English Blog Post

To start, I agree that democracy creates stability in a society.

Ok. First, we have seen how other forms of government such as Communism have failed horribly in the past, like in the case of U.S.S.R, where the communist government fell into disarray after their leader, Joseph Stalin, died without a successor. This caused among other things, a bad economy, and decreased citizen welfare. For example, the country could not keep up with growing food consumption despite having its own agricultural industry, and had to import from other countries. Also, due to the economy being heavily towards export of raw materials such as oil, its economy was very vulnerable to global price shifts. This slump in economy also caused citizens to become poorer and thus unable to afford health treatment. One indication of that is the climbing death rate of citizens, about 10 per 1000 in 1983 compared to 7 per 1000 in 1964. These numbers were also far worse than those of the nearby non-Communist Central-European countries' levels. Eventually, this lead to the dissolution of the Communist Party. The U.S.S.R is now a federal state, with each state pracitising direct democracy.

While over here in Singapore, we had gained independence from colonial rule and we were under the democratic rule of the PAP, from 1963 to now. So far, they have been the ones that have won the elections everytime with landslide victories, although the opposition parties have had their share of wins. The similaties between both parties, even though they might have different ideas on how to run the district they're in charge of, is that when they have lost they do not stage rebellions or protests with its supporters to overthrow the party in rule. This I think is a sure sign of political stability in a country, something not seen in other coutries, such as U.S.S.R above.

Why is this so? Well, democracy means that the government is decided by the people who vote for those they want. The government then has the responsibility to give the people what they need, and then what they want. In the case of U.S.S.R, the government's general communist policies meant that everyone was poor, and didn't get much welfare. Also, this means most poeple were unhappy with the government, thus it was a matter of time that soon the government would be overthrown. Over here in Singapore, we the people have been living in rather good conditions, and the amount of povertised people has been rather low. This I think would explain why we have been quite content with our government.

Another factor to consider is the stability of life. In Russia, there were wars going on at the time the Communists were in power, and they repeatedly got involved with wars, examples include the failed peace treaty with Germany and declaring former allies US as enemys during the cold war; probably meant that civilians couldn't have been having a very peaceful time living there. On the other hand, we in Singapore have been busy establishing diplomatic ties with other countries, helping them out when needed and so on. All this to give others a good impression of us. This has paid off, since the only war Singapore has been involved in was World War 2, where we were captured by the Japanese, and we did not even provoke them to begin with! Since then, life here has been pretty peaceful. This I feel is good evidence that there is definite stability in the society.

In conclusion, a democratic government is needed for stability in a country, as policies, both foreign and local, will have an impact on the civilians. Adding on to that, in democracy the civilians themselves pick what they want for themselves. Although other forms of government exist as well, we can see here that democracy is a sure-fire way to create stability in a society.