Anwar Ibrahim the second death a of politician Standing Strong Against Discrimination

 The Malaysian government should revoke its colonial-era law criminalizing consensual sexual acts between people of the same sex, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should drop their criminal case alleging consensual “sodomy” against opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who is awaiting the verdict in his trial that began in February 2010.

“The Malaysian government uses its outdated sodomy law to slander political opponents and critics,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Whether or not Anwar Ibrahim engaged in consensual ‘sodomy’ is irrelevant. It’s time to reject this law and end the farcical political theater that promotes discrimination based on sexual orientation and destroys people’s lives.”

On June 28, 2008, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, then a 23-year-old aide to Anwar, filed a police complaint accusing Anwar of having forcibly sodomizing him two days earlier. The charges were later changed to consensual sodomy, after the authorities determined that Anwar, a 60-year-old with a bad back, was physically incapable of compelling the young man to engage in acts against his will. The complainant avoided being charged because he had reported the incident and asserted he needed protection.

Anwar is being tried under section 377 of the Malaysian penal code, which prohibits “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” This so-called sodomy law is a relic of British colonial rule dating back to the mid-19th century. Conviction could result in a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Leading members of the Commonwealth of Nations, to which Malaysia belongs, called for the abolition of sodomy laws during the recently concluded summit meeting in Brisbane, Australia.

As a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Malaysia has agreed to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.” Revoking the sodomy law would be consistent with Malaysia’s undertakings as a Human Rights Council member, Human Rights Watch said.

In 1994, the Human Rights Committee, the UN body of experts that monitors civil and political rights, held that sodomy laws violate the right to privacy and non-discrimination. The Yogyakarta Principles, a set of international legal principles on the application of international law to human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, call on states to, “Repeal all laws that criminalize consensual sexual activity among persons of the same sex who are over the age of consent.” A November 2011 report by the UN high commissioner for human rights, which will be presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2012, recommended that UN member states “repeal laws used to criminalize individuals on grounds of homosexuality for engaging in consensual same-sex sexual conduct.”

Appeals to cultural or social exceptionalism do not overrule international human rights standards. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which was adopted by consensus at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, provides that, “It is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” In his 2010 Human Rights Day statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and said that, “Where there is a tension between cultural attitudes and universal human rights, rights must carry the day.”

This is the second time Anwar Ibrahim has been arrested on allegations of sodomy. His previous trial for sodomy, which resulted in a conviction in 2000 and a nine-year prison sentence, was marred by rights violations throughout. Upon being arrested on September 20, 1998, Anwar was beaten by the police chief at that time, resulting in severe facial injuries. Due process violations included lack of access to legal counsel; witness intimidation; harassment of his lawyers; and major problems with the prosecution’s evidence. The conviction was overturned in 2004.

“Laws punishing consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex are an unjustifiable invasion of the rights to privacy and personal security,” Robertson said. “They foster a climate in which discrimination and abuse takes place. These rights cannot be willed away by selective appeals to cultural tradition and religious belief.”

 Abraham Lincoln had this to say: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

They say liars are sightless. They swathe their eyes to the truth and trust that people they talk to are as dim as themselves. Why do most politicians customarily lie? They discern that the majority will follow rather than think for themselves. A lie told often enough becomes the truth. To lie in politics is a Machiavellian mode of manipulation and conspiracy.

Mahathir’s intelligence and political astuteness are generally acknowledged by his acquaintances and enemies. Mendacity or mendacious propaganda is Machiavellian. The people are already familiar  with his political  slant as he understands the Malay minds better than any of the past and present leaders in UMNO. The book ‘The Malay Dilemma’ (1970) that he wrote 11 years before he became Malaysia's 4th Prime Minister is worth reading. It is an insightful analysis of the Malay mind.  The Malays in general have a feudal mindset and Mahathir has acknowledged this in many of his writings and intellectual discourse. He either failed or did not want to do enough to change the mindset of the general Malays despite helming the nation for many years, for fear that an enlightened Malay race could not be easily manipulated. The Malays – especially the rural folks –  can be easily manoeuvred by leaders to make them believe a lie to be truth if it is well propagated.  The UMNO propaganda tools – newspapers and the electronic media – are ever ready to help their political masters to remain in power.

Must have lied routinely

Telling lies is for political expediency and we can expect this from Mahathir. He must have lied routinely in his political career. It is noteworthy, throughout his career as a prime minister and past this era he has seldom admitted his mistakes. It is not his character or principle to accept his mistakes or weaknesses. To Mahathir, ‘to admit one’s mistake is to admit one’s weakness’. Critics say that  ‘he has a very strong character’. The people seldom hear him apologise for his mistakes, hence dealing with this Machiavellian persona, his political enemies must learn to be equally incisive.

Understanding Mahathir’s wiliness is as simple as having to accept him as he is. Reading his 843-page Memoirs – ‘A Doctor in the House’ (2011) – noticeably, some relatively hard-to-believe facts are written about issues and personalities who were never in his good book. Anyway, this is only his side of the stories.

Even Chin Peng had his side of the stories as told in his book,  ‘My Side of History’(2003) – a 527-page ‘recorded journey of a man who opted to travel along a different road to pursue a dream he had for his country’. Reading his ‘journey’ makes us understand how stoic this man was and how he stuck strong to his principles till the end of his struggle. Leaders – good or bad – are often ‘successful’ due to their strong character.

Mahathir has his side of the stories to tell on many issues that must have incurred the wrath of the people for the past many years. Some of these narrations from his Memoirs can never go unchallenged in the court of opinion.

His view of the Chinese: “Losing my Parliamentary seat hurt terribly and on the ride home with Hasmah, I could not help shedding  tears. The taste of defeat was unfamiliar and it was painful. I was also angry at the Chinese, in particular the MCA, who I felt were responsible for my defeat and with it the undermining of my political future.” (p196).

So the insinuation here is that it was not his fault then, but the Chinese who did not vote for him. Mahathir had lost the Kota Setar Selatan parliamentary seat to a PAS candidate Haji Yusof Rawa in 1969.

On Anwar Ibrahim: “Anwar should have been the Prime Minister of Malaysia today. But if he is not, it is because of his own actions.” (p698)

In other words, Mahathir blamed Anwar for his ‘disillusionment’ but not the former’s ultimate resolution to dismiss the latter from the government for trying to ‘dislodge’ him.

Complaining about the noise

On the dismissal of Salleh Abbas as Lord President and the judiciary:  “… the Agung showed me a letter that Tun Salleh had written to him: complaining about the noise  that was being made in the course of repairing the Agong’s private residence near Tun Salleh’s own house.” (p565).  “I recently called the Attorney General at the time, …. and asked him where was the first letter. He said it was with the Government. I can have no access to it now but I am prepared to swear on the Quran that it was the letter and the instruction from the Agung which caused action to be taken to remove Tun Salleh Abas.” (p568). “Tun Salleh demanded that the tribunal be made up of his peers. We obviously could not find enough Lord Presidents… Tun Hamid Omar, who by then was the Acting Lord President, chaired the tribunal.”  (p568)

So, he did not blame himself but the Agung and the lack of Lord Presidents to be in the tribunal for Salleh’s predicament.

On Tengku Razaleigh:  “We also heard Team B spent RM20 million on their campaign, with most of the money provided by Tengku Razaleigh himself.” (p541).

Beyond doubt, given the chance Razaleigh would like to refute this feral accusation against him.

I don’t remember

On the permanent government administrations (such as the police or the judiciary): “Ultimately, we had no way of enforcing our decisions on them.” (p551)

But we have heard of the ‘fixing of judges’ and of how a well-known lawyer with good political connection wrote the judgement for a judge. Even when this was revealed in the VK Lingam RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry) the matter was just swept under the carpet. Mahathir was reported to have said to this,  "I don't remember."

On interfering with an ACA investigation: “Though some witnesses were hostile towards me, nobody came forward to say that I forced him to tell lies to support me. Datuk Shafee Yahya who had earlier accused me of interfering  with an ACA investigation…. Our meeting did not go well and Shafee became angry, accusing me of interfering with his duties. Actually, the affair with the ACA had nothing to do with Anwar’s case. But Shafee had his day in court and seemed to be happy to vilify me.” ….” (p695)

Shafee was only doing his fair duty as an obedient ACA officer like any other dutiful government servant but this had hurt Mahathir.

On the removal of Ghafar Baba: “I criticized some UMNO leaders in Terengganu for staying too long and not giving a chance to young aspirants….. he interpreted my advice there to mean that I wanted older leaders to step down.” (p411). “ I did not want to remove Tun Ghafar but what would have happened if I did not appoint the new Deputy President of UMNO…..” (p411)

Ghafar realising that he was only  being  ‘made use of’ by his superior in the party during the latter’s ‘bumpy’ times in politics was very humiliated, caved in and resigned. Seeing which side of the bread was buttered at the time of crisis, only one UMNO politician at the time came to sympathise with Ghafar and she was Rafidah Aziz – sighting that it was against Malay tradition and etiquette to disgrace an elderly man.

But Soros did it and made a lot of money

On Tajuddin Ramli and MAS, after the debacle in forex trading by Bank Negara:  “Claiming that he had bought Malaysia Airlines out of national duty, Tajuddin demanded that he receive the price per share that he had paid when he bought them.” (p711) “ But I knew that he had bought the company because he felt it was a good investment.” (p711). “Our purchase of his stake received a lot of criticism because we paid him RM8 a share, at a time when the market value was RM3.62 per share.” (p711)

If only Tajuddin was given a chance to rebut this. The MAS fiasco has still been a hot issue long after Mahathir left the government.

Malaysia did it and lost a lot of money. But Soros did it and made a lot of money: “….It was a matter of taking calculated risks, and when one of our speculative ventures failed, we lost a lot of money. After that lesson, we got out of the business. “ (p671). “I mentioned Soros by name as one of the traders who had manipulated the currencies of Southeast Asian countries and undermined their development.” (p671)

Soros must be smarter then our Bank Negara executives then.

On his ancestor: “ I admit that some Indian, or more accurately South Asian blood flows in my veins, but from which part of the Indian subcontinent my ancestors came from I do not know.” (p24)

We have to forgive him on this for his selective memory. He almost forgot where ‘exactly’ his ancestors came from. As Abraham Lincoln once said,  “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.”

He was the Prime Minister

Despite what has been documented clearly that Malaysia did seek loans from the World Bank to overcome the 1999 financial crisis, he has adamantly denied that it was not he who sought it. The blame – as usual –  falls on Anwar though Anwar was at the time and prior to his dismissal from the government only the Finance Minister when Mahathir was the Prime Minister. Any layman would discern that without the blessing of the Number 1 in the government it would not have been possible for his subordinates to bulldoze their ideas through especially when it involved loans from the World Bank amounting to millions of dollars.

At the height of the Asian financial crisis, Mahathir sacked Anwar in 1998 and subsequently served as the Finance Minister till his retirement in 2003. The Finance Ministry could not have endorsed any colossal deal without Finance Minister Mahathir’s knowledge and consent.

It is the mainstream media – the  propaganda implement – that has been misleading the rakyat all these while about Mahathir and Anwar. No economists during the economic turmoil in 1997 could deny that, without the urgent loans taken from the World Bank at the time to ride out the financial crisis Malaysia it would have roughly affected the country. Just accept this fact. The loans came in at the right time to at least cushion the effect of the bad recession during the time until sometime later when the country subsequently pegged the ringgit against the US dollars and gradually began to recover from the economic smithereens. Is it a shame not to tell the truth?

Despite not being in favour of George Bush, Mahathir had the knack to engage Jack Abramoff using ‘taxpayer’s money’ to lobby for a chance to meet Bush. The lobbying part of the story was not highlighted by the local media until the news broke out very much later by other sources. Is it also a shame here not to tell the truth?

To swear on the Quran

Excepts from one of the documents from the World Bank supported the evidence that the country did seek financial help from this international body:

“In view of these circumstances in July 1998, the Government announced a National Economic Recovery Plan to bring the economy back on a positive growth path.”

“The Government has proposed a plan of action to mitigate the adverse social impacts of the crisis which threaten to reverse the gains made in the past.”

“The Government has approached the Bank for help in strengthening this plan and implementing it through a Social Protection Project.”

Reportedly, officially World Bank documents showed huge loans were taken by the Malaysian government from the international bank, when Mahathir denied the claims and challenged Anwar to swear on the Quran over the allegation that the former had sought the loans. His challenge to swear on the Quran reflects poorly on his understanding of Islam and his credibility as an elder statesman. It says in the Quran, “…that the Believers who succeeded … are those who turn away from ill speech… but whoever seeks to go beyond that, these are that exceed the limits.”  (23:1,3&7).

Playing politics in the name of God is a misdeed. It simply shows weakness and lack of the ability to sustain one's emotions at times when patience is required. It shows a person being incapable of performing the right action such as providing a rightful answer to a particular situation. It also smacks of undertones that are meant to abuse the truth seekers.

To lie in politics is Machiavellian

As opposed to Mahathir’s rigid regulation of foreign investment and currency control method to avoid the weak ringgit that was prone to future currency attacks – bogged down with the syndrome of blaming currency attackers as root cause of the financial fiasco, the Anwar formula had during the 1997 Asian financial crisis supported the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank plan for economic recovery. Anwar also established a rigorous package that cut wastage on government expenditures, cronyism and endemic corruption among politicians and government bodies and also deferred most major mega projects.

He advocated a free-market strategy to the crisis, which included trade liberalisation favourable to foreign investment. Complying to these prescriptions, it was successfully done in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and many other countries with the help of loans from the international bodies. And these countries recovered from the economic recession with much pride very much earlier and faster than Malaysia – in fact within two years of the IMF and World Bank prescriptions.

If truth be told, Malaysia did indeed get monetary aid from the World Bank after the sacking of Anwar in 1998. If Mahathir has said, “I can’t remember, he would be excused for his age as he has been known to have a selective memory. But if he wants to portray himself as an honest politician by again telling a lie this reflects on his false pride.

There’s one way to find out if a man is honest ~ ask him. If he says, “Yes,” you know he is a crook. ~ Groucho Marx.

Has anyone wondered what will the scene be like if UMNO/BN were to be defeated in the 13th GE? Will there be an orderly changeover of government or are we expecting otherwise; a state of calamity, instability, chaos and public disorder? These are the concerns that I am beginning to have, and I suppose many likeminded and peace loving citizens would feel apprehensive, more so with the revelation of more of UMNO/BN leader’s wrong doing, and the persistent war mongering by Malay NGO’s; fearful of the loss of ‘ketuanan Melayu’and their self proclaimed inalienable rights and privileges. 

Awang Selamat of Utusan Malaysia must have crystal gazed and has predicted an uncertain political, social and economic environment will envelop this country should PR reign after the 13th GE. But what Awang Selamat did not do is to crystal gazed his own future and that of Utusan Malaysia, should there be a change of government. I think he believes it is only UMNO/BN that has the right to rule this country, regardless of the unstoppable and endemic corruption that is going on among politicians and government officials, the flight of illicit money out of the country that runs into billions, the phenomenal increase in deficit spending that has reached almost half a trillion that could bankrupt the country, and the ease at which the government seems to be flushing money for projects that is likely to end up in failure – PKFZ and NFC are cases in point. Just watch, the act of flushing money will heighten as the general election draws near. My kampong folks are only waiting for the roads and lanes to be resurfaced and possibly lighted up. 

Someone commented to me recently that every government project would end up in failure if the hands of politicians and cronies are deep in it. Let’s watch the outcome of the proposed listing of Felda Global Venture; supposedly to generate a windfall for the Felda settlers; masterminded by the infamous, Isa Samad. I do not know what is there in him that had softened up PM Najib to appoint him Felda’s Chairman. I suppose Isa Samad’s past record of being barred from UMNO after being found guilty of money politics qualifies him to the Chairmanship of Felda. What about the Chairman of Felcra then? You know who is he? I think he is one of those porn CD peddlers. 

This nation of ours has not experience a changeover of government following a legitimate and democratically held election. If the takeover of the states of Pulau Pinang, Selangor, Kedah and Perak following the 2008 general election can be cited as an example, than we can be rest assured that there will be some semblance of an orderly changeover. But my fear is that this involves a changeover of government for the entire nation where there is likelihood that some states aren’t quite ready to handover for a prescribed reason. It is not easy to hand over power to someone else after more than five decades of continuous rule, and knowing that the loss would badly affect the livelihood i.e. income, businesses and privileges of many who are already well entrenched in their comfort zone. 

We have also seen the ‘force retake’ of the Perak government by BN lawmakers following the shift of allegiance of three PR lawmakers towards the BN. Although the incident in Perak was found to be legitimate by the courts, it somehow does not satisfy the people of Perak that had voted in the PR government. This is understandable because voters felt cheated by the three PR lawmakers that had jumped into the clutches of the UMNO/BN, which caused the PR government to be swept out. 

Having had the experience of being swept out, PR should no longer rely on a marginal win. PR has to win hugely to avoid a similar situation from happening at the federal level. PR should know too that it is money that can sway allegiances, and I believe there is no lack of money in UMNO/BN coffers. If say you need ten people to shift allegiance and the payout is RM1 million per person, that totals only RM10 million; a fraction of the billions given out to PKFZ, or of the RM500 million commission received for the two submarines or even the RM250 million soft loan for the failed NFC project. I think this shift in allegiance need to be watched closely in the next general election because UMNO/BN has too much to lose if PR were to form the next government. As the saying goes – ‘desperate people do desperate things’.

As I have said in an earlier posting, the sudden surge in the exposures of UMNO/BN wrong doing is the will of Allah SWT and what is worse; at a time nearing the general election. I believe it is Allah way of telling the government that enough is enough, and for UMNO to believe that all that is being exposed can no longer be kept out of public notice. My final word to UMNO/BN - CHANGE OR BE CHANGED

CRUSADE AGAINST CORRUPTION

The recent rise of technocratic governments in Italy and Greece is the culmination of a process that has been unfolding in Europe over the last 20 years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent triumph of neoliberal ideology, there has been a trend toward de-politicisation, a wholehearted embrace of the neoliberal order apparently devoid of a viable and promising alternative.

Politics died its first death in celebrations of a growing consensus that communism was a thing of the past, sealed by Francis Fukuyama's diagnosis of the end of history. Apparently lacking a clear enemy, neoliberalism was ready solemnly to declare its worldwide hegemony.

 Italy's new government sworn in

To be sure, we also observed flashes of political polarisation in the post-9/11 world. The threat of global terrorism, which resurrected the ever more amorphous figure of the enemy, and more recently, the intense mass protests against austerity measures were only two of the most salient, if divergent, facets of this counter-tendency.

While the fear of terrorist attacks served to consolidate neoliberal ideology, attractively packaged as the sole bastion of freedom and security, the protests coincided not only with the economic but, above all, with the ideological crisis of neoliberalism, no longer able to promise consistently improving standards of living within the conceptual framework of open-ended progress it inherited from the optimistic nineteenth century. The protesters have done nothing less than revitalise politics by reminding us of the clear division between the "99 per cent" and the richest one per cent of the population. They have re-invented the idea of the enemy along class lines, all but ideologically erased by triumphant liberalism, which contributed to an unheard-of increase in economic inequalities.

It is, in the first instance, this crisis of ideology that explains much of what is going on in Europe (and, to a lesser extent, in the United States) today. When it comes to the draconian austerity measures, approved in the so-called "debtor countries", including Greece, Portugal, and most recently Italy, there is a marked shift in political discourse. Rather than emphasise the advantages of late capitalism to everyone involved, politicians increasingly resort to the quasi-religious rhetoric of sacrifices meant to preserve the untenable economic status quo. The contrast between such rhetoric, eerily reminiscent of the speeches by 20th century dictators (Francisco Franco in Spain, Benito Mussolini in Italy, António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal) and the technocratic nature of the new regimes is glaring. And yet, in the absence of ideological fig leaves, the technical-economic management model of government coexists, in perfect unison, with the elevated pathos of religious tropes. Between theology and technocracy, politics has no place of its own.

Technocratic regimes

Technocratic governments may come to power through different paths, but the result is invariably the same. In Greece and Italy, under the pressure of the global markets, the respective resignations of prime ministers George Papandreou and Silvio Berlusconi paved the way to the EU-backed appointments of Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, bypassing the procedural exigencies of democratic elections. In Portugal and Spain, the elections of Pedro Passos Coelho and Mariano Rajoy installed leaders whose political styles and proposed solutions to the crisis are strikingly akin to those in Greece and Italy. So, if it is not their rise to power that determines the essence of technocrats, then what does?

"Technocratic regimes entail, by default, an abdication of the political decision-making capacity."

First, the managerial approach to politics, coupled with the new leaders' business backgrounds, is crucial. The vast and deep cuts to the public sector, welfare programmes, and social services are treated as though they were a political-economic extension of the logic inherent in company downsizing, allowing businesses to survive tough economic times in a "leaner" condition. Countries turn into nothing but giant and rather unprofitable (for a vast majority of their citizens) corporations, where eroding social security nets aggravate the situation of those multitudes of workers who have been and continue to be fired by private companies.  

Second, and relatedly, technocratic regimes entail, by default, an abdication of the political decision-making capacity. Where a country is run as an economic corporation, the iron laws of the market dictate the course of action, without leaving much freedom of choice to those in the formal seat of power. Technocratic governments are the unabashed mediators, the nearly superfluous intermediaries, between the global markets and the citizens; indeed, they are nothing but the faces or personifications of these economic institutions. Their "decisions" are the decisions of global capital itself, which is why the technocrats tend to state that they do not like introducing unprecedented budget cuts but have no other choice.

The bottomline is that technocracy signals a massive shift of power, at least on the symbolic level. Translated from Greek, this term literally means "the power of artifice", while, conceptually, it embodies an old utopian ideal of things administering themselves. The illusion of technocracy is that it is capable of evacuating the personal element from politics, which turns into the dispensable means in the self-regulation of the essential economic order. From the dictatorship of persons we transition to the dictatorship of things; the organisation of the polity becomes dependent less on the arbitrary element of decision-making and more on the "iron laws" of the market.

Unfortunately, even such a staunch enemy of capitalism as Vladimir Lenin fell prey to this illusion, when in his The State and the Revolution he envisioned the communist dissolution of the state in economic self-administration. For a technocrat, then, politics is but a withering appendage of economics.

'Politics without politics'

It is ridiculous to think, however, that things would be able to administer themselves: the fantasy of technology as the saviour of humanity perished along with the rest of the liberal narrative, glorifying endless progress. The smokescreen of technocracy veils from sight highly interested, partial decisions that work in favour of the few and to the disadvantage of the many. Technocracy is utterly incompatible with democracy; if anything, it is a disavowed form of oligarchy, a degenerate mode of aristocracy where the few rule.

In the case of the "pure" technocrats in Italy and Greece, their academic backgrounds do little to substantiate claims - prevalent today - to the effect that these few are, in fact, experts and that their knowledge base can help their countries overcome the crisis that shows no signs of abating. The field of mainstream economics, for example, is an academic handmaid of actual capitalist profiteering and the kind of knowledge it generates is, in part, responsible for the onset of the crisis. Expecting rescue from those versed in the discourse of neoliberal economics is analogous to putting hopes into the rock tied to one's feet and pulling one further into the deep.

After having dissolved in the one-dimensional consensus of neoliberalism, politics dies a second death when technocracy dispenses with the last shreds of sovereignty and meaningful decision-making processes. We are not living at the dawn of the Platonic "politics of truth", where power is finally grounded in knowledge. On the contrary, we inhabit a scenario that, for Plato, would have been nightmarish, a symmetrical inversion of his ideal polity: technocratic managers instead of philosopher-kings; techne instead of episteme (knowledge aimed at understanding); oligarchy instead of aristocracy…

At the same time, the de-politicisation of the institutions of power, uncannily reminiscent of the ideal "politics without politics" promulgated by 20th century dictatorships, coincides with the inverse trend toward a politicisation of the citizenry, outraged with their systematic impoverishment. As those who experience this contradiction most intensely, people in southern Europe may thus find themselves at the forefront of an attempt at reimagining politics after its second death.