Mike Williams: Myanmar reminds us how lucky NZ is

Jacinda Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta in Havelock North in 2020. The Government is proposing making it easier to establish Māori wards in local Government. Photo / File

OPINION: The recent military coup in Myanmar that overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung Sun Suu Kyi is a timely reminder of how fortunate we are to live in a democracy and just how fragile this system of government can be, even in states where the system has seemed well established.

A long-time interest in just how our kind of government came about is a major reason I got involved in politics and it was a repeated theme in subjects I chose to study at school and university.

In recent weeks we have again been given pause to examine our own democracy through the government's proposal to make it easier to establish Māori wards in local government.

New Zealand's democratic development has a long and fascinating history.

A very first step in the formation of modern democracy occurred more than 800 years ago when the English King John was coerced into signing the Magna Carta in 1215.

This document amounts to the original limitation on autocracy and is a foundation stone of the individual human rights which, over many centuries, was to morph into the English democracy on which our own system is based.

Mike Williams. Photo / File

Democracy in the 20th century came to be associated with national wealth and economic success and via two world wars prevailed over despotic systems.

A system based on free will is probably not the most efficient way to run a government and Sir Winston Churchill said: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried."

New Zealand was granted self-rule by the New Zealand Constitution Act, an Act of the British Parliament passed in 1852, and our first elections occurred the following year.

We immediately began to chart our own democratic path with much more liberal qualification-to-vote rules than almost anywhere else and, in 1867, the establishment of four Māori Electorates.

The idea of extending the right to vote to an indigenous population in a settler colony was unprecedented anywhere in the world and it is worth noting that Australia only got around to conferring the vote on its Aboriginal people more than 100 years later.

New Zealand went even further and, in 1893, extended voting rights to women.

With Māori and women as established participants in New Zealand's government but not in the Australian colonies, it is unsurprising that we rejected the idea of joining the Australian Federation in 1900.

While Labour Party president somewhere in 2006, I experienced a month book-ended by two contrasting experiences touching on democracy as a form of government.

First, I was invited to be guest speaker at a biennial conference of the Indonesian Labour Party, held in Jakarta.

I had decided against attending, but Prime Minister Helen Clark got wind that the Indonesian President Yudhoyono would be there, and she thought my attendance would be of value to NZ, so I went.

I was booked into a hotel and noted a large public address system installed just beside the entrance.

This turned out to be where the ear-splitting and sleep-ending call to prayer was broadcast five times a day. Indonesia is overwhelmingly Muslim, though Hindus and Christians form significant minorities and discrimination appears not to be an issue.

The Indonesian Labour Party turned out to be one of dozens of political groupings in that country and although it had no seats in the Indonesian Federal Parliament, it did have representation in some of the 34 state parliaments.

Indonesia disproves the commonly held belief that the Muslim religion and democracy are somehow incompatible.

With a population of 270 million, Indonesia is the largest Muslim country, and it enjoys a vibrant and engaged democracy where fair elections are enthusiastically mounted on a regular basis and governments are voted in and out.

I was delighted to see democracy in action in Indonesia but was brought down to Earth a week after my return when I was asked to address a group of university students visiting from Russia.

These were very bright and articulate young people who seemed genuinely interested in the workings of New Zealand politics.

When we got chatting about democracy in Russia, a strange (to me) attitude emerged. These young people told me that Russia had a 1000-year history of autocracy and that "strong leadership" (that meant Putin) was needed for their huge homeland.

Real democracy, they believed, would not work for Russia - "it is just too big".

When I pointed out that there were many sprawling countries like Canada, Brazil and the USA where democracy worked well, they told me Russians were "not ready for it".

I hope this attitude is a legacy of the many stifling years of communism. It may pass – watch this space!