Today, 15 September, is International Day of Democracy (IDD). It is the ninth commemoration since 2007 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 62/7, deciding that every 15th September should be observed as the international Day of Democracy. Last year, 2015, the IDD focusing on “Space for Civil Society”, emphasized the role of ordinary citizens in promoting democratic principles.
This year the theme is “Democracy and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”; making it clear that the international community is serious about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has said that “the implementation of the Goals must be underpinned by a strong and active civil society that includes the weak and the marginalized”. Adding that “We must defend civil society’s freedom to operate and do this job” of delivering development to ours and future generations.
Indeed, democracy is relevant only if it yields strategic dividends for development.
For this and other reasons, it is important, at least on such occasions, to without reinventing the wheel, rigorously interrogate the concept of democracy in the context of some practical, if evolving, observations. In doing this, we unavoidably have to examine things like human rights, governance and development. While the world hails as victory the virtual demise of monarchically ruled kingdoms and perfect autocracies; touting so loud what we claim to be huge strides of civilization’s progress because of democracy, we cannot play ostrich to the significant level of insecurity and inequality that taunts us every day.
The roars of terror across the Middle East are not only causing trembling knees in the West; they are also establishing some credible surrogates in hitherto secured and ignored blocs and creating reprisals threatening a quest for bigotry from the least suspects . Now, as the head of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said, “the European Union is facing an existential crisis as it confronts the twin challenges of rising nationalism and Islamic terrorism”. 62 individuals have a combined wealth more than that of three billion people and since 2004 there have been about 30 terror attacks in Europe, about half of which have occurred in just the last year.
Is our Democracy delivering the promise?
The operationalization of the Concept of Democracy
Democracy is a system of governance. Some sum it up in the now iconic phrase Abraham Lincoln made in his November 19, 1863 Gettysburg Address: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”. In many ways it is a process by which the well-being of a people is entrusted to the hands of a mandated cohort with the right to access and control the management of (national) resources in a manner that makes better the welfare of all citizens.
So it may be considered that Democracy begins with the construction of the framework for the process. Thus the formulation of a constitution is crucial. In Ghana, many have contended that the 1992 Constitution has decisive provisions that unduly benefit the political elite, especially the incumbent.
Perhaps this was a reason for which the aborted Constitutional Review process was themed to reflect a more developmental, rather than political, approach to governance. In other jurisdictions, arrival at a more stabilizing Constitution has been more tumultuous. America’s was preceded by a horrendous civil war. The practice of constitutional democracy is predicated on assumption that the interpretation of constitutional provisions would be objective. But reality is different. That’s why America and others make a big deal of who gets on the Supreme Court. At the end of it is the sad situation that politics is the critical determinant of how the pendulum of democracy swings.
Enter Politics: the quest for access and control of resources, driven by self-interest, for perceived enhancement of the people’s well-being. Intricate weave, in practice as well.
Self-interest and disinterestedness do not have to be mutually antagonistic. Disinterestedness is not uninterested-ness in self. But when self-interest leads, disinterestedness shrinks. This is what IMANI tried to point out on Bawumia’s NPP political delivery last week of the state of Ghana’s economy. It is what Mahama’s highlights on NDC’s manifesto demonstrated this week: political parties and politicians have wired themselves to manipulate information for their self-interest. That’s what Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are epitomizing on behalf of the Democratic and Republican Party in the U. S. Politics has hijacked Democracy and politicians across the world are making industry of it at the expense of their peoples.
More serious is the global dimension, where geo-politics wears the cloak of global democracy to destroy whole nations through imperialist self-interest.
If the U. S invasion of Iraq is dead news without its resurrected currency in their up-coming elections, the France-U.K-U.S led destruction of Libya and opening it up for ISIS invasion is fresh evidence of the recalcitrant hypocrisy of politics and politicians. In the name of promoting democracy in Lybya, the Western Allies started the bombings with and original aim of protecting Benghazi from Gadhafi threats. This goal was achieved in one day. Why then did the military intervention continue? The just released Report by the U.K. Parliament indicates the intervention was a calamitous invasion. “Brexitically” resigned U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, tried to shift responsibility by blaming the people of Libya “for failing to take their chance of democracy”, as reported by the Guardian. When we do things like this, we twist the concept of true democracy.
What we are practicing as Democracy is increasing veering away from what we promised ourselves at the turn of the twentieth century.
Our concept of democracy seems to have some interesting assumptions that 1. We are intelligent beings therefore we will act reasonably; or its more dangerous variant, to wit, we are intelligent beings so we are reasonable. 2. We are free so we act freely or we are free so we will act freely. 3., the majority (will) have their way. 3. The minority are marginalized 4. The minority should have their way otherwise they are being denied of their rights. Let’s put these through brief discourse.
The 2015 World Development Report, authored by the World Bank and titled Mind, Society and Behaviour used extensive empirical data to underscore the present reality that, deviating from the premises of standard economic theories, people make choices based more on their automatic thinking system rather than their deliberative thinking system. In other words, most of the decisions and choices people make are not informed by well thought-out considerations. We assume ourselves to be rational beings when we actually aren’t often. Rather, nearly all our judgements are made automatically based on our mental frame.
The Report boldly disrupts our claim to thorough rationality: “we normally think of ourselves in terms of the deliberative system-the conscious reasoning self-yet automatic operations generate complex patterns of ideas that influence nearly all our judgements and decisions”. It explains that “although often perfectly capable of more careful analysis, people are hard wired to use just a small part of the relevant information to reach conclusions”. This is why here in Ghana, many don’t care about Manifestoes. They will vote based on the campaign rhetoric of one-promise-two-excuses.