Relevance of Democracy: What you Need to Know About Democracy – Details

Relevance of Democracy: ‘DEMOCRACY’ have been defined by several people to be almost the same  thing… “Government of the people by the people and for the people”
I could recall vividly in my junior high school days, they will ask us to define democracy, we will smooth run the definition with our mouth, without knowing what it really meant in its functionality.

One day we finished learning in class, the subject was social studies, the woman (our teacher) extensively explained what democracy was but we still didn’t understand it…

We left school that very day going home after school dismissal, we saw a crowd, queuing on a different lines with a bucket In front of them,

I noticed a particular line that few numbers of people were standing, the other groups were fighting to even see a space to stand,

This display caught my attention and that of my friends, I wondered why those struggling couldn’t move over to the other line lacking numbers…

We decided to see to the end of this drama, I heard the line of those people that has large numbers of people saying
“they can’t buy our votes, our vote is for libration! Our vote is for the people! We can’t sell our votes and our future for the sake of currency… He will do well for us if he goes”

As I keep hearing those words, though it didn’t make much sense to me then but I did learn a lot from it,
They casted their votes and the masses later won, though it was councillorship  election, but there was popular participation in the electoral process…

My interest rose that day for democracy… And it clearly defined democracy to me…
since then I too defined my “DEMOCRACY” as thus;
Demo= demonstrations
Cracy= denotation of a type of government
Which I then said it is truly the systematic demonstration of a government of the people…

Democracy is as relevant as the business, school, office, religion, and everything we do in life…
Laying aside the downturn of our real democratic ERA, democracy is still the best option for our way of governance…

Relevance of Democracy: What you Need to Know About Democracy 

I read a newspaper recently about north Korea and her president, Kim Jong UN, and the laws  enacted, and limitations to internet connection, and you have no right to speak against the leader, coupled with other limitations attached to their way of government…

I am not rather encouraging hate speech, but advocating for freedom of expression by people and this can only be found in a democratic area of governance…

In this piece of write up, tagged Relevance of Democracy: What you Need to Know About Democracy we are going to look at the features and limitations of democracy..

FEATURES OF DEMOCRACY

✓ popular participation
✓ freedom of expression
✓ competitive government
✓ fast track developments
✓ good leadership
✓ accountability
Just to mention but a few

1. POPULAR PARTICIPATION

One of the things democracy brings to the people is sense of relevance, when the masses discovers that their votes counts there will be participation in elections, but when they are deprived of that sense of importance they tend to collect money or be discouraged, just like the event I explained earlier in my early school days…

2. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: One of the things that kills democracy is shutting the mouth of people, either by jailing them or paying them off to stop criticisms, no government is void of imperfections so expression of this pot holes by the people can help the leaders make their wrongs Wright…

3. COMPETITIVE GOVERNMENT: One other thing democracy breeds is competition, because it gives chance to different political parties to arise, and these parties has their differences and mechanism of doing things,

democracy creates a room for opposition and this sends signal to the political party in power that any misbehavior will eventually be handled by the next political party coming in power, just like what is happening in Nigeria today between PDP AND APC… and the anti graft war.

4. FAST-TRACK DEVELOPMENTS: When there is awareness that every mismanagement of funds will be accounted for, the government in power tends to develop or invest more so as to keep him/her in power knowing fully well that the people has the final say.

Democracy creates Avenue for development in the country and even to the grassroots of governance…

5. GOOD LEADERSHIP: When all these four features are in place, democracy automatically provides good leadership, because any leader elected will be by the good will of the masses.

People of questionable character will not be eligible to contest because they will know that the people will not give their votes to them, one elected will have the masses at heart.

Relevance of Democracy: What you Need to Know About Democracy – Details

6. ACCOUNTABILITY: This is the ability of the leader to give account to the people, it is the most suiting feature of democracy, any government that is not accountable to the masses is not democracy but rather autocracy.

Leaders are held responsible for any mismanagement of funds during their time of leadership that’s why they is room for impeachment by the legislature and the judiciary arms of government…

Hence, democracy creates a leader-masses relationship since it is the government of the people,
Democracy also has limitations, just as autocracy has advantages.

LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY

√ violence
√ corruption
√ election rigging, etc.

Relevance of democracy can never be over emphasized, because it covers vast area of governance, and goes a long way to improve dichotomous representation…

THE GOVERNMENT IS FROM THE PEOPLE, SO PLEASE LET US MAKE IT FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE

and we all will have reason to smile about the smooth running of governance, let us know that the democracy is wholly for the people and not to the electoral chairman, party chairman or the leaders in power, rather let they be “A TRANSPARENT DEMOCRACY”  that our children will inherit… The question is, what do you think about Democracy…

 

Thanks for Reading…