The Tribune

FROM ancient Greece, with its limited democratic franchise, to the present, democracy has always been an idea, a set of principles and values, often codified into law, equally a set of conventions and traditions defined and crafted over centuries, observed and adjudicated by flawed and biased human beings.

Democracy survives, flourishes or declines, because of adherence or lack thereof, to its strictures, boundaries and norms by political leaders, public servants and citizenry. Restraint by those with power is critical to democratic stability and flourishing.

Democracy is fragile. It takes generations to become entrenched in nations and institutions, such as an executive, legislature and judiciary, always requiring restraint on and the balancing of powers to protect a citizenry from the abuse of power and to enhance a greater good.

Democracy often fails, sometimes terribly. But it also succeeds and endures because of its institutions and those who populate its offices, as well as a free press which, like other institutions, also fails, especially when it mostly does the bidding of certain interests, be they economic or political.

Democracy cannot be forced on another country at the barrel of an invaders weaponry. But it can be easily upended, with cancerous effect, by illiberal mindsets and forces, even in the mostly seemingly secure democracy like the United States of America.

Writing earlier this year, commentator Fareed Zakaria exclaimed: “The real scandal of January 6 [the breach of the US capital by armed invaders] is not what happened outside the Capitol alone, it’s what happened inside when a majority of House Republicans voted to overturn the valid results of a presidential election simply to curry favour with then- President Donald Trump. It is that vote, not the violence, that almost broke the American system.”

What would have happened or what might happen if there is a future Republican majority in the House and Senate, who vote “to overturn the valid results of a presidential election”?

Given the hardened or ultra-Trump supporters who may be elected to both chambers, one cannot dismiss the possibility. The American democracy and system is getting sicker and more cancerous through each new primary and electoral cycle.

A political system, such as our parliamentary democracy, is constituted by a complex of shared beliefs and values of a polity. What happens when such beliefs are no longer shared? The majority of Republicans still “believe” that Trump won the presidency. With such a belief, what are possible outcomes?

LIBERTIES

A liberal democracy – not liberal as in progressive – is a democratic form of government committed to the rule of law, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedoms and rights, and with limits on political power.

Democracies do not simply or necessarily survive or develop because there are laws and conventions. Its values must be passed on from one generation to the next through careful observance, safeguarding and rituals.

What happens if citizens and others fail to understand and internalise the basic tenets of a democracy? What happens if there is no longer basic consensus about what may be true or false?

What happens when citizens are ill-informed and make decisions based mostly on whims and emotions, falsehoods and prejudices? What about manipulation by demagogic demigods masquerading as saviours of a people?

Bahamians should never take for granted that our democracy is immune from illiberal politicians, mindsets or breaches of basic norms, which can be easily eroded and ignored.

Zakaria has also written: “It may be that we have exposed a flaw in the founders’ Constitution. They believed that to create a political system, you did not need to ensure that people acted virtuously. ‘If men were angels,’ James Madison famously wrote, ‘no government would be necessary’.

“But can a system work without human beings acting responsibly, even virtuously? One branch of government, Congress, is supposed to check the other. But today, for Republicans party politics trumps institutional loyalty.

“We often hear that, unlike in fledgling democracies, America’s institutions are strong. But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.’ If people abuse them, attack them, disregard them, they will slowly collapse.”

Is American democracy collapsing? How sick is the American polity? How undemocratic has the Republican Party in America become? Will the “lengthened shadow” of Donald Trump, who is both symptom and cause of America’s democratic decline, return to the White House?

TRENDS

Because of the country’s demographic trends, many in the Republican Party believe they can only win and retain federal power, including Congress and the White House, through illiberal means; by disenfranchising voters, mostly minorities; outrageous gerrymandering; packing the Supreme Court with right-wing originalists; and wedge issues concerning race and attacks on communities such as gays and lesbians.

In her book, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured”, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a Christian author and history professor at Calvin University, laments and chronicles the toxic and “militant” masculinity inherent in the Christian right in the United States.

She describes how the majority of American fundamentalists believe that the last presidential election was stolen, and who support the illiberalism and undemocratic stratagems of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who are committed to white Christian supremacy and nationalism.

Kobes Du Mez writes: “Despite Evangelicals’ frequent claims that the Bible is the source of their social and political commitments, Evangelicalism must be seen as a cultural and political movement rather than a community defined chiefly by theology. Evangelical views on any given issue are facets of this larger cultural identity, and no number of Bible verses will dislodge the greater truths at the heart of it.

“From the start, Evangelical masculinity has been both personal and political. In learning how to be Christian men, evangelicals also learned how to think about sex, guns, war, borders, Muslims, immigrants, the military, foreign policy, and the nation itself.”

For these fundamentalists, the Gospels of Jesus have been supplanted by a series of narrow and prejudicial cultural ideas that refuse to be interrogated and transformed by the example and person of Jesus Christ.

What similarities are there here at home with fundamentalists who deem it impossible for a man to be able to rape his wife, who believe women should not be in certain positions of leadership and who still view women as inherently inferior in church and society.

Just as certain democratic values are under grave threat in the United States, democratic health is being tested in places like Brazil, with an upcoming presidential election, the bludgeoning of democracy in Nicaragua, and other authoritarian leaders ignoring and debasing democratic norms.

Disturbingly, even in highly-regarded democracies, certain conventions and values are being tested.

PARTYGATE

The Partygate scandal in the United Kingdom involves Prime Minister Boris Johnson breaking COVID-19 protocols during strict lockdowns in the country designed to slow the rapid spread of the virus in order to save lives and protect health.

Britain had a very high rate of infection during much of the pandemic. Most of its citizens abided by the rules and observed protocols limiting the number of people who could gather in various settings, including in households.

Because of the restrictions, many were unable to be with loved ones in person, especially older relatives, as they were dying of the disease and/or related ill-health.

Mr Johnson, his wife, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and various Downing Street staff broke COVID protocols. They have all been fined, with more fines reported to come.

What has angered the public is that Mr Johnson broke the very rules that he adamantly insisted others carefully follow. He broke the rules to enjoy social gatherings, including a birthday party organised by his wife.

The vast majority of citizens and residents in the UK acted responsibly and diligently during the pandemic. When vaccines were finally available, the British public admirably did their duty, getting vaccinated and boosted in high numbers. That Mr Johnson seemingly so cavalierly broke the rules has enraged many.

Many believe that his repeated breaches, which he consistently denied for many months, were resigning offences. Others believe that the offences were not such that he should resign.

But the Prime Minister’s greater offence was that he appears to have repeatedly, and in the minds of many, deliberately misled the House of Commons on several occasions.

Though there is disagreement as to whether the parties should result in Johnson’s resignation, the majority of the British public believes he should resign because they believe he misled Parliament. The Privileges Committee of the Commons is now investigating whether he misled the lower chamber.

The UK Parliament website, referencing Erskine May (1815-1886), who has been referred to as “the Bible of parliamentary procedure”, notes: “The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt. In 1963, the House resolved that in making a personal statement which contained words which they later admitted not to be true, a former Member had been guilty of a grave contempt.”

Misleading Parliament is a grave offence in the UK, a democracy though having no written constitution, has sought to adhere to various rules, conventions and traditions crafted over centuries.

For many, Johnson’s refusal to resign as prime minister, is a low point. He is surviving in office because of his Tory caucus, which overwhelmingly appear more interested in how they will fare electorally, rather than whether Johnson has blithely ignored a longstanding Westminster convention in one of the world’s oldest parliamentary democracies.

Witting in “i” a few weeks ago, columnist Ian Dunt argued: “No functioning country – on a basic moral, political or constitutional level – could allow Johnson to stay in office. It’s not about his own failings, or party political advantage, or even public outrage. It is foundational. It is about the elementary structures of how liberal democracy operates.

“The government has to abide by the laws that it sets. That is what the rule of law means: that no-one is above the legislation passed by the executive. If that principle no longer pertains, we do not live under the rule of law.

“It is an expression of the basic principles of our society as John Locke or Montesquieu would have understood them… We have been dumped into a crisis about the legitimacy of government and the rule of law.”