Respect democracy and accept its outcome

Comments on Greg Sheridan “Don't pin hopes on change in Tehran”, 18/06/2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25651979-5013460,00.html

It is sad and tragic to see people being killed in demonstrations, no matter where it is and what regime it is happening under. On that ground one has sympathy to those being hurt or killed.

However, we here in the west say the election was rigged and the results were stolen, do we have credible evidence of that? We can't just assume the results are not what we like and the results are not those demonstrators want, then they must be rigged. I think that is wrong.

What is occurring in Iran could reflect that the results were rigged, or people in Iran are not used to democracy and how that should be practiced. We really don't know what the results are and are on shaky ground in saying the re-election of the Iranian president was not the results of that election. We can't and shouldn't use the demonstrations as evidence that the results were rigged and wrong. We should not be hypocritical on democracy.

Democracy means one person one vote and free voting, whatever the results are, everyone should accept them.

Democracy does not mean nice people will always be elected every time and all time. It will mean an election outcome may be very undesirable to some or many nice people. But that is democracy. Unless you want to blame democracy or deny it, you should accept the outcome under democracy.

Even in the US, they elected GWB for two terms. What GWB did were not necessarily what most Americans wanted or liked. But that was democracy. If you don't like, you vote differently in the next time. But you need a majority.