Have you ever stopped to consider what “the new norm” in the COVID pandemic could mean for your freedoms and your democracy that gives rise to them?
In the words of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, “democracy is not just an election, it is our daily life” – a life that for Bahamians has been altered in ways that might not be easily reversed whenever the current state of emergency ends.
With emergency restrictions plunging workers and business owners into financial insecurity, many have been far more focused on how to make ends meet and how to stay safe from COVID, than on the extent to which their safety in a weakened democracy has been compromised.
While necessary focus has been placed on protecting the country’s healthcare system, and public health protocols focus on protecting the country from widespread COVID-19 outbreaks, protecting the democracy has not figured nearly as prominently as is necessary to safeguard the Bahamian people well beyond a COVID state of emergency.
In our July 2020 piece, “Emergencies and power”, and our November 2020 piece “Unholy war”, we focused on why a state of emergency in a democracy ought to exist for only the shortest possible time and advanced the position that a protracted suspension of constitutional rights and departure from normal parliamentary oversight, were not necessary to adequately respond to the ongoing pandemic.
A March 2021 United States Council on Foreign Relations discussion paper on COVID-19 and its effect on inequality and democracy, asserted that COVID-19 fosters democratic regression.
The paper, which published a study on five large democracies including the United States and India, stated, “Recent leaders of these large democracies, like many of their peers in the COVID-19 era, have used the pandemic to expand their executive power.
“… All five have attacked institutions such as independent judiciaries, bureaucracies, civil societies, electoral apparatuses, and the media. These governments have also often stepped up attacks on norms and institutions during the pandemic when civil society groups have had more trouble holding demonstrations and citizens are distracted by their own reasonable fears for their health and their families.
“These five large democracies are symbolic of larger trends, as the pandemic has caused democratic regression in much of the world. Yet these countries’ trajectories carry special weight regionally and internationally because they head some of the largest democracies in the world.”
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
