The Spirit of collegiality
The cries of ordinary people have been flooding on WhatsApp lamenting the loss of incomes due to the third major lockdown.
May 22, 2021
By Anil Netto
The cries of ordinary people have been flooding on WhatsApp lamenting the loss of incomes due to the third major lockdown.
Malaysia’s efforts at fighting the pandemic have been stymied by u-turns, poorly thoughtout measures and double standards in enforcement.
Things have taken a turn for the worse since Parliament was suspended at the beginning of the year.
The suspension of Parliament and the state assemblies has removed a major institution of checks and balances in our system of separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.
Without Parliament, there is reduced oversight of major government expenditures. How are the people to know if the government has spent public funds properly, that it has gone to the right parties without inflated costs and “commissions”?
There is no avenue to systematically question the ministers about how money is being spent. Without Parliament, what we have is unaccountable leadership, a lack in transparency, the executive steering the nation according to its whims and fancies.
There is no one to express the people’s grievances in a public platform when firms chop down forests, when developers undertake extensive land reclamation or evict farmers and others from the land they have lived and worked on for generations. Elected representatives are also unable to question the executive and provide feedback and input into new policies.
Might this also explain the flip-flops and Uturns in guidelines, policies and even COVID prevention measures since Parliament was suspended? Without a collegial body like Parliament, we lose a vital avenue to improve on policymaking after listening to the different views in, at times, heated debate and discussion.
True, Parliament and the state assemblies are not perfect. Many elected representatives seemed more keen on jostling for power and position. They seem beholden to the neoliberal policies which concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
Of course, this is a generalisation. Some elected representatives are genuinely hardworking and attend to their constituents’ needs without delay. They put up pro-people policies and speak up for the marginalised, the landless and the poor.
The suspension or closure of the legislature allows for creeping authoritarianism and dictatorship to emerge.
Parliament used to provide an avenue for the people’s views to be heard through their elected representatives. In this way, the ministers attending Parliament would have a fair idea of what the people across the nation, whether in urban or rural areas, are going through.
But a year of lockdowns and partial lockdowns has taken its toll on ordinary people who are feeling the pain. Food price rises have hurt the ordinary person. Small businesses, roadside stall holders and night-market vendors have suffered as fewer customers patronise their stalls. Those who depend on tourists, whether domestic or foreign, for their livelihoods have taken a hit as well.
There is no avenue to highlight their concerns and ask for corrective policies to be taken.
In our own spiritual tradition, often the wisest, most enlightened decisions are arrived at after a process of discernment in the collegial spirit.
That is why Jesus chose 12 Apostles, not just one. The Spirit often works through a collective process. The first major challenge in the early Church came at the Council of Jerusalem around 48AD, about two decades after Jesus had left his earthly ministry.
The thorny problem: what were the requirements for Gentiles to become Christians? Should they first adopt most of the Jewish tradition or practices, especially circumcision, or could they bypass much of that? Among those who spoke at the Council were Peter, Paul, Barnabas and James, the head of the Jerusalem Church. After much debate and discussion, the Council decided that the Gentiles did not need to observe many of the Jewish rituals, including circumcision, before becoming Christians. The Spirit must have been working through that process.
In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council to usher in a breath of fresh air to the Church and to sweep off the cobwebs that had accumulated over the ages. For three years, from 1962 to 1966, over 2,000 bishops, theologians and experts from around the world deliberated in a spirit of collegiality to chart a new path for the Church in the 20th Century, on the threshold of the new millennium.
A decade later, in 1976, a similar process of collective renewal was kicked off in the Malaysian Church with a month-long study and reflection by the local clergy, known as the Aggiornamento.
In all these councils, the Spirit was there to guide the discernment and to tease out the finer points in the spirit of collegiality. In this way, the people were open to the promptings of the Spirit – in the same way the Apostles were gathered as a collective – to receive the Spirit on that first Pentecost.
If we apply this collegiality to a more secular context, the same openness to the views of others in policymaking and deliberations will produce much more discerning decision-making than the dictates of one person or a small group lording it over others.
That is why it is such a loss when that spirit of collegial decision-making is lost. It is not a coincidence that Germany lost its soul to Nazism when much of its parliament building, the Riechstag, was set ablaze in 1933, and Adolf Hitler used that opportunity to consolidate his power. A string of basic rights were then abolished – freedom of speech, freedom of the media, freedom of assembly – while surveillance was enhanced. This is a salutary lesson for all about the threat posed by executive overreach.
Witness also what is happening in Myanmar today after the military seized power in a coup after the recent general election and arrested lawmakers. Today, the country is in chaos as the people demand the restoration of democracy.
All this shows us how vital collegial decision-making is for a society or nation to progress on a more enlightened path that reflect the aspirations of a broad consensus.
This kind of collegiality may be messy, heated arguments may erupt, but it often does tease out a more enlightened path for us to move forward. That is why we should hope for the early restoration of our own parliamentary democracy
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