Cynicism is greatest threat to democracy

Azizi's red blood has made the desert green This-history had never ever seen Trembling dynasties're crumbling... Hurray! Democracy is coming! Generals and mullahs: stay away! You've shed enough blood Lower your guns and loudspeakers... Let's dance to the tune of democracy! These lines of a poem, written by Pakistan poet and journalist Habib Sulemani in memory of Muhammad Bouazizi, a Tunisian street hawker who burned himself to death as a cry of anguish at the corruption in his country, sums up the desperate position of peoples in Arab states who are trying to breaking off the chains of decades of oppression and despotic rule. We have seen how recent protests in Tunisia and Egypt which led to the downfall of its overstaying autocratic leaders, have also led to similar social unrest in neighbouring countries including Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. Iran too is bracing itself for renewed street protests. The common thread running through all these protests, of course, is the quality of leadership among the ruling elites in these countries. In the main, they are fiercely repressive, brook no opposition, keep large sections of their populations in poverty and do not allow any democratic movement to flourish. Take Libya, for instance. It has no democracy and there are no political parties. Freedom of speech exists but only out of the earshot of the police. Libya is defined as a "jamahiriya", a word resmbling a word for republic. We too have a "jamahiriya", although in our case our Taoiseach is not a colonel. He does not parade under the grand title "Guide of the First of September Great Republic of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" - in short, Brian Cowen, for all his faults, was elected by the people. Gaddafi came to power in an army coup against the ruling monarchy. These days, most of us take voting for granted. In most Western democracies, we have no living memory of a denial of the right to vote even though the pages of history are littered with the desperate struggles of people to establish that right. They made great sacrifices so that we could express our opinion through the ballot box. Of course our system of democracy is not perfect. If we wanted to be cynical in our view of politicians and how our democracy works, we might recall the story of the labourers sitting by the side of a road in Russia breaking stones with lump hammers when horsemen gallop by. One of the labourers shouts up, "who is the new czar?", and a horseman replied, "It doesn't matter to you. You will still be breaking stones tomorrow." Taking all the imperfections of our system into account, it is the only system we have and one that is worth maintaining. Which brings us to the question of voter turnout in our republic It should be a cause of concern to all of us that that the level of turnout has been falling. In 1948, the turnout was 74.25 per cent of the electorate and stayed in the 70s right up to 1989. In 1989, it dropped to 68.61 per cent, to 68.49 per cent in 1992, 66.08 per cent in 1997, and 62.57 per cent in 2002. In the last General Election in 2007, the turnout was 67.03 per cent. It will be interesting to see how, in this election, the cold economic winds that have blown many of our hopes and dreams away will affect our turnout. In the face of all that we have experienced in the last two years or so, it would be easy to be cynical about the political process. However, this particular election campaign has been interesting in a number of respects. This has certainly not been a 'pothole' campaign, where all the energies of campaigners for election to our national parliament are directed towards fixing Mrs Murphy's broken footpath. Nor, given the national mood, has it been a 'baby kissing' campaign. We have engaged with the serious economic and social issues facing us. The rest is up to us. Remember the words of the leading American drama critic George Jean Nathan who said: "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote".