El Washington Post també defensa el referèndum d'independència de Catalunya

2014: The year we are reminded, yet again, that elections do not always equal democracy
By Adam Taylor
March 12 at 6:13 pm

Back at the start of 2014, the Economist noted something rather special about the year: There were 40 national elections scheduled for the next 12 months. Some 42 percent of the world was due to vote in what the publication said would be a "huge year for democracy" and potentially the largest amount of people voting ever.

Now we're a few months into this year, and it appears that estimate may have been a little low.

For example, this weekend, Crimea will vote on whether it should leave Ukraine and join Russia, and Ukraine itself is scheduled to have a vote May 25. There have been other big developments, too: In Egypt, a new decree was recently adopted that will likely allow Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to run in presidential elections, and in Syria, it appears that Bashar al-Assad, aware that his term in office is almost over, appears to have started campaigning for a summer election.

But is this democracy in action, really? Well, not exactly.

[...]

There are plenty of reasons to be glad that so many elections are taking place in 2014, of course; independence referendums in Scotland and Catalonia, for example, plus the fact that 814 million people will be eligible to vote in India. But we should remember that elections are not inherently democratic – and that a lot of elections in 2014 isn't necessarily a good thing.




El Washington Post també defensa el referèndum d'independència de Catalunya. El diferencia del cas de Crimea per explicar que les votacions no sempre són sinònim de democràcia