To get anything done, leaders need to make decisions. But certain decisions have a telling demonstration effect beyond their actual content. Decisiveness on big issues, or in the teeth of opposition, makes a leader seem resolute, far-sighted and above the narrow world of party politics, as Margaret Thatcher showed; so, to a lesser extent, did Tony Blair. The most effective decisions are often taken after deep but private consultation—with no-men as well as time-servers—so they manage to look bold while still being carefully considered.
On the other hand, wilfully unpopular decisions can make a leader appear deranged, like some of those taken by Lady Thatcher in her late, Coriolanus phase (“Alone I did it!”). Then there are prevaricating pseudo-decisions, like Mr Brown's establishment of umpteen policy reviews. These at first looked clever and circumspect, but have cumulatively come to seem, as Hamlet puts it, “one part wisdom” and “three parts coward”. Decisions forced on leaders by events—like Mr Brown's hasty emulation of the Tories' ideas for cutting inheritance tax—make them look weak or confused.
Is Mr Brown starting to make more impressive calls? The long-term, difficult (and so on) decisions that he is touting mostly involve the economy, and specifically the tough line the government has taken with some public-sector unions over pay. On January 8th the chancellor offered, or threatened, to conclude three-year pay deals with some of them. By dwelling on this stringency, Mr Brown hopes to guard against both inflation and the political fallout of an economic downturn; also, less sensibly (because it makes him look desperate), to contrast his own record with the inflationary but long-ago early 1990s.
Unfortunately, public-sector pay restraint may be a little too arcane, and bust-ups with unions too familiar, to work as reputation-forming decisions. But the announcement on January 9th that the government is to encourage the building of nuclear-power stations is more electric: overdue, perhaps, but important and controversial (as well as right). To persuade voters that Mr Brown really is The
Decider, he ought to follow that up with, for example, decisions to put Northern Rock out of its misery, to scrap ID cards (which almost no one would mourn) and to do something genuinely radical with the
National Health Service. Maybe Stephen Carter, his new right-hand man at Number 10, will help: Mr Carter is reputedly the man to provide the grip and focus that Mr Brown lost when he gave his erstwhile top aides their own cabinet jobs.
In a recent documentary, Mr Blair said something interesting about decision-making. To do the prime minister's job properly, he reflected, “you need to be able to separate yourself somewhat from the magnitude of the consequences of the decisions you are taking.” That ability to dissociate may not be an entirely appealing trait, but it is probably a necessary one for leaders, and is a very necessary one for Mr Brown. He has made a start, but in his “decisive year” he needs to seem much less Hamletic and more like his fellow Scot, Macbeth—for whom “the very firstlings of my heart [were]/ The firstlings of my hand.”
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Charles Taylor in the dock
Bringing bigwigs to justice
Jan 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Heads of state, past and present, are increasingly being brought to book for crimes committed while in office
WHEN Charles Taylor, then president of Liberia, was charged with 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities in June 2003, few thought he would be captured, let alone ever brought to justice. But this week, four and a half years after his indictment, his trial proper at last began in The Hague. Mr Taylor, now aged 59, is the first former African head of state to face an international war-crimes court.
Just a few years ago, such an event would have been almost inconceivable. However brutal or corrupt, Africa's leaders used to shield one another from justice for fear that their turn could come next. But the remarkable spread of international justice over the past decade has brought about an equally remarkable change in attitudes towards prosecuting former heads of state, not just in Africa but throughout the world. No fewer than ten former presidents and military dictators are facing legal proceedings for human- rights offences and/or corruption, some in international tribunals, others in their own domestic courts, a few in other countries' courts.
In Peru, ex-President Alberto Fujimori is on trial for human-rights violations and fraud. He has already been sentenced to six years in jail for abuse of power. In Cambodia, Khieu Samphan, president from 1976 to 1979, is in jail awaiting his turn before a new UN-backed tribunal set up to try Khmer Rouge leaders. And in Senegal, Hissène Habré, ex-president of Chad, is awaiting trial for crimes against humanity before a special court being set up in Dakar.
Meanwhile, General Suharto, Indonesia's former dictator, aged 86, has once again been rushed to hospital in the midst of legal proceedings for graft. Previous moves to prosecute him—he is alleged to have embezzled $1.54 billion during his 32-year reign—have failed on grounds of ill health. But he may have cried wolf too often. Despite the general's reported “critical” condition, Indonesia's attorney-general vowed to press ahead regardless with civil proceedings against him.
Until recently, heads of state and government, past or present, were commonly seen as immune from prosecution for acts, however vile, performed as part of their official functions. But in a landmark decision in 1999 involving Augusto Pinochet, Chile's ex-dictator, Britain's law lords ruled that there could be no immunity for certain international crimes such as torture, and that Pinochet could therefore be extradited to Spain.
AP
The fact that the octogenarian was never extradited, being allowed to return to Chile instead because of ill health, did not matter. A taboo had been broken. A previously hesitant Chile then brought its own charges against the ex-president. Although Pinochet died (in December 2006) before his trial began, the floodgates had been opened. Others now felt free to pursue their own tyrants.
In Latin America, home to many odious military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, charges have been brought—mostly for crimes against humanity—against half a dozen former rulers. In Suriname, the trial is about to begin of ex-dictator Desi Bouterse, for his role in the summary execution of 15 political opponents in 1982. In Uruguay, another former ruler, Juan María Bordaberry, is about to be tried on charges relating to murders and “disappearances” in the 1970s.
Meanwhile, in Spain, María Estela Perón, who succeeded her husband as Argentina's president in 1974, is awaiting the outcome of two
extradition requests from Argentina on charges relating to the killing of hundreds of left-wing militants by government-backed execution squads.
She hopes the Spanish courts will adopt the same position as
Guatemala's Constitutional Court, which last month ruled against the extradition to Spain of Efraín Ríos Montt, a former Guatemalan dictator, on charges of genocide. Mexico's ex-president, Luis
Echeverría, may also have been let off the hook after charges relating to the killing of student protesters, in 1968 and thereafter, were dismissed in July by a Mexican court for falling outside a statute of limitations. For most international crimes, there is no time limit.
Manuel Noriega, a former Panamanian despot, is likely to be less lucky.
After completing a 17-year sentence in America for drug-smuggling in September, he began fighting an extradition request by France, where he has already been sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison for money-laundering. On January 9th a Florida judge rejected his appeal against extradition. He will now probably face a retrial.
Sometimes a country may, of course, be unwilling or unable to
prosecute its own leaders. In such cases, an international tribunal, like
the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is trying Charles Taylor (in a courtroom loaned from the International Criminal Court in The Hague), may step in. All five international tribunals set up over the past 15 years explicitly exclude immunity (or amnesty) for heads of state charged with war crimes or other atrocities. Mr Taylor is only the second serving head of state to be charged with war crimes after Slobodan Milosevic. Like Pinochet, the Serb tyrant escaped jail by death—in 2006.
If no competent international tribunal can be found, a country unconnected with the case may decide to bring a prosecution in its national courts under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. This allows a country to try the perpetrator of a serious international crime even if neither he nor his victims are nationals and the crime has not been committed on its soil. At least eight European countries have adopted the principle. It was invoked by Britain in the Pinochet case, and also by Belgium to prosecute Mr Habré—until the African Union was shamed into asking Senegal, his country of exile, to try him instead.
Exile, once the choice of many a deposed tyrant, no longer seems so safe. When Mr Taylor was handed over in 2006 to Sierra Leone's Special Court by Nigeria, where he had taken refuge in 2003, Libya's president, Muammar Qaddafi, noted nervously that a precedent had been set. “This means that every head of state could meet a similar fate,” he said. Quite so.
AP
Wanted back home: Mrs Perón
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Islam and democracy
The practice—and the theory
Jan 10th 2008 | BOSTON AND ISTANBUL From The Economist print edition
Can rule by the people be reconciled with the sovereignty of Allah?
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“TURKEY sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it's possible to have a democracy coexist with a great religion like Islam.” Those were George Bush's words of welcome, this week, to Turkey's President Abdullah Gul.
In decades past, a Turkish leader might have been received at the White House with cordial remarks about his country's growing prosperity or its contribution to NATO. But it would have been strange, perhaps, not to mention religion when hosting a head of state who had just set a precedent that was watched with fascination by politically active Muslims in many parts of the world. When he became president, Mr Gul proved that it was possible for a pious Muslim with a headscarved wife to be made head of state, by a perfectly democratic procedure, in a country where the army is an ever-vigilant guardian against theocracy. For those who insist (whether their arguments are theological, or empirical, or both) that Islam and liberal democracy are quite compatible, Mr Gul's election (and Mr Bush's
exuberant reaction to it) was a badly needed nugget of hope in a year when that cause has seen quite a lot of setbacks.
Among American officialdom, confidence in the prospects for democracy in Muslim (and in particular, Arab) lands has fluctuated under the Bush administration. It reached a high point, arguably, in mid-2005, when Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, declared in Cairo that the bad old days of favouring
stability over democracy were over—and then it plunged again the following January when the Islamist Hamas movement swept to victory in Palestine.
For political scientists, especially those who have studied the phenomenon of “Muslim Democracy” in the belief that the Turkish case could be a precedent for others, the recent turmoil in Pakistan and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto have been a great tragedy in a pivotal country that had the potential to develop a new concordat between Islam and open politics.
Vali Nasr, a professor at America's Tufts University, terms “Muslim Democracy” a newish and potentially decisive force in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world. In his view, the recent experience of Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia all points to a single truth: wherever they are given the
AP
In the name of God, let's throw the rascals out
chance, Muslim Democratic parties (which are responsive to public opinion and thrive in an open political contest) can prevail over harder-line and more violent varieties of political Islam.
Among the parties Mr Nasr identifies as Muslim Democratic are the faction of the Pakistani Muslim League that held sway until the military takeover in 1999; the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (in power till last year's coup); Malaysia's ruling UMNO party; and a cluster of mildly Islamic parties that share power in Indonesia (see article). Exhibit A for Muslim Democracy is Turkey's Justice and Development (AK) party, which won its democratic spurs after several decades of sparring between generals and pious politicians.
As with several other Muslim Democratic parties, the AK's rise reflected economic growth and the advent of a devout but non-fanatical middle class which resents the older elites of bureaucrats and generals.
But what if any is the intellectual ground for Muslim Democracy? Roman Catholic thinking had to tread a long path before it reconciled its belief in human sinfulness with popular sovereignty; Christian
Democracy, an important force in post-1945 Europe, was the result.
Abdal-Hakim Murad, a British Muslim scholar, argues that Muslim Democrats have an easier road to travel because Islam's view of human nature is a less pessimistic one. But several factors have helped to make the Muslim debate about democracy difficult and inconclusive. Most of the schools of Muslim thought that have emerged over the past century have been intensely interested in political theory, and also intensely concerned with precedents set at the dawn of the Muslim era. But the precedents are not clear: some caliphs took power by inheritance, others through consensus, others by force.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian-born law professor, has pointed to a passage from the Koran which seems to endow human beings with a special mandate to look after their own affairs.
When your Lord said to the angels: “I have to place a vice-regent on earth,” they said: “Will you place one there who will create disorder and shed blood, while we intone Your litanies and sanctify Your name?” And God said: “I know what you do not know.”
That verse, Mr Fadl has argued, seems to imply that far from sitting back and letting God do everything, human beings must organise their own society.
Another relevant text is the story of Ali, the fourth Muslim caliph, whose leadership was challenged by a rival. To the fury of his zealous supporters, Ali agreed that conflicting claims should be submitted to arbitration. Posterity found Ali right and his critics wrong: human institutions do have a place in settling issues of state.