So little Billy goes to school, and he sits down and the teacher says, "What does your father do?" And little Billy says, "My father plays the piano in an opium den." So the teacher rings up the parents, and says, "Very shocking story from little Billy today. Just heard that he claimed that you play the piano in an opium den." And the father says, "I'm very sorry. Yes, it's true, I lied. But how can I tell an eight-year-old boy that his father is a politician?" (Laughter)
有一天,小比利去上學 老師問他 "你爸爸是做什麼的?" 小比利說 "爸爸在鴉片館裡彈鋼琴" 於是老師打電話給家長 "今天小比利說" "你在鴉片館裡彈鋼琴" "我實在是不敢相信" 小比利的爸爸說, "真的非常抱歉,我的確撒了謊" "但你要我怎麼向一個八歲大的男孩" "坦承自己是個政治人物?"(笑聲)
Now, as a politician myself, standing in front of you, or indeed, meeting any stranger anywhere in the world, when I eventually reveal the nature of my profession, they look at me as though I'm somewhere between a snake, a monkey and an iguana, and through all of this, I feel, strongly, that something is going wrong. Four hundred years of maturing democracy, colleagues in Parliament who seem to me, as individuals, reasonably impressive, an increasingly educated, energetic, informed population, and yet a deep, deep sense of disappointment. My colleagues in Parliament include, in my new intake, family doctors, businesspeople, professors, distinguished economists, historians, writers, army officers ranging from colonels down to regimental sergeant majors. All of them, however, including myself, as we walk underneath those strange stone gargoyles just down the road, feel that we've become less than the sum of our parts, feel as though we have become profoundly diminished.
身為一名政治人物, 現在我站在你們面前 就像在世界各地 和不同的人會面一樣 當我最終揭示我職業的性質 人們會用一種奇怪的眼神看著我 好像我是隻四不像 我非常強烈地感覺到 這有些不對勁 我們的民主政治已經發展了四百年 國會裡的那些同事,在我看來 都是非常有魅力,受過高等教育 精力充沛且見識廣博的人 但人民卻對我們失望透頂 新一屆的議會中,我的同事包括 家庭醫師、企業家、教授 著名經濟學家、歷史學家、作家 和各級軍官,上至上校下至准尉 但所有人,包括我自己在內 都對現在的政治情勢感到不安 感到膽顫心驚 如履薄冰
And this isn't just a problem in Britain. It's a problem across the developing world, and in middle income countries too. In Jamaica, for example -- look at Jamaican members of Parliament, you meet them, and they're often people who are Rhodes Scholars, who've studied at Harvard or at Princeton, and yet, you go down to downtown Kingston, and you are looking at one of the most depressing sites that you can see in any middle-income country in the world: a dismal, depressing landscape of burnt and half-abandoned buildings. And this has been true for 30 years, and the handover in 1979, 1980, between one Jamaican leader who was the son of a Rhodes Scholar and a Q.C. to another who'd done an economics doctorate at Harvard, over 800 people were killed in the streets in drug-related violence.
這並不是英國才有的問題 這個問題普遍存在於 開發中和中等收入國家 以牙買加的國會議員為例 他們通常是羅德學者 畢業於哈佛或普林斯頓大學 但是, 你到了金斯頓市中心(牙買加首都) 看到的卻是 在任何中等收入國家都能看到 最蕭條的景象 放眼望去 無數燒毀的房舍和半廢棄大樓 這樣的光景已經持續了30年 1979年、1980年的權力交接時期 領導人從一個羅德學者, 和皇室法律顧問的兒子 變成一個哈佛經濟學博士 一樁樁牽涉毒品的暴行 仍然在街頭上演 死亡人數高達八百人
Ten years ago, however, the promise of democracy seemed to be extraordinary. George W. Bush stood up in his State of the Union address in 2003 and said that democracy was the force that would beat most of the ills of the world. He said, because democratic governments respect their own people and respect their neighbors, freedom will bring peace. Distinguished academics at the same time argued that democracies had this incredible range of side benefits. They would bring prosperity, security, overcome sectarian violence, ensure that states would never again harbor terrorists.
然而,十年前民主的承諾 似乎很偉大 小布希在2003年的國情咨文中表示 "民主政治" "是世界上多數問題的解藥" 因為民主政府尊重人民 尊重鄰國,自由會帶來和平 學者們同時認為 民主有超乎想像的附加價值 能帶來繁榮、安定 消弭宗派之間的暴力 並確保 國家永遠不再窩藏恐怖份子
Since then, what's happened? Well, what we've seen is the creation, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, of democratic systems of government which haven't had any of those side benefits. In Afghanistan, for example, we haven't just had one election or two elections. We've gone through three elections, presidential and parliamentary. And what do we find? Do we find a flourishing civil society, a vigorous rule of law and good security? No. What we find in Afghanistan is a judiciary that is weak and corrupt, a very limited civil society which is largely ineffective, a media which is beginning to get onto its feet but a government that's deeply unpopular, perceived as being deeply corrupt, and security that is shocking, security that's terrible. In Pakistan, in lots of sub-Saharan Africa, again you can see democracy and elections are compatible with corrupt governments, with states that are unstable and dangerous. And when I have conversations with people, I remember having a conversation, for example, in Iraq, with a community that asked me whether the riot we were seeing in front of us, this was a huge mob ransacking a provincial council building, was a sign of the new democracy. The same, I felt, was true in almost every single one of the middle and developing countries that I went to, and to some extent the same is true of us.
但在那之後,情況又如何呢? 我們可以看到,伊拉克和阿富汗 成立的民主政府 卻無法享受上述的任何好處 舉例來說,我們在 阿富汗不只有一、兩次選舉 阿富汗已經舉行了三次選舉, 有總統大選也有議會選舉 結果呢? 是否就此建立一個 繁榮昌盛,人人奉公守法 和平安定的民主社會呢? 並沒有,我們在阿富汗看到的是 一個軟弱、腐敗的司法制度 一個無能的公民社會 媒體才剛起步 政府卻失去公信力 政權極度腐化 治安更是糟糕透頂 在巴基斯坦和許多撒哈拉以南地區 可以看到一些實行選舉制度的民主政權 仍嚴重腐化 國家動盪不安 記得有一次 和伊拉克人民的對話中 有人問我 眼前這群暴民 洗劫省議會大樓的暴動 是不是新民主政權的好兆頭? 在我造訪過的每一個發展中國家 甚至於我自己的國家 這樣的情況都是存在的
Well, what is the answer to this? Is the answer to just give up on the idea of democracy? Well, obviously not. It would be absurd if we were to engage again in the kind of operations we were engaged in, in Iraq and Afghanistan if we were to suddenly find ourselves in a situation in which we were imposing anything other than a democratic system. Anything else would run contrary to our values, it would run contrary to the wishes of the people on the ground, it would run contrary to our interests. I remember in Iraq, for example, that we went through a period of feeling that we should delay democracy. We went through a period of feeling that the lesson learned from Bosnia was that elections held too early enshrined sectarian violence, enshrined extremist parties, so in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made, let's not have elections for two years. Let's invest in voter education. Let's invest in democratization. The result was that I found stuck outside my office a huge crowd of people, this is actually a photograph taken in Libya but I saw the same scene in Iraq of people standing outside screaming for the elections, and when I went out and said, "What is wrong with the interim provincial council? What is wrong with the people that we have chosen? There is a Sunni sheikh, there's a Shiite sheikh, there's the seven -- leaders of the seven major tribes, there's a Christian, there's a Sabian, there are female representatives, there's every political party in this council, what's wrong with the people that we chose?" The answer came, "The problem isn't the people that you chose. The problem is that you chose them." I have not met, in Afghanistan, in even the most remote community, anybody who does not want a say in who governs them. Most remote community, I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.
那有什麼解決之道呢? 難道要就此放棄民主嗎? 顯然,答案是否定的 如果要把伊拉克和阿富汗 再次變回以前的模樣 如果我們突然意識到 我們推行的並非一套民主制度 而是其他東西 其他和我們的價值觀,人民的意志 和我們的利益背道而馳的東西 那就會非常荒謬 還記得我在伊拉克的時候 有一段時間,我們覺得 應該拖延民主的進程 我們學到了波士尼亞的教訓 太早舉行選舉 反而助長宗派主義暴力, 和極端主義黨派的發展 所以 ,2003 年, 我們在伊拉克做出了決定 那就是, 兩年內不進行選舉 優先投入選民教育和民主化 結果就是, 我辦公室門外聚集了一群人 這張照片其實是在利比亞拍的 但和我在伊拉克看到的一模一樣 人們在門外嚷嚷著要求選舉 我一出去,他們就喊道 "臨時省議會怎麼了?" "我們選出來的人哪裡出問題了?" "議會成員有一名遜尼派族長、一名什葉派族長" "七大部落的七位酋長" "一名基督徒、一名薩比教徒" "數名女性代表,和各黨派人士" "我們選出來的人到底哪裡出了問題?" 我的解讀是, "問題不在於你們的人選" "問題在於你們選了他們" 在阿富汗 即使是最偏遠的地區 每一個人都想參與決定誰來統治他們 從來沒有人 說他不想投票
So we need to acknowledge that despite the dubious statistics, despite the fact that 84 percent of people in Britain feel politics is broken, despite the fact that when I was in Iraq, we did an opinion poll in 2003 and asked people what political systems they preferred, and the answer came back that seven percent wanted the United States, five percent wanted France, three percent wanted Britain, and nearly 40 percent wanted Dubai, which is, after all, not a democratic state at all but a relatively prosperous minor monarchy, democracy is a thing of value for which we should be fighting. But in order to do so we need to get away from instrumental arguments. We need to get away from saying democracy matters because of the other things it brings. We need to get away from feeling, in the same way, human rights matters because of the other things it brings, or women's rights matters for the other things it brings. Why should we get away from those arguments? Because they're very dangerous. If we set about saying, for example, torture is wrong because it doesn't extract good information, or we say, you need women's rights because it stimulates economic growth by doubling the size of the work force, you leave yourself open to the position where the government of North Korea can turn around and say, "Well actually, we're having a lot of success extracting good information with our torture at the moment," or the government of Saudi Arabia to say, "Well, our economic growth's okay, thank you very much, considerably better than yours, so maybe we don't need to go ahead with this program on women's rights."
所以我們要體認 即使數據顯示 84%的英國人認為政治已死 即使我們在伊拉克做了一項民意調查 在2003年, 我們要求民眾選擇他們喜歡的政治體系 結果 7%想要美國模式 5%想要法國模式 3%想要英國模式 卻有將近40%選擇了杜拜模式 阿拉伯聯合大公國 根本不是一個民主國家 而是相對繁榮的君主制國家 民主, 是我們必須一同奮鬥的價值觀 但首先,我們應該避免 整天把那些"民主的好處" 掛在嘴邊,同樣的 我們不該說 人權有很多好處 婦權有很多好處 所以它們很重要 為什麼不該這樣說呢? 因為這種論證很脆弱 舉個例子,酷刑是錯誤的, 因為它無法取得有利的資訊 或者說,我們需要婦女權利 因為它能提升勞動力,刺激經濟增長 最後,反而留下把柄 這時候北韓政府就可以說 "事實上,我們正是以酷刑" "換取不少有利的資訊" 沙烏地阿拉伯政府也可以說 "謝謝關心,我們的經濟還可以" "可能還比你們好一點" "所以, 也許不需要推動婦權運動了"
The point about democracy is not instrumental. It's not about the things that it brings. The point about democracy is not that it delivers legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. The point about democracy is intrinsic. Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.
民主的重要性, 不在於其本身的"好處" 也不是它帶來的利益 民主的重要性不在於它體現了 法律的正當性、有效性,和繁榮發展 民主不能保證 一國及其鄰邦的安全 民主的奧義 在於它反映了平等的理念 自由的理念,以及人的尊嚴 它體現了每個人都有平等的權利 用選票 決定誰來組成政府
But if we're really to make democracy vigorous again, if we're ready to revivify it, we need to get involved in a new project of the citizens and the politicians. Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity. And part of that activity is honesty. After I speak to you today, I'm going on a radio program called "Any Questions," and the thing you will have noticed about politicians on these kinds of radio programs is that they never, ever say that they don't know the answer to a question. It doesn't matter what it is. If you ask about child tax credits, the future of the penguins in the south Antarctic, asked to hold forth on whether or not the developments in Chongqing contribute to sustainable development in carbon capture, and we will have an answer for you. We need to stop that, to stop pretending to be omniscient beings. Politicians also need to learn, occasionally, to say that certain things that voters want, certain things that voters have been promised, may be things that we cannot deliver or perhaps that we feel we should not deliver.
但如果我們真的想讓民主復甦 我們需要 公民和政治人物的共同努力 民主不單單是政權結構的問題 它是一種思想狀態,也是一種行動 而誠實則是其中的一部分 今天演講結束後,我要去參加一個 叫做"你問我答"的電台節目, 你們可能有發現 參加這類節目的政治人物們 永遠永遠都不會說"不知道" 不管是什麼樣的問題 問兒童稅收抵免 問南極企鵝的未來 問中國重慶的發展 或對可持續發展之炭的回收封存 我們都有答案 我們必須停止這麼說 不要再假裝無所不知 政治人物偶爾也要 說一些選民想聽的話 一些曾向選民承諾過的事 可能是一些做不到的事 或覺得不應該做
And the second thing we should do is understand the genius of our societies. Our societies have never been so educated, have never been so energized, have never been so healthy, have never known so much, cared so much, or wanted to do so much, and it is a genius of the local. One of the reasons why we're moving away from banqueting halls such as the one in which we stand, banqueting halls with extraordinary images on the ceiling of kings enthroned, the entire drama played out here on this space, where the King of England had his head lopped off, why we've moved from spaces like this, thrones like that, towards the town hall, is we're moving more and more towards the energies of our people, and we need to tap that.
我們應該做的第二件事是 理解這個社會的天才 我們的社會從來沒有 像現在這麼高的教育水準 從來沒有像現在這樣, 健康,充滿活力 人們從來沒有像現在這樣 知道這麼多,關心這麼多 需要這麼多, 這是整個社會的智慧結晶 我們為何要離開 我們所在的宴會大廳? 看看天花板上耀眼的壁畫 描繪著國王登基的場景 這裡上演過各種各樣的戲碼 英國國王在這裡被砍頭 為什麼我們要走出大廳, 走下王座 走進了現在的市政廳? 因為我們要開始關注人民的力量
That can mean different things in different countries. In Britain, it could mean looking to the French, learning from the French, getting directly elected mayors in place in a French commune system. In Afghanistan, it could have meant instead of concentrating on the big presidential and parliamentary elections, we should have done what was in the Afghan constitution from the very beginning, which is to get direct local elections going at a district level and elect people's provincial governors.
改變的意義 對每一個國家來說不盡相同 對英國而言,這意味著 向法國學習 學習法國公民社會體系 直接選舉市長的模式 對阿富汗來說, 這意味著不再執著於 總統大選和議會選舉 首先,我們應該完成阿富汗的憲法 從當地直接選出省長市長開始 一步步推行民主
But for any of these things to work, the honesty in language, the local democracy, it's not just a question of what politicians do. It's a question of what the citizens do. For politicians to be honest, the public needs to allow them to be honest, and the media, which mediates between the politicians and the public, needs to allow those politicians to be honest. If local democracy is to flourish, it is about the active and informed engagement of every citizen.
若要這些方法生效 誠實必須被放在首位 這不僅僅是政治人物的問題 也是每個公民的問題 公眾應該要求政治人物誠實, 他們才會變誠實 而在政治人物和公眾之間協調的媒體 也應要求政治人物們必須誠實 每個公民都享有充分知的權利 並積極地參與當地民主建設, 民主才能夠蓬勃發展
In other words, if democracy is to be rebuilt, is to become again vigorous and vibrant, it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public. Thank you very much indeed. (Applause)
換句話說,如果我們想要重塑民主 讓它再次充滿活力 不僅公眾需要學會 怎樣去相信他們的政治人物 政治人物也要學會 怎樣信任他們的民眾 謝謝各位!(掌聲)