Survey warns of looming global freedom stagnation; RP remains ‘partly free’

THE Philippines’s status as a democratic society remained “Partly Free,” according to the Freedom House‘s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties worldwide for 2006.

In its Freedom in the World 2007 report released last week, Freedom House gave the Philippines a rating of 3, both for political rights and civil liberties. A rating of 1 corresponds to a status of most free while a rating of 7, the least free.

The survey reported a downward trend for freedom in the country with the continuing spate of extra-judicial killings that specifically target left-wing political activists.

Last year, the country got the same ratings, resulting in a downgrade from its erstwhile “Free” status which it had enjoyed since 1996, and during the period from 1986 to December 1989.

On a global scale, Freedom House’s survey noted little difference in the state of freedom between last year and 2005, with only one country joining the ranks of “Free” countries since the previous survey. The number of countries adjudged as “Free” in 2006 stood at 90, representing 47 percent of the world’s 193 polities and three billion people, or 46 percent of the global population. (Click here to download the map.)

In fact, the percentage of countries designated as “Free” has failed to increase for almost a decade, suggesting that these trends may be contributing to a developing “freedom stagnation.”

The surveys findings also pointed to a setback for freedom in a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, a more modest decline in Africa, and an entrenchment of authoritarian rule in the majority of countries of the former Soviet Union.

Download the overview essay and survey charts and graphs.

The number of countries considered as “Partly Free” remained unchanged at 58, or 30 percent of all countries assessed by the survey, accounting for a billion people, 17 percent of the world’s total.

The number of countries judged as “Not Free” was likewise unchanged at 45, representing 23 percent of all countries and 2.4 billion people (37 percent of the world’s total). Almost half of this number live in just one country: China.

The Philippines was listed alongside South Africa, Kenya, Taiwan, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Hungary as countries that experienced declines in freedom — societies, Freedom House said, which either have democratic institutions that remain unformed or fragile, or had previously demonstrated a strong measure of democratic stability.

Though Freedom House described the decline in the Philippines as “modest but ominous,” it considered the considerable setbacks in the country — along with the experiences of Thailand and East Timor — as “perhaps the most disquieting aspect of the year’s developments” given the fact that the three countries were previously considered showcases of Asian freedom.

The military-led coup in Thailand that ousted its democratically elected prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was the major development in the region. The coup caused Thailand’s political rights rating to decline to the lowest possible for the survey, as well as its status to drop from “Partly Free” to “Not Free.” Though Freedom noted that Thaksin’s style of governance had led the country’s freedom rating to decline in recent years.

Seven of eight countries which were considered “worst of the worst” in 2005 again received the lowest possible rating — Cuba and North Korea, both one-party Marxist-Leninist regimes; Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Central Asian countries ruled by dictators with roots in the Soviet period; Libya, an Arab country under the sway of secular dictatorships; Sudan, whose leadership has elements both of radical Islamism and of the traditional military junta; Burma, a tightly controlled military dictatorship; and Somalia, a failed state.

Syria somehow improved its civil liberties rating from 7 to 6 because of what Freedom House regarded as “small improvements in personal autonomy and the country’s commercial sphere.”

Tibet (under Chinese jurisdiction) and Chechnya, where an indigenous Islamic population is engaged in a brutal guerrilla war for independence from Russia, were named worst rated territories.

Categories of countries based on freedom

Freedom in the World provides three broad category designation for each of the countries and territories included in the index: Free, Partly Free, and Not Free.

• A Free country is one where there is broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media.

• A Partly Free country is one in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. Partly Free states frequently suffer from an environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and often a setting in which a single political party enjoys dominance despite the facade of limited pluralism.

• A Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.