spinoff

The problem with democracy is that you can’t control its outcome. Not from the outside at least.

 

But inside the country, it's a different matter. After all, if you’ve got a few quid and a burning urge to get your hands on the presidency of the United States, say, then there are one or two wheels that can be, as it were, greased from within the political machine.

 

Or if you're a brutally shrewd, public school, politico-careerist armed to the teeth with script writers, stylists, PR people, a quick-response unit and a booming-great spin department, then yes - you're probably going to have some effect on the democratic preocess.

 

Control from inside the country is one thing.

 

Control from the outside, on the other hand, is quite another.

 

This is a problem brought staggeringly to light in the recent Palestinian elections that saw Hamas get its hands on the reigns of power. Hamas, for the uninitiated, has spent the last god-knows-how-long blowing Israelis up because they don’t believe Israel – and hence Israelis – have the right to exist. And now they are the ruling party in Palestine.

 

Hopefully, this complete cowpat of an election result will set one or two brains whirring in Palestine about the advantages of the political process over the bomb.

 

Hopefully it will also set the cogs in motion down Washington way. The rather unfortunate conclusion they may wish to consider is this; that democracy can dish out vary very nasty results indeed - like this one -  and in this light, is it altogether a good idea to force democracy on nations in the middle east who might well end up electing similarly brutish arseholes like Hamas?

 

Which leads to the most troubling question of them all – can democracy be imported at all? And if a political system that you call 'democracy' is imposed from outside, then is that system not democracy by the very fact that it has been imposed rather than chosen?

 

"Bringing Democracy to the Middle East," suddenly stops looking like quite such an attractive prospect.

 

Yours etc.,

 

Spinoff.