12 May 2012.
The current Greek crisis is indicative of a fudamental problem of democracy.
Following a proportional reprentative demociatic election there was no clear majority in parliament. Even though consitutionally Greece implements a variation whereby the Party finishing with the most votes gets an extra 50 seats (from a total of 300) to help it form a majority, there was still no clear majority. Greek Consitutional procedure dictates that the Party finishing with the most seats gets the first opertunity to form a coallition, should that fail then the Party in second place has that privilage. The process finishes with a new election should the Party in third place also fails to form a coallition. With the political stand-points of each of the leading Parties it was clear from the outset that each was obliged to negotiate with each other at every stage of the process, that no resolution would be forthcoming.
The dilema of the Greek electorate is a crisis for the concept of democrcy. With 'direct' democracy the morority votes of all citizens on every single issue would sway matters. This policy by refferendum is only tenable in small populations such as small villages etc. 'Represntative' democry elects peoples representative with the delagation and responsibility to act in the peoples best interests.
Last Sunday the Greek people voted for National bankrupcy. A bulk of poiticians see the nonsene in this and would direct the country and its people on another course. Another large number of elected politicians were elected on exatly the mandate of the people for bankrupcy. This is stand-off at the moment in the Greek parliament.
What is democracy, what is representative democracy if not to protect the people from thier own ignorance? Where is the democratic process if the people freely elect politicians to act against their own best interests? Who determines what is the peoples best interests? Should there be constitutional procedures preventing a county from chooseing bankrupcy, or even national suicide?
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the electoral law in Greece was founded many years ago and sort of advantages the first party. regardless of that fact, people have a preety good idea of what they voted -althow it s been expressed with high percentages for extreme parties- and they clearly condemened the austerity measures. the dilemma bankrupcy or eurozone is a fake dilemma created by Greece s creditors and Greece s corrupted leaders who destroy the country. this vote was not a 'national suicide' but an effort to avoid ending up like Uganda.
ReplyDeleteThe question was, taking Greece as an example, how does one interpret the term democracy, when hypothetically a populous could vote for something to their detriment simply because they do not understand or are ill-imformed as to the narture of the issues at hand.
ReplyDeleteDoes one defend thier right to decide, or should there somehow be a guiding god-like hand.