How does democracy allow people to participate in the affairs of the State? Why did several political leaders frequently mock and sometimes defy the Supreme Court decisions?
By Dr. Prakash C. Lohani
Co-president
Rastriya Janashakti Party (National People?s Power Party).
Former Finance Minister
What happened in 1990 in our country was a historic political movement. It established firmly that sovereignty resides with the people and it outlined a democratic structure to serve their interests. It was not a social revolution and its economic content was at best confused between the slogans of socialism and the new mantra of free competition, economic liberalism and globalization. What the country lacked was a vision that would link multi-party democracy and development together into a unified whole. Experience has shown that democracy does not automatically lead to peaceful development unless the political leadership is able to consciously establish values that can act as a link between the two. Our experience and indeed the experiences of many other new democracies seem to indicate that electoral democracy is no guarantee of automatic stability and development that is transformational in nature. Similarly the notion that free market and electoral democracy are complimentary to each other is not necessarily true. The rich, with the free market as the shield can use the democratic system for their benefit much more easily than the poor. A minority can progress at the cost of the majority. If this process gains momentum as has happened in our country, ironic as it may seem corruption emerges as an important by-product of an ideology that is based on the will of the people. The state in this scenario starts assuming a predatory character and sooner rather than later the rip-off and the political double-cross in the name of democracy become the cause of social tension, conflict and the emergence of competing social transformation paradigm based on violence and terror, promising an utopia that sometimes seems to border on religious mysticism. Our country at present is an example of this phenomenon.
As a system of governance democracy has the strength to transform subjects into citizens. The freedom of the press and the freedom to organize allow people to examine their relationship with the state and demand a better deal for the future. The awareness of one's own rights as well as the role of the state in creating the necessary infrastructure in the meaningful exercise of these rights takes the form of new expectations and demands that is mass based and even populist. When the democratic structure and its leadership fails to respond to these demands and uses the new legitimacy -the political capital- for the interests of the elite rather than that of the masses there is a serious mismatch between the structure and functions in the system. A situation can arise when the democratic state finds it increasingly difficult to sustain democracy. A lead-lag relationship between the increasing awareness among the people and the inability of the system to respond effectively can lead to a situation of "failed " democracy.
Incongruence between structure and functions in a democracy is not uncommon. However, there is always the hope that the feedback mechanism that is supposed to be the major strength of a democratic system will be effective in controlling the gap. In new democracies, however, the efficiency of the feedback system in inducing major policy changes leaves much to be desired. You do not have to go very far: Nepal is an example.
(Question by Mahesh Chhetri, Kathmandu Nepal)
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