Last
week, we saw why politics, the way it is currently structured in democratic
countries, is likely to attract corrupt, low-intelligence, low-caliber, and
low-integrity people. What is the way ahead?
First,
we must accept what is not working. Something done consistently for one hundred
or four hundred years also needs to be changed and improved. One big issue
faced by democracies today is the emergence of two parties that divide the
society to perfection. From Bush-Gore to Trump-Hillary, USA has achieved an
astounding equality in its division. Two hate camps, amplified and inflamed by
social media, get formed. Their aim is to attack the thinking and actions of
the rival camp irrespective of the argument. A woman’s right to abortion is no
longer a moral issue. If you support a republican camp, you must oppose
abortion. Guns kill, but as a Republican you must ensure their proliferation.
Brexit can neither happen nor un-happen because May and Corbyn have been
trading insults from their dispatch boxes for the last three years. The
Commons’ layout facilitates their slanging match (at a distance of 8 feet,
reportedly to prevent a member from thrusting his 4-feet sword into his
opponent).
Is this
how governance was supposed to be?
Compare
this to a giant corporation. Microsoft and Apple are a nearly a trillion dollar
companies. Walmart and McDonalds employ more than two million each. Running
such companies is like running a country. Do any of these companies create two
management groups, one to suggest policy matters and another to oppose it? Can
you imagine a Board Room of Cisco, where a CEO and a shadow CEO, shout at each
other like soccer hooligans?
If companies
are not governed this way, why countries? Would you run a company based on
populism? Coke has Pepsi as a key rival. But they are not part of the same
business. In the 1990s, I worked for British American Tobacco. Its chairman Sir
Patrick Sheehey, an elderly corporate tyrant, in his finite wisdom decided that
the different divisions of the company should compete against one another. In
Moscow, where I worked, the British (BATUKE),
American (Brown & Williamson), German (BAT Deutschland) and
Brazilian (Souza Cruz) all fought with one another, even set up different
offices and hid information from one another. Sheehey’s replacement stopped
that nonsense and merged all the divisions into a single company that prospered
as a result.
*****
Of
course, when we talk of a single party-politics, we think of China. Democracies
don’t wish to create autocratic monsters not subjected to criticism from
opposition. But if the ‘two-camp-dogfight’, a modern democratic practice, comes
at the cost of progress and development, reforms become necessary. Before
addressing the issue of dangers of dictatorship, let me suggest reforms based
on the points I raised last week.
*****
First,
qualifications for a politician. Under current system age and residence.
Nothing else.
We
expect anyone servicing us to have the necessary professional education and
training. Remember doctors and pilots; we will not entrust our life into their
hands unless we knew they were licensed to practice. For politicians at all
levels, graduation must be made mandatory. An MBA or PhD desirable.
Competitive exams can be formulated to get the best candidates from the
country. A finance minister must have finance qualifications and experience.
Would you recruit a BA with geography or history as a company’s CFO?
Canada,
to my knowledge, is the only country with the highest number of cabinet members
with relevant qualifications. Jane Philpott, the Minister of Health, is a
qualified medical doctor. Kirsty Duncan, the Minister of Science, is a
scientist. Bill Morneau, the finance minister, has a Masters’ degree from LSE (the
London School of Economics). Before entering politics, he was the President and
CEO of a business firm. Harjit Sajjan, a Sikh migrant from India, during his
military career was deployed in Bosnia and Afghanistan. He is now Canada’s
defence minister. And the list is not complete.
Insisting
on high qualifications also raises the lower age limit to thirty or so. If work
experience is required, it goes up further.
An
upper age limit is needed. I suggest 60. It will make politics younger. Old
politicians sign policies that are unlikely to affect them. In the Brexit
referendum, older voters demanded UK leave the EU, but the tragic consequence
will be faced by the young Brits. This is unjust. Under my proposal, the
two-term limit for the US president will become unnecessary. If in 2016, Obama
was allowed to run for presidency again, he would have easily beaten Trump. The
rules conspired to make a much older, unfit man the president sidelining a
competent incumbent. This wouldn’t have happened in any business corporation.
Instead,
if serious education, work experience, and rising from lower levels are
mandatory, best presidential candidates will be in their late 40s. Let them
rule until sixty, and retire.
Also, like in multinational companies, any
competent person from the world should be able to apply. Barack Obama can now
be hired as a President or Prime minister of another country. Why let his
experience go waste? Today’s world is not ready for this radical suggestion, I
don’t think. But in two hundred years, this could become a norm.
*****
Continuing
the analogy with the corporations, politicians must be paid handsomely. Pay the
top federal ministers in millions and give them bonuses based on actual performance.
This has a double benefit. Government can attract the best talent, and there
will be less temptation for corruption. Corruption as a basis for joining
politics needs to be eradicated.
Where would
a government get the money from, if it wishes to pay the cabinet well? It is
not a profitable corporation, people may argue. This is not true. Government
has a prerogative to run any business in the country. State monopolies exist
over several businesses (oil, diamonds, metals). Taxes form a key revenue item.
Big, competitive salaries for politicians would form a smaller part of the
budget than imagined. Currently, corrupt politicians loot the government treasury
many times more.
*****
Finally,
just like in a company, a competent politician should have job security. It is
paradoxical that a civil servant may retain his job for life. But his boss, the
minister, may lose his on the day of the election results. A minister or a member of parliament should
be entitled to work until reaching sixty, and then paid pension and any other
benefits contractually agreed.
*****
Would
such a scheme give rise to dictatorship? By itself, it should not. If that were
the case, most successful companies of the world would have become dictatorial.
Their boards are still accountable for the performance, answerable to the
shareholders. External auditors are expected to scrutinize their working and
fairness of the reported results. Similar steps can be taken to install
auditing bodies for checks and balances. This discussion requires a long
chapter, perhaps a book. I will cover this topic in future.
*****
For the
time being, I will return to elections, the principle of majority and their
connection to democracy.
As a
matter of habit, we accept the rule of the representative majority. When votes
are counted, one who gets the most votes wins. In countries such as India or
the UK, where FPTP (First Past the Post) system is prevalent, a candidate with
as little as 5% popularity vote can win. In last month’s LokSabha elections, India
elected 543 Members of parliament. That is one MP per 1.5 million voters, or
per 2.5 million people. (In the UK, one
MP per 70,000 voters or 100,000 people). An Indian MP has no practical chance
of a genuine interaction with his constituents.
The
rule of majority also has its faults. 67% of India’s population has not passed
fifth grade. It is sad, and in most cases not their fault. But in a
representative democracy, 67% of the people chosen to govern India can be
semi-educated as well. Proportionate representation is one thing. Governing
ability is another. Once again, you will not make anyone from the 67% a pilot
or a doctor, why then a politician?
It is
well known that the quality of the population keeps declining, because the
poorest, the less educated, the less intelligent people usually have more
children than the others. As a result, the caliber of the masses keeps falling
all the time. This degeneration has now crossed the tipping point. Trump and
Brexit are one visible consequence.
Elections
and referendums can, therefore, be dangerous. We applaud them as a result of
habit. We have been trained to think that elections and majority are the
backbone of democracy. They certainly are, if majority of the population
has the competence and choices to make the right decisions.
Politics
is an unorganized industry. It is not a profession. So, it usually attracts third-rate
people from the country. Those third-rate candidates are offered as choices to
the voters. More than half the voters don’t have the qualifications or caliber
to understand the large governance issues. By applying the rule of majority,
the worst-qualified voters elect from among the third-rate candidates.
And we
still wonder why the world is in such a bad shape.
Ravi
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