Cyprus-Forum.com

[Simon]

Turkey is yellow! What a surprise.

[souroul]

Turkey is yellow! What a surprise.

noooooooooooo simon, they ARE green. that map is full of shit

[miltiades]

democracy is the gift of civilization to the people of the world. Without democracy we have dictators , autocrats and worst of all bloody theocratic regimes.
Long live our democracy that gives me the right to believe and say what ever I wish.My father , under British rule in 1937 was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment by the British for the crime of being a Communist. Tefkros Anthias was amongst those that suffered the consequences of standing up and proclaiming his commitment to his beliefs.
Democracy is the most precious gift that the human race can bestow on future generations , those who reject the ideals of democracy are degenerates inflicted with cancerous ideological perceptions of prehistoric fundamental concepts.

[Pyrpolizer]

Yes Sotos he was not re-elected. However for a total of 5 years he was acting against the will of those who elected him. According to our Democratic system we could do nothing about it, nor force him to resign,nor take our mandate back.

Do you think that was "democratic" ????

[cypezokyli]

Yes Sotos he was not re-elected. However for a total of 5 years he was acting against the will of those who elected him. According to our Democratic system we could do nothing about it, nor force him to resign,nor take our mandate back.

Do you think that was "democratic" ????

these are the virtues of representative democracy.
or else we would have had no president and just have a referendum for every decision. this way we would have pure democracy and no decision taken. its a matter of choise i guess. but the fact that in most places of the world, presidents are a elected for a certain number of years (irrespective of their popularity) , tells us that there might be a sound reason for that. dont you think ?

in that way, in all democracies in the world, where there is a change in goverment (short before the elections) turn into undemocratic since obviously they donot represent the will of the people!!!

i didnot vote for clerides but i dont see how he was acting against the will of those that voted for him! let me remind you that he received almost 40% in the elections, and if you add markides votes on that, it is almost a 45%. these are percentages that DYSI cannot even dream about. the majority of people who voted for clerides in 98 did so in 2003.

now that he lost the elections, after 10 years of governing, is something purely democratic. monopolising rousfet for that long is something that all the rest couldnt possibly take

[Pyrpolizer]

He,he,he
The point of discussion is not whether we should choose "democracy" over another system, but whether "democracy" is a perfect system, whose basics are sort of a doctrine.
I support they are not, and most aspects of democracy are subject to variations towards a better or worse but still "democratic" system.

As for the percentages of Klerides may I remind you that he first got elected to presumably burry the Gali ideas, then re- elected to bring the S300 missiles. On the first issue he worked behind the back of his own people for something worse, as for the S300 missiles, well he simply lied.

[cypezokyli]

so ?!!! tpap was elected to bring "allagi". did you see any changes around you ?
and precisely , that is my point. he lied and people at very high percentages still voted for him. and the reason is simple: people dont vote having the cyppro in mind.

imo, clerides ideas and past were there for everybody to read (despite his election slogans) . he was considered a moderate since the 1960s. he was even considered (and was) more moderate than makarios. the fact that in the end, those who wanted to overthrow makarios because he was a moderate ended up voting for clerides, proves once again their level of stupidity.


(even koutsou voted for him, but became his worse critic, after he was refused a ministry position )

[souroul]

clerides wanted to solve the cy prob no matter what. he was all about the annan plan and if he got the extra 6 months he asked we would've been living by the annan plan. thank god that didnt happen

so ?!!! tpap was elected to bring "allagi". did you see any changes around you ?
and precisely , that is my point. he lied and people at very high percentages still voted for him. and the reason is simple: people dont vote having the cyppro in mind.

imo, clerides ideas and past were there for everybody to read (despite his election slogans) . he was considered a moderate since the 1960s. he was even considered (and was) more moderate than makarios. the fact that in the end, those who wanted to overthrow makarios because he was a moderate ended up voting for clerides, proves once again their level of stupidity.


(even koutsou voted for him, but became his worse critic, after he was refused a ministry position )

[G.Man]

democracy is an illusion to keep the people happy..

in reality its an elected dictatorship

[Piratis]

For a system to be really democratic it should at least have the essential elements:

the essential elements of constitutional government--majority rule coupled with individual and minority rights, and the rule of law

Without that any system could be labeled democratic, even the one of North Korea, but that would be nothing more than a meaningless label.

Democracy is not perfect and there is no perfect democratic system. Democracy is just the best from all other systems. How good a democratic system is depends on each system. Not all democratic systems are equally democratic.

For example the system in the USA is formed in such a way that it makes it extremely difficult for anybody other than a Republican or Democrat to become the president. For that to happen the candidate should be billionaire, and even then it will be extremely difficult.

In other countries they have systems were the required % to get a seat in the parliament is very high, 10% for example. In this case you can have several "small" parties that all together could add to more than 50% of the votes and yet they would not get a single seat in the parliament. Something like that happens in Turkey.

In Greece I remember that until some years ago each Government was changing the election law a bit before the elections in the way that they believed would suit them better!

What I want for Cyprus is the most democratic system possible. For me best elections system would be:

1) President elected directly by the people and every vote to count (unlike the USA that you can get less votes and in some weird way become the president).

2) That each party will get a proportional amount of parliament seats based on the votes the party received. (e.g. 5% votes = 5% of seats, 2% votes = 2% of seats, 35% votes = 35% of seats etc)

But democracy should go beyond the elections system, and if we could finally agree that democracy is what we all want, then we could discuss ways that citizens could participate more effectively in the decision making (not just once every 4-5 years) and how we could better monitor what our government does. I think that fully utilizing the internet for these purposes could make a country much more democratic, and especially for Cyprus with less than one million people, we could even have a representative democracy that is as close to direct democracy as possible.

Therefore, democracy is not perfect, but it is up to us to make it as good as possible. The fact that out there there are not so good democracies and "democracies", doesn't mean that we should have a system other than democracy, or try to compete with some of those "democracies" for the worst "democracy" ever created.