As I was reading The Republic the second time, it came to a point where I was asking myself, what if democracy

can
be reformed through the ideas presented by Plato? In the 21st century, most of the governments in the world are
democratically elected and ordinary citizens of our republic are allowed political participation through the ballot box. If
those in power are conscientiously selected by citizens, then there will be a reduction of distrust and cynicism towards
our elected officials. The questions is, how do we get a conscientious choice...how do we make sure that those we
elected will performed accordingly? First, I would say that such a choice must be made on the basis of a reliable
criteria. For one, Platos Socrates provides one such criterion in The Republic. It says that one ought to be a
philosopher to govern. That is in literal sense, it means that the ruler must be a lover of wisdom. This is the meaning
of the Greek word philosophia. In platos Crito, he affirms that the thoughts of one wise man may be better than the
many thoughts of the foolish. But what really does it mean to be a lover of wisdom? In Platos The Republic, the main
thrust of his argument is that those who govern must do so with the relevant expertise, but the philosopher king must
be trained in the following: physical education, music, mathematics, and most important, for me, is statecraft.

Now, how do we put these philosopher kings into public office? My thinking is that,
we create a pool of philosopher kings that the people would elect. Then, for those
who wanted to be president or prime minister, they would be entered into a system
where the position of president, prime minister, cabinet positions/ministry will be
randomized or selected by a lottery system. The first one will get the position of the
prime minister, the second one, will get the position of the president, etc. Plato
recommended in The Republic that such system should provide a formalized way of
selecting and training future leaders who then serve a fix term in office before
standing down in favor of the next batch of carefully selected leaders through a
standard processing I suggested above. I proposed that the position of the president
or the prime minister should be extended up to 8 or 10 years to give him a chance
to effect credible reform. However, checks and balances must be provided to assure
the people that these leaders are up to the standards the system requires.

My dream is that our country will transform from a presidential form of government
to a federal form of government under a parliamentary system.