Non-democratic regimes and dictatorships are continually drilled into us as wrong. Yet talking to friends living in Fiji during the coup, they believed that most people were happy with Bainimarama in power. Although he was not properly (from our democratic eyes) brought into power, his actions as leader were beneficial to the many of the people in Fiji and this was shown when democratic elections were finally held in 2014 and Bainimarama was voted in. I just wanted to see what your thoughts were on the situation;
If you're not democratically elected, are you automatically a bad leader?
Was Bainimarama a good leader for Fiji despite forcefully taking power?
Would you he was a good leader or more that he was just better than most dictators?
In my opinion, I think he definitely should have taken the democratic route to power (would have saved him from a lot of criticism) however when he did come into power he was good for the people. I would say that while technically he was a dictator, he was not a bad dictator as we usually imagine them to be.
Robert - most dictators have some genuine popular support; as I noted early in the course, even people as horrible as Hitler or Stalin were genuinely popular for some of their time in power. And some authoritarian regimes do quite well by some metrics (we have noted in this course Singapore, China post Mao, and some others), even if some do horrible things and impoverish their people.
ReplyDeleteBut then what? Some democratically elected leaders are also popular and respected, and some democratic regimes also do quite well by many economic and social metrics. In social life, exceptions to every rule exist; this does not mean that in general we would want to encourage political leaders to take power via coup, and there is much evidence that people who come to power via coups (e.g., Gaddafi, Ongania, Pinochet) are not particularly better than people who come to power via regular election. Not every dictator is bad, but if most are likely to be bad (e.g., likely to personalize and concentrate power) then it matters little whether some particular random dictator happens to be good.
It's also important to note that "most Fijians were happy with Bainimarama" doesn't mean "all Fijians were happy with him." He represented a particular group of people, and intervened in a particular conflict between people representing Indo-Fijians and people representing native Fijians. It's a good thing that he turned out to be a skillful leader and politician, and apparently quite popular, but he could easily have turned out very differently.
Very true, lots of dictators have been supported by their people but yes this is usually only a part of the population.
DeleteWhat I find different with Fiji was that the Bainimarama was not killing hundred of it's citizens or starting great wars so I feel like he can not be thrown into the same class as someone like Hitler or Stalin.
There's no denying he was a dictator but I think dictators should be measured on a scale of sorts based on how the people perceive him/her and how he treats the people.
Just my feelings towards the topic, this wasn't supposed to be a statement or anything just gauging people's opinions :)
Robert, yes, you are totally right - I didn't mean to say that he should be compared to Hitler or Stalin. He's definitely a much more benign leader!
DeleteThe point I was sort of trying to make is that there is a difference between a leader (which may, for idiosyncratic reasons, turn out good or bad) and a system (that encourages or discourages people from acting in particular ways). Generally speaking, taking power by means of coups is a bad thing for a country, though there are always exceptions.