The 2021 democracy index shows stability in the Pacific but a setback in Central Africa
Saturday, February 12, 2022 | Central Las Vegas Newsroom
The new annual report on the World Democracy Index, published by The Economist is now available for analysis. The most negatively affected states in general are the poorest, while the richest maintain their position but with the data falling. Island and remote states notice little difference between this past year and previous ones.
The data of all the countries of the world are not published, although, of the majority, but the most remote and small ones are excluded, so we will try to make an assessment of the latter even though there is not much data. Most notably among the relatively remote places, we find Fiji, in 2020, it had a total score of 5.72 points out of 10, in the year 2021, on the other hand, it has decreased to 5.61 points. To understand his setback, even if it is not very remarkable, we can resort to his political situation; Fiji has seen several coups caused by the military, their leader achieved his goal of being president. Years later, the same self-proclaimed president managed to win various elections, which cannot be said to have been legitimate. Since then, the political situation has not been very good. We can also consider foreign companies as a problem of corruption in the government. In data by categories, Fiji obtains 6.58 points in the electoral process and pluralism, on the other hand, the operation of the government drops to 5.00 points, the same figure as the previous year. With these data, but also, among some others, Fiji acquires the qualification of a hybrid regime, along with countries such as Ecuador, Mexico or Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Central Africa region each year turns out to be the one with the most negative results, making it impossible to find a country that reaches at least the pass mark. Sudan, meanwhile, has a score of 2.47, clearly understandable for its incompetent political system and institutions, not forgetting the October 2021 coup. The inability of the government to deal with threats throughout the country, which largely controlled by terrorist militias, they make the Democracy Index in this country unable to increase. In the year 2020, the score was 2.54. The other countries of Central Africa also show their decrease in the score, making it impossible to find any country that reaches 5.00 points.
The South Pacific region, in which we include Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia, is the most excluded from the report, leaving only Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. However, it is not very difficult to make a general assessment of the aspects included in the table of the report in the countries of this region. Although we could not include any country within a perfect democracy, countries such as Tuvalu or the Cook Islands could clearly be within the group of democracy with defects, the second being one of the highest scoring among all those in the region. ; largely because it has a free association agreement with New Zealand, which has a score of 9.37. Papua New Guinea, which is included in the report, reaches a score of 6.10. On the other hand, the countries with the lowest scores may be Tonga and Fiji itself, although the former is expected to reach at least 5.00 points.
