大象传媒

Wednesday 18th March 2015<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

听

Good morning. The General Election is looming and speculation is rife. Analysts are at their work, geeks are having a ball and the exhausting election trail will soon begin. Suffrage, the right to vote, is to be cherished for it gives us ordinary citizens an opportunity to make our voices heard. And without that right protection of our freedom can be undermined.

听

Voting is the core of democracy. Plato looked on democracy favourably without being over-effusive:

Democracy, he wrote, is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and non equals alike.

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Today in 1990 the first free election took place in East Germany. The wall was gone, new processes were in motion and political change was afoot. Old enemies were meeting one another and parted friends were finding each other. East Germans knew the value of the freedom they were being offered, the freedom to have a say when for so long they had simply done what they were told. No matter what we think about possible defects in democracy we hear the dream of Aung San Suu Kyi, held for almost 15 years under house arrest in Burma:

Freedom and democracy are dreams you never give up.

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Lord, 听today we celebrate freedom - the freedom to express ourselves, the freedom to think, the freedom to choose and the freedom to influence decision-makers. We remember the many who long for freedom in their time and in their place. Amen