Session 6-Totalitarianism or Democracy?

After world war II, the  world was divided into two regimes, Democracy and Totalitarianism. 

Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private sector. Totalitarianism is mostly considered a 'bad form of politics'. While, democracy is a system of government by eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. It is also referred to as western polyarchy.

Although democracy is considered better of the two, it has its own cons. Right to freedom of speech is one of the most prominent characteristic of democracy. Consider Pakistan for example, everything portrayed on the media is considered valid without evidences but people speaking bitter truths are not allowed to speak. Take for example ARY News, ignoring which political party they support, showed to public many proofs against the government and what happened? Their channel was banned. Where does the right to freedom of speech go?

Similarly, fair trials are not given to common people. And there are countless such examples. Hence democracy is not always suitable, especially in developing countries where literacy rate is considerably low.

Totalitarianism may be a better option in Pakistan. The fact that majority of Pakistani population is not educated, they might not be able to make sound decisions for themselves and Pakistan. 

In democracy, big and sensitive decisions take long times to get approved by the legislature. Whereas in totalitarianism, decisions can be made in  a split of second. Huge decisions that are threatening to national security can not wait. For example, when discussions were being done whether or not to carry out operation in waziristan, federal government was taking too much time to make decision. The opponents were continuously carrying out attacks. Here, we needed a swifter response. Then the army chief gnrl. Raheel Shareef gave orders to start bombing in terrorist areas. This might be a small scale totalitarian approach. Considering dictatorship and totalitarianism almost same, the eras of dictators in Pakistan have "usually" been better than that of democrats. 

Though the fear of not getting a genuine leader is always there in totalitarianism, democracy also does not guarantee prosperity. There should be a middle way of governing the state.

As Plato and Aristotle also viewed democracy as a system of rule by the masses at the expense of wisdom and property.