A devalued currency

Our politicians seem to slide nearly as fast as rupee and what we urgently need is a reawakening of political will.

It has been said of Guy Fawkes, arrested guarding a huge store of gunpowder beneath the British Houses of Parliament on November 5, 1605, that he was the only man ever to enter that parliament with honest intent. When questioned the day after his arrest, he was asked why it was that he planned to kill the king and all the members of parliament sitting with him. He replied, “A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.” He was paraphrasing Hippocrates who said, “Extreme remedies are appropriate for extreme diseases.” It will be remembered that Hippocrates is regarded as one of the founders of modern medicine. Both Fawkes and Hippocrates were right, though perhaps the extremity of their remedies requires some modulation.

Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were tried, found guilty and executed, but at the heart of their plot lay the germ of an increasingly evident truth — a lot of people are losing faith in politics and politicians.

Scroll forwards to the last two weeks and an interview on BBC television. In the interview, which has gone viral on YouTube, a well-known interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, grills an equally well known comedian and social commentator, Russell Brand, on just why it was that he had never voted. Brand launched into a scathing critique of the political classes generally, both contemporary and historically and appeared to be advocating revolution as the only remedy for the ills that lie within the body politic.

Much debate has followed with many, if not agreeing with all that Brand said, at least agreeing with the core of his argument: that politics at a purely intellectual level may be fine, but insert the human element and politics and its practitioners quickly descend in a lying, deceitful and corrupt stew of snolleygosters bereft of moral values and driven wholly by self-interest.

The Land of the Pure is no less cursed with its politicians than anywhere else in the world. They are revealed as liars en masse — how many fake degree holders are there for instance? They are fraudsters and tax evaders and are utterly deceitful when it comes to the making and breaking of promises to fix this, that, or the other. They have been known to beat lesser mortals that have somehow violated their protocol bubbles and they preside over a civil service which they have assiduously corrupted and colonised for their own ends. They sponsor gangs of political thugs that kill and maim, support appalling ‘cultural’ practices that fly in the face of all civilised norms, and when it suits them, disenfranchise entire sections of society, with women their invariable target.

‘Don’t vote — it only encourages them’ is an old anarchist proverb, origins unknown. Of more certain provenance is a quote from Winston Churchill who famously said: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute talk with the average voter.”

But democracy is supposedly what we have here in Pakistan, and despite my many misgivings about the state of governance and the rapacious politicos that are on the receiving end of our largesse when we gift them our votes, vote we should.

Sadly, those we are invited to put our ticks and crosses against tend to be more of the same: the sons and daughters of a previous generation of feudal chancers coming to claim their birthright, and there does not seem to be a political kindergarten in which a new generation of politically motivated citizens might be nurtured.

Our politicians seem to slide nearly as fast as the rupee and what we are urgently in need of is not the local equivalent of Guy Fawkes — though his spirit may live on in the form of the Taliban who would dismantle the entire system if they could — but a reawakening of the political will of the (fairly) moderate middle class that has today largely abdicated politics, leaving the field wide open for the bottom feeders at the shallow end of the gene-pool.

Democracy is never a finished process. And it is not the only form of governance either. But it is the only form that encourages pluralism and inclusivity, and that in its purer forms makes better lives for more people. So vote when you get the opportunity but hey ... think first. Got that?

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2013.

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