Elections:

For power or for consultative leadership?

Observations

by Lakshman Gunasekara

When people go and vote tomorrow, they will be voting to elect not one person or even a few individuals with special power over others, but a group of people who will function as an assembly of collective decision-makers whose decisions become the law of the land but who are not empowered to rule by implementing those decisions.

The Parliament Building. Pic: Courtesy defence.lk

Rather, this assembly - our Parliament - authorizes other sets of people to implement their rulings - the Cabinet of Ministers, the President, the government bureaucracy, and the law and security enforcement institutions, et al.

This is a complex system of government in which there are multiple layers of 'rulers' with different degrees of power and each 'ruler' accountable to other sets of 'rulers' who are all ultimately accountable to the community of citizens. The accountability is then weighed and assessed at the time of the next elections and the citizens decide who is deserving of taking up the reigns of governance.

But political culture is fickle and given to sudden twists and turns. In Sri Lanka, we have seen how those elected to power have worked to strengthen their own power over the citizens in various ways. Entire constitutions have been replaced with ones that either concentrated more power in individual executive officers' hands or, in the hands of the politicians as against the bureaucracy and civil society or, in making some ethnic communities or social classes or genders more privileged and powerful than other communities or classes or genders.

Quantum of power

The focus of political attention and practice has become more on the degree or quantum of power over others - individuals or groups - than on the facility for effective and successful consultation and collective deliberations and agreement on decisions, which, actually, are the real stuff of politics. There seems to have been a gradual shift away from the practice of collective and consultative governance to the practice of power and control over others. So much so, that, when we talk of government today there is much focus on individual leadership and the accrual of individual power over others.

In the campaign for tomorrow's parliamentary election, for example, there was much frenzied debate and political manoeuvres inside one party over who would be prime ministerial candidate. In an earlier time, the other major national party was almost torn apart over a hard contest over the position of 'Leader' of the party.

However, in intellectual discourses on governance and politics, it is the fashion to uphold 'democracy' as the best form of government, the government system of modernity, in which power is diffused seemingly elegantly among sets of people and, in which concentration of power in individual officers is regarded as less civilized and non-modern. 'Autocracy' and 'authoritarianism' are considered political styles of the past, of backward or even barbarian societies.

In real practice, however, there seems to be creeping return to such autocratic styles. In many parts of the world, for example, the term 'Leader' has become a formal designation and even an office. Many political parties, for example, now have an office of a 'Leader' who is either alongside or, more often, above that of the 'president' or 'chairman'. In some democracies, the 'Leader' of the party is merely the leader of that party's group of MPs in parliament. In other States, including some that are described as democracies, the party leader is the ultimate boss of the party as a whole.

Office at the apex

The term 'leader' is actually a generic term that is used to collectively describe various specific forms of leadership - chairman, director, president, general secretary, etc. However, given a certain type autocratic value, the term 'leader' becomes the specific word to describe the office at the apex of a necessarily pyramidal structure of power and control as opposed to a more horizontal structure of diffused power.

Hence, 'Der Fuhrer' or 'Il Duce' during that horrific era of European fascism.

When power structures become increasingly pyramidal with a powerful singularity at the top, and it is formalized in this way, then it is explicit authoritarianism.

At one time, Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf ('My Struggle') was not easily available - in Sri Lanka and the rest of South Asia it was not available at all except, perhaps in some remote secondhand bookshop.

Today, it is easily available in street bookstalls in central Delhi and may be available in Colombo too. In fact, if certain political groups and their ideologues are encouraged to espouse their authoritarian ideas more, I would not be surprised if 'My Struggle' becomes popular in Sinhala and Tamil translations as well.

Liberal governance

I am certainly not against the easy availability of this book. I am merely remarking on the fact that it seems to be attracting increasing popular attention.

And I ask: is this a reflection of critical approaches to the subject of liberal governance and the possibilities of greater democracy or, does it reflect a relapse of political culture back to authoritarianism and its counterpart racism and supremacism?

In fact, despite 'democracy' seeming to be a modern phenomenon, human history shows that democracy precedes autocracy and not vice versa. Consultative governance is, perhaps, the earliest form of collective action in human society to ensure order in the community and collective action for the betterment of that community.

Even if there were certain individuals who were more prominent than others in their inputs into governance, in those earliest times of society, they did not exercise control over others but rather functioned as sages, soothsayers and medicine men. They provided ideas, vision, diagnosis and prognosis, and the only control they would exercise was that of psychological and spiritual reassurance in the form of mystical ritual and prophesy.

In fact, most ancient religious traditions portray the earliest human communities as being ruled by collectives - whether in Vedic societies, Hebrew and other ancient West Asian tribes, the Norse 'Althings' or other tribal societies.

The Buddha himself refers to the collective assemblies of the Vajji tribal confederacy. I thought it important to reflect on traditions and styles of governance because tomorrow's election seems to one that is more important than most in our modern history. Hopefully we are moving away from an era of authoritarianism toward one of greater republicanism. My reflection is intended to dissect the current popular discourses to root out what is left of those practices of autocracy and dictatorship so that, as citizens, we are more sensitive to the nuances of political practice as we wield our ballot.