2024: A year of dusks and dawns for democracies around the world

As the year 2024 comes to a close, it may be prudent to evaluate the status of global democracies, threats to the democratic ethos, and the powers working silently but constantly to undermine it. The world as we know it today is mired in multiple conflicts, with the ones in Ukraine, Gaza, and Syria as the three prominent ones. There are several smaller armed conflicts ongoing in Sudan, Myanmar, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and others that don’t get spoken about because they have less geopolitical impact than the three larger ones.

Over fifty elections have taken place in 2024 alone where most incumbent regimes have been defeated and a new government has been formed. In several countries, regimes have been changed by means of public protests fuelled by the political opposition. However, if we take a microscopic look at some of the crucial regime changes around the world that have taken place in 2024, it appears that not all of these have been organic. Many foreign powers, particularly the western ones, seem to be at play in orchestrating situations that lead to an escalation of conflict between the masses and authorities, which eventually leads to a change in the power structure of a nation.

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Let us consider individual instances—the democratic backsliding of Ukraine is extremely worrisome. Billions of dollars have been pumped into Ukraine to fight the war against Russia by the West. In an interview last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that elections due in 2024 would not be held in Ukraine. The media control, refusal to hold elections, and no significant win against Russian advancement seem to have damaged his ratings, and his government may have been voted out if elections were held when they were originally due. The West, which is currently heavily funding Ukraine, seems to ignore this severe democratic regress because currently, the Ukrainian land seems to be the battleground for them to fight the proxy war with Russia.

Moving on to other Eastern European states, there seems to be great tumult ongoing in most Baltic areas. Three weeks ago, the Romanian Court annulled the results of a presidential election in which a NATO-sceptic candidate, Calin Georgescu, emerged victorious. A lot seemed to be at stake here—only recently had NATO announced pumping in 2.7 billion dollars to create the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase, which would eventually turn out to be NATO’s biggest base in Europe on the Black Sea, which Georgescu had avowed to pause, cut aid to Ukraine, and limit Romania’s collaboration with NATO. The annulment of a presidential election seems suspicious at best, with indicators of foreign interference in Romania’s democratic and judicial processes.

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In another European nation bordering Russia—Georgia, the sitting pro-West president refused to step down and vacate office despite her six-year term having ended. She lost to the firebrand leader Mikheil Kavelashvili, who appears to have won with the support of the governing pro-Russian Georgian Dream Party. The country erupted into protests, amidst which the new president had to be sworn in. In yet another Eastern European country, Serbia, protests have erupted on the streets against the sitting government led by Aleksandar Vucic, who seems to have taken a softer stance on Russia and a harder one on NATO. The fact that three nations of Eastern Europe seem to be going through political instability suggests that this is not simply a coincidence but more of a grand plan of the West to orchestrate turmoil in border nations led by pro-Russian leaders.

In India’s neighbourhood, we have witnessed the West’s unanimous support for the new government in Bangladesh, which has taken down Sheikh Hasina’s democratically elected government by supporting protests. This new government in Bangladesh is holding on to power, curbing media freedom, and carrying out ethnic cleansing of Hindus, without being voted in by the people of the country.

In the Middle East as well, we have seen the Assad regime recently displaced by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other terror-support groups, which seem to enjoy the West’s blessings, with clear disregard for democratic values. Afghanistan as well continues to be run by the Taliban, for whom the West left abandoned weapons when they fled after decades of armed intervention in the country.

The United States’ Joe Biden administration pulled every string possible to indict Donald Trump in the country’s courts before the 2024 presidential elections, so as to stop him from running as the Republican nominee. Trump also survived two assassination attempts during his campaign trail, which were severely downplayed by the mainstream media of the country. The world witnessed how the US’ mainstream media continued to cover up President Biden’s health and capabilities to hold office, despite clear deterioration. Certainly, these aren’t actions acceptable in a robust democracy, and yet the US continues to brand itself as the upholder of global democracy.

What is striking is that the West seems to have orchestrated regime change operations under the garb of ‘protection of democracy’, when, in fact, their intervention eventually faded away the democratic ethos of nations, leading to the instillation of a puppet regime that remains at the behest of Western funds and other forms of assistance provided. So long as the puppet regimes dance to the tunes of the Western corridors of power, their governments are safe, and the global media narratives built by the Western ecosystem are laudatory and supportive of their actions.

The Democratic rating indices often used by the West in ‘ranking’ democracies that their own power centres control also continue to place puppet regime-led governments in prime spots, adding to the laudatory narrative-building of the respective government being ‘democratic and fair’. When the Western rating indices begin to downgrade nations on their democratic index, it may be taken as a clear indication that the powers-to-be will most certainly intervene to ‘uphold democracy’ by pumping in funds to lead protests against the elected governments, by raising ‘concerns’ in the global mainstream media on the ‘deteriorating state of democracy’ in those nations, and essentially build a narrative that can be exploited to directly intervene in the electoral processes of those nations.

At the same time, in 2024 we witnessed examples in the East where democracy has been in action and held its ground over and over. In South Korea, we saw the martial law saga having failed due to the courts, parliament, and the media taking a strong stance against President Yoon Suk Yeol’s decision. In India we witnessed the return of the Narendra Modi government for the third term, albeit a coalition one with reduced seats for the ruling BJP, after a democratic electoral process.

As we enter the new year, the hope is that more parts of the world will learn to see through the lies propagated under the ‘protecting democracy’ agenda to explain the intervention of the West in other countries’ electoral processes. This will certainly lead to more resistance from the people to foreign intervention, increasing favour and trust for genuine leaders in nations around the world.

The writer is an author and political communications expert. She has written four best-selling books. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.