Assilah Forum: Populism biggest threat to democracy in modern era

ASSILAH - Populism is the biggest threat to democracy in the modern era, warned Morocco’s former tourism minister Lahcen Haddad during a seminar about democracy in the northern city of Assilah.

International experts and politicians took part in a seminar titled "Electoral Democracy: What Future?" as part of the 35th edition of Al-Mouatamid Ibn Abbad Open University organised by the Assilah Forum Foundation.

Haddad stressed that populism is led by some political leaders who are exploiting people’s frustration to serve their unrealistic agendas.

“The danger of populism is of an international concern as fake news and the twisting of truth has become a fashion for communicating with the aim of achieving instant political and media harm,” warned Haddad, who cite former US President Donald Trump as an example.

The former Moroccan minister said that the populist stance has become more attractive than telling the truth.

“Many layers of societies resort to populism, especially in the midst of a rising wave of migration, the impact of automation on the job market and the rejection of globalisation,” said Haddad.

Former Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker seconded Haddad’s analysis, stressing that populism was the biggest threat to a representative democracy.

“We’re still far from having a real electoral democracy in many countries where there is a lack of freedom of expression and severe shortage of good governance,” said Walker.

Former President of the Peruvian Congress Luis Gonzales-Posada said in turn that dictators have succeeded in finding platforms to defeat the democratic currents across the world, particularly in South America.

Gonzales-Posada cited several examples of countries where democracy hit rock-bottom because of the populist speeches by their leaders that allowed them to stay in power for decades.

Meanwhile, Adballah Saaf, professor of political sciences at the Mohammed V University, said that is was now difficult to talk about a democratic transition which failed to materialise in many Arab countries in the post-Arab Spring.

“After all what happened, we can raise a question mark about the pertinence of this notion of democratic transition which doesn’t reflect anymore the collective movement that traverses the Arab region,” said Saaf.

He noted that the social card has become very complex. “Who represents who?” he asked, adding that borders between social categories became porous.