Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Essence of Righteousness in Mordern Democracy

When I am reading Dr. Lao Mong Hai of Hong Kong about his perspective relating religious figures that Majority has always persecuted minority; his example of Jesus was crucified to death in the cross by major Jews, or Jews were massacred by major Germans led by Nazi..etc ; and other dictatorianism in every communist country has caused the new paradigm shift in creating new civilized society called DEMOCRACY which constitute of pluralism, free market, diversity, state of law and human rights respect(minority)...etc

However, I can see that the term Majority and Minority in here is not holistic because it seems only produces more pejorative and biase in social competition.

According to Dr. Lao, when we look at Buddha; his teaching and principle don't depend on majority or minority, but depends on righteousness which is called Dhamma. Aritotle, Socrates or Johnson...etc had also valued the importance of this principle.

So ideal democracy would be the regime which is Righteousnes, Dhamma or State of Law is the essential principle. I can see the heritage of Buddha with this Righteousness Democracy has been essentially implementing in most liberal and developed democratic countries. Law enforcement, respect the indigenous minority, respect the talent of individuals, subsidizing the weak citizens(welfare system) such as seniors, amputees, widows/widowers, unemployed citizens....etc

When we look all these core principles at Cambodia - it is almost zero. However, we don't want to blame the Cambodian government that has just recovered the country from year of zero. But until now, it is 28 years; the advancement is critically under poor condition. The debt of international loan is increasing while the law enforcement of Cambodia is frequently manipulated by the leaders. Consequently, the poverty condition is still haunted within this 28 years...but what we are worrying is the social gap which is critically under its worse progress.

We can conclude the current Cambodia disapprovement through her two conditions:

1. Cambodia is still far beyond the standard of social equality. This shortcoming comes from the loosing practice of Law Enforcement. UN tremendously helped to adopt the national constitution, but the respect of law by national leaders/powerful men is really disorganized. Especially, the three different core institutions in the nation: the Executive, the Judiciary and the Assembly. Ideal democracy and ideal leaders who have good intention to develop the country will try to seperate these three core institutions to work effectively and independently. But Cambodia is not like that. Judiciary and Assembly institution are just the tool for Executive to use for their central absolute power. Johnson said "it is normal for leaders who desire and thirst for power to manipulate other two institutions to accomplish their ambition, but it is their own conscience that is lacking of human being's heartedness to serve the weak people."

With this principle of law enforcement is not existing only in democratic regimes, all communist regimes are also bolstering the national law for the ideal of their nation. But they have different institution such as in Vietnam and China, they have only one state-party centralizing the power. But their conscience to serve and to save the weak people is admirable.

2. 28 years, Cambodia is still under the same leaders and party. We have not seen any integration of CPP to advance herself with new modern righteousness democracy. Same leaders, same system and same principle in CPP doesn't assure the willingness to implement democracy as well as the prosperity in Cambodia. With this concept, Cambodian people shall experience longer social gap, discrimination in front of law, poverty, injustice, dictatorship, no respect of minority and talent of individuals, and the suffering will last within the unpredictable period of time in the future.

All the Best!

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