Beyond Elections? Hope for Human Flourishing!

Elections, elections! What to do about them? Canada is well into another federal election, its fourth in seven years. It is an election that most Canadians don't want, and many may skip altogether. US President Barack Obama, with diminished popular support, announced this past week his run for a second term at a time when he faces challenges quite different from his first campaign for the president's office in 2008 including the determined agenda of a rascally Tea Party. Peru, with the fastest growing economy in Latin America (7% growth last year), is about to hold its next presidential election with a close field of candidates and a lead candidate , Ollanta Humala, who cozies up to and admires Venezuela's far left president, Hugo Chavez. Then there is the despot Robert Mugabe, in power for the past 31 years, 87 years old and in poor health, who is looking to run at least one more time soon while he has the health to campaign. His mother lived to be 100. Finally, there is the Arab Spring of 2011 with the enormous hope of hundreds of millions of people for democracy, especially among young Arabs, Muslims and Christians, in the Middle East: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and the Ivory Coast.

Elections and the great hope for the blessing of elections are on peoples' hearts and minds as a path to democracy and freedom. Beyond elections is the hope for human flourishing! Democracy is more than elections. In true democracies, elections are free and fair. Unlike the long, sad history of Mugabe's reign of terror in Zimbabwe for 31 years, opposition parties are not violently suppressed. People do not permanently disappear. Opposition candidates are not imprisoned. Beyond free and fair elections, democracies are characterized by freedom of the press, a freely, well informed populace, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. Without the whole package, democracy fails and falls into corruption and tyranny grounded in the rule of despots' whim. Freedoms of speech, of religion and worship, to gather and protest, of movement within one's country, and so many more are not possible. Democracy is a mockery. We see a mockery of democracy in Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Libya's Gadhafi, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Yemen's Saleh, so many more. Elections are greatly rigged by way of significant oppression and none of the other elements (free press, independent judiciary, rule of law, etc.) exist.

Hundreds of millions of people suffer under the will of a minuscule, yet powerful elite. The great hope is that the deplorable political conditions in so many countries are changing. So many countries struggling under the tyranny of ruthless despots have very young populations who are wired into the wider world through the internet: e-mail, twitter, face book, and other social network media. In cyber-cafes and by cell phones, there is an awakening to the possibility of a better way to live as a people. In particular, the Arab Spring represents that awakening. It is, as they say, a game changer. But it is not clear if the game will shift toward authentic democracy or a deeper, more aggressive tyranny and oppression as witnessed subsequently to the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. What hundreds of millions of people today yearn for is authentic democracy and peace. They desire respect for all people's rights to life, freedom, health and wholeness. When there is democracy and peace within a nation, and mutual trust and respect among nations, there is the possibility of human flourishing. We pray for these ends and for those living under oppression today whose hope is based in the increasing awareness that we have that for which they yearn. We pray, but we must also work for and commit ourselves to the ways in means by which others may be blessed by democracy and peace. Our work starts here at home making sure our democracy is strong, that we elect public servants who have servants hearts not only for our interests, but also for the interests of others throughout the world: for Palestinians and Israelis, North Koreans and South Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese, South Sudanese and North Sudanese, Ethiopians and Eritreans, Egyptians, Libyans, Iranians, and so on.

Democracy is not a perfect system by a long shot, but it has proven to be the best system. When guarded and supported, and when it fully flourishes in all its characteristics, it offers the best hope for the full flourishing of humanity. It has the potential to be foundational to the hope we find in Jesus Christ who said - "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly."