Oil and democracy mix like oil and water

‘Take Azerbaijan’s 2013 elections, when the highly repressive government of President Ilham Aliyev sought to boost its democratic credentials by launching an iPhone app that enabled citizens to keep up to speed with the vote tallies as ballot counting took place. Touting its commitment to transparency, the regime said that the new technology would allow anyone to watch the results in real time. But those who were keen to try out the new technology were surprised to find that they could see the results on the app the day before the polls opened. In other words, anyone with the app could see who had won, who had lost, and by how much, before any ballots had even been cast.’ (Cheeseman, Nicholas 2018 – ‘How to Rig an Election,’ Yale University Press).

The authors argued that Azerbaijan was not an outlier: they had interviews with more than 500 elite figures ranging from prime ministers and presidents, lowerlevel election officials who have rigged elections, ambassadors, aid workers, opposition candidates, rebels and coup plotters disillusioned with democracy from countries such as Belarus, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, the United States and Zimbabwe. They had also witnessed electoral manipulation at first hand and their mission was to reveal the lessons they had learnt.

Using the most up to date data, they argued that more national multiparty elections are being held today than ever before. From an average of 30 a year in the early 1950s, the increase has been constant but accelerated in all regions of the world in the early 1990s after the collapse of communism and by the time of their writing, about 70 national elections were organised annually. However, we are asked not to believe that the above type of electoral manipulation apply to only a small proportion of the elections held each year. ‘In authoritarian states in which leaders hold elections despite not being committed to democratic values, rigging is the norm rather than the exception.’ With the end of the Cold War, scholars such as Francis Fukuyama, were predicting the ‘end of history’ and the inevitable march towards the liberal democratic state. However, these kinds of predictions were ‘naïvely optimistic’ and in the last decade there has been a gradual decline in the quality of democracy with no end in sight.

‘How is it possible’ they asked, ‘that the flourishing of elections has coincided with a decade of democratic decline? The answer is that dictators, despots and counterfeit democrats have figured out how to rig elections and get away with it. An increasing number of authoritarian leaders are contesting multiparty elections, but are unwilling to put their fate in the hands of voters; in other words, more elections are being held, but more elections are also being rigged.’

I was attracted to this quite recent book because there are those who want us to believe that with counting of the ballot at the place of polls, multiple party scrutineers, national and international observer missions, a quite intrusive media, forensic election audits and other such checks, national elections are near impossible to manipulate. So I am interested in and future articles will seek to establish whether or not the authoritarian tool box the authors have identified can be used to manipulate elections in Guyana, and what can be done to prevent such manipulation.

Cheeseman and his colleagues recognised four basic types of political system leading towards democracy: (1) pure authoritarian regimes, such as China, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, which do not hold national multiparty elections; (2) the dominant authoritarian type - Russia, Rwanda and Uzbekistan - where elections are held but political and civil rights are curtailed to a point that make it almost impossible for the opposition to compete; (3) competitive authoritarian states such as Kenya and Ukraine, in which elections are hotly contested but the opposition competes with one hand tied behind its back, and (4) electorally democratic states, such as the United States and United Kingdom, where some discrepancies exist but polls tend to be reasonably free and fair. We might be tempted to argue that Guyana is not authoritarian but a liberal democratic state with blemishes that holds regular elections. Be that as it may, we have seen that holding regular multiparty elections means very little if leaders are not committed to the democratic process, and there is abundant evidence that our leaders are masquerading as democrats. The no-confidence vote and its aftermath are ample proof of this contention. Furthermore, to this may be added their encouragement and use of ethnic alliances and Guyana’s history of elections manipulation. Indeed, now there is the accusation, without a shred of evidence mind you but with serious future implications if the coalition loses the next elections, that the previous government had embedded some 200,000 fake names in voters list and is fighting tooth and nail to prevent a new house-to-house registration.

Interestingly at one point they argue that three factors make leaving office particularly problematic for authoritarian rulers. They may have used use of physical force against opponents and must be prepared to suffer reprisals if they lose office. Assets built up under authoritarian rule are often illegitimate or at the very least of highly questionable origin, and so are prone to being appropriated by future governments, and these days extreme human rights abuses make such leaders vulnerable to prosecution in both national and international courts. However, at the end of the day, if such leaders insist upon holding on to power, suppression becomes necessary but can only be used if the cost of repression, such as buying off the security forces, is available.

‘This is one reason why there is such a high correlation between oil reserves and the quality of democracy. … most of the world’s oil-producing states are authoritarian.’ On a 20- point scale in which –10 is a pure dictatorship and +10 is a pure democracy, the average country with no or very low oil revenues scores +4.2, while the average country that secures at least 3 per cent of its GDP from oil scores –2.4. On the specific issue of the conduct of elections, on a scale of 0 to 100, in which 100 represents the highest quality and 0 the worst, the average oil-producing state scores just 24, almost half the score of the average non-oil-producing state. ‘The implication is clear: from Angola to Saudi Arabia, oil and democracy mix about as well as oil and water.’