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Witoubou Newmai
When decisions and steps are taken on convenience, intended goals are often curtailed or further narrowed. When such a development prevails, any discourse or movement or campaign can be unyielding, as the veneer of hypocrisy is promoted. Above all, bitter binaries and invective will overwhelm the atmosphere.
Can there be a bigger travesty than to choose convenience over justice?
The prevailing trend in our society is due to our inability to ask the above question on time and recognize the danger of it.
It is not about the usual monotony of ranting over the sorry state of affairs, but ending the prevailing trend requires such a soliloquy sometimes, and also, to find a new discourse.
This writer has been ‘generous’ in sharing this ‘monotony’ all along. In the past, this writer had advocated fervently that “the past has to be correctly re-read into the present” so that the ‘discourse’ of a society does not acquire adverse forms of vitality, which will, in turn, invite things to the next level of pandemonium. That is why the people need to rediscover the ‘purpose’ together by forgetting the binary of the ‘authority’ and the ‘grass-root’ for a while.
One concern is about the culture of ‘trickling down.’ Since things have not been trickling down well all this while, confusions and doubts among the grass-roots have prevailed. This relational hiatus has created divisions and resulted in broadening split among the people, thereby, giving rise for the spawning of demagogues and power centres. As the process of division accelerates, the focus has become divergent and faint.
This trend, in turn, has laid grounds for the germination of the culture of making the ‘purpose’ convenient to the interests of the demagogues. Now, these demagogues have come into the scene with an intention more intense than the situation requires or demands. These are certain glaring reasons for concern.
As the spirit of the ‘purpose’ of demagogues and power-centres or 'leadership groups' is in sharp contrast now, the grass-roots ought to rise to the occasion to prise the ‘purpose’ away from the vested interests. In doing so, not only the veneer of hypocrisy will be ripped, but sobering participation of all concerned will be ensured. In this way, the passion of the people can be re-ignited, and the possibility of the wrong channelization of the manifestation of impatience and confusion of the grass-roots are subdued.
Unless stultifying effects are created for the demagogues from travestying the people, room for the ‘purpose’ to get diluted or channelized will continue to lurk.
It is worthwhile to mention also that, since the all ready demagogues and ‘leadership groups’ seldom let it go of any opportunity in channelizing things in the absence of informed and conscious grass-roots, there are increasing demands for the role of the thinking/concerned people.
