The Bad Democracy Award

This month openDemocracy has launched its Bad Democracy Award.

The system – composed by a gaggle of constitutional experts working to exacting deadlines, works like this:

• each month, you email your nominations for the month’s worst democrat
• the nomination can be from any country or institution in the world, as far away or as close to home as you like
• the candidate you propose might be a politician who has abused his mandate, pilfered from the public purse or betrayed public trust; a tyrant who has feasted while his people starve; a corporation, committee, party, army, sect, vicar, imam or mandarin who has undermined democratic governance
• a shortlist of the six most heinous candidates will then be put to the vote – your vote, that is
• each monthly victor will be informed of their success and sent an appropriate garland of shame
• after a year, readers will be invited to crown one of our twelve reprobates Bad Democrat of the Year
• the possibilities don’t end there: we may even invite the year’s nominees to pick their own choice for Bad Democrats’ Bad Democrat; and if all goes to plan, the whole project will culminate in an annual shindig of staggering gluttony during which the planet’s despots, fiddlers, riggers, rogues, bungsters, grafters and gerrymanderers will be presented with statuettes by – who else? – Imelda Marcos and Henry Kissinger

Happy voting!