The Man is chatting with the banker buddy about what makes a ‘good’ politician. More to the point, he says, as things stand after Sri Lanka’s years of calamitous political mismanagement, what makes a bad one?
He’s asking as a newly-minted MP, having just entered parliament thanks to the National List and his well-connected tycoon mentor, and with every intention of rising rapidly through the ranks to ministerial office.
According to the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, he says, good politics is about nurturing the soul, while fellow deep-thinker Socrates believed that politicians should instil self-control, bravery, piety, and justice.
In other words, a heady whiff of civic-minded virtue completely at odds with actual ‘democratic realpolitik’—itself a state of affairs that both those Athenian radicals despised as misguided and capricious mob rule that rarely ends well.
So is this ‘democratic realpolitik’ merely cynical expedience, he muses, a place where populism collides with reality? Where every five years, voters kick the tyres of the ‘deep-state’ bandwagon while ignoring its rickety mechanicals that somehow motor on until the brakes fail and the wheels fall off?
Sadly, yes. Because becoming an elected politician, he says, means years of ‘kiss up and kick down’ in the murky smoke-and-mirrors snakepits of party politics. Which is not an enticing prospect for the kind of ‘principled’ men and women the people think they want.
And there’s the rub. Because while ‘principles’ are what the people think they want, in practice they are a hindrance. Good governance, he says, is about survival in the real world of economic crises, financial turmoil, competing interests, partisan backstabbing, natural disasters, global events, outrageous fortune, etc etc. In short, keeping the show on the road no matter what, which means pragmatism before ‘principles’.
So what will the people expect of me, he asks, now I’m a back-door National List member of parliament? What will I have to do to win enough popular support to actually get elected next time round?
Good question, says the banker buddy. First, they need to believe that you’re on their side. Second, that you really are a reformed character. Third, that your word is your bond. Fourth, that you know what you’re talking about. Fifth, that you walk the talk. And finally, all of the above at the same time!
Furthermore, he says, a ‘good’ politician is one who can and will do what needs to be done how and when it needs doing, and who will rise to the challenge. A bad politician, on the other hand, is one who can’t or won’t, and who will run and hide when the going gets tough.
Which gives The Man pause for thought. Will it have been worth giving up the illicit and highly lucrative CatAstrophe asset-relocation fund to become a ‘man of the people’? But only time—and events—will tell…
Meanwhile, Diogenes Fernando is breathing sighs of relief. The enforced exclusion zone and Covid-style lockdown on his cousin’s pig farm seems to have done the trick by keeping at bay the deadly swine fever that’s been sweeping the hill country.
Which means that the planned joint-venture poo-powered cannabis farm is back on track, which will hopefully keep their serious black-money investors happy and off their backs.
Now all we have to do, he thinks, is install the lights and hydroponics, grow our first crop, harvest it, find a buyer, and reap the rewards!