Democrats Despair

This is a lonely time for democrats in two countries, Pakistan and Kenya. Lonely, because in each case their western backers equivocate about the need to enforce free elections. In Pakistan, America and Britain fund a military dictatorship, which fails to protect its leaders, locks up its lawyers, and systematically nobbles the political process. In Kenya, we underwrite a president who has just stolen an election and set his country aflame in the process. We preach civil society, fair elections, a free press. We practise emergency rule, bent polls, and a muzzled media.

We invade our enemies in the name of democracy, but allow our allies to subvert it. All this in the service of the greater causes like counter-proliferation or the war against Islamic militants. In reality, nothing could be more calculated to heighten the risk of proliferation or to despatch millions of floating voters into the arms of rival creeds. When our client states collapse, as they inevitably do, we puzzle at how we "lost" Russia or Iraq. We fret about how anti-Western the world has become. The truth is simpler. We do not need tsars or mullahs to fan the flames. We do it quite effectively ourselves.

Elections in Pakistan looked set last night to be delayed for at least a month, as new video footage emerged challenging the official version of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. The government's insistence that her head injuries were caused by falling on to the sun roof lever of her armored car, is contradicted by footage that shows her head and shawl rocking from the percussive impact of a bullet. She fell back into her car before the suicide bomber set his device off. The Bhutto family has asked for Britain or the United Nations to hold an independent inquiry, and this should be done.

The delay in elections will help Mr Musharraf muddy the waters still further. If an election were held as scheduled on January 8, the Pakistan People's party would sweep away all before it. The vote would be Pakistan's last act of remembrance for its fallen leader. Delaying the poll allows Mr Musharraf's people to get to work on the reputation of the PPP's caretaker leader, the widower Asif Ali Zardari.

The president's party will want to allow personal sympathies to subside before reminding Pakistanis of their distaste for the man whose alleged corruption earned him the nickname "Mr 10%". The fight will be bitter in the Punjab, where the president's party goes head-to-head with that of Nawaz Sharif. Sadly, Mr Musharraf's tactics stand every chance of working. Democrats who take up the cudgels against the military establishment may well be fighting for a lost cause.