Listening in democracy

By ANDREW MOUTU
FROM combining the Greek words “demo” for people and “cracy” for rule, the political idea of “democracy” found meaning and came into form. Ideally it advocates a preference for the systematic rule of “many” people (democracy) over the rule of “one” person (autocracy). Since the second world war, we have seen a mathematical game in the global theatre of political systems that was played out between democracy and dictatorship. One of these two systems is aligned with a political mathematics involving the rule of “one”, in the form of dictatorship, and the other advocates for the rule of “many” or democracy.
We have seen both regimes of government in the Asia Pacific region where the “one” appeared in countries like Indonesia (in President Suharto), Philippines (in President Ferdinand Marcos) and China (in President Mao Tse Tung). The “many” appeared across Pacific Island countries.
From the 1970s and into the 1990s, systems of governments across the world have been brought under the persuasive sway of democracy. While this ideological persuasion holds sway, many countries are constantly negotiating the kind of democracy they need or want for their people or national constituents.
As an ideal, democracy speaks for and about a government by the governed. It means the voices and the ears, the eyes and the sentiments of the governed that are the objects and pursuits of the government.
The government is in the hands of a house of representatives. To give effect to the rule of the many, we have adopted representative democracy to remedy the practical impossibility of gathering the demos into a single house of commons on the ridges of Mirigini in Waigani.
Modelled on the British Westminster, our system of government is imagined like a tree with three branches. The tree is an image of the world imagined in terms of roots and branches. The roots go down while branches go up and reach out.
One of the branches is not always vocal or visible but its set of decisions and precedents of both original and borrowed ideas flow out of a metaphoric substrate that gives the depth, the stretch and the measure of law and justice. The court is the hearing branch in the tree of government. That branch on that tree is where the birds of justicethe legal eaglesare perched in search of new beginnings, resilience and courage to look and fly into looming horizons with truth and honesty.
This particular branch in the tree of government makes its decisions through hearing. Hearing is indispensable as it offers itself as a facility and a procedure in decision making.
The interlocution and voluble engagement that unfolds in the hearing of stories from different parties in a legal case ultimately turn into binding decisions that are informed by an art of listening that distils and settles a matter in its resolves.
If hearing is a judicial procedure whose outcomes are clear and distinct, it owes its aura and prudence in a sacred art of tHlistening.
The house of representativesthe National Parliamentcontains two other branches in such a tree of governmentthe executive and

the legislative. The members of the house represent different electorates across the country. The membership in this house and its two branches are based on winning a numbers game. Numbers give and provide an exegesis, an interpretation to the power of politics. Numbers are then intertwined with procedures that imbue the membership of these two branches with power, legitimacy and the right to be heard, to champion or to be ignored.
Talking and speeches, perlocutions and interlocutions go hand in hand in the conversations and decision making that takes place in the branches of this figurative tree of government. There is often deliberate haste and haphazardness in decision making, rhetorical blind spots and half-baked conversations that take go on there.
We do not know if the art of listening permeates the surrounds and the etiquette of such a tree of government whose talking and decision making means a lot to the destiny of the people and the country. The general perception is that the membership of the house is only good for talking. Once they have their minds made up on some willy-nilly dealings, talking becomes as a matter of procedure to pass the time. If only we know and value the art of listening as a kind of alchemy that imbues silence and meaningful conversation into gold bars that secure our moral transactions with integrity.
While what we have adopted a constitutional aspiration that cannot be easily renounced, democracy is a system of values open to innovation and transformation. However, we are fast becoming our own worst enemies. This is echoed in the profuse and extravagant charms of our political evangelists whose enthusiasm to take back PNG has not been guided with any hint of hindsight, industrial probe or economic acumen.
The talking continues without any hope of a kind of listening that can make a difference. There is a rampant profusion of sounds of illegitimacy that our species of democracy, characterised by a vein monologue, is producing. Democracy that is vitally sympathetic is one based on communication in general and listening in particular. Just as respect is a two-way street, listening should be key part of a democratic government. This is not mere talk or the gullible perlocutions of some of our elected representatives.
Listening creates a vibe for dialogue and co-participation. In the art of listening, we can create a culture and a practice that is integral to democracy.
For now, we have too much talk that come out in the form of half-truths, deceits, gossips and rumours, threats and empty promises. Those who talk like this do not have the ears of those who are listening. And apparently, when there is no listening and there is no empathy.
Our economy is collapsing and we are already deaf to the cries, the fears and the anxieties of our people. The Black Wednesday on the 10th of January did not come with any deterrence from the sounds of sirens and alarm bells and the explosive warnings of tear gases. The silence of law enforcement became synonymous with anarchy, where the rule of law diminishes, where the government or state institutions decline in their authority because they do not have the power to dispense and command, discipline and restrain the uncanny, the noisy and the riotous. The burning smokes of Black Wednesday that protrude the skies of Port Moresby reveal that the silence that comes in the wake of a civilian uproar may not be gold but it is as eloquent as a method to distil the moments when chaos loses its temper.
I was recently drawn to a kind of visual and acoustic satire of a vocalist humming a tune that was captured on TikTok and shared on Facebook. The caption on the video footage read: “The only Man who sing Rubish and the Rubish is still good to hear”. That is an apt metaphor for the kind of democracy that is unfolding in our country. The guy is humming a tune with a melody line that he invents on stage by the guide of his whimsical inclinations. While he hums his tune away, he is indifferent to the sentiments of his audience.
He exhibited the thought that the audience, including those of us who are listening in visually on our phones, can whine and caterwaul without tunes. Tunes align memory and sentiment with a direction of thought in our listening. But he is harsh and discordant, he doesn’t listen to himself nor is he cognizant with the ambience of those who are listening to him. He doesn’t care.
He hums along with a loud and pompous cacophony of a muted voice that comes to a halt at certain intervals which are punctuated by the intervention of sympathetic pitches emanating from a group of brass musicians at his back. He comes in again with humming the song “Rubish because Rubish is still good to hear”.
This crude caricature is a poignant satire of an egregious proportion. Imagine when the atrocity of malice in PNG politics rhymes and thrives as benign as the new normal of a deaf and dumb democracy that does not listen in on its demos, the people.