Whose country is it anyway?

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan The Daily Star Asia News Network Dhaka

The question has the surreal swiftness of a sinister quip. You don't ask this question in a democracy, because who doesn't know that the country is supposed to belong to the people. But does it really? Where are the people in the affairs of this country?

They vote in the elections, they pay higher taxes, higher prices for utilities and essential commodities. They get kidnapped and killed, their daughters and wives are molested, and they get threatened by extortionists. But then they don't decide who runs their country and they become the victims of their own choice of government. These people have lost their country.

Whose country is it anyway? Does it belong to the people, politicians, bureaucrats, musclemen or businessmen? Who runs the show? People certainly not. They are forced to live in an isolated room in the nation's house. It has the absurd situation of a prison under seize. The guards are in the lock up, while the inmates are free.

Say, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Whose vigilance is it for whose liberty? The keepers turn into usurpers and the people are always the suckers in the end. There is the irony of a contrived suicide about the whole thing. The majority chooses its own minority and then wears that choice like a noose around its neck to hang by the rope of its own stupidity.

If anything, people don't own this country. So, when their elected representatives don't go to the parliament or misuse the power vested in them, people cannot do anything. Thus the source of all power has no power at all. It's only the rubberstamp, needed to win elections and abandoned afterwards. It happens again and again. If anything, people are eternally vigilant to be eternally abused.

The people are caught like chilies between the mortar and the pestle, between the government and the opposition. Each side has its echelons of activists, politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats, labors, musclemen and intellectuals. Each side is like a column of forces that relentlessly collides with another to crush popular will. Politics is more vengeance than vision in this country. Needless to say, it's an opportunity for those who make money.

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America, proclaimed, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it." Does our country belong to the people who inhabit it? In fact, the people are the first for disasters and calamities. They are the last for progress and prosperity. The BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, shopping malls, cybercafes, bowling alleys, spas, restaurants, private universities and flurries of other amenities of modern living, these are for the few, not for the many. All our institutions are engaged to separate the people from their country.

As a matter of fact, the people are in exile in their own country. Who wants to know if they are happy? Who wants to know if their children are healthy, homes are safe and future is secure? Their government is not of them, by them and for them. Instead their government is off them, which tries to buy them, which tries to fool them. Democracy is a mere excuse to exclude people from the republic.

Whose country is it then? We have lots of emphasis on the economy these days. We stress economic growth over political reform. We want economic growth, more exports, more foreign exchange earnings, interest rate management, and private sector development. We have more businessmen in politics and more politicians in business. The chambers of commerce, the trade associations, the business community as a whole, dictate the terms of our governance. Everything must make business sense, and every sense must mean business.

All of these have given us the ecology of money. We live in it and we breathe in it, our dreams, aspirations and convictions are shaped by it. Gone are the days of plain living and high thinking. Now one lives as plainly as one thinks, and one thinks as highly as one lives. Gone are the days of profound knowledge and pristine wisdom. Everything is connected to money. With credit cards and business cards, the world is in your wallet.

Money dominates conscience, money dictates common sense. You don't have to write correctly, you don't have to speak correctly. You don't even have to make sense at all. But nothing keeps you from anything. You can own a college or university with your money. What is education unless one can use it to earn money? Likewise, what is money unless it can be used to teach a few lessons? Businessmen own institutions where educated men teach business. How do you like it?

Where are the people in all these? Private gain is public policy. Individuals think privately within the family, and families think privately within the nation. Democracy is nothing but government, run by public men thinking privately. These men think about their families, children, wives, in-laws, cousins, their minds sucked into the concentric circles of selfish propensities. Where is the collective will? Where is the consideration for others, which is the steppingstone of democracy?

We are divided as a nation, which further divides us as individuals in our political belief, moral conviction and social commitment. We waver between this life and afterlife, rogue ambition and religion, our unsettled minds falling into the formation of hypocrisy. We live amidst the erosion of our values, our vanishing virtues sucked out by the swirling vortex of virulent vices.

French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre gave a speech at the Jacobin Club in 1792 when he declared, " I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor Tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people." Does that vaunted utterance answer our question?

Are our people tucked inside the pride of our leaders? Where are the people if you ignore the streams of limbs that fill the streets, the smell of sweats that laden the air? Where are the people if you ignore the groaning moaning sounds of anguish under the crushing burdens of corruption and injustice?

Many centuries ago the struggle for democracy had started to give back power to the people. Now democracy has arrived like a runaway train, which forgot to pick up the passengers, who waited for it. It belongs to those who are at the driving seat and their families, giving joyride to ticket checkers, attendants and guards and their families. If you cut the long story short, a few families are having fun at the cost of many.

Whose country is it? I ask again. It belongs to a cabal of politicians, musclemen and businessmen, is the answer. What about the bureaucrats and the intellectuals? What about them? They are there to serve to the order. What about the people? They are the poster boys of democracy, who look cute without any real power. If anyone feels ashamed or ignored, it's time to get together and take your country back in your hands.