Re: A SAD, SAD DAY...
Civic, asdf,
I think ftc may very well be right in his stance about pressing democracy on a people and that sometimes a 'benign' dictatorship is better than democracy. This may sounds strange, but look at it from this side:
Most 3rd-world countries have a very weak state, which means no legitimate power amongst the people, and very little operational institutions that can check the state in it's democratic efforts.
In a society divided by ethnical or religious boundaries, there is always a struggle for power over the other groups. In a poor society the state is the grand prize which can make you rich if you obtain it. Once in office, the government is not likely to give up it's position, for that would mean a gigantic decrease in income for those involved.
So in both cases democracy has no feeding ground in the thoughts of the people.
Among scholars and researchers on these topics, it is already common thought that sometimes a dictatorship could be favourable for the following reason:
There is no possibility of fighting among the people for power (as it is taken), and a government that is centralized like that is by far more capable of implementing rules and measures that have to be taken, by force if neccesary.
It's a tricky one, but if it gets the job done better than democracy, so be it.
My African Hero is Yowereni Museveni from Uganda. He has managed to evade the ethnical problem by making a semi-federal construction, in which the administrative regions correspond with the boundaries of ethnical identities. They have a certain amount of autonomy where it comes to the spending of the allowed fundings, too.
This part is taken from a co-student who wrote about this, and whom I respect very much:
[quote=MB]The Movement system is a governmental institution-building which focuses on decentralization. The so-called local ?resistance? councils of which all adults are automatic members, choose representatives, who then choose members for a parish committee, who choose a sub-county committee who choose a district committee. At the apex of this pyramid structure is the countries parliament (NRC) and the Movement?s National Executive Committee (NEC). Only the people in the village committee, the smallest unit, are therefore directly chosen. Museveni?s decentralization design therefore does not follow ethnic or religious lines. According to the constitution, boundaries of districts are only based on rational grounds:
[i]Any measure for the alteration of the boundaries of or the creation of districts or administrative units shall be based on the necessity for effective administration and the need to bring services closer to the people and it may take into account the means of communication, geographical features, density of population, economic viability and the wishes of the people concerned (art.179.4 of the 1995 constitution)[/i]
Effectively this means that areas are divided in small units and are easier to control. In a way the Movement system establishes a fragmentation of power within ethnic groups and therefore a fragmentation of the (possible) opposition.
Presidential elections held in 1996 and in 2001 kept Museveni in power, economic growth had soured during his rule and his government was one of the first on the African continent to recognize the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic[/quote]
She ends with this part, which I fully support:
[quote=MB]If we are to compare the type of democracy Uganda has to the democracy as we know it in the West we might judge it as non-democratic because there are no political parties within a political arena. You could, probably successfully argue, that it is at least semi-authoritarian. There is a reason however why I went into depth of the political history of Uganda. The maxim goes that those that do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. Africa can not be compared to western society, and political systems as we know them should not be imposed on them. Africa has to feel its way as it goes along. If we are to look at our own history we can hardly claim that we reached the level of democracy of the present time without mistakes and blatant disregard of human rights and lives. Recent events can only teach us that we still have to be on guard not to loose the rights we take for granted now.
History has taught Museveni that following established ways of democracy can very well lead to new ethnic and religious conflicts. With the Movement system he tries to avoid this trap and only time will tell if he succeed.[/quote]
A long post, but worth the read I think.