Nepal’s Machiavelli politics

Niccolò Machiavelli is a 15^th century’s political critic of Florence (now Italy), who is known more for his negative role in politics. Machiavelli often used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians, which is best described in his masterpiece ‘The Prince’. In his political treatise, Machiavelli advocated hawkish, chauvinist and feudal approach in dealing with political, social, political, cultural issues as well as the matters concerning statecraft. His political thesis, which is known as ‘Machiavellism’  in the present political lexicon, has earned the infamy of championing the unruly approach in political dictum—often equated with political deceit and brutality.

According to Machiavelli, politics is the art of cunning. Rulers make promises but hardly any of them keep them once they go to power. Successful rulers are those who make most promises but keep them the least. Politicians and rulers become successful only if they cunningly manipulate people’s minds. This means leaders and politicians are required to lie and deceive the people in order to become successful in politics and state affairs. In other words, politics needs to be controlled by money, muscle, military and manipulation.

Machiavellism is not compatible with modern day democracy, which is supposed to be based on popular will and mandate. But Machiavellism is still at work in most developing countries including Nepal, which continue to boast to be democracies. If we look at the present political scenario and developments in Nepal, we are still not very far from Machiavelli’s notion of politics. Despite having competitive democracy, Machiavellism continues to dominate in Nepal’s politics.

In the present political system, be it democracy or otherwise, power is being taken as a tool to have upper hand in national politics. Political parties and their leaders tend to go to power and retain it by any means possible. This is because power is paramount for political benefit and control. Nepalese political parties feel inferiority once they are out of power. In a democracy, periodic elections are the means to go to power for parties and leaders. Thus, they focus everything, both moral and immoral, to win election so that they capture power and control politics. So money, muscle and other tricks are applied to influence the voters and even buy votes. In every election, underdog or losers always accuse of vote rigging. It is not merely accusation but several cases of vote rigging take place in every election. In the last election for Constituent Assembly held in November 2013, the opposition parties claiming massive vote rigging threatened to reject the election results and demanded a probe. It joined the Constituent Assembly, only when the ruling parties or winners agreed for investigation into the polling process. This happens in every election, which is a testimony of the fact that our electoral system has flaws. Our system has not made the people confident that their votes are genuinely reflected in the results, which has raised fundamental question about our democracy. When people do not believe in election, they also do not trust the government that is formed on the basis of results of the election. This ultimately creates public apathy towards the political system and democracy as a whole. Against this background, electoral system should be reformed in a way which may not provide any room for public doubt on the impartiality and fairness of the election.

Democracy is the competitive politics and parties and candidates have to woo people and voters to go to power. During the election, parties and leader make more promises so that they can attract more people towards them and win people’s support. But their promises are always not pragmatic, which are often broken after the election. The tendency of not keeping the promises is the fundamental problem of our times which has not only given rise to Machiavellism in our politics but also created public frustration about political system and democracy. This phenomenon is guided by the Machiavelli’s theory of capturing power by any means, which is against the basic principle of modern democracy. In a democracy, there has to be competition based on policy and competence for delivery. In developing countries like ours, competition is not in terms of policy and competence but in terms of money, muscle and mis-use of power. This is the reason why our democracy has not taken deep roots even in more than six decades since Nepal had a first taste of democratic policy in 1951. Despots often trampled democracy on various occasions due to malfunction of democracy and its system. As democracy and democratic system failed to function, the king trampled democracy in 1960 and imposed his absolute regime under Panchayat for three decades. Similarly, Gyanendra also tried to take benefit out of the misrule and briefly took over power imposing his own dictatorship in 2002, although it lived short due to massive popular protests.  However, our leaders and parties do not appear to have learnt lesson from the past and they still tend to capture power based on Machiavelli’s theory, which will ultimately be counterproductive for them.

Democracy is modern lingua franca, which has to be based on good policies and good performance and governance. Parties and leaders are required to promise the people only things that can be kept. And once they go to power, they need to keep their promises. They are required to say what they can accomplish and do what they have promised. But there has been marked inconsistency between the promises and performances and between rhetoric and action of political parties and their leaders. Democracy cannot thrive and prosper on words but only on actions and sincere willingness to translate the promises and democratic ideals into reality. But the willingness of the parties and leaders to translate the promises into action and democratic norms and values into real politics has been glaringly lacking. Democracy is not merely a tool to capture power and enjoy perks and position by leaders. All need to take into account the fact that democracy is a system that is required to deliver goods to the people at their door steps. People are the supreme masters in democracy but leaders treat them as mere subject. This tendency has not been different from that of the despots and monarchs who regard themselves as masters whereas the people as their servants. This tendency has to be done away with and leaders need to be democratic first and empower people in order to strengthen democracy. Otherwise Machiavellism would continue to prevail in Nepalese politics.