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LONDON As I strolled through Paris the other day, the air was warm, the sky was blue, and I felt like I was in the best of all possible worlds. As always, Paris looked elegant and exuded confidence and cheerfulness. France had just elected a clever, young, handsome, and brave new president, who seemed to match the citys ambience. Without much bad news to darken the day, I had every reason to walk with a spring in my step.

Of course, things could have been very different. It was just 18 months ago that a terrorist attack in Paris left 130 people dead and hundreds more injured. Last July in Nice, an attacker drove a truck through a Bastille Day crowd on the citys seafront promenade, killing 86. Not long after that, an assailant slit an elderly priests throat at a church in Normandy. And last month, just before the second round of the French presidential election, a policeman was gunned down on the Champs-lyses.

These wicked acts, stemming from a distorted interpretation of a great religion, did not stop French voters from electing Emmanuel Macron, a man who knows that vigilance requires us to respect all members of our community. To fight evil, we must reject exclusion and hate, and we must not blacken the reputation of a large segment of our society.

I was reminded of this lesson recently, on a taxi ride from central Paris to the Gare du Nord. The driver, after complaining about the competition from Uber (a familiar refrain from London taxi drivers, too), went on to denounce the world and everything in it. He claimed that globalization and mass immigration are destroying jobs, overwhelming public services, compromising French national identity, and breeding terrorists.

Needless to say, the driver had voted for Marine Le Pen although he did not look like what the National Front would call a pureblooded Frenchman. Of course, most of France voted the other way. And while the drivers grievances still have wide currency, they do not represent a coherent, fact-based approach to todays problems.

Britain faces its own terrorist threats, as we have seen yet again with the horrendous attack in Manchester, the northwestern city where my grandparents were head teachers, and where my father was born. So far, the death toll stands at 22, many of them children, making the attack on the Manchester Arena Britains worst encounter with terrorism since the London Underground bombings in July 2005, which killed 52. There have been similar but smaller-scale incidents since then. And, in previous decades, London and other cities (including Manchester in 1996) withstood attacks by Irish nationalist militants.

And yet Britons, like the French, have not panicked or responded in a knee-jerk fashion. We continue to prefer living in free and open societies, so we have always reacted with calm and measured resolve.

That resolve is one of the strengths of democracy. We will never hand the political agenda over to those who offer only simplistic slogans, crude arguments, and extreme policies. Those who want to pin their problems on the other as defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality will always be in the minority. Their goal is to close hearts and minds. They have no interest in understanding the causes of violence, or in developing effective ways to address them.

The good sense of democracies is based, in part, on the understanding that country matters more than party. In democracies, effective policymaking rests on compromise and reason. Those of us who live in democracies will not be terrorized into discarding our sense of balance and moderation, because we understand something profound about most societies: life always wins over death.

Although there is such a thing as original sin the wickedness that simmers, blows up, and scars young children and their family and friends there is also original virtue, which is always present after terrorist atrocities. It is manifested in the passers-by who stop to help; in the nurses and doctors who attend to the injured; and in those who search for the lost, offer families a bed for the night, or escort people home from the scene of a mass murder.

The people who plan and commit terrorist acts will probably never learn that theirs is a lost cause. Open societies will undoubtedly have to withstand further assaults in the future. But if one thing is clear, it is that terrorists cannot defeat democracy.

In France, voters just elected a new president out of hope, not despair; and in the UK, we will soon hold another free and fair election in June. Democracy will withstand attacks like the one in Manchester; and democratic citizens will respond with courage and generosity.

See more here:
Democracy Trumps Terrorism - Project Syndicate

Kashmir is burning again! The violent aftermath of Burhan Wanis death underscores the fragility of peace in the valley. And, as usual, the anger is directed at those who bear the brunt of failed policies, mis-governance, political machinations, and pay for it with their blood: the security forces.

Soldiers who were lauded months ago for saving thousands during floods are now denigrated as sadistic torturers and killers. Students attending schools a few years ago are elevated to CheGuevaric status and goaded into martyrdom. This is a familiar and oft repeated pattern.

A young charismatic lad takes up arms after an incident with security forces. The cause gets a face to a name. He becomes the rallying point for those whose growing reputation is grudged by the state (as well as other leaders of the cause). Stakeholders ranging from terrorist outfits, Pakistani sponsors, secessionist elements, and political fringes leverage this exposure; stoking the fire, egging on the youngster and conferring him with grandiose titles. Eventually the poster boy takes one risk too many and is killed. And all hell breaks loose. Claims of human rights violations, strident demands for removal of security forces, and leaders crawling out of the woodworks professing solutions to a six-decade-old problem.Students are elevated to CheGuevaric status and goaded into martyrdom.

It is dj vu. This scripted frenzy hides the underlying dynamics of proxy war and the true motives of players far removed from brickbats, bullets, and bodies on the streets.

Kashmir is Pakistans diversion from its collapsing economy, civil-military power struggle, volatile internal dissent and most importantly, the charade of democracy its leaders have foisted on their populace. Since independence, Pakistani power play has been a cat and mouse game between the army and autocratic civilian leaders with no semblance of democracy. A comparison of the civilian-military relationship in India and Pakistan establishes the latters raison detre of keeping the Kashmir bogey alive.

The starting point of both the countries seemed alike, with respective prime ministers promising a secular democratic fabric. But that is where the similarity ended. While India was able to integrate hundreds of its states into a democratic union, through a largely peaceful process, Pakistan suffered sectarian, provincial and linguistic schisms from its inception. This was exacerbated by a leadership vacuum with Jinnahs death within a year of independence and estrangement between West and East Pakistan which began with the imposition of Urdu as the official language on a nation whose majority spoke Bengali. Widespread protests were brutally crushed by West Pakistan which culminated in the Dhaka Medical College massacre in February 1952, when protesting students were shot dead by the police.

The subsequent years saw Pakistani civil and military leadership embark on a series of blunders which included the attempt to seize Kashmir, using their trademark farce of state soldiers in the guise of freedom fighters, followed by the first of many coup attempts in 1951 and the inability to control the persecution of minorities and severe rioting. Ironically, in 1958, the civilian leadership asked the military to take over by imposing martial law. This reliance on the army to obtain power and then help retain it, is a continual phenomenon displayed by successive Pakistani politicians over the yearsfor which their civilian leadership and citizenry have paid a heavy price. Pakistani army chiefs take over reluctantly, promise speedy transfer of power to the civilian governmentand then decide to stay put in power after all. So despite the experience of Liaquat Ali Khan elevating a Brigadier Ayub Khan to the chiefs position who promptly seized power or Bhutto appointing Zia and being hanged by him or Nawaz Sharif selecting his nemesis in Musharraf, Pakistani politicians either dont seem to learn or are incapable of anything but proxy governance by the army.

Comparatively, the civil-military relationship and civilian control of governance in India has been the bedrock of its democracy. Despite severe differences between the military and civilian leadership, chequered with several instances of the latters suspicion about the formers motives and apathy towards the armed forcesthroughout our history, the Indian armed forces have stoically resisted the temptation to take matters into their hands.

Nehru for instance, was distrustful of the army, interfered in military operations, and succumbed to civilian advice in 1948 just when the army was gaining initiative and could deliver far larger gains if they were allowed to do their job. In 1962, he trusted Krishna Menons assessment over the professionalism of his army chief even when Chinese troops were killing Indian soldiers. Despite the 1962 debacle, the strength of our civil-military leadership put India in pole position during 1965 war with Pakistan and notwithstanding major differences of opinion regarding the conduct of the 1971 offensive; two of the most charismatic leaders of that eraIndira Gandhi and General Sam Manekshaw, together, delivered a stellar victory. And in every war, gains paid for in soldiers blood were frittered away by civilian leadership but the Indian armed forces deferred to their governments decision.

They stayed true to their oath of loyalty to the government of the day, even during other opportunities of national turbulence like the Emergency or traumatic tasks like Operation Bluestar or ambivalent campaigns like IPKF. Even the extreme and militarily questionable constraints placed on Indian troops of not crossing the international border during the Kargil operations was obeyed in letter and spirit. Despite systematic denigration of the status of the armed forces and the lackadaisical attitude towards long overdue promises like OROP (one rank one pension), our troops swing into action at the behest of their civilian superiorsbe it external aggression, internal security duties or aid to civil authorities.India has an army and the Pakistani army has a country.

That is the difference between India and Pakistan. The clich that India has an army and the Pakistani army has a country, aptly describes the situation.

The conflict in Kashmir needs deeper strategic understanding in addition to operational deployment of forces. As a nation we need to be aware of the root cause in the form of a failed neighbour whose civilian and military leadership needs a faade to bolster their legitimacy and mask the fact that it has been deteriorating across every social, economic and developmental metric. The irony of a prime minister who is unable to stop foreign drones or militants from killing citizens within his own country, but is concerned enough to move the UN over atrocities committed in another country, is ludicrous. Couple that with the hypocrisy of separatist leaders who extol Kashmiri youth to fight unto martyrdom while their own children are educated abroad using the funds they extort from the intimidated citizenry. Or the duplicity of leaders who demand the removal of security forces from the valley but keep asking for more troops for their personal protection. Kashmir has become a conflict economy. There are many stakeholders with vested interests in continuing the conflict. And until we recognise that realitywe will continue this endless cycle in which Indian youthboth in and out of uniform, will continue to be fodder in the Great Game.

This post first appeared on Medium. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Read more:
Kashmir is Pakistan's diversion from its collapsing economy and faux democracy - Quartz

In response to Trumps election integrity commission, the DNC is going on offense on voting rights.

Early voters use electronic ballot-casting machines at the Franklin County Board of Elections, Monday, on November 7, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo / John Minchillo)

To counteract the Trump administrations election integrity commission, the Democratic National Committee is launching a new Commission on Protecting American Democracy from the Trump Administration. While the Trump commission plans to focus on so-called fraudulent voting, the DNC says its commission will debunk the myth that voter fraud is widespread, document the impact of voter suppression efforts in the 2016 election, and propose solutions to expand voting rights.

Trumps commission is part of the continuing dissemination of alternative facts, DNC Chair Tom Perez says. The commission itself is fraudulent, in the sense that voter fraud is a virtually non-existent phenomenon in this country. Perez calls it nothing but a sham to justify the GOPs voter suppression efforts across the country. Our commission will be ready to counter every move that the Trump administration makes to silence eligible voters. We simply cannot trust Trump, Jeff Sessions, or anyone in this administration to protect the integrity of our democracy.

Former Missouri secretary of state Jason Kander, president of Let America Vote, will chair the DNC commission, and Alabama Representative Terri Sewell, who represents Selma and Birmingham, will be the vice chair. The other members will be New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, Colorado House Speaker Crisanta Duran, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, New York Representative Grace Meng, Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, DNC Vice Chair Karen Carter Peterson, and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine.

When Donald Trump made the false and baseless claim that three to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, he told one of the biggest lies in presidential history, says Kander. While Trumps misleading claims about voter fraud were probably made to mend his bruised ego after losing the popular vote, he created an opening for Republican politicians to nationalize their efforts to complicate voting and suppress eligible voters. Im excited to join with the DNC and defend the rights of eligible voters from the Trump administrations attacks on democracy.

Our commission will document and report on todays wave of voter-suppression tactics and provide recommendations for strengthening access to the polls for all Americans, adds Sewell.

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

The commission is part of the DNCs new Voter Protection and Empowerment Unit, which represents the partys most ambitious effort to safeguard voting rights. With the relentless attacks on voting rights that have become a staple in the playbook of the Republican Party, its absolutely imperative to develop a robust and permanent infrastructure within the Democratic Party for voter protection and empowerment, Perez says.

In the past, the DNC had one full-time staffer focused on voter protection. The new unit will have four staffersintegrated with state parties and the broader voting-rights communityin addition to a new Voter Empowerment Caucus within the DNC and revived Lawyers Council. (The staff and members have yet to be announced.)

We have to develop a much better capacity to play both offense and defense on voting rights, Perez says. That means challenging restrictive voting laws in the courts and through on the ground organizing in states like North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin while also pushing for policies that would expand access to the ballot, like automatic voter registration. (As assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Obama Justice Department, Perez filed suit against strict voter-ID laws in Texas and South Carolina.) Perez also mentioned more far-reaching solutions, like abolishing the Electoral College through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

We have a bully pulpit as a party, but I dont think weve used it sufficiently, Perez said. Given the threats to voting rights at the local, state, and national level, this effort is long overdue.

Read the rest here:
Democrats Are Launching a Commission to Protect American ... - The Nation.

This article was originally published by The Conversation.

The questions that I get asked most often by students, policymakers and political leaders are: Can democracy work in Africa? and Is Africa becoming more democratic?

As we celebrate Africa Day and reflect on how far the continent has come since the Organization of African Unity was founded in 1963, it seems like a good time to share my response.

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Some people who ask these questions assume that the answer will be No,because they are thinking of the rise of authoritarian abuses in places like Burundi and Zambia. Others assume that the answer is yes because they remember recent transfers of power in Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria.

Overall trends on the continent can be read in a way that supports both conclusions. On the one hand, the average quality of civil liberties has declined every year for the last decade. On the other, the number of African states in which the government has been defeated at the ballot box has increased from a handful in the mid 1990s to 19.

To explain this discrepancy, I suggest that we need to approach the issue a little differently. Instead of focusing on the last two or three elections, or Africa-wide averages, we need to look at whether democratic institutions such as term limits and elections are starting to work as intended. This tells us much more about whether democratic procedures are starting to become entrenched, and hence how contemporary struggles for power are likely to play out.

When we approach the issue in this way it becomes clear that democracy can work in Africabut this does not mean that it always will.

Men hang a banner for the inauguration ceremony of Gambian President Adama Barrow prior to his return on January 26 in Banjul, Gambia. The election of Barrow, who defeated longtime ruler Yahya Jammeh, was widely seen as a victory for democracy in Africa. Andrew Renneisen/Getty

Democracies are governed by many different sets of regulations, but two of the most important are presidential term limits and the need to hold free and fair elections. Because these rules have the capacity to remove presidents and governments from power, they represent a litmus test of the strength of democratic institutions and the commitment of political leaders to democratic principles.

So how are these institutions faring? Let us start with elections. Back in the late 1980s only Botswana, Gambia and Mauritius held relatively open multiparty elections. Today, almost every state bar Eritrea holds elections of some form. However, while this represents a remarkable turn of events, the average quality of these elections is low. According to the National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy dataset, on a 1-10 scale in which 10 is the best score possible, African elections average just over five.

As a result, opposition parties have to compete for power with one hand tied behind their backs. This helps to explain why African presidents win 88 percentof the elections that they contest. On this basis, it doesnt look like democracy is working very well at all.

If we move away from averages, though, it becomes clear that this finding masks two very different trends. In some countries, such as Rwanda and Sudan, elections are being held to legitimize the government but offer little real choice to voters.

Things look very different if we instead look at Benin and Ghana, which have experienced a number of transfers of power. In countries like these, governments allow voters to have their say andby and largerespect their decision.

This suggests that when it comes to elections there are at least two Africas: one that has not become much more democratic since the early 1990s, and another in which elections have become entrenched and the quality of the process has improvedthough not always consistentlyover time.

When it comes to upholding the presidential term limits that most African states feature in their constitutions, the picture is also mixed. In many countries, leaders who were never committed to respecting a two-term (or in some cases three-term) limit have been able to change or reinterpret the law in a way that allows them to remain in office indefinitely. As a result, term limits have been overturned in Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo (also known as Congo-Brazzaville), Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Namibia, Rwanda, Sudan, Togo and Uganda.

But, as we saw with elections, the picture is not as bleak as it may at first appear. To date, African presidents have come up against term limits 38 times. In only 18 cases have presidents sought to ignore and amend the constitution, and in only 12 cases were they successful. Put another way, of the 42 countries that feature term limits, so far they have only been overturned in 13.

This is remarkable. On a continent known for Big Man rule and which has often been described as being institutionless, one of the most important democratic institutions of them all is starting to take root in a surprising number of states. So far presidents have acceptedor been forced to acceptthe ultimate check on their authority in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia.

Thus, while it is important not to overlook the ability of leaders to subvert the rules of the game in the continents more authoritarian states, it is also important to recognize that the constraints on presidential power are greater than at any time in the last 50 years. In contemporary Africa, term limits are more likely to be respected than broken.

This evidence demonstrates that democracy can work in Africa. In those countries in which high quality elections go hand in hand with entrenched term limits, we are witnessing processes of democratic consolidation. Some of these processes are just starting, and all are vulnerable to reversal, but there is no longer any reason to doubt that democracy can function in a number of African countries.

So what separates the success stories from the rest? What we know is that there are a number of factors that serve to insulate governments from domestic and international pressure to reform, and so undermine the prospects for democratization.

One is the presence of strong security forces that can be used to put down opposition and civil society protests. Another is the presence of significant oil reserves. With the exception of Ghana and possibly Nigeria, Africas petro-states are all authoritarian.

A third is support from foreign governments, which is often given to regimes that are geostrategically important and willing to support the foreign policy goals of other states, whether they are democratic or not.

These factors do indeed make it harder to break free of old authoritarian logics. But its also important to keep in mind that they dont make it impossible. Nigeria, for example, ticks most of these boxes and yet witnessed a peaceful transfer of power in 2015.

Given this, and the many other positive stories that have come out of the continent, it is seems apt to end by repeating the final line of my 2015 book. Despite all of the negative stories that dominate the headlines

It is far too early to give up on democracy in Africa.

This is of great importance because there is already evidence that on average more democratic states spend more on education and achieve higher levels of economic growth.

We therefore have good reasons to believe that in the long run living under a democracy will improve the lives of African citizens.

Nic Cheesemanis Professor of Democracy at theUniversity of Birmingham, U.K.

View original post here:
Why Democracy is Not Dead in Africa - Newsweek

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) The United States went nearly two centuries with only one impeachment of a president Andrew Johnson in 1868 and that failed to remove him from office.

In the last half century, the pace has noticeably increased. In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned rather than face imminent impeachment. Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 on allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice, and now there is a hue and cry to impeach Donald Trump for collusion with the Russians during the campaign or for obstruction of justice as president.

No evidence of collusion has been made public and as for obstruction of justice, it is based so far on one remark noted by the participant in a conversation with only two people present, and the other person denies it.

Even if one were inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to former FBI Director James Comey and take his word against that of the president, an admonishment to let this go might prompt a comment from Comey himself that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

The problem is Congress is full of people who arent reasonable. Despite the rejection of the political class by millions of voters who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries and elected Trump to the presidency, these incumbents, abetted by the mainstream media, continue to play a game of politics instead of addressing the nations problems health care, jobs, standard of living, education, crumbling infrastructure and so on.

Whatever Clintons moral missteps, the use of the impeachment mechanism against him was clearly motivated by partisan passions and a perversion of what the framers intended as a last resort to remove a criminal from office.

If Trump is as unfit for office as his critics believe (and as he seems intent on demonstrating), then the appropriate way to deal with it, short of proven criminal activity, is to have Congress take control of legislation and for voters to turn Trump out of office after a drubbing for his supporters in midterm elections.

The Montana House special election this week pitting Democrat Rob Quist against Republican Greg Gianforte and the Georgia runoff vote next month between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel could provide a preview of what to expect in 2018 congressional elections.

In the toxic atmosphere of the Beltway Bubble, meanwhile, there are already frenzied calls for impeachment.

The political and media hysteria surrounding the Trump administration, veteran Democratic operative Ted Van Dyk wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal, lies somewhere on the repulsiveness scale between the Jacobin excesses of the French Revolution and the McCarthy era.

The obsession of East Coast media and congressional Democrats with Russia, to the exclusion of virtually everything else, is out of step with the concerns of voters in the rest of the country. In fact, it is starting to look like a smoke screen to obscure the fact that Democrats have no constructive answers to these real problems.

For all the misfortunes facing their foe in the White House, Democrats have yet to devise a coherent message on the policies that President Trump used to draw working-class voters to his campaign, New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin concluded in a story headlined Outside Washingtons Blazing Inferno, Democrats Seek an Agenda.

Martins story focused on Quists campaign in Montana in the special election to fill the House seat vacated by Ryan Zinke, Trumps interior secretary. Quist spends his time talking about affordable health care, not Russia, because high insurance premiums are a much bigger issue for Montana voters.

Journalist Nate Silver lists five factors from previous impeachment situations that determine how likely a Trump impeachment is. These are the seriousness of the alleged offenses, the partisanship of pivotal votes in Congress, the presidents popularity, the presidents relationship with Congress, party control of Congress, and line of succession.

Silver discusses each factor in detail, but the simple fact is that the three cases of impeachment including Nixon, who resigned under threat of impeachment, as well as Andrew Johnson and Clinton all came when the opposition party controlled Congress. Even a Democratic majority in the wake of the 2018 midterm elections might have trouble getting an impeachment vote through, Silver says.

However, Vice President Mike Pence being next in line might make it easier for Republicans to buck that historical precedent. If the theory is that you shouldnt hire a well-qualified understudy because he makes your job more vulnerable, then Trump made a mistake in picking Pence as his running mate, Silver opines.

All this prognosticating and calculating, however, ignores one salient fact 63 million citizens voted for Trump as president and delivered him a solid Electoral College majority. (The reductionism by some Democrats who insist that only 70,000 votes in three states made Trump president studiously ignores this fact.)

The best way to remove him from office is to vote for someone else when and if he runs for re-election. This is the way voters got rid of an unpopular Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush (and discouraged Lyndon Johnson from even running again).

Bringing out the bazooka of impeachment at this early stage is second-guessing voters who just seven months ago elected Trump president, despite all his evident personality flaws and questionable business dealings.

At the very least, opponents should wait until criminal and congressional investigations produce hard evidence of real wrongdoing by the president himself, rather than a rush to judgment on the basis of anonymous and uncorroborated allegations.

It would be the ultimate political dysfunction, and perhaps the death knell for our democracy, if lawmakers routinely turned to impeachment in an attempt to subvert the will of the people for patently political motives.

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Opinion: Calls for Trump's impeachment are a perversion of democracy - MarketWatch