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So a six-man Malaysian election observer team, led by the Malaysian Election Commission deputy chairman, have declared the Uzbekistan elections “fair” even though critics have described it as a “non-election”.

Remember, the Uzbekistan government is notorious for torturing dissidents and even putting them in boiling pots.

Check out this analysis:

Murray began receiving photographs and other evidence from victims’ families that the Uzbek government was engaging in brutal torture techniques as part of its interrogation of dissidents. One corpse had been beaten around the neck and jaw, and boiled alive. There was a line across his chest, under which it was scalded. Boiled like a lobster.

Gee, I wonder why they invited the Malaysian Election Commission deputy chairman as an observer… I hope the Election Commission in Malaysia won’t reciprocate and invite the Uzbek election commissioners as observers in our general election.

Check out this Bernama report:

Uzbekistan Election Fair, Say Malaysian Observers

By V. Sankara

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 (Bernama) — Despite several criticisms made by the West, Malaysian observers who witnessed Uzbekistan’s presidential election on Dec 23 found it to be democratic, transparent, peaceful and fair.

Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar who headed a six-man Malaysian observer team to monitor the election said international observers were given the freedom to choose the locations in making their observations.

The election, he said was conducted in 14 regions of Uzbekistan with 8,250 polling centres and that some 16 million people out of its 26 million population were eligible to vote.

Wan Ahmad also said Malaysian observers were given qualified interpreters to communicate with the voters there.

“In this aspect, it was very easy to gather details from the voters,” he told Bernama.

Commenting on the ballot boxes, Wan Ahmad said transparent ballot boxes were used in the election.

“It was very easy to scrutinize since everything was transparent,” he said.

Now, contrast the Bernama report above with the Reuters/AlertNet report below:

Uzbekistan’s non-election

21 Dec 2007 13:05:00 GMT

Written by: Andrew Stroehlein

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

Political theatre doesn’t get any more absurd than the 23 December presidential election in Uzbekistan, where the incumbent front-runner is neither in office now nor allowed to run for another term — though Islam Karimov is supported by all three opposing candidates. There have been a few good online articles about it over the last couple days, though of course, the country’s information black hole will prevent Uzbeks from reading them. But never mind: they already know how ridiculous it all is.

Some major international news organisations such as the Associated Press will not be covering the election from the ground, because the regime denied them accreditation. The complete lack of free media inside the country doesn’t help much either. Still, there have been a few worthwhile pieces published if you dig around.

Reporting from Tashkent, Tony Halpin has an article in the Times with a title that says it all: “Torture, an iron fist and twisted logic set stage for Islam Karimov’s landslide victory”.

Inga Sikorskaya at IWPR examines the lack of competition in “Karimov’s Rivals Unite to Praise Him”. The other candidates — I’ll spare you their names as they don’t matter at all and will never be heard of again — “routinely start by singing the praises of incumbent president Islam Karimov.” In another piece, she notes how fake election observers are being deployed to cover the non-election.

So this is the election that our Malaysian observers have described as “democratic, transparent, peaceful and fair”. I guess they were referring to the transparent ballot boxes but in the process, they have missed the wood for the trees. Just like they have here.

In a parting shot, Thierry Rommel, the European ambassador who left his post on Tuesday, castigated the Malaysian government for its deplorable human rights record and the “discriminatory” New Economic Policy (NEP).

News reports quoted Rommel as saying the executive in Malaysia is “all-powerful and not accountable” while the judiciary remains beholden to the executive because the prime minister directly makes the appointments. He said Umno runs the country like its own backyard and that the Malaysia was “a one-party state”.

“The parliament (is) useless. No fair elections, no freedoms. Police is unaccountable. Internal checks and balances? Forget it. So where do you find characteristics that (represent) democracy?”

Malaysians struggling for greater democracy, who marched in the tens of thousands on 10 November, might be forgiven for thinking that they had found an influential ally in Rommel and the European Union.

Big mistake. Although most of Rommel’s remarks ring true, they must be seen in the context of the forthcoming negotiations for the EU-Asean FTA which begins next year. With this FTA, the EU hopes to prise open the Asean market for unfettered access by European multinational corporations. This will no doubt also accelerate the neo-liberal agenda across the region.

Read more »

When writing the piece below for IPS, I spoke to economist Charles Santiago, who told me that non-Malays are so tired of the discrimination under the NEP that many of them would support FTAs with the US and the EU. “But they have to keep in mind the larger implications of an FTA, which means that whether you are a Chinese, Malay or Kadazan businessman or woman, you will face stiff competition from TNCs who are technologically superior,” he warned. ”It will be a takeover of our businesses in the long run.”

”There is a hidden agenda here,’‘ he added. ”They (EU officials) are in effect saying, ‘You guys open up your economy so that our European investors can take over your market’.”

Rommel’s salvo on the NEP is an opening shot across the bow as EU-Asean FTA negotiations get under way in Vietnam in July and perhaps reflects underlying frustration that Malaysia is holding out on signing a pre-agreement.

But in many ways, the NEP vs FTA choice is a false option. We all know that the NEP is deeply flawed and divisive, based as it is on race-based considerations that only serve to entrench Umno in power through a politics of patronage.

That does that mean we do not need a wide-ranging policy - call it what you will - to uplift the economic position of the many Malaysians - including ethnic minority and marginalised groups - who continue to be left out of “development”. A genuine and just affirmative action policy would be one based on need and socio-economic position - not race.

It is naive to believe that an FTA would prove beneficial to Malaysia in the long-run. One need only look at Mexico’s experience with Nafta and the Mexico-EU FTA to discover that the promises of liberalisation and so-called “free trade” are illusory.

In truth, (as we have seen with US/Nafta-led free-trade strategies in Central America), an FTA will deliver nothing favourable for Asean, the wider society or, most notably, the poorest within that society, the Glasgow-based political scientist and author John Hilley told me.

Instead, those most immediately affected, in our case the Malays and non-Malays, have to recognise the false options of domestic protectionism versus open-door trading trade being promoted here - which he says is a contrived agenda which, in turn, has led to divisive positions on the NEP.

So what is the alternative? “The real task, local, regional and global, is to reject the diversionary language of neo-liberal solutions and, as in Latin America, build alternative trading arrangements and coalitions that are about advancing the interests of people rather than big business and their political advocates,” Hilley stressed. In short, we need an economic framework that puts the interests of ordinary people over big business.

PENANG, Malaysia, Jun 27 (IPS) - Unexpected criticism of Malaysia’s race-based affirmative action policy by the European Union’s top envoy reveals underlying concerns that this could be a stumbling block to unrestricted market access for European multinational firms in the region, say analysts.

Envoy Thierry Rommel’s remarks are being seen as the opening salvo ahead of talks for a free trade agreement (FTA) between the EU and the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) that begin in July. Full article: Trade fears fuel EU criticism of race-based policy