Democracy: Tyranny of the elected

QUINTIN MCGAREL HOGG, Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone once called the British House of Commons "an elected tyranny," and recent mass protests that were wrongly named in the media as "riots" and described by Prime Minister David Cameron as "criminality pure and simple" are a clear vindication of Lord Hailsham's incisive assertion, a blatant disregard for the feelings of ordinary people.

Prime Minister Cameron behaved like the cornered hypocrite that he is, criminalising dissent in his own backyard while sponsoring it and fighting for it in Libya, funding it massively in Zimbabwe, and labelling it "democratisation," or "the people's will," for as long it is at the doorstep of others, and not burning the ancient buildings of London.

The British Prime Minister bit his lower lip many times, clenched his fists, hit the table numerous times - all in unmistakable fury against a mass protest he did not want to accept, choosing to describe the protesters as "plain criminals" and followers of "a culture of violence".

Of course, when any other leader from countries where Cameron and his allies are sponsoring and promoting this "culture of violence" becomes the target, the culture of violence suddenly becomes "the struggle for freedom," especially when the leader in question is not pliant to Western dictates in international affairs.

But this essay is not about burning Great Britain and the plausible lessons it brought to all those interested in the true sense of the concept of justice and true democracy.

There is an insurmountable force in the dismaying reality that the world's so far relatively brief experiment in democracy is proving hard for ordinary people to admire, or even to bear, not least because politicians that preach democracy have mastered the art of nullifying or controlling the power of the voting public.

These politicians apply various kinds of manipulation, taking advantage of the fact that often people feel a certain weariness generated by the gap between politicians' promises and the hard realities.

Things promised by politicians always take a lot of turning around, with deep seated inertia in the bureaucratic system, a lot of vested interests so well organised, with well funded influential ways of disempowering voters who are always insufficiently organised and have their say limited only to periodical opportunities.

The masses have no way of frequenting the corridors of power after they elect politicians into political office.

It is the wealthy lobbyists and their funded pawns that are in the corridors of power on a daily basis, cheque books in hand, always winning deals and concessions at the expense of the poor masses.

In May this year this writer happened to be in Canberra when the Australian Federal Budget was being announced. All hotels were fully booked by business executives waiting in the wings to clinch deals with government officials.

Politicians who preach democracy anchor their message on the high sounding theme of civil liberties, something that all countries that claim to have and to value democracy say they cherish, perhaps until a crisis like the London mass protests occurs.

Western countries hailed the occupation of Tiananmen Square in the fateful summer of 1989, just like they did in 1979 when the older siblings of these Chinese students turned a length of Peking brick into what they called a "Democracy Wall," freely expressing themselves through fly posters.

In both cases the name and spirit of democracy were summoned to oppose the rule of the Communist Party of China, just like they are now summoned to oppose the rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and that of others far too many to mention.

After Tiananmen Square the West used the event to inspire uprisings in Eastern Europe, and crowds there invoked what was called democracy, and the majority of people in the West celebrated. Democracy is a feel-good word: it is what the West officially stands for and defends. Not many people can gather enough courage to loudly declare that oligarchy, plutocracy or dictatorship is preferable to democracy.

This is why the West prides itself as the global mentor of governance.

Yet we have a chastening tale in the history of anti-democratic sentiment in Western civilisation; from classical Athens to the present day, well articulated by what is happening in Britain at the moment, itself an indication of what is likely to happen to the rest of Europe any time from now.

Until the recent pretensions by Western elites, democracy was always vilified as the despotism of the poor, the ignorant, and the unthinking majorities over better-off and better educated minorities.

The "Great Unwashed" or the "Bewildered Herd" must not be allowed any political arrangement that enable them to have a say in the affairs of the state, that has always been the tradition.

Let us consider Athens in the fourth and fifth century BC.

It was not a democracy in anything like the true sense of the word. Women, slaves and aliens had no say, and men only reached adulthood at thirty, at which point they would be allowed a say.

It is this Athenian democracy that is today considered the foundation of today's democracy, and it styled itself as a democracy, considering all enfranchised adult males as equal citizens with an equal say in the running of the state. This is the "democracy" that produced art, architecture, drama and philosophy of such power and excellence that they continue to shape most of global civilisation today.

Opponents of this so-called democracy included Plato, who attacked it for putting management of the state into the hands of ignoramuses unable to distinguish right from wrong.

Plato blamed the Athenian democracy for making the citizenry "idle, cowardly, loquacious and greedy," and for devouring those who had founded the concept. In the Athens of Cleisthenes and Pericles democracy meant a democracy of the adult male minority of the population, just like political power in modern day democracy means the power of the rich and the political elites.

It is this kind of democracy that was limited to an enfranchised minority adult male population that eventually brought about the modern ideal of equal status for all the enfranchised, and the prospect of their practical involvement in the government of the state.

This was the first coming of democracy, and it carried significant seeds. Plato hated it, and so did everyone for the next two millennia, except for the levellers, the dreamers, the poor and the oppressed.

We live in the second coming of democracy, which started in the eighteenth century, transfigured by the alchemy of time and circumstances into the doctrines of the American and the French revolutions. American democracy was founded on James Madison's reinterpretation of the idea of a democracy into the idea of a republic, whose key is representation. French democracy was based on the significance of Babeuf's Conspiracy during Thermidor, and what it meant for the democratic idea in the turbulent moments of the French revolution.

This is the 21st century and we still debate what democracy is and "why democracy".

What we call "democracies" today are communities of the disenchanted and demoralised, systems described by one commentator as "all too well adjusted to lives organised around the struggle to maximise personal income."

John Dunn wrote: "Over the two centuries in which democracy has come to triumph, some have seen it simply as an imposter, bearer of a name which it has stolen, and instrument for the rule of the people by something unmistakably different."

This writer is one of these people who view modern day democracy as a thieving imposter carrying a stolen name from the glamorous ideas of Aristotle, but carries no intention of ever allowing people to rule themselves, as it is fully manipulated by a powerful clique of wealthy individuals only motivated by maximising profits.

If we take Zimbabwe as an example of a people aspiring to be counted as democratic, it is quite intriguing to see how the idea of elections is treated as the beginning of democracy, if not its end.

Politicians are essentially fighting over how to manipulate the vote in their favour, one group lobbying for "an election roadmap" of their choice while the other is saying there has always been an election road map since the country began the "one man one vote" system in 1980, with elections having been held every five years or even after lesser periods.

Participation of the masses in the affairs of the state is a feared phenomenon and that has always been so.

The leading philosophers of Athens were against such participation, and from that time democracy has always had little chance among the powerful elites and the thinkers. Renaissance writers were convinced democracy meant constant tumult, the kind we have seen burning London's buildings down this month.

Enlightenment moralists saw it as a threat to virtue, where people could simply become uncontrollably immoral and sinful. America's founding fathers believed it led to the equalisation of property, the much-hated concept of communism.

It was Britain that grudgingly shifted towards democracy between 1830 and 1930. Fiery opponents claimed they were being sold out to the rabble. They saw democracy in the image of the Paris mob of the early 1790s.

Due to the strenuous efforts of nineteenth century historians, the despised image of Athenian democracy has been rescued from the opprobrium of earlier historians. This is largely why democracy has lately become not just respectable but something to die for.

But is modern day democracy worth dying for?

Indeed conservative theory in America has resulted in devolution of political authority, but is such authority derived from an honest and genuine participation of the masses in electing the authorities?

Are the people of America presented with free choices for political leadership? Is the political system free of manipulation from political elites and the wealthy people that sponsor them?

The British conservative system has effected a rapid centralisation of power, breaking with its own traditions by weakening or abolishing intermediary institutions like local government. The recent swing to authoritarianism by the British political system is perhaps the "alarmed reaction" once predicted by Michael Oakshott and others mainly from the right - an alarmed reaction to perceived national decline.

The British tradition is that of political institutions known to have been carefully and unobtrusively arranged to dissipate the unwanted effects of democracy, a fact welcomed by Labour politicians only when they are in office, and by Conservatives at all times.

In Zimbabwe we have a perfect opportunity to come up with a new constitutional arrangement, where we can at the very least promote the participation of the masses in the everyday running of state affairs - delegating authority right down to grass root levels. But are we not sponsored and directed by the very system we intend to change?

Can we freely declare in our constitution that the only people entitled to benefit from the natural resources of our country are the masses of Zimbabwe, and that all others can only be invited on our terms?

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

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Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com