U.S. governments have long been promoters of elections as a measure of democratic progress. But a series of election in the past few days have demonstrated how going to the ballot box can be a rather flimsy measure of political advancement. Americans too often assume that the institutions they take for granted also exist or work as well in other countries.
The presidential election in Afghanistan is probably the most blatant example of less is less. A growing number of accounts indicate that the electoral process in that embattled country has been thoroughly corrupted by ballot stuffing, intimidation and indifference. On one side, the Taliban, who are fighting the Western troop allied with President Hamid Karzai, have warned Afghans not to participate; on the other, warlords and tribal leaders, many of them Karzai supporters, have apparently stuffed the ballot boxes and rigged the count to give the incumbent lead and possibly avoid a runoff.
The U.S. has wanted an election - and a win by Karzai - to reinforce his legitimacy and proof that the sacrifice in lives is making progress. But the problem at the heart of the dispute is that Afghanistan is barely a country. It is an agglomeration of tribal leaders, warlords, and regional governors whose loyalties overlap and shift easily. President Karzai, who has strong support from the United States, barely has any clout beyond Kabul. His brother is suspected of being heavily involved in the vast drug traffic that keeps the country's economy afloat. Many news reports indicate that even the concept of being an Afghan is a tenuous concept often trumped by loyalty to tribe and region.
Then there's the election in Gabon. Just a few hours ago, Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba declared that he had won that country's election for President. He would succeed his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled the small West African country for 40 years, enriching himself and a small coterie of cronies while the country remained destitute. Bongo had close ties to France and is said to have even secretly financed the election campaigns of some French politicians.
If the results hold up, the young Bongo would defeat 16 other candidates to only become the third president of Gabon since its independence from France in 1960. The win was expected, with the political establishment and the state security apparatus fully behind the son of the former president, who died in June. Gabon is the world's fifth-largest oil producer but after 40 years of dictatorship, democratic institutions are few and far between.
Finally, there's the election in Japan, where the ruling party lost an election for the first time in 50 years. The landslide win by the opposition Democratic Party may mean a lot less change than could be expected. Japan's elected politicians never had much clout in running their governments, which remained in the hands of powerful bureaucrats as Liberal Democratic Party administrations came and went. The real issue will be whether the new government will have the will and the levers to unseat the unelected mandarins who have formulated policy, written legislature and instructed legislators how to vote for half a century. Here too, the election may have less impact than the frustration of citizens tired of policies that have dealt Japan 10 years of stagnation and runaway public spending.
