‘People should be allowed to be angry’

‘People should be allowed to be angry’
By Editor
Mon 01 Feb. 2010, 04:00 CAT

WE value the democratic system in as much as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate.

For these reasons we agree with the observations made by Margaret Machila, the programmes manager of Norwegian Church Aid, that it is wrong to label anyone who speaks about people’s welfare a “politician”. Machila says many things are political and people should be left to comment on what they feel should be commented on. “I should comment on anything, it is my right and I don’t want to be put in a corner.” It is not only her right to do so, Machila has an obligation as a citizen to make specific contributions to the common good.

And as such, she should not be stopped from commenting on public issues. All citizens are called to participate actively and responsibly in civil society. In civil society, people come together with different interests to work for the common good. Therefore, government and civil society should cooperate together. Every citizen has a direct duty to work for a just society.

Citizens cannot be required to take part in the political process, and they are free to express their dissatisfaction by not participating. But without the lifeblood of citizen action, democracy will begin to weaken. Citizens of democratic societies have the opportunity to join a host of private organisations, non-governmental organisations, associations and volunteer groups. Many of these are concerned with issues of public policy, yet few are controlled or financed by the government.

The right of individuals to associate freely and to organise themselves into different sorts of non-governmental groups is fundamental to democracy. When people of common interest band together, their voices can be heard and their chances of influencing the political debate increased. As Alexis De Tocqueville, the great 19th Century French political observer, wrote, “There are no countries in which associations are more needed to prevent despotism of faction or the arbitrary power of a prince than those which are democratically constituted.”

And Machila is therefore right in her criticism of the government’s attitude and approach to non-governmental organisations and the work of other civil society institutions. Clearly, the non-governmental organisations Act that was enacted by this government last year was not intended to strengthen or broaden the work of civil society organisations but to weaken and restrict it.

But there is an urgent need to strengthen and broaden the work of all civil society organisations working in this country in all their diversities and complexities. It should also be borne in mind that not all civil society organisations are the same; they are different.

And they should be allowed to be different and do different things. The myriad groups to be found in democratic societies can be classified in several ways. Those that function primarily to pressure government with regard to particular issues are referred to as interest groups, or lobbies. Private interest groups, such as business associations, professional groups or labour unions usually have an economic stake in the policies they advocate, although they may also take public positions on issues far outside their area of specialisation.

So-called public interest groups like environmental and welfare organisations seek what they perceive to be a public, or a collective good. This does not make such public interest groups wiser or more virtuous than those with private interests. Rather, the degree of self-interest is often secondary in the positions they take on public issues. Both types of interest groups are active in any democracy and to weaken them or restrict their scope of work is to weaken and restrict democracy in a country.

Both pay close attention to public opinion, making every effort to widen their base of support as they seek simultaneously to educate the public and influence government policy. Interest groups serve as a mediating force between the isolated individual and a government that is usually large and remote.

It is through the interplay of these groups – and through the process of open debate, conflict, compromise and consensus among them – that a democratic society makes decisions affecting the welfare of its members.

Voting in the election of public officials is the most visible and common form of participation in modern democracies, and also the most fundamental. The ability to conduct free and fair elections is at the core of what it means to call a society democratic.

The motivations of voters are as numerous as the societies and interests that they represent. Voters obviously cast their ballots for candidates who will represent their interests, but other factors influence voter preference as well. Party affiliation is one: individuals who identify strongly with a political party are much more likely to vote than those who identify themselves as independent or non-partisan.

In democratic elections, the struggle is often not to determine which candidate commands the greatest public support, but who can most effectively motivate his or her supporters to convert their opinions into votes. The lingering danger of voter apathy is not that public offices will go unfilled, but that office holders will be elected by smaller and smaller percentages of eligible voters.

And in a truly plural system, political parties are as valid as the societies in which they function. The election campaigns they conduct are often elaborate, usually time-consuming, sometimes silly. But the function is deadly serious: to provide a peaceful and fair method by which the citizens of a democracy can select their leaders and have a meaningful role in determining their own destiny.

In a democratic society, citizens have a right to gather peacefully and protest the policies of their government or the actions of other groups with demonstrations, marches, petitions, boycotts, strikes and other forms of direct citizen action.

Direct action is open to everyone in a democracy, but traditionally, it has been used by disadvantaged or minority groups who feel excluded from other means of influencing government policies. Such protests have always been part of democratic society.

Today, non-violent protests, often designed to attract the attention of the news media, encompasses a wide array of issues, from environmental pollution to foreign policy issues, industrial or labour matters and other forms of discrimination. One special form of direct action is the right of labour unions to conduct strikes against employers with whom they have disputes that have not been resolved at the bargaining table.

Protests are a testing ground for any democracy. The ideals of free expression and citizen participation are easy to defend when everyone remains polite and in agreement on basic issues. But protesters – and their targets – do not agree on basic issues, and such disagreements may be passionate and angry. The challenge is one of balance: to defend the right to freedom of speech and assembly, while maintaining public order and countering attempts at intimidation or violence. To suppress peaceful protests in the name of order is to invite repression; to permit uncontrolled violent protests is to invite anarchy.

There is no magic formula to achieving this balance. In the end, it depends on the commitment of the majority to maintaining the institutions of democracy and the precepts of individual rights. Democratic societies are capable of enduring the bitterest disagreement among its citizens except for disagreement about the legitimacy of democracy itself.

And democracy implies no specific doctrine of economics. Democratic governments have embraced committed socialists and free marketeers alike. Indeed, a good deal of debate in any modern democracy concerns the proper role of government in the economy. No contemporary democratic state has an economic system that is either completely state-owned or totally free of government regulation. All are mixtures of private enterprise and government oversight.

Democracies make several assumptions about human nature. One is that, given the chance, people are generally capable of governing themselves in a manner that is fair and free. Another is that any society comprises a great diversity of interests and individuals who deserve to have their voices heard and their views respected. As a result, one thing is true of all healthy democracies: they are noisy.

Former United States president George Bush senior once described the wide array of volunteer organisations in the United States as “a thousand points of light”. The metaphor could also serve for the diversity, or pluralism, of democratic societies everywhere. The voices of democracy include those of the government, its political supporters and opposition, of course. But they are joined by the voices of labour unions, organised interest groups, community associations, the news media, scholars and critics, religious leaders and writers, small businesses and large corporations, churches and schools and so on and so forth.

All of these groups are free to raise their voices and participate in the democratic political process. In this way, democratic politics acts as a filter through which the vocal demands of a diverse populace pass on the way to becoming public policy. As former United States president Jimmy Carter once said, “The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself – always changing, infinity in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.”

It’s clear why we agree with and support the position taken by Machila on this score: “It is wrong to label anyone who speaks about people’s welfare a ‘politician’. People should be left to comment on what they feel should be commented on. The road to my house is political, many things are political. What isn’t political? Why should they say Margaret should comment about this and not that? I should comment on anything, it is my right and I don’t want to be put in a corner. People should be allowed to be angry because it is their right to do so.”