20% Democracy versus 100% Democracy
When people in a country like Malaysia are not united, do not love each other and cannot appreciate each other’s strengths and contributions, but instead discriminate or look down upon each other, then voters will vote along racial or tribal lines. They will forgive abuses of power and evil as long as they are persuaded such evil is done for their benefit. They will continue to vote for evil politicians.
By batsman
A bad workman blames his tools. This, I suppose, would apply to politics as well.
Quite a few people around the world are of the opinion that democracy does not work. In Malaysia, lamenting non-functional democracy is a favourite pastime. However, I suspect it is more about our lack of control that we lament rather than whether democracy works or not.
There are a few essentials where democracy is concerned and most of it pertains to the level of political maturity as well as to the cultural sophistication of the people. A people with a low level of culture or civilization will not be able to sustain proper functioning of democracy for long while a people with a higher cultural sophistication will make it work reasonably well.
Sadly, this would mean that people in Africa have a lower cultural sophistication than their cousins in the USA while we Malaysians are definitely culturally inferior to the English. I suppose this statement will not sit well with a lot of culturally “sophisticated” Malaysians; but please humour me while I go through the motions of argument and debate.
In the West, people are quite familiar with the concept and are ever ready to punish their political parties if they mess up through the polls. This characteristic alone creates hundreds of institutions and NGOs ready to do battle in defence of voter rights and democracy.
In Malaysia, we are only just becoming familiar with this tradition and even then, not a lot of us are. Politicians who openly bribe voters are not punished in Hulu Selangor but are punished in Sibu. This alone means that people of Sarawak may be culturally superior to the low life in the peninsular – at least during this period. But I think it is a wax and wane thingy – sometimes the peninsula come up tops and sometimes East Malaysia come up tops.
As long as the voters refuse to punish politicians who do wrong, democracy suffers. It is no use for activists and commentators to whine, gripe and groan about the misdeeds of politicians if the voters forgive their trespasses. This environment is not very encouraging of institutions and NGOs springing up to defend democracy and voter rights. At most it creates a lot of commentators who whine endlessly about abuse of power until they are shut up by the Zionist infiltrated secret police. Culturally, we are still in the boondocks.
So it is that we in Malaysia enjoy only about 20% democracy. I suppose the majority of voters are happy with this. Unfortunately, as democracy suffers more and more, people voted into power find more avenues and excuses to abuse power and as a result, the voters themselves can get disenfranchised. This means there is a vicious cycle at work. The more democracy suffers, the more there is abuse of power and the more voters get disenfranchised.
Does this mean then that the people of the West enjoy 100% democracy? I should think – hardly. The Westerners suffer their mass media being controlled by financial and industrial moghuls. This means that although their cultural level may be higher than us here in Malaysia, they still have not reached real civilization yet. So it is that they can support evil wars against poorer and less technologically and hence militarily inferior countries such as Iraq when they believe and forgive the lies of their politicians about WMD.
In the same vein, the Zionist lobby is able to control public opinion in the USA (even as far away as Malaysia) to the extent that the people support murder and genocide against Palestinians on the excuse of wiping out terrorists. This means that voters tolerate anti-democratic Acts of Congress such as the Patriot Acts.
What then does real civilization mean? A civilization that is able to support 100% democracy?
When people in a country like Malaysia are not united, do not love each other and cannot appreciate each other’s strengths and contributions, but instead discriminate or look down upon each other, then voters will vote along racial or tribal lines. They will forgive abuses of power and evil as long as they are persuaded such evil is done for their benefit. They will continue to vote for evil politicians.
So it is that people who hate and despise each other have a low level of cultural sophistication while people who respect and appreciate each other’s strengths and contribution can be said to have a high level of civilization and culture. As argued earlier, people who have a low level of culture cannot sustain a high level of democracy.
In the USA, for the longest time, the whites hated the blacks. Thus we saw such things as civil rights marches and police brutally beating up on the marchers and closing one eye when KKK members burnt blacks alive. This uncivilized behaviour obviously had repercussions on democracy and for the longest time, the majority whites discriminated against and voted en bloc to marginalize the blacks.
Naturally the blacks reacted. They did so in basically 2 ways – by turning into big time criminals and creating no-go areas for the white police and becoming world class – as entertainers, as sportsmen, as soldiers and even as politicians. This push-pull effect resulted in a good measure of respect for the black community over time – to the extent that a black President was elected for the first time recently.
In Malaysia, unfortunately the reactions were the opposite. Those who felt discriminated against either ran away through migration or they became door mats for the rich and powerful or spies for the Zionist infiltrated secret police. So it is that mutual respect is difficult to come by – until recently.
There is a detectable trend these days whereby voters seem willing to punish politicians for misdeeds. This means there is hope yet for democracy in Malaysia.
However we are still just playing catch up with the USA. The USA is not 100% democratic and we are still trying just to catch up.
The USA is not 100% democratic because they still hate minorities and weaker people – if not within their own nation, then in foreign lands. Democracy has a built-in tendency to suppress minorities and weak people. This is why quite a few people are of the opinion that democracies don’t work. And until the USA achieves real civilization and begins to respect the rights of people of other countries at the same time as people of poor countries prove themselves by becoming world class (such as Japan and China in becoming world class manufacturers), 100% democracy is difficult to attain.
Again the opposite is true in Malaysia. We are ever friendly and respectful of people of foreign countries. Maybe this is part of our culture which has a lot of potential. The only thing is when we start to respect ourselves and other communities within Malaysia, only then will we be well on our way to becoming a world class democracy – maybe even better than the USA.
