Twenty years ago a simple unarmed student protest in the central parts of Beijing began in April 1989,mourning the death of Hu Yaobang. The students frightened the elders who had been in power for 40 years. They reacted badly when the students asked to talk and register their complaints about regime corruption. Deng Xiaoping denounced them as reactionary and anti-Chinese. But the students persisted. The Chinese Communist Party,despite its years of experience,did not know how to deal with peaceful unarmed protest. By the end of May,it was too late. The result was tragic. Zhao Zhiyang,the one member of the Politburo who wanted to talk to students,suffered demotion and then house arrest for the remaining 16 years of his life. Tiananmen became a memorable word.
June is a cruel month. Now we have the tragedy in Iran. China has no democracy whatever. But Iran has been experimenting with a limited form of democracy,call it a Theologically Guided Democracy. The Ayatollahs clear the selection of candidates and then the people vote. This time around,even the carefully selected candidates are not good enough for the Mullahs. Mir Hussein Moussavi is an ex-Prime Minister,a man with a solid record of supporting the Khomeini revolution. Even so,it looks like the Ayatollahs panicked at Moussavis popular appeal. Here was a man whose wife openly appeared with him in public and they even held hands! She is articulate and talented. Women scare the godmen of Islam. Moussavi had to go. He was a challenge to the prevailing madness of Islamic Puritanism.
It may yet come to bloodshed. Six days of protest have already witnessed murders of students. Ayatollah Khamenei has given the verdict as I write this. Before Sunday we could be seeing tanks on the streets of Tehran. Nothing frightens the powerful like a peaceful unarmed crowd of people.
What is it about democracy that frightens the powerful? There are,no doubt,many people now around the world who support the Ayatollah. People tell me that democracy is not good for everyone. Dictatorships are better,more efficient,more suited to Asian values or Islamic values or whatever. The Great Leader,the Helmsman,the Fuehrer,the Ayatollah provide certainty,assurance of wisdom,illusion of perfection. Democracies have corrupt,weak leaders who quarrel among each other.
But then you discover that no Great Leader is perfect. They are just as corrupt as the rest. Stalin and Hitler and Mugabe and Mao and Pol Pot are all the same. Power does corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely as Lord Acton so prophetically wrote a hundred years ago. Democratic leaders are easy to remove. It takes a war or a bloody revolution to remove a dictator. China has not yet seen democracy and we can only wait for the sake of the Chinese people. I desperately hope that the transition to democracy,when it comes to China,as it will eventually,will be peaceful,but I doubt it.
Eventually democracy works because it does not rely on human perfection. Indeed it exploits the imperfection that is endemic among human beings. No single person is good enough to guide all,no single source of power can be relied upon not to be fallible. Democracy allows us to pool talents and then again remove one lot of imperfect rascals and try another. People used to democracy know what it is to be disappointed. They know the promises they have been made will only be partially,if at all,fulfilled. But they dont mind because they know these leaders are imperfect. There are others equally imperfect who are available to take their place.
India was close to losing its democracy in 1975 but it was lucky that two years later Indira Gandhi deluded herself that she could win an election. That saved her and the nation. India did not need a dictator to prosper. Indeed,the years of single party dominance from 1947 to 1989 were years of slow growth. Once that dominance went,growth perked up. The country liberated itself from the certainty of single party rule.
Let the liberation last forever.
