I am not sure I agree with the statement above.
A democracy - understanding the term in its narrow sense as a setup where people power is limited by certain concern for civil rights, if not by a full-grade American Republic - if it holds and is not immediately overthrown by a new tyrant, is an improvement. The American Republic - suffering as it did from horrible injustices like slavery - was, at its founding, superior to the tyrannous systems of France, Spain, and the other continental monarchies, where slavery (or rather, serfdom, which was not much better) was practiced up until the mid-19th century and in some cases as late as the 1860's, where political absolutism was still king and the opposition brutally crushed.
It is best to imagine it like the U.S. South in its darkest hour. Where its 'attitudes' 'progressive'? Hell no. Were elections faked, minorities and whites lynched, and so forth? Sure. But as compared to Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany - or hell, to Belgium at the turn of the century, which was responsible for a genocide of ten million people in its own right - Alabama was a paradise. It would be far better to be a black man in Alabama in 1900 than it would be in Belgian-ruled Congo.
Today's Indonesia, India, or Mali are not as democratic, as shiny, and as wealthy as modern-day Europe or the United States. But - even with the (increasingly rare) religiously-based attacks in these nations, they are miles better that their neighbors without such a tentative, fail-infested democracy. If Egypt turns out to have a democracy on the Indonesian level, that would be beautiful.
Is a democracy the best thing since sliced bread? Possibly no. But if I were an Egyptian of the appropriate age, or a Lybian of the appropriate age, I would be in the streets right now, fighting for democracy.
