DailyPost 1644
POLITICAL PROPRIETY
Nobody has even been able to define political propriety. There is a general feeling that it is on the downslide. One of the meanings of propriety is appropriateness to the purpose or circumstance; suitability. The standard definition of everything is positive or pro-active in nature. In case we get into the current side of the political landscape and juxtapose that with appropriateness to the purpose or circumstance, what would that mean to propriety is a big question mark. We have landed in a vitiated world of propriety, wherein personas antithetical to it, would find their behaviour, demeanour, conduct and actions to be appropriate.
Which means that the general feeling is that there is no loss in political propriety amongst the people who are in the thick of things. Politics was based on political philosophy, having its roots in the brains of renowned political thinkers. Left, right and centre has been known the world over. The methodologies of agitation, change and governance were pretty well known for all the three and their variants. Preceding it, was the policy imperative which was supposed to be dictated by political philosophy. This went in for a churning a few decades back and was born the omnibus paradigm shift in political philosophy and the nemesis of political propriety, is that in politics there are no permanent enemies.
It thus means your friends also keep changing. We have been making a heady mix of left, right and centre in the interest of the purpose or circumstance; maximum gain the shortest possible time. It did not end with the strange political bedfellow relationship, the demands, manifesto, public manifestations starting becoming contradictory to each other over a period of time, in the same party itself. Each party becomes a party of contradictions. How does it then function as an organization, when everything is so negatively dynamic. If you add the fast-changing political alliances /coalition partners in governance, even the best of the algorithms will not be able to find out any correlation between their demands, declarations, promises and what they actually do.
In power or out of power are two political states which matter to a political party and to be in the first state by any method is the political propriety for them. Political parties becoming bedfellows is only one part of the story, individual politicians are ready to give up their elected seats and their political homes of decades, if the bounty seems to be commensurate. They are ready to fight fresh elections. Political propriety is an inverted pyramid. The refuge giving party declares them paragons of virtue. *Whoever can win a seat is virtuous. Who all can make a party win are virtuous. Who all can gobble a new political alignment to from a govt are virtuous. Who all are able to get a bill through the legislature are virtuous.
THE POLITICS OF PROPRIETY WILL NEVER BE REBORN.