Hossam Badrawi Official Website
If we go back to the history of social or political revolutions, we cannot see a movement that is believed to be a “human rights” movement in any of the meanings of this phrase as we understand it in the present era. Perhaps among them were the so-called democratic movements in Greece, in which he interpreted the use of the word democracy as a movement of peoples and human rights, but it is not so even in its verbal connotations. She was elected, and her participation in the election was not a recognition of a human right in which individual people are equal, but rather a recognition of the tribe and to prevent its opposition from serving in the army.
The Greeks and the Romans had successive types of democratic governments that did not have a principle on which to base them other than that it had practical plans to ward off sedition and attract loyalty from the conscripts to the army and fleet from among the tribesmen and the owners of industries.
I will metaphorically call this first generation democracy.
As for the human and electoral rights that arose in Western democracy in the mid-twentieth century, they gradually generalized according to the needs of the electorate. Workers in industrialized countries obtained them before the farmers acquired them, and women obtained them after they became workers in factories on behalf of soldiers in the war, and people of color obtained them. In the United States, after the state was forced to serve their services in society and in the armies gradually in the two world wars, and different peoples gained them as a result of mutual pressures and conflicts between classes to reach a specific political formula acceptable to all parties.
I will metaphorically call this second generation democracy.
As for human rights that are recognized in principle and not practical plans dictated by equality of power between sects and the masses of voters, they are represented by an unimaginable human democracy without the elements of equality, individual responsibility, and the establishment of governance based on shura and constitutions with well-defined limits and consequences… These are the elements that we advocate for. As general principles, they are not compelled by an electoral reality or service in the armies, but rather represent a real belief in the way of justice in governance in recognition of the rights of citizens, regardless of their educational level or social position.
I will metaphorically call that third generation democracy.
But now, as I look at Western democracy, and what is applied in the countries of the world under the name of democracy, I find a lot of confusion of concepts, coercion of the powers granted to governments, and sometimes social injustice to classes of peoples who are not able, with their knowledge and capabilities, to obtain real equality of opportunities as we claim and say .
The more educated, the wealthier, and the more open to the world, gets the opportunity, and the gap between citizens gradually increases, and the opportunities for human development that we seek from good governance are often lost.
This prompted me to put it on my social media page, in which I say, “How does the one we choose control and oppress the one who chose him, knowing that whoever chooses him can change his choice and that he is subject to the will of the one who chose him?” How can those who pay their salaries and owe their position underestimate those who pay their value and give them their jobs, unless the system is inefficient and does not reflect the reality of the balance of power?
Peoples are stronger than their rulers without the need for revolutions or demonstrations if they use their rights to choose at the time of choice.”
I received dozens of responses and interventions, some of which I share with you and ask the reader to communicate and express his opinion, so that we may reach the fourth generation democracy, as I call it metaphorically.
