Yoweri Museveni

Thousands of Ugandans filled the Independence Ground at Kololo Airstrip just outside Kampala to mark the country’s Golden Independence Jubilee Anniversary. Uganda is celebrating 50 of Independence from British colonial rule which took stretched from 1894 to 1962.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has made history himself by leading the country half of that time, was the guest of honour together with his wife Janet Museveni. Heads of state from Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Ethiopia, graced the pompous ceremony. British rule over Uganda came to an end on October 9, 1962 with the Union Jack being replaced with the Uganda National flag which was handed over to then Prime Minister Milton Obote during Independence Day on 9 October, 1962. His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent who 50 years ago presented the country’s independence to Dr Obote, was in Uganda for the first time since 1962 to represent Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In his speech to mark the occasion, President Museveni, who shot his way to power after overthrowing the regime of Gen Tito Okello Lutwa and having fought against the regime of Milton Obote before that, again predicted that the country which has suffered several dictatorship since independence including an army take-over by Gen Idi Amin in 1971, is on course to achieving a first-world status.

Having started his reign in 1986 with a ten-point programme, Mr Museveni seemed to have come out with yet another ten-point programme which he this time named ‘10 key bottlenecks’. Mr Museveni who this year won a consecutive fourth five-year term in office, said these bottlenecks were: fighting ideological disorientation, eliminating sectarianism, improving education to refine human resources, facilitating private sector-led economic growth, developing road, rail and electricity infrastructure, market expansion through regional cooperation, pursuing industrialization for exports, developing the service sector to create jobs, modernizing agriculture to increase household incomes and deepening democratic governance.

When he first came to power, President Museveni’s earlier 10-point programme included democracy, security, the consolidation of national security, the elimination of all forms of sectarianism, defending and consolidating national independence, building an independent, integrated and self-sustaining economy, restoring and improving social services and rehabilitating war-ravaged areas, eliminating corruption and the misuse of power, redressing errors that had resulted in the dislocation of the population and improvements of others, cooperating with other African countries in defending human and democratic rights of ‘our brothers’ in other parts of Africa and following an economic strategy of mixed economy.

While Ugandans and mostly regime supporters were celebrating at Kololo, the country’s opposition leader was under house arrest at Kasangati on the Gayaza Road where armed police have put up a strong show of force to stop him from leaving his house and exercising his right to freedom of movement and speech. Dr Kizza Besigye, who is the leader of the country’s largest opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, has been under preventive house arrest for the last two weeks. His house is surrounded by hundreds of riot, regular and anti-terrorism police to stop him from leaving it.

Military and anti-riot police were on Tuesday deployed heavily in Masaka Municipality, south of the capital Kampala, to prevent any planned demonstrations by members of the opposition. The opposition threatened to go on streets and demonstrate while the country was celebrating the Independence Golden Jubilee.

According to the Southern Regional Police Commander, Mr. Simon Peter Wafana, police were deployed to maintain peace as Ugandans mark the Independence Golden Jubilee. It is reported that suspected groups of youth from Masaka distributed anti-government leaflets on streets with messages saying that Uganda has had ‘50 years of bondage and suffering under dictatorial rulers’ and that this period was not worth celebrating.

Political analysts and opposition parties in Uganda say that for more than half a century, the government of Uganda has still not made the necessary transition to genuine democracy. Many Ugandans who did not join the celebrations say they are not yet independent and are unsure about their future. They say true independence celebrations should have been based on the release of falsely accused political prisoners, the restoration of human rights, the declaration and implementation of zero tolerance to corruption, economic freedom for all, security, quality infrastructures like roads, and the freedom of speech to all Ugandans. Many Ugandan journalists continue to be harassed by the army and police for airing views of the opposition either on private radio and TV stations or in the newspapers.

In Karamoja, northern Uganda where his wife Janet is Minister for Karamoja, locals were angry that they had been denied the right to take part in the golden jubilee celebrations after the government ordered that all district celebrations be done after yesterday’s ceremony to enable district leaders to attend the Kololo ceremony. The decision angered locals who suggested that the government could have allowed the districts also to celebrate the independence since the districts have deputy Regional District Councillors (RDCs) and the vice chairpersons and Assistant chief Administrative officers.

“We have never seen Independence day being postponed. This is not NRM day or Labour Day. If the president was interested [to have top district leaders with him at Kololo] then it would have been better to leave the districts to conduct celebrations because deputy RDCs and their vice chairpersons, and Chief Administrative officers would pass us a national message,” said John Teko a resident of Katanga in Moroto Municipality. Peter Loputh a resident of Nakapiripirit district described the government move of postponing the Independence Day as selfishness. “Now it has called the RDCs, LCV chairpersons and CAOs to Kololo. Are those the only Ugandans?” he asked.

AUTHOR: Nangayi Guyson
URL: http://www.thelondoneveningpost.com
E-MAIL: n.guyson [at] yahoo.com

“As an authoritarian regime, Burma was very close to an authoritarian China. As it democratizes, assuming that process continues, where do you see Burma’s international position going. Will it retain close ties with China? Will it draw closer to the United States? How do you see that evolving?”

“I should mention that when Burma became independent in 1948, we became independent as a parliamentary democracy, and we believed in the values of democracy, and although of course you can say we were not a perfect democracy, considering the fact that we had to cope with a lot of internal armed insurgences in those first years, we did well. We certainly felt free. I always remember the days of my childhood as days when people were not afraid to speak out against the government and of articles lampooning the Prime Minister appearing quite regularly in the past and nobody was arrested for that. So we were a practicing democracy, flawed, but still strong and going in the right direction. In those days we were one of the first countries to recognize a communist government of China in the 1950s and we established good relations with China, friendly relations. We maintained a neutral position. We were good friends of India, of China, of countries in our region and also of the western nations. We established good friendly relations with our ex-colonial government, the English. We became very friendly with them. We had good relations with the United States. And now that we are going back towards democracy I would like to think that Burma rather than being a bone of contention between China and the United States would be able to bring those two great countries together. It is in the interest of the world that the United States and China should be friends rather than adversaries. And this is something I would like to see. I would like to see a world where, the greater the powers are the more they realize that they have a responsibility to keep on good terms for the sake of the rest of the world. And I certainly would not like Burma to be in a position where we have to choose between one big power or the other. Or that we can not only be friends with both, but we may be an instrument of bringing them closer together. This may seem very ambitious but I think you have to be ambitious if you want to get somewhere.”

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

Since the Wikileaks and Assange affair, and than the denial to extradite Alexander Barankov, Ecuador positioned itself as the champion of human rights and a defender of free speech.

It is a very positive sign that Latin American government step up the plate, and show that democracy indeed has become a fixed feature of the continent.

The Colombian President has announced the beginning of informal talks with FARC as precursor for peace, beginning next November in Oslo. The peace process is widely supported by the people and legislature who drafted a bill to create a framework for ‘amnesty’, or as Human Rights Watch puts it Amnesty in disguise. But the Colombian people want peace more than anything, and if they support amnesty for the rebels than indeed amnesty will help enforce the peace talks and provide an impetus for lasting peace after more than half a century of war and conflict.

Are the developments in Colombia and Ecuador indeed signs of democratic consolidation and politicization?
But before we start hollering hooray and doling out balloons in celebration of Latin American democracy lets take a closer at the underlying factors that brought on these actions. Before continuing with this issue I want to introduce into the discussion, the impeachment of the Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, rather the fact that it invoked negative reactions in Latin America. I don’t believe that said reactions are symbolize increasing democratization, of human rights, quite the contrary!

The Nitty-Gritty of Democratization, Human Rights and the Latin American Left

The Political Left in Latin American is founded on neo-Marxism, Leninism and Maoist conceptions; it is radical, typified by its consistent call for revolution and uprising of the poor against the Latifundia and Caudillo. Another characteristic is its penchant to go underground, fight guerrillero type of wars, seemingly with the peasantry and for the peasantry. Guerrillo movements such as FARC (Colombia) Sendero Luminoso (Peru), Sandinista (Nicaragua) teach that oftentimes the peasantry and the people in the rural areas fall prey to the whimsicality of a guerrillo warfare; they are oftentimes caught in the middle, forced to co-operate with the rebels because they are told that the fight is to advance their plight and loathed by the officials because the fight is to advance their plight! And the peasants? They are up to this point unaware that some people or a movement are/ is defending their cause! All they want is peace! And peace never comes, only more mayhem. Both FARC and the SANDINISTAS have contributed to the impoverishment of rural Colombia and Nicaragua. In the case of Nicaragua, research by for example Anja Nygren, demonstrates that the Sandinistas were responsible for the eviction of peasants from their lands and their homes, for crimes against humanities and for the steady stream of refugees to neighboring Costa Rica. The FARC by the same token has left a trail of destruction specifically in rural Colombia, abducting children and forcing them to become a soldier in the FARC. Many poor people in the rural areas of Colombia fear for their lives and for the lives of their families, confronted with the criminality and atavistic nature of the soldiers of the FARC, as they pass through their neck of the woods. In the case of El Salvador similar patterns have been attributed to the FMLN; Several publications mention the controversial role of the FMLN as freedom fighters and perpetrators (see for example: http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/truth-com.html;

http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1669)

In broad terms, the Commission finds the FMLN responsible for having committed “grave acts of violence” including assassinations, disappearances and kidnappings during the war that violated human rights and humanitarian law. The Commission received more than 800 denunciations of grave violations by the FMLN, including nearly 400 killings and over 300 disappearances. The Commission calls on the FMLN to renounce forever all forms of violence in the pursuit of political ends.

The sense of impunity, of injustice that proliferated among especially the poor, the landless and the disenfranchised hampered democratization in the last decade of the 21st century. No longer did the people believe in a Revolution would transform the society into a Socialist Nirvana of some sorts. Of course, there was Venezuela, were the Bolivarian revolution raged on, firmly establishing the reign of Hugo Chavez, a case that in essence corroborated the idea that the :Latin American left failed to deliver on its promise, to create a more just and verdant society. The failure of the left is best illustrated by their failure to transform the economy; only in the case of Brazil (President Lula) and Chile (President Bachelet) did Leftist governments manage to establish a platform to reduce poverty; Venezuela on the other hand, turned to mercantilism in an attempt to resolve the rich-poor divide, but failed miserably in its quest to do so.

It is therefore uncanny that many leftist leaders on the continent modeled their platform inspired by Bolivarianism. Evo Morales, Fernando Lugo and Ollanta Humala exemplify the new Latin American left that modeled their movements inspired by the success of Chavisimo.

The positive aspect of the strengthening of this type of leftist movements is the increasing involvement of the grass-roots in politics, rallying behind a type of leader who looked like them and who spoke their language, and who empowered them to rally behind a platform of liberation. The optimism that came from this type of movement, the fact that its leaders were able to articulate and aggregate demand of the previously disenfranchised gave hope, specifically among anti neo-liberal proponents. But the very people that rallied behind the grass roots, in support of these new leaders of the left are now confronted with what can be qualified as the backlash. Are these leaders still the champions of the poor? How can one explain the fact that president Morales of Bolivia turned on his own people, using violence against the protesters. Striking is that Mr Morales started his MAS movement in protest against pollution of the Indigenous Habitat, but today he as the president feels that a road build with money from Brazil should and will have to cut through Indigenous lands.

The same can be argued about the Paraguayan case, President Lugo became impeached after he ordered the use of violence on protesters. He and his supporters argued said impeachment was in fact a coup, but the bi-cameral legislature of Paraguay did not act on a whim, in fact their move became backed by the Supreme Court. The reaction of the Latin American community was therefore very peculiar; Mercosur in fact condemned the actions by the Paraguayan legislature, in fact pushing the country out of the movement, in favor of Venezuela. No mention was made of the fact that Mr Lugo had used violence to evict landless peasants who are locked in the struggle to regain possession of their land. Latin American leaders did not spoke out in defense of the people who struggle for justice, in fact they seem to condemn the Paraguayan government for taking actions against the anti-democratic actions of the presidency.

Farmers’ leader Jose Rodriguez told Paraguayan radio that those killed “were humble farmers, members of the landless movement, who’d decided to stay and resist”.The farmers said the land was illegally taken during the 1954-1989 military rule of Gen Alfredo Stroessner and distributed among his allies. According to the Paraguayan Truth Commission, 6.75 million hectares of land were sold or handed over under “irregular circumstances” during military rule. The Commission says that almost 20% of Paraguayan land can be qualified as “ill-gotten gains” Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18474444

Social Movement, Radical Ideas and Status Quo

One of the immediate drawback of the social movements described in this posting, is in my view the consistent denial of the status quo, the idea that they would be able to overturn the old nomenclature to create a new political order, a total and complete disengagement from the existing political establishment. The idea that one can reconstruct a new political order based on ideas of neo-Marxism, Gramsci and so called autonomist neo-Marxist intellectuals sums up what I call the immediate failure of these political movements (Motta 2009). Indeed, the empirical overwhelming teaches that it is not possible to deconstruct and then again reconstruct a new political order; it is only possible to de-align from a certain partisan structure, or from a certain political system. Completely deconstructing a political system attenuates to radical change and transformation, to a revolution.

Harking back to the earlier mentioned radical leftist movements FARC, Sendero Luminoso, Sandinistas and FMNL to argue that none of these movements succeeded in their quests. None of these movements managed to radically break with the traditional political order. Machiavelli in his writings warns of this pitfall, that political leaders typically fall prey to the same foibles, as power corrupts and distorts. Today, we see that one of the seminal leaders of the Sandinista’s, Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua has two faces, a more moderate and placid face, that covers up his hard-line Marxist and militant predisposition that is corrupt and controversial, at best. No longer the champion for the poor and the disenfranchised, president Ortega today is unabashedly corrupt, gaining wealth and possessions rivaling that of the Samosa family that he once ousted from office:

Ortega and Sandinista leaders, in fact, have unabashedly used chunks of the money [donated by president Chavez, from Venezuela] to purchase private ownership of Nicaraguan companies, sometimes as mixed Venezuelan-Sandinista business ventures, and to corner entire industries in Nicaragua. It’s startlingly reminiscent of the personal fiefdom that the Somozas — the dictator family the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979 — made of Nicaragua during their long rule: Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2098720,00.html#ixzz25m1mqezA

Conclusion

In closing, I want to return to my primary position, that democratization in Latin America is cause for optimism and hope. Has Ecuador indeed become the champion of rights, defending free speech and freedom of expression so vehemently that it risks a diplomatic clash with Great Britain? Or is Latin America telling the world that it is no longer the Backyard of the USA? Is Julian Assange the symbol of Latin American autonomy and strive for regional identity? The handling of the Paraguayan affair within Mercosur and the OAS teach us that Latin America is indeed working to gain more autonomy from the USA by increasing its internal cohesion, just like the ASEAN (Association South East Asian Nations). Colombia is indeed working to bring peace and free the society from mayhem and the arbitrariness of the FARC. Disarmament of the FARC is also of utmost (military) strategic importance, to stabilize relations with neighboring Venezuela and to regain a seminal position within the ranks of the Latin American community. Indeed president Hugo Chavez is a crucial force when it comes to Latin American stability. The cases of Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and Suriname show that President Hugo Chavez is working diligently to spread his Bolivarian revolution. And despite the fact that an increasing number of Latin American citizens feel that democracy is the most preferred system of governance, many are still economically too weak, to accept political moderation and this is the reason why many will continue to support and trust politicians who promise change and liberation, instead of trusting the very institutions on which democracy rests.

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Introduction: Cultural Hegemony in Marxian and anti-Marxian Thought

We live in the most difficult times since the Great Depression. Just as in the Great Depression when there was political polarization and weakening of bourgeois parliamentary democracy but no revolution, similarly in the early 21st century there is no sign of social uprisings in the Western World undergoing a crisis in the political economy and bourgeois institutions. Why is it that the masses remain docile, a segment gravitating to the extreme right, another segment going as far as street protests, while most remain apathetic? If the political economy does not determine human behavior, is cultural hegemony responsible for shaping the human mind?

In ‘sociological Marxism’, a theory that assumes society runs parallel to economy and state and rejects economic determinism, Marxian intellectual Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi and others were among early 20th century thinkers who developed a theory of cultural domination. Arguing that ideological superstructures (institutions both secular and religious, public and private) dominate to influence the human mind that they did not see as mechanistic, these thinkers placed the class structure in the context of cultural hegemony that is the product of bourgeois constructs rather than an inevitable or natural consequence as mainstream thinkers argue.

Another dimension to understanding cultural hegemony and the evolution of political systems is through the work of Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). Moore examines how social structures under an agrarian and industrial political economy produces certain political outcomes in different parts of the world, focusing on the violence preceding the evolution of ‘democratic’ (bourgeois) institutions. A sociopolitical revolutionary break with the past comes only after there has been an economic transformation that alters social relations. Moore made famous the statement “no bourgeoisie, no democracy”, which of course explains the 19th and 20th centuries, but it leaves questions about the decline of the bourgeoisie in the early 21st century and what that entails for democracy.

While Gramsci, Polanyi and Moore analyzed the dynamics of social class, political economy, social discontinuity, and the role of cultural hegemony from a rationalist or scientific perspective, Richard Rorty, an American philosopher who represented the new generation of right-wingers from the Reagan to the Bush presidencies returned to the assumptions of Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke regarding the irrationality of human nature and the conspiratorial nature of demagogue intellectuals preaching revolution in order to improve society and human beings; an otherwise unachievable goal. Besides perpetuating cultural hegemony instead of trying to understand it and suggesting ways for a more socially just society, such a philosophy is intended to reject a rationalist or scientific method of analyzing social class and political economy. The propagandist and populist nature of  Rorty’s philosophy captured the imagination of other populist conservatives throughout the media and political world.

Conservatism, especially in its extreme and especially when it comes from what the mainstream baptizes respectable academic, sells and it sells big with a segment of the population that is suspicious of intellectuals, identifying as ‘elitist’ that have no connection to the ‘common man’. Because conservatism, especially in its populist form, has been an integral part of cultural hegemony that resonates with a receptive audience already indoctrinated in the cultural mainstream. When someone like Rorty or populist talk-show personalities argue that the new Left intelligentsia has been obsessed with castigating the US for having an institution of slavery, a history of racism toward minorities, a militaristic policy that proved unpopular with the War in Vietnam, etc., a large segment with strong nationalist tendencies identifies with such rhetoric and becomes anti-revolutionary. This is the ultimate triumph of cultural hegemony when the masses at whose expense policies are implemented adopt an ideological position contrary to their own interests.

Belaboring the negative institutional traits of society to radically change society is an anathema to Rorty and those promoting cultural hegemony, while true salvation is to be found in working within the system, accepting cultural hegemony that entails institutional conformity. Just like the early Cold War when there was systematic persecution of dissidents from Hollywood to academia and research laboratories, including that of Robert Oppenheimer (Manhattan Project), similarly in the early 21st century there is a major shift toward that political climate of quasi-police state, helped along by cultural hegemony.

Bourgeois Values and Indoctrination of the Masses

Does the dominant, or hegemonic social class and the political elites representing that class in pluralistic societies under the guise of ‘democracy’ have the ability to perpetuate the facade of ‘democracy’ behind which operates an economic dictatorship, an increasingly anti-labor and quasi-police  state whose role is to prevent social change? As long as cultural hegemony is effective in shaping the concept of self (Louis Althusser) for the masses, and as long as the masses identify their interests with the dominant social and political class, the facade of democracy and bourgeois culture works to prevent social revolution, even reform that has the potential of leading toward greater social justice.

Cultural hegemony explains modern-day reluctance on the part of workers and the declining lower middle class to resist through revolutionary means. Is it possible that a social revolution is not taking place in the Western World and especially across southern and much of eastern Europe where austerity is devastating the middle class and workers because people have accepted bourgeois values, ideology and institutions to which they see no alternative better than the existing one no matter how horrible it may be? What are some of those values indoctrinated into the minds of the masses, including leftists?

1. Working within the parliamentary system to find solutions to societal problems, because working outside such a framework entails absence of legitimacy as bourgeois society defines it, and the risk of lapsing into chaos if revolution follows means personal and societal disaster.

2. Ardent belief in individualism as the norm and the categorical rejection of communitarian values as deviation from the norm. In practice, this means that if you are rich, it is owing to the merits of your character, not because you have found the key legally or illegally to engage in the process of capitalist appropriation. By contrast, if you are poor, it is your fault, not institutional, because you must lack some trait that prevents you from making it in the open society that offers institutional opportunities to all who become rich. Therefore, the institutional structure is ‘objective’ and thus blameless for the fate of the individual and the multitudes of poor.

3. If the economy is contracting, it is because you and those like you have been living too well in the past, while under-producing, so now you must pay – this is especially true if you are a public employee, generally assumed lazy and overpaid, if not corrupt assuming you have a position that lends itself to making money under the table. In short, upward social mobility experienced in the past must be moderated through the process of downward social mobility for society to find balance, so the workers and middle class must sacrifice for the whole of society, when in reality the sacrifices are intended to strengthen finance capital.

4. If the economy and the state fiscal structure is on the wrong course, it is your fault for immersing in consumerist greed, debt-spending, or not spending enough to stimulate the consumer-based economy, and not paying your fair share of taxes that accounts for your predicament and that of the rest of society. How do all of these contradictory things make sense is in itself fascinating and that people believe it even more so.

The answer rests  in cultural hegemony. Specifically, it has to do with massive advertising as well as the media whose role is to inculcate bourgeois values along with bourgeois guilt into people’s heads. The rest of the institutions, from churches to schools, play a contributing role in the process of shaping the mind and identity, thus the entire society is bathing in the worldview of the bourgeois economic and political elites that transfer blame downward toward the masses, arguing that in an open society people have freely chosen their leaders and institutions, when in reality those have been superimposed.

5. When the economy is on the wrong tract, politicians are to blame and almost rarely business that the political class serves. For example, a recent US public opinion poll finds that 66% blame the lack of economic and job growth on ‘bad policy;, while only 23% blame Wall Street, despite the well-publicized ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. In short, the vast majority of people trust the corporate structure because they identify it with the ‘national interest’, while they mistrust politicians who in essence are the servants of the corporate structure.This process is also part of cultural hegemony.

6. Cultural hegemony is triumphant because the irrational is triumphant in human nature. It is a myth, perhaps dating back to Lockean philosophy and its influence on Enlightenment thinkers that influenced 19th century socialists including Marx, that human beings are rational and act as such, implying that in cases of social revolution the motivation and intent of those following revolutionary leaders is rooted on idealism.

As much as I regard reprehensible the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes who opposed the English Civil War of the 1640s and the counter-revolutionary Edmund Burke who opposed the French Revolution, there is something to be said about their keen observations regarding human nature manifesting itself in revolutionary times. Is it not the case that the rupture in cultural hegemony took place during the course of the Enlightenment that challenged the status quo, thus providing a sense of legitimacy to the revolution? After Locke was the first philosopher to make a rational case for revolution and he was a major influence on the French in 1789. In short, cultural hegemony has limitations because it is always challenged, and when that challenge reaches a substantial number of people and the nature of the challenge converges with the realities in peoples’ lives, a segment of them will challenge the status quo.

Cultural Hegemony Lessons for the 21st Century

The lessons of cultural hegemony from the past should be applied today, as we look at those who want revolutionary action, but shy away from it. What motivates some to protest, others to adopt a more militant position, and the vast majority to do absolutely nothing except complain to their family and friends? Has cultural hegemony suppressed any sense of idealism of aiming toward social justice? Is the majority of the population immersed in ‘bourgeois pragmatism’ – paying bills for now, taking care of family, satisfying immediate needs and trying to advance their careers in the age of careerism that cultural hegemony promotes?

If people are facing a bleak future for themselves and their children unless they embrace the institutional structure, how can they possibly unhinge from cultural hegemony, which is all they hear and see in the media, and in any institutional or social setting? How can people break away from bourgeois values and practices? This sense of ‘bourgeois pragmatism’ is also an integral part of the brainwashing process, to be absolutely crude about it, given that indeed this is a result of multifarious forces from society and the result of long-term historical and traditional (religious and secular) influences.

This concept of bourgeois pragmatism that has its roots in the 19th century, made a return in the 1980s onwards with Richard Rorty among others who adamantly opposed social revolution, any more than they believed in redemption of human beings or their progress through revolution. Unlimited freedom and allowing people to muddle through their problems is what these advocates of ‘bourgeois pragmatism’ favored; in short, early 19th century-style social and economic conditions.

Downward Social Mobility vs. Cultural Hegemony

In the past three decades, the Western World has been experiencing uneven income distribution in favor of the top ten percent of the population, mostly at the expense of the bottom two thirds of the people many of whom considered themselves an integral part of the middle class and democratic society. All the studies that have been conducted indicate that downward social mobility have gone hand in hand with the decline of the welfare state and the rapid rise of corporate welfare under the neoliberal model during the age of globalization. In 2010, the Federal Reserve affirmed that the economic contraction entailed that the median American family experienced a living standard comparable to the early 1990s, wiping away two decades of gains. With stocks too risky for many small investors and savings accounts paying little interest, building up a nest egg is a challenge even for those who can afford to sock away some of their money.

From 2008 until the present, the situation I am describing became much worse, and it is expected to deteriorate in the remainder of the decade, as structural unemployment hovers around 10% in Europe and around 8% in the US. If we consider structural underemployment, we have a picture that approximate Great Depression levels, considering that the combined unemployment and underemployment figures account for an estimate 20% of the workforce in the US and a bit higher in Europe. For example, one-third of all Americans between 18 and 29 are underemployed, receiving very low pay, invariably without benefits of a full time worker. One would think that such dire conditions would shake the foundations of bourgeois society. On the contrary, with the exception of some street protests throughout the Western World, a small percentage going to the extreme right (varieties of neo-Fascism), the institutional structure appears sound, at least for now, with no guarantees how long it will remain so.

Arab Spring and Cultural Hegemony

If cultural hegemony works to prevent social change, how do we account for Arab Spring revolts? If by the word ‘revolution’ we mean systemic change, then Arab Spring revolts did not result in systemic change. If by the word ‘revolution’ we imply grassroots, then Arab Spring revolts do not fall in this category, because there was heavy outside interference, especially in the cases of Libya and Syria.

It is true that political change has resulted, but it is not institutional change by any means where Arab Spring has taken root. Still, how do we explain that an otherwise ‘traditional’ religious society, somewhat influenced by modern secular culture and using high tech communications, manage to have a segment of its population mobilize for change, albeit limited to political regime and with external political, financial and military interference? Does Arab Spring prove that the cultural hegemony theory is wrong, or does it validate it, and what are the lessons for the rest of the world’s grassroots movements?

Arab Spring was a revolt against secular, one-party state regimes that lacked legitimacy from the ruling population and represented a notion of sovereignty identified with the early Cold War instead of the 21st century. Muslims rebelled against such regimes to bring change that would reflect traditional values and practices through domestic and foreign policy that their governments did not represent. Cultural hegemony actually worked to promote Arab Spring, given that the rebels by far wanted a return to Muslim roots and social justice within Muslim institutions. 

One reason we fail to see progress on women’s issues, and democracy and human rights, as the West defines those concepts, is precisely because cultural hegemony, especially in the context of ‘political Islam’ operated all along behind Arab Spring. Political Islam, the mixing of religion and politics, has alienated a segment of the Middle East-North African population, but it remains the principal dynamic in Arab cultural hegemony. 

Conclusions

Some thinkers assume that more than anything people crave safety an security, and on the fears of those cultural hegemony rests. Some argue that actualizing their potential is just as important for human beings, but this entails having an institutional structure that permits and promotes those possibilities. I have argued in the past that revolution is possible in this century. Many factors have to converge for a revolution to take place. It is true that revolutions rarely take place amid economic contractions, but economic hard times eventually prepare the stage for uprisings that may fester in the minds of people for many years before they act. Modern technology has made it possible for cultural hegemony to be challenged, but real conditions (socioeconomic status and lack of prospects for a better future) in peoples’ lives must be such that they will free themselves of cultural hegemony’s grip to embrace social change. 

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

“We are the children of the ideals you couldn’t kill.”

A young woman carried the hand-lettered sign as she marched with tens of thousands of people in Mexico City last July 22. Twenty-something, with long black hair and jeans, her message captures the spirit and sense of history of Mexico’s new movement for real democracy. At the same time, it reveals the resentment that especially youth feel about the presidential elections and a new government that for them representsan era of manipulation and repression.

Weeks after Mexico’s presidential elections, thousands of people have turned out to protest the declared winner, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the imminent return to power of the party that ruled Mexico for more than seven decades. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which is slated to take office December 1, now faces increasing accusations of fraud, a legal demand to declare the elections invalid, and a youth movement that refuses to go away.

#IAm132

“Mexico, Without the PRI”, “Electoral Institute, You Coward—Correct the Elections!” and “Mexico Voted and Peña Didn’t Win!”–men and women chanted these slogans through downtown avenues in the latest demonstration, vowing that the politician best known for his hair-do and ties to old-style Mexican politics would never take office. Most of the marchers are university-age, but contingents of workers, neighborhood associations, and citizens of all ages take part.

Many support the opposition candidate and second-place finisher, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But the media spin that the entire movement is a contrivance of a poor loser falls flat when confronted with the actual messages and motives of the movement.

Mexico is seeing the birth of a movement for real democracy. It is led by a generation that wants to break through the cynicism of a nation accustomed to corruption and authoritarian rule. Its members challenge not just the election results, but the very definition of democracy.

The movement called “#IAm132” that arose in protest to Peña Nieto at a local university centers on the principle that democracy can’t be bought. Young people with no adult memory of living under the PRI have looked at their nation’s history and decided they don’t want to go back there.

The “#IAm132” movement–with the hashtag in its name marking its generational identity–has a broad platform that includes: democratization of the media to guarantee the right to information and freedom of expression; “secular, free, scientific, pluricultural, democratic, humanist, popular, critical, quality education”; change in the neoliberal economic model with less emphasis on the market and more state involvement; transformation of the security and justice model and withdrawal of the army from public security; participative democracy and autonomy; and health as a human right.

PRI’s Rocky Road Back to Power

Few people predicted Mexico’s post-electoral protests or the rapid rise of the youth-led movement against Peña Nieto. The PRI learned from its loss to Vicente Fox in 2000 and the convulsive post-electoral protests of 2006, when conservative candidate Felipe Calderon was declared the winner with the slimmest of margins and widespread accusations of fraud. It set out to avoid both scenarios, grooming its candidate years earlier to position him as the image of the “new PRI.”

The effort reportedly included secret deals with the major television stations for favorable coverage in the media dating back to 2009. Both the Mexican magazine Proceso and later The Guardian reported on these contracts, although the PRI denied the charges.

It also included rebuilding the political machine that served the party during its 71 years of uninterrupted rule over the country. That political machine suffered a debilitating blow with the election of Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in 2000. The PRI not only lost the helm of a nation it had confidently controlled for years, it also lost its majority in the legislature and several state governorships to boot. It was a dramatic and ignominious fall from power, and the age of  “the dinosaurs”—as the PRI political elite is called—appeared to be over for good.

But at least one insider and numerous analysts claim that the PAN agreed to leave the PRI political machine in place in return for support for its reform proposals in the legislature and the continued dominance of a small and powerful economic elite. The PRI was able to rebuild without fear of criminal charges for past acts of corruption and repression among its ranks.

The 2012 elections proved that the machine has been well oiled and employs many of the same tactics used to guarantee electoral wins in the past. But the goal of building a solid margin of victory to assure legitimacy backfired due to citizen and some media monitoring of blatant abuses

A coalition of progressive parties filed a legal challenge on July 12 to declare the presidential election invalid due to violations of articles of the Mexican constitution that call for free and fair voting. The demand specifically cites exceeding campaign spending limits as the cause. The legal limit is set at the unlikely figure of $336,112,084.16 pesos—about $25.4 million dollars. The coalition says it has proof that the PRI-Green Party spent five times the allowed limit.

In the most potentially damaging aspect of the allegations, Lopez Obrador accused the PRI of laundering money through off-the-books campaign spending. The opposition has demanded an investigation into the possible use of public funds in PRI-governed areas and money from illicit sources, including organized crime. The use of pre-paid bankcards is a common form of money laundering. The PRI issued thousands of these cards from a bank called MONEX to voters in a presumed vote-buying operation. (One protest sign noted acidly, “Mexico’s elections were so clean, even the money was laundered”).

The legal challenge also cites evidence of buying off pollsters to create an impression that the election was in the bag. Many polling companies confidently reported double-digit leads for Peña Nieto,with up to an 18-point lead. The final count showed just over 6 points, with Peña Nieto at 38.21 percent, Lopez Obrador at 31.59 percent, and conservative candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota at 25.41 percent. Whether the discrepancy resulted from faulty methodology or giving the client what he wants has become the subject of daily conversation in Mexico.

US-Mexico Drug War Alliance

President Obama called Peña Nieto to congratulate him on his victory even before Mexican electoral authorities had declared the victory. The White house issued a readout of Obama’s call to Peña Nieto, heralding a continued partnership in “democracy, economic prosperity and security.”

The Obama administration’s rush to affirm support for the embattled candidate is not a sign of enthusiasm for the return of the PRI. The U.S. government clearly would have preferred another conservative government in Mexico. The National Action Party swung the door wide open to greater U.S. involvement in the country. Agencies including the DEA, ATF, CIA, and FBI as well as“retired” military personnel now participate in and operate Mexico’s disastrous internal security policies. Felipe Calderon’s war on drugs proved the perfect vehicle for breaking down resistance to U.S.  intervention and making huge inroads in its regional security plan, which includes integrating Mexico into its “regional security perimeter.”

But the Obama administration was eager to put the elections behindto get center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador off the political stage as soon as possible. Lopez Obrador openly called for ending the drug warand “adopting a different strategy” during his final campaign speech.

Ignoring the post-electoral conflicts already brewing south of the border, the White House congratulated the candidate and the Mexican people for having “demonstrated their commitment to democratic values through a free, fair, and transparent election process.”But well before Lopez Obrador filed the legal challenge, evidence of vote buying had surfaced and the “Iam132” movement and others were expressing accusations of fraud.

When asked by a reporter on July 9 if the State Department still maintained that the elections were “transparent,” spokesperson Patrick Ventrell dodged the question, stating only that “we welcome the electoral authority’s announcement of the final results, and obviously we look forward to working with President-elect Mr. Pena Nieto.”

The administration accepted Peña Nieto when polls showed a significant lead and hurriedly arranged meetings with its soon-to-be new ally well before the elections. The Pentagon-driven Mexico policy requires a willing partner in the drug war. Mexican army troops are now stationed in strategic locations throughout the country, ostensibly to stop the flow of illegal drugs and capture drug kingpins. They have repeatedly acted to repress human rights defenders and subdue communities protesting the loss of natural resource control or army presence. The armed forces act as a form of social control, while army officials have been accused of being in cahoots with organized crime in several cases.

Continuing the drug war is at the top of the U.S. binational agenda. Congress has sustained it through consistent funding of the Merida Initiative since the Bush plan passed in 2008. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee just recommended four more years and a billion more U.S. taxpayer dollars, despite the fact that the joint strategy has resulted in 60,000 fatalities in Mexico and no measurable decrease in the flow of illicit drugs to the U.S.

Pena Nieto stated, “Without a doubt, I am committed to having an intense, close relationship of effective collaboration measured by results,” alleviating fears that the former nationalist party would distance itself from the new military/police alliance with its powerful neighbor. He has announced the appointment of a former chief of Colombia National Police, General Oscar Naranjo, as his top security adviser before the elections. Naranjo is a key player in Colombian security policy and very close to the U.S. security establishment.

There are four months until the inauguration. Mexico’s long lame-duck period will be rife with protests. The IAm132 movement joined with other grassroots organizations in mid-July to lay out a series of mobilizations tied to the date the electoral authorities must ratify electoral results (September 6), inauguration (December 1), and beyond.

In questioning the role of media monopolies, publicity and public image, vote buying, campaign spending, and political operators, Mexico’s new movement is raising serious questions about electoral democracy. The questions don’t only apply to Mexico–a nation emerging from and perhaps returning to authoritarian government. They also have much relevance to the United States as it heads toward presidential elections in November.

Photos: Clayton Conn, Alfredo Acedo

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

Haytham al-Maleh

A group of exiled Syrian activists announced a new opposition alliance on Tuesday that aims to form a transitional government inside Syria – a challenge to the Syrian National Council (SNC).

Haytham al-Maleh, a lawyer and former judge, told a Cairo news conference called to unveil the new body: “I have been tasked with leading a transitional government.” Maleh added that he will begin consultations “with the opposition inside and outside” the country.

Maleh said the new alliance would act as an alternative to the SNC which he said “had failed to help the Syrian revolution”. It would work to get more help to rebels, he said.

Maleh, a long-standing dissident against the Assad family, resigned from the SNC in March, saying he had given up trying to make the group more effective.
“We are not asking for military intervention, such as an invasion, but international protection, such as stopping Syrian planes,” he said.

The Council for the Syrian Revolution comprises 70 opposition figures and will be based in Cairo, with branches in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. Al-Maleh, 81, is a laywer and human rights activist who has spent several years in prison in his homeland. He was jailed in October 2009 and released in March 2011 by presidential pardon, just days before the revolt against Assad erupted. Maleh has worked for Amnesty International since 1989 and helped found the Syrian Association for Human Rights.

He was also imprisoned in 1980 for six years along with a number of trade unionists and political dissidents.

Syria’s civil war has entered a far more violent phase since July 18 when a bomb killed four top members of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle. Serious fighting reached Aleppo over the past week and rebels also launched an assault on the capital Damascus in July but were repulsed. The battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, has become a crucial test for both sides in the 16-month-old rebellion. Neither Assad’s forces nor the rag-tag rebels can afford to lose if they hope to prevail in the wider struggle for Syria.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Such alternatives can take many forms—including improving governance, enhancing the rule of law, promoting transparency, decentralizing government (where leaders might be held more accountable in some cases), ensuring equity in governance and the distribution of resources (which may matter more than better governance), and increasing the leverage of societal groups to monitor the performance of state officials.

One neglected area that deserves much more attention is promoting social cohesion. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest difference between the successful developmental states and their far less successful developing country peers is the degree of social cohesion.

But how do you promote social cohesion when it is lacking?

On a national level, it requires determined and consistent effort aimed at building a strong national identity around some unifying force. Tanzania has adopted Swahili as its national language; Senegal has celebrated its unique Islamic and African cultural heritages; Pakistan has attempted to forge an Islamic identity.

This is essential but not a quick solution: effort must be multigenerational and multidimensional to create the moral imperatives for public goods that is the basis of effective government. The young must be educated from an early age in languages, symbols, and ideas that everyone within the country can accept. The media must cultivate a shared self-image and show a population how it differs from its neighbors. Political parties representing sectarian or sectional interests must be banned. Government officials must consistently display no favoritism toward any group. Steps must be taken to institutionalize cooperation between the country’s different ethnic and religious groups, such as making agreements to share the profits from a country’s natural resources equitably throughout the country, and drawing up constitutions that mandate that all groups be represented in cabinets, civil services, legislatures, and militaries.

The local level is often more promising. There are two possibilities. As I have argued previously, urban governments may be better positioned than national (or rural) governments in many countries to promote development, partly because they are in some places much more cohesive. In addition, governance capacity achieves more and accountability loops works better when great distances and poor infrastructure are not in the way.

Outside cities, the best possibility is to try to leverage an existing set of identities and institutions. MIT’s Lily Tsai’s 2007 paper “Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China” shows how this might work (as well as how important social cohesion is at all levels of government).

In this paper, she showed through in-depth case study research and an original survey of 316 villages in rural China that:

Even when formal accountability is weak, local officials can be subject to unofficial rules and norms that establish and enforce their public obligations. These informal institutions of accountability can be provided by encompassing and embedding solidary groups. Villages where these types of groups exist are more likely to have better local governmental public goods provision than villages without these solidary groups, all other things being equal.

She defines “encompassing and embedding solidary groups” as “groups based on shared moral obligations as well as shared interests.” They must meet two particular structural characteristics:

First, they must be encompassing, or open to everyone under the local government’s jurisdiction. In localities with encompassing solidary groups, social boundaries overlap with political boundaries. . . . Second, solidary groups must be embedding in that they incorporate local officials into the group as members. Not all encompassing solidary groups are embedding.

Officials act differently in such places because:

They may still have a strong incentive to provide public goods when citizens award them moral standing for doing so. . . . Moral standing can be a powerful incentive. It not only makes people feel good about themselves, but also it can translate into economic and social advancement. Local officials with higher moral standing may also find it easier to elicit citizen compliance with state policies. Moral standing can be an invaluable resource for accomplishing a variety of political, social, and economic objectives.

These results can explain much of the difference in local government effectiveness between and within countries across the world. They show that the nature of state structures (whether they are democratic or not) may matter less than how society is organized and how this organization interacts with the state. One World Bank study showed that 93 percent of the variation in the extent to which local political leaders pay attention to citizens is explained by within-country variation, meaning that the great majority of difference was not explained by the form of government (which did not vary within countries). Things like social cohesion, political culture, and capacity mattered more.

Tsai’s conclusions are important for anyone trying to improve the accountability of political leaders and officials:

When formal institutions of accountability are weak, citizens can still make government officials organize and fund the public goods that they want and need when they have the right kind of social groups. Solidary groups that are structured so that they overlap and mesh with government structures can provide local government officials with important incentives to provide the public goods and services that citizens demand even when democratic or bureaucratic institutions do not work effectively.

Of course, not all social groups can achieve these results:

We need to differentiate between different types of social groups and social capital and to theorize about how they are correlated with particular political and economic outcomes. What the “right” kind of social group is depends on what result we are interested in. This study shows that distinguishing between different types of social groups can reveal that groups with different structural characteristics have very different effects on governmental performance. It also suggests that we need to pay more attention to important interaction effects between social structures and state structures.

The importance of social cohesion to development and governance is well understood in Asia, but generally ignored in the West. The latter has long focused on technical and economic approaches to what might be better understood as collective-action problems requiring a sociopolitical response.

When the term “social cohesion” does come up in the West, it usually is discussed in the context of reducing inequality, something I called “vertical social cohesion” in an earlier post. “Horizontal social cohesion,” which is what Tsai focuses on, is instead about the social glue that ties people together and that encourages leaders to act for the good of their communities no matter what state structures are present.

Figuring out how informal accountability can improve how states work ought to be an essential topic for leaders of countries and policymakers in the development field.

AUTHOR: Seth Kaplan
URL: http://www.fragilestates.org
E-MAIL: seth [at] sethkaplan.org

We know all that!

As we watch the unfolding of a democracy we surely know to be illusionary, we bemoan how we lack representative political institutions. Those sleepy clowns we elect to the parliament we know to be beholden to the whims of an oligarchy of über-Moroccans no better, in fact worse, than any foreign colonizer. People jeer at how fractured Abdelilah Benkirane’s government is, how crude his ministers, whose directives are snubbed by subordinate officials, are. Mr. Benkirane finds himself making the same mistake Abderrahman al-Youssoufi committed during his tenure as a Prime Minister in the transitional government of 1998 – 2002: ingratiating himself with the King at the expense of his credibility in the street by excessively running to the palace to beseech the King’s imprimatur to force the application of any comprehensive reform on his own rank and file. Everybody is aware our spurious political opposition is a slapstick act. No one in Morocco is shocked to know that the economy is weak, corruption widespread, the education system bankrupt, healthcare inefficient, elections fraudulent.

We know all that!

We allow ourselves to be entertained by the old guard’s obstructionist strategies to the overly conservative reforms of the Islamist government. Cafés have been abuzz with how Faycal Laraichi and Samira Sitail are the steadfast withstanders of Islamisation, the last bulwark against the sweeping advance of an intolerant, misogynist Islamic discourse into Morocco ‘secular and permissive mindset. Mosques are filled with chatter about how Islam is under attack and the PJD is the shield protecting country and faith from a denigrating Western culture set on undermining our identity, stymieing our progress, indoctrinating our minds.

But there is a more salient reason why Morocco is a sinkhole for democracy. We gripe about the government more openly now, but we act little. We are an ambivalent and empathic lot, bloated by greed and spectacular cynicism. Everybody’s looking for a way to fool the system and con the other. Nurses who surreptitiously eat the food brought by families of patients under their care are not exceptions, nor are pregnant women who are forced to deliver their babies at the gates of a regional hospital deserted by its on-duty doctors. Ambulance drivers ask patients for “gas money” while government clerks demand their “cup of coffee,” euphemisms for bribery, in exchange for their services. The teachers, the doctors, the nurses, the civil servants, the lawyers, the judges, the policemen, the military, the politicians, and anybody in a position that bestows upon him an iota of power is for sale. When the Tunisian and Libyan governments collapsed, the Direction générale de la surveillance du territoire (DGST), Morocco’s counterintelligence service, was advised that the security services of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Mummar Gaddafi had recruited Moroccan journalists, intellectuals, parliamentarians, and government officials, as sources tasked to collect and report on their own country; in exchange for their services, they received salaries and gifts.

Integrity and philanthropy are raindrops in the desert. We condemn the repression of journalists, artists, and bloggers, but we suppose they deserve it after all; we preach tolerance and yet chastise those Moroccans who opt for different religions and cultures. We at once lament child servitude and accept it as a cultural fait accompli; we growl about the suicide of a teenage woman forced to marry her rapist, but rationalize the marriage as protection to her honor; we complain about trash in our streets, but we too litter.

The people want change so long it is designed and implemented by the King. He is regarded by most as a beacon of light among sleaze. Any such change cannot subvert his moral authority to govern. Forget about democratic institutions governed by laws and procedures; Moroccans would rather rely on one man’s wisdom and sense of justice. The King of course relies for his governance on a perfidious ecosystem of which the Moroccan society as a whole is a part.  No wonder then the Moroccan society is hardly reactive and has such high tolerance for political and economic shenanigans – in pari delicto. Its members are riddled with self-destructive pathologies. What’s worse? We are in denial. We have yet to face up to reality. We live in a paracosm in which frenzied adulation to the King and his entourage are rooted in the deepest recesses of our psyche. So long we remain this way, there will be no change for a thousand years to come.

AUTHOR: Ahmed T. B. / Cabalamuse
URL: http://cabalamuse.wordpress.com/
E-MAIL: cabalafuse [at] hotmail.com

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Aung San Suu Kyi.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org