If anything we have a conflict between people who want the country to be more Catholic and the ones who want it to be less Catholic, and a secondary push against any government because people seem to believe that entrepreneurs are force of good that is being murdered by the Evil Government through means like taxation.
Democracy is strong here - people are being indoctrinated in it since early childhood, and it's especially effective since we have the boogeyman of comunist USSR to scare them with.
Now, it's debatable if a "representative democracy" would seem to offer that, but I wonder that myself from time to time...
The thing is that true patriot and authoritarian government for a decade can fix many problems that democracy cant handle. Once again - not everywhere though.
In Libia for example most people loved Kadaffi. Yet, he was removed by revolution that would surely fail if not for major help from west. Kadaffi while violent man, managed to make Libia in to blooming example of African country that can distribute prosperity to majority of people.
Let us check Singapore - did it work? Sure. Was it bad for people? Not really. Obviously there will be some affected by strong power, but devastating majority seen their lives skyrocketing comparing to Malasia.
The issue is that majority of strong Leaders are either military man, or democratically chosen governments that refuse to give power away - and they are often bad news.
Exactly this. And isn't it the reason so many people here are into startups? Technology is inherently undemocratic, and so are tech startups that succeed - but we don't call it that because this is "private land", not "politics land". And even ignoring the profit motive, that's why technology is appealing - a few smart people (backed by enough money) with one good design can force a change on the entire world that would never fly if you've asked people themselves.
And frankly, this might be something that we desperately need for the coming decades. Democratic countries have proven themselves unable to tackle the serious issuses of energy and climate change. They don't even bother making token gestures. On the other hand, if a decade ago they'd just said "fuck it, we're building those nuclear power plants whether you like them or not", we'd all be running on green energy now.
The point though, is that nobody can choose to not have the freedom to choose. And as such, we all wish to choose the best government for us - whatever form that may appear. But when it stops serving us...
Just before WWI lot's of European intelligentsia favored communism. Same happened before WWII with fascism. It is still completely possible that spread of democracy is just multinational fashion trend. And something else will come after it.
For any given moment, it's even probable that majority of some country does not want democracy. There are ~200 countries and several somewhat convincing ideologies.
Just to get a real feel for it, I recommend reading through this[0] book review, it may scare one shitless. Also, that belief went for longer than just I WW, it went through the II WW and finally dwindled down when the Cold War started. But imagine this - western newspapers were literally refusing to print bad news about Soviet Union, because it would offend their readers.
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...
As has barefaced lying to the populace about their own dislike for democracy.
It seems particularly common in Egypt where the idea that "the people just aren't ready for Democracy yet like they are in the west" is commonplace among the country's elite.
>It is still completely possible that spread of democracy is just multinational fashion trend.
Nobody's ever voted democracy away and it's not fashion that causes it to end, it's violence.