In the modern political discourse, democracy as a political system has almost attained the status of a religion, and its institutions, including parliaments, have acquired a sanctity which should not be questioned but believed in.
It is not considered politically correct to question some of the basic principles of democracy on which its whole edifice was built, despite the fact that there are obvious flaws in them. Until and unless there is an honest effort to realise and rectify these flaws, there is little possibility of global peace or sustainable human progress.
Democracy, wherever it exists, is exercised through elected parliaments which are the ‘supreme’ law making bodies. All government bills and important executive decisions pass through the parliaments. Legally and constitutionally, whatever is the will of a majority of parliamentarians at any given time, can be made into a law. Parliaments can also alter or revoke existing laws, and every law, sanction and rule is subordinate to the will of the parliament.
However, the laws and resolutions, made by a few, are carefully worded in legal terms and branded as the ‘will of the people’. The logic being that as the parliaments are elected by the people then any majority decision of the parliament, therefore, is the ‘will of the people’. Though, it creates the illusion of people’s will, it is far from it in reality. The general public is most of the time not even aware, let alone desirous of the legislation done in their name.
READ MORE: Senate Retreats From ‘Controversial’ Anti-Extremism Bill After Opposition
The democratic system is developed in a way that after the formation of the parliament through direct or indirect elections, the voters do not retain any legal authority to interfere in the affairs of the parliament that they had elected themselves. They can contact, support or criticise its working, however, the constitutional and legal powers of the parliament would remain unaffected and unconstrained by any outside influence for its entire duration as they have been declared ‘supreme’.
This supremacy, gives the power to parliaments which, like any other unlimited power, can easily turn tyrannical. The manifestations of this supposedly ‘legal and constitutional’ power gone wrong are etched in countless tragic events around the world throughout the history of democracy.
If we take a look at the global events in just the recent past, it is evident that some of the worst possible decisions which had horrendous and disastrous consequences were made by the democratically-elected parliaments of some of the world’s most powerful and old democracies, through majority votes.
Democratic parliaments have declared naked aggressions by their countries as their ‘inherent right to defend’, and have authorised military invasions of other countries, resulting in massive killings of civilians, decimation of cities and destabilisation of entire regions.
READ MORE: Proactive Counterterrorism Operations Require a Proper Policy
To quote just a few examples on September 18, 2001 in a joint resolution by the US parliament, the US president was authorised to use all necessary force against all nations, persons and organisations that he determined planned or executed the 9/11 attack in the US. This blanket authorisation led to the eventual destruction of three countries which did not even have anything to do with the terrorist attack.
In October 2002, it was the democratically-elected US House and Congress that authorised the invasion of Iraq by US armed forces in ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom”, and gave the license to the US president to destroy a country based on fabricated charges. Great Britain fully supported and aided the US in the war on Iraq, which eventually led to the killing of over a million Iraqis.
There are 138 countries in the world that recognise the Palestinian state. Ironically, the UK is not one of them. The UK governments recognise and support Israel. All consequent British parliaments regularly approve issuance of sale licenses for arms worth millions of dollars to the state of Israel, knowing well that Israel continues to kill unarmed civilians, including women and children every single day to perpetuate its reign of terror.
For decades, the democratic government in India has continued with illegal occupation of the Kashmir state and has arrested, tortured and killed thousands of Kashmiri in long-drawn military operations. Yet, as the Kashmir policy is approved by the parliamentary majority, it gives all these atrocious acts a constitutional and legal cover.
In August 2017, in what was termed by the UN as the ‘textbook case of ethnic cleansing’, half a million Rohingya were attacked in the Rakhine state of Myanmar by the Myanmar army and Buddhist mobs. Thousands were killed, hacked to pieces, women raped, entire villages burned to ashes and the tens of thousands forced to flee, pushed out into the sea – yet the Myanmar government refuses to date to acknowledge that any Rohingya massacre ever happened and has rejected all reports of human rights violations and even the decision of International Court of Justice. Ironically, the government responsible for the genocide was headed by a woman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for her ‘struggle for democracy’.
It is the subsequent parliaments of Pakistan that facilitate chiefs of army staff to rule as de facto chief executives of the country and making laws to appease them. They also provide them with blanket immunities for all their actions through the policy of non-interference in any of their affairs and consequently reducing all governments to puppet regimes. Can we then say that these policies and practices are the will of the people of Pakistan?
READ MORE: Democracy: The Game Of Legislative Speed Runs
A different example of how parliaments can exploit their supreme powers is that of the Republic of France, with its founding principles of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. It still uses Africa as its backyard and continues with the policy of exploiting its former African colonies, brazenly taking away from their meagre revenues, natural resources, keeping them constrained in trade agreements from the colonial times, depriving them of any opportunity to break the shackles of poverty. It has been doing it and can continue doing it with impunity because it is according to the consensus or majority decisions and policies of the French parliament.
From the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, to the wars in the Middle East and South America to the looting of Africa, the democratically-elected parliaments have made majority decisions which have manipulated the poor countries, impacted the world as a whole and played havoc with the lives of millions of people who had nothing to do with these parliaments.
It is also some of the democratic parliaments, including US, Canada, Brazil and Malaysia, that have passed laws and made policies which have damaged and continue to damage entire ecosystems and the environment of planet Earth, including unconditionally supporting the big oil industry, allowing tar sands oils, fracking, industrial fishing, hunting of rare animal species, cutting down ancient rainforests and nuclear test explosions in oceans devastating marine life.
The fact that a powerful country can take decisions and make policies approved by its own parliament which can severely impact, endanger and harm other countries is a big question mark in the democratic system. The irreversible damage done by many governments with validations from their parliament are a testament to it.
Parliaments can also make conflicting policies on the same issue for example, UK parliament can conclude decisively that Israel has the right to defend itself, but Palestine does not have the same right; the US can get approval from the Congress to bomb Iraq into the stone age but declare that Russia should not invade Ukraine. The financial organisations can put sanctions on countries for money laundering but Switzerland can hide all the illicit money of even the top international criminals and notorious dictators in nameless bank accounts and safe boxes.
From Raza Shah Pehalvi to Marcos, to Baby Doc Dauvalier of Haiti, to Mobuytu Seko, and countless others, Swiss banks held their stash, no questions asked, because the Swiss Banking Law of 1934 made it criminal for Swiss banks to disclose the name of an account holder.
READ MORE: Justice And The Limits Of Institutions
From 399 BC when 501 Athenians sentenced Socrates to drink the hemlock, on allegations of corrupting the youth to the present day anyone who thinks that a decision can be fair and right just because it is a majority decision is walking with his eyes wide shut.
The present system of democratic parliaments can bring no betterment to the world in the absence of a universal legal system of justice. Peace and progress in the world is impossible if individual governments in any country can make laws which can damage and destroy other countries, people and environment.
Just because a wrong has been done by a majority vote cannot deem it right. Is it not the same as tyranny just in the name of democracy?
It is not considered politically correct to question some of the basic principles of democracy on which its whole edifice was built, despite the fact that there are obvious flaws in them. Until and unless there is an honest effort to realise and rectify these flaws, there is little possibility of global peace or sustainable human progress.
Democracy, wherever it exists, is exercised through elected parliaments which are the ‘supreme’ law making bodies. All government bills and important executive decisions pass through the parliaments. Legally and constitutionally, whatever is the will of a majority of parliamentarians at any given time, can be made into a law. Parliaments can also alter or revoke existing laws, and every law, sanction and rule is subordinate to the will of the parliament.
However, the laws and resolutions, made by a few, are carefully worded in legal terms and branded as the ‘will of the people’. The logic being that as the parliaments are elected by the people then any majority decision of the parliament, therefore, is the ‘will of the people’. Though, it creates the illusion of people’s will, it is far from it in reality. The general public is most of the time not even aware, let alone desirous of the legislation done in their name.
READ MORE: Senate Retreats From ‘Controversial’ Anti-Extremism Bill After Opposition
The democratic system is developed in a way that after the formation of the parliament through direct or indirect elections, the voters do not retain any legal authority to interfere in the affairs of the parliament that they had elected themselves. They can contact, support or criticise its working, however, the constitutional and legal powers of the parliament would remain unaffected and unconstrained by any outside influence for its entire duration as they have been declared ‘supreme’.
The fact that a powerful country can take decisions and make policies approved by its own parliament which can severely impact, endanger and harm other countries is a big question mark in the democratic system. The irreversible damage done by many governments with validations from their parliament are a testament to it.
This supremacy, gives the power to parliaments which, like any other unlimited power, can easily turn tyrannical. The manifestations of this supposedly ‘legal and constitutional’ power gone wrong are etched in countless tragic events around the world throughout the history of democracy.
If we take a look at the global events in just the recent past, it is evident that some of the worst possible decisions which had horrendous and disastrous consequences were made by the democratically-elected parliaments of some of the world’s most powerful and old democracies, through majority votes.
Democratic parliaments have declared naked aggressions by their countries as their ‘inherent right to defend’, and have authorised military invasions of other countries, resulting in massive killings of civilians, decimation of cities and destabilisation of entire regions.
READ MORE: Proactive Counterterrorism Operations Require a Proper Policy
To quote just a few examples on September 18, 2001 in a joint resolution by the US parliament, the US president was authorised to use all necessary force against all nations, persons and organisations that he determined planned or executed the 9/11 attack in the US. This blanket authorisation led to the eventual destruction of three countries which did not even have anything to do with the terrorist attack.
In October 2002, it was the democratically-elected US House and Congress that authorised the invasion of Iraq by US armed forces in ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom”, and gave the license to the US president to destroy a country based on fabricated charges. Great Britain fully supported and aided the US in the war on Iraq, which eventually led to the killing of over a million Iraqis.
The present system of democratic parliaments can bring no betterment to the world in the absence of a universal legal system of justice. Peace and progress in the world is impossible if individual governments in any country can make laws which can damage and destroy other countries, people and environment.
There are 138 countries in the world that recognise the Palestinian state. Ironically, the UK is not one of them. The UK governments recognise and support Israel. All consequent British parliaments regularly approve issuance of sale licenses for arms worth millions of dollars to the state of Israel, knowing well that Israel continues to kill unarmed civilians, including women and children every single day to perpetuate its reign of terror.
For decades, the democratic government in India has continued with illegal occupation of the Kashmir state and has arrested, tortured and killed thousands of Kashmiri in long-drawn military operations. Yet, as the Kashmir policy is approved by the parliamentary majority, it gives all these atrocious acts a constitutional and legal cover.
In August 2017, in what was termed by the UN as the ‘textbook case of ethnic cleansing’, half a million Rohingya were attacked in the Rakhine state of Myanmar by the Myanmar army and Buddhist mobs. Thousands were killed, hacked to pieces, women raped, entire villages burned to ashes and the tens of thousands forced to flee, pushed out into the sea – yet the Myanmar government refuses to date to acknowledge that any Rohingya massacre ever happened and has rejected all reports of human rights violations and even the decision of International Court of Justice. Ironically, the government responsible for the genocide was headed by a woman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for her ‘struggle for democracy’.
It is the subsequent parliaments of Pakistan that facilitate chiefs of army staff to rule as de facto chief executives of the country and making laws to appease them. They also provide them with blanket immunities for all their actions through the policy of non-interference in any of their affairs and consequently reducing all governments to puppet regimes. Can we then say that these policies and practices are the will of the people of Pakistan?
READ MORE: Democracy: The Game Of Legislative Speed Runs
A different example of how parliaments can exploit their supreme powers is that of the Republic of France, with its founding principles of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. It still uses Africa as its backyard and continues with the policy of exploiting its former African colonies, brazenly taking away from their meagre revenues, natural resources, keeping them constrained in trade agreements from the colonial times, depriving them of any opportunity to break the shackles of poverty. It has been doing it and can continue doing it with impunity because it is according to the consensus or majority decisions and policies of the French parliament.
From the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, to the wars in the Middle East and South America to the looting of Africa, the democratically-elected parliaments have made majority decisions which have manipulated the poor countries, impacted the world as a whole and played havoc with the lives of millions of people who had nothing to do with these parliaments.
It is also some of the democratic parliaments, including US, Canada, Brazil and Malaysia, that have passed laws and made policies which have damaged and continue to damage entire ecosystems and the environment of planet Earth, including unconditionally supporting the big oil industry, allowing tar sands oils, fracking, industrial fishing, hunting of rare animal species, cutting down ancient rainforests and nuclear test explosions in oceans devastating marine life.
The fact that a powerful country can take decisions and make policies approved by its own parliament which can severely impact, endanger and harm other countries is a big question mark in the democratic system. The irreversible damage done by many governments with validations from their parliament are a testament to it.
Parliaments can also make conflicting policies on the same issue for example, UK parliament can conclude decisively that Israel has the right to defend itself, but Palestine does not have the same right; the US can get approval from the Congress to bomb Iraq into the stone age but declare that Russia should not invade Ukraine. The financial organisations can put sanctions on countries for money laundering but Switzerland can hide all the illicit money of even the top international criminals and notorious dictators in nameless bank accounts and safe boxes.
From Raza Shah Pehalvi to Marcos, to Baby Doc Dauvalier of Haiti, to Mobuytu Seko, and countless others, Swiss banks held their stash, no questions asked, because the Swiss Banking Law of 1934 made it criminal for Swiss banks to disclose the name of an account holder.
READ MORE: Justice And The Limits Of Institutions
From 399 BC when 501 Athenians sentenced Socrates to drink the hemlock, on allegations of corrupting the youth to the present day anyone who thinks that a decision can be fair and right just because it is a majority decision is walking with his eyes wide shut.
The present system of democratic parliaments can bring no betterment to the world in the absence of a universal legal system of justice. Peace and progress in the world is impossible if individual governments in any country can make laws which can damage and destroy other countries, people and environment.
Just because a wrong has been done by a majority vote cannot deem it right. Is it not the same as tyranny just in the name of democracy?