Daily Times

I recently had lunch with one of my friends who is a prominent politician in another country. I was shocked when he told me that he wanted to quit politics. A promising young man doing very well as a prominent member of his local parliament had lost the motivation to represent and serve his people. He was someone who belonged to political background, well-educated from world renowned universities and had invested a lot of time, effort and energy to be at such a position where he was regarded as a main stream representative, and he was calling it a day.

When I inquired why he didn’t want to keep playing his part in the progress of his nation that he loved so much? His short answer was, “After years of doing my best i don’t feel appreciated. The constant name calling and scrutiny is affecting my family more than me. My kids are bullied at school over government policies. They are being isolated for being the kids of a politician. My immediate family is loosing friends as they expect certain favouritism and when they don’t get it, they get allotted and feel humiliated.”

This prompted my thoughts upon the extended families of our political leaders. Our political humour has characters like Showbaz Sharif, Billo Rani, Jahaz Khan, Bhang Sarkar and many more that make up the political scene of Pakistan. These names are not, of course, their real names but are names picked up by the media or political foes for humour’s sake.

I agree that being a politician demands being in the limelight and under constant scrutiny with every action being watched by the entire world, however, we forget that they are also humans with families. They recent trend of over analysing and focusing on the private lives of their kids and family, scrutinising them and bring them under constant media watch.

Countless times I’ve seen kids of politicians in a constant struggle, just trying to live normally, but ending up having to defend their families and bearing the social repercussions of being who they are and living up to society’s view of them. Younger kids suffer more psychological damage than older ones, but they live under the shadow of dogmas created by the society.

If we humanise our approach and view of them, we need to understand that these politicians are humans with normal feelings and emotions. After all, we want our representatives to do their work with good intention, we need them to be passionate, willing, and genuinely interested in making our lives better. They should represent this community in the most effective way, we expect them to be polite, humble, approachable and a one-stop-solution-shop for all of our problems yet we are curious about their personal lives, their families and friends and we don’t spare any laps or mishap in their conduct be it as innocent as a small road accident, or even them ordering a sandwich at a seafood place, which are considered totally normal for anyone else. And we are not scrutinising it for the right purpose. We are scrutinising it for vicious rumours, sleazy innuendo and in the malicious intentions of creating negative propaganda. It is because the negative propaganda sells.

As readers or viewers we love controversy, and the weakness of other people. A negative campaign works because they are popular and help many politicians attain office. Many a times all their energy is spent on battling the constant pressure on having to defend themselves against the accusations and they get stuck in this vicious circle that makes them unable to do what they were elected to do.

The rumour mill gains momentum and many times it is spiced up to increase the ratings or viewers by the media. It ignites emotions in the political gatherings. it is used as a tool to either demoralise a particular person or bring them to the bargaining table to fullfil some political agenda.

The constant negative campaigning creates a scenario where our entire political scene consists of childish behaviour on all sides and personal insults being thrown around, in the worst cases, even by the crowd. This is a point where a politician has a choice to stay or walk away. Many times, walking away is seen as a cowardly step hence it becomes more psychologically harmful for the politician. By now they are acting calm as a duck swimming in water, totally calm in the outer side however, in reality, they are drowning in a sea of uncertainty, wanting to serve, yet at the same time battling with themselves on the inside, deeming the very population they aim to serve as their enemies thanks to popular views and insults from the media. They begin losing their passion and motivation to do good for their people. They proceed to quietly turn on the people and start using influential powers to attain personal gains. To them, they are the victims.

This vicious cycle and culture of mud slinging creates a society where the politicians become immune to criticism and lose motivation to serve the nation, they are rather playing politics for their personal gains and a nation that totally mistrust their leaders and start framing every politician as corrupt. they lose hope in their government and system in general and that, in turn, deters the intelligent and worthy people from entering the political scene, for fear of this cycle, creating scarcity and finding worthy leadership.

As a case study we look at the present US elections, which is marred with hate statements and personal attacks by Donald Trump and his team versus the non credible Hillary Clinton. They became the front runners while their negative campaigns left the think tank questioning the two party system and inability to find better choices in candidates.

Let us look at an average assembly session, ideally, it should be a group of great minds working together to bring the best for the nation. Where as we watch our representatives failing to bring about constructive debate. The session become a stage for name calling, mud slinging where every achievement is questioned and shot down. Nothing is appreciated.

Let’s not forget a politician, like every human being needs positive feed back for good work. In our country they are receiving the opposite from the party workers and others. I believe there should be adequate checks and balances to access a representative’s performance and ill performance should be criticised. This criteria should be followed across the board for every member. There should be a rating for performance and based on the performance they should be either applauded or criticised.

One important question is should the public care about a leader’s personal life or it should focus on his policies and political decisions. In our country there seems to be no private life of a politician and his or her extended family. On principle every one agrees that gossip regarding the extended families  especially female family members are immoral however the same gossips sell and make sensational posts. Therefore there has to be a criteria regarding where the line is drawn where the media attention is enough.

As per the legal standing, international law gives a lot of freedom of criticism on a public figure as they believe he or she is in a position to defend him/her self. In 1923, the US Supreme Court declaration in the case of “City of Chicago vs Tribune Co” it was stated

Quote;

“Every citizen has a right to criticise an inefficient or corrupt government without fear of civil as well as criminal prosecution.This absolute privilege is founded on the principle that it is advantageous for the public interest that the citizen should not be in any way fettered in his statements, and where the public service or due administration of justice is involved he shall have the right to speak his mind freely.”

Other European courts and human rights associations approved the dictum. According to one such judgement

Quote;

“Freedom of political debate is at the very core of the concept of a democratic society the limits of acceptable criticism are accordingly wider as regards a politician as such than as regards private individuals.” In addition, “the limits of permissible criticism are wider with regard to the Government than in relation to a private citizen, or even a politician.” Penalties for defamation in such cases would only apply where the accusations are “devoid of foundation or formulated in bad faith.”

European Court of Human Rights observed that, to require someone accused of defamation to prove the truth of an opinion “infringes freedom of opinion itself”.

It is clear that law provided very little protection to a public figure or a politician hence making them easy targets for possible malicious campaigns.

There is no doubt that the very position of a public figure should be identified and held responsible for non performance or any illegal act however as a responsible nation we should draw a line to where we use tools like social media or main stream media for name calling and mocking and dragging there personal lives in public. Social media is mainly used by the youth who is learning this vicious behaviour from elders instead of changing the behaviour and stop this vicious cycle of media trials repeating again and again.

{In this age of mass media consumption, the metaphorical “Rumour Mill” has become the most powerful weapon to ever be used  against individuals. In 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay that carried the bomb to Hiroshima underestimated the weapon they carried aboard their vessel. This cost the lives of thousands on the island of Hiroshima, we have come to underestimate this weapon in the same way.

While the social damage of creating a society of no dicipline may not be as immediately apparent, and the damage may be of a completely different kind. If this weapon is used the wrong way, it may lead to more damage than we know. Let us use the freedom of speech for beneficial things, not for verbal civil war.