Why don’t they see the result of Indonesia’s democracy stretching from rampant corruption, collapsing legal system to lawmakers’ penchant of traveling and frenzy of 1-trillion-rupiah-worth building? In the name of freedom, Indonesians can speak anything freely whether the narrative is true or not, lawmakers – as people’s representatives – can do what they want, what they benefit from and the hardliners can show the killing spree of minorities. To some extents, Western-style democracy makes the government powerless and chaotic situation.
Moreover, look at what has happened in Iraq. Democracy absolutely doesn’t solve the very same problems in the dictatorship. Civil war between Sunni and Shiite seems irresolvable. I don’t know the real statistic data, but I expect that people died in democracy era are much more than during Saddam’s era.
The proponents acknowledge that democracy is messy, but to what level can we tolerate the killings? The proponents might also say that we have to be patient to see the result of democracy, but how can we be ensured that the chaos doesn’t lead to the state failure or even the civil war and never attain the pipe dreams?
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Most people have stopped the wars of idea on western-style democracy. We adore democracy based on its success in western countries. However, many cases indicate the copycat doesn’t work well.
To me, the West gives unintentionally the wrong prescription of democracy to the East. To the West, based on their experiences, democracy really works. So they think democracy is universal. Certainly, freedom principle is universal value, but implementing freedom carelessly will bring a nation into relentless turmoil.
One factor should be taken into account prior to giving democracy prescription to a country or judging benevolent dictatorship. That is the way of thinking as ingrained culture. The experts said that there is huge different way of thinking on how the West and East seeing things.
If you ask for connection of panda, monkey and banana, the West will pick up panda and monkey – because they are in the same category of animal, while the East will choose monkey and banana – simply because monkey eats banana. The West pays attention in focal object while the East sees the big picture.
Given that kind of thinking, it’s understandable why Deng Xiaoping, the then-Chinese paramount leader, decided to quell the students protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He said that the protest would lead China to the civil war.
“And if a civil war broke out, with blood flowing like a river, what ``human rights'' would there be? If civil war broke out in China, with each faction dominating a region, production declining, transportation disrupted and not millions or tens of millions but hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing the country, it is the Asia-Pacific region, which is at present the most promising in the world, that would be the first to be affected. And that would lead to disaster on a world scale, “ Deng argued.
And Deng prescient remark – a civil war broke out, with blood like a river – has turned into reality in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Deng could see the big picture of a single event of demonstration. From the West’s point of view, the crackdown is the infringement of human rights, but if you look the big picture, in fact the crackdown will save more lives and finally save the country.
In Iraq the West focuses only on democracy itself and pushes the unprepared Iraqis to embrace democracy as soon as possible regardless the major prerequisite – the existence of educated people in majority who get used to obey rule of law. As a result, without those solid foundations, democracy becomes democrazy and brings hell on earth.
So it is time for the rest of the world to take Western-style democracy with a grain of salt.
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Reference:
1. http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/egypt-asks-for-indonesias-help-in-implementing-democracy/432215
2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB104881491132002400.html
3. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/dengxp/vol3/text/d1150.html
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