A close-up of Hosni Mubarak shown on the CNN website revealed an utterly cynical face. Perhaps it is indeed the case that the evidence of deceit and corruption is etched into a person’s features over time. Or perhaps it is that now the Egyptian president has finally stepped down, we just fancy we can read his personal history in his visage. If it is the former, then some of our own politicians should beware; a photo in an unguarded moment might reveal their true character, Dorian Gray style.
Whatever its effects on the face, the experience of power generally compromises personal integrity – although there are presumably some exceptions. And the fewer the checks and balances in operation, the greater the corrosive effect on personal values and standards. In addition, the longer a person is in power, the more arrogant they become. The evidence for this could not have been clearer when Mr Mubarak gave his final address to the nation as head of state and government, saying he was speaking as a father to his children. It was an extraordinary remark, which recalled the days of absolute monarchy – although it would have surprised Egyptians a good deal less than foreigners, since they were already in the habit of referring to him as the last pharaoh. His newly appointed Vice President was a good deal more direct, cheerfully telling the world that Egypt was not ready for democracy. One might have thought it more appropriate for him to have acknowledged that no one, Egyptian or otherwise, is ever ready for oppression.
However corrupted a senior politician’s character has become, there is always the need to justify actions to the public, and, it must be said, to oneself, and cultivate a façade of respectability. This inevitably requires an ends and means style argument. Mr Mubarak told his own people and the West that he was the bulwark against Islamists taking over in Egypt, although the Muslim Brotherhood is far removed from the ‘Taliban,’ and in any case, the present rising seems to have had its source in secular concerns; the Brotherhood only joined the protests after they were under way. Of all the Arab countries, Egypt seemed the least likely candidate for an extremist Islamist takeover of government. But then rationalisations by absolutist leaders are never about the truth.
Furthermore, in an interview with Christiane Amanpour Mr Mubarak trotted out an après moi le déluge, argument: if he left now there would be chaos. Whether that happens or not is yet to be seen; however, if it does, it will not be because he stepped down, but because he made no effort when he was in power to release his chokehold on the society, disband the thugs comprising the secret police, and allow the development of a true democracy with all its accompanying institutions – not, of course, forgetting open elections. Dictatorship by its very nature destroys autonomous institutions, as a consequence of which there is always a vacuum when the dictator goes. The vacuum can be filled by another dictator (or council of dictators), but any kind of genuine liberal system requires time to build.
Truth and reality, therefore, are not what leaders in Mr Mubarak’s position seek to project; image is all that matters, and by extension, public perception. When public perception is different from what they would wish, such leaders refuse to recognize this. They have, of course, total control of the media which insulates them from uncomfortable realities. However, even if discontent in a country is given massive public expression, they still cannot recognize it, because if they did, the game would be over. In such circumstances self-delusion takes hold in an attempt to protect their concocted image of themselves on the one hand, and maintain their justification for clinging onto power on the other. Power, it seems, is highly seductive and difficult to relinquish.
Guyana is not the equivalent of Egypt by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the careless use of the word ‘dictatorship’ by a few letter-writers from the diaspora notwithstanding, this country has never had a full dictatorship in the true sense of that term, although it is no stranger to authoritarian government at one level or another. Nevertheless, some of the aberrations associated with being in power too long can be identified even now either at an incipient stage or at a more mature level of development.
A consistently positive image is harder for the government in this country to project when it does not have full control of the media, although despite all its promises it still holds on doggedly to its radio monopoly and has refused to allow any TV proprietor to extend their signal. As is well known, it withdrew state ads from this newspaper for seventeen months, and has withdrawn them again, this time from the independent press as a whole, in an effort to apply pressure. The other side of the coin is that friends of the ruling party benefit from state largesse.
What the administration does not seem to appreciate is that even its own supporters can only absorb so much propaganda. If they do not choose to listen to, watch or read the state radio, state TV station and state newspaper – in addition to the ruling party’s own organ – or if they do because they have no alternative but do not take them seriously, then saturation point has been passed. There is no point in telling people that there is little corruption in the society, when from their own experience they know otherwise; or in telling them law and order is at an optimal level, when again from their own personal experience direct or indirect, they know otherwise. The gap between image and reality is too wide.
In other countries, of course, an inefficient government gets voted out, but the peculiarities of the local political-ethnic situation mean that for the past eighteen years the administration has not had to fear that, whatever its own constituency might have thought about its performance. To its own constituents, it has always presented itself as the bulwark against the return of the PNC. Be that as it may, there is still self-image to consider in relation to a wider audience, and so several of the ministers, taking their cue from the head of state, lash out at their critics in frequently unseemly and intemperate fashion, presumably in the expectation that bullying language will intimidate them into silence. In the case of the contortions over the laptop project, or Pradoville 2, for example, full personal attack mode will still not dispel public unease.
In addition, the public perception is that the bullying goes further than just language, and people fear that if they openly criticize it could have repercussions for their jobs, or their position on international committees or whatever. That perception finds support in some high profile cases which have come to public attention. One can only feel that the anger displayed by certain government officials on such occasions, is a reflection of the fact that unlike Mubarak, they tacitly recognize that there is a rent in the veil, and elements of the truth are protruding through the tear.
In fairness, they are not the only ones guilty of intemperate language; it is just that the representatives of a government elected to serve all the people, owe the electorate candid explanations in response to legitimate questions, not abuse with a view to drowning them out. Like Mubarak, they hear the people, but have stopped listening to them.