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Saturday, February 04, 2012

Failing democracy

Our politics has fallen so short of the ideal of democracy that there is little conviction that there is an ideal to which we should aim.

There is an interesting little incident, in the James Herriot series about his experience as a veterinary surgeon In Yorkshire years ago. So the story goes, an old man’s dog was lying under his chair in the pub. His eyes were sore and dirty with infection. ‘Always been the same – a ‘cold’ in the eyes’, the old man constantly repeated.

But Herriot could see that a simple operation to reform the eyelids, so that the in-growing eyelashes would not irritate the eyes, was all that was required. Although tempted to offer help, Herriot decided he could not just barge in and do it at no-cost. However the idea caught on with the pub’s patrons and they agreed amongst themselves to meet the cost.

So, down to the surgery they all went and gathered round to watch the operation, which was straight forward and soon done without incident, (except that the biggest and toughest of them slid gracefully to the floor in a dead faint!)

Here we see a democratic forum in action. Wide public forums are the missing link in our failing democracy.

The leadership cult is a mirage, a travesty of democracy - sidelining the people from active involvement in the system and preventing democracy’s essence - ‘government of, by, and for, the people.

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