It is difficult for people to tell established political parties apart. This statement applies to vast swathes of the world, a bountiful gift of imperialism. The US and the UK have floundered as they have lurched towards a firm two-party system, becoming ever more dysfunctional in ways that would be defined as being corrupt if they occurred in third world countries.
The latter, in continuing to look up to the two imperialists – one on borrowed time, the other oblivious to its irrelevance – have followed the two-party model, incentivised by the former duo’s benevolent purses.
Limiting the political spectrum in this manner narrows choices for the electorate, thereby making it easier for it to be manipulated and ruled. The flaw in this perfect plan of the ruling class lies in the growing inability of the populace to distinguish between the only two options presented to it. The electorate cannot be faulted: If it struggles to tell the difference between two sides when people are starving on the streets, it cannot be expected to tell them apart when people are dying on them.
The disdain felt towards the establishment that has dragged itself to the gutter comes from the antipathy to the cycle of rebuttals that has assumed the form of a zero-sum blame game. It simultaneously gives credence to Orwell’s notion that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” and makes it harder for the citizenry to find said language believable.
When things plummet into an abyss, the axiom of it always being possible for them to get worse ringing true, people respond by revolting against inequality, corruption and injustice.
If the system itself is corrupt, which certainly forms at least a part of the thinking behind the disillusionment, disengagement and disenfranchisement, people find alternatives. Normally, these take the shape of a rise on the left and its counterbalance, a rise on the right, responding to the grave humanitarian crisis.
Forgoing the dangers of voters turning decisively to the other if the first one fails or gives the appearance of failure, and of the situation being ripe for extremist and authoritarian tendencies to take advantage of a vulnerable electorate, this is an opportunity for the people to create something remarkable. This has happened in Spain with Podemos, and in Greece with Syriza.
It is a sad indictment of the modern global political climate, and a sadder reminder of the iron grip of the ruling class, that these parties who represent nothing more than truth, common sense and a mystifying ability to put the people first are branded as being radical. There is nothing unorthodox about their policies. That their desire to emphasise on and prioritise the dignities of their citizens and countries could even be seen as such, could be thought of being extraordinary, only proves how far the established world order has strayed. This lunacy cannot be allowed to extend its reign of terror, nor can the people’s suffering be prolonged.
While the US and the UK are given to hypocrisy when it comes to democracy – turning a blind eye to, if not causing or supporting instances of power being grabbed at gunpoint by men in uniforms, even if they may sometimes be cloaked – Greece, considered the oldest democracy in the world due to its role in having founded the concept of demokratia has upheld the merits of this system of governance at its recently concluded general election.
A coalition of left-wing voices, formed in 2004 and covering the full gamut of ideologies, Syriza officially relaunched itself as a unitary party in 2013. Two years later, this voice of protest has been entrusted with a country in peril, with the populace seeing hope in the face of adversity for the first time in years.
A nation being galvanised by a pro-people movement is not unique to Greece. Spain’s 2011-2012 protests gave birth to Podemos in 2014, a platform against inequality and corruption. Like Syriza, it will seek to return confidence to the population later this year.
The year 2015 can be the year that politics changed for the better, not because of what will happen in the irrelevant UK in May, but because of what has happened in Greece already, and what will happen in Spain by December.
The concerned citizens of Bangladesh – and it is suggested that all of the 160 million people, less the current ruling class comprised of all political parties and their beneficiaries, are unanimous in their concern – need to turn to these positive models. In their implementation, absent nefarious, self-serving external forces, domestic and foreign, lies the only true salvation.
