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2017-02-26 06:29

Thuli Madonsela

"Democracy needs to be reviewed or repackaged for it to remain meaningful to all and, accordingly, maintain sustainability. This view was expressed by one of the South African millennials at Harvard with whom I have been engaging in spontaneous democracy dialogues since our arrival here. His colleagues who participated in the conversation, enthusiastically concurred.

The young leaders advised that they had been giving the issue of democracy and what they see as its contemporary challenges some thought for a while. One of their bold statements was that if current democracy trends continued, democracy was doomed. One of them opined that the key threats to democracy today were irrationality and selfishness among those who are public representatives and their administrative support functionaries.

The spontaneous democracy dialogues I have been having with young people have dispelled the myth that young people have no interest in politics or are some lost generation with regard to leadership and national affairs.

My dialogues with young people have convinced me that if young people tend to do nothing about concerns regarding proper use of state power and public resources, it is not that they dont care or dont have an opinion. It is principally because they tend to find current democracy avenues rather undemocratic or inaccessible to the average person.

Undemocratic

How can democracy be undemocratic? You must be wondering if this is not an oxymoron. I too had similar thoughts when former Spanish presidential candidate Pedro Sanchez commenced his address on democratising democracy at the 2016 conference of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. As I listened to his talk, though, I found resonance between his thoughts on contemporary democracy gaps and the views I have expressed in various forms regarding the need to reimagine democracy.

Has democracy become undemocratic, you might ask. My answer is yes. You might even argue that many of the things that are done in the name of democracy only share the -cracy part with democracy and that the demos part a Greek concept meaning people is missing.

Democracy is meant to connote the government of the people, by the people, for the people. The Freedom Charter simplified democracy into the phrase: The people shall govern. Its a system in which people govern themselves directly or through their elected representatives who are accountable to them. In the simplest of terms, democracy means power to the people. Worth noting, accordingly, is the centrality of the people in a democracy, both as the mandate givers and the supposed beneficiaries of the exercise of public governance.

The philosophy behind democracy is that the collective decides that unregulated coexistence is anarchic and potentially brutal, with survival of the fittest being the order of the day. The collective surrenders to regulated coexistence with a few chosen to regulate the conduct of the group and collective resources for common good. The chosen few, commonly referred to as political representatives of the electorate, are supposed to be the most selfless and most regulatory competent of them all. The outcome of democracy must be the improved fortunes of all and peaceful coexistence.

Essential elements of true democracy are that the few chosen based on trust to look after everyones interests govern at the will of the people and are ultimately accountable to the people as mandate givers.

But lets look at the state of democracy today through the lens of the true meaning of democracy. You will agree with the young leaders views that there are serious discrepancies between what is done today in the name of democracy and what democracy is supposed to mean.

For example, public representatives are supposed to be elected by the people, but many are not.

Taking South Africa as an example, the people have no say whatsoever in the appointment of an increasing number of people to Parliament and even Cabinet today. Many of the people holding key political positions were never elected by the people or put on a list that was reviewed by the people when they consciously voted for political parties in April 2014.

Unlike in constituency elections, the public has no say about who does or does not get on the list of the parties they will vote for. Only party members have a say, but even then, within the constraints of power dynamics in each political party.

Government must be at the will of the people. But not so long ago, the executive unilaterally decided, without the involvement of Parliament or the people, to withdraw South Africas membership of the International Criminal Cour, despite having no alternative mechanism for the impunity for genocide and related war crimes the court was established for.

Furthermore, all public representatives are supposed to be impartial and selfless, but many are encumbered by conflict of interest with a few flagrantly choosing to favour actions that advance their interests, instead of the public interest.

An example is Cabinet getting involved in the conflict between Oakbay and the banks, despite the president having a conflict of interest arising from his sons part-ownership of Oakbay.

Reimagine democracy

While improved fortunes of all is an essential outcome of democracy, we must agree that social justice continues to elude many of those left behind, while the fortunes of some can only be principally attributed to their political positions or connections.

In another country, a president who came into power on the promise of taking power away from the capital and giving it back to the people has since been making major life-changing regulatory decisions without the legislatures input or the involvement of the people.

The courts, of course, have helped the people to push back against some of the excesses of the executive and other state functionaries. The high court recently decided that the ICC withdrawal without parliamentary involvement and peoples participation was unconstitutional. The constitutional administrative accountability institutions have also played some role, as seen in investigations such as the state capture report.

This indeed offers a lot of comfort. Such measures help defend and deepen democracy. The media and civil society also play a part.

The mechanisms for defending and deepening democracy are all thanks to the visionary architects of the constitutional democracy. Such architecture incorporates independent judicial and administrative scrutiny of acts of state functionaries to ensure constitutional, legal and policy compliance, among other factors.

But are these enough to plug the gaps regarding undemocratic tendencies brazenly executed in the name of democracy?

Are current measures aimed at deepening and defending democracy enough to save and sustain it as the best model for regulating peaceful coexistence?

The millennials believe we should dig deeper. One of them proposes considering the future use of robots (artificial intelligence) to govern, as theyll do so with efficiency, precision and impartiality.

I have my doubts. But I do agree that it is time to review or reimagine democracy. Democracy must work for all. Above all, democracy must yield fairness and improved fortunes for all not just some. It seems to me that the centrality of the people in democracy is the answer.

If we dont find a way to bring back the people element into democracy, democracy is indeed doomed. If democracy is doomed, peace and stability are equally doomed in the long term.

Madonsela is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Fellow and chief patron of Thuma Foundation

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Democracy could be doomed - News24

The Hindu

Democracy liberal enough in UK for defaulters to stay: Jaitley The Hindu Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said democracy is liberal enough in the U.K. to permit defaulters to stay there and that normal needs to be cracked, in an apparent reference to liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who is wanted in India for loan default and ... and more »

Read more:
Democracy liberal enough in UK for defaulters to stay: Jaitley - The Hindu

Robbie L. Rogers | Special to the Daily News

We expect our superiors to be greater than we are. How preposterous! Our elected and imposed leaders are simply a reflected mirror of ourselves from a different angle. We cry freedom for all while sitting complacent before the television refusing to vote on trash politicians. Proudly we once watched the young student in Tiananmen Square defiantly blocking an entire brigade of tanks poised to murder thousands of his countrymen.

What makes us think we have a patent on democracy? Smugly, we think we started it all. Emphatically we did not, it started the moment man became oppressed by a form of government. We are not the winners of freedom, the world of man is, and the world shall continue seeking freedom as long as there is one man in repression. We are simply inheritors of our circumstances.

This nation stands in a sea of do-nothing citizens and pork-barreled politicians. Sure its a form of democracy, but a degradated one. Democracy demands responsibility of its citizens but gets complacency and apathy from us instead.

Free enterprise is a partner to democracy and therefore an enemy to communism and socialism. They, the communist and socialist, say free enterprise corrupts man. However, it is free enterprise that the crumbling communist block seeks, not freedom nor democracy.

Greed, found in all levels of society, is only a symptom of the evil side of man. It does not govern and is not a result of free enterprise. Greed is a cancer, buried deeply within the system of man. Greed robs man of his freedom. It creates false needs for laws, laws solely based upon perpetuating certain sectors over others.

Narrow-minded regulatory laws often enslave us and free enterprise, creating powerful bureaucratic protectionist associations. Life never is as you like it, rather it is as you live it. Greed is in mankind, it did not come from freedom nor from free enterprise.

In stealing a penny or a pencil we are as guilty as those who steal millions, the only difference is in the opportunity. We individuals must begin to see ourselves as we are. Before our nation can begin to heal from the current state of moral decay, we too must realize we have a problem.

How well are we doing at changing? Not very well. Forty percent say they take supplies home from the office. What do we expect? We expect to be governed by politicians and bureaucrats who are different from us. However, only 3-5 percent of us believe our government always does the right thing. No form of government will become more righteous than the population that elects them.

Strangely enough, although we expect honesty from them, less than 20 percent of us believe them to be of high moral and ethical standard. Corrupt power, worse than greed itself, is a form of corruption all its own. It can be found in any government, club or job where power forces compliance.

This guest column is from Robbie L. Rogers, a resident of Santa Rosa Beach.

Continued here:
GUEST COLUMN: Democracy doesn't always mean honesty - The Northwest Florida Daily News

Pakistans new Hindu Marriage Act prohibits polygamy among Hindus, but can it reel the big fish in? There is no parallel law yet, nor is there one in the making, that would restrain Muslim men to monogamy in Pakistan. Paradoxically then, while the majority of Pakistanis is still bound by undemocratic norms, the minority there is relatively liberated. In Pakistan, Hindu men can have only one lawfully wedded wife while Muslims can have as many as four at a time, though only a fraction of the population is willing to chance it.

This has often promoted the belief that Hinduism is democracy friendly and citizenship enabling. While it is true that both the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) and the Hindu Succession Act(1956) were great achievements of independent India, it is also true that their passage through Parliament was heavily contested, with not a wishbone at work. Traditionalists, inside and outside Congress, strongly opposed these bills and it required a huge effort by Nehru and Ambedkar, among others, to see them through.

Illustration: Chad Crowe

This much is well known. What is, however, not equally appreciated, and fully baked into our brains, is that the Hindu majority, such as we know it to be, is actually a creation of these post-Independence laws. Before they came into being, not just marriage, even inheritance and guardianship norms differed from place to place, from community to community in India. In some cases, succession was governed by the Mitakshara system, in others the Dayabhaga; and each had dashboards flashing different schools.

Nor could one ignore the many matrilineal communities that had to also conform to this newly minted uniform standard. The Delhi high court in two recent judgments, one in 2015 and the other in 2016, overturned Hindu tradition yet again and brought about a greater consolidation of the majority. It first decreed that a Hindu mother could be the single guardian of her child and later also allowed a woman to be karta in a Hindu Undivided Family unit.

Where then were the Hindus before the mid 1950s, other than a scattered lot with diverse customs? The community we consider to be in overwhelming majority today is an outcome of these laws and did not predate them. The majority, in other words, is a creation of liberal democracy from the many came one, under the watchful eye of the Constitution. Therefore, the first government of independent India deserves a further credit: it not only created a majority, but also tamed it. This is an enormous task that easily frightens many new nations, but India was different.

The first job then in democracy and citizenship making is the creation of just such a majority, and this is rarely ever a gift bequeathed by tradition. Instead of being shamefaced about this majority, we should celebrate it as a laser-focussed republican moment. The Hindu of independent India is a new creature and, in strictly legal terms, its personal code is a creation of the present. A good democracy alters many aspects of tradition to create a majority, and there is nothing so unusual about this.

Just as Hindus had to be disciplined before they could become a majority, so also were Christians in the Western world. There is simply no majority culture that emerged out of any democracy that has not been burnished and moulded by the concerns of citizenship. What we know as Italy today was a powder keg of viciously divisive forces; the Sardinians against Bourbons against Sicilians, and all of them against a unified nation-state. Yet, for a long time now they have all been Italians.

Likewise, Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists are presently part of the Christian majority in Britain, but a little over a hundred years ago they were classified as dissenters. Consequently, they were denied government jobs; they could not even earn degrees from Oxford or Cambridge. All of this sounds unreal today as these sects are now chartered members of the Protestant majority in the United Kingdom. Since then there has been further progress. In 2013 a new law was passed that even allows a British monarch to marry a Catholic. This enlarged the Christian majority from just being a Protestant one, erasing completely the memory of the 1780 massacre of Catholics.

A similar process took place in America when, post World War II, Jewish people began to be considered as white folks. Till the 1920s, Jewish students were discouraged from entering elite educational institutions in the United States. Perhaps, World War II brought home the wisdom to conservative Christian establishments that Jewish talent would be hugely beneficial to Americas well-being.

Taken together this should easily expose the myth of a pre-existing majority in a democracy. If, at times, it appears as if the majority has to do little adjusting, leaving the burden on minorities alone, then that is an optical illusion. This conclusion overlooks how a good and vibrant democracy has long been at work to merge hitherto disparate groups and sects, to form a majority. If democracies, step by step, by incessant crafting and cajoling, create majorities, the same methods must be put to work to merge those who still see themselves as outliers and minorities.

After all, a majority is known by the minorities it embraces.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Originally posted here:
Democracy makes majorities: How India's Hindu majority is an outcome of Independence and constitutional process - Times of India (blog)

Democracy dies when the people remain mired in ignorance, breeding tyrants who promise solutions to all their problems.

Constitutionalist Christian Monsod issued this warning on the eve of the 31st anniversary of Edsa Revolution, echoing the words of a former US Supreme Court Justice, whose remarks in 2012 seemed to portend the rise of leaders like Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte.

We are told that an ignorant people can never remain a free people because democracy cannot survive for long with civic ignorance, he said on Friday.

And if we do not do anything about it and prefer to live with our frustrations about who is accountable for things that go wrong, someone will eventually come and say I will solve all your problems if you give me total power.

And we will give it to him. Thats when democracy dies, Monsod said, paraphrasing the words of David Souter five years before Trump came into power.

Souters warning resounds in our situation today, said the former chair of the Commission on Elections.

Speaking at a forum at the University of the Philippines School of Economics, Monsod lamented that about 73 percent of the Filipino people admitted to knowing little or nothing about the 1987 Constitution, based on a Pulse Asia survey in July last year.

Such ignorance now fuels attempts by the Duterte administration to revise the Constitution, which was framed during a constitutional convention, of which Monsod was a member, in 1987, a year after the peaceful Edsa uprising toppled the dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos.

We are told by the present government that the problem of our country is Imperial Manila, hence the need to shift to federalism, Monsod said.

But I submit that we have failed in development not because of the Constitution, but because we have not fully implemented it, especially its provisions on social justice and on local autonomy. The Constitution is not the problem, it is part of the solution, he said.

Monsod described Duterte as an enigma because of inconsistent messages and behavior, language that the civil society does not accept, inability to dialogue because he is not a good listener and muddled governance because of ad hoc or case-to-case decisions.

Even so, he said he was convinced that the Presidents heart is with the poor.

And given his high trust rating, it is neither feasible nor desirable to try to bring him down. But he is an enigma because his pro-poor agenda is correct, but the means he wants to use are wrong, Monsod said, citing Dutertes bloody war on drugs and encouragement of extrajudicial killings of suspects.

He said it was not only the President who was an enigma but the Filipino people themselves.

And until we have both a transformational leader and a transformational people, we can never fulfill the vision of the Constitution of a new social order, he said.

For all the promise of a new social order that the 1986 Edsa Revolution represented, Monsod said it ended in failure.

We folded our banners, we put away the t-shirts with the imaginative slogans that brought humor to the seriousness of the times, and we went back to our previous lives focusing on our narrow purposes and advocacies. And as we went our separate ways with our separate causes, we lost something of the dream of a nation and the significance of interconnected lives, he said.

You may askhave we failed Edsa? My answer is yes, Monsod said.

Thirty-one years after Edsa, we still have the twin problems of mass poverty and one of the highest [inequalities] among our peers in our part of the world, he said. The social reform programs are underperforming and the social divides have not changed.

And I submit that the biggest divide among our people is not culture or identity or territory but the divide between the rich and the poor, whether within a Christian community, a Muslim community, and indigenous peoples community, or within our nation as a whole. CDG

Read the rest here:
Democracy won't thrive with civic ignorance, warns constitutionalist ... - Inquirer.net