Opinion | Despite the Trump impeachment and Brexit sagas, 2019 was a good year for democracy

Messy as democracy is, it still works. It is preferred by many around the world to all other political alternatives. Democracy’s supporters have, thus, proven wrong commentators who claim that it is in recession or, worse, dead. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared, “The era of liberal democracy is over.” He may be right as to the word “liberal”, but not “democracy”, especially not national democracy.

Democracy can be frustrating, even annoying, when political parties founded on competing ideologies fight against each other. Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and impeachment, Israel going to the polls for the third time in a year, anti-government street protests in Bolivia, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Spain, Sudan, Tunisia and elsewhere around the world, are cases in point.

In the United Kingdom, the English and Welsh voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm their 2016 Brexit vote to leave the European Union, notwithstanding the political elites’ and government bureaucrats’ determination to remain in the European Union and calls for a new mandate from the people. The Scots voted to remain in the EU and Northern Ireland is torn between the Republic of Ireland and Britain but looks like it will reunite with the republic to the south, bringing about new troubles in its wake. All these are based on people’s will.

An equally telling display of democracy in action is in the United States. The House of Representatives has now impeached US President Trump, who had been threatened with impeachment from the day he took office.