Politicians the world over are firm on the idea of democracy as an ideal, but not the messy elections that could give them nasty surprises. It does not matter where they are from: the United States, United Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, the Soviet Union, Malaysia, Singapore, Zimbabwe, India. They spout the same slogans and political beliefs, twist the law and language to their advantage, and sulk when the result is not what they bargained for.

It is a rare country where this belief in free elections and democracy is believed and the results are unquestionably accepted, and honoured. This becomes more difficult in this age of globalisation, which allows, indeed accepts as an article of faith, that the world must be made in the image of the Hollywood village, in which cultural traditions and beliefs must be jettisoned if it stands in the way. This idea of democracy is now tailored to fit into this Hollywood village, a cultural colonisation the likes of which the world has not seen.

Once this idea of democracy was allowed to mature and develop within the cultural values of society, and what you got was an imperfect system to the idea but one which people believed in. That is not possible now, for the framework of that democracy is now challenged with the shrill voice of the global television networks looking for deviations of the norm as they see it, and criticising it often so whatever the result, it is not accepted.

When you look at it closely, the presidential elections in Zimbabwe and the United States, which returned President Robert Mugabe and President Bush to office, were flawed. Both should not have been elected. But in the globalisation remake, Bush is elected without question, but not Mugabe. Washington which insists on elections as a panacea for systemic failures takes the view that if the people vote, all will be well. All it has to show for its belief is a litany of failed states that cannot survive except with Western handouts in which the greater danger is the systemic destruction of its cultural values.