Strengthen democracy: Biden to world leaders
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden closed the “Summit for Democracy” on Friday reminding world leaders, who participated, of their responsibility to “strengthen the guardrails of democracy” to make it more resilient against the “buffeting forces of autocracies” and he vowed to do his own part in America by enacting laws advancing voting rights.
The two-day virtual summit was attended by leaders of 89 countries - of the 100 who were invited - and the European Union.
Biden announced in his closing remarks that he plans to host a second edition of it next year and indicated it would be an in-person gathering.
Joe Biden closed the summit saying, “As the leaders of governments, we - we have a responsibility to listen to our citizens, to strengthen the guardrails of democracy, and to drive reforms that are going to make transparent, accountable governments - governance more resilient against the buffering and - the buffeting forces of autocracy and those who want - and the naked pursuit of power ahead of the public good.”
This first summit of its kind was attended among others by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, France’s Emmanuel Macron, United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australia’s Scott Morrison.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan were not invited and Pakistan’s Imran Khan turned down the invitation.
“Over the last two days, we’ve heard government leaders, as well as democratic reformers from every region of the world, talk about the challenges that democracy is facing and the opportunities for its renewal,” Biden said, summarising the remarks and comments at the conference.
“And we’ve focused on the need to empower human rights defenders and make sure … technology … is used to advance democracies to lift people up, not to hold them down.”
The last point was an unmistakable reference to Beijing’s use of technology - the persecution of China’s minority Uighur Muslims - is what has been described by the United States and other countries as genocide.
The country’s communist party rulers have also used technology to suppress dissent.
President Joe Biden went on to say that though challenges to democracy may vary from country to country “the threat we face and the solutions we seek have a common antecedent”.
China branded US democracy a “weapon of mass destruction” on Saturday, following the summit which aimed to shore up like-minded allies in the face of autocratic regimes.
“‘Democracy’ has long become a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ used by the US to interfere in other countries,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said in an online statement, which also accused the US of having “instigated ‘colour revolutions’” overseas. The ministry also claimed the summit was organised by the US to “draw lines of ideological prejudice, instrumentalise and weaponise democracy... (and) incite division and confrontation”.
Instead, Beijing vowed to “resolutely resist and oppose all kinds of pseudo-democracies”.
Ahead of the summit, China ramped up a propaganda blitz criticising US democracy as corrupt and a failure.
With inputs from agencies