'Going Rogue'

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely……….these words ring true of not only the entire socio political setup of this world that we live in but also of things on a much smaller stage…everyday living and issues surrounding who rules who?

It would be an interesting experiment to give power in the hands of the downtrodden of today….the ones who curse the system and wish politicians dead. Would they then establish a just world order or fall prey to the very temptations and machinations they abhor today??

Would this then answer the quintessential question? Chicken or egg? What came first?
Is it the wrong kind of people who go into politics, accumulate wealth and become powerful and then perpetrate the hideous culture that has become the hallmark of politics across the globe?
Or is it normal people …people like you and me, but maybe with a dash more of ambition thrown in, who get into politics, wake up to the immense thrill and kick that power gives and then start on the journey of corruption to maintain that power ?

Two old political scandals, or shall I say mishaps, have returned to the fore in the public arena this week. They belong in two different continents but the undertones are similar….
As the Chilcot enquiry begins its work to look into the legality of the war in Iraq, the most palpable sentiment around is hatred for Blair. Yet this is a man who could do no wrong a few years ago. A darling of the masses, twice elected to power, with a huge halo round his head and the glow of his charismatic personality radiating far and wide.

Did Tony Blair start off as a well meaning Prime Minister who seriously wanted to do the right thing, defend democracy around the world and establish a just world order? Few believe this today but in the heydays of Labour supremacy in Britain, he did have people enthralled by his sharp oratory and the look of earnestness about him. Did he start off as a smarmy, sly man or was it years in politics that made him cynical to the extent that many now are ready to believe he took the country into an illegal war? How cynical do you have to be to do something you know will cause immeasurable death and destruction, reduce an entire nation to a rubble and ruin the lives of generations to come?

Opponents of the war hope the inquiry will establish that the decision to invade Iraq was illegal and based on flawed or deliberately misleading intelligence about the risks posed by Saddam Hussein. Whatever else the enquiry achieves, simply by being in the news the past few months, it has played a major role in Blair losing out in the race to be EU President.

The other case in point is our very own L K Advani. In a dramatic turn of events, -the Liberhan commission report, which was 17 years in the making, was tabled after details of its conclusions – apparently implicating top leaders of the Hindu nationalist opposition in the Babri masjid destruction – were leaked on monday, triggering uproar in the lower house. Personally, I have always found it extremely difficult to digest that Advani and co had at any point acted out of ‘Ram bhakti’. It never was a campaign of moral outrage against historical acts of vandalism or a campaign to reignite religious sentiments in the hearts of the non believers. It always was a cynical political act directed towards exploiting the extreme naivety of the electorate, wasn’t it? Yet at the time, even the intelligentsia was divided about whether to celebrate or lament their growing influence.

Who knows if these two men started out believing in a just cause and simply ‘went rogue’. (Ha ha….could not keep our darling Ms Palin put of this…). Time will tell.