The person they picked is 73 year old Sushila Karki, who used to be a Cheif justice of the Supreme Court until she retired at age 65, and is the only woman to have ever held that position. She is also now the first and only female to run the country. The protests that overthrew the Nepali government this past week were started to protest corruption in government, and Karki is known for being fiercely against corruption as a judge. She was sworn in on Friday. Good luck to her. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o
It tries to explain the circumstances where a coup such as this can lead to democracy.
Key interesting example include Portugal in 1974 ... and the American Revolution against the British.
It’s happened before and it could well happen again here. My heart goes out to the protestors. May they fill the power vacuum with strong leaders who can make their country better for future generations.
Wouldn't it be best for the country to be leaderless, with no laws being made and all existing government departments continuing their work under the same set of budgets and instructions as before until a new leader is selected by the election department?
Ie. The goal of lawmakers should always be to, at any given point, have a set of laws such that the country will continue for as long as possible with no further laws.
Ie. Perhaps do budgets by percentage of GDP rather than fixed amounts.
Outside the comfy first world, the bar for government sanity can get extremely low.
Therefore activists need suggesting a representative of the groups. IMHO a private voting is fine in this case.
1) You could make digital elections secure with issued digital IDs, and simply recording everyone's vote and it would be easily auditable.
But no one wants elections where (the contents of) your vote is recorded somewhere.
So 2) You use your digital ID to be able to vote once, but if you're no longer connected to your vote, it would be much more susceptible to tampering if you can't establish a double blind chain of custody of the votes, which is what expensive in person voting is doing very well.
The first option would be great if you could somehow guarantee a corruption free future of your country where no one will come after you for your vote (hint: you can't).
I’m sure there are other obstacles to surmount, but if that system works, you could have a digital id, use it to vote every time, and audit your own vote without anyone else knowing what you voted.
My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.
How is one faction holding an internal vote to impose rule on the rest of the people, who have no representation, anything at all like a democracy?
It was an open discord server that anyone sufficiently motivated with an internet connection could join. So not representative of everyone, but obviously more democratic than if the military had just appointed someone by themselves
(“democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." etc)
I have no skin in this game, but I get the general line of thought.
Discord is a spectacularly bad fit for that, it was probably only used because the timetable was short and "it was there" and "everyone already had it".
I don't see that argument at all. What was so democratic about it? Violent overthrowal of the government may sometimes be justified, but it is not an act of democracy.
I really like this kind of conversation because as I read peoples comments I see where some of the obstacles are.
If the format is to be sustainable, they will need to find or found a different platform.
