We Hate It When Our Democracies Become Successful

First up, yes, the title is yet another Morsi/Morrissey joke.  Admittedly, they're getting old.  I mean, I like bad indie rock puns as much as anyone, and even I'm tired of them.  I guess I'm just saying, that joke isn't funny anymore.  Damn! I did it again!

Anyway, the reason I'm thinking about Morsi is this article I read in the Waterloo Record, titled "Morsi Is The Arab World's Mandela" by Tawakkol Karman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Now, that just doesn't sound right. She praises Morsi for not resorting to violence.  That's high praise considering she had been one of the many calling for Morsi's resignation (just not his forcible removal.)  Though her claim that "not a single one of his political opponents were jailed" is a bit of an exaggeration; he merely threatened to arrest them.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, and the fall of Communism, we're starting to come to terms with the fact that there is more to Democracy than free and fair elections.  There has to be a respect for the system on all sides too.  This is one of the surprising things I got out of political science classes in university: every country has some sort of shocking but never-exploited loophole in their government.  I knew Canada's Governor General theoretically has dictatorial powers.  But did you know the members of America's Electoral College don't have to vote for the candidate their state elected?  For a democracy to work, there has to be a common belief that the system works well enough that hijacking it isn't worth it.  And there has to be trust on all sides that no one will try to fix the system in their favour, or else everyone will try to pre-emptively fix it for themselves.

And that's where Mandela stands above Morsi: given the chance to rebuild his country, he encouraged reconciliation and the building of a fair, workable country.  In doing so, he vaulted South Africa past decades of pseudo-democratic retribution.  Morsi used his government to build a country in the Muslim Brotherhood's image, which would have led to vengeance by their opponents in the years to come.  He's better than Mubarak, but not nearly the leader Karman thinks he is.