This is the season for jumping ship again as
the majlis elections season throws up its festivities. I wrote about this ways
back in this blog. But I guess this has to be revisited. Why a Political Party
in a democratic process in the first place?
It is for including diverse views of society. After all democracy is all
about discussion and consultation and compromise as we all know. If we didn't
have parties we wouldn’t have the minorities and life’s dissenting views and
social sensibilities included into the discussions as inclusively as we want
these to be. Having such discussions widen the net of social concerns beyond
just the concerns of the rich and powerful. It gives voice to the minorities,
the disenfranchised and to the voiceless of the masses. When banded together
they have their voice in a party. This about implementing the idea of unity is
strength; that of brining a divided society together.
But let’s also look at where parties have
true relevance! What comes quickly into mind is inclusiveness of views, and that
Parties have greatest relevance for nations that have egalitarian and sectarian
divides; those with a diversity of sensibilities. Large nations that are
melting pots of many cultures and ethnic diversity and even ideologies and
social sensibilities need a way to have their voice at the table. And so here
the party finds its true relevance. But in nations that are homogenous across
culture, language, religion, ethnic origins, social sensibilities, and
geographical settings don’t have to divide itself into parties just because
this model of Western representative liberal democracy has in it their process
of implementing it.
When we look closely at the features of our
local parties we have nothing to celebrate such as a specific aspect of
diversity or social sensibility. Our parties are, it is sad to say, a band of
people being led by the rich and powerful, seeking pride of position or
financial gain from winning the race to the top. Just reflect on the the
parties we have. I don’t witness any party with a rallying ideology that draws
people to it because they value that social edict or national goal or an
ideology to guide life by. These are more akin to gangs members who will stay
with the monied leader as long as they have the money and power to dispense.
The moment the leader falls they would disperse to find another godfather. So senseless has been the birth of democracy in our nation.
Just think about it! Just imagine if these leaders, by some quirk of nature
don’t cease to be. What will happen to the Party? Will any of these Parties
that we have today continue to function in the strength that it is doing now?
It’s not difficult to imagine the result. It will fall apart and disintegrate;
unless the Party leadership that is in the shadows of the leader revives and
rebrands it with an attractive ideology. That charisma, or the money, or the
social power that the ex-leader had would not in most instances be available as
a rallying song for members. Bu with an
existing ideology, those who did support that ideology would perhaps stay on.
That would be the true way Parties forge
into the future.
But then do we, in Maldives, have such
polemic ideologies that impel us to lead such advocacies? The concerns of
environment, liberal or conservative agendas, business models or the types of
prevailing government models we want, liberal socialist or communist, religious
affiliations or ethnic sensibilities are strong ideals people are attracted to.
If we care to employ them as our thrust, then parties will have meaning and a
purpose for people to rally to. But in Maldives where are those pressing
demands that need attention? If there were, we would have been clamouring for it
already. Not rallying round the rich and padded in the hope of catching a
morsel they throw at us. This is shameful some would say. Yet others would argue
that the very basic needs that we need satisfied is not available to us; so why
not for this moment “accept the fish that they throw at us; and later think of
learning to fish”. That is also understandable. But in a nation that is booming
in business and the attendant income, do we have to be jumping around to grab
the notes that are thrown at us rather than striving to do an honest job or
start a business to earn some honest money to have those three square meals,
respectable clothing and safe shelter? Not sell our soul to the devil in these
shameless behaviours. Do we have any respectfulness we want to model to our
children? Or do we really want our children also to be just rowdies like us?
But I also think in a different line. Maybe
we have not introduced democracy in its right image - as a way of giving voice
to a voiceless public. For them to become aware that a nation is the complement
of all the people in it; that the nation exists for its people not for its
leaders. In the new independent setting the world moves now (in contrast to the
despotic or totalitarian contexts it used to before and even from our colonial
times) the difference must be celebrated. And that is in the awareness that the
people have been liberated from the shackles of bondage and they don’t need to
be bonded yet again by their own local Masters. It is for the people to realise
this and give four or five year terms to their servant leaders to manage the
land in the best way for the people to feel safe and settled and happy.
But we don’t see this happening. As the
saying goes “ the oppressed knows only the ways of the oppressor. So when the
oppressed come to power they use the same tools they know to govern - that of
the oppressor”. Perhaps that is what we see in our nation too. The same
oppressive ways being promoted. The same rallying round the rich and the
powerful. It is the replay of the tribal culture we wanted to leave behind. The
rich and the powerful love the tribal culture and the concept of a cult because
that is how they get their hype their high or their purpose fulfilled. And
unless the public knows the real purpose of democracy (that they are the ones
to call the shots) the powerful will always dominate.
Our minds that have been moulded into this
subservient model of character won’t just go away unless we are truly and
mindfully and lovingly nurtured out of it. This of course can’t happen because
those in power will not allow it. We have not had the urgency and the pain of a
birth into democracy as in many of the Western countries and some in our
regions too — they fought civil wars and endured great pain, social strife,
loss of loved ones, and enduring fear to get to the taste of democracy. That
too maybe waning now even in the West, because many generations have passed to
wash away those memories. In contrast, for us in Maldives, we were given our
democracy on a silver platter without us lifting a finger to earn it. It was
like a gift given to us not because the colonial master had to but because they
wanted to. The British empire was dismantling their hold in the world anyway
for reasons of necessity. And so we too got our share of “freedom”; but then, to
be bonded yet again --- to the neocolonialism of our own local masters.
So we were not introduced to this
liberational model of democracy but to a bonded one. We feel we are free but we
are as much in chains as we have ever been; because our minds don't comprehend
the essence of democracy When I ask
anyone of many who are the ordinary people in Maldive as to what is democracy,
their response is a confused one. “We have the freedom to do what we want”.
It’s as if living the ‘NIke line “just do it”. This is not democracy to do
whatever we want. Young people know the line that Spiderman’s uncle uttered as
he died. “With power comes great responsibility”. We know this intellectually
but we have not put it still into our hearts that with the power of freedom
that democracy bestows, we need an equal amount or even more of responsibility
invested to maintain that democracy. And who is it that needs to think
responsibly and act responsibly to
maintain their house in order but us the citizens of Maldives? It is us the
people of our nation. It is not an outside force that will occupy us now forcefully
and visibly. It is our own rich and powerful who will. For wealth and power is
sought by people not to for safekeeping in a bank locker. But to exercise it.
And that exercise will be on a hapless and unaware public.
This is the scene that is playing out in our
country. We the people refuse to take responsibility for our freedom. Perhaps
we don’t value it. And as all gifts we get that didn’t require our effort to
earn, we just let these go to rust or decay or just get tired of it. That is
why we don’t think twice about selling our votes or just forget and let the
atrocities created by the previous government go by because perhaps it’s in this
situation that more mischief can be played by the incoming local leaders too
and the nation to be milked yet again. Should this go on? Do we let this happen
without even mentioning with sadness and regret? Or should such utterances be
the noises we make in our cursory get together in a coffee shop or in a homely
dinner table conversation? I also wonder if our polity is aware that selling
votes is a bad thing? Perhaps they
don’t. Perhaps they feel it’s their right to do so. After all, this is the best
chance in five years that they can have the benefit of a national
redistribution of wealth. Why worry if the method is nefarious. We don’t even
perhaps know if it is.
Then there is the policy of doling out
government money to parties to function. In a presidential form of government
parties don’t get money to spend for their party promotion and campaigns. This
is what is practiced in a parliamentary democracy. So we are also in a confused
and mixed up democratic method; and it’s making hay time because the public
don't even know about it. But the fact
that money is being given by the government to the parties, the prevailing thought for those who would
like a part of the pie is why not have as many more parties as we can muster?
Why not register another party for getting this money? And the public viewpoint
must also be that this money is given for distribution. So why not give
allegiance to those other parties who are getting established so that we can
get some money from it. It seems a scam of a way to inveigle money from those
needing the support. Thus, in the light of this perception of our public mind,
this jumping ship mentality is not quite unfounded given our ignorance of the
democratic method.
Most dangerous than all these money dishing
out is the senseless political division we observe also in our little nation.
Every party divides our community into further separation and separation
doesn’t bring harmony as we all know. Separation foments conflict. That is
what the colonial masters did in their occupation of our lands. They divided
and ruled. This is what I mean by we employing the same means as the oppressor.
We are oppressing our own people by dividing our nation into senseless
divisions. Even as the colonial masters are laughing at us for our folly, they
are also invading our nation with their neo-colonialism of culture. We are even
blind to this as our minds are focused in our frenzy to grab that fistful of
money by rallying around our rich and powerful. And to be like out colonial
masters in our ways too, We are blind to the fact that our society is being
eaten alive from within our communities by the insidious osmosis of alien
values in the name of globalisation and the wonders of a connected world we
know as the “social media”. Aren’t we just
going the way of the “parable of the boiling frog” where he died being boiled
in the can even without his own realisation that this was happening?
