The whim of charlatans

Subject: The whim of charlatans 

Is democracy a con. Is it a palliative, a balm to assuage the population and encourage them to believe that the people they vote for have their interests at heart. 
The process is simple, the people who believe they can garner your support do so by publishing, a  political manifesto in which, if elected, a series of economic and social promises will be put in place. The manifesto is not a contract and often, in essence, is worth little since there is no binding responsibility to carry out what was promised, but it's a promise by which people are encouraged in what they read to place their vote.
It's a universal 'con' on which world wide, the democratic system is based and valued as the way civilised communities link 'the people' with 'the executive'.
Ideological sureties such as the 'democratic process' have achieved something like a religious status on which, every five or so years we troop, like trained monkeys to the voting booth, having been informed, usually through the press and media, what 'goodies' we can expect if we vote for so and so. 
The morning after the election the realisation begins to hit home as we now learn that for a number of reasons, the manifesto promise will not be fulfilled and so, duped we slink off into our homes that night to see, on our television screens, the very same people we voted for engage in both obfuscation and the practised art of the U turn, with the bland explanation, "we still have your best interests at heart".
If the manifesto had the same legal status as a binding 'contract' in business the politicians would have to choose their words carefully. Their manifesto would be enforceable  in all but exceptional circumstances, otherwise the law would take a view and either insist the pledges were carried out or the people who made them would have to answer to the forensic test of contract law. 
It's simply not good enough to let the politicians off the hook irrespective of which party they represent, to allow them to lie and cheat us out of that most precious concept a democratic vote based on a belief that what we are told is an enforceable truth or at least as close to being factual as makes no difference.
In years gone by man's word was known as his bond, sadly that concept has died along with so much else we used to deem as ethical and with its death the archetypal con man arrived for whom the truth has little meaning. His agenda, to make speeches which are clearly without any sense or reality and has reduced the body politic to disrepute. 
 A situation where the very fabric of democracy loses all meaning and leaves us stranded in no man's land, unable to have confidence in anything political and the affairs of state to be at the whim of charlatans.