BURMA & INDONESIA

Burma & Indonesia



Burma & Indonesia

Introduction

This essay will be focusing on the key elements which define the position of a nation in terms of democracy. Understanding the concepts related to democracy is important to categorize, how the level of democracy is measured with in the country. The factors on which the democracy of a nation is dependent are the elections, rule of law, parliament, the public opinion, the freedom of media etc, are also discusses later in the essay. Studying the two countries, Burma and Indonesia that are in the phase of development, would further elaborate the obstacles that are in the way of them becoming democratic nations.

Democracy

It is quite a difficult task to define democracy in one statement as it has more than one definition. The literal meaning of democracy is divided into two parts as it is derived from a Greek terminology “demokratia”. Demos mean people while the other half kratos means rule. In the mid of the fifth century BC, this concept indicated a system of politics. Hence, the meaning of democracy is the government by people. In other words, democracy means that people have the rights to give their input to everything relating their life. People set the factors that affect their lives and standards of living. These rights are given to an individual with the consensus of every other member that is living in that community, without any obstacles of mediators. In democracy, a person makes his own decision making position depending on his leadership abilities. In the past, this was easy to achieve in smaller communities, but as we are in the era of technology, it is now much easier for a larger set of communities to adapt the process of democracy (Saramasinghe, 2009). Talking about the large communities where more than one member has to be selected, the terminology of representative democracy is introduced.

Representative democracy can be defined as the authority of a group of people with similar school of thoughts set their position to make decisions, through technology or representatives. There is no problem if all the members of the representative democracy make decisions consulting other members. They may make decisions instantly, or they may hold the decision till they all agree on a point, and work to accommodate the idea set by the majority. Sadly, most of the countries that categorize them self as the representative democracies are not democratic in the true sense. They name themselves Representative democracy, but for real, they are under dictatorship. Such countries are deviated from the real idea of democracy. They elect their representatives, while the representatives do all for their private incentives. The definition of democracy gets much clarity with the study of democracy in Switzerland, which somehow is near to the different definitions given to democracy.

The Dilemma of Democracy

The inventors of latest political thoughts from the ancient times are the Romans, the Greeks and the Italian republics. They created the most communal governments, while the philosophers of that time have so much ...