When I tell my students, ‘Democracy is a value and not a belief’ in my MBA classes, some of them have very peculiar questions about my contention as to why I stress this sociological phenomenon quite very often.

Culture comprises three important phenomena: belief, value and norm. Dictatorship is all about one person’s value over the million people he rules. On the contrary, democracy is about the plebian value of how the government should be elected and ruled. What is right and what is wrong in a society is justified by values.

Hence democracy remains a value through which capitalism, socialism, communism and social-democratic beliefs prevail through a process of election that is determined by collective individual desires and aspiration for a belief to be in power and authority. Thus the collective value of people prevails over everything else. And this collective value is democracy.

When candidates contest in elections, they subscribe to a certain belief and get elected via the process of a value that is democracy. Hence the value of democracy becomes predominant over how a government should be brought in and how it should be ousted.

They are answerable to plebian authority and not to any single individual. This is a very formidable pillar of governance and polity within context of democracy itself.

Our federal constitution has given immense respect and dominance to democracy as a value and also has given the process of law, the instruments to ensure this value is widely protected. Hence, when a candidate gets elected through one party and changes to another party after an election, the process of law may or may not hinder such movement.

However, the value of democracy becomes strained and its strength becomes fallow and tarnished. This affects one of the most eminent pillars of culture - the norm to live in peace and to respect each another’s belief.

If the time frame of five years to change a government is not endeared, the norm of continuity of the process of democracy becomes emaciated beyond repair and the compatibility of individual whims and fancies become dominant at the expense of the very basic value of democracy.

What happened in Perak yesterday is going to have far-reaching consequences on the process of democracy in this country.

The political philosopher Maurice Durvegier, had recognised political parties as mere pressure groups just like a trade union or a consumer movement. The differences between these groups are based on their roles in societies.

Hence the coalition of Pakatan Rakyat and the coalition of Barisan Nasional are merely based on the contentment of pressure groups taking on sides to form a government.

People who are elected to represent the people must have first-hand knowledge of the values of democracy and their integrity within the machinery of governance. Taking sides and changing game plans to suit individual aspirations must be disallowed at all costs.

The deputy speaker of the Perak state legislature has become an ‘independent’ candidate after being elected via the DAP as her pressure group. An independent candidate must have been elected for her own, personal beliefs.

However, the people of her constituency did not elect her for her own, personal beliefs but for the beliefs of the DAP. How is she now going to impress the people of her constituency by supporting the beliefs of another pressure group? This is ridiculous and her recognition of the values of democracy cannot be accepted.

Ethically, this candidate has pronounced her discordance for the beliefs of her constituents and hence cannot be representing them anymore. The same applies to the two PKR candidates who have avowed their support for the BN before the ruler of state.

Their decisions cannot be representative of the majority of the people who elected them and hence they are ethically impotent.

The constitutional monarch, who is also the hereditary ruler, has played his role very well by asking the three people who have crossed sides as to whom they now support and owe allegiance to.

Upon hearing of their switching of ‘loyalty’ and support, he has sworn in BN as the next government. This process is correct and does not transgress the values of democracy. The ruler has not interfered in the process of democracy.

However, all of us who bear significance to the process of democracy in this country, emotionally and rationally, must take cognisance that this event could be the death knell for democracy itself in Malaysia.

These three elected representatives will go down very well in the history of the country to have initiated the slow death of the democratic process itself.

Do always remember, if this value of democracy dies what other alternative values do we have? The future looks very gloomy for citizens and rulers alike.