REFLECTIONS: HOW POWER CORRUPTS

It’s been quite some time since joining Government as a senior aide. During this period I have come to see that indeed, power has the ability to corrupt. Being a senior aide means that I am one in many such aides of the administration, but most times people accord me respect as if I were in a position to make decisions that affect their lives.

The truth is, from the kind of personal requests I get, many think I can make a lot of things happen. On several occasions I have been approached to “help talk to the governor” like I and my principal dine on the same table every day.

I am no more referred to as mister or the prefix Mr. attached to my name, rather I am called Honourable and the prefix Hon attached to my name. Sometimes others prefer to call me leader or Oga for short.

This pretentious show of respect does something to those whose idea of self-worth is attached to public perception about them. It corrupts their mind to think of themselves as powerful. They become pompous knowing that people think of them as having the power to control their lives.

If mere appointees can sometimes fall for this delusion, then imagine what can happen to a governor or president for that matter, who in actual sense wields the power to affect people’s lives. Instances abound where government officials, both past and present, and some wannabes act in a power-drunk manner.

The trappings of political office can make anyone arrogant. For democrats, we do not manage our leaders well. Ask anyone if they agree with Lord Acton’s observation that ‘power corrupts’, and they will nod knowingly. Then they will offer other examples, and perhaps a caveat. Before long they are holding forth on one of the classic problems of politics.

Upon election, the leader wants to do things well, and the cult of leadership whispers to him, telling him how to do so, how to avoid failure, how to treat your constituents and new subordinates. He is elected, and brought into the elite village, taught its ways, wined, dined and given an expense account. He feels he is working hard, holding responsibility and every day, his relative power is recognised in the eyes of the constituents and subordinates. At the same time, he is absorbing cognitive shortcuts from his new surroundings.

As these ways of thinking become automated and sink beneath awareness, he becomes more arrogant, annoyed, distrustful of others, and bold. Now his constituents fade into the background, only intruding when they complain or avoid responsibility. Gradually, he is separating. When someone suggests that he is making mistake, he holds it against him/her.

This is why it is not enough to describe corruption merely in terms of personal financial gain or promoting one’s friends. What we are here considering is a change in personality, an inflation of the self, a deep and moral degeneration. Gandhi said, “Possession of power makes men blind and deaf,” Dewey, that “all special privilege limits the outlook of those who possess it.

Corruption by power is an inability to see, a disorder of perception. It occurs when holding power over others changes the way we think. Organisational privilege, and indeed, unequal status of almost any kind, makes some things invisible.

When an elected or promoted leader begins to change, we say that ‘power has gone to his head. We watch warily as his confidence increases, he becomes more interested in his goals and more irritated by those around him. As the arrogance sets in, we notice that he increasingly thinks what is good for him is good for everybody; indeed, he begins to think he knows it all. Gradually, he becomes isolated and cannot be approached or questioned. Increasingly defensive, separated, casually cruel and reckless, he is utterly convinced of his own abilities, and so becomes dangerous.

Of the symptoms, it is perhaps total lack of awareness, which is most troubling, because it makes the corrupted leader, be it of a country, a State, an organisation or a family, becomes blinded by power, angered by those who point to what he cannot see and so unable to correct his mistakes.

To criticise him is thus to risk one’s life or career. If he is to be removed, all must overcome their fears and ready to lose the benefits of a quiet life. And so they try to tolerate him, to get by. It’s true he treats them like fools, and accuses them of shirking responsibility; true also that they never know when he will explode and punish.

Today, we mistrust our political representatives and our leaders. It is for this reason that people smile knowingly and nod when asked if power corrupts. It is also why liberal democracy learned to separate political power, and to restrain it with institutional ‘checks and balances’, which are of course non-existent in our clime.

Rousseau said, “Once you have citizens, you have all you need.” What he meant was that citizens who are wide-awake are the best way to control the corruption of elites.

What I have observed over the years is that if leaders are corrupted into tyrants, citizens are corrupted into blind obedience. It is therefore worth remembering – when we are ‘just doing our job’ or ignoring what elected leaders do in our name – that the most serious wrongs most of us ever commit are seemingly minor ‘crimes of obedience’. It is in this sense that we are all and regularly corrupted by power, either as power holders or as subordinates; often as both, switching effortlessly between them as we turn from one person to another.