P Kharel

Albert Camus is credited to having observed: “If you have to be persuaded, pressured, reminded, lied to, incentivised, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalised ... you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest.” Currency of democracy has created a devastating dent on faith in democracy on account of some powers applying double standards to foreign governments, elected or otherwise. Animus against opposing ideas is no credibly durable approach. Contexts and prevailing socio-economic conditions greatly impact governance and political leadership.

Even as tyrannical manoeuvres persist covertly or overtly to serve narrowly defined core economic interests on the pretext of democratic ideals or local disenchantment having taken over, the eventual outcome will boomerang on the pretentious sloganeers. Democratic discretion should not desert politicians; nor should fair conclusions be derailed. Politics in pure terms is an aspiration to serve society rather than a tool for short-cut route to power, pelf and position at the expense of the larger welfare of society.

Democracy sans jobs
No one is willing to be sponged out. Reflecting the depth of pain and anguish of the victims of unemployment, the educated unemployed signal a crude state of affairs. When multiple adults, if not all, in a family are without regular jobs, the most likely fallout is deep-seated trouble. Extended families might just about manage to help ease the situation slightly but this cannot go on endlessly in this day and age.
More than half of young American adults between the ages of 18 and 29 think democracy in the United States is either in deep trouble or failing fast. According to a recent survey conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, 52 per cent of young Americans believe that US democracy is “in trouble” risking failure. The survey shows that 27 per cent believe that the government is “somewhat” functioning as against 7 per cent terming the country a “healthy democracy”. More than one-third of American youths expect a civil war to break out in their lifetime.

The West’s fall from credibility can be attributed to the indefensible weight of contradictions whereby elected governments were engineered to be killed, jailed or ousted, often tolerating the successor regime’s tyranny over its own people. Iran, Chile, Guatemala and Egypt constitute some of the glaring examples after the end of World War II.
At times, the consequences for sponsors of such events can be staggering. In a humiliating backlash on the superpower US, an Iranian youth brigade held 52 American nationals as hostages for 444 days in 1979-81, which destroyed Jimmy Carter’s chance for a second term at the White House. In came Republican Party’s Ronald Reagan depriving his Democratic predecessor of an extension a second term.

American officials joined hands with crass commercial interest groups to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii” toward the dying years of the 19th century. Eventually, in 1959, the island chain, first declared a republic, became the 50th — and so far the last — state of the United States. After Washington’s 1953 engineering, political change took place in Tehran. Two and a half decades later, American President Jimmy Carter went out of the way to laud the Shah of Iran: “If ever there was a country which has blossomed forth under enlightened leadership, it would be the ancient empire of Persia.”

Carter’s lavish praise paid the price of the unpopular support. In the wake of the 1979 revolution that compelled Iran’s ailing absolute royal ruler to exile, as many as 52 American nationals were taken hostages by the revolutionary guard for 444 humiliating days. The super power chastened. Trust deficit in the big democracies, which give short shrift to their declared ideals beyond their borders, demonstrated the precedence given to their own economic interests over democratic process in other countries.

Afghanistan’s last two foreign-backed presidents, Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, fell from the grace of credibility as corrupt and incompetent. In fact, the former World Bank staff member fled the war-torn, impoverished country at the first signs of the Taliban advancing to the gates of the capital Kabul. This earned scorn for Karzai and Ghani and his backers lasting embarrassment. Their foreign patrons that supported them for 20 years, though it was clear from early on that the stalemate would continue until the foreign forces left the country and power transferred to the hands of the Taliban.
Global pattern is no guarantee for a system to succeed in the absence of due consideration to local contexts. Indonesia’s Suharto and Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak all left to fend for themselves after collaborating with the capitalist powers for decades in the name of containing communism and maintaining balance of power in their regions.

Anomalies anger
Expediency in dealing with complicated issues and governments invites decline in democracy. Ideology dictatorship and values dictatorship do not boost democratic culture. It is being used as a political tool for limited interests. Class system, urban-rural divide and the top 5 per cent of population holding 80 per cent or more of a nation’s wealth corrodes, and eventually damages, the credibility of democracy itself. Youth frustrations are picking up at perturbing speed — a dangerous portent with unpredictable outcome.

Britain’s magazine, The Economist, in January 2021, cited a national survey indicating that 65 per cent of Britons think their country is “in decline” while 57 per cent believe today’s youth have a worse life than their parents’. Described by many as the “mother” of all parliaments, Britain offers one of the latest examples in the sequence of anomalies in democratic functioning and the tenets that go with it. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government seeks to pass a Home Office borders bill that many of his own party members fear could “create a British Guantánamo Bay”.

Hypocrisy gets blatantly on display in the guise of strategic security that vainly seeks to conceal interests of economic type and covetous eyes on natural resources in other countries. We are told the amount of money needed to eliminate extreme poverty from the world is $2.3 trillion can. A huge sum, no doubt. But then it is less than twice the amount the US alone spent in prolonging the trauma, misery and the long stalemate in Afghanistan before the foreign troops in that South Asian nation pulled out.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)