India's Election Commission has shown its Bias

 

Yogendra Yadav Speaks: Agnee Pareeksha for the Opposition

 

CBI/ED bonds generate 335 crores

 

Circle of Conspiracy

 

Vignettes from India's No Confidence Shoutout!

 

Are these rumbles of discontent coming together?

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

A PEOPLE’S movement is underway in Israel against its ultra right-wing government. Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to subvert the judiciary’s neutrality, with a selfish aim to kill the criminal cases hanging over his head and that of his colleagues. In quite a few democracies, the judiciary is or has been under assault from the right wing for similar reasons. India is witnessing it in unsubtle ways. Pakistan too has seen political interference with the judiciary at least since the hanging of Bhutto. Then Nawaz Sharif and Gen Musharraf, vicious to each other, took turns to undermine the courts. Pakistan, however, has seen mass movements too that have thrown out military dictators and restored democracy even if intermittently. Where’s that old fire in the belly for India?

Describing the unprecedented attack on India’s democracy starkly at a Cambridge University talk is one thing. Few Indian politicians are capable of speaking with conviction without a teleprompter as Rahul Gandhi recently did before an enlightened audience, while also making plenty of sense. But just as he was holding forth — at a talk called ‘Learning to listen in the 21st century’ — two unrelated landmark events were unfolding in Turkiye and Israel. Was he listening to them too?

The events might send any struggling democratic opposition to the drawing board. In Turkiye, a last-minute collapse of the alliance of six disparate parties, preparing to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election in May, holds a lesson for any less-than-solid political alliance about possible ambush on the eve of an assured victory. Equally instructive was the opposition’s ability to bury its differences promptly, something that eludes India. The Turkish groups have made compromises with each other so that their common goal to defeat Erdogan remains paramount. There are good chances they would succeed, but even if they don’t, it won’t be for want of giving their best to restore Turkiye’s secular democracy.

However, it was the coming out of Israel’s air force pilots to join the swarming protests against the Netanyahu government that is truly remarkable, and unprecedented. These pilots are usually adept at bombing vulnerable neighbourhoods, including Palestinian quarters. But their taking a stand in defence of democracy offers a lesson to every country with a strong military. There were rumblings in India once. Jaya Prak­ash Narayan, the mass leader opposed Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian patch and called for the army and the police to disobey her, an unusual quest but an utterly democratic call when democracy itself is being murdered. The RSS had supported the JP movement. The boot today is on the other foot. Does the Indian opposition have the conviction to follow in JP’s footsteps to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Does it at all feel the dire need to make sacrifices and compromises to rescue and heal the wounded nation?

The Israeli government may or may not succeed in neutralising the supreme court, which it has set out to do. But the masses are out on the streets to act when their nation is in peril. And India cannot exist as a nation without democracy. Secular democracy enshrined in its constitution binds it into a whole.

Rahul Gandhi has evolved as a contender for any challenging job that could help save the Indian republic from its approaching destruction. But he should also have a chat with Prof Amartya Sen perhaps who was quoted recently as saying that Mamata Bannerjee would make a good prime minister. Others have their hats in the ring. Gandhi’s talk in the hallowed portals of Cambridge bonded nicely with his 4,000-kilometre walk recently, from the southern tip of India to what is effectively the garrison area of Jammu and Kashmir. No harm if the walk served as a learning curve for the Gandhi scion, but even better if it were a precursor for a mass upsurge as is happening elsewhere, and which has seen successful outcomes in many Latin American and African states.

Rahul Gandhi spoke about the surveillance, which opposition politicians and journalists among others have been illegally put under. His points about deep-seated corruption, that shows up graphically as crony capitalism, are all well taken. Few can match the feat of mass contact across the country that he displayed recently and his declamation at the world’s premier university. The point is that Cambridge University cannot change the oppressive government in India. Only the Indian opposition can. Rahul Gandhi has the credentials to weld mutually suspicious opposition parties into a force to usher in the needed change.

There’s no dearth of issues to unite the people and the parties. To cite one, call out the BJP-backed ruling alliances in north-eastern states where its supporters assert their right to eat beef. And place it along the two Muslim boys incinerated in a jeep near Delhi by alleged cow vigilantes. The criminality and the hypocrisy of it.

The fascist assault on India’s judiciary is an issue waiting to be taken up for nationwide mobilisation. The assault comes at a time when the new chief justice is one with a mind of his own. Judges have stopped accepting official briefs in sealed envelopes as had become the practice, dodging public scrutiny, say, in the controversial warplanes deal with France. The court has set up a probe into the Adani affair, something unthinkable until recently.

The timing of the vicious criticism of the judiciary is noteworthy. The law minister described the judges as unelected individuals, perhaps implying they were answerable to the elected parliament like any other bureaucrat. This is mischievous. The supreme court set new transparent principles in the appointment of election commissioners. It’s a rap on the knuckles of an unholy system. Could anyone call it a fair election in a secular democracy when people are nefariously polarised and the election commission looks the other way? The questions are best answered by opposition parties, preferably in unison.

Bagga or Mevani, an unlawful arrest is just that. But tell that to Indians picking sides

Yogendra Yadav in The Print


Principles be damned, whose side are you on? This seems to be the ruling philosophy of our public life. We all talk about principles, we invoke norms, we cite rules — but only after choosing whom to support. Rarely do we allow our judgement about who is right or wrong to be touched by the principles, norms or rules we extoll. No wonder, no one takes any proclamation of principles seriously.

As someone who is a stickler for procedures, I have often been at the receiving end of this sorry side of our public life. No one is willing to entertain a suspicion that I might have said something because it is right, correct or fair. It is not just our political life, which is especially charged at this moment. I have faced the same reaction in academia, government institutions as well as social movements. If you object to a proposal by a “friend” just because it is a poor proposal, you are sure to risk your friendship. If you support something right done or said by someone from the other camp, tongues start wagging — zaroor kuchh setting hai! That is what happened when I spoke up against hoisting of religious flag inside the Red Fort on 26 January, or against lynching of a Dalit Sikh man at Singhu border by some Nihangs. My visit to the family of a BJP worker who died at Lakhimpur Kheri is still held up as a proof of lack of loyalty to the cause.

So I was prepared for the usual reactions when I tweeted welcoming the Punjab and Haryana High Court order staying the arrest of BJP member Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga until 6 July. My tweet simply said: “The order should be welcomed, no matter what our opinion about the person. Sending police to arrest someone on a tweet is not done. Be it Jignesh Mevani or Rana couple, Alka Lamba or Disha Ravi, it is unethical and illegal to use police to torment political opponents.” You can check my timeline for the replies I received. The usual trolling was joined by AAP supporters, no less vicious than BJP ones — who assumed that I was taking out khundak (grudge) against Arvind Kejriwal. (As and when I support something the AAP does, it is read as a sign of a wish to come back.)

Looking beyond the personal antics

Many critics made valid points: that what happened to Bagga was nothing compared to what BJP governments have done to their critics, that the courts were far from consistent in protecting other victims in his position. Some of them assumed that I had forgotten Bagga’s past, especially his leading a physical assault on my friend Prashant Bhushan. Some of them insisted that given his low-grade trolling, the Punjab police had good reasons to give him its famous dose.

Without doubt, Tajinder Singh Bagga is what in polite English you’d call a ‘disagreeable’ character. The thesaurus offers you less polite options to choose from: rude, nasty, obnoxious, repugnant, disgusting. Worse, we don’t even know if this public persona is his real self. All we know is his reel self on social media. All we know is that he has made a political career and business out of attacking — physically and verbally — those targeted by the BJP. We just know him as yet another cardboard character — straight from a cartoon strip — that has arrived in our public life to meet the ever-rising demand for hatred, contrived and real.

How do you deal with someone like him? Ideally, he should be ignored. Stop feeding people like him with negative attention and they perish. Or, you could turn him into a meme, as satirist @roflGandhi has done, much to my delight. Or you could refute him — an ineffective and unwise option, to my mind — through fact-checking or counter-trolling. But can you set the police after him? That is the operational question in this instance.

Just consider the facts of the case. In March this year, Bagga wrote a nasty tweet, since deleted, in response to Arvind Kejriwal’s speech in Delhi assembly questioning the BJP’s promotion of the movie The Kashmir Files: “When 10 lakh ***** are born, one Kejriwal takes birth”. Disgustingly provocative the post certainly was. But would you say it is “criminal intimidation” or “promoting enmity between communities”? These are the charges under which the Punjab police, following a complaint from a local AAP functionary, booked Bagga. He dodged police summons to come to Punjab for “questioning”, a euphemism for mental and physical torture. The Punjab police, ever so focused on this one FIR, landed in Delhi to arrest him.

The drama that followed, involving Punjab, Delhi, and Haryana police, can only be called a farce worse than Bagga’s antics. The National Commission on Minorities, conspicuously silent on bulldozing of Muslim-owned houses and shops, was peeved at Bagga not being allowed to tie his turban. When the court opened at midnight for him, India’s criminal justice system looked like a joke. The Punjab and Haryana High Court order was a welcome end to this prolonged and pathetic public spectacle.

Noticing a nation-wide trend

This drama is being played all over the country, in what Shekhar Gupta calls Mutually Assured Detention. While the BJP leads in targeting its critics with the help of agencies, mainstream media and social media, the opposition-led governments have also taken a leaf out of the BJP’s book. They, too, use the standard recipe: file a frivolous complaint, slap draconian charges in the FIR, use the police to go after the target and teach them a lesson. The job is done before the case ever comes up for trial in a court of law.

That is why I cite the case of Jignesh Mevani. Now, it seems ridiculous to compare Mevani’s fight for justice and his courage of conviction with Baggas of the world. My point here is to remind us that the insidious trick used by the BJP in Mevani’s case is not different from that used by the AAP in the case of Bagga. Now that the AAP controls a police force for the first time (Punjab’s), it is happy to misuse it exactly as other governments. They have also targeted Kumar Vishwas and Alka Lamba on similar trumped up charges.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra is no different, as the recent case of MP Navneet Rana and her MLA-husband Ravi Rana demonstrates. Their proposed gimmick of reading Hanuman Chalisa outside the private residence of the Chief Minister could at the most call for preventive detention. But arrest under charges of sedition and spreading hatred between communities is plainly ridiculous. Such vindictive actions cast a shadow on other cases — the one against TV anchor Aman Chopra, for example — where the charge of spreading enmity between communities appear to be serious and worthy of a criminal trial.

Hence my plea to all those who are concerned about the endangered constitutional fiction called the Rule of Law: can we stick to principles, irrespective of the persons involved? Or am I whistling in the dark?

India's Democracy Project

 

Now we can't tell our kids to use 'parliamentary language'

 

What is Rule 267?

 

The Congress Party needs to die

Yogendra Yadav in The Indian Express

My remark on a TV show, that the “Congress must die”, has triggered a debate, perhaps somewhat prematurely, on the role of the country’s principal Opposition party in the times to come. Some of the early reactions have been virulent. Perhaps the timing of the remark made it look like an attempt to kick someone when he is down. And the metaphor of death invited strong emotional reaction.

Let me, therefore, spell out the rationale in the hope that it would generate a more serious and constructive debate. Let me begin by clarifying what this remark was not. One, it was not a knee-jerk emotional outburst in reaction to an exit poll. I had expressed a similar opinion earlier too. The broad judgment is not dependent on the exit polls, unless, of course, the Congress manages to defeat the BJP in the states where it is a direct Congress-BJP contest. Two, I harbour no animus or khundak against Congress leaders. I have said publicly that Rahul Gandhi is more sincere than most political leaders that I have met and far more intelligent than everyone thinks.

----- Also Read
Opinion | Suhas Palshikar writes: Dear Yogendra, I disagree
----

Three, this is not a forecast. I know big political parties don’t die easily, and not just because they lose two elections. I don’t have Pragya Thakur’s powers to give shrapa (curse), so you may call it my wish. Finally, this wish is not born out of a congenital anti-Congressism. I have always maintained that Ram Manohar Lohia’s anti-Congressism was a short-term political tactic and must not be turned into an ideology. Unlike most Lohiaites, I have come to admire the role of Nehru and the Congress party in nation-building in the first two decades after Independence.

To my mind, the core issue is assessing the Congress’ potential in acting as a bulwark against the onslaught on the foundations of our republic. There are two assumptions here. One, the rise of the Narendra Modi-led BJP presents a threat to the core constitutional values of democracy and diversity. Two, as the principal national Opposition party, the Congress carries the first charge of protecting the republic against this onslaught.

Once we agree on these, and I think most of my critics would share these assumptions, then we can enter into a meaningful debate and disagreement on the following questions: Has the Congress done justice to this historical responsibility in the last five years? Or, can it be trusted to perform this responsibility in the foreseeable future? My answer is a clear no. The Congress is not just not up to this task, it is a hurdle for those who wish to do so.

Let us look at what the Congress did, or rather didn’t, in the last five years. The Modi regime’s economic performance was below average. Did the Congress organise any nation-wide mass movement to articulate and mobilise the farmers’ distress, or the rising unemployment among the youth, or the small traders’ anger against the way the GST was being implemented, not to speak of the disaster of demonetisation? These five years were marked by a spate of lynching of Muslims and rising atrocities against Dalits. Did the Congress even articulate it coherently in a way that would make sense to non-Muslims and non-Dalits as well?

Or take this election, after the Congress got a dream launch-pad with victory in three assembly elections. Did the Congress do something in these three states that could be presented as an alternative to the Modi regime? Did the Congress have a message for the voters of this country? No doubt, it finally came out with a decent manifesto, but that is hardly a political message for the last person. Nor did it have a credible messenger. Pitted against Modi’s communicative onslaught, Rahul Gandhi carried little appeal. The Congress did not appear to have a strategy to handle the post-Pulwama “nationalist” blitz by the BJP. And it certainly had no roadmap for building a Mahagathbandhan: Just compare how the BJP brought back the Shiv Sena and the AGP with how the Congress dealt with alliances in UP, Bihar and Delhi.

I don’t overlook the odds the Congress was up against: The Modi government’s brazen misuse of state power, its mind-boggling money power and the near complete control over mainstream media. But did the Congress do what could be done under these constraints? Besides, the only reason why mainstream parties exist and flourish is their viability and reach. The Congress cannot say everyone must come to it because this is the only party that can take on the BJP and then give reasons why it couldn’t. 
Let’s focus on the future. The prospects of a second Modi regime bring with it two deeper challenges to our republic. On the one hand, we are walking towards electoral authoritarianism where the electoral mandate will replace any constitutional constraints. On the other hand, there is a slide towards non-theocratic majoritarianism, where minorities are reduced to the status of second-rate citizens. Do we expect the Congress to be the principal force to combat these two dangers? To my mind, the Congress does not seem to possess the vision, the strategy or the ground strength to take on this historic responsibility. If so, the Congress is not the instrument needed to save the republic.

Worse, the Congress is an obstacle to those who want to build an alternative. A large mainstream party acts like a magnet that catches a lot of energy around it. So, even when the Congress is unable to defeat the BJP, it ends up diverting and diffusing a lot of the energy that gets drawn to it. It won’t do the job and won’t let anyone else do it. Alternative politics cannot take off until it calls the bluff of “Vote for Congress or else…”, unless it begins to carry on its work as if the Congress did not exist. This is how the metaphor of death should be understood.

Of course, parties don’t wither away or die an instant death. There are two ways in which the Congress can “die”. There is death by attrition, where a big party keeps getting marginalised and gradually loses traction with the voters. This process takes many elections, perhaps many decades. This is exactly what the BJP would wish for the Congress. But there is also death by submergence, where the remaining energy of the party gets subsumed in a new, larger coalition. There is still a lot of energy in the country to take on the challenge to our republic. The ideal “death” for the Congress would be for this energy, inside and outside the Congress, to merge into a new alternative.

The dark metaphor of death is an invitation to think about a new birth. Or a rebirth?

Outrage and opposition are not the same

Tabish Khair in The Hindu



I cannot say this online, I am sure, but I do not believe in getting publicly outraged. This does not mean that I do not feel privately outraged at times. I do. When one hears of a woman being raped, one feels outraged. When one hears of the most powerful man on earth reportedly discussing nuclear war options, one feels outraged.

And yet, it is one thing to feel outraged and another to act from outrage or even cultivate that self-righteous feeling of outrage. Because outrage is not opposition. Actually, it is not even rage. It is an ‘outing’ of rage.

Rage versus outrage

Rage is a problematic word: its etymology connects it to madness, violence, passion and fierceness in battle. Its uses, if they can be justified, are hazardous, and pertain to extreme circumstances. In Greek mythology, the consequences of human or semi-divine rage tend to be disastrous, even when the act of rage is seen as justified. However, rage has one purpose in extreme circumstances: it can get things done.

Outrage is not like rage: it is a venting of rage. When we are outraged, we basically let off steam. This is more so online. Its primary purpose is to make us feel good about ourselves. Unlike rage, it might not even get anything done. Because once we get outraged and post a few things or espouse a list, our attention wavers, and soon we have another matter to get publicly outraged about.

Like rage, outrage often leads to hasty action. In India as well as in Europe, people got outraged at the rumour of some women putting spells on their cattle or their person, and proceeded to burn the women as witches. Racists in the American south are known to have become outraged at some real or imagined slight by African Americans and lynched them. The list of innocent people persecuted, killed, burned, or lynched because otherwise decent people got publicly outraged is pretty long.

Unfortunately, outrage is particularly adaptable to online culture, where the dominant ethos is that of self-indulgence rather than an engagement with the other. By getting outraged, we signal to ourselves and others that we have the right views. We might also, by the very level of our outrage, absolve ourselves from a close examination of the matter and an organised effort (with others) to tackle the matter. Outrages tend to lead to nothing at all — or to witch-hunts.
By moving on from one outrage to another, we might also make it more difficult to address the root causes of the injustice, if it exists, behind our outrage. Outrage is expressive, reactive, wordy, fleeting. Opposition requires physical action, thought, organisation and perseverance. It is a major mistake to confuse the two.

Opposition needs a considered evaluation of evidence and possibilities; outrage tends towards self-centred and sweeping pre-judgment, usually passed without deep thought to the matter or comprehensive collection of evidence. It is worth remarking that ‘prejudice’ basically means ‘prejudgment,’ from the Latin words prae and judicium.

The general flow of outrage is towards a kind of fascist violence: it assumes guilt unless the victim is proved innocent, and moves too fast for sufficient proof to be collected. Opposition is a democratic construct: it accepts that you are innocent unless proved guilty.

Dismissing opposition

Unfortunately, given our hyperventilating cybercultures, outrage has become synonymous with opposition. Apart from the problems outlined above, this has another serious drawback: in an atmosphere of frequent outrages, it is possible to dismiss legitimate opposition as outrage. This, as we know from places like India, Turkey and the U.S., is the usual policy of the parties in power.

Because all opposition is increasingly wrapped in verbal and digital forms of outrage, this is easy for people in power to do. Online postings, TV shows, etc. consistently assume the registers and pace of outrages, so that the pith of the matter is often lost in the smoke, and even necessary acts of opposition can be dismissed as just the hyperventilation of easily outraged groups.

It is sad that this has happened even in India, where Gandhiji set a very rigorous example of calm and collected opposition, even, I would say, a slow and forbearing opposition. He knew that any true opposition — he would have called it a just opposition — needs thought, time, slowness and perseverance. These are not characteristics that outrage respects.

I find it troublesome that we have entered a phase of public discourse where, on the one hand, outrages erupt one after another and then evaporate in the desert sands of usual practice, and where, on the other hand, genuine acts of opposition are dismissed by people in power as just fleeting outrages.

On the one side, there are people yelling at us to be outraged, without considering evidence, context or effective responses, and on the other side, there are people telling us that we are just acting outraged when actually we are opposing something that needs to be opposed. How does one negotiate a public space like that? Your answer is as good as mine. But I think slowing down just a bit before passing judgment and looking more deeply at matters might not be such bad ideas.

Jeremy Corbyn: Love him or hate him, at least the Labour leader represents actual opposition

Mary Dejevsky in The Independent

​If anything illustrates the desperate need for a reordering of British politics, it is the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of Jeremy Corbyn. Almost everyone with even the tiniest stake in the system as it stands has contributed; that includes the London-based media, as well as the Labour MPs and celebrity spokespeople who are theoretically on his own side. The Conservatives have hardly needed to deploy any of their assault forces, so keen have others been to do the job for them.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no Corbynista. His politics are not mine, but I understand his appeal. His arguments are coherent; they deserve to be heard, and every government needs a credible opposition. Alas, this is not what is happening

To his many enemies, Jeremy Corbyn is a pretender. He is a pied piper who has cast a spell over a deluded section of the young. He is incompetent. He was eviscerated by Theresa May at PMQs. He’s hopeless in Parliament generally. He can’t lead. He could never be elected prime minister. He is a stubborn egotist, who won’t acknowledge his failings. He is traducing the noble Labour cause and should stand down post haste for the sake of the party he loves.

Well, that is a point of view. The trouble is that, even in our land of free elections and free media, it is pretty much the only message that is finding its way out to the great British public. Part of the fault may lie with Corbyn’s own media operation, but a lot of it derives from the dominance of a self-serving establishment logic, according to which only “people like us” are entitled to a say.

Here is an alternative version. Let’s start with legitimacy of party leaders. It is little short of astonishing that Jeremy Corbyn, with the colossal mandate he received a year ago from party supporters, in a contest conducted entirely according to agreed rules, should be dismissed as somehow illegitimate and an aberration. The losers may not like the rules (retrospectively), but at least some of them were instrumental in setting them. When Corbyn resists calls for his resignation, citing his mandate, he is absolutely justified in so doing.

Compare this with the position on the benches opposite. Theresa May was on the losing side (if only nominally) in the EU referendum; she was one of several candidates to succeed David Cameron, all of whom fell – by fair means or foul – by the wayside, leaving her to be crowned party leader and prime minister without a contest.

It beggars belief that the Conservatives, as Cameron did in his valedictory PMQs, have hailed this as a triumph (of efficiency, rather than democracy?) and that there are no calls – as yet – for Theresa May to seek her own mandate at a general election. May herself demanded this of Gordon Brown in analogous circumstances, so what is different now? It is not good enough to hail the return of political stability and insist that the poor electorate is suddenly tired of voting.

And how incompetent is Jeremy Corbyn really? He has not been nearly as ineffective a parliamentary performer as his adversaries charge. If you take into account that a large number of his own MPs have set out to stymie, if not actually sabotage, his efforts, just hanging on in there is a feat. He may not be the best picker of people and he may not be a natural leader, but it is hard to judge his strengths (beyond an almost superhuman resilience) when you consider the obstacles placed in his path.

He had to sit through a speech by his foreign affairs spokesman in the Syria debate that argued the opposite of what he, as party leader, believed. Earlier this week, he had to watch as his MPs hand May a victory in the Trident vote, that was out of all proportion to public sentiment. His difficulty is that the Labour Party’s electoral system threw up a leader whose mandate came from the popular, rather than the still nostalgically Blairite parliamentary, party. How many leaders would look competent in such circumstances?

Consider other measures of political success and the picture changes. As Corbyn said yesterday in his opening bid to remain leader, the party under his tutelage has won every by-election it has fought and four mayoral races, including London. It has changed the terms of the economic debate – George Osborne’s demise and Theresa May’s first remarks as Prime Minister are the latest testimony to that. Party membership is higher than it has ever been, and Corbyn – improbable though it once seemed – has fired political enthusiasm into the supposedly apathetic young.

He has done this by reviving old Labour priorities and applying them in a way that speaks to a generation growing up in the shadow of the financial crisis and several disastrous wars. Nor does his brand of Labour speak just to the young. It appeals to many of those whose employment is precarious, who have seen huge mistakes (in finance and Iraq) go unpunished, who resent the stratospheric rewards the bosses reserve for themselves, and who ask whether Labour’s pursuit of electability in the 1990s was not at the price of their interests and the party’s soul.

The political centrism that prevailed in Parliament in the wake of Tony Blair’s landslide, left sections of the population essentially without a voice. The Iraq war, a touchstone now for mistrust of government, was supported by both major parties in Parliament, as was sweeping de-regulation, as – despite the Labour leader’s best efforts – was the Trident decision this week.

Jeremy Corbyn’s was a lone voice on all these issues, but he can claim in many ways to have been vindicated. His so-called “intransigence” has now won him a following in the country at large, where levels of discontent – largely disguised by the first-past-the-post electoral system – were spectacularly laid bare in the Brexit vote. Whether you agree with him or not, you must accept that Jeremy Corbyn represents a real opposition. If only the Labour elite could accept that, too.

Action man: Give Justin Welby an issue and he will speak out

TERENCE BLACKER in The Independent 

Monday 21 October 2013

He fights the wrongdoings of the payday loaners and now the Big Six – what next?

News broke this weekend that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duchess of Cornwall have held a meeting to discuss poverty. Both have expressed their concerns about the behaviour of payday loan firms, and have supported the idea of local credit unions. They also share a belief in a pragmatic approach to contemporary problems: Justin Welby has suggested that the Church of England might set up shop as a moneylender while the duchess joined the London Mutual Credit Union in Peckham, where she is not a resident.

All this is something of a break with the recent past. Imagine a similar meeting but between the duchess’s husband, Prince Charles, and the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams: the agonising over terms of reference, the anguished beard-tugging over what exactly constituted poverty, the reference to St Thomas Aquinas and Laurens van der Post, the ever-thickening fog of well-meaning abstraction.

The idea of a dynamic former oil executive taking over as head of the Anglican Church has, admittedly, taken some getting used to. Like many non-believers, I rather liked the gentle, beardy Dr Williams, with his tentative, non-prescriptive faith. I sensed that his God and my good were vague enough to be rather similar.

The new action-man Archbishop seems to have no time for windy theorising. His progress has been that of a businessman with a meeting to get through, rather than an academic wrestling with an abstruse intellectual problem.

Apart from his payday initiative with the Duchess of Cornwall, he has recently attacked energy companies for maximising profit, spoken out against the pursuit of economic growth, expressed views about same-sex marriage, regretted the influence of the colonial past in the running of the Church, welcomed tax changes for married couples, and supported the building of affordable houses.

He is, in other words, a thoroughly modern public figure, who sounds off confidently and unambiguously about the issues of the day. A glance at the nice old duffers who have preceded him – Coggan, Runcie, Carey, Williams – is enough to reveal how far he has already taken the church away from the old, grey establishment of which it was once part.

It is probably a sensible move. The words of politicians have become increasingly woolly and meaningless (last week, for example, we learned that coalition government means that the Liberal Democrats can simultaneously support and oppose free schools), and the public is looking for guidance elsewhere.

Archbishop Welby is moving towards the real shadow cabinet, the small group of public figures who speak out and influence opinion on the issues of the day. In this unofficial opposition, he could take on the role of Home Secretary, while Jamie Oliver is in charge of Health, Stephen Fry speaks on culture, and Chris Packham covers the environment. Among the junior shadow ministers can be found young thrusters like Russell Brand, Charlotte Church, Louise Mensch and Joey Barton.

In their own individual ways, these people – celebrities with attitude – have more sway over the way people think and the topics that matter than any number of the Gregs and Nicks who are in government.

They now include the Archbishop of Canterbury.

A few more telling soundbites, and he will be on The Graham Norton Show, telling twinkly anecdotes on Desert Island Discs or contributing to a “What Turns Me On” lifestyle column in one of the Sunday newspapers.

For those who like the Anglican Church to be a solid, slightly dull presence in our national life, the Welby way will no doubt be distressing – he is hardly, in the words of the hymn, a still, small voice of calm. But at a time when politicians are trying to please everyone, the press is widely distrusted, and the BBC has lost its way, perhaps it is not such a terrible thing that the Church of England has found itself a confident, slightly bumptious new voice.

There is still time to side with those committed to democracy in Egypt

The irony for some is that the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters remain the upholders of the ballot box's legitimacy

• 
• • Maha Azzam
  • The Guardian, Thursday 15 August 2013 21.05 BST

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi: 'The security apparatus is taking revenge for the last two years when it felt threatened by the possibility of any new order.' Photograph: Mohamed Al-Sayaghi/Reuters

The military and police state has returned in full force to Egypt. A country that for a brief period after 60 years of dictatorship was on a path of democratic transition saw a reversal of that process with the coup on 3 July against Egypt's first freely elected president. The coup was justified on the basis of a mass popular outpouring on the streets, although it is generally accepted now that the numbers were a fraction of those claimed by the military and its supporters.

Those calling for a return to the days that preceded the 25 January revolution in 2011, which brought about the fall of Hosni Mubarak, were not only the military high command, the interior ministry, the security services and the police, but critically the judiciary and the state media. These coteries of power actively worked together to block the smooth functioning of the state.

This went hand-in-hand with a vicious campaign to vilify and demonise the party in power, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. Propaganda campaigns against them had been a feature of Egypt's dictatorships from Nasser to Mubarak in an attempt to weaken the main challenge to the regime. But the secular and liberal opposition, having failed to win enough votes themselves, played spoilers rather than engage in the political process, accept the results and campaign for the next elections.

And so the military and this opposition to Mohamed Morsi were to come together in an alliance of convenience with at least a nod from the US and UK to bring down the elected government through unconstitutional means. The street would have to be the way out if the ballot box was not delivering desired results. The method was a well-choreographed campaign that, despite genuine popular support, was essentially directed by the interior ministry and military.

As we examine the debris of Wednesday's massacre (where mounting casualty numbers are suggesting more than 1,000 deaths), there are two parties in today's power struggle. On one side is the ancien regime and its liberal allies – that small core of revolutionaries opposed to the Brotherhood and the politicking Salafi parties. On the other side is the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, including pro-legitimacy liberals who refused to broker the idea that votes suddenly counted for nothing. The irony for some is that it is the Islamist side that is upholding the legitimacy of the ballot box and the commitment to a civil state.

During the elected government's year-long term some said that the ballot box was not enough and that Morsi was not inclusive enough, but the fact remains that the ballot box is an essential part of the democratic process. Politically, what Egypt lacked during its experiment in democracy was a loyal opposition. Instead, the opposition that came together under the umbrella of the National Salvation Front decided to back a military coup.

The public is told through the state-controlled media that the sit-ins that have filled Egypt's squares were hijacked by terrorists bent on destroying state institutions. The west is told that part of the roadmap that General Sisi has sanctioned includes a limited number of cabinet posts for the Muslim Brotherhood. Notwithstanding such blatant distortion of electoral will, the vast majority of the Brotherhood's rank-and-file are determined that its opposition to the military coup be peaceful and its leadership categorically reject violence.

What Egypt has experienced since the coup has been the systematic return of the military and police state through arbitrary arrests, media clampdown and the shooting of protesters. Egypt's state institutions, as in most dictatorships, are corrupt and fearful of change. The security apparatus is taking revenge for the last two years when it felt threatened by the possibility of any new order that would eventually hold it accountable. Since the coup began it feels it has taken control again and is ready to strike hard at anyone who challenges it, whatever their ideology.

The civilian facade to this regime is no guarantee against human rights abuses. On the contrary, it provides them with greater shelter. Egyptians are divided today between those who long for security and economic stability, and those who know that although the price is high, the country is at a crossroads of military dictatorship and the possibility of a civil society.

There is still a window of opportunity to side with those committed to democracy in Egypt, and to put pressure on the military by cutting off aid from the United States and by ensuring that it has to be held accountable for any crimes against humanity.