Once upon a time in a far away place there was a city called Athens. It was across the Mediterranean Sea, about 1,100 kilometres, as the ibis flies, from a city called Cairo.
The people of Athens were an unusual bunch and they did all sorts of unusual things, not least of which was creating a way to govern their city that gave all male adults (but not females or slaves, perhaps because they didn’t want to seem too unusual) a say. Athenians gathered at huge assemblies to make huge decisions. About 500 of them had further governing responsibilities because their names were drawn — annually — by lot and they had to serve a year in the boule, another governing body. Many others served on juries to make decisions in legal disputes. There were no judges.
Historians would eventually look back and credit Athenians with the creation of pure, or direct, democracy. Except in a few small countries, like Switzerland, the idea of pure democracy has been pretty much abandoned over the years. It requires an active, involved citizenry and keeps power in the control of the people. Some, mainly those who have a lot of money and want to be able to keep it, worked long and hard to take that power away from the people.
The simple truth is that direct democracy never caught on in most countries. The moneyed classes are subtle and determined and, above all, patient. Change seemed to happen as slowly as the erosion of the Sphinx, but happen it did, as predictably as the Nile River’s spring floods. Political parties were created to choose who could and who could not become members of the ruling class. They also stole the right to choose the government’s leader away from the people. Judges took over the judicial system and, while some juries continue to make decisions, they do so under the guidance and direction of the judges (who are mostly appointed by the government).
Athens eventually ceased to be a city and was absorbed into a country called Greece, which, like its friends and neighbours, has adopted a system we should call Democracy Lite (motto: Not filling and doesn’t taste so great, either). Cairo, not having been part of the democratic movement, is part of the country we call Egypt, which has been controlled over the centuries by a motley crew of pharaohs, ruling families, dictators, invaders and, now, the military.
The Egyptian military took over Cairo and Egypt because the people (Remember them? Athens had people at one time, too) said they were fed up with a dictator who made sure the money and the power stayed in the hands of the wealthy. And much of the Western World clapped and cheered and said, “Get a democracy like we have!”
Strangely, that message has come from many people who don’t have money and power. The very people who should find it laughable, if not insulting, that we have been part of groups of nations that have invaded others in the name of promoting “democracy”, just don’t seem to get it. Democracy Lite is a far cry from people gathering in squares to make decisions. This bastardized democracy is a system designed to give the illusion of public participation, while keeping the real power and preponderance of wealth in the hands of a very few.
If the world really cared about the people of Egypt they would be delivering a warning message: “You can do better. Learn from our mistakes. Adopt our system and your leaders will disappear behind close doors to negotiate ‘free’ trade, border security taxation agreements and a whole lot of other things and you won’t have any say at all. Democracy Lite works like putting tranquillizers in the drinking water — you will never make a change without a whole lot of pain. You can do better!”
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.