A FULL-PAGE ad in London’s Guardian costs 17,425 sterling pounds which works out to around 1.9 million Pakistani rupees. So if you are going to spend that kind of money on getting your message across, you’d better make sure it’s worth it.

And what did the Great Leader of the Revolution, Muammar Qadhafi, have to say to Guardian readers last week? The Libyan leader addressed the problem of reforming the UN, and concluded by asserting:

“The world will ruin itself if it thinks of broadening the Security Council and disdains the General Assembly, as is the case at present. A powerful call for the withdrawal from the United Nations will appear prominently and on a wider scale. I personally will be the first of those calling for it.”

No doubt the world body will miss the Great Leader when the sad time comes for him to pull Libya out. For those seeking more nuggets of wisdom from him, the Guardian ad helpfully includes his website which is www.algathafi.org Let me just say that the opening page carries 15 of his pictures in glorious colour.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Libya is blessed with proven reserves of 30 billion barrels of oil and 1.3 trillion cubic metres of natural gas. With a small population of 5.6 million, it should be one of the richest countries in the world. But Qadhafi’s stranglehold on power over the last 36 years has pauperized ordinary Libyans, apart from making it an international pariah, subjected to all kinds of sanctions. With its proximity to Europe and its long coastline of lovely beaches, it could have been a paradise for tourists, thereby reducing its unemployment rate of 30 per cent.

Another great leader’ who was fond of inflicting his crackpot views through expensive press ads in the West was Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s maximum dictator for well over four decades. After his death in 1994, ordinary North Koreans who expected the yoke to be lifted were disappointed when his equally bizarre son, Kim Jong Il, took over. This diminutive dictator has a taste for the good life, and often has gourmet chefs from Europe flown in to cook his favourite delicacies.

And yet, it has been international food aid that has kept mass starvation at bay in this impoverished country. Malnutrition is rife, and with a growth in GDP of one per cent in 2003, it does not seem North Koreans are going to get better off anytime soon. But despite its abject poverty, Pyongyang has more than enough money to develop nuclear weapons and missile technology.

I have highlighted briefly the situation in these two dictatorships, although I could have picked several others. The point I am trying to make is that the worst kind of democracy is better than the best kind of dictatorship. And Libya and North Korea are by no means the best kinds of dictatorships.

There is a tendency, especially in our part of the world, to automatically assume that just because the Americans are interested in pushing a certain policy, it must be exclusively in their interest. So when Bush talks of democracy, particularly in the context of the Middle East, our hackles rise and we rail against American arrogance and ignorance. “Change,” we argue, “must come from within.”

But how and when? God knows most Arabs have been waiting long enough. In the continuing absence of democratic reforms, many leaders in the region will continue squeezing their people for their personal benefit. Only the Gulf states have shown the vision and the will to lift their people up. Most of the rest have been profligate with their people’s God-given wealth, squandering enormous fortunes either in the armaments factories of the West or on the gaming tables of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo.

Another problem with many despotic states is the dynastic nature of their leadership. Bashar Assad took over from his father, just as junior Kim took over from Big Daddy Kim. Now we apparently have Mubarak of Egypt grooming his son to assume power after him, while Qadhafi is supposed to be preparing his son.

This dictatorial cycle can only be broken by a democratic dispensation. Before I am accused of naivete, let me say at once that many democracies are that in name only. Robert Mugabe’s thuggish regime in Zimbabwe is as nasty a dictatorship as anywhere, despite its trappings of democracy. Iranian clergy vets candidates before they can run for elections.

According to one point of view, western nations took centuries to develop democratic institutions, and similarly, today’s dictatorships must be given time to evolve towards representative government. This theory is a cop-out because it ignores the reality of accelerated social and political development as a result of the many healthy, vibrant examples around the world.

Another reason to press for democracy is that in recent times, no genuine democracy has attacked another. For instance, both the 1965 and the 1971 wars between India and Pakistan were fought when the latter was being ruled by army generals. Similarly, the conflicts in the Middle East and Africa have been largely between nasty despots of one hue or another. The only partial exception to this rule that comes to mind is Israel’s pre-emptive and expansionary wars against its neighbours. I suppose the others must be America’s post-9/11 wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. But in both cases, democracies attacked dictatorships, and the axiom holds true: one democracy does not attack another.

As neocons in Washington lift their glasses to the successful elections in Iraq and the anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon, many in the Muslim world are furious at this outright interference from Washington. The rights and wrongs of the Iraq invasion apart (and for the record, in my mind the wrongs outweigh the rights), getting rid of Saddam Hussein and giving Iraqis the right to choose their own government, no matter how imperfect, should not be lightly brushed aside.

There are no guarantees that all will be hunky-dory in Iraq from now on. As Pakistanis know from bitter experience, there is more to democracy than just holding elections. But ultimately, this is the only way the people can hold their leaders accountable and prevent them from buying expensive newspaper space in the West to publish their embarrassing rantings.

In the final analysis, we should strive towards democracy not because it is good for the United States, but because it is good for the people it frees from dictators.