Last night’s election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York city showed again what democracy is all about.
– He was opposed by President Trump, who called him a communist, and threatened to withdraw federal funding if he won
– He was opposed by the billionaires and influencers in New York who threatened to leave New York if he won
– He is a Muslim born in Uganda to Indian parents, the first Muslim to be elected mayor of NYC
– He was tagged an anti-Semite
– He is 34 years old, the youngest person to to be elected mayor in over 100 years
– He contested against the former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, a veteran politician backed by Trump
Despite all this, he won and won big: with over 50% vote, making over 2 million New Yorkers come out to vote for the first time in decades.
That is the true definition of democracy.
– No electoral commission determines who wins an election
– results are live and seen by everyone as they come in
– no electoral commission announces the results or winners – the media houses show the results and announce the winners based on the results.
– no “master strategist” uses any untoward means to determine the result of an election
– whoever the voters prefer becomes the winner
That was the same system that ensured that Barack Obama and Donald Trump became president despite all the issues raised against them.
The only sad part of this is that Mamdani cannot run for president of the USA because he was not born an American.
There is only one type of democracy in the world. When people want to justify nonsense like electoral fraud, intimidation and manipulation, they say: “Our democracy should not be measured by the standards of any country.
We should not copy any country. We need our home-grown democracy.”
Any country where someone or a group determines who wins an election rather than the voters themselves making that decision is not a democracy, no matter the name the country gives itself.
