Misery in the Name of Democracy: The US Works Elections in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti

By Yifat Susskind

The Bush Administration is touting Iraq’s December
15 election as a giant leap forward for freedom
guaranteed to ignite fervor for democracy across
the entire Middle East. But closer to home, the
Administration has discovered that democracy has
created a monster and that the monster is
democracy. In Latin America and the Caribbean,
popular movements are demanding that the United
States’ "gift to the world" make good on its
promise of majority rule. That would likely disrupt
a system-otherwise known as "free-market
democracy"-that has benefited a small elite and
worsened poverty for most people. The possibility
has so alarmed CIA Director Porter Goss that he
recently labeled the spate of upcoming elections in
Latin America as a "potential area of
instability."1

The Bush Administration is fighting back, stepping
up USAID’s "democracy promotion" program to ensure
that those who have long had a monopoly on wealth
continue to exercise a monopoly on government. The
program’s main targets in this hemisphere are
Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti.2 National elections
in these countries-all occurring within just one
month of the Iraqi ballot-provide a flashpoint for
how hard the Bush Administration is working to keep
democracy out of the wrong hands, both in this
hemisphere and in Iraq. Venezuela

On December 4, Venezuela’s main opposition parties
chose to boycott congressional elections rather
than face certain defeat at the polls. In 2002,
these same pro-business parties-financed directly
by the US National Endowment for Democracy to the
tune of about six million dollars a year-resorted
to a military coup to oust Hugo Chavez from the
presidency.3 The coup failed in less than two days
because millions of Venezuelans (including the
lower ranks of the army) rallied to Chavez’s
defense. Most Venezuelans continue to defend-and
vote for-Chavez and his brand of participatory,
bottom-up democracy, which has mobilized millions
of citizens in national dialogues on governance,
produced the region’s most democratic constitution
(written in gender-inclusive language recognizing
women’s unpaid work and guaranteeing a pension to
housewives), launched an ambitious land-reform
program, and improved rates of illiteracy, hunger,
and infant mortality.

At last month’s Summit of the Americas in
Argentina, Chavez was a lightning rod for
widespread opposition to US-driven economic
policies that have further impoverished most Latin
Americans. Afterwards, Bush accused him of trying
to "roll back democratic progress."4 Yet, most of
the world seems quite impressed with Venezuela’s
democratic progress, even by the rather narrow
standard of elections. Indeed, all eight elections
held in Venezuela under Chavez have been declared
free and fair by independent observers, including
Jimmy Carter.

This is precisely the problem: despite the
opposition’s extensive US backing, it can’t beat
Chavez at the polls. Democracy just isn’t working
(says the only US president to be appointed by the
Supreme Court after losing the popular vote). For
decades, Venezuela was controlled by two
alternating elite parties, both allied with US
business interests (sound familiar?). Most of the
population was effectively disenfranchised and
elections could be counted on to confer legitimacy
on a compliant leadership. Now, Venezuela’s poor
majority has seized on the rhetoric and procedures
of democracy to win control of the state. This is
what the Bush Administration calls a crisis of
democracy.

Bolivia

Bolivia is suffering from a similar crisis. When
Bolivians go to the polls on December 18, they are
likely to elect Evo Morales to be their first
Indigenous President.5 Morales is a social democrat
whom the Bush Administration vilifies as a radical
leftist and the US Ambassador compared to Osama bin
Laden. But Morales’ platform is extreme only if you
consider policies that guarantee mass poverty and
vast inequality to be moderate. His platform
reflects the Bolivian social movements’ demand for
increased government regulation of natural
resources and the formation of a popular
Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution
that would make government more inclusive.

Apparently incredulous that Indigenous peasants
could be strategic and organized enough to
overthrow two presidents in two years (Gonzalo
Sanchez in 2003 and Carlos Mesa in 2005), Donald
Rumsfeld says that Hugo Chavez must be pulling the
strings in Bolivia.6 Yet, it is the Bush
Administration that has meddled openly in Bolivian
politics since the Indigenous movement rose to
prominence in 2002. That year, the Administration
publicly threatened to cut off economic aid if
Bolivians elected Morales. Since then, the US has
steadily expanded its "democracy promotion" efforts
in Bolivia, pouring millions of tax dollars into
building a parallel, pro-US Indigenous movement and
turning out public relations campaigns for a series
of doomed, US-friendly governments.7

As in Venezuela, US "democracy promotion" in
Bolivia supports a limited notion of representative
government enacted by pro-business elites over more
direct participation in government by the poor
majority. The big headache for the Administration
is that Bolivia’s Indigenous-based social movement
is playing by the rules, working within the system
to gain more legitimate representation within
government.

Haiti

Two weeks ago, Haiti postponed its presidential
election for the fourth time in five months. With
the vote now set for January 8, the Interim
Government (installed by the US after it helped
overthrow Haiti’s democratically-elected President,
Jean Bertrand Aristide, in February 2004) will hold
on to power past its February 2006 deadline (just
imagine if Hugo Chavez tried that). Regardless of
when elections are held, conditions in Haiti make a
mockery of democratic process. Yet the Bush
Administration has demanded that elections go
forth.

Secretary of State Rice has hailed Haiti’s election
as "a precious step on the road to democracy."8 But
look closely. Haitians are being denied the right
to vote: only a few hundred registration and
polling sites have been created to serve eight
million people (compared with 10,000 provided by
the deposed Aristide government) and some large,
poor neighborhoods-with few government
supporters-have no registration sites at all.9
Haitians are being denied the right to campaign:
the government’s potential challengers have been
jailed on false charges or no charges. And Haitians
are being denied the right to organize: in
September, the government outlawed political
demonstrations in violation of Haiti’s
constitution; and anti-government protesters have
been repeatedly attacked by the Haitian National
Police. The Bush Administration fueled this
repression by sending $1.9 million worth of guns
and police equipment to Haiti just in time for
election season.10

In fact, repression is the Haitian government’s
primary campaign strategy. Since 1990, every
internationally-validated election in Haiti has
produced a landslide victory for the Lavalas Party.
Once the standard-bearer of Haiti’s pro-democracy
movement, Lavalas-like its exiled leader,
Aristide-is a casualty of US "democracy promotion."
After US-backed forces ousted Aristide, the party
splintered into factions, including unaccountable
and violent groups. Despite its flawed human rights
record, Lavalas would no doubt win again in January
if its candidates were allowed to run. The reason
is simple: Lavalas is the party of the poor and
most Haitians are poor.

Far from supporting constitutional democracy in
Haiti, the US has twice helped to overthrow
Aristide, who resisted Washington’s prescriptions
for Haiti’s economy by insisting on social spending
for the poor. The first time, back in 1991, "regime
change" was still a covert business. The US had to
deny that it was sponsoring the military thugs that
took over Haiti and killed thousands of Aristide
supporters (and poor people in general, just for
good measure). By last year, when Aristide was
ousted for the second time, things had changed. A
Pentagon plane flew him into exile. The US warmly
welcomed the "new" government, including remnants
of the 1991 coup who are poised to win next month’s
sham election.

Democracy in Iraq: The Freedom to Do
What We Tell You

The first fact of Iraq’s election is that it will
take place under the distorting influence of
military occupation, precluding a free and fair
vote from the start. Iraq’s "march toward liberty"
has been marred by US intervention at every step,
starting with Paul Bremmer’s 2003 decision to
appoint reactionary clerics to the Iraqi Governing
Council. That move has helped Islamists dominate
Iraq’s interim government and roll back the
democratic rights of Iraqi women-a majority of the
population.

In fact, the Bush Administration has no intention
of allowing a majority of Iraqis to determine key
policies. The Administration has tried to avoid
holding direct (one person, one vote) elections in
Iraq, giving in only because of pressure from
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite cleric who wants
Iraq to be an Islamic state. And Bush’s two most
important objectives in Iraq-creating an extreme
free-market state and maintaining a long-term
military presence-have been placed well beyond the
reach of Iraqi voters.

As in Haiti, democracy in Iraq is to be mainly a
procedural matter, demonstrated by periodic
elections regardless of political chaos and
widespread violence against candidates and voters
alike. And as in Venezuela and Bolivia, the
government that is produced by the elections will
be entitled to the label "democracy" only as long
as it follows a US policy script.

In 1819 Simón Bolívar observed that, "The USA
appears destined by fate to plague America with
misery in the name of democracy." The Bush
Administration is intent on extending this destiny
to Iraq and the whole Middle East. Iraqis may be
having an election this week, but the Bush
Administration is no more interested in genuine
democracy in Iraq than it is in Latin America and
the Caribbean. By Yifat Susskind, MADRE
Communications Director

End Notes

1. Dan Glaister, "Bush Isolation: Elections
Likely to Bring New Alliances and Governments
that Defy Old Ideological Labels," The Guardian,
14 November 2005.

2. Tom Barry, "Transitioning Venezuela," Americas Program, International
Relations Center, 9 December 2005,
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/2977.

3. Ibid.

4. Michael A. Fletcher, "In Brazil, Bush
Continues Trade Push," Washington Post, 7
November 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/06/AR2005110600636.h
tml.

5. John Pilger, "America’s New Enemy," New
Statesman, 11 November 2005,
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1600.

6. "US warns of Bolivian interference,"
BBC News, 17 August 2005,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4158998.stm.

7. Reed Lindsay, "Exporting Gas and Importing
Democracy in Bolivia," NACLA, November/December
2005, http://www.nacla.org/art_display_printable.php?a rt=2603

8. Larry Birns and John Kozyn, "Haiti -
and You Call This an Election?" Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, 11 October 2005,
http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/

New_Press_Releases_2005/05.106_Haiti_and_you_cal
l_this_an_election.html

9. Brian Concannon Jr.,"’Electoral Cleansing’ in Haiti Violates Human Rights and Democracy," International Relations Center, 29 September 2005,
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/816

10. Marjorie Cohen, "US Pulls the Strings in Haiti," truthout, 29 September 2005,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092905I.shtml

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