Daily Times

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,” John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, otherwise known as Lord Acton. So now everybody knows who uttered perhaps the most quoted quote in Pakistan, although another particular unknown gem from Lord Acton is perhaps more to the point: “The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.”

The perfect example of the inability of mankind to govern benevolently, or at least with compassion, was showcased by the Stanford Prison Experiments conducted by Professor Philip G Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. A mock prison was set up in the basement of the university and 24 undergraduate students volunteered to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. Any guesses what happened? “How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress,” Professor Philip G Zimbardo.

Sadistic? And that too in a role-play. Remember, they were not actually guards and knew that the prisoners were fellow students.

Nonetheless one thing is absolutely clear: abuse of power cannot occur without power. This is the reason why the corporate world’s system of internal controls relies immensely on segregation of duties, checks and controls. And this is also why national governance, especially in a democracy, is designed to have four pillars or five if you do wish to include the media as a pillar, which frankly is a mistake. Nonetheless, the recognition alone that checks and balances are essential confirms the hypothesis that concentration of power induces hubris.

The first casualty of concentration of power is the desire for truth and obviously thereafter truth itself. The mighty can only see the world through their own lense and anything conflicting with their vision is deemed to be an aberration meant to be eliminated. If nothing else, running a national government is complicated and any person invariably at some point is prone to make an incorrect decision. But immersed in their fabrications, and having eliminated the need for sane counsel, the powerful risk being afflicted by moral blindness.

Addicted to power, each and every action is then directed towards clinging on to power, with lies, rivalries, corruption, twisting truth and propaganda becoming routine. Notwithstanding that Lord Acton believes that every class is unfit to govern, faith, after blinding common sense, keeps reaffirming the common belief that there are still righteous men who make this world go round.

And nothing will concentrate power in the hand of a leader more than the perception that he alone has played a decisive role in winning an election, which is the case perhaps for all the leading political parties in Pakistan. In all cases, win or lose, the media, and party stalwarts, are quick to foster this perception for whatever reasons and pin the responsibility on the party leadership. In fact, there is a persuasive argument that the ‘minus one’ formula will be the death knell for any of the leading political parties. The fact that the country’s electoral system effectively translates a modest majority into a disproportionately large advantage vis-à-vis parliament seats does not in any manner dampen this perception one bit either.

Even at the party level, personalities therefore become the party themselves and, with that kind of power, the perception that the party revolves around the leader invariably will tend to corrupt. Take for instance the leader and the party pushing the change agenda; it appears that all the mainstream anchors of leading news channel have a love-hate relationship with both: the anchors love to criticise the leader but their respective news channels hate not to cover the party’s rally. This greater focus might be good for business for the media but must simultaneously enforce the conception that the leader is the force behind the party. Naturally, this will concentrate decision making at the very top and in the worst scenario dilute the fact that nobody can be right all the time.

At the government level, this perception and consequent concentration of power has an even dire effect. In principle, in a democratic system, ministers, or in theory at least, are allowed a great deal of freedom of action subject to accountability within the cabinet by their peers. This translates into greater cohesion and coordination within the government with the entire cabinet sharing the blame for all the blunders and vice versa. This even makes sense since an individual can neither have the knowledge or the time to gain the requisite knowledge for every facet of governance. However, when power is concentrated, there will be talk about kitchen cabinets, and credits and debits will hardly be shared on merit. And those who lack authority will never consider themselves subject to any form of accountability.

Dear readers, it is not the means but the end that will define a democracy or a dictatorship. And with that kind of power, hoping for benevolence in modern times is perhaps futile. So, if I win the elections, will I ever make a difference?

The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. He can be reached at syed.bakhtiyarkazmi@gmail.com and on twitter @leaccountant