If we lie to government, it’s felony. But if they lie to us, it’s politics.
— Bill Murray, American actor
Pariah politics is the inevitable doom when power is placed in the wrong hands for all the wrong reasons and purposes by the wrong people who wrongly think they have exercised their universal suffrage. It happens in the multiple artifices of government, social cubs and in the hallowed halls of corporate governance.
Universally accepted as the three most basic elements necessary for any nation-state to be recognised as an entity endowed with dignity, power and purpose is its form, its vital force and its indomitable spirit. This is only possible when no effort is speared to keep pariah politics out of the equation. A worthy ideal never finding expression in its practice.
The most dangerous and hidden element in pariah politics is the unseen hands symbolising hidden agendas and advancing covert machinations often translated as missing government funds where the blame game takes on magical and mystical dimensions dubbed as scandals accompanied by robust make-believe prosecutions.
Some social and recreational clubs in Malaysia, for example, have perfected an advanced culture of one-upmanship, arrogance, private prejudices, covert camaraderie, and vengeance premised upon blatant tribalism. Their annual elections are well-orchestrated using vote banks, sinister promises, clandestine partnerships and lucrative disbursements.
The written law for these clubs is enshrined in its constitutional rules and bye-laws. Professionally incompetent lawyers who happen to be members have a field day deliberately misinterpreting simple and unambiguous words and phrases for a professional fee based on a third-rate understanding of the intent, content, extent, reason, purpose, scope, scale and effect of the written guidebook which is supposed to make management competent if not creative in espousing good club governance.
Show trials initiated by the government sometimes make loud media copy to nab the crooks, but often dissipate when another distraction is manufactured on cue, on time, to transfer the focus to some other issue. Ex-Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner has become a leading expert in playing to the gallery where his every lie is compounded by the fact that he’s telling the truth about lying in the past!
Think tanks and talk-shows spring up everywhere assuming nuisance proportions with talking heads doing their utmost to spew hot air. It is a culture sworn to merely talk about the problem with hardly any formula or concept to solve the festering agonies of the times. Winston Churchill captured it brilliantly: “There’s no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”
The legislature is another circus where partisan politicians, pariah politics and putrefied practices are mercilessly showcased. Nothing gets done, but plenty is reported about how an Opposition MP took on the establishment by embarrassing the living daylights of the truth. Soon, that’s forgotten too because it’s time for another distraction.
Shouldn’t the rakyat be bothered about the status quo? How do they express their outrage? One young rising promising politician is often touted as the promise for tomorrow as he extols the virtues of “turbocharging” the rakyat to greater heights of accountability and positive action.
Pariah politics in the private corporate sector is managed, underscored and pre-determined by Lady Godiva accounting principles where vast profits are “written-off” as losses while the employees are meaningfully exploited.
The superrich accounting to less than five per cent of the population control the economy with the middle-class controlling all the jobs and paying most of the taxes. The poor are there to frighten the daylights of the middle-class.
As long as the private sector keeps the economy motivated with the dynamics of demand and supply accompanied by consumerism at its peak, the government continues to plays pucks with mismanaging the wealth of the nation. The bribe-giver plays a pivotal role in pariah politics as long as his client base grows gradually and often unabated.
George Orwell never fails to send chills down our spines when one of his greatest observations still reverberates in our consciousness — “that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
Meanwhile, the rakyat continues to be anaesthetised with inaction.
“Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress,” warned a caring observer.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
