Is democracy working?
Looking at the headlines in the internet this morning makes depressing reading.
There has been joint survey by leading newspapers in the UK, Canada, Israel and Mexico, which shows that most of the people in these traditional allies of the USA think that George Bush is more of a threat to world peace than the leader of North Korea (Kim Jong-II) or the Iranian president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). North Korea and Iran are, of course, both members of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”.
Yes, the leader of the country which likes to think of itself as being the world’s leading example of democracy is seen by many, even in Israel, as being a very threatening person who has made the world more dangerous since he came to power. Here are the top three threats:
At the same time, the German magazine Spiegel is running it’s lead article on a poll by the state TV station, ARD, showing that only a minority (49%) here believes that democracy is working in Germany. The figure is down from 55% in a survey carried out in April this year by the EU and down 11% on the results of a survey in September 2005; it is the lowest value ever recorded in Germany. In the EU survey, the Germans were more satisfied with how democracy was working in their country than the Italians or French, although their satisfaction then was less that the average for all EU countries.