It is no longer possible to rule such a large population in a country as vast as China in the style of the 1950-1975 period with IT educating the people of the steady progress in other societies. Just about the only country around which probably can do this – and indeed does – is the virtually closed hermit Kingdom of North Korea whose people have no way of discovering what is happening in the outside world. What more, the people of North Korea do not know what is happening a few hundred miles across their own border where their cousins in South Korea enjoy a very high quality of life.
by I. S. Senguttuvan
(April 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was in power for 30 years. Libya’s Muammar Gaddaffi is still there, though challenged, since he took over 42 years ago. This long period of brutal grip in power over their own people made both take their cowed down people to granted. No surprise they figured their imposing their sons on their captive people will not be resisted. Syria’s minority Alawite Hafeez al-Assad who was around for around 30 years imposed his son Bashir on the Syrian people with the usual mumbling of “popular mandate of the people” Saddam Hussein kept him in enforced power for 24 years and was forced to exit the political-ruling structure before he could impose his clearly established greed to impose his own sons on the unwilling Iraqi people. The world was made to believe this is a cultural feature in the Arabic world. That was, sooner than later, bound to be challenged with global events coming to the fore. Egypt was looked upon in the region as the seat of learning with the honoured AlAzrah University being one of the oldest in the world. Egypt also contains an educated elite class that provided the world with respected and able civil servants – Mohamed El Baradei and Boutros Boutros Ghali being just two of the more famous names.
In South Asia, matters move more subtly. The children of the Nehrus-Gandhis of India, Bhuttos of Pakistan, the Bangladeshis and the Bandaranaikes in Sri Lanka reached the pinnacles of power in their own scenes through a veneer of the democratic process. They were not thrust on the people crudely but came through the electoral process – though the charges of these being manipulated remains valid in many cases. In that first world society of Singapore the current Prine Minister Lee Hsein Loong appears to have made his way through a more acceptable process. Well-educated, experienced Hsein Loong was in the Cabinet for sometime before he took over in 2004 from his much respected and undisputed Father of the Nation. The Singapore example goes out to meet the argument being the son of a leader is no bar to political heights - provided the candidate has merit and comes through due process. In what was once prosperous Burma – now Myanmar – the invisible Generals have bled the country and emptied much of its resources for their personal gain. They have adamantly denied Aung San Suui Kyi the popular election she won convincingly. She remains incarcerated - under various dubious pretences – since her democratic victory in 1980. The party she headed won 59% of the popular votes and 81% of seats in Parliament. The UN and its much hyped R2P are totally exposed as ineffective. Many personal visits of UN and global political heavyweights to reason out with the brutal military regime to restore Suu Kyi are frustrated by a global power in the region – more bent on grabbing Myanmar’s petroleum and other mining resources across the border paying scant respect to the process of the law. In Japan and the Philippines, children of former leaders came up the political ladder more legitimately. Way down in Communist Cuba – where theoretically everything is done according to reason in keeping with Marxist doctrinaire justice to the people, Fidel Castro (in power from 1958) imposed his brother Raul in a country Cuban exiles in Florida called “an open prison” The electronic media brought down the Polish regime that, in turn, provided the inspiration for the collapse of the Berlin Wall by a series of popular revots of the people taking to the streets. A different form of democratic government to the countries that came under the former Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe is now in place in that part of Europe. This is by no means a complete list of men and women taking power in different parts of the world by reasons legal and other than legal.
The global proliferation of mobile phones and the affordable prices at which they were available even to the poor plus the technological advances where these units can photograph events and relay them to the world in seconds, brought down many walls that kept people in many countries in literal chains. to the day it threatens many more by their restless people hungry for opportunities to shape their destinies and who have seen radical - relatively peaceful - changes in the contemporary world. China,where only a few millions possessed Mobile and landline phones just a decade ago now claims a telephonic penetration level of 81% enabling 1.3 billion of the largest ever population on earth to be in constant touch both with local and global events of the hour. The strong and cohesive Chinese military-political behemoth finds it increasingly difficult to keep her fastly prosperous population under her thumb. It is no longer possible to rule such a large population in a country as vast as China in the style of the 1950-1975 period with IT educating the people of the steady progress in other societies. Just about the only country around which probably can do this – and indeed does – is the virtually closed hermit Kingdom of North Korea whose people have no way of discovering what is happening in the outside world. What more, the people of North Korea do not know what is happening a few hundred miles across their own border where their cousins in South Korea enjoy a very high quality of life.
In Sri Lanka, during the contentious weeks of May 2009 and indeed before and after that the advantages of Information Technology have provided the world with sensitive evidence that will not be available through official channels. In Iran, on several occasions in recent times, the world learnt in a matter of minutes, ghastly scenes of oppression and terrible human rights abuses against the Iranian people that put the Ahmedinajad fundamentalist regime under universal censure. The crime of the Iranian people - they came out to the streets in silent and peaceful protest for a regime change in an environment the current incumbent's coming to power is alleged to be3 deeply flawed.
Dictatorial and undemocratic societies put forth various theories in support of their hold on their own people. In Afghanistan and societies in the region, it is claimed women should be denied even the very basic in education simply because, it is suggested, their role is in the kitchen and at home taking care of their husbands and children. While in others in the region the denial of what is universally recognized as democratic rights is interpreted as inconsistent with their own religious values. The truth is women, the educated and HR workers in the same societies do not agree. The regimes concerned fear IT is far too deadly a tool in the hands of those working to take their imprisoned people outside the depths of medieval madness crudely marketed in different words.
The democratic way of life, admittedly, has many faults within it. But as Winston Churchill was to remark “still it is better than all other systems of governance put together” The springing of the Information Technology over the world provides the democratic way of life exceptionally added and pungent vigour.
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