Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
IS DEMOCRACY ALWAYS RIGHT?
“The sun as everyone says sets later
the longer the day persists.
‘The majority are right even when they are fools,’
the blind democrat insists.”
I’ve just been reading and
reviewing Vincent O’Sullivan’s latest collection of poems Us, then, and I know this satirical little jab of O’Sullivan’s
isn’t directly concerned with the political process. But that line ‘The majority are right even when they are
fools,’ has a particular and sad resonance at the moment.
In Egypt, an elected government
has been overthrown by the military.
Those of us who are fairly ignorant
of Egyptian affairs are not sure how to react. Of course we are saddened that
the promise of the “Arab spring” a year or two back has so rapidly soured. We
were never so naïve as to imagine that democracy and a civil society,
full-formed and functioning, would spring without difficulty from years of
dictatorship. To think that, once a dictatorship is booted out, democracy comes
immediately, was the mistake American policy-makers made in both Iraq and
Afghanistan. So there is the sadness that another hope has been met with armed
force.
But there is this complicating
factor in our reaction. The government of President Morsi, which the military
has seen off, was a government too close to, and indeed dominated by, the
Muslim Brotherhood. This movement is no friend of pluralistic democracy, its
ultimate aim being to establish a confessional state based on Sharia law. No
room for Egypt’s dissident Muslims, Christians, or for that matter secularists.
Granted, Morsi’s government came to power by the democratic process. But, we
now ask, was the constitution of the fledgling democracy flawed? And was the
electoral process loaded? How else could a group with such an agenda have
gained such power?
I emphasize that I am writing as
somebody who knows little more of Egypt than I see in the evening news. But I
am profoundly troubled by the sight of Morsi’s supporters now taking the
position that Morsi’s opponents took a few weeks back, and saying that they are
the supporters of an elected democracy and that their popular will has been
thwarted. Because, in one very obvious sense, they are right. Soldiers, not
voters, have overthrown Morsi.
So here is our problem. Let’s
assume that Morsi won his election fair and square. Let’s go further and assume
that supporters and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood were indeed the majority
of voters. (I know these assumptions are both highly contentious, but I’m just
being hypothetical here.) Do we say therefore that no force has the right to
oppose them? Or would this make us “blind
democrats” who think ‘The majority
are right even when they are fools,’?
Yet, I suspect, most of us
non-Muslim, non-Egyptian observers are quite happy to see the back of Morsi’s
government. We tell ourselves that in this case, the military have acted in
support of the greater good; that they have headed off an Islamist initiative
and helped make the emergence of a truly pluralistic democracy more possible.
This sentiment can take the form of the rather reductionist and puerile
statement I saw on Facebook that “religion
has no place in government”.
But if we take this view, how
much are we in fact saying that an ideology of which we approve can override
the popular will by force?
And, on a more pragmatic level,
how can we be sure of the military’s intentions?
Generals have often overthrown
governments in the name of the greater good, but their track record isn’t all
that great when it comes to delivering on democratic hopes. Generals or
military juntas who see themselves as saviours of the nation too easily turn
into dictators. We are wearily familiar with the scenario of putschists
promising democratic elections – and then indefinitely postponing them. Indeed,
the only example I can think of in which military force in a revolutionary
situation helped to secure democracy was Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution”
nearly 40 years ago (in 1974) – and that was essentially a case of conservative
military leaders standing back and letting a popular movement have its way when
they could have adopted the more brutal course of trying to stamp it out.
So is democracy always right?
Apparently not. And certainly not when it comes to moral, religious, ethical or
aesthetic matters. (You do not prove how great a work of art is, or how true a
moral proposition is, by voting on it.) Yet, as a form of government it is
still the best we have.
The situation will probably have
changed by the time you read this; but as of this writing, all we can hope is
that the Egyptian military keep their word.
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