Democracy — by the people, for the elite

The Belly and the Head is a variant of an Aesop’s Fable. In one of its 1870s illustrations by Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyosai, the belly is shown seated, smoking a pipe while the disjointed bodily members crawl on the floor about it. This fable is the first known examples of the body politic metaphor.
Ironically, this millennia-old fable still seems relevant, especially for most democratic, developing nation-states. If one loosely refers the Head to parliament, the arms to military, the Belly to the country’s elite class and the legs and feet to the middle and the working class, one could say that the belly in its greed to accumulate all the fat conspires with the arms to cut the head off, or at least render it paralysed and powerless. 
Another illustration in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) shows the body formed of multitudinous citizens, surmounted by a king’s head. This seems to be an ideal state where all members of the body act as political equals and strengthen the head with the understanding that it represents their will and welfare. There is a social contract between the people and the head, whereby the hierarchy is accepted. Notably this hierarchy could easily turn into anarchy if either the head is removed or if the body politic loses its contract of trust with the head. 
Comparing these age-old ideas with the current political upheavals in several developing countries as ours, one is amazed how the members of the same body can be battling with each other in the quest for power not realizing how they are potentially dragging the whole body towards a paralysis. It is amazing how the state and all its machineries, that were meant to strengthen the whole and protect it from foreign interventions, can forget their purpose and create vested interests. Is it possible then for the ruling class to have a social contract with the people when the people are being misled and exploited. The question is: does democracy, and the electoral process, represent hierarchy or anarchy? Though seeming unequal and authoritative, hierarchy is natural to human society. Since the beginning, human societies have organised themselves under chiefs and chieftains. Thus a society or an institution cannot work without hierarchy. Though often stuffed with debasements and transgressions, a society cannot function without a hierarchical structure!
So, the need was to correct the flaws in the natural hierarchical system, not to dismantle it. But post-WWII, when religion and tradition-based empires were replaced with ethnicity-based nation-states, governance was also snatched away from ancestral hierarchic systems to a peoples-based dilution of power and governance. The treasure vault of power, once kept sealed with the highest authorities, was now open, and everyone had a cent of it. Everyone — from the son of a cobbler to the son of a scholar or the son of a governor — now had an opinion of equal value. 
But this power, and this valued opinion, has proven to be a lie, because the democratic electoral process always depends on the hierarchical institution of a formal order and leads to the assemblance of a hierarchical power construct comprising parliaments, ministries and a slew of government apparatus to implement its governance. Therefore, the people vote in a group of people believing that they ‘represent them’, whilst once chosen the elected ones immediately become part of the oligarchy; they become a ‘government by the few’ to the advantage of a privileged class. So, what the people are really being left with is a belief of power, freedom and equality, which are not really there. 
Yet this ‘belief’ is the social contract, it is the precious key to power that needs to be kept alive at all costs. If this ‘belief of power’ is lost, the unruly herds of the public may trample upon the ruling classes. As Noam Chomsky quotes in What Kind of Creatures Are We?, “the public are ‘ignorant and meddlesome outsiders who must be put in their place’. Decisions must be in hands of the ‘intelligent minority of responsible men’ who must be protected ‘from the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd’. The herd does have a function. Its task is to lend its weight every few years to a choice among the responsible men, but apart from that its function is to be ‘spectators, not participants in action’. All for their own good.”
Basically then, what democracy has actually done is the removal of kingship and the clergy from the seat of power and their replacement by a class of rulers that top the bureaucracies, the martial forces, the judiciary, the parliaments and the economic elites. With their strong networking and unrelenting resources, they are always miles ahead from the general public in intellectual and technical preparedness. And their accumulative advantage, coupled with their tendency of exploiting and corrupting the system to their benefit, is always increasing from one electoral to the other, as is their hubris of power. 
One is reminded of the Quranic anecdote (2-246, 247) that mentions the Bani Israel asking their prophet to “appoint a king for us so that we may fight in Allah’s way”. “And their prophet said to them, ‘indeed Allah has appointed Saul as your king.’ They said, ‘why should he have kingship over us whereas we deserve the kingship more than he, and nor has he been given enough wealth?’” Notice that the people were already socially segregated; there was no question in their mind of the prophet to be taken as the king; and the wealthy and resourceful ones, because of already being in privileged positions, thought they deserved to be the kings. Also noteworthy are the qualities Saul had that made him worthy of leadership as both a king and as a warrior. “He said: ‘Allah hath chosen him above you, and hath gifted him abundantly with knowledge and physical strength.’”
The question is: is the democratic electoral process ever going to yield for us God-chosen men like Saul? Probably the chances are, given all the odds, one in a million! Rest of the time it is just going to be ‘by the people, for the elite’!

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2024
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