Accommodating other points of view is the essence of
democracy. After all, consultation which is the tool of democracy can best generate
its fruits when we accommodate myriad points of view. Just as there are many
types of people in this world – even beyond color and creed – there are
infinite view points on any give subject. And as if that is not enough, these views
and opinions are dynamic too. Someone’s opinions today may not be the same tomorrow.
That is the nature of us human beings. Therefore, democracy, as an idea for
governance provides that space for listening to other points of view, even
though the final decision may have to be categorical. And the art of decision
making is about how deftly we accommodate a confluence of these myriad views –
the best of such results is called consensus. The general process by which we
arrive at this kind of decision is persuasion, and it comes about through the
use of tools such as negotiation and accommodation. In the world of politics
this coming to consensus is often termed as “deals” which give such decisions a
derogatory ring. And many a time this maybe so because the so called win-win
situations arrived at seem biased towards the benefits of the parties that are negotiating rather than
for the public for whom this decision was needed in the first place. Hapless
public in our so called democratic systems languish from one voting day to the
next lamenting the wrong decisions they have sided – and are so deceived over
and over again. It is not difficult to understand why; because we are ignorant
of the purpose of democracy!
A way out of this conundrum for us the public is for us to
be aware of the consequences of political decisions (what the government calls policies).
All too often we are easily swayed by the glitter of the moment, or at best
only the very immediate future, of what is offered to us and seen as an
immediate personal benefit, and want to grab it while it is available for we
feel that soon it might be gone or that someone else might have it if we don’t
act fast enough. Our minds are not used to reflecting on consequences of such
decisions to the larger society because our primeval instinct is about getting
what we can quickly – the survival instinct – and this hasn’t still left us, or
put another way, we have not been able to get out of its clutches. The role of
civilization is for us to move from that level of self-serving survival mode to
another that moves us closer to our real selves – that of our essence as
spiritual beings as we go through our just this temporary human experience. When
we can begin to think that way, we can begin to see ourselves in every other
person and thus view humanity as one whole unbounded entity, rather than
fragmented beings each with our own selfish ends. Unfortunately, these types of
ephemeral pleasures that the world of form offers us are what we continue to
grope at, and this behavior never subsides because the material society, in its
market logic, continues to expose us to such enticement, and we keep lapping
this up being blissfully ignorant -- even deciding to be willfully ignorant
because the moment of experiencing pleasure is so engaging and thrilling.
Our Maldivian public deserves to be given the awareness for us
to become the reflective polity that will drive a mature democracy. So far in
these past five years or so little has been done to make the Maldivian public
become better stewards of democracy. Rather we have been made more ignorant of
becoming it. The overt rifts, fights, and deals all the way – have exemplified
this inaction by the party machinery and the independent commissions that are
supposed to do this for us. Perhaps this ignorance is just what serves best the
divisive politics that is rampant in our midst now – all in the name of
democracy!
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