[everybodyknows]

Well-meaning Westerners like to imagine that all one has to do is put on a fair election, get the "good people" in power, and all will be well thereafter. This can be effected by Western occupiers when they want to wash their hands as they exit some troubled spot.

The occupiers don't want to hear that democracy is sustained by values and habits taught by parents to children who are still young enough to listen. Once the boys are old enough to hold a gun, that kind of learning is pretty much over.

[puranjay]

Doesn't help that in any democratic setup, the people with the means to fight elections are usually the people who are already close to, or embedded in the previous dictatorial setup.

This is the post-colonial story across the world. The people who came into power after the colonizers left were direct beneficiaries of the colonial rule