Or rather how do you determine a country is democratic or not?

US have had their Trump elections. Loser of the popular vote is declared winner. Yaani, the minority have decided for the majority.

In UK, the High Court has ruled that the Brexit referendum is only advisory. Parliament will be the final decision making organ. Not the people. And yes, they could decide to stay in EU!

Me thinks hakuna demokrasia Brito na Stato!

True democracies (majority having their say) don't work in heterogeneous settings. For me all these systems are competitions, events that we need to engage in so that we don't go to war over resources or a certain prize. So whatever works for the contesting teams - but it must be agreed upon by all significant sides of the contest. It's like a football match... it has rules and a way to count scores. So you decide before hand that all balls that pass through the enclosure we call a goal post shall be counted and the one with most wins. You cannot later come an say...Oh.. I won because I had 90% possession, 50 shots at goal and you guys won by an own goal. I saw a tweet by someone who i really respect to the effect that

Ganering electoral votes was the contest... not popular votes. He won! clean! should California fell cheated? yes! but let them address that in the next election. Let them ask to get a better representation. Let them arm twist the establishment and push for it's interest. Saa hii Madam ako na 800k on top of Trump... let the 800k strong side figure out how to make sure their influence is felt in future elections.

@Wakanyugi, are you a 'Platonist' by any chance?

Sounds familiar? Sycophants, pls respond...

Hey!!!!... ....are your sure they call that democracy?

Hypocrisy of democracy!

The reality is that democracy is seriously flawed political enterprise. We need to stop treating democracy like a God. We need to stop using terms like democracy and freedom. Democracy is very easily corruptible. Susceptible to some of the worst forms of humanity as we have seen in trump election: illusion of choice, manufactured consent...

Noam Chomsky in his book: Manufacturing consent talks about how mass media works against the pple's best interest and essentially brainwashes the pple, indoctrinate them, so that they think they have the illusion of choice but in reality, they don't have an actual choice.

So yes, it is a tool, but it has serious cons.

In that case yes, you could say I am a Platonista. Where he uses the term 'form' I use 'pattern' - same difference.

The discussion we are having would seem to indicate that formism is not outdated at all

Democracy is an ideal in conceptual form - more real in our mind than outside it. Our frustration with the concept comes largely from the difficulty we have in reproducing it into the perceptual world of space and time, human relations and other 'imperfections' that attend Earthly reality.

But Plato would also say that the it is not in realizing democracy that we achieve greatness but rather in the striving towards the unattainable. The effort is more important than the reward.

That is the classic Jubilee definition of democracy, also known as 'kusema na kutender'. Your cynicism is valid.

To a hammer all problems look like nails! What we have is democracy in it's rawest form... it's called WINNER TAKES ALL or FIRST PAST THE POST. in the long run, First past the post always ends up with a two party system. A system driven by hate for the other guy/party. In Kenya that is bound to happen soon. People are already congregating around 2 parties and any 3rd party is considered a 'spoiled vote' - you may actually like the guy (KARUA for me in 2013) but you start thinking... how will @hardwood vote? and thus you change your vote driven not by liking Karua but by hating who @hardwood will vote for. We end up with akina dida not running or karua, Kiyapi, mudavadi and Kenneth being mezwad


There are alternative systems out there... especially in Europe! they have been able to hack this problem. there is the altenative vote (AV) system. Where people vote for more than one candidate. So you get a ballot and you rank them and state who is your number 1, number 2, number 3... upto the point you want. you can do only one or you can rank all the candidates. this is called the Alternative Vote. think of it as an instant run off - the rule is that you must have majority to win (50+1 in our case) and so @swenani likes Karua and can tolerate Raila. he puts 1 on Karua and 2 on Raila. when no one gets to 50%+1 - the voters who voted for the lowest ranked person (say Kiyapi) get examined and we deduce who they voted for as no. 2. if it's Raila - they are all added to Rao and if Rao gets to 50%+1 - he becomes president... instant run off!


The third system is the single transferable vote (STV) - in this system there are no primaries. Parties can have multiple candidates on the ballot. So JP can have Sonko, Wanjiru, Waititu, Kenneth e.t.c. and CORD can have Kisia and Kidero and Miguna would run as an independent. in a first past the post - JP would have "haribud Kura" by having multiple candidates on the ballot and Kidero would pita katikati yao. however the STV has an element of the Alternative vote (AV) where you must get to a threshold to get elected. if no one gets to that threshold the greatest loosers votes are caniblaized by their second choices. We end up with people who we really like or at least we had on our ballots.


there are other systems propotional representation systems - especially for parliamentary systems,


here is the mixed member propotional systems

Read my post! it explains it all!! Nyongo and his SDP run against Raila in 1997 akaonyeshwa moto, Orengo run against Raila in 2002 and wakaonyeshwa moto... so they have towed the line.