DEMOCRAZY

“It doesn’t count if you’re already planning your own defeat. How can you claim you’re protecting everyone when you know what the consequences of your fall will be, sir?”

“What do you want from me, Jonah?” Jacob asked forcefully. He was already at his wits end. “I’m doing everything I can – I have done everything I can! I have done everything I need to do. I shook the hands I had to shake, I smiled for the camera for as long as I had to, I said the things I had to say – even if I didn’t like or enjoy saying them! What more do you want from me?!” he shouted as he rose from his seat. “The voice of the people, they say, is the voice of God! If this is what the people say they want, then so be it. They are nothing but a bunch of ingrates! After all I’ve done for them – after all I’ve done for this country, this is how they repay me! They repay me with hate! They repay me with insults! They repay me with shame! To hell with the lot of them!!”

Jonah sighed. He leaned forward in his seat and folded his hands on the conference-room table in front of him. “If the voice of the people is the voice of God, then God needs to seek a better voice for himself. The voice of the people isn’t so invincible that it can’t be tampered with. If God is who they say He is, then I don’t think He would want anything to do with the voice of the people. The wise choice for Him to make would be to choose a voice that wields true power – a voice that is in control. All the people do is make noise, they think their numbers give them power, but they are wrong.”

Gunther nodded in agreement. He was seated on the other side of the table from Jonah. He fully agreed with Jonah. “Millions of people chorusing at once doesn’t constitute ‘a voice’. The people are nothing more than noisemakers. It is those who wield true power that have real voices. The voice of the people isn’t the voice of God, Mr. President. You are God’s representative in this country. Your voice is the voice of God, and all you need to do is make a declaration and your will be done in every corner of our country’s share of the earth as it is here, in our earthly heaven, the Presidential Manor.”

Jacob slowly lowered himself to his seat. He balanced his elbows on the arms of the swivel-chair and cradled his face in his palms. He had never been as confused as he was in that moment since he took power sixteen years prior. His mind was pulling him in one direction, but his heart craved something entirely different.

As the years rolled by, his lifestyle became more luxurious by the day, and he deeply enjoyed the luxuries his position afforded him. This was one of Jacob’s greatest fears, the challenge adjusting to a life without the power and luxuries would pose. Although he had stashed billions looted from state coffers in different tax havens around the world, and although he could install whomever he pleased in his place, he knew it would not be the same as occupying the seat himself. Why brave the risks of wielding power through a proxy when he could do it himself? Why finance his luxurious lifestyle with his own funds when he could do it on the people’s buck?

***

The protests had begun a little over a year earlier and the country had been shut down since then. The protesters refused to leave the streets till he agreed to a democratic election for the first time in sixteen years. They didn’t want rushed elections, they wanted elections that were as free and fair as the one that brought him to power. Their demands didn’t stop there, when he lost – which they knew he would if the elections were really free and fair – they demanded he accept defeat and submit himself to investigations on the numerous corrupt practices he was alleged to have spearheaded or ignored during his tenure, in the same manner that his predecessor had. And if he was found wanting, they wanted him tried in court, and if found guilty, they demanded he serve the same twenty-five year jail sentence his predecessor was serving. 

Jacob felt in his heart of hearts that the right thing to do was to step down and let the people have their way, not just because half the population was in the streets of the country demanding his resignation while the other half cheered them from home, but because he knew a refusal to do so would result in anarchy. That was just half of it though. The other reason was the craving he started to feel a year after he took the job. He started to feel that there was something missing – something that would make him feel complete if he could just discover it again. He didn’t know what it was exactly that was missing but the desire for that missing element constituted a gaping hole within his soul that he hungered to fill, and as the years passed, the hole only got bigger.

The gaping hole affected everything he did. It didn’t bother him so much initially because it came in the form of waves, and once one wave exhausted itself, he would return to a state of normalcy till the next episode. That changed very quickly. The waves started to occur multiple times in a day, and eventually, they became his ‘state of normalcy’. The craving was aroused the moment he opened his eyes in the morning and it stayed put till he fell asleep at night.

He had tried different things and seen different counsellors and spiritualists to figure out a way to fill that hole, but all the solutions he found were temporary. The drugs and alcohol made him feel better till their effects wore off, working hard took his mind off the craving only intermittently, the horde of women that warmed his bed only made him feel better for a few minutes at most, and although sleep worked effectively initially, he started having nightmares and soon found it hard to fall asleep despite taking the numerous pills his doctors from all over the world prescribed.

He wanted to let go, to walk away and find the solution to the craving he had had for fifteen years, but it was easier said than done. Asides from the lobbying by people and businesses whose interests would be adversely affected if he left office, the people’s demands also posed a problem. They had multiple interlinked demands, and to accede to one would be to accede to the others. By demanding investigations and prosecution, it was clear that they wanted heads to roll. If the investigation was successful, the most powerful men and women in the country would be killed or thrown in prison for a long time. None of them were ready to give up their lives or their comfortable beds for the ones in prison, and neither was he.

“You have to make a decision soon, darling.” His wife reminded him. She was seated to his left, beside Jonah. He knew her presence there was no mistake, they recruited her for this purpose. “Everyone is waiting to hear from you. We are waiting. The hoodlums on the street are waiting. The international community is waiting. It is time to tell them what they need to hear, it is time to say what you need to say.” He turned his gaze in her direction. Jessica was shining from head to toe. The people had given her a nickname due to her love for all things bling: “Sparkle Lady”. She seemed to take to the name, but Jacob wasn’t sure they had positive thoughts of her when they coined it.

He sighed and nodded his head. “Call in the press.” He ordered. He rose and buttoned up his suit jacket, then he turned, walked to the window, and peered at the shining lights of the City. The City seemed so peaceful and calm, yet he felt so tense and uneasy. “I will make a statement. I will speak to my people now.” 

***

He stared out at the City from the rooftop balcony of his sleeping quarters. The Presidential Manor was perched atop a hill so he had a clear view of the city below. Just a few hours prior, before he gave his speech, he had peered down at the city and he had found it peaceful, but that had now changed. The tension and uneasiness he felt earlier had infected the City, it was now in flames. There was smoke issuing up into the sky from different parts of the City as protesters reacted to the content of his speech. He could hear sirens blaring all over the City, and he could see the flashing lights atop police vehicles as they began to act on his orders. He had spent billions on equipping the security agencies, it was high-time they put all that equipment and training to use.

“You made the right decision.” Jessica said as she placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “These are just birth pains,” she said. “Our country is being reborn, so there must be pain, there must be agony, and there must be chaos. A new dawn will rise from the ashes that are now being formed. Without chaos, there can be no order. Chaos must precede order.”

He raised the bottle in his hand to his lips and swallowed a mouthful of the spirit contained within it. A few years before that he would have winced at the pain that resulted from swallowing that much spirit at once, but he had grown accustomed to it. “Leave me.” He ordered and Jessica immediately took her leave.

***

A short while after Jessica left him, he turned and walked towards the stairs leading down to his bedroom. Jonah had found him a mistress, and he claimed she fell into the category of mistresses he enjoyed the most – very young, untouched, and unwilling. It was time to find out if Jonah’s prognosis was correct.

A few meters away from the stairs, he turned and stared at the City again as he took a sip from the bottle. There was no way he could agree to all the terms that the people had put forth, but he was willing to give in on some. They said they wanted democracy, and not just any democracy, they wanted it modelled after what was believed to be the best of democracies the world had to offer. That was exactly what he had given them.

As was obtainable in the country whose democracy they loved and deeply admired, an elite group of voters – in this case, he and his allies – constituted the Electoral College and they had made a decision on who should lead the country. The people had no choice but to live with it. And as was obtainable in the same country, the vote of the electorate didn’t count for much, so why bother wasting time and resources casting and counting them?