When party politics corrupts!

Jul 03, 2021

By Dr M. D. Thomas
Sir John Dalberg Acton, 8th Baronet, a prominent historian and liberal Member of the UK Parliament of the 19th century, remarked, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”!

When a person has ‘power’ over people or things, it tends to make him or her corrupt. Power has the ‘power’ to morally destroy the nature of the one who holds it. It fills one with arrogance, which ultimately knocks one down. No doubt, power is the sure way to corruption.

‘Politics’ is a means to gain power. It often involves ‘highhanded’ ways. One’s own self becomes the focal point in life. It goes to the point of self-absorption. Hardly anything else matters. No wonder ‘good sense’ is bound to be lost then.

The word ‘politics’ might have been innocent and good in its original intent, but it no longer is today. It is perhaps the most abhorred and disastrous word in all the languages of the world. This is why the word is often used in the pejorative sense.

Of late, ‘politics’ has stood for the most ‘polluted’ reality of our human civilisation. For that reason, it is mostly refrained from by the sane sector of the world.

No wonder that ‘party politics’, sooner or later, becomes a filmy ‘game of hero and villain’ among political parties, and that at the cost of the people, whose wellbeing they are avowed to support. Well, that would translate to ‘party politics corrupts’, even though it shouldn’t be so.

By and by, political parties get so self-possessed that they tend to think of a ‘one-party rule’ and of wiping out the opposition party or parties.

Politics is the easiest job one can get today. For the most part, it does not require qualifications of any sort.

Of course, a criminal background adds to the merit. There is no age limit either. Even if incapacitated, one could very well prefer to die in the chair.

‘Changing the party’ seems to be a major business worth millions of Ringgit today. ‘Leaders’ are sold and bought, like instant coffee, in terms of money and power. Swapping over to another party from the terrace of one party is to bluntly bluff the people who voted him or her into office. This indeed is ‘perversion’.

The reality of the coronavirus pandemic has now been etched in history to show how ‘party politicians’ mismanaged or failed to manage the state of affairs, to the point of acute non-availability of hospital, beds, oxygen, ventilators, medicine, ambulances and the like, for the dying citizens. Claiming the opposite is the irony of reality.

A healthy debate among the political parties, in principle, is part of the game. But the ‘pull and push’ among them, to the point of filling the public space with ‘indecent and hostile remarks’, ends up being a major insult to the public as well as an out-and-out violation of the spirit of the Constitution.

It is good to remember that the ruling party has to be above party politics. They have climbed up the ladder of politics to be at the helm of affairs. They have to be ‘common persons’.

It is appalling to note that the ‘public space’ of the country is full of conversations that are ‘issueless’ and worthless, so much so that sensible citizens feel ashamed of hearing them from their leaders. The ‘dignity and decorum of public life’ seems to have been very severely eroded.

Do power, politics and party politics corrupt? Party politics has to be redeemed. Ethos and the ethics of competence and confidence, along with simple, unassuming, straightforward and transparent ways, have to take over.–– Indian Currents

(Dr M. D. Thomas is Director of the Institute of Harmony and Peace Studies, New Delhi)