Saturday, July 14, 2007

14 July 1790, the day democracy died

After the French revolution climaxed by the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the spirit in the air gave rise to expectations of the dividends of democracy.

Politicians however took over and precisely a year later in the 1790 Fete de la Federation, the story was different as the commoners were still without succour as a new set of tyrants in democratic garb took over. Till date, it is still an impossibility to define the boundaries of democratic norms and this inconsistency had been exported to all nooks and crannies of the globe.

Certainly nation states in Africa and most developing countries are definitively practicing a dead or dying brand of democracy, and the originators of the idea in Europe and America are certainly having a hard time ressurecting their own democracies, not mentioning those of others.