[ALOCHONA] Failure of dynastic politics around the world

Dynasties and the law of diminishing returns

Syed Badrul Ahsan @ The Daily Star

Political dynasties make a mockery of democracy. And they do that through keeping power, or the possibility of arriving at it, limited to a self-chosen few. You might now want to explore the issue a little deeper. You can do that easily through observing the way matters have lately been shaping up in Pakistan. A nineteen year old young man has just been imposed on the Pakistan People's Party as its new chairman. His father, notorious for all the charges of corruption levelled against him not only in Pakistan but in Switzerland as well, will be the party's co-chairman for as long as the son does not finish his education at Oxford and return home to take charge of the organisation. It all reminds you of the old days when monarchies were the rule rather than the exception, when kings too young to exercise authority were guided by regents until they reached the first rung of adulthood. So what we now have in Pakistan, following the tragic end of Benazir Bhutto, is a very young king named Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who will for quite some years be in the shadow of a regent called Asif Ali Zardari.

The irony here is that with such royalty in charge of the PPP, there is yet the expectation that the party will bring democracy to Pakistan and, indeed, make it possible for all Pakistanis to savour all the good things that pluralism throws up. But that is not how it works, especially in conditions where you keep thinking and talking of democracy as it ought to be. And such circumstances are not to be found in Pakistan alone. You will remember the alacrity with which a policy of shock and awe (even before such a term was invented) was planned and implemented in India moments after Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her bodyguards in Delhi in 1984.

Back in 1964, when Jawaharlal Nehru died, it was Gulzarilal Nanda who took over as interim prime minister, and stayed in that position until the Congress elected Lal Bahadur Shastri to succeed the country's first prime minister. In 1966, when Shastri passed away in Tashkent, Nanda again held the fort until the ruling party asked Indira Gandhi to take charge of the country. In October 1984, none of these precedents was followed. Pranab Mukherjee, the most senior member of the cabinet at the time, was elbowed aside; a young, novice lawmaker called Rajiv Gandhi was summoned back to the capital from Calcutta and administered the oath of office of prime minister.

That dynasties do not throw up competent politicians, particularly when their founding patriarchs have left the scene through demise, has been observed nearly everywhere across the globe. You would have thought that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would make a good president for the Philippines because she was the daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal. You would be wrong. Just look at her record in office. Or, for that matter, look back on the dismal presidency Megawati Sukarnoputri conducted in Indonesia before Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono entered the scene. The fact that she was the daughter of Achmad Sukarno did her no favours.

You could even think of Benazir Bhutto. Neither of her two stints as Pakistan's head of government was remarkable for any vision or purposeful, practical, day-to-day performance. She was a brilliant star, certainly; but it takes a whole lot more to administer as fractured a country as Pakistan. Rajiv Gandhi was a disaster for India. That his widow Sonia has chosen to stay away from leadership of the country may be encouraging for some, but that still does not mean that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is not there any more. It is there. The way all those Congressmen fawn over the young Rahul Gandhi is a sign of bad days ahead for all Indians.

Here in Bangladesh, it has not been uncommon for people to spot walls extolling the virtues of political families. As graffiti once put it so astonishingly crudely, "Zia is our philosophy, Khaleda is our leader, Tareq is our future." After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Go into some simple mathematics and you will likely come up with figures that will leave you reeling. The dynastic is what has lately taken over politics in Bangladesh. Slightly over a year ago, when a minister in the BNP-led coalition government decided that his nephew would take his place as the lawmaker from his constituency, huge uproar was the result. Our surprise is not that the move was protested. It is that almost anyone you know in politics is, these days, happily projecting himself or herself as the future founder of a new dynasty. Tareq Rahman's rise in the BNP is but the outer symptom of a malaise. Look deeper. You will not like what you see, in the Jatiyo Party, in Bikalpadhara, for instance.

Think of distant Congo. The murdered Laurent Kabila was swiftly replaced by his young, pretty callow, son Joseph Kabila. The country has only limped from bad to worse. In an earlier era, we used to be horrified at the way things went on in Haiti. Papa Doc Duvalier was followed by Baby Duvalier. The country went to the dogs. In these times, everyone seems to have taken a cue from the Duvaliers. The Syrians have seen one Assad, Hafez, replaced by another, Bashar. The Hariris and the Chamouns and the Gemayels and the Jumblatts have had their own dynastic patterns run riot in Lebanon.

Muammar Gaddafi in Libya seized the state in 1969 and, nearly forty years on, shows no sign of an imminent departure. But when he does, it could well be his son, Seif, who will set yet another political dynasty in motion. In Sri Lanka, the Bandaranaikes had a very long innings, and in the process left a country divided along sectarian lines. It was SDRD Bandaranaike who first made the Tamils seethe with rage by his outlandish ideas of governance. His wife and daughter then improved on his methods. And, today, the Tamils, in the form of the LTTE, run around the place creating panic and fear among all Sri Lankans.

Political dynasties sap the strength of a democratic system. Where the objective is a creation of democracy, predominant political families, for all their promises of a fealty to democratic ideals, scupper the whole enterprise. And this they do in two ways. They make sure that no one outside the family gets to be influential enough to become a symbol of future leadership. Such an attitude naturally and swiftly pulls the rug from under those who, in the deepest core of their hearts, believe in democracy as a way of life. And then comes the competence factor. Dynasties generally follow the law of diminishing returns. Our experience says it all. It is always the founders of dynasties who sometimes leave a big, positive imprint on the popular consciousness. Those who come after them, their spouses, siblings or children, demonstrate, in increasing frequency, unabashed philistinism where their ancestors were once dynamic and visionary.

Dynasts thrive on borrowed reputation, generally. Little of intellectual analysis is evident in their actions. But, of course, a surfeit of imperiousness marks their public behaviour. They are the new ruling classes. And as ruling classes go, they soon reveal the decadence that underlines the hollow glitter on their public faces.

And do not forget that political dynasties are, in broad measure, an insult to the intelligence of the nations they foist themselves on. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari believes, or has been told, that the future of the federation of Pakistan is inextricably linked to his leadership of his mother's party and of the country that Muhammad Ali Jinnah cobbled into shape. Nothing could be more ludicrous. Nothing could be more damaging for a country.
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