Sir, – Regarding your Editorial (“The battle for Aleppo”, August 2nd), I am not at all sure the people of Syria want democracy. Why on earth would they want a system of government which patently obviously does not work? Just look at the mess in Europe and the United States.
We can delude ourselves that this crisis is a financial one, or that it is all the fault of greedy speculators. It is in fact, a crisis of democracy. Elected legislators cannot be expected to pass good laws; they will, of course, pass popular laws.
When a poorly educated and greedy electorate comes face to face with self–serving elected legislators, the result is bad government. We have experienced this at first hand. Since the troika took over, we have enjoyed the best years of governance in the history of this State. Democracy has failed to deliver. It is time we faced that fact honestly and attempted to devise a better system. It is time also we stopped trying to impose a failed system on other countries. We should remember the most successful economy in the world right now is that of China! – Yours, etc,