Democracy

One of the most common form of Governance today: Democracy

It's almost exercise in every part of the worlds. Where there're people, there'll be a form of democracy being practised.

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía (info)), "popular government",^[1] which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos), "people" and κράτος (krátos), "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC.^{[2] More}

OK...I'm not going to get into the technical side of it. Let's have it in an everyday terms where everyone can easily understand. Basically, democracy is a system where the people decides. Sounds fair and good? After all, majority decides, minority submits.

Gotta admit democracy seems to be the best possible option after all the other options are trialed. Having said that, is democracy a system for everyone? Well, to be honest, that shouldn't be a question that we are supposed to ask. We should be asking "when and how democracy can be applied".

In democracy, if you're popular, it's more likely for you to win it even though your ability might be less compared to others. This raised the issue of "irrational voters". How do we define what is an irrational voter? Basically, a voter who is not well informed, bias, badly interpreted the information they get or not well educated on their rights as a voter.

Fast or even sudden change is possible in the democratic systems because the results are determined by the people. People can easily change their mind overnight. Hence, it'd not be considered stable and should not be applied to a something that's on transition, developing or growing periods. Normally, in those times, long term goals are unavoidable. Sudden change will caused everything to start from the beginning again.

Illusions of democracy is not something new as well. Because of the lack of knowledge on Democracy, voters do not know their rights hence the "leaders" can easily abuse the system without the worry of getting into trouble. In many countries, we have witnessed non-democratic practise in a democratic systems.

So, in my view, if we're in the process of growing or developing, democracy must be used with extra care to avoid the deadly pit fall. However, autocracy has a major threat as well. What if the leader is corrupt or incompetent?

Democratic system works well with mature people but a disaster among immature people. If we do not expose them to the system earlier, they'll forever be immature or slow in understanding the concept. How then can we progress ahead?

Perhaps we can learn from countries like China or Singapore.