Why is a strong opposition a necessary safeguard for democracy?

There are 2 quotes I would like to use to explain myself the first one being. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and the second one being “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

An effective opposition is necessary to provide check and balances in the government. The founding fathers of the US realized this and created different levels of government. What they did not foresee is other members using legal but non-ethical methods to prevent a law being passed i.e. filibustering a law. “Talking a bill to death” or “out talking a bill”, with unnecessary talking and time wasting as to prevent actual passing a significant bill or law. An opposition can frustrate the government and prevent any law being passed, hence making it ineffective.

Without an effective opposition the government of the day, becomes dictatorial and unaccountable and could pass laws which favor a selected few or a particular tribe or group. As said “Power Corrupts”, unfortunately it does, the so called kings in the past that were said to be “benevolent”, were actually not exposed to real power. In the 1960′s before the first Nigerian military coup, Nigeria had an effective opposition but due to gerrymandering and divide and conquer tactics, imprisonment of the leader on changes of treason, they were able to destroy the effective opposition. This lead to a coup when the people felt that their grievances were not being addressed, the government had become unaccountable and corrupt, they killed all of those which they believed where corrupt. The killings of the politicians which mainly belonged to a particular tribe subsequently lead to civil war. Although the leader may think he is acting in the interest of the people but if they do not have a say in it, they will feel subjugated.

It is great that a pass or siting leader can be called to address the representatives of the people and is held to account for his actions (Chilcot and Tony Blair).

For any sound democracy it is essential that the people believe that they are free to choose their leaders and have the power to remove them if they find it necessary. The absolute monarch of French King Louis XVII could only be removed by violent means, which lead to the French Revolution with widespread death and destruction. So it is essential that there is an effective strong opposition for people to be given an alternative to the government of the day. When majority of the people decided to leave the EU (Brexit) in the UK, it is essential that this is follow through, although the government was against it. A sound democracy with an effective opposition will ensure the desire of the people is follow through.

Comments

The seedling of doubt - Merchants of Doubt

Doubt is the product What this book says, and the film elucidates is there is a selective specific group of "scientists" who have a particular playbook to discredit, confuse and "muddy the waters" against scientific research for their sponsors. What these group of people or interest groups have learned from the days of dealing with the tobacco industry, is that they need not concern themselves with trying to prove anything or to disprove the scientists. All they need is to seed doubt and confusion in the market of public opinion, their main motto is "Doubt is our product". As, when people are confused and the policies are difficult to interpret because they are complicated, ambiguous, inconclusive, etc then there will be great difficulty in organizing widespread opposition to it. They deliberately frustrate governments into inaction, blocking them by using their lobbyist and "experts" and hence stop all ways of finding effective solutions...

The end of a massive killer - The Malaria vaccine story

A program on BBC iPlayer tells the story of the search for the first Malaria vaccine. T his is an exciting story. It has everything, from an exciting detective story to romance, horror, thriller, and finance. The individuals involved go from country to country, from London, Oxford, and New York to Villages in Africa and India. It involves multi-million organisations and sole individuals working against the system. It is recorded that one child dies every minute from Malaria, and it is a significant killer in a large number of countries. This program tells the story of how the Oxford University Team, the same team that developed the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZencetra as part of the Academic Vaccine Development Program. They had produced about 3 billion doses and had been used in 170 countries. This was also helped by a grant from the EU. Malaria was endemic throughout the Western world. It got its name from Rome. The "bad air" ( Medival Latin' mala aria' ) surrounding ...

Further explaination of the universe

Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, has always tried to explain complex astrophysical phenomena in simple language that everyone can understand. The subtitle of this book is "a further explanation of a science classic made more accessible". To his surprise, his book A Brief History of Time was a bestseller and was on the top ten list for 237 weeks and sold one copy for every 750 people on Earth. The book was a remarkable success for a modern physics book. Many people were asking for a sequel to the book. A Brief History of Time explained how Newtonian Astrophysics described the laws that control planets and stars' movement. This book takes into consideration the most recent theoretical and observational results. How light speed is finite and constant at 299,792,458 m/s. Since the speed of light is constant, to explain the different observations for different observers, time must be relative. Producing the twin paradox, i.e., time slows d...

A different prespective to Life

Search This Blog