Will Swanson's Blog

The training wheels are off in a fledgling democracy

Here are some final thoughts on the events of this week, tomorrow I should probably move onto more mundane things.

From my perspective it feels as though Mongolians are finally coming to terms with what it means to be a democratic country, and hopefully it will act as a counterweight to the rushing spiral to chaos that many older Mongolians feel the country is heading into. By this I mean the warnings that I’ve heard for the young people – the lack of rules and norms that govern the national character, the new definition of freedom, and the downside of democracy.

The downside of democracy is that we can’t all be winners, it doesn’t work that way. When the majority win- the minority lose out. So what were the protests about? Were they in protest of fraudulent activity? Or was it because being democratic isn’t as sweet or as simple as it sounds?

I hope this experience brings to light the institutional mechanisms that are needed to maintain a vibrant and healthy political process in Mongolia. It’s clear from recent examples in Kenya and Zimbabwe that there is a need for freedom of the press, a transparent and fair election process as well as empowering normal citizens in the democratic process before they head to the ballot box. I think it was wrong to revert to the old way of doing things as a response to the fall-out of last weeks elections.

Without these mechanisms (and others I haven’t mentioned), governing a democracy becomes a circus that results in voters feeling left out of the political process- and no other opportunity but to throw stones in order to be heard.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 12:24 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with 2008, blog, democracy, elections, flickr, mongolia, photos, protest, protests, riots, ulaanbaatar, ulan bator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.