A society that seeks full democracy must devise a system that guarantees civil and political liberties. The right to elect one’s government is not enough.

Experience has taught us that it is one thing to say that a particular country has emerged into the bright light of democracy. It is another to say that there is sufficient appreciation of the fact that emerging democracies have yet to make substantial advances if they are to bestow full civil freedoms on their citizens.

It has taken a long time to assimilate the full meaning of the above.

At the beginning of the past century, politicians announced the good news that an age of democracy was unfolding. As it happened, the 20th century saw large parts of Europe and Asia succumbing to totalitarianism.

Thankfully, the present-day world scenario is not so bleak. Democracy has made a comeback. But the process continues to be gradual.

It takes time for free people to liberalise democracy.

Heroic struggle

A society aspiring to full democracy must find ways and means to deliver the goods in real terms. It is far from enough if one has a system that merely allows free citizens to choose who will govern them every so many years.

Democracy authenticates freedom when it guarantees the freedoms of expression, of association and dissent. This makes possible effective opposition capable of competing for popular support and for the emergence of alternative governments through options exercised at the ballot box.

It has taken many a heroic struggle for many nations to establish their citizens’ rights to manage their own affairs and to be masters in their own home. Modern democracy has been cross-fertilised by liberal ideas that represent a set of social and political beliefs and values that assume the rule of law and the existence of basic and universal human rights that transcend the interest of the community.

Citizen rights

In this sense, the term liberal (with a small ‘l’) has no party political connotation. It affirms the basic worth of individual citizens and holds that the interests of the State cannot override those of citizens in matters of conscience, thought and expression.

Although it has deep roots, liberalism drew its strength from the 17th century political and social philosophers who stood for freedom from the fetters of unchecked feudal and State power and from imposed dogma.

It is liberal democracy that subsequently became the main target of fascism and similar ideologies.

The modern human rights movement believes in the tenets of liberal democracy. But their earlier democratic generation stressed the importance of political freedom. Fascism and Nazism matured in democratic societies that provided the tools for free discussion. In that environment, it was possible to mobilise cadres that seized State power and imposed eventual dictatorship.

Self-determination implies the exercise of freedom – but it could turn out to be a form of freedom unrelated to the liberty. Too often, the demand for self-determination could serve the ends of ethnic and fundamentalist interests, whose aim is to impose their own form of tyranny.

Self-determination has arrested the progress of many South American democracies. Although self-determination is, without doubt, a legitimate right, its right of moral recognition is subject to the condition that it does not threaten other rights. This is where the consideration of human rights comes into play.

No blank cheques

Human rights represent values vital to democracy. They should be jealously safeguarded against the threat of fundamentalism and from political theories that could send free people back to conditions prevailing in the Middle Ages.

We must be ever vigilant against the possibility of political systems in which the desires and interests of a manipulated majority could allow for the suppression of dissent.

There is a case for on-going development of education programmes that inculcate liberal values to broader segments of the electorate.

And we should strive to make further inroads in the sphere of direct democracy.

It is not enough to build up a solid public opinion that refuses to accept rulers who are not freely elected representatives. Power has to be further dispersed enabling the electorate to have a more direct say in decisions that affect them than at present.

The days of the blank cheque are over. Democracy requires a system where politicians and their subordinate ‘Authorities’ go more often to the electorate to have specific cheques endorsed.

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