Democracy, if it is true, should fulfill the needs of the people as well as be beneficial for mankind as a whole. The second condition is important because people by nature seek peace and harmony, which will be lasting only when the entire world is happy. Yet both these conditions remain a distant dream in today's world, in spite of Democracy existing in some form or other in most countries of the world. There must be a systemic flaw that makes Democracy so woefully inadequate to fulfil its task.

During elections at the local/state/national level, when we want to cast our vote for a candidate, we take into consideration two aspects. First, whether the party to which the candidate belongs to stands for policies and programs that are in tune with our needs. Secondly, whether the candidate is a person with integrity and would fulfill the task for which he/she may be elected.

The first aspect of noting the political party to which the candidate belongs is the predominant criterion that decides our vote in the present day; if the candidate is an independent, the past record of the candidate may influence the decision. The second aspect - the integrity of the candidate is much more important. This is however usually sidelined in the prevailing party-based political system. The integrity of the candidate can be surmised by the people only by what is known in public about the candidate. There is still no method to evaluate the integrity of a candidate in an in-depth manner through a reliable procedure during the process of election.

Political parties lay more emphasis on their ideology and agenda and the compliance of the candidate towards it; the integrity of the individual is secondary. The result has been that, throughout the world, we have Democracy in letter but not in spirit. The party candidate may appear ideal for all external appearances but his true inner nature gets revealed only after the election. People do not have any control over who is selected to be a party candidate to stand in the election. In the uncommon instance of a candidate being an independent, his reputation influences the voters; his inner nature remains hidden.

By the very process of election a candidate tends to become self-centered. Once elected, he is expected to think in terms of his party and his family or group which brought him up. Such a mindset inevitably leaves little room for impartial thought and action. In today's world filled with divisive and vested interests, nothing less than a selfless attitude that benefits everyone or at the least harms none, is required if there is to be peace and harmony in the society and the world. In other words 'spiritual correctness' is the need of our times.

So the fundamental requirement for True Democracy is that the process of election should test the integrity of the candidate in addition to other qualities. This will ensure that the candidate would fulfil the expectations of the voters in a wholesome manner by discharging his duties in a spiritually correct manner.

To some extent integrity of the candidate can be ensured by adopting true inner party democracy. When it comes to critical situations like deciding between 'party interest' or 'national interest', anybody within the party who stands by 'national interest' runs the risk of being dubbed as anti-party and may be sidelined. True inner party democracy is possible only if political parties themselves adopt the 'Triplet system' of selection that ensures selflessness as a essential quality for getting selected, as explained at: [worldtruedemocracyplatform.blogspot.com]

The existing political parties will not adopt such a selfless system so easily anywhere in the world. To stimulate the political parties into adopting the 'Triplet system', a World True Democracy Platform (WTDP) needs to be established, which would compete with the usual political parties in every election. The candidates posted by the WTDP should be selected through the 'Triplet system' from among those who register themselves at the WTDP. If the people are convinced that the candidates elected from this platform are qualitatively different from others by being selfless as well as competent, then that would make a big difference in every subsequent election.

Success of the WTDP would mean that a viable alternative to political parties is at last available to the people for selecting their candidates for election in an organized manner. Political parties would be forced to ensure that integrity gets the focus of attention since they may otherwise be ignored by the people, being no longer considered to be indispensable for Democracy to function.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2009 10:10PM by PVR.