It has been good to read Saihou Sanyang’s extremely informative essay on the above topic, the essay taking a full 4-pages of the Daily Observer this week. Mr. Sanyang ended with an Einstein-style formula for Good Governance:

“My formula for Democratic Good Governance (DGG):

DGG(cds + vcs + ips) over t

Where

DGG means democratic good governance.

cds means capable democratic state.

vcs means vigorous civil society,

t means time. and

ips means innovative private sector (QED).”

This formula scares me abit because it looks as if it could be applied to split the atom, but infact it is simpler than that. Or is it? Maybe getting good democratic governance is much tougher than splitting the atom! All our religious texts and constitutions going back to the beginning of time are about trying to find a formula for governance that could make most people happy.

Maybe again therein lies the rub. Maybe  we cannot make most people happy. Most people would probably always be grumpy with whatever system of governance we have in place. Maybe what we should look for is a system which most people find tolerable, a system in which the rulers are not so oppressive and corrupt as to lead to rebellion and revolution.

I think the secret of governments that call themselves “democratic” is knowing how far they can go in oppressing the people. It is not a sense of good democratic principles that makes a George Bush a good democrat, it is just a commonsense fear of how far the people can be pushed. It was the rebellion of the American people that, for example, led to the “loss” of the Vietnam War - and might equally lead to an American retreat from Iraq.

As for Mr. Saihou Sanyang’s formula, being a simple man, I would replace it with a simpler one: (B+ P=S)xI where B=Bread, P=Peace , S=Stability and I=Indefinitely which all means that: if you give the people bread and peace you can govern for as long as you wish. If people are hungry and fearful, beware a revolution.