On 4/2/15 9:07 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
What I can't take is a form of democracy that is destructive to the body politic and is too expensive to be sustainable.i'd like to make a small comment on this. (moses, don't read it since you don't like me making comparisons with the west)
it is now the case that our elections in the u.s., unlike those in the u.k., drag on for years (note the campaign for 2017 has already begun), and that they cost billions. worse still, they entail pandering to the lowest, most bigoted elements of the population, because it is they who come out for the primaries.
worse still, the stupid supreme court now permits corporations to donate unlimited funds, thus buying the politicians.
and finally, the gerrymandering has reduced our votes to empty gestures: the majority of voters in michigan are democrat; but gerrymandering has given republicans a large state majority, despite the fact that on statewide votes we elected two democratic senators and obama by large margins.
these complaints about gerrymandering are now widespread--not just in michigan.
lastly, the electoral college system means that my vote for president counts less than those of people in states with smaller populations--a system established initially to accommodate slave owning states.
democracy in the broad sense--a system of govt where the people elect their representatives--is a good thing, even if it isn't the only possible form, nor necessarily the best. don't go quoting churchill, he is not god.
but democracy in its actual form permits enormous distortions to the notion that a free people can freely voice its opinions and vote openly. for instance, without millions of dollars, how do you get your message out to the people? without millions, how do you get nominated? it isn't a coincidence that most u.s. legislators now are millionaires, and they spend most of their time fundraising. is that anyone's idea of a real democracy??
i wish we would stop calling it western or even liberal democracy. each country in the world has its own formulation; most people in the world understand the idea of a representative govt as opposed to autocracy.
but i agree with moses that each instance of it has to be formulated so as to take into account the local conditions. otherwise we face the catastrophes like that which happened in rwanda when "donor nations" imposed their dictum, as was the case across much of africa in the 1980s, resulting in a model that accentuated violent conflict within the country, and actually led to genocide.
in contrast, when "universal" notions of justice were being purveyed after the genocide, which would have required 100 years to be carried out (and all the 120,000 in prison would have died by then), a local system of justice, called gacaca, was implemented. it wasn't perfect, but it was perhaps the best one could have hoped for under the circumstances.
nigeria is unique, and its systems of governance or justice need to respond to its own configurations of people and power if they are to be workable in the long run
ken
-- kenneth w. harrow faculty excellence advocate professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
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