Anatomy of national elections
By Chen Xiangyang (China Daily) Updated: 2014-05-16 08:16Afghanistan faces a future full of uncertainties. Obama has announced that the US will withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, but without the signing of the security agreement, the scale of American troops to be stationed in the country remains unclear.
Another big problem is that, using the "political show" that the presidential election actually is, the Taliban is staging a comeback in Afghanistan. There is no doubt that the new Afghan government will face severe challenges, especially the Taliban's counteroffensive, on the security and political fronts. It is thus questionable whether the new government can gain a firm foothold without the support of NATO forces. Is this what the US wanted Afghanistan to become when it launched its "war on terror"?
The Egyptian presidential election will be held on May 26-27, and till now only former army chief Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and leftist leader Hamdeen Sabahy are in the running for the country's top post. El-Sisi, who resigned as army chief because the new Egyptian Constitution bars military officers from contesting elections, is widely expected to win the election.
Egypt has faced one political crisis after another since the 2011 "Arab Spring". After the ouster of two presidents, the military has returned to the center stage and enjoys overwhelming popular support because most people are desperate for stability. But the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Mohamed Morsi was ousted as president, is not expected to take things lying down.
Syria is an altogether different story. Although the country is still in the grips of a civil war that broke out in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad has called for presidential election on June 3, which he is likely to contest for a third term in office. But with about 150,000 people killed in the civil war and a third of the Syrian people forced to flee their homes, UN-Arab League peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has said the election will undermine Syria's political process and damage the prospects of a political settlement of the Syrian crisis.
Assad may have endured - even gained the upper hand in - the "protracted war" launched by West-backed opposition forces, but he still faces stubborn anti-government forces and a West that is adamant on seeing his ouster.
Given that the countries that have gone, or will go, to the polls face internal and external contradictions, it would be too optimistic to expect their new governments to turn around the volatile domestic political and security situations and help improve regional and global security.
There is also the fear that some of the elections could add fuel to the flames if they do not yield basic political agreements. Moreover, multi-party elections have their share of problems, including partisanship, external intervention, social unrest and even political stagnation. Only by copying Western-style election campaigns, a party cannot restore social and political stability, or ensure better livelihood and living standards for the people.
The author is deputy director of World Politics Research Institute, affiliated to the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
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