Columbia Journalism Review: How ‘democratators’ threaten press freedom/Please read and share
This column, published today in the Columbia Journalism Review, is by Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
It describes a new breed of ‘elected dictator’ – or what Simon has dubbed ‘democratator’ – who uses electoral victory to consolidate autocratic control and undermine democracy.
It is an accurate description of what Muscat is doing in Malta. Here is a particularly relevant excerpt.
These leaders have earned legitimacy and international support by winning elections. But in office, they govern with contempt for the independent institutions that define a democracy, the media foremost among them.
I call these elected autocrats “democratators,” and their influence is hardly confined to Africa. Globally the leading examples are President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and the late President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. All three won resoundingly at the polls and then used their popular mandate to consolidate control of the institutions that constrain their power.
As I’ve shown elsewhere, Putin used punitive tax audits to pave the way for Kremlin-orchestrated takeovers of critical broadcasters; Chávez used his bully pulpit to rally opposition to critical media and vilify individual reporters; and Erdogan used his country’s anti-terror laws to round up and jail dozens of independent journalists, making Turkey the world’s leading jailer of journalists for several years.
These are typical democratator strategies. Democratators—as opposed to traditional dictators—prefer stealth, manipulation and subterfuge to brute force. While exploiting the global demand for formalistic elections, at home they use their popular mandate to justify repressive policies.