Eshin Direct

One good thing about this week is that I don’t need to put up with all the HK election crap they spew out everywhere. TVC’s, print, and outdoor ads extolling you to do your civic duty to vote coupled with patronising messages to keep the elections free from corruption and other nasties was beginning to do my head in. The HK blogosphere was positively awash with election buzz, either extolling a pro-democratic approach or taking a more cynical defeatist approach to it all. I even had an American student/intern who was over here for a short time telling me to vote democratic and send a message to Beijing. How nice.

Elections are all very civilised. Now, at the risk of suffering an ideological backlash, I’d say that elections are lovely little distraction designed to keep the people from actually making a change in anything. It’s the biggest show in each democratic nation. Millions turn up to exercise their right to govern themselves apparently by putting a little cross on an anonymous form, signalling their desire on who should run the country. It disappears off somewhere into the system to be counted and hey presto, the next day, you have your winner.

Why am I being so cynical about the whole election process? It is pointless as a tool to affect change and its only purpose is to keep the prolitariat in place by transferring the illusion of self-government to a tick on a piece of paper. This is apparently our democratic right of universal suffrage. Bollocks to that. It is our right under the bureacratic systems most of us live in, but actually a right under the package of self-rule, I doubt it.

Every four or five years, we apparently get to exercise our right to rule ourselves. For some it’s a big sacred cow that should be up there with the ten commandments. Extolled upon us is the argument that voter apathy led to some serious and costly escapades. George W. Bush seems to be one of the arguments. The other is the example of Nazi Germany. To vote is to protect your nation against the fascists, communists or other evil doers and preserve the bastion of self-rule. At the end of the five years, we can all sit back and relax, knowing we’ve done our part.

But would Hitler really not have come to power if people had actually voted? I suspect that voter apathy in pre-Nazi Germany was a myth. People were voting otherwise the system couldn’t have been manipulated by the Nazis. I suspect too that people began voting for the Nazis because they represented the only real source of change. Most of us would be frustrated at a system that could so easily be perversed and ineffectual, especially in a time of economic hardship. In this case, it might not have been the voter apathy that brought the Nazis to power but rather a dislike at being slaves to a system. Hitler and his party was ambitious enough to have tried anything to exercise their desire to govern Germany.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you live in a democratic nation, self-rule is not only your right but your responsibility. Affecting change or preserving the way things are aren’t simply done by putting a tick on a piece of paper. It’s a constant process over the four year period in-between the great tickathon. In fact, just going to put a tick on a piece of paper without really knowing the policies of the person or the parties you are voting for is just as bad as not voting at all.

And real change is often not as bloodless and civilised as marking pieces of paper. I’m not advocating revolution folks, I’m just pointing it out. The Magna Carta, Cromwell’s commonwealth, the American revolution, are all examples of when power was given little by little back to the people. For China, change towards a more democratic system is a slow progress (and at times seems to be regressing). Would the change have come about as quickly if Tiananmen hadn’t happened? Well, Deng was a reformer of sorts and things were moving on in that direction. But it could be argued that the blood sacrifice of the students helped to bring China in the spotlight and helped it to become more open and transparent than it was previously.

Those students saw something wrong with their country and they took it upon themselves to fix it. This wasn’t done on a piece of paper but through real action. I’m sure under a democracy they would have been civilised to do it the paper way. But under a system where there was no recourse to express self-rule, they resorted to change in action and sacrifice.

For me, all I wish to do is to provoke the thought in folks that their democratic duty isn’t over once they’ve marked their paper. But it shouldn’t be an action of making you feel better that you’ve done your duty to bring about change. Change can be affected in your country starting with you on an everyday level. If you don’t like something, then try to change it little by little with real action. Alternatively, if you like things the way they are, then say so and work to preserve it. Much like those in pre-Nazi Germany, or the students in Tiananmen, we too should remember our power of self-rule and not become slaves to a system. The more apathetic we get to our own responsibility to govern ourselves, the more likely a more bloody, chaotic change of government is likely to occur.

Tags: Political Rants