Left Flank

A novelist would be hard-pressed to top Chhun Yasith's story. Yet, beyond his humble beginnings in a Long Beach strip mall, and with California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in his camp, still Chhun looks like a bit player in a larger campaign. It's just not democratization.

Some observers said the American government's aggressive pursuit of Mr. Chhun stands in marked contrast to the aborted investigation the FBI carried out into a 1997 incident in which grenades were thrown into an election rally, killing 16 people and injuring more than 100 others, including an American who formerly worked for the International Republican Institute. An initial FBI probe was all but abandoned after evidence pointed to bodyguards for Mr. Hun Sen.

"I find it extremely curious," Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch said. "They went after this ragtag bunch that was not in power and did not systematically commit human rights abuses for many years like Hun Sen has and they, for political reasons, dropped the investigation into the grenade attack which many think derailed any chance of a serious multi-party political system there."

Other analysts have described the charges against Mr. Chhun, who promoted a Cambodian rebellion openly from a Long Beach strip mall, as a quid pro quo for Cambodian help in rounding up members of a an Islamic terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiya.

I guess the Bush administration is signaling which project, democratization or GWOT, is more important.

FP Passport's Blake Hounshell seems to endorse Matthew Yglesias' argument that the US has no justification for criticizing the Pakistan People's Party for anointing former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as its titular leader, because "...the odds of us going Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton in the White House look pretty good..." It's like marking a liberal bona fide, where good intellectuals just don't throw rocks while living in glass houses. But, it's really ultimately a a bad analogy that justifies propping up a dictator.

However, Joshua Hammer and Michael Hirsch can both joke about the Clinton-Bush feud, AND more pertinently point out that General Pervez Musharraf kept a lid on democratization. The medievalism of the PPP might be manifest, but Musharraf played a more corrosive role by not allowing democratic alternatives to appear, mostly notably when he ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

America is not Pakistan: President Bush and Bill Clinton do not jail and exile political opponents.

Georgia's «Rose Revolution», after a favorable start, might now come to signify why democratization defined as mere electioneering is even worse than geopolitical stability.

This all makes recent events in Georgia more depressing. On November 7th the government cleared opposition protesters from Tbilisi's main street after five days of demonstrations. The move went wrong as the opposition called in reinforcements, provoking riot police into liberal use of batons and tear-gas. A state of emergency was declared and opposition television stations were taken off the air. The next day Mr Saakashvili declared that he would hold a snap presidential election on January 5th. â€ūYou wanted early elections,â€? he said. â€ūHave them even earlier!â€? This week the government announced the lifting of the state of emergency, too.

At the start of the protests, Salome Zourabichvili, a former French ambassador who became Georgia's foreign minister before being sacked by Mr Saakashvili, said that the government liked to show reconstruction to foreigners to mislead them. â€ūWe are living in a Potemkin country,â€? she scoffed. This is unfair, but life is hard for most Georgians. Former industrial towns such as Zestaponi and Kutaisi remain devastated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The countryside is dotted with skeletal remnants of factories. One of Georgia's biggest exports is scrap metal.

Expectations of Mr Saakashvili were so high that they could only be dashed. Alex Rondeli, an analyst, suggests that part of the problem is that no politician who wants to stay in office can be truly honest about how long rebuilding Georgia is going to take. â€ūIt will take time,â€? he says, â€ūmore than one generation.â€? Mr Saakashvili and his friends have been tough and acted quickly, but in the process they have made enemies. Many claim that Mr Saakashvili has let power go to his head.

If he is no longer half as popular at home (and abroad) as he once was, it still seems likely that he will win the presidential election. Badri Patarkatsishvili, a tycoon, has declared that he will run. The opposition is furious because this may divide the anti-Saakashvili vote. According to David Usupashvili, leader of the Republican Party, the aim of the ten-party opposition coalition, who have chosen Levan Gachechiladze, a former businessman, as their candidate, is to scrap the present presidential system. â€ūWe are not searching for a better Saakashvili,â€? he says.

All bets are off.