Sixty-three years ago, US president Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Since then, the “unwarranted influence” of the arms industry has grown much stronger, financing political parties, candidates, think tanks and the media.

The US Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling removed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections.

Even in countries that do not have a military-industrial complex, business lobbies have acquired a lot of influence by financing our election campaigns, turning democracies into different shades of plutocracies.

Better to have taxpayers finance electoral campaigns and political parties. We kill democracy where politicians are in the pockets of powerful private individuals.

Addressing the first Summit for Democracy three years ago, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “If we want free institutions to thrive the world over, then, first, we must model what they look like at home.”

This was certainly a breath of fresh air instead of the usual self-righteousness when countries like Malta are lectured on corruption, democracy and good governance. The US uses institutions like the Financial Action Task Force as leverage to coerce other countries into following its diktats.

Last year, at a similar summit, Yellen said: “Corruption has fuelled the rise of kleptocratic regimes that are divorced from the interests of their own citizens. It has consolidated the power of autocrats to repress and harm opponents at home and abroad.”

But she was frank enough to admit: “Democracies, including our own, are not immune. We know that corruption’s effects spill across borders...

“I said at the first Summit for Democracy that ‘there’s a good argument that, right now, the best place to hide and launder ill-gotten gains is actually the United States’.”

As Italy’s president, Sandro Pertini used to say: “God forbid that anyone defends corrupt people, out of loyalty or solidarity to their party. In doing this, the friendship within the party becomes complicity… people like these, dishonest and corrupt, should be put aside, because they offend the… millions and millions of people who, in order to live an honest life, make huge sacrifices, they themselves and their families.”

Other inner threats

We undermine democracy when we have electoral laws and processes designed to protect our vested interests and not to make them as representative and inclusive as possible. This makes more people disconnected from politics as they feel powerless to influence what goes on.

Our short-term mindset, obsessed with opinion polls and the electoral cycle, weakens democracy. A series of short terms do not amount to the long term. Existential challenges, like the climate emergency, require strategic foresight and long-term policies, often with no visible deliverables and beyond electoral cycles to address them.

Democracy is threatened by social and economic inequality and injustice also in developed countries- Evarist Bartolo

Democratic countries give democracy a bad name when they denounce genocide and violation of human rights only where it suits their geopolitical interests, like in Ukraine. When genocide and violation of human rights are committed by their allies in Gaza, they not only look the other way, but enable them.

Censoring journalists, academics, suppressing free speech and clamping down on student protests when they challenge the official narrative, as is happening now in several countries that are classified as democratic, also undermines democracy.

In the name of spreading democracy, major western countries have also carried out invasions, regime change and coups d’état overthrowing democratically elected governments, leading to well-founded accusations of hypocrisy and double standards. They have still to atone for these terrible crimes. The West also has to come to terms with the new multipolar world.

The rest of the world is not willing any longer to tolerate the global domination of the hegemonic West.

Democracy is threatened by social and economic inequality and injustice also in developed countries. In 2022, 21.6 per cent of the EU population – or some 95.3 million people – were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Larger sections of the working population across the EU feel let down and betrayed by mainstream parties.

In the past 23 years, the average euro area rate of increase of real hourly wages has been just 0.5 per cent per annum. This is considered next to nothing and is one of the main reasons for the general disenchantment with politics and the rise of far-right parties. People are not confident any more that their children would be better off than their parents.

More than a leader “bestriding the world like a Colossus”, we need leaders who are honest, humble, empathetic, ready to continue learning, committed to inclusive politics to heal polarised societies, capable of mobilising the best talent, experience and know-how to address the complex challenges of the world in the 21st century.

Democracy needs an ecosystem to survive and thrive: checks and balances, a fair justice system, effective and equitable law enforcement, a media system that holds the powerful in business and in politics to account and an active civil society where voters are ready to turn away from political cronyism and tribalism.

In democracy, we have to contend with what Voltaire, before our age of political correctness, called “the idiocy of the masses”. We also have to contend with the idiocy of the leaders. Waiting like Voltaire for “an enlightened monarch” surrounded by wise men to solve our major problems is like waiting for Godot. They will never come.

Democracy is a work in progress. We stumble forward. Finding our way is neither automatic nor guaranteed. More than lecturing the rest of the world on democracy, we need to put our house in order.

Democracies to be healthy need conflict and cooperation, disagreement and agreement, division and unity… can we at least cooperate, agree and unite at the local, national and European level to protect our democracies, first of all from ourselves?

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.