Democracy is first a choice-driven enterprise before it may be driven by the consideration of merit. People vote ‘choice’ either because they do not even have the capacity to discern ‘merit’ from ‘mediocrity’, or they may vote stark mediocrity even in spite of ‘obvious merit’. If the law allows mediocrity on the ballot, then mediocrity is an option. Democracy is concerned more with the freedom of the majority to choose what it pleases than with the desire of the society to be governed aright. All well and good if in the exercise of the right to freely choose, the majority is lucky to install good government. It is the reason that of the many definitions of democracy, ‘the right even to elect the wrong candidate’ is inclusive. Are we not often confronted with Hobson’s choices on the ballot? Are we not often faced with choices only as good as those ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’? Or -as the English would say- between a terrifying Scylla and a horrible Charybdis?
The law cannot regulate the legitimate choices that the democratic freewill is entitled to make. It chooses what it will. It rejects what it will not choose. Or else the democratic freewill ceases to be what it fundamentally ought to be, namely ‘free. As parliament is the touchstone of democratic freedom and regular election is the veritable proof of that liberty, so is the freewill the touchstone of electoral liberty. That it may be guided by conscience is only a ‘desirable’ function of the freewill, not a ‘necessity’. In fact that the free electoral will acts in repudiation of the dictate of conscience or that it acts of its own whimsical consideration does not make its decision any less legitimate. The democratic freewill has the right to elect mediocrity and to vote out merit. It can be activated by moral consideration or it may be attracted even by depraved, dissolute concerns. It can elect a bum, a scum bucket or a lollygagger; and it can ignore the able, the capable and the knowledgeable.
The ‘freewill’ is as its name suggests, ‘free-willing’. It is either ignorance or the tyranny of so-called enlightened opinionation that arrogates the right to inquisition the free electoral will. We cannot make morally repugnant what the law has made a legitimate option. Try as we may, the judgment of which candidate is best or better in a democracy cannot be an objective one. It is forever a subjective one. One man has a right only to recommend his choice to another and not to inquisition the choice that others make. Nothing underscores the primal place of ‘choice’ and the un-importance of merit than in the words of a cartoonist, Mike Peters, who wondered “When I go into the voting booth, do I vote for the person who is the best president or the slime bucket who will make my life as a cartoonist wonderful?”
And it is the reason that ‘democracy’ is called ‘majority rule’: the right of the majority to a ‘way’ -no matter what other ‘way’ the minority would’ve preferred. Thus besides being an expression of the ‘will’ of the people, elections confirm what the majority –advertently or inadvertently- is willing to be governed by. As in our present situation, whether by a ‘stingy, right wing tyrant’ allegedly personified by Buhari or by a profligate, no-wing, thieving capitalist represented by Atiku. Democracy, like ‘virtue’ is its own reward. And it is the reason Walter Winchell said that ”too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing is just having it!” Since the law has dared to have them, both –a tyrant and a thief- on the ballot, the law has thus made them, each, a legitimate option! Nor is the right by some to elect one, superior to the right by others, to elect the other.
By the way, as there can be benevolent dictators, there can also be benevolent thieves. At least medieval England’s Robin Hood was. Not that he was right, but he stole from the rich to give to the poor. But then the question arises: ‘did Atiku steal from the rich in the first place? Or did he even steal with the motive of Robin Hood –namely to give to the poor? Or did he –again like Robin Hood- give all that he stole to the poor? When you take unlawfully from the pocket of the commonwealth you are in a sense stealing from the poor -and cannot therefore claim to play the ‘benevolent thief’. You are either a Robin Hood or you are a hooded robber!
But is Atiku a thief? For the reason that he has not denied that he did apologize to Obasanjo, yes. Because people do not apologize who are innocent. They do only when they are wrong. But Atiku’s apology, not only was it made to the un-harmed party, Obasanjo; it was not preceded by a confession. Pleas everywhere are taken either with the confessional adjective, ‘guilty’ or with the negative, ‘not guilty’! They are not taken with the apologetic: ‘I am sorry’, or with a promissory: ‘I will not do it again’. Equally sins are forgiven with the confessional: ‘I have sinned’ and not with the pledge: ‘I have repented’. The one who says ‘I am sorry’ is no less sinning in the eyes of God, or any less culpable in the eyes of the law, than the one who says ‘I have sinned’ or the one who says ‘I am guilty’?
Atiku’s ‘I am sorry’ is definitely no quittance from wrong, it is a clear admittance of ‘guilt’. Reason Obasanjo said ‘although I endorse him, I maintain that Atiku is still a thief’. Obasanjo has discharged and acquitted Atiku not because of his ‘innocence’, but in spite of his guilt. And isn’t that wonderful? That the illusive ‘quality of mercy’ sought by Portia in Shakespeare ‘Merchant of Venice’ should be found not in a heartless Shylock, but rather in the stony heart of a now ‘compassionate’ Obasanjo. Imagine ‘mercy’ not seasoned by ‘justice’, ‘forgiveness’ without ‘confession’; ‘absolution’ without ‘repentance’.
But that is not the worst part of it; Obasanjo has not only forgiven Atiku on our behalf without consulting us, he is recommending a felon who once bled us, to our trust again. He wants us to reward an un-confessed criminal with the Presidency simply because the man has said ‘sorry I will not do it again’! Atiku himself has said that he is already filthy-rich enough, he needs not steal our purse again. But if all we say to Atiku is ‘go sin no more’, he should still be in our book of debt.
And now Buhari. Stingy? Yes. Rightwing? Yes. But is he a tyrant? They say that a ‘tyrant’ is a ruler unrestricted by law. To the extent that Buhari has said that national security is superior to the rule of law, it cannot be denied that he is guilty as charged, a tyrant. But what manner of tyrant? A tyrant of necessity or a tyrant of gloat? Kings, said Robert Harrick, “seek their subjects’ good, tyrants (seek) their own”. Is Buhari guilty of the ‘despotism’ of kings or of the despotism of tyrants? Yes one of Britain’s prime ministers, William Pitt the Younger has said that “Necessity is the….argument of tyrants”, but shouldn’t ‘bad laws’, as the Irish-born British philosopher would say, be truly “the worst sort of tyranny”? What must leaders do who seek the public good but are hamstrung by laws? 19th century’s Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco provides the answer: “If I didn’t act with an iron hand, this would soon be chaos.” One man’s dictator is also another’s revolutionary. Buhari is not a tyrant of necessity. He is a benevolent dictator. He is not a maximum ruler, but is a despot ‘good governance’.
But to everyone, his democratic freewill: to vote a tyrant or to vote a thief; to elect the puritan or to elect the cavalier, the spendthrift or the extravagant, the benevolent dictator or the unrepentant rogue!
