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I was having a healthy (by excluding those swear words in Kelantanese-Malay dialect) debate with a couple of middle-age men yesterday amidst the festive atmosphere of Hari Raya Puasa. The hot topic was initially on the upcoming election but eventually diverted to some political attacks on the current government. They debated on a lot of issues but the justifications they gave were very shallow and “uneducated”. These men may look like a politician when they talk, but their knowledge of the world is very limited. They left school at the age of about 12, and rarely read books. Their main source of information is either from friends’ constant lambasting remarks or news shown on TV. I’m not against their views but the debate yesterday suddenly made me think for a while.

I asked myself: “Is democracy the best policy? Is it the best way forward?” While many would agree that Democracy is perhaps one of the best forms of government, but giving power to people can sometimes be dangerous especially when the people are not ready to be given power to choose or elect. In countries where there are more people uneducated than educated, sometimes when an issue is voted on, wrong opinions are translated into policy while the truth remains widely unknown. More often than not, people vote not because of their own rational thinking but merely based on emotional appeal and sometimes popularity. This may be the reason why some politicians are using “Democracy” as a tool to sustain and protect their positions. You can see how a candidate who worked day and night to help the citizens got voted off just because he chose to be with a party that many dislike. You can also see how a candidate who merely sat still and poured money, but managed to win the hearts of many people.

I’m not against democracy. In fact, i do think it is still a better form of government than the rest. There are certain experts who know more information than others and their knowledge should be trusted more than the everyday persons. I know this may sound strange to a lot of you, considering that most of us have been taught that Democratic solutions are always the best. The problem is, they are not always the best.

I think that we all need to think out of the box, democracy isn’t democracy any more, there’s corruption and discrimination everywhere. We need to stop eating the garbage shoveled into our mouths. Real democracy is by allowing the people to be involved in major decision making rather than letting the government to hold the “absolute” decisions.

Perhaps…people nowadays are too complacent to rethink their government…or maybe lazy to think is a better reason.