If there is a single country in the world that could provide a shining example of the benefits of democracy, it ought to be India – the biggest democracy in the world. India, like China, has made great strides forward. But can Catherine Sampson, or anyone else, seriously suggest to me one single worthwhile social or economic indicator against which democratic India has performed better than CCP-ruled China over the past thirty years?
You don't create the conditions for a successful democracy by scrawling a few slogans with marker pens on cardboard placards and marching up and down the street. The first thing you have to do is decide what the democratic structures are going to be – the forms of government, and the institutions. Then you have to decide what the democratic process is going to be – who is going to vote, and how? And who gets to make these decisions in the first place? You need to make sure that the electorate has been educated to a degree that they clearly understand how the process and the structures work, and the importance of their vote, in order to protect them from abuse.
Then you have to implement the structures and the processes in every single village and every single town and every single city in the country. And most important of all, while you're doing that, you need to put in place the safeguarding structure that guarantees the probity of the system, and you need to be absolutely certain that every single one of the people who run that safeguarding process is of unimpeachable character.
The idea that you could do all this overnight in a country of 1.3 billion people is worse than na?ve – it's stupid. By any sensible measure, it will take years. And if by any chance you don't get it absolutely right, there is a serious risk that it will go absolutely wrong.
Take corruption, for example. Bolting a free democratic electoral system onto an immature structure in which corruption is endemic does not get rid of the corruption. It actually does the opposite. It institutionalizes the corruption, but what is much worse, it legitimizes it. Who can question the right of the freely and democratically elected official to govern in whatever manner he can get away with? If you want to see how this process pans out in practice, try Africa – Zimbabwe is a particularly good example.
On a more general level, how do you define democracy, and what are its benefits? There are many possible answers to that question, but here is a nice simple one that I think most people would agree with:
"Democracy produces representative government that is accountable to its electorate."
The signatories to Charter 08 might like to confirm with Ms Sampson this list of things that could not happen in a well-functioning democracy:
1. A Party could not dominate parliament and government to the exclusion of all other opinion with the support of less than a quarter of the electorate.
2. A Party could not lie to the electorate by offering in its manifesto a categorical commitment to implement a fairer electoral system, and then contemptuously discard that commitment as soon as it was elected.
3. A Party could not lie to the electorate by offering in its manifesto a categorical commitment to hold a referendum on a major constitutional change involving the abandonment of significant sovereign power, and then contemptuously discard that commitment as soon as it was elected.