Voters globally want democracy

Democracy isn’t dead. It isn’t even dying. It was common late last year among the “chicken little” pundits to predict, in their year-end pieces, that 2024 was the year that liberal democracy would be forced to its knees.

- ROBIN SEARS

India, Indonesia, an array of European countries would all see a triumphant ride to victory by autocratic leaders, given the growth of right-wing populism and/or racism or good old corruption.

It didn’t happen. Indian voters smacked their wannabe autocrat Narendra Modi, cutting a major slice off the prime minister’s parliamentary power. Indonesian voters may not have liked the way the outgoing president put the thumb on the electoral scales in favour of his son, but they pushed aside radical Islamist voices at the same time. Then Polish voters threw out their angry populist government.

Of course there was no global clean sweep in favour of moderation. But hundreds of millions of voters exercised their right to vote and they mostly rejected the siren calls of the extreme right. Even the European elections were only partial victory for those forces, despite pollsters promise of a populist landslide across the continent.