Even would be dictators need to think twice about taking away the right to vote

People who have enjoyed the right to vote tend to be tenacious in clinging onto the ballot box.

Koreans fighting to preserve democracy

Just look what happened recently in South Korea when President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to introduce martial law and thus override the cherished democratic institutions which came into being after the previous dictatorship collapsed in the 1980s.

Koreans had no desire to go back to authoritarian rule and recognized what was at stake by rapidly mobilizing to defend their democratic system, much in the same way as they had mobilized to bring down the military dictatorship which had seemed impregnable right up to point of collapse. Even more impressive was the success in achieving a transition to democracy without bloodshed.

Koreans are not alone in resisting attempts to turn back the clock on democracy. The fight is on in Georgia; in both India and Turkey electoral support for authoritarian government is dwindling and even in Russia where short-lived fragments of democracy have been extinguished, resistance to Vladimir Putin has stubbornly refused to go away.

Mr. Putin and a notorious assortment of other authoritarians would love to do away with an elected system of government but they keep it in place for show. Often the show is little more than a weak shadow as they subvert the system and tamper with its independence but they know full well that an open attempt to do away with elections will be met with resistance.

Only nations which have never enjoyed more than a glimmer of democratic rule, notably China, are able to resist the lure of elections because those seeking change have no lived experience of liberty.

And yet it seems that the worm is turning following electoral success for authoritarian minded political parties in places such as Italy, France and even Germany where historical memory appears to have dimmed.

There is always space for the temptation of so called strong leadership, freed from the restraining shackles of pesky laws and independent legislators, nowhere less so than in the United States where its consequences are about to be revealed.

The reality is that there are no easy solutions in politics and even extremist politicians have to trim their wings. As an example look at the way Italy’s extremist rightist government is tempering its extremism. Authoritarian governments who refuse to trim are vulnerable to defeat at the polls. This is what happened in Poland when it became clear that the promised simple solutions driven by hard men, turned out to be neither simple nor achievable.

When I lived in Hong Kong, which had enjoyed a rudimentary form of democracy, a politician called Regina Ip, a forceful apologist for the Chinese dictatorship, was regularly found claiming that democracy was no panacea because it gave rise to the triumph of the Nazis in Germany. Ms. Ip has thrived under Hong Kong’s new order of repression and has little credibility while both supporting authoritarian government and making the case that democracy is flawed because it gives rise to dictatorship. She also displays ignorance by not knowing that what actually happened in the crumbling Weimar Republic was that the Nazis effectively staged a coup to seize power and rapidly abolished the election system.

Many Germans today appear to be tempted by Hitler’s distant cousins in the new extreme right but, having experienced decades of prosperity under democratic governments and having seen the nation’s standing in the world greatly restored, there is no real appetite for a return to dictatorship, let alone in the rabid form employed by the Nazis.

I may appear to be suffering an outbreak of complacency as voters around the world are abandoning mainstream democratic parties in favour of extremists who have nothing but contempt for liberal democracy. However, as we have seen in Korea, the leap from extremist rhetoric to actually suppressing democracy is a leap too far for people who have breathed the heady aroma of liberty.

Liberty allows them to moan and groan about bad government, castigate their rulers without fear of imprisonment and offers the enduring chance of replacing one government with another through the ballot box.

It is not starry-eyed idealism that reinforces a belief in the durability of democratic government but history which provides the evidence. Dictatorships, on the other hand, portray an impression of greater durability but events in Syria have once again demonstrated the fundamental weakness of authoritarian government.

It remains unclear what will come following the collapse of the Assad regime but the people’s joy over its demise is overwhelming. Meanwhile the millions of citizens around the world with the right to vote have consistently shown that they will not willingly relinquish it.