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For the past several weeks, foreign press editorials and reports have been generally negative about the political goings-on in Thailand. One described the situation as being "worse than a coup". Generally, they have been negative towards the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) as an extraneous and illegitimate political force that, if left unchecked and uncensored, represents a threat to the organic growth and sustainability of Thai parliamentary democracy. All of them tended to gloss over the long list of reported misdeeds and abuses of power - such as cronyism, nepotism and corruption - that became so prevalent during the last few years of the Thai Rak Thai era.

The foreign press has played softball when it comes to the incompetent handling of the political mess and ill-conceived economic measures undertaken by the present government, whose leader was stripped of his post on Tuesday. Some even went further, into conspiracy theories, alluding quite openly that the force behind the PAD is the most beloved institution of the Thai people.

Is it right or even true that democratic election results should be given the highest esteem, so as to exonerate all the faults and flaws of those elected, and to condemn those who oppose?

Benjamin M Friedman, the former chairman of the Economics Department at Harvard University, in his book "The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth", puts it succinctly that a democratically elected government hardly guarantees a country's consistent commitment to democratic values. He goes on to say that "any form of government is potentially subject to the exploitation of specific groups, or to the repression of individuals...."

Even Thomas Jefferson - one of the authors of the US Declaration of Independence and forefather of American democracy, which the world has been brainwashed into emulating - contended that a democracy is "nothing more than mob rule where 51 per cent of the people take away the rights of the other 49". Coming from a man who said he had sworn upon the altar of God his "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny", this should make some of us pause and ponder.

And lest we forget, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via democratic means, not by gunpoint. He was constitutionally appointed to his position by Hindenburg because he was the leader of the largest party in the parliament and was thus able to head up a coalition government. Europe ignored or misread all the alarming signs and actions generated by his increasing anti-Semitism and extreme nationalist rhetoric. The price paid was millions of lives and an upended political landscape in Eastern Europe that lasted for decades.

A point to be made here is that maybe democratic institutions are not foolproof safeguards against the emergence of tyrants. If a constitutionally valid plurality want tyranny, they will have it.

Another point to keep in mind is that political and executive legitimacy is not the God-given right of a government and/or official who is democratically elected to public office. Such officials do not have carte blanche to play the "democratically elected" hand unconditionally. A dissenting political force, as a part of a check-and-balance system, must be allowed to exist so that democracy can keep its good name and be true to the intent of its fathers. The same canon applies to the dissenting voice. Every party must play by the same rules.

Political legitimacy is the marriage of the right of the government to govern and the approval of the governed of that right. Prime Minister Fukuda of Japan is a touching example of a seasoned politician who willingly recognised this union and resigned voluntarily when his ruling party plunged in the realm of public approval.

Quite ironically, in the United States, the bulwark of liberal democracy, there has been no presidential resignation since the untimely and disgraceful departure of Richard Nixon in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal. President George W Bush's approval rating sank to 28 per cent in July this year, one of the lowest in US history, but it is clear he will not vacate his office until his term ends officially in January next year. Some American friends joked that the American political system does not have available an effective tool, as Thailand has, to remove an unpopular leader. What they were referring to is what many Thais secretly wish for: intervention to break a political deadlock of which they are more than weary.

To that I would just say: be careful of what you wish for.

I have no doubt that our last former prime minister genuinely believed he was in the right, morally and politically, and that he had legitimacy conferred on him, by election results, to remain in office and govern in any way he saw fit. The Western media seems to have shared this view. But such a view is at best incomplete and at worst biased and simply wrong.

The court verdict on Tuesday has left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand it is reassuring that the rule of law prevailed. But on the other hand it did not, and should not be expected to, solve the country's political troubles. As long as there is disquiet within the system, as long as there is growing social and political polarisation, and as long as some normal elements of democratic procedure are vitiated, we will continue to have governments that are popularly elected but lose their legitimacy. That appears almost inevitable, and it will come at the expense of the present and future well-being of the country.

After all that has been said and done, whether we wear yellow, red, pink or white, democracy remains the only political system that, according to the American journalist Sydney Harris, "persists in asking the powers-that-be whether they are the powers that ought to be". And for that, it is incumbent upon all of us, and not only a few, to protect and preserve it.