Democracy and its discontent
From Le Monde Diplomatique, the novelist Jose Saramago calls for a reinvention of today's democracy, noting that while democracy has often been touted as the least bad of the systems of government, "No one seems to realise that resigned acceptance of the least bad is a brake on the search for something better." Saramago laments the fact that the poor are called to elect leaders, but are never called to govern. Elections in today's democracy, according to him, are more like wholesale abdication of civic responsibility rather than genuine exercises in political choice.