Spotlight: Deutschland

Shooting from the hip here again, thought i might blog some more to keep up my new-found momentum and since i had just slept 4 hours and disrupted my sleep routine for the night. Germany has successfully demonstrated the failings of democracy for the world in their recent elections, much to the ire and anguish of many Germans, I believe, if anyone still hold belief that their politicians possess enough competency to rescue the country.

Is democracy still relevant in today's world? That is a multi-layered question that depends on national contexts. A simplistic conclusion is that democracy has increasingly created politically polarized nations, see the Red-Blue divide in America, the "blame-game" played out in the halls and corridors of power in Congress and Senate in the wake of Katrina. In the case of Germany, we have Angela Merkel winnin mathmatically but failing to muster any form of ruling mandate over her opponent Gerhard Schroeder. She is most likely to end up joining arms in a "strange bedfellows" relationship with Schroeder and form an impotent government that will spend more of taxpayers' money in a very public verbal debate on words with little or no action being done to improve the welfare of the nation. If developed, First World and relatively industrialized and well-educated nations like US and Germany have succumbed to the democracy malaise, what chance does democracy hold for less developed and less-educated nations where the social facilities for democracy are more lacking and people lack the judgmental abilities to make the right decisions for their countries' futures? Read Iraq and Afghanistan, you do not hand power to the people, although it might seem better than handing them to dictatorial despots or terrorist-friendly regimes. However, as we can see, the situation in both countries are really a result of errant US foreign policy makers who seem to prefer internal chaos contained within the countries, rendering them harmless to US national interests, than an agenda-driven country that poses a national threat to US.