BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- For the public in Western countries, the ballot box is "the only means of appraisal for state governance," while after elections, the public's role in making and implementing policies is "minimal," said a former Malaysian lawmaker.

In an interview with Xinhua on Wednesday, Ong Tee Keat, former deputy speaker of the lower house of the Malaysian Parliament, lamented a political system distant from ordinary people in the West and a West that keeps touting elections as the only form of democracy.

Ideally, candidates should be "people's choice," but in reality, they are "cherry-picked" by contesting parties, with some of them even "novices remaining unknown to the people," said Ong.

Then comes voting -- with the majority prevailing and winner-takes-all math, minority groups may not be heard, he said.

Moreover, candidates are usually mandated through rhetoric like "populist appeals, bold and undeliverable promises," he said.

Administrations often fail to address public needs after taking office, Ong noted, citing the United States as an example.

"Lawmakers appear more obsessed with enacting legislations designed to target other nations in the interest of upholding U.S. primacy" instead of "striving for the well-being of its people," he said.

The bipartisan legislators on Capitol Hill appear "unperturbed" by the "ubiquitous, pathetic scenes" of illicit drug abuse, street vagabonds and looting of shops in the name of "zero-dollar shopping" in U.S. cities, illustrating the dysfunction of U.S. democracy, Ong said in his speech during the third International Forum on Democracy: The Shared Human Values also on Wednesday in Beijing.

Despite its deteriorating system, the West for years has made electoral democracy "the one-size-fits-all benchmark" for democratic rule worldwide and labeled non-Western values and cultural norms "anathema to democracy," he said, noting that "the coercive transplant of electoral democracy, either through military intervention or brutal regime change, as was initiated by Washington in the developing world, has only added more failed states and ensuing humanitarian disasters to the lists."

He added that Washington's strategic motives perpetuate its global hegemony by rallying and camping countries through ideology.

"Democracy should not be made a dogmatic tool," said Ong, adding that it varies with different levels of modernization, trajectories of nation-building, and histories of nationhood across the developing world. Finally, democracy evolves with time.

According to Ong, what matters most in democracy is "the relevance of the people's participation and the end results of the governance."

The former lawmaker called for embracing the diversity of democracy. "One man's meat is another man's poison," he said. Enditem

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