In 2024, the world will experience history's biggest ever show of electoral exercises as half of the world's total population will participate in elections in over sixty nations to choose their new national leadership to run governments. Of those countries, Bangladesh is one that has meanwhile gone to the polls on January 7 (Sunday). Bangladesh is also among the most populous nations after India, Indonesia and Pakistan to hold their national elections this year.
So, in its more than 2,500 years' history since it started in Greece of classical antiquity, the concept of democracy as practised by way of holding elections to choose a leadership to rule a representative body or government has evolved over time. In this connection, there are many who tend to believe that election itself determines democracy. Similarly, others think democracy constitutes a fixed set of ideas that are defined once and for all. But that is also not true. For instance, the democracy that the ancient Greeks in Athens practised was one in which only 'citizens' or the so-called free men could vote. But as women and slaves including children were not considered as citizens, they had no right to vote. Even in the USA, where elected democracy has been in practice for over two centuries, democracy was only for the white people with property until 1800. And in that democracy, even white women had no right to participate in election to change government before the 20th century. Actually, women got the right to vote in 1920 through 19th amendment to the American constitution. And the African Americans (black people of the United States) had no voting right until the civil rights movement initiated by Dr Martin Luther King in the1960s. So, the fact that more countries in the world will go to the polls this year do not necessarily mean that the practice of democracy is increasing across the globe. In fact, democracy does not consist just in the exercise of one of its fundamental conditions, voting. For international research bodies including democracy watchdogs have rather expressed concern over the decline of democracy worldwide despite the rise in the number of countries conducting elections.
According to the Global State of Democracy report of the International IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), some aspects of democracy other than just 'voting' have been on the decline in at least half of these countries (holding election). For instance, far right parties' election victory even in some old democracies of Europe does not bode well for democracy. Remember that Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 through an election. But then he turned his country into the worst dictatorship the world had ever seen. So, election and democracy are not synonymous. Seeing the recent rise in far right forces in the advanced democracies, Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist, Maria Ressa of Philippines, recently made a remark saying, 'We will know whether democracy lives or dies by the end of 2024'. But does that mean that the 'era of democracy' is in an existential crisis? To those used to the form of elected government known as 'liberal democracy, especially in the West, it is indeed a concern of consequence. Perhaps, Ms Ressa is concerned about that kind of advanced democracy whose history is not a long one. Otherwise, we have been familiar with the term, democracy, since antiquity. To be fair, though democracy is an old idea, the way elected democracy is being practised in post-feudal Europe, historically, it is rather a recent phenomenon. In the post-colonial Southern hemisphere, it is a very recent development. According to the online scientific publication, Our World in Data (OWID), of the countries holding elections this year, only ten countries have been holding free and fair multiparty elections to form governments for over the last nine decades. But for the rest of the countries, it is rather a recent experience. As it happened in the case of advanced liberal democracies, it is through the process of trial and error that higher form of democracy may emerge among these recent entrants to electoral democracy. But seeing that even after decades of practice, democracy can turn majoritarian and oppressive, the new practitioners of democracy need to learn from history to avoid the mistakes of some older democracies. As many countries in the post-colonial South follow the West, the recent rise of the far right there also has a negative influence on them. For instance, religious intolerance and anti-immigrant rhetoric in electoral politics are also on the rise in many of those in newly emerging democratic countries. But though this is sometimes ridiculous, it is still a very dangerous trend. Ridiculous because, there is hardly any economic reason for immigrants being an issue with those countries. It is just about mimicking the Western rhetoric by third world demagogues to incite a prejudiced section of the public. But religious intolerance, or hatred towards an ethnic minority when used as an electoral ploy to win election is the most dangerous development today. It is, indeed, the death knell for democracy. Nobel Peace laureate, Maria Ressa, might be referring exactly to this possibility in the 2024's elections.
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