Last
year ended with a series of portentous developments for the Yanukovych
regime. And, more and more, it looks like the regime’s ready to break
down or crack up. Consider the signs.
The new year therefore begins on a hopeful note for Ukraine and its democratic aspirations. The writing is on the wall for the regime. If they’d only read more and steal less, they might even see it.
How do we get one group of people to “count” to another group of people? Not, thought the philosopher Richard Rorty,
by relying upon Kant and telling them they are being “irrational.” He
thought solidarity was rather “an inclination of the heart,” grounded in
nothing but contingent emotional identification. Solidarity can be
embedded, or not, in the contingent cultural practices of a society but
can’t be proven “right” or “true.” He thought a human-rights culture “no
more needs a philosophical foundation than does a recommendation to
take an aspirin if you think you’re coming down with a migraine.”
Rather, it needs culturally shaped intuitions and practices, for it is
from these that we get our sense of shared moral identity, not the philosophers.
And now, with How to Cure a Fanatic, a beautiful and wise little book that fits in the palm of one’s hand, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz—a longtime advocate of mutual recognition, compromise, and the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—has rendered the philosopher’s intuition in a novelist’s prose.
Oz has many useful suggestions to make about curing the fanatic, most based on his experience of growing up in and among fanatics himself in wartorn Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, though, it is his appreciation of the power of literature to educate the sentiments that comes through strongest.
Fundamentally, the fanatic “lacks imagination,” argues Oz. That is, he lacks the ability to empathize with the Other; he can’t walk in their shoes, even for a second. “The seed of fanaticism always lies in uncompromising righteousness” that grows until “the fanatic can only count up to one; two is too big a figure for him or her.” To gain a little imagination “may serve as a partial and limited immunity to fanaticism”—precisely because it confronts the fanatic with the two and by doing so “may help cause the fanatic to feel uneasy.” If it does its work, then “the zeal and the simpleness” of the fanatic’s life “go away.” And once gone, they rarely come back.
Oz suggests that certain works of literature (not all; some only “inflate hatred”) “contain an antidote to fanaticism by injecting imagination into readers.” For example, in Shakespeare, Oz points out, fanaticism always ends up a tragedy or comedy. As the curtain falls, “either [the fanatic] is dead or he becomes a joke.” And there is Gogol, and Kafka, and Faulkner and Amichai, Mann and Lampedusa. And, of course, there is the Israeli Amos Oz and there is the Palestinian Izzeldin Abuelaish.
This Christmas I gave Oz’s essays to my son as a gift. He is 17 years old, getting active in politics and intends to study it at university. He is entering a world beset by fanaticisms. I can think of no better way to cultivate his imagination about their sources of strength and their points of weakness.
Many
believe and rightly so that the upcoming elections would be the crucial
milestone in Pakistan’s democratic history. It would be the first time
that a democratic government (without a general sitting in its driving
seat) will complete its five years tenure and will held elections to
transfer powers to another democratically elected government. This
democratic transfer, if hopefully is made rightly would mark Pakistan’s
first ever democratic transition and it could bring Pakistan to new
horizons of democracy where the chances of military rule are minimized
by transfer of power to sovereign parliament and not otherwise.
Although elections held in 2008 were considered pretty fair and democratic as well yet there were few big hiccups which can defame the claim altogether, like the elections were actually held under the rule of a military dictator and not under a democratic regime. And there was the fact that leaders of two biggest political parties PPP and PML (N) were out of the game for so long that they had difficulties gathering and consolidating their political parties. Also many political parties boycotted the 2008 elections which make these elections look not so unbiased and fair as they claim to be.
This time around however, most of the pre-conditions for a democratic transition are being met quite effectively. One of which, is the presence and action of multiple democratic parties playing their role on the political saga. The good thing about it is that most of these, rather almost all of these are nationalist parties and not regional ones so they represent the interests of their people at a national level. Also, this time around most of these parties are fully functional and politically free to cast their spell around and exercise their political rights to attract masses. So now with these preconditions met can we believe that the upcoming elections would change the fate of Pakistan for good and would transform her into a democratic being?
Maybe, maybe not!
So yes these elections are going to be a milestone in a journey towards a stable democratic Pakistan but there are a lot of things to upset all this up. First and foremost the institutional makeup of Pakistan is not democratic itself. The unjustified and excessive role of military and establishment in governmental affairs have such a long history and deep roots that it is difficult for power to be rested in a sovereign parliament when there are parallel bodies to claim power. Secondly, the elitist rulers in Pakistan enjoy the free reign of no accountability whatsoever. Since the judiciary have just held its ground recently and the other fragile law enforcement institutions like that of police are strained with massive corruption allegations and are pressed under political pressure, there is little hope if any, to enforce a strong apparatus of accountability for such elitist groups. Another factor in connection to accountability which disrupts the democratic framework is that the political actors who win through elections have no interest in pursuing the agenda which they made in the first place to win votes of the masses. Since there is such a weak sate institutional make up in Pakistan that it holds little accountability propositions for democratically elected representatives to actually represent the interests of their people and not of their own, hence there is little implementation of it.
So in a crux my argument resides on the fact that though elections are the first step towards democracy, yet the fact that Pakistan lacks institutional democracy badly hurts the true essence of democracy. The true democracy does not only mean that people have the right to vote, it also means that this right of vote represents a deeper meaning where people could actually see their demands, rights and interests being reflected by the elected government and if not… than these people have the right and power of accountability to question their elected representatives. This is how a country moves along the lines of democracy and if it is not being achieved in the forthcoming elections than yes Pakistan might very well be on its path to democracy but would definitely have a long long way to go to actually achieve that democracy.
- The almighty Regionnaires couldn’t even cheat their way to a majority in the new Parliament and, instead, had to settle for what effectively amounts to a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition. Worse, they will now have to deal with a raucous collection of right-wing deputies, the “Svobodites,” who will harass and jeer them at every step of the way.
- The much-vaunted professionalism of the Regionnaires received two fatal blows, when, first, the government was snookered into signing a billion-dollar deal with an imposter claiming to represent a Spanish energy firm and, second, all the expensive Hyundai trains procured by former Infrastructure Minister Boris Kolesnikov just before the Euro 2012 soccer championships last summer broke down in the harsh Ukrainian winter.
- In moves that could impress only Leonid Brezhnev in the final years of his inglorious reign as Communist Party leader, the newly appointed speaker of the Parliament became Viktor Yanukovych’s crony from Donetsk, the aging, dull, and thoroughly uninspiring Volodymyr Rybak, while the prime minister’s job went to the equally dull and uninspiring incumbent, Mykola Azarov.
- The notoriously Ukrainophobic Dmitri Tabachnik remained minister of education, science, youth, and sport, thereby demonstrating the president’s mindboggling inability to understand that replacing him with anyone would have won him easy brownie points with the electorate.
- That two of the brightest, if morally compromised, members of the old Cabinet, Serhii Tyhypko and Valery Khoroshkovsky, have left—the former for Parliament, the latter for his business empire—demonstrates, first, that Yanukovych’s primary criterion in choosing ministers was not talent or brains, but loyalty and, second, that the pro-regime elites are jumping ship.
- Since the new Cabinet consists mostly of Yanukovych loyalists who are beholden to his “Family,” the clan run by the president and his two sons, the newly appointed ministers will focus their energies on fulfilling the sultan’s wishes, thereby aggravating the regime’s hypercentralization, indecisiveness, incompetence, ineffectiveness, and instability.
- Because Yanukovych yes-men also control all the most important financial and economic ministries, the Ukrainian economy will continue to decay, while the Family’s plundering of the economy will accelerate, perhaps in anticipation of the rapidly approaching end and, hence, the limited amount of time left for untrammeled theft.
- All the other seats on the Cabinet went to Donetsk hyper-billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s flunkies, a sign that Yanukovych has formalized his alliance with Ukraine’s richest man, accepted that his power base has been reduced to a sliver of the country, the Donbas, and effectively acknowledged that he has no legitimacy among the people or even—no less important—the other oligarchs and elites.
- The last-minute cancelation of the Ukrainian president’s planned trip to Moscow, the European Union’s continued dissatisfaction with his regime, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s harsh criticism of Ukraine’s democratic backsliding, and China’s deafening indifference demonstrate that Yanukovych has managed to achieve the near-impossible in international relations: complete isolation.
The new year therefore begins on a hopeful note for Ukraine and its democratic aspirations. The writing is on the wall for the regime. If they’d only read more and steal less, they might even see it.
How to Fix a Fanatic
There [is] nothing bigger, more permanent and more reliable, behind our sense of moral obligation to those in pain than a certain contingent historical phenomenon—the gradual spread of the sense that the pain of others matters, regardless of whether they are of the same family, tribe, colour, religion, nation, or intelligence as oneself.Rory idea is that certain Western poets and novelists, muckraking journalists and contrarians “spoke as they did” and so created “our traditions.” Solidarity happens because we “talked ourselves into being the kind of people who cannot live with themselves if we neglect those duties.” Rorty urged us to carry on this work by devoting our energies to moving the heart by the education of sentiment or, the same thing only more candidly expressed, by the manipulation of feelings.
And now, with How to Cure a Fanatic, a beautiful and wise little book that fits in the palm of one’s hand, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz—a longtime advocate of mutual recognition, compromise, and the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—has rendered the philosopher’s intuition in a novelist’s prose.
Oz has many useful suggestions to make about curing the fanatic, most based on his experience of growing up in and among fanatics himself in wartorn Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, though, it is his appreciation of the power of literature to educate the sentiments that comes through strongest.
Fundamentally, the fanatic “lacks imagination,” argues Oz. That is, he lacks the ability to empathize with the Other; he can’t walk in their shoes, even for a second. “The seed of fanaticism always lies in uncompromising righteousness” that grows until “the fanatic can only count up to one; two is too big a figure for him or her.” To gain a little imagination “may serve as a partial and limited immunity to fanaticism”—precisely because it confronts the fanatic with the two and by doing so “may help cause the fanatic to feel uneasy.” If it does its work, then “the zeal and the simpleness” of the fanatic’s life “go away.” And once gone, they rarely come back.
Oz suggests that certain works of literature (not all; some only “inflate hatred”) “contain an antidote to fanaticism by injecting imagination into readers.” For example, in Shakespeare, Oz points out, fanaticism always ends up a tragedy or comedy. As the curtain falls, “either [the fanatic] is dead or he becomes a joke.” And there is Gogol, and Kafka, and Faulkner and Amichai, Mann and Lampedusa. And, of course, there is the Israeli Amos Oz and there is the Palestinian Izzeldin Abuelaish.
This Christmas I gave Oz’s essays to my son as a gift. He is 17 years old, getting active in politics and intends to study it at university. He is entering a world beset by fanaticisms. I can think of no better way to cultivate his imagination about their sources of strength and their points of weakness.
Elections - the ultimate gamble!
Although elections held in 2008 were considered pretty fair and democratic as well yet there were few big hiccups which can defame the claim altogether, like the elections were actually held under the rule of a military dictator and not under a democratic regime. And there was the fact that leaders of two biggest political parties PPP and PML (N) were out of the game for so long that they had difficulties gathering and consolidating their political parties. Also many political parties boycotted the 2008 elections which make these elections look not so unbiased and fair as they claim to be.
This time around however, most of the pre-conditions for a democratic transition are being met quite effectively. One of which, is the presence and action of multiple democratic parties playing their role on the political saga. The good thing about it is that most of these, rather almost all of these are nationalist parties and not regional ones so they represent the interests of their people at a national level. Also, this time around most of these parties are fully functional and politically free to cast their spell around and exercise their political rights to attract masses. So now with these preconditions met can we believe that the upcoming elections would change the fate of Pakistan for good and would transform her into a democratic being?
Maybe, maybe not!
So yes these elections are going to be a milestone in a journey towards a stable democratic Pakistan but there are a lot of things to upset all this up. First and foremost the institutional makeup of Pakistan is not democratic itself. The unjustified and excessive role of military and establishment in governmental affairs have such a long history and deep roots that it is difficult for power to be rested in a sovereign parliament when there are parallel bodies to claim power. Secondly, the elitist rulers in Pakistan enjoy the free reign of no accountability whatsoever. Since the judiciary have just held its ground recently and the other fragile law enforcement institutions like that of police are strained with massive corruption allegations and are pressed under political pressure, there is little hope if any, to enforce a strong apparatus of accountability for such elitist groups. Another factor in connection to accountability which disrupts the democratic framework is that the political actors who win through elections have no interest in pursuing the agenda which they made in the first place to win votes of the masses. Since there is such a weak sate institutional make up in Pakistan that it holds little accountability propositions for democratically elected representatives to actually represent the interests of their people and not of their own, hence there is little implementation of it.
So in a crux my argument resides on the fact that though elections are the first step towards democracy, yet the fact that Pakistan lacks institutional democracy badly hurts the true essence of democracy. The true democracy does not only mean that people have the right to vote, it also means that this right of vote represents a deeper meaning where people could actually see their demands, rights and interests being reflected by the elected government and if not… than these people have the right and power of accountability to question their elected representatives. This is how a country moves along the lines of democracy and if it is not being achieved in the forthcoming elections than yes Pakistan might very well be on its path to democracy but would definitely have a long long way to go to actually achieve that democracy.
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