Regular fair elections are a mechanism for dissuading governments from making catastophic errors. By manipulating elections or by making oneself president for life one disables this mechanism thus make it more likely that you will make a catastrophic error (like invading a neighboring country). Karl Popper explained this all a long time ago. This view of elections an essential mechanism for preventing catastrophic errors is a liberal principle worth fighting for.
Elections incentivize governments to prevent errors that result in not being elected any more.
Errors that result in the entire planet warming by a couple of degrees, or that generally just screw the country over on a timescale longer than an election cycle, are collectively shrugged off by wider society and a complicit media apparatus.
