SYSTEMS collapse when promises are not honoured. In a democracy, institutional health is measured by how each branch — legislature, executive and judiciary — upholds its commitments. One such commitment is to conduct elections within 90 days of the dissolution of an assembly as required by the Constitution. Commitments exist for the collective good. They collapse when they are negotiated to secure personal or institutional ambitions — such as when a law is tailored to protect the tenure of the chief justice.

Democracy, as currently practised, is designed in a way that cultivates a kind of collective inanity. Representatives surrender their own thinking, and the promises they made to the people, to the party; the parties, in turn, obey the whip and toe the line. Truth is not considered valuable in and of itself; it is a tool in a box, taken out when useful and put away when not. This can be seen in the 26th and 27th Amendments, and the Peca and NAB amendments, each tied by its defenders to the ‘public good’. Those who supported these laws gave more importance to optics that would present them in a favourable light, than to truth itself.

Against what standard, then, should........

© Dawn