Our would-be kings

In early times, kings generally did not have much to do. Health and education were matters too mundane for their majesties’ attention. Revenue collection, through excruciating taxes, was relegated to barons and landowners.

However, monarchs thought two things defined their thrones and imposed them zealously: declaring laws and waging war.

Over the last century, monarchs have been reduced to non-partisan, innocuous symbols of their once unchallenged power. They are not accountable and non-interventionist, and, above all, these surviving monarchies have the support of the people. The role of public approval can be gauged from the fact that King Juan Carlos of Spain, notwithstanding his 40-year reign, had to flee his homeland. He was alleged to have received $100 million for help in awarding a seven billion euros rail contract.

Interventionist monarchs too have faced a severe backlash. At the age of 41, King Christian X assumed the Danish throne. Having served for 22 years in The Royal Lifeguard, he was dismissive about parliamentary practices. This culminated in the Easter Crisis of 1920, when he dismissed the democratically elected prime minister Carl Zahle-led social-liberal government. To add insult to injury, he replaced it with one led by Otto Liebe, his personal lawyer.

This authoritarianism evoked a furious public backlash. With the future of Denmark’s monarchy itself at stake, Christian X was forced to accept that he could not dismiss a government and install one against the will of the people. He also had to come to terms with the reality that he was merely a symbolic head of state.

As monarchies are giving up their centuries-old claim of the divine right to rule, would-be kings – more so in our part of the world – are increasingly staking their right to this claim. However, so frail is their veneer of unrepresentative power that they have taken up to promulgate laws like the once in vogue ‘lese majeste’, Latin for ‘injured majesty’.

In ancient Rome and later eras, sovereigns were thought to be the image of God on earth. This law was to punish any affront to their dignity. Still enforced in some countries, this out-of-time law is used by unelected rulers, both as defensive armour and an offensive weapon.

Absolutism is a political system typically vested in a monarch or a dictator. In it, a ruler holds unchallenged and unrestrained power. Machiavelli’s political treatise, ‘The Prince’, promoted fear as an autocrat’s essential tool to control, what he termed the fickle populace.

Thomas Hobbes, another proponent of absolutism, labelled the state as Leviathan. It signified a government with unbounded power. It could dictate anything to people while prohibiting them from speaking against it regardless of how badly power was abused. Hobbes summed it up as: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all”.

In what could be a Hobbesian state, nebulous laws are being created to stifle any sort of dissent whatsoever against our many would-be kings. This stark absence of priorities and critically needed focus on nation-building has led to a cracked facade of governance that can be breached easily. The fallout sees the scourge of terrorism becoming ubiquitous. This is compounded by extremism with heart- and mind-searing acts like the horrifying one in an otherwise tranquil Madyan and those perpetrated against religious minorities.

This is not an age of absolutism. Weaponizing the law illustrates a shocking shift towards the same. An appalling trend of what legal scholars term ‘tunnel vision’ and ‘confirmation bias’ is also starkly evident. The former has the state focusing only on a certain theory or entity while dismissing anything that deviates from it.

The latter supplements the tunnel vision by preferring any information or evidence that can augment an already drawn-out conclusion. This is a mockery and antithesis of the justice system.

The Chinese, ever careful with words, are masters at the art of subtlety. However, Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party Liu Jianchao chose the recent CPEC meeting in Islamabad to unequivocally stress that “internal stability is imperative for any nation to develop”. He also cautioned that “the primary factor shaking the confidence of Chinese investors is the security situation”.

In contrast, China’s confidence regarding Afghanistan’s stability and security (manifested in the unity and fighting spirit of their cricket team) can be gauged from its offer of $10 billion to access Afghanistan’s lithium deposits alone. Our natural bounties notwithstanding, even countries with purely transactional relationships have gone aloof, contrary to the starry-eyed expectations of our would-be kings.

Throughout history, the English have refrained from giving negative epithets to their monarchs. However, King John 1, described by historians as an unchivalrous tyrant, had the dubious distinction of earning one. Labelled Bad King John, his reign was portrayed by Shakespeare as: “A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand, must be boisterously maintained as gained”.

When King John, known for his military debacles, was defeated yet again at the Battle of Bouvines, his frustrated barons stood up in rebellion. To appease them, a dithering King John signed the famous Magna Carta Libertatum – the great charter of liberties. It restated English law and limited royal power drastically. To this day, Magna Carta’s clauses 38 and 39 remain central to liberty and justice in Britain.

History tends to create parallels. Sagacious ones emerge wiser; they build upon it. Magna Carta’s liberty and justice emanated from Bad King John’s tyranny as did the enduring and endearing legend of his arch antagonist, Robin Hood. History, not to be spurned, is never a loser. This is one lesson our would-be kings should heed and never forget.

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com