Welcome to the Age of the Shameless Politician

Welcome to the Age of the Shameless Politician

By: Erreh Svaia

"Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I'd kill you"

Rodrigo Duterte

It seems to be a dangerous tendency these days to watch supposedly non politicians whose man claim to power is the honesty of their speech, claiming not to be regular politician, but displaying attitudes close to populism and demagoguery, these really threatening figures, are really display a discourse that could bring back the darkest points of our still on development democracies.

Is understandable the anger of the current voter, tired of the slow or apparently nonexistent advances, consequence of the never ending world crisis of 2008, this so called non politicians have learned to create a protest tone that apparently put them on the side of the people, kidnapping the voice of the "people" by assuming they are the voice of the people.

Modern history of these populist non politicians started with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Alberto Fujimori in Peru, both characters coming from places outside politics circle, Chavez, a man from the militia, and Fujimori, an academic who both learned to capitalize peoples anger and irritation towards common politics, it must be considers that these dangerous outsiders can come from everywhere, Chavez, a man from the left wing, and Fujimori, a man from the right wing, who after using democracy to achieve power, started an ongoing process to dismantle it.

A big wave of these outsiders started in southern Europe, with people like Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Beppe Grillo in Italy and Pablo Iglesias in Spain, every one of them offering supposed alternative projects to the current political systems in their respective countries, Tsipras with connections to the radical left and Putin's Russia, Grillo as a curious hybrid of Roberto Benigni and Mussolini, and Iglesias, an academic with links to Venezuela's Chavismo.

These wave, although successful was not able to capitalize on Chavez' success, as his death, the fall of oil prices and the current Venezuelan crisis, with world record inflation of 700%, and other left wing has severely damaged the image of these outsiders propitiating the fall of Chavez peers in Argentina and Brazil.

In America, the wave of the anti-politicians made a comeback in various ways, the arrival of comedian Jimmy Morales, who looked to the Guatemalan people like a good alternative to their corrupt politician, in paper it looked like a good idea, the problem is that Morales lack of experience put Guatemala in a static position, without the capacity to move forward in various themes, in Mexico, the so called first ”independent candidate” Jaime Rodriguez won in the state of Nuevo Leon, a militant of the PRI, the corrupt official party for 33 years, managed to convince the voter, that just by quitting the PRI, Rodriguez immediately exorcized from him the corrupt practices of his former party.

Let's not forget also that these neo populist ”non politicians” have created a supposed honest speech, which simply touches the shameless, like Rodriguez, who considers football soccer most important for people than security, or ask people to help him by asking people to mend the damaged roads by themselves because cement is cheap and the government´s finances are bad; similar to Rodriguez, in the state of Nayarit, another outsider known as Layin has become another famous outsider within the government, claiming that he steals from people, like every other politician, ”but just a little”, Layin is known to throw big popular parties paid by ”his friends” in which luxury cars are given randomly to the assistants.

Call it the age of the shameless, where people are so tired of a democracy that doesn't seem to solve their problems, and tired of unreal political speeches, prompting them to give their vote to those shameful figures who they feel closer to the common people, two more gruesome examples being Donald Trump in the USA, who has no shame in claim to be taking advantage of the system in order to avoid paying taxes, and who wants Muslims out of the country; or simply take newly elected Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte nicknamed "The Punisher", who became famous after unashamedly claimed to use death squads to clean his city from crime, and who also complains after he wasn't invited to rape a woman because ”she was beautiful”, perhaps we have simply stopped caring who is in charge of our country, perhaps we are hungry now for media hungry characters who can put a mediocre show instead of knowing about economy, perhaps we are too confused about honesty and shameless rating, and is better we start making our minds before a disaster hit our reality.