Rory Stewart: Why democracy matters

83,045 views ・ 2012-10-29

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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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So little Billy goes to school,
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and he sits down and the teacher says,
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"What does your father do?"
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And little Billy says, "My father plays the piano
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in an opium den."
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So the teacher rings up the parents, and says,
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"Very shocking story from little Billy today.
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Just heard that he claimed that you play the piano
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in an opium den."
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And the father says, "I'm very sorry. Yes, it's true, I lied.
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But how can I tell an eight-year-old boy
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that his father is a politician?" (Laughter)
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Now, as a politician myself, standing in front of you,
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or indeed, meeting any stranger anywhere in the world,
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when I eventually reveal the nature of my profession,
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they look at me as though I'm somewhere between
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a snake, a monkey and an iguana,
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and through all of this, I feel, strongly,
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that something is going wrong.
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Four hundred years of maturing democracy,
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colleagues in Parliament who seem to me, as individuals,
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reasonably impressive, an increasingly educated,
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energetic, informed population, and yet
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a deep, deep sense of disappointment.
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My colleagues in Parliament include, in my new intake,
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family doctors, businesspeople, professors,
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distinguished economists, historians, writers,
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army officers ranging from colonels down to regimental sergeant majors.
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All of them, however, including myself, as we walk underneath
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those strange stone gargoyles just down the road,
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feel that we've become less than the sum of our parts,
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feel as though we have become profoundly diminished.
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And this isn't just a problem in Britain.
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It's a problem across the developing world,
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and in middle income countries too. In Jamaica,
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for example -- look at Jamaican members of Parliament,
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you meet them, and they're often people who are
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Rhodes Scholars, who've studied at Harvard or at Princeton,
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and yet, you go down to downtown Kingston,
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and you are looking at one of the most depressing sites
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that you can see in any middle-income country in the world:
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a dismal, depressing landscape
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of burnt and half-abandoned buildings.
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And this has been true for 30 years, and the handover
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in 1979, 1980, between one Jamaican leader who was
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the son of a Rhodes Scholar and a Q.C. to another
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who'd done an economics doctorate at Harvard,
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over 800 people were killed in the streets
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in drug-related violence.
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Ten years ago, however, the promise of democracy
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seemed to be extraordinary. George W. Bush stood up
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in his State of the Union address in 2003
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and said that democracy was the force that would beat
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most of the ills of the world. He said,
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because democratic governments respect their own people
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and respect their neighbors, freedom will bring peace.
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Distinguished academics at the same time argued that
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democracies had this incredible range of side benefits.
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They would bring prosperity, security,
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overcome sectarian violence,
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ensure that states would never again harbor terrorists.
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Since then, what's happened?
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Well, what we've seen is the creation, in places like Iraq
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and Afghanistan, of democratic systems of government
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which haven't had any of those side benefits.
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In Afghanistan, for example, we haven't just had one election
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or two elections. We've gone through three elections,
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presidential and parliamentary. And what do we find?
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Do we find a flourishing civil society, a vigorous rule of law
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and good security? No. What we find in Afghanistan
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is a judiciary that is weak and corrupt,
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a very limited civil society which is largely ineffective,
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a media which is beginning to get onto its feet
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but a government that's deeply unpopular,
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perceived as being deeply corrupt, and security
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that is shocking, security that's terrible.
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In Pakistan, in lots of sub-Saharan Africa,
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again you can see democracy and elections are compatible
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with corrupt governments, with states that are unstable
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and dangerous.
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And when I have conversations with people, I remember
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having a conversation, for example, in Iraq,
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with a community that asked me
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whether the riot we were seeing in front of us,
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this was a huge mob ransacking a provincial council building,
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was a sign of the new democracy.
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The same, I felt, was true in almost every single one
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of the middle and developing countries that I went to,
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and to some extent the same is true of us.
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Well, what is the answer to this? Is the answer to just
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give up on the idea of democracy?
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Well, obviously not. It would be absurd
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if we were to engage again in the kind of operations
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we were engaged in, in Iraq and Afghanistan
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if we were to suddenly find ourselves in a situation
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in which we were imposing
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anything other than a democratic system.
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Anything else would run contrary to our values,
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it would run contrary to the wishes of the people
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on the ground, it would run contrary to our interests.
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I remember in Iraq, for example, that we went through
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a period of feeling that we should delay democracy.
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We went through a period of feeling that the lesson learned
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from Bosnia was that elections held too early
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enshrined sectarian violence, enshrined extremist parties,
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so in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made,
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let's not have elections for two years. Let's invest in
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voter education. Let's invest in democratization.
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The result was that I found stuck outside my office
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a huge crowd of people, this is actually a photograph
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taken in Libya but I saw the same scene in Iraq
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of people standing outside screaming for the elections,
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and when I went out and said, "What is wrong
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with the interim provincial council?
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What is wrong with the people that we have chosen?
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There is a Sunni sheikh, there's a Shiite sheikh,
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there's the seven -- leaders of the seven major tribes,
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there's a Christian, there's a Sabian,
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there are female representatives, there's every political party in this council,
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what's wrong with the people that we chose?"
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The answer came, "The problem isn't the people
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that you chose. The problem is that you chose them."
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I have not met, in Afghanistan, in even the most
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remote community, anybody who does not want
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a say in who governs them.
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Most remote community, I have never met a villager
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who does not want a vote.
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So we need to acknowledge
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that despite the dubious statistics, despite the fact that
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84 percent of people in Britain feel politics is broken,
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despite the fact that when I was in Iraq, we did an opinion poll
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in 2003 and asked people what political systems they preferred,
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and the answer came back that
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seven percent wanted the United States,
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five percent wanted France,
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three percent wanted Britain,
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and nearly 40 percent wanted Dubai, which is, after all,
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not a democratic state at all but a relatively prosperous
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minor monarchy, democracy is a thing of value
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for which we should be fighting. But in order to do so
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we need to get away from instrumental arguments.
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We need to get away from saying democracy matters
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because of the other things it brings.
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We need to get away from feeling, in the same way,
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human rights matters because of the other things it brings,
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or women's rights matters for the other things it brings.
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Why should we get away from those arguments?
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Because they're very dangerous. If we set about saying,
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for example, torture is wrong because it doesn't extract
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good information, or we say, you need women's rights
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because it stimulates economic growth by doubling the size of the work force,
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you leave yourself open to the position where
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the government of North Korea can turn around and say,
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"Well actually, we're having a lot of success extracting
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good information with our torture at the moment,"
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or the government of Saudi Arabia to say, "Well,
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our economic growth's okay, thank you very much,
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considerably better than yours,
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so maybe we don't need to go ahead with this program on women's rights."
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The point about democracy is not instrumental.
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It's not about the things that it brings.
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The point about democracy is not that it delivers
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legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law.
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It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors.
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The point about democracy is intrinsic.
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Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality
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and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity,
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the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual
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should have an equal vote, an equal say,
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in the formation of their government.
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But if we're really to make democracy vigorous again,
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if we're ready to revivify it, we need to get involved
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in a new project of the citizens and the politicians.
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Democracy is not simply a question of structures.
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It is a state of mind. It is an activity.
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And part of that activity is honesty.
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After I speak to you today, I'm going on a radio program
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called "Any Questions," and the thing you will have noticed
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about politicians on these kinds of radio programs
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is that they never, ever say that they don't know the answer
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to a question. It doesn't matter what it is.
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If you ask about child tax credits, the future of the penguins
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in the south Antarctic, asked to hold forth on whether or not
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the developments in Chongqing contribute
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to sustainable development in carbon capture,
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and we will have an answer for you.
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We need to stop that, to stop pretending to be
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omniscient beings.
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Politicians also need to learn, occasionally, to say that
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certain things that voters want, certain things that voters
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have been promised, may be things
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that we cannot deliver
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or perhaps that we feel we should not deliver.
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And the second thing we should do is understand
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the genius of our societies.
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Our societies have never been so educated, have never
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been so energized, have never been so healthy,
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have never known so much, cared so much,
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or wanted to do so much, and it is a genius of the local.
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One of the reasons why we're moving away
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from banqueting halls such as the one in which we stand,
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banqueting halls with extraordinary images on the ceiling
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of kings enthroned,
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the entire drama played out here on this space,
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where the King of England had his head lopped off,
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why we've moved from spaces like this, thrones like that,
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towards the town hall, is we're moving more and more
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towards the energies of our people, and we need to tap that.
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That can mean different things in different countries.
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In Britain, it could mean looking to the French,
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learning from the French,
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getting directly elected mayors in place
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in a French commune system.
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In Afghanistan, it could have meant instead of concentrating
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on the big presidential and parliamentary elections,
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we should have done what was in the Afghan constitution
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from the very beginning, which is to get direct local elections going
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at a district level and elect people's provincial governors.
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But for any of these things to work,
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the honesty in language, the local democracy,
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it's not just a question of what politicians do.
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It's a question of what the citizens do.
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For politicians to be honest, the public needs to allow them to be honest,
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and the media, which mediates between the politicians
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and the public, needs to allow those politicians to be honest.
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If local democracy is to flourish, it is about the active
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and informed engagement of every citizen.
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In other words, if democracy is to be rebuilt,
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is to become again vigorous and vibrant,
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it is necessary not just for the public
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to learn to trust their politicians,
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but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.
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Thank you very much indeed. (Applause)
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