COMMENT | Democracy is not about toppling the government. If that is the definition, then Malaysia would have learnt all the wrong lessons from the French Revolution of 1789.

In the aftermath of the "Storm of the Bastille" that removed the Sun King of France and his mistress Marie Antoinette, both of whom emptied the coffers of the French Empire with lavish spending, there was one attempt after the other to keep toppling the government of the day. This was known as the Jacobin Terror.

Even Robberspire - one of the original French revolutionaries. To kill their opponents as quickly as they could be brought down, the guillotine was used as the fastest method of ending the lives -literally - of all other democratic revolutionaries in the original French Revolution. An eye for an eye does make the world go blind. In this case, it was the French.

To divert the people's attention from perennial turbulence in France, on came Napoleon Bonaparte, who assumed the role of an emperor by attacking the surrounding empires of France, in order to externalise all the internal aggression and endless madness in France where everyone who was the leader was brought down, with their heads lobbed off.

Yet let it be said too, the French regretted their anti-monarchical action. Yet Bonaparte declared himself as the emperor a new, the French followed his lead to attack others on the creed of "Liberte, Fraternite and Egalite"....