Rawiri Waititi's comments about the ‘tyranny of the majority’ was recognition that simply adding up votes and handing control to the group who gets the most is indeed dangerous
Opinion: Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi was criticised last week by Act leader David Seymour, and called “dangerous and confused on democracy”. For my part I think Waititi made some important points. There is nothing “liberal”, to use a favourite word of Seymour’s, about treating any question about the way the current democracy here works as “dangerous”. The better word is “vital”.
In remarks he has made inside and outside Parliament, Waititi has noted the potential for western democracy to become a “tyranny of the majority”. Although it is not obvious from the Act press release objecting to the terminology, it comes from the 19th-Century writer Alexis de Tocqueville, observing the tendency for democracy in the United States to lead to that outcome.
READ MORE:
* MMP system is complex and secretive
* MMP and my part in the downfall of First Past the Post
* Quarter of a century of our MMP voting system
* The MMP dilemma: are you the lap dog or the tail?
He was an astute, if aristocratic, observer. Some other quotes from him I like with relevance to today include:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” We might be past that point.
No one should be fooled by the democracy of three-yearly elections based on one person one vote. Not when between elections vastly different ability to influence events accrues to different parts of society. Not when campaigns (aka political marketing) are financed so inequitably that the candidates of privilege are so advantaged
“I do not know if the people … would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.” Gender blind by today’s standard but makes you wonder.
De Tocqueville was an elitist but we should not be blinded to some of his insights by that characteristic. He recognised that simply adding up votes and handing control to the group who gets the most was indeed “dangerous”.
Hence societies have recognised that protecting minority rights is an equal characteristic of genuine democracy. One might include, as I do, recognition of indigenous rights or Treaty-created rights in that category. Without such rights one can readily get what looks like a democracy but is in fact a tyranny. If you do not believe that, or the flexibility available to users of the term “democracy”, have a look at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, inter alia.
Equally no one should be fooled by the democracy of three-yearly elections based on one person one vote. Not when between elections vastly different ability to influence events accrues to different parts of society. Not when campaigns (aka political marketing) are financed so inequitably that the candidates of privilege are so advantaged.
Not when education and information and social participation is so unequally distributed. You do not need much more than a rudimentary understanding of history to recognise that elites have managed to sustain their power within the “democratic” framework very nicely, thank you.
I reckon Waititi does us all a favour to blow a hole in that façade. It is something well worth questioning. I made the point in an article during the week about our election campaign that it was showing no sign of resolving any of the really important issues facing the country. Helmut Modlik, the chief executive of Te Runanga o Toa Rangatira, concurred: “Regardless of who controls the Treasury benches post-election, we cannot expect transformative improvement in our society until our democracy, its institutions and machinery of government are fundamentally improved.”
Modlik is working with other local body interest groups and academic people in a group called Re-Shape, which is seeking to commence a public conversation about such issues before and after the election. My own view is that we cannot depoliticise such a political issue but the very process underlines that a real democracy is not reduced to one vote every three years.
If we are going to have a successful society and economy we must adapt to changing conditions. There is no reason to think political parties that have failed in the past or institutions that have failed in the past will succeed in leading such adaptation.
I think the nature of this election campaign is reinforcing this. Any reasonable approach with depth and richness would include indigenous thought of tangata whenua, and the wider voices of the other cultures making up tangata tiriti. It is not resolved by an election that leads to a “we won, you lost, eat that” conclusion, let alone an indecisive version.
Waititi is right.
