Democracy is mostly debatable

DEMOCRACY remains highly contested. Even so there are some tenets that are generally agreed upon as constituting democracy. In my view it entails;

Equality of citizens in the eyes of the law. Society is governed by a set of laws and each citizen is supposed to be treated the same before the law.

Each citizen is deemed equal within the public sphere. Only the force of the better argument prevails in the public sphere. No one must force anyone to think like them.

There are institutions to mediate the functioning of a democratic State. These include the Judiciary, made of non-partisan professional judges and magistrates to dispense justice to the satisfaction of conflicted parties. There is the Legislature to make the laws, represent the citizens and play oversight over the Executive. The Executive implements the government’s decisions, through various departments.

The actions of citizens and organisations are influenced and guided by the decisions, consensus from the deliberations of different stakeholders. Whatever is agreed upon by the society through its various institutions becomes the norm, and what we then do is our communicative action. Society would have established itself as producing and reproducing what is deemed normal and appropriate.

Democracy assumes that ideas must be more prominent in all public discourse, with no need to use physical force to subdue those with opposing views. So in any debate or discussion on anything of public concern, no one should get angry at the ideas of the other. All battles are about ideas.

Being the majority does not mean one has more rights than others. The minority have rights as well, and deserve to be heard. Insults are the preserve of those who have no ideas to bring to the public sphere to be publicly scrutinised.

Democracy is not the only governance concept. Each society has its ways, values, cultures, beliefs, etc.