer full disclosure. This means that countries need to have strong, independent and incorruptible election commissions. I may seem to have been excessively harsh about my native India, but say this for the Indians: at least now candidates for the federal legislature are required to disclose their assets.
That's progress, to be sure. But the miscreants who generally contest elections aren't necessarily transparent about their finances. Their "black money" remains in the blackness of the shadows. How else to explain the fact that, in the May 2004 national elections in India, candidates running for the national parliament and various state legislators spent the equivalent of $2 billion. Surely that money didn't come from campaign contributions by individuals in a country where the per capita income is barely $400, and more than 60 percent of India's 1.2 billion people live under the poverty line -- earning less than the equivalengt of $1 a day.
The money is raised, of course, through political blackmail and extortion. Companies generously fund politicians. One of India's biggest industrial conglomerates is said to "own" more than half of the 575-member Lok Sabha, the Lower House of parliament. Its typical methods include funding campaigns through cash contributions, and then plying elected lawmakers with women, wine and foreign shopping trips. In other words, there's a scandalous two-traffic between corporate India and political India.
So I think there's a lesson in all this for the beleaguered Iraqis, some of whom are reported to be delirious with joy at the prospect of casting ballots on January 30. Beware of whom you vote for -- if you vote at all -- because you'd be voting for a life term for that man. And the lesson for Washington? That American-style democracy can be exported, but it isn't easily anchored in other cultures.
And that brings us back to the question of cultural relativism.....