Isn’t it rather funny that Xi Jinping’s government officials find offence in their leader being referred to as a “dictator” by an American president? That is the least one would expect of any self-respecting American official with an opinion about anything at all. That it has been uttered by none other than Joe Biden, President of the United States, makes it a no-brainer for anyone. It is so obvious it need not be mentioned.
Weaned on the salute to the Star-Spangled Banner, and the strident strains of “America the Beautiful” and apple pie, what better way to reassert the goodness of America than to poke a little harmless fun at the “Commies” in Beijing with their outdated system that can allow the enshrinement of a leader’s name in a constitution, which is what the Communist Party has done?
It is much more than being a dictator, if we are to go by the behaviour associated with so many people who have gone by that epithet across timelines and spaces.
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Even if one were to restrict oneself to the People’s Republic alone, neither Chairman Mao Zedong nor Deng Xiaoping got their names inscribed in the constitution, though they exercised control very much similar to what the current leader does currently.
The insertion of the man’s name in the constitution must speak to the need to instil extra thought discipline among the party faithful, lest some of them start having erroneous ideas about, perhaps sometime soon, some of them vying for such an exalted status: There is one leader for now, and that is enough for the near, foreseeable future.
This practice may be frowned upon by certain constituencies that have been too much acquainted with the tombola-like periodic elections, during which those who can buy people’s minds buy them and those who can steal, rig and cheat steal, rig and cheat.
In this, we pretend there is no dictatorship, but there is no way to ascertain that this latter variety of political operators is more salutary than the simple device of inserting into the constitution the name of the man who is obviously the most desired — the most able.
All leaders are dictators, in case you never noticed, only they do not call themselves that.
Anyone who is empowered to decide on the course of events when there is no universal agreement — and universal agreement is an impossibility — is necessarily a dictator, because he or she holds the key to many “tied” decisions, whether real or imagined.
A leader has to decide, and that is what dictatorship means. The alternative would be to allow endless debates during which very little of substance is distilled, but the smart alecks who know how to pull the strings of the national purse have a field day drying up the national resources and coffers.
It would seem to me that whether a leader is a dictator or not is of no significance, since all of them are what matters is what that leader aims to achieve and the methods, he or she employs to attain those. Inevitably, some questions will arise around the leadership skills of the person at the helm and whether he or she exercised requisite care, foresight, wisdom and all those things that defy quantification or calculation.
In the history of the world, there have been instances where, by consensus, polities openly agreed to have someone they openly called a “dictator” and charged him with the responsibility to work towards the establishment of a certain number of yardsticks after which normalcy would be restored. It is obvious the Chinese Communist Party has taken a hint from that age-old practice.
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This is a debating square in which African participants have little room, because all too often, they have largely been dictators for the sake of it, without hardly any idea to do with the power they have usurped. A number of them have used differing levels of force and violence, even when they have not been so-called civilian regimes kept in power only by the military under their thumb till, they revolt and take overpower for themselves.
Back to our Biden and his remarks concerning the Chinese leader.
As stated earlier, I would expect nothing less of a US politician, what with their smugness in their self-righteousness and self-congratulation. They are so upbeat about lecturing the rest of the world that they no longer care to find out what they are qualified to lecture on.
If one were to ask Donald Trump whether the US was a dictatorship, his reply would be in the affirmative, although, of course, his rantings would be about this “greatest witch-hunt” Biden has been organising against him, which is “the most disgraceful thing in the history of our country.”
Hyperbole and superlatives apart, Trump has a point.
The brutes clambering over fences at the Capitol that January 6 clearly looked and sounded like aggrieved barbarians who wanted no truck with the system sustained by Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.
All three are dictators to those baying mobs, representing maybe 40 percent of Americans, who were bent on lynching Trump’s vice-president who had refused to “deliver” the vote in favour of Trump. Who is the dictator now?
Source: The East African
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