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Blame it on the Third World

Hasan Suroor

Many in the West find it convenient to see their problems as the result of "contamination" by the Third World. Such commentaries sound patronising, even racist.

NEARLY HALF a century after decolonisation, there is still a tendency in the West to see the Third World as a bit of a white man's burden, though, mercifully, not in the way that once prompted the dispatch of "civilising" missions across the length and breadth of the Asian and African continents. Rather, the Third World is now seen to have mutated, as it were, into a "virus" that is threatening to "contaminate" the Western values of tolerance, good governance, and probity in public life. They call it the Third World "syndrome."

Last week, Mathew Parris, one of Britain's more sober commentators, accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of bringing a "Third World flavour" to British politics. His criticism came amid a gathering political storm over the cash-for-peerages scandal, which is fast heading towards No 10 Downing Street with Mr. Blair set to achieve the dubious distinction of becoming the first-ever serving Labour Prime Minister to be questioned by the police in a criminal case.

But that was not the point of his attack. What Mr. Parris was moaning about was what he saw as a precipitous fall in the standards of Britain's political life because of which, he argued, a "chasm" had opened up between the wider public and those it had elected to govern the country. In this respect, Britain was beginning to seem like a Third World country where, he noted, nobody believed "a word that leaders say about what they will do or what will happen."

"I am used to this chasm because I was born and raised in Africa and have lived too in the West Indies. ... It has been Mr. Blair's special genius to bring something of that flavour to our politics," he wrote in The Times.

Mr. Parris went on to suggest that — rather than Iraq or any of the other failings of his government — the "real legacy" of Mr. Blair could turn out to be the way he had managed to infect the pristine British Isles with Third World-ism by creating a gulf between the people and the government. "A strange and growing psychological chasm between two worlds: the Britain that people live in, and the schemes, projects and plans of the British Government."

In the Third World, nobody expected political leaders to translate their promises into reality. People would "smile" and say: "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." And Mr. Blair had brought this "syndrome" to Britain and this, in turn, had "contaminated the public's view of democratic politics," Mr. Parris wrote.

I am not sure if this is an entirely accurate portrayal of the Third World, which, contrary to the perceptions in the West and despite a shared colonial past, is not a monolithic entity acting in some typical "Third World-ian" way. To the Western eye, all "natives" might look the same but in their cultural and social practices and political beliefs they live on quite separate planets — much like the denizens of the First World.

If there are tinpot dictatorships in the Third World, there are also thriving democracies with free press, rule of law, independent judicial systems, and constitutionally guaranteed individual rights. Moreover, there would seem to be much greater public participation in the democratic political processes in these countries than in many parts of the First World such as Britain where political parties struggle to get people out to vote on polling day. The falling voter turnout has, in fact, reached a crisis point in the West, prompting questions about the democratic legitimacy of governments elected on wafer-thin turnouts.

I am also not sure if being "born and raised" in a corner of Africa is a sufficient qualification for anyone to claim to have an insight into the whole of Africa, let alone the whole of the Third World. It is as presumptuous as it would be for an African "born and raised" in a corner of Britain to start making generalisations about the First World. Mr. Parris is right about the public mood of cynicism in Africa but to portray it as a uniquely Third World attribute, which is now "infecting" or "contaminating" Britain, thanks to Mr. Blair's policies, is plain nonsense.

Winter of discontent

People's disenchantment with the British political class is neither a Third World import nor is it new. And it predates Mr. Blair's arrival on the scene. Memories of the infamous "winter of discontent," which gripped Britain in 1978-79 and revealed the gulf that existed between the people and the Labour government of the time, are still fresh. James Callaghan, the then Labour Prime Minister, seemed to be so out of touch with the public mood that when journalists asked him about the growing industrial unrest, which had virtually paralysed Britain, he dismissed it saying there was no cause for concern. This, as the BBC "Timeline" on its website recalls, triggered a famous newspaper headline: "Crisis? What crisis?" And a few months later, he was thrown out of office.

The Conservatives too had their "Callaghan moment" in the last days of John Major's Government when Mr. Major and his Ministers appeared to be completely out of sync with the public mood — and were punished by angry voters in the 1997 elections when they brought back the Labour Party with a thumping majority.

It is noteworthy how the term Third World has been reduced by Western opinion-makers to represent the lowest common denominator against which to judge the standards in the First World. Any sign of a decline in the West's alleged "gold" standards is promptly labelled a Third World phenomenon. Indeed, anything — from political sleaze to creaking public services and law and order — that the Western media and the chattering class find embarrassing is portrayed as having a Third World "flavour."

There is an apocryphal joke that on seeing a particularly bad work of craftsmanship at an exhibition, the Duke of Edinburgh remarked that it must have been "made in India." Although it was a rude remark most Indians did not mind. After all it was only a joke and the old chap is known for his corny sense of humour. But when such comments about the Third World are elevated to the level of serious commentaries and dressed up as an insight they cease to be funny. Indeed, they sound patronising, even racist.

No doubt, the Third World is heaving with problems because of bad governance and corruption. But what is often glossed over is that not only are many of these problems a legacy of Western, including British, colonial rule but that such tendencies are covertly encouraged by First World leaders when these suit their own national interests. Take human rights. For all the Western angst over the state of civil liberties in the Third World, the truth is that the West needs brutal regimes and their torture chambers to do its dirty work.

Remember rendition

Remember the recent scandal over the so-called "extraordinary rendition" of U.S. prisoners to countries where they might have been tortured? With the covert support of its European allies, including Britain, the CIA operated hundreds of secret flights to "render" terror suspects to countries where, according to Western governments themselves, third degree methods are routinely used to extract confessions. It was all about making use of the "Third World flavour" without having to dirty their own hands.

And if the West needs brutal regimes for "straightening out" suspected terrorists, it also needs corrupt Third World leaders whom it can bribe to buy favours. Anyone who has read John Le Carre's novel The Constant Gardener or seen the film based on it would know what I am talking about. He shows how a corrupt and badly governed African country reeking of "Third Word flavour" is bribed by a multinational drugs company with the covert backing of Western governments to allow its citizens to be used as guinea pigs for trials of a new, questionable, drug.

One does not need to buy into Le Carre's fictional account to know that some of the most undemocratic, corrupt, and repressive rulers in the Third World have been used by the First World in its hour of need.

The point of this article is not to wave the flag for the Third World but to argue that the so-called Third World "flavour" is not a unique brand patented by its allegedly sleazy and lousy governments and threatening to engulf the "civilised" Western world. Many of the First World's policies and practices have an equally sour "flavour" and, believe me, Mr. Parris, the blighted Third World has nothing to do with it.

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