Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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What is democracy? This was the question a group of media people struggled to answer as they met at a resort near Cape Town. Recently there on a mission to finalise films about HIV/Aids in Southern Africa, someone mentioned democracy and a new project was born.

The group decided to commission 10 themed films, each with a different question attached to it, to try and stimulate a global debate about democracy. That modest affair soon snowballed into a global event, with 42 broadcast partners, covering every corner of the globe except China, Russia and the US.

In a recent issue, the London Observer published details of the project, with an introduction by Nick Fraser, editor of the BBC Storyville and chairman of the group which commissioned the films. At the same time, the Observer posed 10 questions to leading thinkers, politicians and activists about the topic.

In his introduction to the story, which covers seven full pages of the newspaper, Fraser writes that democracy can also perish and "cannot be imposed. No people can live free unless they wish to." Another lesson we are only starting to absorb, goes on Fraser, "is that there are many ways of being democratic and the Western tradition is not the only one."

In India, for instance, much religious and moral controversy existed "before Pericles lived in Athens."

So much admiration for democracy is relatively recent. Like many contemporary Washington pundits, continues Fraser, "19th century liberals such as J.S. Mill and Tocqueville were not whole-hearted democrats. They believed the spirit of freedom resided in benign oligarchies and not mob rule." Even now, there are doubts by backers of democracy who ask whether the Western variety of democracy -- ballot, boxes, polls, stock exchanges and supermarkets -- are valid for everyone.

Democracy, in the writer's opinion, is more than a system of government, it is a cult revered as the last civic religion. Celebration of freedom or human rights does not mean that they actually exist. And democracy is not all good. "Democracies cause war," he says. "They are susceptible to the lightest tides of public opinion. They can destroy themselves and have done so many times." These days liberties are reduced ostensibly to fight terrorism.

What is more, there is declining voter interest levels. In all so-called mature democracies, "there is a chasm" that separates the bureaucratic oligarchy, which runs contemporary states, from the disgruntled, often apathetic citizens.

Following this introduction are the 10 questions the Observer, (and the films) ask. All cannot be mentioned here, but I have chosen three that I find valid. The first is, "Are dictators ever good?" Writer Andrew Roberts, one among 10 attempting to answer this question, says "very, very rarely." They can be useful in civil wars or near resurrection, such as in Spain in the 1930s and Chile in the seventies: both Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile managed "to prevent takeovers by Marxist-inspired movements that would deny democracy in the future." Both generals eventually handed over to a democratic system. The trouble is that dictators "always carry on in office well after the initial need for them has gone."

R. W. Johnson gives De Gaulle as an example. He was voted in by the people and he needed dictatorial powers "to decolonise Algeria and put down repeated army revolts, but by 1962 it was all over. His greatest mistake was to go on too long. Had he stepped down when his term ended in 1965, he would have been a hero. Instead, he tried to carry on governing dictatorially. The result was disaster and popular rejection, first by students in May 1968, then by the electorate in 1969. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate, answers, "Unfortunately, history, as it has come down to us, compels us to acknowledge that there have been exceptions. Contemporary experience indicates, however, that any good dictator died out with the dinosaurs."

There are still nine more questions to answer, such as "Are women more democratic?" "Is democracy good for everyone?" "Can terrorism destroy democracy?"

I shall try and present the answers in future columns.