Democracy is much more than free and fair elections

Sep 03, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
After being told day after day for 28 years that elections were stolen, it seems that many voters believe that democracy is only free and fair elections. It is much more. Democracy is also the ability to freely criticize government. It is the means to enable open criticism of the actions of government.
Such means include ensuring a free and independent press. It covers government being responsible when they are elected. It requires government to act reasonably in exercising its powers.
For too long too many in this land have laboured under the belief that the ability to show up and get some ink on your fingers and mark an X next to a symbol is the only representation of democracy. It is a foolish belief. For if one votes freely for bad government over and over again, it is actually a case of a single democratic act multiplying and leading to a completely undemocratic system.
As some put it, it leads to elected autocracy or elected dictatorship. Freedom and democracy are not limited to only free and fair elections. If one repeatedly elects failed parties and failed governments that engage in totalitarianism, autocracy, raw corruption and every feature of the repressive and failed party and state, then one is making a mockery of democracy.
In fact, it is obvious that the average Guyanese voter does not even understand democracy. Because how does a Guyanese voter genuinely believe they are practicing democracy when they go to mark their X knowing full well the consequences of their actions?
Freedom and democracy means more than elections. It means freedom to do what is right, freedom from harassment or threats such as Kaieteur News has reported. It means economic freedom where people have an equal share of the nation’s resources. People have to start waking up and asking themselves whether it is worth voting in a free and fair election for the same thing over and over again. People are entitled to freedom from crime and a freedom to earn enough to visit their family in the United States or the Caribbean.
How does one claim that freedom and democracy are equal to free and fair elections but within one’s own party one does not care to have elections?
The little freedom and democracy we enjoy now was given to us by the Americans in 1992 after they played a role in taking it away from us in 1964. The fate of Guyana’s elections when it mattered most was never in the hands of Guyanese. After a free and fair election in 1964, the PNC came to power with the UF. We got 28 years of them. After free and fair elections in 1992, the PPP came to power. We got 19 years of them.
Freedom and democracy starts in the mind, the heart and the soul and it is much more than a free and fair voting exercise that occurs once every five years. It is what happens after those elections for the next five years that matters most for defining democracy and freedom.
M. Maxwell

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