How Far Are the Present Governments From a True Democracy?

They say democracy is the worst kind of government but we do not have anything better than that.

It is important to remember that democracy has different levels and in so-called western democracies there are different levels of achieving democratic governments. For example, the level of democracy in Switzerland is much higher than the level of it in France, Italy or the UK, never mind countries which have recently adopted democracy. In the UK out of six sources of power namely: Legislative, Judiciary, Armed Forces, Monarchy, Civil Service and the Press only one of them is directly elected by people.

According to Jean Jacques Rousseau Democracy is the participation of people in every decision which affects their lives. However, due to the existence of the large population in most of the western countries, it is not possible to consult everyone for every decision. So, we only have the representative democracies in which people’s representatives take part in decision making on their behalves.

Having said all that, a country like Iran can not become democratic in one day. People have to learn about it and practice it gradually till it can be called anything close to democracy.

This process will take a long time and achieve it is in need of patience and hard work.

It is important to remember that any government which is not supported by its people through democratic means has got to resort to a repressive police force and a very far-reaching secret service in order to suppress the democratic ambitions of its own people.

These kind of governments are usually very fragile and in need of support from outside, which means losing independence and leaning to superpowers support. As a result, these governments are not able to protect the interest of their own people when it comes to a conflict with the interest of their masters.

Recently there are many cries from different directions but, most probably supported by the same source, that it is not possible to have democracy in the Middle East in general and Iran in particular. They claim that people are not ready for it and the result would be nothing but chaos. Admitting that a democratic government might not be able to produce fast development of the country but, surely it would be able to produce the lasting results which are not going to get reversed in future. During the course of the struggle between different forces and directions, people will finally find their own way and the process of political education of the people will take place.

This is the only sure way forward and commensurates progress both economically and socially.