The secretary-general of an international forum of election management bodies hailed India's assent to lead the organisation, saying that democracy is unlikely to be "sustained by the same countries who led the charge for the past 80 years".
The speech by Kevin Casas-Zamora, the secretary-general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IIDEA), comes at a time when global leaders — such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron at Davos — are questioning the US's leadership of the "free world" in light of President Donald Trump's belligerent moves on Greenland, Venezuela, and the world economy.
The Election Commission has assumed chairmanship of the IIDEA this year. The US quit the panel just before the conference.
Casas-Zamora, a former Costa Rican Vice-President and academic, spoke at the inaugural session of the India International Conference on Democracy and Election Management, here.
He elaborated: "Political polarisation, illicit funding flows, aggression both online and offline, and digital disinformation supported by obscure algorithms and bots have all disrupted elections globally. Perhaps most concerning, outright election denialism has spread around the world with politicians from the US to Peru and from Georgia to Bangladesh using spurious arguments to question credible results."
Trump supporters did not accept the election of Joe Biden as President in 2024. The US and the UK judged the 2024 Bangladesh polls as unfair. Now, deposed Sheikh Hasina's Awami League came to power, amid a boycott by the main Opposition Bangladesh National Party in 2024.
Casas-Zamora said: "In 2024, we saw the greatest round of elections in history as 1.6 billion people cast ballots in 774 national elections, including here in India. Yet global electoral turnout that same year was down nearly 10 percentage points when compared to 15 years before. While around 40 per cent of elections suffered some form of dispute over their credibility, from legal boycotts to party complaints against the outcome."
He added: "I come from this part of the world from the south and I strongly feel that advancing the democratic cause is our responsibility too. The proud democracies from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in many cases born from long struggles for self-determination, are the living proof that democracy is not a western construct, but a universal aspiration...."
The secretary-general explained, "International IDEA's data show that more countries have declined in democratic performance than have improved for nine straight years. Meanwhile, the headlines of the past months have belied any presumption that the cause of democracy will be sustained by the same countries who led the charge for the past 80 years or so. If democracy is to be resilient, if democracy is to be renewed, then we need new champions to carry the torch. That's why India's leadership is so welcome. "