Depends on what you mean by "Republic". If you mean

• Democratic development of the core language: no. That seems to be an oligarchy. Or a benevolent dictatorship. But still ... if enough people would think, the leader (group) is going nuts or inefficient, there might be a revolution. Look at what's happened to gcc: the original line got "officially" replaced by the egcs line of development.
• Democratic development of the library: sometimes yes, sometimes no. Much more competition there, you often have the right to choose.
• Your right to choose, to hack and to share applications/scripts/whatever: yeeees! :-)) Definetly!

Your call :-)

Have fun ...

Andreas