Politics in a Desperate Need for Dialogue

It seems like an irony to plead for a politics with dialogue in the current moment, especially such a dialogue that is internally democratic. It is equally needless to mention that a politics based on dialogue requires transparency within which debates about certain core issues can take place and judgments having a bearing on the common good or welfare of the people are shared publicly. But this has become increasingly difficult, especially in the context where defections have followed secretive roots rather than the ones of open debate to defect from one party to another.

Politicians often show an extraordinary caution in speaking less in private conversations, even with those who are relatively harmless. Everyone is turned into a potential suspect who can be a danger to one’s personal reputation, thanks to digital media, which has created this “art of suspicion” among the brand of current politicians. One could characterise this facet of contemporary politics in a post facto manner—that dialogue is impossible, and that strong decisions should be taken at the very moment when suffocation is detected in the party structures. But such confidence was not evident in most of the cases. And yet, one might argue that the association and assimilation in some parties with resources indicate the violence that occurred within the politicians’ self as much as it disrupts the moral consistency within the peoples’ representatives. Such association or assimilation of politicians, particularly from one party to another, also speaks of the unhappy existence that becomes unhappy for those who still have some sense of self-worth that pricks their conscience even after their defection, for example, from the parent party to the patronising party. It is also an act of violence against the aspirations of the people.