“We are at a turning point,” added the Democratic leader. “Will we allow the decline in rights and democracy to continue rampant?”
For the White House, the summit, which is held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic, embodies the leadership of the United States in an existential struggle between democracies and dictatorships or autocracies.
“Make no mistake, we are at a time of democratic evaluation,” said Uzra Zeya, Undersecretary of State for Civil Security, Democracy and Human Rights. “Countries in practically all regions of the world have experienced degrees of democratic backsliding,” he warned.
Presences and absences
The summit, which began with the words of Biden and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has the participation of representatives of about 100 governments, as well as NGOs, companies and philanthropic organizations.
Biden arrives at the summit with the United States mired in problems regarding the democratic order. His Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, remains engaged in a campaign to alter the political norms of the United States and reverse the results of the 2020 elections in which he was defeated by Biden. Tensions have also arisen over who should be on or off the list.
China and Russia, which Biden considers autocracies, were deliberately left out, which these countries say fuels an “ideological divide.” “No country has the right to judge the vast and varied political landscape of the world with a single criterion,” wrote the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, and the Chinese Qin Gang.
What ended up exasperating Beijing was that the White House invited Taiwan, an island with a Western-style government, which mainland China considers a rebellious part of its territory.
Washington also announced on Monday that it would not send government officials to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February to protest human rights violations in China, including the “genocide” against the ethnic minority group of Uyghurs, in the western region of Xinjiang (see separate note).
Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have joined the diplomatic boycott, although their athletes will attend the competition. And once again, Russia joined China in criticizing the decision.
Controversies
Deciding when other countries should be excluded from the summit for human rights violations or electoral fraud has been just as complicated.
For example, Pakistan and the Philippines are inside, while the nationalist government of Hungary, a member of the European Union, stayed outside. Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was invited, while the president of Turkey – a member of NATO – and staunch defender of Islam, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was rejected.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the governments of eight countries have been excluded: Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Venezuela – several are on the left and other problems of corruption or in their democratic system – although Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader who faced the Venezuelan socialist ruler Nicolás Maduro, was invited.
In the club of consolidated democracies, Argentina is part of the meeting.
Argentina
President Alberto Fernández participated yesterday in the opening and today will make his speech. It had to be postponed due to the length of the previous speeches.
Beyond controversy, the most striking thing is that Biden has difficulty restoring faith in democracy in his own country.
Trump still refuses to acknowledge the 2020 election results and, with the help of conservative media outlets, including the powerful Fox News network, continues to spread lies about a fraud among his tens of millions of followers.
While the images of the violent invasion of Congress – carried out on January 6 in Washington by thousands of Trump supporters with a toll of five dead and dozens of injured – are still very much present, there are growing fears about the legislative elections of 2022 and the 2024 presidential elections to which Trump wants to run again.
Source From: Ambito
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