What is a government? How does it become a government? What is it supposed to do?

A government, by ideal standards, is the people. It is the representation of all of its citizens and their rights. In today’s terms though, the government of a state is the body that represents the entirety of a country’s population. In a representative democracy, a government becomes a government through elections in which the people vote for the representatives they support. Elections are there so that the people of the country can take part in how the country is run. The government is a manifestation of the needs and wants of the people. It’s not supposed to be anything more or anything less.

The purpose of a government is to run the country in a way that is in the best interests of all of its people. No government has the right to put anything above the best interests of the population. Once the elected representatives put their own interests above the people’s, once they act in accordance with their own quests to achieve power, once they forget why they were put there and stop pursuing the best for the people, they become failures.

Too many times have governments become nothing but failures.

In Ukraine, after being removed from the presidency by the Parliament, Viktor Yanukovych said “I am a legitimately elected president.” What Mr. Yanukovych is failing to grasp is the simple fact that being elected president does not give him unlimited authority to stay in office. Since his election in 2010, Yanukovych had become more and more corrupt and authoritarian. His 340-acre estate with a five-story mansion, a golf course and a private zoo doesn’t seem to be built from his $100,000-per-year salary as president, and the anti-protest laws he pushed through the Parliament in January, as well as the harsh crackdown on protesters by the police this past week, demonstrate the extremities of his authoritarian complex. Yanukovych wanted to rule a country rather than have the people and the country be in the best possible condition. The fact that he had abandoned the interests of the people in favor of his quest for power meant he had become a failure. Once the people of Ukraine realized they deserve more than a failure, they used their power to change the country. There’s no question that Ukraine still has a long way to go, but nobody can disregard how large of a step it took this week.

Eight months ago I wrote on my blog, “People now know that they have the power to come together and make a difference” after the first day of protests against the government in Taksim Square in Istanbul. The Turkish people understood, just as the Ukrainians did this week, that they have power over the government. They understood that if they are under the rule of a government that’s a failure, they have the power to change it. No, the government in Turkey didn’t fall. But since those protests, Turkey feels different, more alive. The government is frightened by the people, it’s frightened that it’s on the brink of losing its power — and that makes it think twice before every step it takes.

Right now, Venezuela is where Turkey was eight months ago. The Venezuelan people are screaming their hearts out. They want the government to realize they are there, they are not silent and they will never be silent. It’s working, too — you can see that the government is frightened. It’s going to ridiculous lengths to keep the people quiet, trying its best to silence the protests. The thing is, by taking measures like these, the government is just affirming the fact that it is a failure. It’s showing that it will try to do its best to silence its people, that it will keep acting as a failure if it stays.

That’s why Venezuelans have to stand their ground and keep their protests going. They have to stay on the front foot and see this opportunity to fix their country all the way through. They have to keep their voices heard, make themselves visible, make it clear that they will not give in.

The Venezuelan people need to show that they deserve more than failure.

Yoni Pinto is a Weinberg freshman. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you want to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].