US President Joe Biden closed the Summit for Democracy on Friday reminding world leaders, who participated, of their responsibility to “strengthen the guardrails of democracy” to make.
It more resilient against the “buffeting forces of autocracies” and he vowed do his own part in America by enacting laws advancing voting rights.
The two-day virtual summit was attended by leaders of 89 countries – of the 100 who were invited – and the European Union. Biden announced in his closing remarks that he plans to host a second edition of it next year and indicated it would be an in-person gathering.
Joe Biden closed the summit saying, “As the leaders of governments, we – we have a responsibility to listen to our citizens, to strengthen the guardrails of democracy, and to drive reforms that are going to make transparent, accountable governments – governance more resilient against the buffering and – the buffeting forces of autocracy and those who want – and the naked pursuit of power ahead of the public good.”
This first summit of its kind was attended among others by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, France’s Emmanuel Macron, UK’s Boris Johnson, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australia’s Scott Morrison. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan were not invited and Pakistan’s Imran Khan turned down the invitation.
“Over the last two days, we’ve heard government leaders, as well as democratic reformers from every region of the world, talk about the challenges that democracy is facing and the opportunities for its renewal,” Biden said, summarising the remarks and comments at the conference.
“We’ve shown a spotlight on the importance of protecting media freedom and how advancing the status of women and girls is an investment in the success for our democracies,” the US president added. “And we’ve focused on the need to empower human rights defenders and make sure … technology … is used to advance democracies to lift people up, not to hold them down.”
The last point was an unmistakable reference to Beijing’s use of technology the persecution of China’s minority Uighur Muslims is what has been described by the United States and other countries as genocide. Country’s communist party rulers have also used technology to suppress dissent.
President Joe Biden went on to say that though challenges to democracy may vary from country to country “the threat we face and the solutions we seek have a common antecedent”. Autocracies, essentially.
In the US, the most serious threat to democracy in recent history came from a horde of insurrectionists incited by former President Donald Trump who invaded the US Capitol, home to the country’s parliament, to prevent a joint sitting of its two chambers from certifying Biden’s election as president.
Biden addressed the domestic threats to democracy in the US as a voting rights issue and promised to “make real the full promise of America, including by enacting both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act”. The two legislations seek, above all, to make voting easy and non-discriminatory.
“Here at home, that means working to make real the full promise of America, including by enacting both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” he said.