Former President Jerry John Rawlings has condemned what he terms the double standards of the developed countries.

“If the developed countries applied the same level of integrity in their dealings with the developing world, their leadership would not be in question," he said.

According to him, while the developed countries have kept their morals and value systems intact within their nations, those countries adopted different morals towards developing nations, resulting in the developing countries becoming weaker and weaker.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, President Rawlings recalled what former US Vice President, Mr Dick Cheney, said while he was a Defence Minister that: “America's interest overrides issues of morality.”

President Rawlings said: “The developing world is getting weaker and weaker; of course, you will see a growing infrastructure in Tunisia, Egypt or possibly Libya, but those infrastructures will not be a reflection of the socio-economic justice in the country. On the contrary, they reflect a very corrupt class attempting to rule a discontented and disempowered people,” he said, adding that it appeared the developed countries seemed to profit from the demise of the value systems of the developing countries.

He said Western powers had often interfered, entered and declared war on other countries and left some of them as failed states.

He said the world, particularly the developing nations, wanted to see multiparty democracy at the super-power level.

President Rawlings said following the collapse of the bipolar leadership, and the communist and socialist economic philosophy, the world, especially those in the developing regions, had hoped to see the human face of capitalism “but no, we've ended up with what Pope John Paul appropriately called ‘the savagery of capitalism.’”

According to him, nepotism was at its worst and multiparty democracy had failed to contain corruption, and socio-economic injustice was at its worst.

He said when the West declared war against terrorism, most governments or a few too many governments took the cue from the US and Britain and started persecuting and silencing genuine quests by freedom and justice advocates.

“The manner in which the war in Iraq was prosecuted did the worst damage to human morality or ethics, in the sense that the might of right was subsumed by the right of might. It sent the wrong message to the developing world and a few too many governments (especially in Africa) took advantage of that, and corruption and impunity became the order of the day,” he lamented.

President Rawlings said it was Nelson Mandela whose voice could hold Bush and Blair in check in Iraq.

“The true international appeals to them fell on deaf ears and this was in spite of the fact that they had used the pretext of looking for weapons of njass destruction to enter Iraq. It was the height of impunity to use a false declaration at the UN to enter Iraq,” he said.

President Rawlings was highly uncharitable with France for her growing role in the collapse of the developing world.

“France used to adopt a fairly admirable position and not blindly follow the US and Britain to be declaring wars, but she has abandoned that position and chosen to profit from a Western unipolar power status,” he said.

President Rawlings said France was not only trying to edge out Britain’s influence, but was becoming an overzealous partner to the US.

“We saw that in Libya — the manner in which they flushed out Gaddafi into the hands of his people to be killed like a dog; the misuse of the UN by France in Cote d'Ivoire to not only unseat a government, but to pluck an elected patriotic leader and put him on trial at The Hague," he noted.

President Rawlings said in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bipolar leadership of the world, Russia's undiminished^tatus and the emerging power of China still worried and irritated the US's desire to be at the helm of a sole unipolar power.

He said the world would have accepted America's unipolar leadership if she had not lost the moral high ground.