Between this issue and our next, Mongolia will be in the grips of election fever, and that is my excuse for laying aside matters financial or economic for this month’s column. I shall not stray from our consistent and scrupulously followed policy of not commenting on domestic partisan politics, but I am as interested as anybody else in the outcome and how it is achieved. There certainly is no clear favourite and no party can be expecting to emerge substantially stronger than the others. At a recent conversation, the astute pollster L. Sumati claimed some of his earlier predictions based on results of surveys conducted by hisSant Maral Foundation had been “breathtakingly accurate” but he, too, feels stumped this time around.
Personalities are likely to be more important than party programmes, but the latest Sant Maral survey was done before the Enkhbayar episode and so offers no clue to its impact on the electorate. Will it turn out to be a masterstroke by those opposed to him, or will it make a martyr of him and thus boomerang on them? Or will people agree that the timing of the arrest was fortuitous and had nothing to do with the political scene? Much will depend on how events are presented and perceived. Maybe public opinion will crystallise but maybe it will not and we shall see erstwhile combatants joining hands to sidestep a hung parliament.
The whole election process in Mongolia is quite different from what I have seen in several countries, mostly in South Asia, where the political/democratic culture is of a radically different texture. But that is merely the externals. Given all the imperfections of the way it is manipulated and measured in any country, it is rare that the people’s will in general is not reflected in the results. Time and again, it has been seen that exigencies of geography, public practices, and systemic and cultural differences are overruled at a time of free, democratic elections.
This belief was reinforced in me after I read a recently published book related to an election fought in 64 BCE in Rome, which is about 7000 km away from Ulaanbaatar, as the crow is taken to fly.Apart from the distance and the fact that the Eternal City is two lakes and a sea away, ancient Rome and its empire may not mean much to Mongolians and the name of Marcus Tullius Cicero is unlikely to be much known here. But he is a very important figure in European history. Most of present day allusions to him refer to his oratorical skills and his felicitous prose style, but he was also a political theorist and a philosopher. Indeed, it was primarily he who introduced the chief schools of Greek philosophyto Romans and in the course of this, created a Latin philosophical vocabulary. Many scholars even go so far as to claim thatPetrarch’s rediscovery of Cicero’s letters marks the initiation of the 14th-century European Renaissance. The Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, maybe known in Mongolia, wrote, “The Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.”
But he was neither an ivory-tower scholar nor just a successful lawyer, and took an active role in civic affairs, as was the contemporary norm. Aconstitutionalist and a distinguished Roman consul -- one of the two men who, for a year, directed Rome’s superpower republic -- Cicero was a champion of republicangovernment, ultimately paying with his life for his opposition to concentration of power in one ruler’s hands.
His younger brother Quintus wrote a long letter of advice when Marcus ran for office in Rome in 64 BCE and this has now been translated by a classicist academic, Philip Freeman, under the title How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians. Cicero won that election and the second part of the English title is more than apt as the text shows that what proved to be a winning formula in Rome almost 2,200 years ago could be as effective in Mongolia over the next few weeks. An election campaign’s brutal and brutish essentials have changed little over the centuries, and stripped of inessentials, little is new in today’s political thrust and parry. Nothing the younger Cicero told his brother has lost any currency. At the end of the day, politics continues to be, as he said, “full of deceit, treachery, and betrayal”.
The Commentariolum Petitionis (little handbook on electioneering) is only about 4,500 words long. Even then, it is an insistently repetitive tract (maybe the writer was not sure how the high-minded candidate would take his suggestions of baldly manipulative intent). Freeman writes in his introduction, “The real pleasure for most modern readers is its unashamedly pragmatic advice on how to manipulate voters and win political office… Idealism and naïveté are left by the wayside as Quintus tells his brother…how the down-and-dirty business of successful campaigning really works.”
I list below the core stratagems of the self-appointed consultant. Readers who follow developments in Mongolia will marvel at the relevance of each.
Promise everything to everybody. However, “you should not make specific pledges… Stick to vague generalities.”
Remind voters about the sexual transgressions of opponents. Of Cicero’s two opponents for the consulship, Quintus wrote: “They have both been brutes since they were boys, while even now they are notorious philanderers and spendthrifts. … (One) disgraced himself by going down to the market and openly buying a girl to keep at home as a sex slave… (while the other) was so impudent, so wicked, so skilled in his licentiousness that he molested young boys almost in the laps of their parents.”
When you’re a candidate, be wary of your supposed allies as the most damaging tidbits about you will come from them. Nonetheless, surround yourself with rabid supporters; they are the ones to dazzle and deceive the electoreate: “Be sure to put on a good show. Dignified, yes, but full of the colour and spectacle that appeals so much to crowds.”
Call in favours and curry new ones. If potential backers seek a quid pro quo, turn them down tactfully… People would prefer you give them a gracious lie than an outright refusal.”
Don’t sweat over honesty, or even sincerity. “Broken promises are often lost in a cloud of changing circumstances so that anger against you will be minimal.”
As for the pitch, give people hope, because even cynical voters want to believe in something.
There is also advice on how to be a disciplined campaigner. The need to be focused is repeatedly underscored and so is the value of never doubting one’s own winnability. There is no off day in a campaign. Quintus also suggested an unbiased evaluation of both the vulnerabilities and strengths of rivals. This is what would be today called opposition research. Quintus also asked his brother to map the electorate, the business groups, local interests, the poor and the young, offering the largesse of hope to everyone, even if he knew full well he was promising the moon. A leader then and also nowknew he thrived on the gullibility of the masses and justified his cynicism with the faith that being deceived was in their own best interests. No democracy has ever been or can be democratic enough.
It’s not such a long way from the hills of Rome to the steppes of Mongolia. I hope the candidates enjoy their campaigning as much as we shall watching them. n
Between this issue and our next, Mongolia will be in the grips of election fever, and that is my excuse for laying aside matters financial or economic for this month’s column. I shall not stray from our consistent and scrupulously followed policy of not commenting on domestic partisan politics, but I am as interested as anybody else in the outcome and how it is achieved. There certainly is no clear favourite and no party can be expecting to emerge substantially stronger than the others. At a recent conversation, the astute pollster L. Sumati claimed some of his earlier predictions based on results of surveys conducted by hisSant Maral Foundation had been “breathtakingly accurate” but he, too, feels stumped this time around.