Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-07-Speech-4-193"
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"en.20050707.28.4-193"2
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"Mr President, we in this Chamber have spoken about Zimbabwe many times now, and everything that could have been said has been said. I do not now intend to repeat what out resolution says; I only wish to say that democracy is a challenging process which requires effort. We cannot even take for granted that it exists where people have sworn to uphold it. Perhaps we need a completely new profession, that of ‘democracy engineer’, to examine the weak points in a society’s structures and conduct an impartial quality control assessment of democracy.
President Mugabe, a former freedom fighter and national hero, has degenerated into a dictator, who guards his own power jealously, and a criminal, and this needs to be analysed. When, a few years ago, we were in Zimbabwe as election observers, we could only wonder at Mugabe, who had the nerve to proclaim during the election that the government would remain, whatever the result. How does such arrogance come about?
This former fertile African model country is now in a state of chaos. Now its economic structures have disappeared and the country’s plight is worsening the whole time. What is that slow slide from democracy to dictatorship? One keyword is law and order, a condition of the social contract. When he incited people to occupy land illegally, instead of carrying out a controlled land reform himself Mugabe did away with law and order in the country and thus destroyed the viability of its social core. There is also a sequel to this: now Mugabe is using hunger and misery as a weapon against his own people, and is feeding nationalism and blaming colonialism to conceal his own crimes. What is more, by crushing the opposition he is destroying the basis of democratic society.
For democracy to function, rulers need to be aware of just how dangerous they can be. The possibility of becoming corrupted by power comes from within. The philosopher and theologian, Niebuhr, hit upon a reason for man’s dual nature: our capacity for good makes democracy possible, and our inclination to do bad makes it necessary. Only true democracy guarantees that new faces will replace people who have been corrupted by power.
President Mugabe, for the sake of your people, it is time for you to go."@en1
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