By Tony Samson
WE DO NOT HAVE party politics. Ideologies or political platforms seldom define parties and the members they attract. After the proliferation of our multi-party system, the party acronyms have become a blizzard of alphabets in various dialects, which also include party list agglomerations and citizen action groups. Remember the August 21 Movement (ATOM)? Always, the party is defined by who organized it and the candidates it is promoting, including common ones from yet other parties.
We do not have think tanks promoting policy statements and position papers on national issues, say in the continuum of conservative, populist, or liberal perspectives. What we have are economic forecasting groups, political analysts, pundits, and polling organizations. One survey group shows that over 65% of the population embrace dictatorship as a preferred form of government — this is announced without bursting into maniacal laughter.
It is often expediency that determines political action. Appealing to a politician’s nationalism is pointless. Still, even self-interested moves (for charter change, for example) are cloaked with the rhetoric of democratic ideals, the public’s right to know, the search for truth, the need to devolve power to the people, and an assortment of high-minded principles, to put proponents, with their hidden agendas, in the company of patriots.
Political parties are porous, as groupings are identified with specific political players. As in change of management, so with elections, there are winners and losers. Guess which political party gains more adherents when the dust settles? Photos of mass oath-takings of new members soon follow.
A change of administration every six years introduces a new set of power players and their business titans in the making. Even in mid-term elections such as the one coming up in May, new alliances may be formed which again affect the groupings. Since political alliances are temporary and driven by mutual convenience rather than a common ideology, there are always members joining and leaving.
Media are obsessed with political news, several notches above murders, car pile-ups, celebrity break-ups, and snatched cell phones. Even independent media can be dragged into the spin zone of politics. A narrative like students from elite universities being recruited for an uprising, and suddenly advocating the abolition of private property just because they are noisy critics of inflation and curious about medical check-ups can acquire a life of its own… until it is withdrawn as a threat. Let’s change the month. It’s November already.
The working press likes to catch off-the-cuff remarks from the top. Stories that make the suits nervous (the economy has become lethargic) get front page treatment. Media love the underdogs, naturally sympathetic to unions and their perennial plea for increasing the minimum wage, spinners of conspiracy theories, street marchers against the slow rehabilitation of war-torn cities no matter how few, and any group that can provide a sound bite that rattles the plates.
The frequent recourse for businessmen is to find key players whose narrow interests coincide with theirs, and who understand the effects of inflation. Politics and its impact on economics mobilize business groups, which promote private enterprise and the wisdom of markets, to plunge into politics if they mean to change things. There are no business parties, only management associations. Still, business personalities are sometimes lured into politics, and often lose in elections. They need to acquire the common touch.
Corporate politics too adheres to the personality-based model. With a change in management from an acquisition or the poaching of a senior executive from competition or an unrelated industry, there follows a tectonic shift of allegiances. There are the old guards who are largely ignored and dismissed as defenders of the status quo — we need to embrace change. And the new faction, including switchers from the first group, sometimes referred to as “posterior moochers,” will constitute the new power structure. Peripheral groups of kibitzers form around extracted stories from coffee servers, secretaries, security, and doctors — is that really just an allergy?
The politics of personality is extensive. Friends of friends, cousins of cousins, neighbors of parents, neighborhood associations, and old school ties define a shifting power structure. Our culture is personality based, where “know-who” trumps “know-how.”
Getting difficult things done involves influencing the appropriate personality, hopefully a better one than a rival can come up with. When an awaited decision comes out, the loser needs to accept that… it’s nothing personal.
A.R. Samson is chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda
ar.samson@yahoo.com
