Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

Despotism and democracy
This is a true, political story of a country which had a long-lived, tireless President
34
Luan Starova
The events I'm about to unravel
before you really happened and
might still happen in some
Mediterranean or Balkan state. It
could happen in any small country,
free from colonial dependence, that
builds its own future, looking for the
real democracy that can be found in
Western countries. A country that is
looking to find what
Churchill called the
least bad institution
of governingdemocracy-a
system
which has had at
least 200 years to
develop successfully.
The Little
Republic I'm going
to tell you about had
a President-
Liberator. He was
also referred to as
"The Supreme
Fighter," the Father
of the Nation.
"You have a
very little state, as
big as a postage
stamp on the globe,"
said foreign diplomats
to the
President.
"It's true, it is as
small as a stamp, but
the stamp travels
worldwide. We're as big as the
world," replied the wise President.
And as things sometimes turn out,
the Father of the Nation spent years
and years studying, exiled in the large
colonizing state, against which he
later took up arms and fought for his
country's independence. His people
lived with happy and unhappy twists
and turns of fate, together with the
President-Liberator. A decade passed,
then another and another, but the
President showed no signs of letting
go his power. In the end, the
Liberator turned Despot. Everybody
reminded him of his years spent
studying in the prestigious Western
state. But, it turned out that when you
grab hold of power, you don't let go
of it so easily. The President spoiled
his good relations with the president
of an African country, a well-known
poet, who abandoned power to allow
his country to experience democracy.
The president was not naive or
unwise. He could sense his destiny.
He would rule for as long as he could,
but it wouldn't last forever. The thing
he feared most was a military coup.
As it often happens in far away
African or South American states, the
President had chosen a group of
smart young men and sent them to the
numerous European and American
universities to study law, economics,
defence and even intelligence and
politics. The President comforted
himself that even if he were to be
overthrown, at least it would be done
by some of his "sons." I will be
peaceful in my old age, he thought.
And so it happened. But that's another
story and we'll talk about that later.
After the third, and at the dawning
of the fourth year of his life, the
once-cherished Father of the Nation,
was revered as the people's despot.
He controlled the only political party,
a monolithic organization of Socialist
character, and he was unable to bear
What now, June 2001