Caudillo’s way and the road to despotism, by Uthman Shodipe

In the days of the Enlightenment when the ancient verities were being abandoned, when effete kingdoms and absolute rulers were tumbling down before the mighty forces of new realities – from the turbulent waters of the Mediterranean far into the arctic waters of the Norwegian Sea – Europe stirred in tumult and ideological ferment. There was that hurry everywhere to redesign and reformulate the structures of the state.
From the howling wastes and the tundra of the old Muscovy to the steppes of Southern Europe, Political theorists, Statesmen and Philosophers clashed in tempestuous grapple about the ideal society and the intricacies of erecting more formidable signposts of power that would be immune to the ravages of despotic venom.
Amid these intellectual stirrings and dialectical profusions, there rose a young French lawyer and Philosopher who argued with robust articulation in his magisterial thesis “The Spirit of the Laws” that “Government should be set up that no man need be afraid of another.” In this ennobling anchor of incipient democratic platform, Charles Louis de Montesquieu strengthened the doctrine of Separation of Powers which the English Philosopher John Locke had postulated almost a generation before.
The inherent logic here is that each organ of the state- the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary must act in counterbalancing singularity; with each independent of the other , with each residing in a potent island of countervailing integrity, with each dominant in its own sphere, but tempered from straying into excesses by the watchful assertiveness of the other to prevent a descent into a grim absolutism.
The process of that overriding watchfulness , the instinctive alert by every organ of the state is what the American founding Fathers had memorably enshrined as Checks and Balances.
The ringing leitmotif here is that the ideal society is never moulded in fear nor built around the chastening protective cauldron of a single arbiter. Democracy is about a contributory summation, the shared dependence, the vast infinite holler from everyone, the sweeping collective importance in the gradual shaping of a uniform vision .
It is on this rubric that all enduring democracies are firmly implanted and invariably sustained. No democracy can long endure when there is an impairment of this natural equilibrium. No democracy can thrive for long in firm , stable latitude when one organ of the state presumes itself in unerring messianic arbitration of the affairs of the state.
Democracy is never about a unitary vision. It is always about a plural contest. It is always about a clash of ideas, the pitting of truths, the unceasing platform of debates, the conscious cultivation of diverse articulations without the recourse to violent divisiveness. And at the end of this constant sifting and balancing, at the end of the passionate contentions and the multifarious contributions, the will of the people is emanated in the pronounced majority vision.
This was the primal defining spirit that provoked the Athenian Agora in the fifth century BC when virtually everyone gathered in the market place to deliberate on the affairs of the state.
The Athenian model of direct democratic representation has now yielded to the modern, indirect, delegated leadership. Leaders are now elected to serve our purpose and articulate the general will. Leaders are now conduits of channeling the general aspirations. While they inspire and motivate, leaders are the purveyors of the popular mandate, the representative emblems of the general vision.
It is in this formulation that the one with the Executive power is appropriated as a restrained Sovereign ultimately beholden to the will of the people.
Here the Executive is an arbiter answerable to the concerns, the clamor and the promptings of the popular throng. He cannot act alone in some vain caprice of tyrannical license. He cannot steer the rudder of the state in some whimsical omniscience, indifferent to the prevailing vision. The people still wield the ultimate lash of moral containment and the vibrant whip of electoral sanction.
And beyond the popular will stands the twin moderating majesty of the Judiciary and the Legislature, both acting in superintending containment of the Executive, and everyone complementing each other in a necessary stabilizing actuation of the storms and shocks of the forces of power.
In this delicate balance and democratic pivoting, the levers of the state are strengthened , the sinews of representative government are hardened in enduring vigour and balanced maturation.
This classical balance is however disturbed and the configurations of the state inevitably threatened when any of the organs arrogates to itself an infallible guidance and omniscient bearing. No organ of the state can repose alone in wandering, indifferent absolutism.
There is that reckless posturing now as it affects our presiding Caudillo. In his last outing he was animated in furious all- knowing nuance, contemptuous of the ruling of the judiciary, disdainful of the tempering logic of the due process, pronouncing the guilty verdict of the accused like the Roman imperators of yore, absolutely scornful of the rule of law, fulminating in vain proprietorial pouting, halted in the tyrannical past, delusionally absorbed in the imperial armor of a frozen Caesar, stubbornly insistent that he must have it his own way !
Alas, one man’s way, no matter how enlightened, no matter how selfless, no matter how borne upon good intentions is hardly the democratic way. It is not the way of restraint and contemplative brightness.
One man’s way , one man’s will , one man’s truth and one man’s wisdom without the restraining challenge of plural contributions is the quickest way to ruin and forfeiture; it is the quickest road to a one man’s rule and the dark descent to abrogation of liberty and the tragic withdrawal to despotic largeness.
It is often said that the Caudillo is a man of sanitizing pulchritude, straight as an arrow without a tarring blemish, prompted by a patriotic vision to sweep clean our Augean stable !
Even should we grudgingly acknowledge this untidy hyperbole, we are still detained by an inherent flaw: No enduring democracy can accommodate any one who presumes himself in unerring and unquestionable arbitration of the affairs of the state. That is not the way of democracy. That is not the way of freedom and liberty.
The Caudillo’s way is the way of the gulag and the bayonet; the brutal preserve of little men who would palter with the eternal God for eminence .