------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 23, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- VOTERS BEWARE: INTERVENTION IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY By Deirdre Griswold How many times in recent days have we heard politicians and media pundits invoke the "will of the people"? Once the messy recounts are over and a president has been chosen, they say, the government can go about its normal business of carrying out the "will of the people." That is the American Way, the great democratic process that begins at the ballot box in the United States. The problem with this view is that, stuffed ballot boxes or not, U.S. elections certainly do NOT serve "the will of the people." This political system was designed to uphold the will of the privileged few. It didn't start with this election, but has been going on for over 200 years. However, the false issue of democracy has been used so often by administrations in Washington to intervene around the globe that a short review of how elections are used to advance imperialist schemes is in order. EXCUSE FOR YUGOSLAV INTERVENTION The claim by "experts" in Washington that elections in some other country have been flawed has been used more than once as an excuse for intervention. First comes political and economic pressure. Then, if that doesn't work, there may be outright military invasion. The most recent and flagrant example of this is, of course, the massive intervention of the U.S. and European capitalist countries in Yugoslavia's presidential election. Little effort was made to conceal the millions spent on posters, fax machines, television ads and other means to propel the candidacy of Vojislav Kostunica. This plus threats of a new war and promises to rebuild the shattered country evidently succeeded in winning him the popular vote. We say evidently because, now that the media are paying so much attention to the U.S. election, it is obvious that there are many, many ways to change the outcome of voting-- from "losing" ballots to intimidating voters to disenfranchising large numbers of people. Maybe this didn't happen in Yugoslavia, but it has certainly happened here, in the country that appointed itself to decide if Yugoslavia's elections were fair. Why does the U.S. ruling class prefer Kostunica to former President Slobodan Milosevic? "Democracy" hasn't got a thing to do with it. Kostunica is committed to accepting economic and political dictates from the U.S., the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Foreign corporations are already taking the measure of Yugoslavia's state-owned industry, which the new "reformers" are preparing to sell to the highest bidder. THE MAKING OF PRESIDENT YELTSIN The loudest shouting about democracy can be in reality the excuse for massive election fraud. With the help of spin masters in the media, the people chosen by Washington to carry out its agenda are given "legitimacy" in elections bought and paid for by the U.S. For example, the International Monetary Fund openly gave Boris Yeltsin a $10-billion loan just before the Russian election in 1996 to buy him the presidency. It allowed him to outspend the Communist Party candidate, Gennadi Zhu ganov, by 10,000 to one at a time of great economic crisis. There, too, the clear threat that there would be a dangerous return to the Cold War if the left won helped tip the vote. "Democracy is served," said all the Western commentators when Yeltsin won. He soon became the most unpopular leader in Russian history, earning a 5-percent approval rating that put him below Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin. And no wonder. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, living conditions for the masses in all its former republics have deteriorated more sharply than did conditions in the capitalist West after the stock market crash and Great Depression of the 1930s. All this has been done in the name of "American democracy." Should we be so surprised at how hollow that now turns out to be? Some of the bloodiest conflicts of recent times have come after U.S. pressure actually prevented a real election from taking place. ELECTION SABOTAGED IN VIETNAM Take the U.S. war against Vietnam, for example--that ruinous, one-sided, high-tech assault on a poor peasant country trying to break free of colonial bondage. Its roots go back to 1954, when the Vietnamese liberation forces had just defeated the French colonialists at Dien Bien Phu. Under enormous pressure from the U.S. at international peace talks in Geneva, the Vietnamese reluctantly agreed to a temporary partition of their country. Within two years, however, there were supposed to be nationwide elections. Not one among all the international experts on Southeast Asia doubted that, if real elections were held, the next president of Vietnam would be Ho Chi Minh. He was the hero of the independence movement, having led the fight against both the French and Japanese colonialists for decades. The nationwide elections were never held. The Eisenhower administration dug up Ngo Dinh Diem, an expatriate living in New Jersey, and spent millions to establish him as "president of South Vietnam." In October 1963, after the U.S. military had become directly involved in Vietnam and massive demonstrations had begun in the south against the Diem dictatorship, the Kennedy administration had Diem and his brother assassinated so it could put in someone less known and hated by the Vietnamese people. What the CIA giveth, it can taketh away. Thus began the hand-picking of a long string of "heads of state" in South Vietnam by the great democrats in the U.S. ruling class--until a furious anti-war movement at home and an unstoppable resistance in both north and south Vietnam combined to force an end to the war. ITALY, LEBANON, CHILE, GUYANA, ETC. In the book "Rogue State," published by Common Courage press, former State Department officer William Blum summarizes a long history of U.S. efforts, mostly successful, to throw elections in countries where there were strong political movements that resisted control by U.S. corporations and banks. Blum shows how U.S. operatives, often but not always working for the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out a variety of dirty tactics to affect elections in the Philippines (the 1950s), Lebanon (the 1950s), Indonesia (1955), Vietnam (1955), British Guiana/Guyana (1953-64), Japan (1958-1970s), Nepal (1959), Laos (1960), Brazil (1962), Dominican Republic (1962), Guatemala (1963), Bolivia (1966), Chile (1964-70), Portugal (1974-5), Jamaica (1976), Spain (1981, 82), Panama (1984,1989), Nicaragua (1984, 1990), Haiti (1987-89) and Bosnia (1998). ALL THESE INTERVENTIONS ARE WELL DOCUMENTED. As long as this list may seem, it does not exhaust the subject. Much information has come out in recent years, for example, on how in 1948 the CIA spent millions to produce a victory of the Christian Democrats in Italy against the Communist Party. The CP enjoyed immense popularity among the workers because it had led the Partisan resistance to Mussolini's fascist regime. What does all this show us about the recent U.S. presidential elections and the "will of the people"? That when the issue has been settled, regardless of which candidate and party come out on top, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and all the other institutions of the state that have been shaped over many generations to serve the interests of the class of super-rich capitalists will continue to do their thing. However, the peek that millions of up-to-now unaware people in this country have had at the sordid workings of the political system should bring out some healthy skepticism the next time the rulers of the empire try to enlist their support behind the export of "democracy" abroad via U.S. dollars and guns. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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