Recent protests on the streets of Bishkek and Bangkok are warnings to us here in Nepal about the dangers of democratic decay, the threats of reversal and backsliding.
The rise of the red shirts in Thailand culminated in hand-to-hand combat on Saturday that left 22 dead. In Kyrgyzstan last week at least 100 people were gunned down in an uprising that sidelined a hated regime. In other resource-rich former Soviet Central Asian 'stans', totalitarian Soviet communism has been replaced not by democracy, but by rapacious oligarchs. Across the world, democracy is numerically in retreat: there have been more setbacks to freedom than progress.
Some would argue that it is the Thais who should learn from us, not the other way around. The street protests that marked the beginning of our transition from a monarchy to a republic were relatively non-violent. Things are behind schedule, we have a messy political deadlock, but at least we are moving in the right direction.
Freedom is an absolute (one can't be partly free) and an inalienable right. But ever since the Philippines in 1986, we have seen that the restoration of democracy through people power is not the end of a process, it is the beginning. If we become complacent, the euphoria of democracy is soon replaced with disillusionment and despair as the new rulers begin to emulate the tyrants they replaced. Democracy doesn't come with a warranty card, it has to be protected through vigilance and accountability.
Elections are the process by which we choose the most honest, efficient managers to run a country for a given period. But, as we saw in Kyrgyzstan, elections cannot be the sole criteria for legitimacy. The Thai debacle, too, raises a question as old as Athenian democracy itself: how to protect the nation and people from those they have elected? History is replete with examples of leaders who, once elected to office, proceeded to dismantle the very institutions they used to get to power in order to indefinitely extend their mandates.
Fortunately for us in Nepal, there seems to be an emerging consensus at the top level of the triumvirate that lords over us that there is no alternative to a national government during the constitution-drafting process. They are now putting the necessary legal provisions into place to postpone the statute deadline till 28 November, and hopefully within a month we will have a new all-inclusive government.
Inaugurating an international conference on democracy in Jakarta this week, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who spent six years in solitary confinement, said there were two kinds of political leaders in Asia today: ones that grow old in their jobs and others that grow old in jails. He paid tribute to the world's most noted elected prisoner of conscience, Aung San Suu Kyi.
In his keynote address, Anwar said he realised two things while in detention: "Democracy needs patience, and democracy needs hope. Despair is the enemy of democracy."
Here's to hoping we don't run out of patience in 2067.