What makes a democracy successful?

Reading the many comments and remarks in the media it seems that the concept of what is a democracy and what it is not is clearly not understood by most Filipinos, so we at FreeFilipinas decided we would write a piece about it and make things just little bit clearer. Hopefully this will enlighten, engage and bring others into a debate which will assist the Filipino people into coming to terms with what needs to happen in the Philippines to fix its many problems.

The first point that needs mentioned is that we do not claim that any democracy will ever be perfect, but based on the historical evidence, democracy, despite its imperfections, is still way better than any other form of government. Democracy, as with everything else in life, is a work in progress. Truths that may be self-evident today may not be so tomorrow, so a system of government must change along with the times.

With that in mind and after reading copious amounts of material online and in various media and listening to the politicos and pundits discussing the woes of the country a few things stand out;

    There seems to be confusion in the understanding the differences between the rights of the people, and what is “right” as a society.
    Few people understand what democracy is, or for that matter what majority rule is all about.
    Many do not know right from wrong, the understanding that being part of a majority does not give anyone exclusive rights seem lost to most.
    Many more do not understand “conflict of interest”.

Number one is “Human rights”, a society that does not respect Human Rights, is no real Democracy.

The observation has been made that countries which are successful democracies all tend to have sound enforcement of human rights, and that is almost invariably contained in their constitutions and is vigorously enforced by adequate maintenance of the Rule of Law.

Number two is the understanding of democracy and how the electorate is established, its separation from other arms of government and the Judiciary.

Democracy is the extension of the human right of “self-rule,” it is about choosing who leads you and how they will implement the policies they campaigned for in the electoral process. Policies that however, must be in sync with the human rights as defined by the constitution of the country. The two should not be confused.

Number three is the confusion about knowing right from wrong, just because a party may have the majority in the government and therefore become the country’s leaders, it does not allow them to use personal opinion, breach human rights or engage in any other activity which removes any ones rights to being treated equally.

Just because a party may hold the majority of the vote, and while that gives them the right to govern, that does not give them a right to abuse the minority.

Number four is understanding conflict of interest and that is where it gets interesting. The Philippine constitution is weak in this area, you supposedly have separation of powers, yet the President appoints heads of department including the Judiciary and has influence well beyond that. As a consequence there is high incidence of conflict of interest. In effect this situation negates democracy and allows for nepotism, and many other abuses which negatively impact the wellbeing of every Filipino.

The outcome of these four points is reality that it does not matter who is the President, or who the Senators and Congressman are, corruption will still happen here, and will keep repeating until people learn that a reform of the system is required and the place to start that is with human rights.

What needs to be understood in our opinion is this:

Successful democracy comes from the implementation of fundamental human rights and not the other way around, democracy does not always bring human rights, but human rights will always bring democracy.

Source: http://www.freefilipinas.com/blogs/1/247/what-makes-a-democracy-successful