book of aphorisms by a Pakistani lawyer

Politics

People will admire you if you share their prejudices. They will denounce you if you tell them of their weaknesses and hound you if you attempt to reform them
Power is both capability and hubris. If you take it as capability, you will do immense good to the society. If you are possessed by hubris, you will unleash maximum wickedness you can muster.
Public morality is the sacred cow of a politician.
Politicians are like weathercocks. They tum the way the wind of public opinion blows.
Nothing endears a politician more to the public than the prejudices he shares with them.
One should not please everybody. Very few are worth the trouble, unless you are a politician or a shopkeeper.
He inspires best who leads by example.
The masses follow a great leader; the lesser leaders follow the masses.
Freedom from want and arrest are conditions precedent f.>r a culture of high thinking, which cannot be founded on empty stomachs and confined bod1e .
Diplomacy is the mother of deception.
Political speeches normally consist of amorphous ideas vaguely understood by the mob and mindlessly applauded by them .
A nation rich in slogans is poor in solutions.
Unpacified grievances grow into burgeoning quarrels which, if unmediated, explode into riots and uncontrolled riots are either treason or revolution, depending upon the outcome; the lesson of Bangladesh is before us.
Blacks in America, Muslims in India and Chinese in Malaysia will always play second fiddle to their white, Hindu and Muslim compatriots, because they are neither great in numbers to demand economic and cultural equality, nor small enough to be ignored completely.
Unlike a reformer who is willing to put his life in jeopardy for the desired change, a politician feeds the fires of popular prejudices, lest he is discarded at the best or assassinated at the worst. It is not possible to mould the hearts of ignorant and fanatics filled with misguided glory of the past and hatred for the secular present in one lifetime. It will take centuries, with luck, to impact them.
The way some Asian politicians, sometimes, madly shout and fight in parliaments in the full glare of media coverage, gives the impression that they are acting like scavenger hyenas, howling and pissing out in the open – as was shown in a TV programme of “Animal Planet” – to cordon on: stake claim and guard their territories, to roam about freely and feed in them.
Whenever any query accidentally pops up about Israili failures or excesses on BBC and CNN in the views of commentators, there is invariably a dead silence in reaction from the newscaster or a compere. Criticism of lsrail on these media is a tabu.
Seen in a balanced historical perspective, it is not such a good fortune to become a military dictator. He stands solitary, not affording to slip, on the pinnacle of absolute power. He occasionally must feel dizzy, ifhe has any streak of humility, or puffed up, ifhe is all arrogance, on the heights of his power. He is in the constant danger of assassination from the reactionary fanatics, if he has bold convictions. He works hard day and night as every head of legitimate government does, first for the voluptuous benefits and perks of his military hierarchy on whose strength he wields power, and second for the residuary and cosmetic good of the civilians in the national economic field left unoccupied, as less attractive, by his cabal. Yet the history will remember and blame him and not his beneficiary subordinates, as a usurper. Such a person does not, normally acquire moral justification forhis act of usurpation. Exceptions of beneficial dictators are rare and accidental like Lee KuanYew of Singapore. In Pakistan, history has not forgiven Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq for their illegitimate and ignominious impositions of martial laws by force and fraud, resulting in the ultimate separation of East Pakistan and societal regression and religious fanaticism.
In a country democracy is sham, if power is misused for self-aggrandisement, officers are corrupt, judiciary cowers in fright, police is ruthless to the helpless, common man is either ignorant or fanatic, influence speaks and safety or security oflife and property are absent; life is treated like a trash; people become insensitive to pain, cruelty and injustice; educational,
sanitary and medical public services revert to antiquity; public accountability is selective and meant for businessmen, civilians and opponents; juicy civilian jobs are taken over by the armed forces and big chunks of government properties are cheaply reserved for ex-services officers who also own and operate in big and lucrative sectors of agriculture, trade, finance and manufacture with governmental patronage and immunity.

These are but a few examples of a litany of misgovernance in an uneducated, overpopulated and a backward-looking country, where overlords of the West demand establishment of democracy, even if it is a spurious.
A politician, who is unspecific about his promises in public, is most eloquent.
A charismatic leader is a greater evil for democracy, but this is the type which draws large crowds in underdeveloped and over-populated countries.
A charismatic leader is a person who fascinates mobs and does not have to say anything, which makes sense.
Resort to spin to confound the public is a political ploy.
Education to comprehend political issues is a condition precedent to know what democracy is all about for exercise of the power to govern by the people. The more complex the stakes, the more intense the education should be .

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Rasheed A. Akhund

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