Democracy is a political system which encompasses the following attributes including popular sovereignty, rights and freedom, elected government, political participation and the rule of law. Among all the elements above, popular sovereignty and the rule of law are the most important because all the other derivatives are subsumed under the said two core elements.
When one holds popular sovereignty as the core element, one can see that rights and freedom, elected government and political participation are built in the popular sovereignty tenet. Popular sovereignty denotes people’s power and being the source of political legitimacy through the mandate granted by the people. This is diametrically opposed to the source of political legitimacy or the right to rule of the Western concept of the Divine Right of King or the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven or the Hindu concept of Deva-raja or god King. The traditional Japanese concept of the emperor being deity descending from heaven to rule Yamato or Japan would be the weightiest sanctity in which the ruler was no human but deity.
To date, popular sovereignty has replaced, in different levels of degree varying from country to country, the above concepts. The people’s demands or voices become the voice of god. Vox populi, vox Dei is the most quoted Latin maxim. Democracy is the rule of the people, originated from the words demos kratia. The elected government rules or governs or manages with the consent of the people through a process of election. Administering affairs of state is executed in the name of the people. Since the people have sovereign power, their status as citizen has to be recognized and respected. This will encompasses rights and freedom, equality, human rights and human dignity. They are also entitled to have a judiciary which adheres and upholds justice most especially the rule of law. This is why the rule of law constitutes the sacrosanct tenet of a democracy. Without the rule of law, violation of the fundamental rights of the people and abuse of power by the state and government can be expected. Therefore, a constitution which ensures the above is a significant element for a democracy Citizenship and constitutionalism are thus often referred to as the two key elements which will constitute a good political system most notably a democracy while the rule of law is the foundation upon which the two elements above are to be based and guided.
A constitution is thus the structure of a government which is the consequence of the formation of a state. Government consists of a group of people which exercise state power. Power is a two-edged sword. It can bring about good governance or tyrannical acts harmful to the people who are the owner of sovereign power. There is thus need to come up with a system of checks and balances to ensure that power will not be abused and used for malfeasance. The two acts is a violation of laws, ethic and morality. Once those two heinous acts are committed, the rule of law will be negatively affected. The important fact is that power is an element which will tend to lead to misbehaviors due to power craze or the power wielders are tempted by greed devoid of guilty feeling. As Lord Acton contains, in effect, that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely A constitution is thus to lay down the structure and process of governance to prevent or discourage undue acts on the part of power wielders. But it has to be immediately and emphatically added here that a constitution has to adhere to the sacrosanct tenet of the rule of law otherwise the supreme law of the land will become a piece of paper which ushers in a bogus democracy. Once that has happened, the so-called democracy and the legal provisions embedded in the charter are but a rule by law. It is but an extension of the rule of man disguised in legal provisions in contradiction to the universally recognized process of enactment of laws based upon popular sovereignty through the popularly elected parliament. Such laws are enacted through the use of coercion not free will of the owner of political sovereignty. It is thus not enacted on a bona fide basis but rather with an ulterior or mala fide objective to exert control on political power. Such laws or such a constitution will usually be presented as a faire accompli under duress. It is in the manner of a force majeure. The rule by law is drastically different from the rule of Law.
This will pose an important question. What is the rule of law? The rule of law is having law as foundational principle in governance as opposed to the rule by law and the rule of man characteristic of non-democratic or dictatorial regimes of all sorts. The rule of law has to have the following characteristics.
First, laws must be universalistic applying to people of all walks of life equally sans privileges or exceptions albeit in limited cases and situations.
Second, enactment of laws must be done in an electe