Democracy strained by some governments’ failure to deliver, not problems with the system: Edwin Tong

SINGAPORE – Democracy is under pressure because some governments have failed to deliver, not because there is something intrinsically wrong with the system, said Law Minister Edwin Tong.

Some governments have abused their power and have been elected by unfair means, and through these means, have remained in power and abused their position, he said at a dialogue on Jan 22 titled “Is Democracy in Trouble?” at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland.

This has caused many citizens to be cynical about the process, he said.

Some governments have also failed to carry out and discharge their obligation to improve their societies, said Mr Tong, who is also Second Minister for Home Affairs.

Trust in institutions has eroded, and there is now more misinformation than previous generations had to contend with that has undermined many elections.

“So all these factors and forces, I think, are buffeting the process of democracy,” he said during the dialogue which saw politicians and an academic debate the future of the political system.

On the whole, the four panellists agreed to varying degrees that democracy has to evolve to keep up with the challenges it faces globally.

Mr Tong said it is not possible to assess democracy without understanding the social compact that lies behind it.

He put it this way: People choose leaders via free and fair elections, and the quid pro quo must be that the leaders selected have an obligation to uplift lives, build society and improve upon the previous generation.

“That compact lies at the heart of what I believe is the democratic process,” he said.

Mr Tong was responding to the session’s moderator, journalist Shekhar Gupta, who asked: “What’s got everybody paranoid? Paranoid that old liberal consensus on democracy produced incrementalism, bureaucracies and slow processes... Do you think the old institutions and the old structures’ inability to change with the times has caused this distress?”

The answer is both yes and no, said Mr Tong. “We embrace the old structures because they have worked for generations.”

But within this framework, governments must collaborate more with citizens even after coming to power, he said.

In Singapore, the Government has committed to making sure that citizens, including young people, have their views presented at its highest forums, including Parliament.

“We feel that citizens are able to say: ‘I’m invested in the outcome of policies. I have a say in the architecture of social policies that affect me,’” he said.

Ultimately, “the balance and the bargain in Singapore” is that if the government of the day is not performing and there are failures of delivery on the ground, then the process must “come to roost in the elections”, he said.

Countries must guard free and fair elections, which keep democratic systems running. “That’s the heartbeat.”

Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Hugo Aramayo said at the same dialogue that some democracies have been “captured by specific interests from some groups”, who have cut regular citizens out of the process.

“Once they get the power, they don’t care about accountability to deliver institutional performance. They only care about how to capture the rest of the institutions, and how to preserve the power they get.”

Yale University political scientist Helene Landemore took issue with the fundamentals of democracy as a political system.

She disagreed with Mr Tong’s view that democracies can still be efficient, adding that the system has not evolved much for the past 200 years.

Mr Tong had cited how Singapore during the Covid-19 pandemic

had passed legislation

to arrest an “avalanche of litigation” caused by social-distancing measures.

Professor Landemore said: “I do think people are fed up with the slowness, the lack of responsiveness, the lack of causal impact of majorities.”

She added that democracies worldwide continue to select leaders in an old-fashioned way that sends wealthy, connected and older people into power.

The world should move away from the “complacency” of thinking it has figured out democracy, she said. “We should deepen, explore, experiment and involve all this collective intelligence that is distributed in the population and that we are just ignoring and not making the most of.”

Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya disagreed. “Stop making these diagnoses (that) democrats are in danger, democracies don’t work any more,” she said.

Instead, the world should redefine democracy by looking at countries where it is working and delivering what populations need, said Ms Tsikhanouskaya, who has headed a government in exile since running in the 2020 Belarusian presidential election – the results of which are contested.

President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled since the country was established in 1994 after the fall of the Soviet Union,

eventually declared victory

.

But Ms Tsikhanouskaya agreed it may be “time to reinvent democracy” and create new instruments to cope with the pace of technological change.

“Everybody has to invest in democracy,” she said, pointing to tech companies, the media and regular people.

In response to a Swiss student on the trade-offs between allowing citizens to vote on every issue and making decisions quickly, Mr Tong said democracy is not about voting on “every last issue”.

“If you have to put every last decision you make to a vote, you are abdicating a responsibility,” he said.

The government has been chosen to take responsibility and make decisions on behalf of its people – the quid pro quo being that it must advance society.

Mr Tong acknowledged that democracy has its failures, but said: “Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.

“Let’s not take umbrage at all forms of democracy, but let’s work out what precisely are the ailments that cause today’s democratic process to fail and try and fix those.”