2nd Impression The Telegraph

S E C O N D I M P R E S S I O N

The term democracy, as many political scientists here would agree originated in ancient Greece to signify rule by the demos, usually accepted to mean "the people". However, in its original Greek usage ‘demos’ was not taken to mean all the people but "the many" or "the poor". This cracy was therefore used in a pejorative or negative sense, to imply a rule by the "poor" at the expense of the rich, or a rule by the ignorant and uneducated at the expense of the wise.

Nepali experience of this cracy is surprisingly different and you know it better who is being ruled by what sets of people?

How we had been ruled for all along these thirteen years gets reflected from the "politicians" now under CIAA investigation some others who await CIAA summons.

An American scholar Andrew Heywood not for nothing says in his book "Political Ideologies, an Introduction" that "it is not a set of political ideas about the means and ends organised social action, but rather a description of a particular system of government and of the distribution of power within it.

The modern experience with democracy emerged after the political revolutions of the late 18th century, the American revolution of 1776 and later the French revolution of 1789.

Nepal’s experience with democracy is pretty new but then yet it gives an impression that it is in the use since long and has already become a burden on the people. Thanks the kind courtesy of the men handling the government and the system. To put it modestly, one of the world’s best system ever known is being given a very distasteful name by our own political heavyweights who, as a matter of fact, struggled for its restoration for years and years.

I am reminded of Ambassador Michael Lummaux, the French diplomat, who in a 1998 Telegraph weekly seminar suggested the editorial board of this paper to go in for "The press and the nation’s democracy rise and fall together instead of Press and the nation rise and fall together. Now I could guess as to why this French diplomat had suggested me to ponder over his new suggestions. The fact is that Nepali media too has remained instrumental in not providing needed impetus to the real and effective institutionalization of democracy and hence its negative impact on development.

At this juncture I’m reminded of the liberal thinkers, for example, James Madison and John Stuart Mill who echoed then in their time the reservations which Plato and Aristotle had harbored about democracy warning that "unrestricted democracy would both threaten property and endanger individual liberty".

Ponder over this statement made then.

A more helpful starting point is provided on democracy by legendary Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysberg Address, 1863, which referred to "government of the people, by the people and for the people". Compare our own case here.

Add to this what Voltaire, French scholar, said: "’ I disagree with every word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say"’.

This should have been the ethics of Nepali press and the leaders here. The fact is that it is just the otherwise.

To cut it short, neither the media is honest nor the leaders of this country. The two pillars of democracy have their own drums to beat. The victim is thus the "development" which is already at the mercy of the rebels and the political instability.