Ever since its debut in the modern world in the United States back in 1776 it has disseminated to almost all known lands of this planet. The spread of democracy is the quintessential and the most successful representation of the domino effect theory. It has vigorously toppled ancient monarchies, seemingly formidable empires and most of the paranoid communist regimes. All successful and sustainable nation-wide movements of the past 300 years have in common a sincere devotion and romanticisation of the idea of a free democracy.
With its guarantees of a plethora of rights and freedoms along with the right to choose (or at least the illusion of choosing) one’s own leader, democracy certainly seems like an exciting prospect for any people. Democracy also guarantees instant and consistent improvements from the conditions of the past.
However, this isn’t always true. Democracy doesn’t turn out to deliver these guarantees and isn’t foolproof in all cases.
There are flagrant disparities between what democracy has achieved in different environments.
Let us try and understand both successful as well as unsuccessful democracies.
Poland, after four and a half torturous communist decades, held its first free general elections in the November of 1990. The new government put in charge Leszek Balcerowicz of an economic recovery. Under his dynamic new plan the country with warmth welcomed foreign investment, deregulation and private enterprise. The government also reversed dreadful social restrictions put in place by the harsh and satanic communist regime. As a result Poland has been repeatedly declared the most hopeful economy of Europe (in fact its economy has gotten so strong that it suffered only a gentle blow in the 2008 recession when almost all other European nations were painfully hassling to keep their economies going). Furthermore, it has achieved a flawless first class grade in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of the press, political rights and civil liberties.
On hopping south from the southern tip of Poland, through just 100 kilometres of Ukraine, one encounters the Republic of Romania, another erstwhile communist democracy. Its story unfortunately is much less glamorous. Just like Poland, Romania’s new democratic government also initiated privatisation drives. However, the helms of the public corporations that controlled most of Romania’s economy, ended up in the same incompetent hands that had caused Romania’s collapse in the first place. These hands, incidentally belonged to the new President’s closest allies. This resulted in Romania becoming a definitive oligarchy. That is not all. The government has even gone so far as to legalise bribes up to $50,000 and has decriminalised certain abuses of power. Protests continue against these heinous actions as I write this. Is this a government for the people, by the people and of the people?
Romania is not an exception. There are increasing numbers of failing democracies in today’s world. Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Russia and Pakistan to name just a few.
One might enquire- why failing never overthrown? After all, this is what used to happen to the oppressive in the past. The answer lies in two words- false hopes. Due to false hopes, the electorate believes that if there is a bad government in power, it will be soon that it is removed and a new and better government is formed in its place. This false hope of improvement is what keeps the failing democracies afloat. People are naïve to the fact how easily democratic societies can be manipulated.
My expressions may seem anti-democratic. Or even an elucidation of a quote by Benito Mussolini – “Democracy is a beautiful theory; but in practice it is a fallacy”. But this is what happens when disgusting realities of a beautiful concept are put before people who believe in the concept.
Most of the vulnerable democracies have either had their forms of governments superimposed by other successful democratic nations or have laws that haven’t been properly reviewed for decades and are therefore unsuitable and obsolete for the current times. In some cases, a law framed, maybe a century ago, is given so much prestige and value that even a slight mention of reviewing it is considered highly offensive to the entire nation. In fact, people who support such reviews are at times declared heretics.
That being said, democracy should also not be a plaything in the hands of leaders. Some of its structures should be strongly defined. Examples of leaders toying with their country’s constitution are also very abundant. Leaders of these democracies win elections at first by putting a sympathetic face and behaving like people who genuinely care about public issues. These candidates almost always have darker ulterior motives. Once they get elected they start to manipulate the systems of government at their pleasure so as to ensure that power never leaves their hands. This is not only true for certain democratic nations but also for generally all unsuccessful governments which have been toppled or are just waiting to be toppled. Some examples are (though I do not think I should need to give any) include USSR (under the Communist Party), Russia (under Vladimir Putin), Libya (under Muammar Gaddafi), Syria (under Bashar al-Assad), Cambodia (During the Khmer Rouge), Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Uganda (under Idi Amin), Poland (under communist rule), Kazakhstan (under Nursultan Nazarbayef), Iran (under the Pehelavi dynasty), etc.
No two countries are the same. No two countries have the exact same hurdles in their paths of prosperity. Thus each country’s democratic system should be home-grown and flexible enough to adapt quickly to changing times.
The best example to explain this statement is perhaps that of the United Kingdom. England as we know it today was incepted on Christmas Day of 1066 when William the Conqueror was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. Since that time the United Kingdom has gone from an absolute monarchy, that criminalised people of basically any religion except the Church of England and ruined the human rights and the economy of almost all other countries, to a truly fair and democratic nation, that has proven to be a favourite for all immigrants and is one of the biggest donors of international aid and of the UNICEF.
There are other highly successful examples of countries modifying democracy to suit themselves. These include Singapore (due to the exceptional foresightedness of its first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew), South Korea (with the genius of President Park Chung Hee), India (though not economically very successful, it has been one of the most successful nations to uphold its people’s rights, liberties and freedoms thanks mostly to Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and others who ensured so).
In conclusion, I believe that democracy is the best known system of government but it is vital that it is reformed and redesigned time and again as a copy and paste approach only works towards the ruination of the country and nothing else.
I would like to end with a quote by President John F. Kennedy in regards to a communist East Germany “Democracy is not perfect, but we’ve never had to build a wall to keep our people in”.