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A voter in Transdniestria (Pridnestrovie) casts his ballot in a recent election, unobserved on purpose by the OSCE

BRUSSELS (Tiraspol Times) - Oxford scholar and sovereignty-expert John Laughland says that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has no consistent commitment to democracy and is guilty of "breathtaking double standards".

Writing in The Brussels Journal, London-based John Laughland also criticizes the 56 member organization for direct anti-democratic behavior against Transdniestria (officially Pidnestrovie, but sometimes referred to as Trans-Dniester and Transnistria).

" - On occasions, the OSCE even turns against democracy completely. In September 2006, for instance, the tiny secessionist territory of Transnistria held a referendum on independence from Moldova (from which it has been de facto independent since 1992). A massive majority of Transnistrians voted for the continuation of the country’s current course away from Chişinău (with which it has no common history at all, except as a joint member of the old Soviet Union) and towards Moscow," explains John Laughland.

" - But the OSCE Chairman in Office, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Karel de Gucht, pronounced that the result of the referendum itself would never be recognised because the West supports the territorial integrity of Moldova," he says.

Double standards interfere with democracy

At the time, the position of the OSCE's local American boss, Louis O'Neill, led to protests from pro-democracy groups in Tiraspol, the capital of Transdniestria. O'Neill later cut short his tour of duty and left his job early after being implication in a smuggling scandal of cultural artifacts.

According to sovereignty expert John Laughland, the unelected OSCE leadership turned against democracy completely in September 2006 when it refused to observe Transdniestria's referendum. Locals strongly agreed.

" - The OSCE pays lip service to democratic standards, but they need to come to Pridnestrovie to see what real democracy is all about," believes youth leader Alena Arshinova. She can not understand how OSCE could pronounce judgment on elections that it didn't oversee and that it refused to send observers to.

John Laughland explains that the OSCE's tactics is part of a plan to ignore the will of the voters if the voters have different opinions than the OSCE leadership.

" - The tactic of not sending an observer mission, on the pretext that conditions are so bad that the election cannot even be monitored, has been deployed at least twice by the OSCE, once in Albanian in 1996 and once in Belarus in 2000," he says. "As with the Russian parliamentary elections on Sunday, this did not stop Western observers from condemning those polls anyway. It is a tactic customarily employed when the West knows or fears in advance that the outcome of a poll will be politically uncomfortable for it. As even President Putin’s bitterest enemies admit, he is immensely popular in Russia and any party he leads is bound to do well in the polls."

Laughland is a London-based writer, journalist, academic author, lecturer and trustee of a human rights group. He has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and has been a lecturer at the Sorbonne and at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. He also holds a post-doctoral degree for work on sovereignty in international relations.

OSCE election reports written in advance

John Laughland has participated in election observer missions alongside the OSCE and says from personal experience that the reports are written in advance, rather than based on any actual experience drawn from the elections themselves.

" - Far from providing a “gold standard” of election observing, the OSCE’s evaluations on elections are in fact a worthless paper currency which fluctuates alarmingly, and not according to market pressures but instead as a result of direct political control," he says.

" - The OSCE’s election reports simply reflect the political imperatives of the West: allies hold good elections, enemies bad ones. These reports are in any case are always written before the poll has taken place: I know, because I discovered one once in a hotel bar in Montenegro in 1998, the day before the elections," recalls Laughland.

A staunch opponent of Communism and totalitarianism, John Laughland is a frequent columnist for publications as diverse as The American Conservative, the right-wing The Spectator Magazine, and a left-of-center newspaper, The Guardian. He has also written for The Sunday Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review.

Transdniestria is not the only place where the OSCE fails to live up to its supposedly democratic mission. In the nearby Republic of Georgia, the OSCE was present but disgraced itself by rubberstamping an election that local independent observers say was far from democratic.

" - The result is breathtaking double standards," says John Laughland of the OSCE's wavering commitment to democracy only when it suits the larger geopolitical goals of the United States.

" - This is the same OSCE which welcomed the 2004 presidential elections in Georgia as having “brought the country closer to international standards for democratic elections,” in spite of the fact that the by then incumbent president, Mikheil Saakashvili – who, for the first time since Hitler and Stalin, had made his party’s flag the national flag of the country he governs – won 96.24% of the vote, and in spite of the fact that that election, like most in Georgia, was marred by corruption, intimidation and violence," he notes. "But Saakashvili must be kept in at all costs, since he has promised to bring his country into NATO: he is “our son of a bitch”."

In Transdniestria, OSCE election observers have been absent but numerous other international groups have consistently participated as observers in all elections. In all cases, they have unanimously agreed that every single election held in Transdniestria was free and fair and adhered to the international democratic standards.

See also:
» Youth: "OSCE undermines democracy by passing premature judgment" [1]
» OSCE cries fraud but did not observe vote [2]
» Unfounded claims inflame Tiraspol; OSCE flag burns [3]

Opinion and commentary:
» The popular will of the people can never be illegitimate [4]
» Why not a referendum to decide the issue? [5]

On the web:
» Referendum on independence or federation with Moldova [6]