In a democracies liberty blossoms! Liberty constitutes the richest humus for the nobility, creativity, industry and enterprise of the human person to gain pre-eminence. To this end, social progress and economic empowerment have greeted the democratic enterprise of many nations. Most other systems of government entertain ontological proclivities to tyranny; and readily repulse the human spirit. This may account for why the modern world seems to be enamoured and actively seduced by democracy. This craze not only borders on the fact that only democracy affords the governed the opportunity, no matter how limited, of participating in running their affairs; but it has also proven to be the system of government that conduces more to human development and freedom than all other contrivances. (Cf. Sen, 1999)
In a democracy the rule of law holds sway. Not the rule of man. Absolute power, which corrupts absolutely, is denied leeway. This inheres in the fact that human whims have proven notoriously inadequate as a base to anchor social regulation. Its fluidity and profound uncertainty disqualifies its candidacy. And since no credible structure could ever be erected on some treacherous quicksands, the laws, which constancy is akin to that of the Northern Star, rose to become the source of social legitimacy as well as the regulator of social conduct; upon which all the structures of state came to be predicated and tends toward. Extending the views of Sen, (1999) only democracy avails freedom the opportunity to cross-pollinate responsibility, to pave way for development and security, which are the primal needs of the human society.
This is because in a democracy, social evolution is compelled to configure itself into a positive affront to Darwinistic schemes, and transcends this to guarantee survival both to the weakest, as well as to the fittest under the ambits of the law. Darwinian and Hobbessian schemes are intrinsically allergic to development. Both are ontologically incapable of spawning or providing the requisite conditions for the development of human society. Darwinianism constructs a society of predators forced to exist on a balance of terror or mutual deterrence. It is a subterranean, violent society with the semblance of calm as icing. The least excuse that tips the balance ensures the elimination of the weaker elements. The Hobbessian jungle on the other hand, ontologically banishes development. This universe hosts or entertains the war of all against all (bellum omnium contra omnes). This ensures that there is no arts; no letters; no society; and which is the worst of all continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes)
Mao Tse Tung’s interpretation of the sources and legitimizing authority of power-power flowing from the barrel of a gun- equally caresses some primeval themes resident in wild nature; and is thereby disqualified from hosting human development. His aphorism is in line with an ancient proclivity native to the economics of untamed nature; well articulated in the Darwinist conceptual estate, where survival of the fittest is the credo. This metaphysic underwrites power as the greatest aphrodisiac, which acquisition, the acquisitive nature of man counsels. Since “man remains naturally competitive, acquisitive, and, in a greater or less degree, pugnacious (Bertrand Russell); it then lies in his nature to aspire or to ascend to the heights to acquire this greatest of destinations.
Granted that politics is about power; its acquisition and exercise; but when the Machiavellian ends-means nexus is thrown into the fray; man in the Maoist think-scape becomes justified in going about the acquisition and exercise of power after this Darwinistic ethos, where the fittest is pre-eminent on the survival scheme, and the weak construed as eternal fodder for the strong. But since man has proved to himself that he is more than an animal with clothes on; he succeeded in fashioning a social order, where power bows to reason; where power can only legitimately not flow from the barrel of a gun, but from the fountains of the law. This is the province of democracy. Society by evolving to the democratic level, reached the omega point of its political evolution, thereby denying individual whim, the authority of exercising power without recourse to the provisions of the law.
Although democracy has many variations, those variations do not sabotage its fundaments. Democracy is principally where allegiance is owed to the law, and the law only; not to a cult of rogue charismatic personalities; not to a clique of renegades looking for an estate to turn into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom (Achebe, 2006), or a cartel of kleptocrats looking for treasuries to sack and plunder. Allegiance is equally not owed to a cabal of individuals, or to power epicentres of insular import. This is because contrary to what obtains in some other political schemes, democracy is not a theocracy where impious pretenders usurp earthly power in the name of a heavenly father. Neither is it a plutocracy, where the wealthy commit political simony; purchasing offices and trading influences for private profit. It is equally not a monarchy where kings hide under the monstrous deceptiveness of divine right to oppress their subjects. In its pristine purity, it is where all are presumed to be equal before the law; where natural justice, equity and good conscience counsel all judgement. It is where power is a subject to civil control, and where loyalty is owed to the constitution. It is where any law that is inconsistent with the Grundnorm, is to the extent of that inconsistency null and void. It is where power is subjected to checks and balances which ensures that power remain ever responsible
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