Washington Post slams DI’s efforts in Pakistan
The Washington Post’s Robin Wright has an article on our observation team that seems a bit unfair. It’s true that this was a last-minute mission. However, this is the fault of the State Department: they wanted an observation team to give legitimacy to the election and when IRI refused at the last minute, they scrambled to find someone who would do it. There is no doubt that our presence is nothing more than symbolic but it’s the US government that wants the symbolism, not DI. Moreover, DI didn’t push for this election, the US government did. No one on our team thinks we can do anything remotely close to a legitimate observation (especially given the security situation) and her implication that we think we can is just plain wrong. The folks at DI have done an excellent job staffing this mission at the last minute and to dump US government policy failures with regards to Pakistan into the lap of DI seems to me to misplace the blame. Moreover, her belittling of DI is downright unfair. Eric Bjornlund and Glenn Cowan faced difficult challenges in building their firm and it has become a success, contrary to expectations. Eric and Glenn have too much class to ask for an apology for this screed but they deserve one.
Caitlin on 18 Feb 2008 at 3:51 pm #
I saw that story as well, and thought it cast DI in an unfair light. Ms. Wright also failed to mention that Eric Bjornlund actually wrote the book on election monitoring (that would be Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy). The story also does not explain what sort of report DI is expected to issue - presumably quite limited - or how the European delegation’s assessment will figure in analyses of the outcome.
Jack on 18 Feb 2008 at 4:11 pm #
The claim that ‘real’ election monitors could have done something about this ‘pivotal’ election is naive. The other claim, that DI are “electoral tourists,” was baseless and insulting.
Anand on 18 Feb 2008 at 6:27 pm #
I also object to the implication in the article that since DI is employed by the US government, that it is somehow forced to endorse the elections as free and fair. For one, if DI were unable to provide objective assessments of US government activity, then its position as a primarily technical, evaluation-based organization (which evaluates NDI and IRI programs) within the democracy bureaucracy would have been called into question long ago. Secondly, by conflating the Bush administration’s strategic interests with its interests in promoting democracy through measures like election monitoring, Wright echoes the rhetoric of people like Putin: American organizations cannot be fully trusted to assess foreign election fairness because of the neo-imperialist aspirations of the US government. While excursion like the iraq war have done the administration no favors in improving this image, implying that DI is a lapdog to such agendas is irresponsible.
andrew g. mandelbaum on 20 Feb 2008 at 10:10 am #
I don’t think that Wright’s article is all that bad, even if it does belittle DI, which we all know is a very capable and dedicated organization. We should be so lucky to have private firms that are in this for the democracy as opposed to the dollar.
That said, Wright’s problem extends from the point of view from which she confronts this story. If you were at State and your election observers peaced out at the last minute, what would you do? The question becomes: is having an election team better than having no election team?
The answer turned out to be ‘yes,’ and DI got a great team together. I will bet that DI’s final report will reflect the constraints that were faced, but will ultimately conclude that the will of the people was reflected in the vote. Would this have occurred if election monitors - regardless of their preparation - did not show up? I’m glad we don’t know the answer to this question.
Chris on 25 Feb 2008 at 12:04 pm #
Agreed. I endorsed Jack’s comment on washingtonpost.com (jucci, right?) and would like to encourage others to do the same.
Still, I’m glad that there are articles like this. It’s good to call attention to the way that this was handled because, as DI agrees, this is not a good way to do election monitoring. That being said, I would have appreciated a little more emphasis on IRI backing out at the last second and creating this godawful mess instead of going after DI.