Globe and Mail
June 7, 2001

You want democracy? said (Canadian) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. We'll give you democracy. And so, as the tear gas began to dissipate outside the April Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, the Democracy Clause was born.

Word for word, this is what it said: "Any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state's government in the Summit of the Americas process."

As spun by Mr. Chrétien and his aides, the clause was unambiguous. No free elections, no free trade. No rule of law, no soft loans. Overthrow the president? Jail the supreme court? Put your passport away, General. No inter-American hobnobbing for you.

Skeptics noted that the actual text failed to link democratic rule to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, that it didn't define democracy at all, and that, although the leaders promised to consult one another on political crises, it wasn't really clear how the clause would be enforced.

Relax, they were told. The Organization of American States, a kind of mini-United Nations of the Americas, will draw up an "inter-American democratic charter" to make the whole thing operational.

Well, guess what? Seems democracy isn't so simple after all.

Presented this week with a draft charter at the annual OAS general assembly in Costa Rica, foreign ministers from the same countries that gathered in Quebec City refused to approve it. They sent it back for further work, and scheduled an extraordinary meeting in September to consider it anew.

The draft says the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy. It specifies elections, a party system and respect for human rights as essential elements. It lays out a procedure to be followed when democratic rule is threatened, including emergency OAS meetings and action by the organization's secretary-general.

It could be improved, no doubt about that -- by specifying the kind of abuses that would trigger OAS action, and enumerating the benefits that would be denied to those flouting democratic norms. But reports from the OAS meeting suggest that isn't what all the ministers have in mind.

Some, in flagrant contradiction of Mr. Chrétien, appear to believe that constitutional democracy should not be a condition of free trade. Some, oddly, believe that the OAS lacks jurisdiction over access to the summit process. Venezuela continues to push for a charter that speaks of participatory as well as representative democracy.

This will hardly do.

Many people, in Canada and elsewhere in the Americas, believe that the Quebec democracy clause was a confection designed to sweeten the taste of tear gas rather than a genuine attempt to ensure respect for the popular will. If the OAS can't agree on a charter that packs a punch, that argument will be hard to refute.