FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS ARE AT THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY

As the IPU turns 117 years, the Organization is launching three studies dedicated to democracy. With Professor David Beetham holding the pen, the first in this trilogy sets out the requirements for a democratic parliament - to be representative, transparent, accountable, accessible and effective - and offers a rich selection of good examples of how parliaments carry out their tasks. The second is an expanded edition of the 1994 publication Free and Fair Elections written by Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill.

The study prepared by Professor Goodwin- Gill reviews a decade (1994-2004) of progress in the law and practice of elections around the world. It points out that the elections debate no longer solely concerns States in transition from conflict or from authoritarian forms of government. It is now increasingly relevant to all democratic systems, that are facing the internal challenges of alienation and distrust of the process. The third in the series is a pamphlet offering a panorama of parliamentary elections in 2005. It provides answers to questions such as how many people went to the polls in 2005, in how many countries, and what the results were.

In his study, Professor Goodwin-Gill stated that "the issue of representation will be increasingly dominant in the future, not just with regard to free and fair elections but also the very meaning of democracy at ground level. Globalization and technological change have also brought new challenges for the democratic process." In a press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Professor Goodwin-Gill underlined that the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government. The question of free and fair elections is very much in the headlines, "whether we are thinking about the situations in Belarus, in Iraq, in the Middle East", said the author of the IPU study. He added that "in the more developed democracies, we are alsoasking ourselves if our system allows for sufficient representation of all the voices of the multicultural communities that now make up our societies. We often find that the present system of voting, for example, does not precisely provide what we are looking for: a representative government."

Elections are the core of democracy, but in many countries, citizens are increasingly claiming that if an election is to be free and fair, the expression of the will of the people must also be respected. "We are right to be worried about the fake front that might be erected in this or that State with a view to persuading us that indeed all is well. In fact, if we go behind that fake front or behind the semblance of free and fair elections we find that there is nothing there or perhaps something worse than nothing", declared Professor Goodwin-Gill.