Hamas, Morales, Yushchenko

So, let’s see. Monday, the Palestinians voted in Hamas as their new government. Good for them; unlike Floridians in 2000, they actually intended to vote for the lunatic right-wing fringe. Earlier this month, the Bolivians voted in Evo Morales, a socialist coca grower who is friends with Venezuela’s Hugo Chaves. Last week Michele Bachelet was elected in Chile over two pro-U.S. right-leaning opponents. And in December the Iraqis voted in a group of sectarian rabble-rousers rather than the hoped-for secular parties. Can nothing go right for the U.S. in foreign elections?

Actually, yes it can. Stephen Harper’s conservatives have been elected in Canada. Viktor Yushchenko was installed in Ukraine after mass popular demonstrations. Unhappy voters in Georgia installed Mikhail Sa’akashvili (don’t you just love Georgian names?) two years ago after the ruling party rigged an election. This spring the Lebanese threw out the Syrians and elected a parliament of their own choosing, for the first time in over two decades. Germany threw out Gerhard Schroeder and his anti-American foreign minister Joschka Fischer last September in favor of a national unity government headed by the Atlanticist Angela Merkel (that’s ONG-gela, not AN-jela, for us American types).

Then there are places like Kyrgyzstan, where pro-reform demonstrators tossed out the only leader the country had known since independence, Askar Akayev. Akayev had actively courted the United States, but the new leadership doesn’t seem to mind U.S. presence.

Frankly, all over the world it seems like long-standing regimes are falling by the way. Liberia has just elected a new president, the first elected female head of state in all Africa. The Spaniards threw out their right-leaning Atlanticist pro-business government in favor of the socialists last year. The Portuguese did the same the year before. The Poles sacked their left-leaning government last summer in favor of a coalition of rightist parties. The Indians ditched the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to return to the old National Congress last spring. Over the last two years a great majority of countries that have had the opportunity have thrown out their sitting governments in favor of something new. The UK, US, Japan, Russia, and Australia are the only major countries to have kept their leaders during elections over this period. And in Japan at least, keeping Junichiro Koizumi was almost as revolutionary as throwing out a government would be in any other country.

So what does it all mean? Anything?

Yeah. It means everybody’s as pissed off about their governments as we are. In a sense it’s not much more than proof that people power, whether exercised through non-violent protest or at ballot box, still rules the day. But that is proof of something very, very good.

Not all of these revolutions and changes in government will turn out well. Kurmanbek Bakiev in Kyrgyzstan looks an awful lot like Askar Akayev in most respects. The voters have soured on Viktor Yushchenko after his government has failed to produce any meaningful reform or reduction in corruption. The Poles seem to hate their current government as much as the one they just threw out. And we must admit it will be a miracle if Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf or Evo Morales can bring stable government or solid economic growth to Liberia or Bolivia. But at least now they have a chance.

Still, mixed results are better than none at all. Mikhail Sa’akashvili has reigned in one of his two secession-minded provincial governors and returned stable electricity to his country, more than his predecessors had ever done. Morales has sounded a wise moderate tone, courting both Venezuela’s Chavez and more rational leaders and offered reassurance to Bolivia’s foreign energy investors that he doesn’t plant to seize and nationalize their assets a la Fidel Castro. The jury is still out on most of these new governments and leaders, of course, though in many cases they’ve been more impressive than not, more centrist than extreme, more interested in good government than ideological pablum. This is certainly a good thing.

So I come back to Hamas and Palestine. This morning it was reported that Israelis are split 48-43 on the question of whether to negotiate with the new Palestinian government (48% supporting negotiations, surprisingly). President Bush for once has not been unbendingly ideological, arguing that we have to deal with Palestine one way or another, and that if the new government wants recognition they have to renounce their statements calling for the destruction of Israel.

It is very easy to look at the Hamas victory as universally negative. After all, Hamas is a terrorist organization, and they do call for the destruction of Israel. Hard to deal with people like that, but then let’s not forget that our country has its ideological wackos and we all manage to get along well enough, Ted Kennedy and Rick Santorum included. The easy thing to do here is fall into the idea that the Palestinians voted in Hamas because they agree with the organization’s goal of destroying Israel.

No doubt there is an undercurrent of support for that, but it is hardly the dominant issue in Palestinian hearts and minds. Just as with Kyrgyz, Bolivians, Ukrainians, and Lebanese—as with Americans and Brits and Japanese—the first issues are close to home. Do I have a job? Can my kids get to school? Is there anything to buy in the stores? Do I feel safe at home? And how much money do I have to set aside this week to bribe the authorities into letting me live my life unmolested?

In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan at least, as in Palestine, corruption and graft were everyday parts of life. Americans aren’t really used to this idea. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, if you had money, it was not uncommon to be sideswiped at a traffic intersection. The other driver would feign injury or otherwise keep you at the scene until police arrived. The police would then threaten you, say they were taking you to jail or seizing your car, but if you paid them some money—not much by American standards but plenty by Kyrgyz—they would agree not to report your dreadful infraction. After you left, the other driver would then receive ten to twenty percent of the bribe as payment, and then get back in his car and start looking for the next victim. Seriously. This went on every day in Bishkek, Osh, and Jalal-Abad, and likely elsewhere. It wasn’t reported, because there’s no one there to report on things like that.

In Ukraine, if you wanted to start a business—a business selling fruit by the roadside, for example, though any business of any size would count—you faced (still face) a daunting array of legal obstacles, which may take between four and eight months to overcome and cost the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars. Of course, for the right fee (usually about half the total cost of filing fees) a bureaucrat could be persuaded to look the other way. If you wished to do business honestly and not pay the bureaucrat and jump through all the hoops, then the bureaucrat’s cronies in the police and criminal worlds would make your life hell for your trouble, through intimidation and criminal activity (arson was popular, as were crooked insurance schemes, and frequently the police and mafia were in collusion).

These things just don’t go on in America, or the West in general. If they did, you’d be out on the streets complaining about it, wouldn’t you? You’d be voting out the bums in office the first chance you got. If the bums in office were the seemingly sane moderates—Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, for example—you’d even throw them out in favor of crazy extremists, because at least maybe the crazy extremists would let you get on with your life. When anything is better than what you have now, you’ll vote for anything. In Palestine last week, Hamas was anything.

Now the crazy extremists in Hamas have to figure out how to govern for real. It’s been easy—using their fundraising network they’ve been able to build trust in the community by building schools, funding hospitals and poverty programs, supporting the man in the street when he came up against the corruption and cronyism of the Fatah regime. They did not campaign on a “Vote for us and we’ll destroy Israel” platform. They said, “Vote for us, and we’ll eliminate the corruption and graft of the old regime.” That was it. That was the issue.

Compare this with Evo Morales in Bolivia. This is a country that has had six presidents in six years; Morales is the fourth just since 2003. The people felt their government was corrupt, their leaders were enriching themselves with energy money from foreign companies, and that their lives weren’t getting any better. Morales came along and said, elect me, I’ll take over the energy companies and give you the money, I’ll kick out the old corrupt guys, I’ll let you get on with your lives—whether that includes growing coca or what. Here in the U.S. we focused on two things: he’s a coca grower, and he promised to nationalize the energy extraction industry. Back home in Bolivia, the people were focused on Morales’ promise to give them money and let them get on with their lives.

It has always been true that where you stand depends on where you sit. When you sit in America you have a very different perspective from the average Bolivian or Palestinian.

In the end, the victory may be a good thing for Hamas and the Palestinians in general. Not that America, Israel, or anyone else (save Iran) should rush to embrace Hamas. That isn’t the point at all. The fact is, now that Hamas has won, they have to prove they can do something. Getting elected has never been the hard part about governing, even if getting elected is very hard (as Viktor Yushchenko has found out). The hard part is figuring out how to turn your campaign promises into real change that the voters can see—because otherwise, they’ll throw you out, too. Hamas now has to build schools and hospitals. They need to build an airport in Gaza and reopen the port. And above all, they need to give Palestinians a sense that they can get on with their lives without being harassed by their government. And that government, for most Palestinians, is a combination of Israel and the PA. Hamas will have to talk to Israel. Many Palestinians work there; if bad relations between Hamas and Israel lead to tighter border controls or outright restrictions, those folks who voted for Hamas may find themselves out of a job—and they’ll have no one else to blame.

Hamas will realize this eventually; it’s possible their leadership has realized it now. What will it take for them to deal with Israel? One newly elected Palestinian parliamentarian said on NPR the other day that Israel and the PA had a window of about four to six months during which they didn’t really need to talk—as long as the cease-fire holds (which this Hamas-backed representative seemed to take for granted, it’s worth noting), Hamas needs that time to create a working government, and Israel has its own election to deal with—an election that has been thrown into turmoil three times now, first with Sharon’s creation of Kadima, then with Sharon’s stroke, now with the election of Hamas—and those things will occupy the governments of the states for a while before they need to talk. It will be a delicate dance, but the PA can no more afford to have Israel give it the silent treatment than Canada can afford to have the U.S. close its borders.

It is tempting, given the prevailing attitudes in modern society, to assume the worst about everything. Tempting, but silly. We can throw up our hands and wail that Hamas’ elevation will surely mean the death of the peace process if not of Israel itself. Or we can sit back and recognize that, before it can do anything, Hamas will have to prove it can govern, that it can provide for the people and reduce corruption. The Palestinian electorate will be less forgiving of a failure in those areas than the Israelis or the rest of the world will be in other areas.

This isn’t, of course, meant to be all sunshine and smoke. After all, as I said, Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel. But just as the IRA had its Sinn Fein, Hamas will now have to develop a reasonable political arm. That could mean the creation of a false front governing authority that supports increased terror attacks or even outright war on Israel; it certainly isn’t hard to see that happening. But it could also mean the beginning of a bright future for Palestine, and perhaps the first sign of a future peace in the region. After all, Ariel Sharon showed us that old warriors are sometimes the only men with the authority to make peace. Perhaps Hamas will continue his example.