Lech Walesa: Societies need order based on values

By Felipe Salvosa II

Democracies won’t work unless people participate actively in it and hold politicians to their promises, Polish democracy icon Lech Walesa said yesterday as he continued a weeklong series of talks in the country.

Mr. Walesa, the 1983 Nobel Prize winner whose labor movement Solidarity started the chain of events that led to the fall of communism, also said faith plays an important role in democracy, citing the Catholic Church’s symbiotic relationship with Polish society.

“The world cannot have unemployment … We will lose it, everybody will lose. He’s (the unemployed) not paying taxes, he’s not buying the produce. And he might make revolution … And if the people who have the capital will not start creating work then we will have revolution,” said Mr. Walesa, speaking through an interpreter after accepting an honorary professorship from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila.

Photo from Lech Walesa's blog

Mahathir Mohamad: 'Limits' to democracy key to Malaysia's economic success

By Felipe Salvosa II

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad touted his multi-racial country’s economic success in a university lecture yesterday, saying Malaysia’s phenomenal growth was hinged on pro-business policies accompanied by “limits” to democracy.

Mahathir also blasted the excesses of Western financial markets and said European society, which is reeling from Greece’s sovereign debt crisis, has been living beyond its means by maintaining generous compensation schemes, huge bonuses, and short working hours.

“We applaud democracy but democracy works only when people understand the limitations of democracy,” Mahathir said during a special convocation of the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas.

Photo by Sherwin Vardeleon