Gambiaj.com – (BANJUL, The Gambia) – My dear Fellow Gambians: This open letter is an invitation to all of us, especially our current and aspiring political actors – both leaders and led – to reflect on the moral economy of our political discourse, the nature and implications of our political utterances.
The letter is inspired by the fact that our political discourse is growing increasingly offensive, objectionable, and damaging to our social fabric and national aspirations. Yes, there are notable exceptions – a few political actors who never insult or demean their political opponents.
In general, however, the trend points to a troubling politics of hostile utterances that serve no one’s interest and that are inimical to the well-being of our dear nation.
Fellow Gambians: The moral economy of political discourse refers to the unwritten moral rules that shape the legitimacy of political speech, the credibility of speakers, the emotional responses of audiences, and the ultimate value of political utterances to the common good.
Political discourse is not merely the showcasing of partisan positions, the bashing of political opponents, safeguarding political interests, or scoring political points. It is also a moral performance.
Beneath every political argument, campaign speech, or public debate lies a system of values, expectations, and ethical judgments that govern how political actors – both leaders and led – communicate, address critics and opponents, mobilize support, or defend their preferred political loyalties. That system of values, expectations, and ethical judgments needs to be kept healthy at all times.
Fellow Gambians: Political discourse, especially partisan political discourse, is, above everything else, about the well-being of society, of human beings, and of current and future generations.
It is about assessing the state of society, measuring the level at which our individual interests stand in relation to the common good.
It is about the ethical standards of the people, and the extent to which citizens are able to navigate the layered challenges and complexities of national life, and how healthy their inter-personal and inter-communal relationships are.
It is about the challenges we face as a society and about ways and means of meeting and satisfactorily overcoming, or adequately coping with, those challenges in pursuit of the common good.
Fellow Gambians: Our political discourse should always be guided by truth, fairness, justice, and respect for human dignity. All our political actors – both leaders and led – should always speak with honesty, appeal to our shared values, and maintain a sense of moral responsibility toward each other and toward the common good.
When political actors speak this way, they reinforce our collective trust in the integrity of our social values. They reinforce confidence in our ability, as a community of intelligent people, to behave in mature, dignified and responsible ways.
They prove that we can manage our irrational emotions, build healthy and productive relations, and continually nurture our civic virtues. Healthy political speech inspires hope, confidence, and optimism in our capacity to grow, to prosper, and to live dignified lives in a peaceful and healthy society.
But, fellow Gambians, when political discourse is dominated by dishonesty, deception, manipulation, hate, disrespect, selfishness, and a déjà vu attitude of “anything goes if it works for me,” its moral economy shrinks, dries up, and collapses.
The social trust and mutual concern that sustain democratic life are eroded, and society loses its way and continually gropes in the darkness of political confusion and regression.
Unhealthy political discourse is like poison injected into the veins of our body politic. Every crude utterance is another dose of poison inimical to our national well-being. It pays to remember that if the nation dies, the citizen dies.
Fellow Gambians: We all know that unhealthy political discourse is repugnant to all we hold truly dear, from our shared cultural values to the religious teachings that seek to guide us to lives of peace and harmony. Both our cultural values and religious beliefs frown upon dishonesty, callousness, and the moral corruption that characterize unhealthy political discourse.
A majority of us pride ourselves on being good Muslims, good Christians, or good adherents of other religions, all of whose teachings emphasize our responsibility to always speak the truth, to always be just, to always be righteous, to always show concern for others, and to always be as kind and considerate to others as possible.
If we truly follow these teachings and live by them, our political discourse will become healthy, and our society will become stable and grow in the right direction – the direction of truth, justice, and a capacity to face and tackle our national challenges in an intelligent manner.
Fellow Gambians: It is crucially important that our political discourse address our pressing national issues and desist from turning political platforms into hostile battlegrounds where anything may be said, where right or wrong have no place, where truth and lies do not matter, where humans may be thingified and called animals, and where people’s reputations, dignities, and characters may be freely smeared and assassinated.
No common good requires this kind of political discourse. No national interest is served by it. Ultimately, no benefit is to be accrued by anyone from it.
Fellow Gambians: As a society struggling with many complex challenges of growth, development, and even survival, we must realize that political discourse is not all about winning, retaining, or losing power.
Our political utterances create our political and social realities and determine our common national destiny. When our political utterances are infused with integrity and concern for the truth, they become vehicles for the healthy growth and transformation of our society.
But, when our political utterances are amoral and corrupted by greed, selfish interests and parochial considerations, they become harbingers of needless hostility, strife and social division.
Let us watch our political utterances and ensure that what we say does not turn our country into a space of mutual contempt and hatred. Let us nurture, safeguard and upgrade the moral economy of our political discourse. In so doing, we greatly enhance our national wellbeing.
