Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa 9780755620272, 9781845113674

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Election Poster. ‘Vote Kérékou: The strength of courage and the weight of experience.’

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Figure 2: Dalit peasants of village Laukaha participating in the Ravana Mela procession, 14 October 1999, Pukhrayan (Uttar Pradesh).

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Figure 3: Dalit police officer being welcomed by local Dalit Panther organiser Kallu Bhaiya at the Ravana Mela, 14 October 1999, Pukhrayan (Uttar Pradesh).

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Figure 4: The march on 1 July 2003.

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Figure 5: The evening rally on 9 July 2003.

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Figure 6: Swearing-in ceremony of NAMFREL national co-ordinators in Manila in preparation for the 1951 senatorial elections.

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Figure 7: NAMFREL campaign poster in preparation for the 1986 snap presidential elections.

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Acknowledgements Our intellectual and administrative debts have accumulated over many years, and extend in a great many directions, to many more people than can be fully listed here. Our first order of thanks goes to the institution of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for providing such a supportive intellectual atmosphere for a project this unconventional. Without SOAS in general, and the students in our MSc seminar ‘State and Society in Asia and Africa’ in particular, there would be no book at all. Over the course of twelve years of teaching the comparative political sociology of Asia and Africa, we found that there was enormous student demand for ideas and texts on the theatrical and performative dimensions of politics. Year after year, the most popular and best engaged part of the course were the sessions on what we then called ‘theatre politics.’ In response to student demand, one class meeting was expanded to two, and then two into three. After running out of reading material at three sessions, we concluded that the only way forward was to somehow develop our own set of texts. We also found that very openness of this area of inquiry also proved an advantage for teaching as well as learning. Many of our best postgraduates tended to gravitate towards topics on the theatrical and performative dimensions of politics, we learned an enormous amount on theatre politics from Azerbaijan to Burma to South Africa. The two international research workshops from which this book emerged were made possible by an International Network Scholars grant from the British Academy and supplementary funding and institutional support of the School of Oriental and African Studies. We were able to have two meetings, the first on 18–19 January 2002, and a follow-up second on 14–15 May 2004. The generosity of the British Academy in funding not one, but two workshops on the staged forms of politics made it possible for our ideas to evolve, away from the staged setting and towards the dramatic performance in political negotiation, in protest or in intimidation. Among the many involved in talking these notions over, David Apter and Jean-François Bayart were both generous with their imaginative and learned guidance. And we finally thank the people who have directly helped in the production of this book, Stephen Chan for guiding us towards I.B.Tauris and away from the odd production snag, making everything

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possible; Raphaël Jacquet for being an assiduous copy-editor and producer of camera-ready copy often in difficult circumstances, and Brita Pouget for being helpful at every stage. The editors would also like to thank those closest to them, Rita Cruise O’Brien and R. Bin Wong for the critique and support that made the process of writing and revising not only possible but a pleasure.

Introduction Julia C. Strauss and Donal B. Cruise O’Brien

Most contemporary scholarship on the politics of new states owes its key operating assumptions to one of two key intellectual lineages: Weberian and rational choice. Each has real strengths and suggests useful analytical frameworks to understand developmental trajectories and the host of such endemic problems as corruption and perverse incentives that hamper the unfolding of that development. But both also have significant limitations: their focus on institutions and practices that in the Western experience have tended towards the increasingly depersonalized. While Weberian approaches privilege institutions and rational choice interests (particularly individual interests), both implicitly benchmark ‘the West’ (particularly Northern Europe and Anglophone America) as the norm from which the rest of the world deviates. Thus Weberian approaches have given rise to a very substantial literature on state capacity and its associated sub-lineages of ‘strong societies/weak states’ (Migdal 1988), neo-patrimonialism (Médard 1982), praetorian military involvement in politics (Ben Eliezer 1997) and norms of good governance promoted by all manner of international organizations and NGOs from the World Bank to Christian Aid. This tells us a great deal about how and why new states don’t quite manage to develop strong states, an impersonal bureaucracy, the rule of law, democratic representation and good governance, but seldom has much to say about the substance of how new norms of citizenship and belonging to a new state are understood, communicated and negotiated outside or alongside Weberian-derived classes of institutions such as the bureaucracy. Rational choice approaches to politics in developing countries, best exemplified by Robert Bates’ Markets and States in Africa (1981), but ultimately descended from the individualism of John Stuart Mill, take presumptive universals about interests and incentives and how badly skewed they become in particular political and economic environments, but say very little about the ways in which these blatantly sub-optimal results are justified (‘sold’) and either accepted or contested (‘bought or not bought’) by different sectors of society. In short, both Weberian and rational choice approaches have tended to focus attention on what is, at





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least comparatively speaking, not there, or at best only imperfectly there in terms of impersonal institutions such as a working independent judiciary, functional markets, and ‘good governance’ to the veritable exclusion of what is there: the myriad ways in which politicians, state makers and different sectors of society make claims and engage with each other through the kinds of performances that engage the emotions and enable new relationships between state and society to be imagined and acted on. This volume represents a preliminary effort to complement Weberian and rational choice approaches in focussing on what so often is present in the contemporary evolution of state and society in Asia and Africa: the type of politics that speaks to what Gandhi called ‘the heart,’ the politics of affect, emotion and drama, which we call the ‘politics of performance.’ We confine our empirical subject matter to what used to be known as the ‘Old World’: the broad span of Asia (including Northeast, South, and Middle East) and Africa. It is here that one finds great diversity in old societies, some of which, like China, Korea and Thailand, already had long-standing indigenous traditions of state organization, while others, like Senegal and Iraq, have been drawn into the modern state only relatively recently, in the last one hundred years. Whether possessing a modernizing imperial tradition (China), brought into modern state structures exclusively through colonialism (Senegal or Tanzania), or some combination of the two (India), the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed a fascinating diversity in the ways in which state and society interact and negotiate, often in novel ways. It would be naive to disregard the importance of either state structures (and their lack) or interests and incentives for both individuals and key elites in the ongoing political sociology of Asia and Africa, but to get at the whole it is equally important to consider the ‘softer’ but no less relevant categories of affect, emotional engagement, and imagination, and for this one needs to turn to the whys and hows of effective public performance. No volume on this topic can avoid its intellectual debt to anthropology in general, and Clifford Geertz in particular. Anthropologists such as Victor Turner (1974) and Georges Balandier (1980) have long recognized the importance of performance for power, and Geertz’s path-breaking study of Negara in Bali, made the study of the theatrical dimensions of state power respectable for political scientists, with the essential idea that ‘the dramaturgy of power [is not] external to its workings’ (Geertz 1980: 136). We differ somewhat from Geertz in our view that empirically states will vary in the degree to which theatre and symbols are important, and we see that the theatrical, symbolic and performative elements of politics are at least as important for contestation and challenge from below, or at least outside the state, as they are for reification of state power through ceremony and spectacle from above. Theatrical and performative modes of politics are for us a means of communication, with all the potential for slippage and misunderstanding that communication poses, particularly in times of rapid change.

Introduction



We conceive of the politics of performance broadly and include in its purview a wide range of ‘shows’ that are put on from both above and below as the dramatization of power. The modes of performance we consider include state ritual (such as staged ceremonies), theatre with semi to totally open-ended outcomes (such as elections and street demonstrations), and individual performance or micro-performance (a particularly dramatic speech or event designed to engage the emotions and rally support). These three variants of performance politics are analytically distinct: ritual is repetitive, predictable in its reiteration of symbolic language and ceremony, and tends towards the conservative reification of the community of practitioners of the ritual; theatre at least often searches for novelty and allows for improvisation from either above or below while referring to a commonly understood core of symbols; and individual performance that goes particularly well involves the old indefinable of ‘star quality’ (‘I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it’). But in practice, ritual, theatre and individual performance have a strong tendency to intersect temporally and borrow from each other. Thus the Chinese student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 got underway by attempting to highjack a state-controlled ritual (the state funeral of ex-Premier Hu Yaobang, whose relative liberalism and tolerance of youth was seized upon as a rallying symbol), shamed the government and mobilized a first wave of popular urban popular opinion when kneeling outside the gates of Zhongnanhai in the traditional pose of supplication to the Emperor. But it then quickly developed as a popular movement in increasingly raucous street theatre, and was galvanized at a particular moment when Party officials made the fatal mistake of allowing television cameras in to record their symbolic confrontation with Wu’er Kaixi, erstwhile hunger striker, who put on a dramatically convincing micro-performance when he ripped the oxygen tube from his nose as he berated the conservative, stodgy Premier, Li Peng, on national television (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1990). Ritual, theatre politics, and individual micro-performance: all were to be found within the same few weeks in the evolution of one social movement; and each interacted with the others in subtle and often unpredictable ways. However varied in intent and execution the performance may be, whether ritualized or theatrical, heavily scripted or improvisational, ensemble or individual, performative modes of politics have some common characteristics. All require a stage or platform upon which the performance can be played out (be it a public square, a village school, a shrine, a monument or a particularly defined set of city streets). All need audiences, and since ultimately the goal of performance politics is to win a positive audience reaction, much needs to go into making the performance intelligible to those target audiences, and for more theatrical modes of performance, a heavy premium is placed on freshness and novelty. Thus performance politics is a realm thoroughly saturated with symbols, as the scripts for the performance either implicitly or explicitly call upon tropes, symbols and metaphors presumed to be well understood by those audiences.



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The versatility of many symbols means that the very evocativeness of particularly relevant symbols varies enormously from culture to culture, and thus performative modes of politics entail serious risks for the performer. First is the risk that performers can lose control of the message. Key symbols and evocations may either get lost in translation or understood in an entirely different way than intended, particularly by non-targeted secondary audiences. For example, in the struggle for independence, Gandhi evocatively invoked an idea of India based on humble gestures and equally humble clothing, the spinning wheel and the staff, and they worked brilliantly as ‘PR’ and unifying idea for much of the subcontinent – both elite and rural. Equally, these were the symbols of a rural Hindu India and sent an equally powerful negative message to the sub-continent’s millions of Muslims: you don’t belong here. Second is the risk that the performer may lose control of the process in a different way, as those in the audience may confuse the performance with reality, and possibly even be moved to action not anticipated by the performers. In appealing to emotion and affect, the organizers of street demonstrations often find themselves taken over or outflanked by smaller groups with significantly more radical agendas and stronger emotional appeals. New states using public fora for show trials to educate the population into new political norms of citizenship and belonging may find that either the audience has an unanticipated sneaking sympathy with the accused, or conversely takes regime claims to promote citizen participation at face value. And third is that the performance can simply flop – failing to draw in the audience and engage the emotions. As any stage producer knows, putting on a show is fraught with risk, and there is a multiplicity of ways in which the show can not go well, even in a setting in which it is crystal clear that the audience is suspending its disbelief for the duration of the show by having paid for the tickets and entered the theatre. In the more ambiguous circumstances of theatrical and performance politics, these problems are compounded. The implicit script can be muddled, the symbols and metaphors confused, the target audience either too sophisticated or too unknowledgeable to appreciate the level at which the performance is pitched, and finally the performance can itself be botched, or formulaic, wooden, repetitive and boring. Much depends on that old saw on knowing one’s audience, but in politics as well as show business, audiences can be enormously varied in their reactions (what plays in Peoria won’t make it in New York and what may fly in Beijing may be greeted with derision in Berlin or met with incomprehension in rural India). And audience taste can vary dramatically by generation, or change radically in short periods of time, even within the same generational cadre. Given the huge range of political activity that involves a performance or performative element, we might reasonably ask what isn’t political performance. Broadly speaking, we suggest the following propositions: 1) the more

Introduction



impersonally institutionalized the area, the less politically relevant performances will be. Bureaucratic hierarchies able to implement uniformly rule-based decisions will on the whole not be amenable to performative modes of politics and will probably actively shy away from anything that smacks of emotionally based, ‘irrational’ and extraordinary demands; 2) the more clearly transactional and divisible the subject, the less amenable to performance politics. Well-functioning markets devoid of face-to-face bargaining with their impersonal rules will typically not have a lot in the way of performance, nor will the strictly distributional aspects of ‘who gets what, when, where and how.’ Yet performance and shows often serve to soften, legitimate and render intelligible these more impersonal, rule-bound and transactional elements of politics. Thus the administrative implementation of a tax system (rule-bound, impersonal) is not performative, but the debates surrounding the laying down of new rules or the amendment of old ones almost certainly will be, typically over presumptive ‘fairness’ vs. establishing incentives for investment and growth. Similarly, the bureaucratic and hierarchical workings of military organizations are the very opposite of performative, but militaries everywhere are known for putting on their own particular ritualized shows through the dress parade, the military funeral and the commemorative ceremony. Many countries (notably China and the former Soviet Union) indeed have made it a practice on National Day holidays to wheel out some of the weaponry itself to complement the parade colours and uniforms as part of a wider national public spectacle of power. And the softer public face of political theatre and performance everywhere masks the harder interest-based realities of who is getting what, when, where and how, particularly in election years. Given that performance in politics is such an omnipresent complement to institutions and interests, this volume attempts to confine the phenomenon to manageable proportions by opening with Donal Cruise O’Brien’s article on the importance of imagining the state, then moving on to the three substantive groupings that the rest of the essays naturally fall into, moving from the most to the least structured and controlled types of stages and settings: 1) trials; 2) elections and 3) contestation from below and public space. Within each of these areas, we focus attention on how a) the state and state leaders, b) elites and counter-elites and c) target audience(s) go about pursuing power in dramatic form. Cruise O’Brien begins with the importance of the imagination, as a state is not fully a state until it is popular imagined, and he charts the way in which the imagination of a Senegalese state is underway, ‘by repetition in ritual, by presentation in political theatre, [and] by improvisation in what is termed play acting.’ This starts from a micro-performance in a village school one year after the French conquest, with a performance in an already anachronistic style of Wolof precolonial power that enables Sufi Muslims to engage with the new state. Cruise O’Brien’s view is a relatively optimistic one, as in Senegal the secular state (whether French colonial or independent) and powerful Sufi brotherhoods have found much in the way of



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grounds for mutual accommodation; the Senegalese state has historically worked through the Sufi orders, and in turn the Sufis get ‘roads built to the shrine, the radio and television, and a respectful audience of government officials, in or out of uniform.’ In times of stress, symbolic pronouncements from Sufi elders get the government to sit up and take notice without compromising Sufi saintliness, and in times of generational change, the Sufi elders have wisely accommodated to youth by changing their habits of issuing instructions on how to vote. So in Senegal, theatre, ritual and symbol have had the net effect of providing a means of communication for both state and the key social and organizational presence in rural society; allowing for accommodation while preserving enough distance; ultimately strengthening both the state and society. Trials As many a Hollywood screenplay writer knows, a trial offers an almost ideal setting in which drama can be played out. The set is simple and self-contained. The judge or judges are at the centre, usually physically raised above the proceedings, the defence and prosecution in appointed places to the side, and the public (‘audience’) to the back and/or in the gallery. A large space is cleared for the key dramatis personae (prosecutor, defence lawyer and occasionally the defendant) to come forward and speak their lines. Indeed the trial is so well known as a genre of drama that real trials with celebrity involvement, such as the O. J. Simpson trial, themselves may become forms of mass entertainment, with the additional frisson of suspense, as one does not always know things are going to turn out. The trial is part of the state’s show of power. In new states it defines space and orders relationships (often new relationships) between the individual and the state. The ‘show trial,’ may well not be about impersonally administered justice, but it is far from being only about surface show. The show trial reifies the values of the regime and implicitly instructs the citizenry in new norms, values and codes of behaviour. This volume includes essays on three sorts of trials in locations as far apart as post-monarchy Iraq in the late 1950s, revolutionary China in the early- to mid-1950s, and colonial India in the 1920s. All in different ways can be seen as show trials; although the dynamics, particular cultural tropes and resulting narratives of each of these ‘shows,’ displays considerable variation. Charles Tripp’s article on the ‘People’s Court’ of the first phase of the Iraq revolution (1958–60) illustrates how perfectly the show of the state trial serves to ‘condense a theatrical moment’ between old and new regime by putting enemies of the state in the dock. Widespread reporting and even the novelty of in camera television added to the publicity, and the ‘People’s Court’ served quite explicitly to educate the public (in both the galleries and at large) into the new norms of the regime, and what it particularly meant by its ‘revolution.’ Everything about the court was designed for maximal dramatic effect; from the layout of the courtroom to the lead player. After a slow start, the court was blessed with a

Introduction



convincing leading actor in the prosecutor, who had an instinctive flair for the dramatic as well as a mastery of the cultural forms that went down well with the audience, particularly a sort of improvisational poetry which simultaneously mocked the witness and demonstrated the prosecutor’s (and the state’s) erudition. And at first the show went off very well, and was applauded in the galleries – as much as entertainment as revolutionary ‘justice.’ But even in the relatively controlled circumstances of the show trial, the unexpected could, and increasingly did, occur; eloquent defendants could gain audience sympathy, particularly when the targets of the revolution widened beyond the obvious (members of the old regime) to the much less obvious (members of losing factions of the revolution). Eventually, target audiences bored of the excesses and spectacle, and the Court itself was wound down as it became a liability. Julia Strauss’s article on the public accusation of counterrevolutionaries in another revolutionary situation – this time in the People’s’ Republic of China in the 1950s – echoes a number of themes tackled in Tripp’s chapter. As was the case in Iraq, the authorities of the new regime used the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries to deliberately target those associated with the bad old days of the ancien regime to galvanize public opinion behind the new regime while educating it into new norms and ideals of how a proper revolutionary citizen was to behave. But the cultural form and particular codes through which this took place could not have been more different than in Iraq. Rather than a formal courtroom and eloquent poetic improvisation of a chief prosecutor/orator for whom the audience was expected to admire and applaud, in the public mass accusation meeting the audience was itself invited to directly participate in the drama through a heavily stage-managed, but no less emotionally charged, set of mass denunciations which typically ended in the parading off of the accused to the execution ground. In this scenario, the tensions between the behind-thescenes bureaucratic planning of the mass accusation meeting and the dramatic event itself were ever present. Not yet understanding that their function was that of a chorus, crowds whipped into an emotional frenzy and often took matters into their own hands, to the embarrassment of control-minded cadres. As was the case for the People’s Court in Iraq, when later ‘waves’ of anti-counterrevolutionary accusation moved beyond the obvious pillars of the old regime to ever wider groups of suspects more difficult to distinguish from regular society, the vast majority lost enthusiasm for the participatory spectacle. In 1951 it was not obvious to many that the outcome of the public accusation had already been decided on by the state; by 1955–56 it was abundantly clear to all concerned what a risky business it was to get overly involved, and this caution resulted in formulaic and contrived accusations for those who could not get out of it. In both postrevolutionary Iraq and China, the prosecution of accused counterrevolutionaries well illustrated the trial genre to be dramatic, heuristic and entertaining, but at the same time suggested the inherent limits of the form; excess bred boredom



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and tuning out (Iraq), and the very success of the heuristic device led the participatory masses to be much more circumspect in their participation within only a few years (China). Sudipta Kaviraj deals with a very different aspect of the show trial. In his discussion of Gandhi’s trial of 1922, he illustrates how the public forum of the state trial, and the forms of liberal ideology built into the justice system of the AngloIndian empire could be easily subverted by a colonial subject who understood the deeply ambiguous moral groundings of that system: procedure, fair play, equality before the law and ultimately justice. But Gandhi’s trial was also notable for skilfully managing not only to destroy the legal-rational legitimacy of the colonial justice system, but to do so while continuing to communicate in registers pitched at three simultaneous radically different audiences: educated public opinion in Britain, the Indian middle classes and the Indian peasantry. The scripted words admitting to writing the seditious articles mattered, but tone (quiet and calm), gesture (calculated to maximize impression of frailty and aloneness), and civility had the net effect of almost totally discrediting the British colonial state while identifying himself with the larger idea of India – to the point that even those running the trial ‘came close to acknowledging Gandhi’s saintliness,’ and ending with the British colonial state having been put on trial rather than Gandhi. The event of Gandhi’s trial illustrates the importance of the performance itself, and the ways in which the dramatic components of gesture, costume and tone as well as words appeal to multiple audiences for a man then well on his way to a version of secular sainthood. This could not have been an easy thing to pull off and perhaps no one other than Gandhi could have managed it; unlike the Iraqi and Chinese cases of public trials where audience enthusiasm for the theatrical and dramatic waned within a few years, Gandhi’s trial of 1922 added to his aura and was an important step in a longer career that involved him as the focal point of ever larger amounts of mass mobilization and drama. Elections Like trials, elections comprise an agreed on form, typically with a set period of campaigning, known protagonists with at least partially knowable or guessable scripts and claims to get across, fairly set forms of speeches, campaigns, advertisements, debates, and the mobilization of supportive constituencies, ultimately culminating in the actual voting that will result in an electoral decision. Like trials, good electoral races are almost tailor-made for a mix of ritual, theatre and micro-performance. As ritual, the election contributes to the construction of a community of those who have performed the ritual, which is no small matter in a new state or one for which the ritual is a relatively new phenomenon. Yet there is a good deal of variation in what the show of elections actually means in Asia and Africa. The articles by Vincent Foucher, Dafydd Fell and Patrick Claffey included

Introduction



in this volume all implicitly suggest that the theatrical and performative elements of elections render the form of elections significantly more open-ended than trials in terms of staging, characters and outcome; elections, leaders and the shows that surround them matter, both in content and for outcomes. In these otherwise quite varied cases, the set period of electoral campaigning carries clear rules about winners, losers and outcomes, but since no one knows what the outcome will be, there is significantly more room for improvisation, as Foucher’s contribution on the Blue Marches in Senegal neatly demonstrates. Elections have potential as fast-moving zones of opportunity in Asia and Africa as well as elsewhere, and recent elections in Taiwan and Senegal both show the importance of being quick on the uptake to adapt old forms, communicate new messages, appeal to new constituencies, master new media and provide entertainment in the process. But much about electoral performance depends on their respective audiences and the political context in which they take place: Steve Heder shows that in contrast to Taiwan and Senegal, elections and notions about good governance in contemporary Cambodia are domestically seen as little more than insincere theatre; a show put on for foreign consumption to keep the funding coming in. Dafydd Fell opens his discussion of the increasing importance of putting on a campaign ‘show’ in Taiwanese politics with language. The American colloquialism ‘to put on a show’ has been directly transliterated into colloquial Mandarin in Taiwan as ‘zuo xiu,’ and all players on the field of Taiwanese electoral politics now understand how important it is to put on a compelling show. What emerges from Fell’s article is how rapidly moving an arena this is in terms of the background technology for the transmission of performances, how quickly electorate (‘audience’) taste changes, and how blurred the boundaries between political ‘show’ and pure entertainment are. The rate of change in Taiwan’s electoral shows illustrates just how important it is for politicians to be nimble as well as media savvy – as those who don’t adapt quickly to the demands of new media and more catchy shows are rapidly punished by an ever more discerning electorate. Fell’s article contains numerable examples of how difficult this is to do in practice; over the last ten years each of the main political parties has gone ‘off-message’ and/or seriously misjudged audience taste with either outdated campaign themes that no longer struck the right chords, or faintly ridiculous television ads, as when a famously wooden KMT technocrat was cast as Roberto Carlos and Luis Figo, beating monsters at football à la Nike. Many have not made the transition to television well, but those that have learned quickly from mistakes (e.g. Chen Shuibian and James Song) have prospered. Though it is difficult to get all the elements of the show to come together, there is at least a fair amount of room for change and adaptability, and those adopting radically different shows after an election defeat may in fact be proving a greater degree of responsiveness. Rapid social change, and the need of politicians to be responsive to those changes during electoral campaigns are also explored in Foucher’s chapter on

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the ‘Blue Marches.’ These Blue Marches embody a different kind of electoral show: half political rally, half street procession, blaring through Senegal with vans, loudspeakers, and the music of Youssou N’dour and Alpha Blondy drawing out the crowds, with a few speeches thrown in at opportune moments. They began as a desperate measure: the final gasp of an opposition that simply could not afford the expense of the normally expected old guard electoral shows involving praise singers, drummers, meetings with chairs under tents and a lot of free food. But the opposition candidate, Abdoulaye Wade, managed to turn this seeming disadvantage into electoral success. Thus, the visible externals of the Blue Marches and their chief organizer – relative youth, mobility, transnational symbols and spontaneity contrasted with the deference to age, fixity and oldstyle munificence through free food of the traditional political rally. But in their mobility and youthful participation, the Blue Marches were at least as important for what they implied as what they demonstrated; with a mobile youth already used to both demonstration and violence on the move, the Blue Marches served as a cautionary warning about the civil disorder that would be likely to ensue if the incumbent party tried to rig the election. While not an exploration of elections per se, Patrick Claffey’s piece on the remarkable career of Mathieu Kérékou in Benin offers yet another example of how an effective politician can work within a range of specific ‘symbolic registers’ in a given place, adapt himself accordingly and ultimately legitimate himself through a democratic process of elections and voting. Kérékou began his long domination of Benin politics in the early 1970s by following a form of revolutionary ‘pur et dur’ tropical Marxism, which gradually softened enough to allow open elections in 1989, which he promptly lost to a technocrat. Rather than slink off after such a crushing defeat, he opted for a highly public and risky apology to the local archbishop that was widely broadcast to the nation as a whole; thus laying the long-term groundwork for his eventual, chameleon-esque rehabilitation as a democratically elected figure of unity for Benin some ten years later. One cannot make sense of Kérékou’s remarkable rehabilitation without also considering the remoteness and overall lack of appeal of his opponent, or the interest-based support of Pentecostal Christian churches, but it was Kérékou’s particular gift to be able to link traditional sacral imaginings of kingly power with charismatic Christianity, and himself as the only viable candidate to hold it all together, and as such he continues to embody the Beninois nation, with all its fragility and internal contradictions. In Benin, as in Senegal and Taiwan, the symbols of the past together with the acknowledgement of social change and the ability of potential leaders to communicate their adaptability to that change are played out at least as much through the symbolic and the performative as by any clearly laid out policy differences or electoral promises about goods and services. The case of contemporary Cambodia illustrates the exact opposite: how in a weak, foreign-dominated state riven by factionalism, predation, vote-buying

Introduction

11

and physical intimidation, ‘discrepancies in the realms of democracy, the state and economy – characterized by elaborate facades and enormously powerful shadows – are supported by foreigners who suspend disbelief, at least in public.’ In contemporary Cambodia we see something that does approximate Geertzian Negara: a ‘peculiarly modern theatre state,’ in which outcomes are almost completely predetermined, and where the most important audience is comprised of foreign NGOs and international organizations. Entirely hollow elections are held; the foreigners in turn send in their commissions and applaud. This external applause confers the external legitimacy necessary to keep things in the hands of the extant political elites and keep the all-important flows of aid on tap. The domestic audience has meanwhile absorbed a quite different message: elections and their accompanying systems of electoral complaints and conciliation hearings serve to perpetuate local elite and thug dominance of those elections; they are nothing more than an empty show of form and it is a dangerous and risky thing to behave as if the show is real, or has any appreciable impact on possible outcomes. In contemporary Cambodia, the reality of elections and politics is something quite different from the external show put on for naive (or collusive) foreigners; all things considered, it is best to keep one’s head down and allow the show to proceed without making the mistake of confusing it for reality. Contestation and Public Space Social movements and contestation in public space are almost as a matter of definition theatrical. This is a very rich field for the politics of performance, as it is through theatrics and capturing the imagination of both a wider public and the attention of the state that groups whose very existence may have gone unrecorded become visible, and demands that frequently may not have even been articulated can make themselves heard. Of the three areas that this work considers, contestation and public space is by far the most open-ended, in terms of staging, performers, time frame and possible outcomes. There is clearly more room for improvisation, the addition of new characters, a more extended set of performances and a large range of political consequences, from tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square to the Berlin Wall coming down. This volume contains three very different essays on the performative aspects of contestation and claims to public space in regions as far afield as rural Uttar Pradesh in India and hyper-urban Hong Kong. Although the settings and particular theatrics could not be more dissimilar, the ways in which contestation and public space in Uttar Pradesh and Hong Kong play out suggests at least preliminary ways in which theatrical moments can begin to intersect with and influence the outcome of more institutional forms of politics, while Eva-Lotta Hedman’s work on electoral watch campaigns in the Philippines shows how the idea of proper electoral procedures itself became an arena for dramatic symbolic confrontation; a form of mass spectacle and opening of civic space.

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Nicolas Jaoul turns to India. He describes the ways in which Dalit (untouchable) identity and symbolic assertion blur the lines between symbolic and more ‘regular’ forms of politics through public processions and ceremonies. These ceremonies revolve around the central figure of Ambedkar, whose legacy has provided a potent symbol for organization, mobilization and group assertion to claims in public space and on the state. Ambedkar himself was a Westernized and highly educated Dalit, equally involved with Dalit emancipation and Indian independence. After Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism and passing in 1956, the Dalit movement transformed him into a half-secular, half-religious saint with a full and growing complement of commemorative statues, holidays, festivals and remembrances to be celebrated and protected against the depredations of other castes at all costs. In addition to mobilizing the emotions and providing mass-popular entertainment for the Dalit sub-altern, Dalit activists frequently invoke the state as a referee in guaranteeing Dalit rights in the face of symbolic discrimination, and, now that there are some to whom to turn, in actively coopting sympathetic Dalit officials to participate in and lend respectability to Dalit processions. It is in Uttar Pradesh’s Ambedkar festivals that the line between theatre and politics is most blurred; the festivals and processions are themselves a symbolic show and medium of communication, but they also include staged morality plays which are deliberately designed to raise communal consciousness. For their part, authorities seem to waver between wanting to refuse permission to stage these events and realizing that they are a useful way to keep their fingers on the pulse of the grassroots Dalit movement. Agnes Ku’s chapter on the reinvention of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong clearly lays out the ‘contesting theatrical performances’ of an authoritarian state and an inchoate liberal movement. The case of the July 2003 march is an instructive reminder about the dangers and opportunities inherent to improvisation. Those in positions of state power who depart too far from the expected ‘script’ in a way that misjudges the public mood so seriously that it can alienate and inflame rather than engage and defuse, and indeed bring about exactly what they are trying to avoid: oppositional broadly based mobilization. In Hong Kong, the theatre of state power was embodied by a stiff, unaccommodating and unreasonably inflexible security chief, who in effect deliberately and provocatively flouted the bureaucratic norm of at least pretending to consult with society over key security legislation and its impact on civil rights. This in turn galvanized a hitherto loose and relatively unorganized coalition opposing the security legislation into a much more broadly supported movement, culminating in a demonstration of over half a million people against the security legislation on 1 July – a day heavy with symbolism as it was the anniversary of the retrocession of Hong Kong to the mainland. The short-term response of the government to the sheer size of the spectacle was paralysis; after paralysis came tactical concessions to delay the security legislation, but these were carried out in such

Introduction

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a weak way that they resulted in another round of smaller but still substantial demonstrations, this time for direct democracy and universal suffrage, ultimately enough for Beijing to step in with some heavy-handed theatre of its own with its public pledge of support for its hand-picked government in Hong Kong. Eva-Lotta Hedman’s article on election-watch campaigns in the Philippines neatly shows how under the right kind of conditions, even something as seemingly institutional and rule-bound as election monitoring can become a liberal civic spectacle and vehicle for the most passionate of dramas. In the Philippines, the mantra of ‘free and fair elections’ arose in a particularly charged environment of competition against both Right and Left, and was invested with an unusually strong civic nationalism buttressed by morality discourse from the Catholic church (a Christian duty to vote). In the Philippines, the procedures to ensure ‘free and fair elections’ themselves have become sacralized – arenas for public spectacle and implicit opposition against those who would tamper with anything as sacred as the inviolable procedural guarantors of freedom and fairness. Of key importance in widening the audience and the degree of citizen participation in the mass spectacle was the media; first at local and national levels, and then internationally for the 1986 presidential elections. As the international story snowballed, the media moved from simply monitoring and reporting to directly influencing outcomes. At a minimum the very existence of foreign television cameras dispatched around the country dampened down election fraud and strengthened the position of the civic heroes of the electionwatch campaign facing down ‘guns, goons and gold.’ Election-watch campaigns, particularly the one in 1986, not only was a means by which a civic Philippine nation could be readily imagined and popularized; it depended on the ‘return gaze’ of the foreign, particularly American, media, which in turn played no small part in the eventual mobilization that led to the mass public demand for Marcos to step down. In Uttar Pradesh and Hong Kong, how this interplay of institutional politics and theatrical contestation through public procession, demonstration and organization of social movement will evolve is at present writing uncertain. Minimally, each of these three cases suggests that when played out in public space on highly public stages, the theatrical and emotional can in fact influence more ‘regular’ forms of institutional politics. New demands have in some cases been taken on board, new norms of public discourse have become widespread, and perhaps even new political parties have started to become viable local concerns. Marcos did fall, the Hong Kong chief of security did find herself out of a job, and the Dalits now have greater standing with the local state in at least parts of Uttar Pradesh. In an age of late capitalism and virtually instantaneous communication, performative modes of politics and claims on public space may well change in content but are unlikely to diminish in importance. Both Foucher and Fell show how entire national elections can be won or lost if your party image is looking

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out of date, if key politicians aren’t wearing the ‘right’ kinds of blue jeans or projecting the ‘right’ kind of image on cable TV. This volume represents only a first step at beginning to integrate the performative – including ritual, theatre and individual micro performance – with more common institutional and interest-based approaches to politics from a range of cases in Old World Asia and Africa. On a recurring four-year cycle, nearly six months of almost daily media coverage is taken up with gloss, spin and set pieces of a US presidential campaign. Plays such as Michael Frayn’s Democracy; which survey the careers of charismatic political figures like Willy Brandt and focus on their seemingly magical ability to come up with spontaneous, unspoken public gestures of prime political symbolism, will continue to undergo periodic revival. In recent years anti-globalization protesters have done an excellent job of illustrating just how limited the international institutions of global finance and development are for meeting a large range of felt needs. The performative is clearly an important part of politics in Europe and the Americas as well as the developing states and societies of Asia and Africa, and it is our hope that further scholarship will take up where we leave off by systematically bringing in the pursuit of power in dramatic form with interests and institutions in a fuller explanation of political dynamics writ large. References Balandier, Georges (1980). Le Pouvoir sur scènes (Paris, Baudrillard). Bates, Robert H. (1981). Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (Berkeley, University of California Press). Ben Eliezer, Uri (1997). ‘Rethinking the Civil-Military Relations Paradigm: The Inverse Relation between Militarism and Praetorianism,’ Comparative Political Studies, 30 (3), June. Esherick, Joseph and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (1990). ‘Acting out Democracy: Political Theatre in Modern China,’ Journal of Asian Studies, 49 (9). Geertz, Clifford (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Médard, Jean-François (1982). ‘The Underdeveloped State in Tropical Africa: Political Clientilism and Neo-patrimonialism,’ in Christopher Clapham, Private Patronage and Public Power (London, Pinter). Migdal, Joel (1988). Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Turner, Victor (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London, Routledge). –– (1974). Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, Cornell University Press).

1 SHOW AND STATE IN SENEGAL Play-acting on the Threshold of Power Donal B. Cruise O’Brien

The state’s surest foundations are to be sought in the imagination of the people who live within its authority. It isn’t fully a state until it is popularly imagined, of course with the help of a symbolic repertoire: currency, monuments, maps, postage stamps, football teams, a version of history, uniforms, the flag, etc. These are some of the reminder cards of the imagined communities of national statehood (Anderson 1982).1 That imagination is not to be contrasted with an implicit, other, reality. The imagination is the most important political reality, that of the state present in the mind. And in Africa such a presence is not to be taken for granted: below we will deal with some of the ways by which an imagination of statehood is under way in one African state, by repetition in ritual, by performance in political theatre, by improvisation in what is here termed play-acting. To start with the ritual, the repetition of symbolic action, is to remark the African state’s need for rites with a purchase on people’s imagination. State ritual is to be borrowed or stolen; it is new but also improvised, cobbled together from old materials (Levi-Straussian bricolage), an intriguing subject of study. To make the state an imaginative reality in these circumstances requires that ritual be assisted by the dramatics of political theatre or play-acting: the show’s the thing (and the word ‘show’2 covers the whole range, from ritual to play-acting). The primary significance of the imagination in African politics is to be discerned in that range of shows, in the interaction between different types of show. The imagination of a whole new structure of authority, a new institution, can start with an apparently insignificant piece of play-acting. The imagination of power is what the show is about, power imagined in variants of a theatrical form. In the first form, that of ritual, symbolic action is presented as an imagination of order, of continuity with the past, of an institution. In the second form, that of political theatre, we take off from ritual to enter the domain

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of theatrical improvisation, using a ritual site as a stage, for presentation of a new show to a guaranteed audience, large numbers of people. The theatre improvises from the ritual in order to make new political points, it pirates the ritual. In the third form, named here as play-acting, we start from the small encounter, display before an audience which can be as small as a single person, which can then be extended in its audience reach by the available means of communication, from word of mouth to television and the internet. These three variant forms also interact, and they have in common that they operate on the threshold of power, from the power of the adult over the child to that of the Muslim cleric over the devotee, that of the state over the citizen. All the World’s a Stage A stage is a place for self-presentation as drama; a place to deploy all the tricks of theatre; a place where the audience chooses for a moment to suspend its disbelief. All the world’s a stage … I would have done well to have borne Shakespeare more in mind when first confronted with the spectacle of a Mouride disciple’s extravagantly displayed declaration of submission – abject, kneeling, stooping close to the ground, forehead pressed to the back of the hand of his holy guide, reciting or murmuring a ritual phrase borrowed from the time of slavery (Cruise O’Brien 1971: 141–8). This performance touches what seems to me to be the centre of our concerns, the relation between ritual and theatre (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1992: 28–66).3 The submission was presented as a ritual, an expected event, always more or less the same: all concerned seemed to know very well what to do, knew where and how to do it. The disciple, humbly dressed, torn clothes, dirt on display; the holy master reclining, in flowing robes, perfume in the air; the language of dress and gesture completed the few words of the ritual, a ritual which appeared to satisfy all concerned: this was the display of a legitimate authority. Or so it looked at least to this spectator, in 1966, but there was more of theatre than first appeared to me, more contrivance, more of an instrumental drama – for which I turn to the designation, ‘play-acting.’ That designation is remembered from the Dublin of my childhood (‘he’s only play-acting’), words with a negative loading, certainly, suggesting that somebody is dissembling, putting on a false appearance, being frivolous or simply lying. Seen in the adult perspective, this was child’s play. Adults preferred not to see themselves as play-acting: but those words also I think included a grudging recognition of the invention involved in the improvised drama, theatrics in the pursuit of personal advantage. And it is the imagination involved in play-acting which is to be emphasized below, imagination together with disguised ambition: play-acting is among the weapons of the more restless of the weak, the weak who hope one day to be strong. This kind of improvised drama, theatrics or play-acting, can be valuable matters of comparative political study for what they reveal in the cultural repertoire in any given case (Clapham, Cruise O’Brien, Mbembe and Wagner in Manor

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1991; Fujitani 1992; Toulabor 1991; Wedeen 1998). What are the symbols to be deployed? what stage props? what costumes? what are the words? How and why do any of these communicate to an audience, perhaps to more than one audience? In essence, how does the show work? The theatre or show will among other things reveal a vision of the past in the actors’ use of symbols, the ritual objects which can best communicate to an audience, which can work on the emotions. The Mouride ritual of our introduction was also a show, with its own small audience of clients, relatives, hangers-on, including on that occasion one from overseas. We stood here on the threshold of power, audience to the performance of a show of loyalty. The power on show was of course a religious one, loyalty was to a Sufi Muslim cleric, a Mouride shaikh. It looked straightforward enough, but then loyalty is always a tricky business – the most intriguing panel in Hirschman’s (1970: 76–105) triptych. What reservations were in the mind of that particular loyalist? I can’t claim to have an answer for the individual concerned, but then the reservations may have been way at the back of that person’s mind. So in Dublin in the 1940s, perhaps ever so in play-acting. This is instrumental drama, improvised at least in part, theatre with a purpose. At a grander level, Hamlet setting his mousetrap for the King of Denmark, Iago’s show of honest loyalty to Othello, the plays within the plays (Bloom 1999: 383–475). But we all do our talking to power in theatrical terms; we may start our theatrical careers at home or in school, rehearsing the language of gesture, tone of voice, the right costume … and anybody with a career to make, with problems in dealing with the authorities, is likely to have a good intuitive sense of the requirements of play-acting (Goffman 1971). So far with Shakespeare, so far with all the world. What can we hope to gain in pulling the curtain on the more or less improvised political dramas of Asia and Africa? Perhaps to lay the basis for a new kind of comparative politics, with less of implicit or other condescension; less of the mark sheet in assessment of progress toward rationality, of how far the others have learned to organize their lives as we like to think we do ours. There was after all a sense of discoveries to be made in the widening of comparative politics that went with the development of modernization theory in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sense that is worth trying to recapture. Modernization theory did have its own mark sheets for the political progress of the new nations, its own censoriousness as well as what looks in retrospect like naïveté, its own disposition to give lectures rather than to learn (Cruise O’Brien 1972). So let us look at politics rather in the spirit of a theatre critic, assess what is presented in terms of its impact on the emotions, and then perhaps get back to some of that sense of the discovery to be made in looking at politics in Asia and Africa. Rather than the grand abstraction of modernization theory, start from the particular, the show, the show people and the audiences: rather than rational choice, the emotional basis of choice. Improvised performances, theatrics or play-acting can be valuable subjects

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Staging Politics

among other things for what they reveal in the cultural repertoire: the show reveals a vision of the past in the actors’ use of symbols, the symbolic action which can best communicate to an audience. Play-acting is a performance before the authorities in the first instance, a way of talking to power: the authorities as audience may affect to see the show as beneath consideration, mere frivolity. Perhaps in some cases it is. But in general terms play-acting in politics is to be taken very seriously, either by the authorities or by the observer. In some of the cases now to be considered the performances take place at moments of institutional disarray, when the future is there to be grasped – or so it seems. The performance then draws on the past to make itself moving as well as comprehensible, while it also projects the imagination of a possible political future, in a moment of liminality. A Rite Performed as a Show We may start with one such moment, an inspired piece of play-acting which took place in the immediate aftermath of the French conquest of the Wolof state of Kayor in 1886, on the micro-stage of a small Muslim school at Mbacké Baol in the semi-desert of what is now north-western Senegal. What there took place, apparently far away from the state old or new, was a small encounter in ritual form, but a rite performed as a show. When Ibra Fall (Cruise O’Brien 1971: 141–8)4 came to school in the brightly coloured costume of the Wolof warbands, in grubby makeup, hair in long tresses, huge wooden club in hand, then dropped to his knees, took off his clothes, and declared his allegiance to Amadu Bamba (Ibid.: 35–57, Roberts and Roberts n.d.),5 he was emphatically not performing the correct ritual in the context of a Muslim school. To make that point, the schoolboys eventually left in disgust, and never returned. Ibra Fall had been acting as if he were elsewhere, not at school but at court, the court of a Wolof kingdom, he not a pupil but a slave. And the cleric to whom he had declared such spectacularly inappropriate allegiance was also a man with his own parental linkage to what had just become the old regime: Amadu Bamba’s father had been an eminent courtier in what was now the collapsing state of Kayor. So the state was after all lurking off stage to Ibra Fall’s show, the expiring state of Kayor and for that matter the expanding colonial state of Senegal, agency of Kayor’s defeat. To perform the wrong ritual, theatrically, was in this historical context also to make an insistent statement, a demand. The disgusted schoolboys clearly felt that the intruder in his behaviour made nonsense of the very idea of school, but then Ibra Fall was not performing for them but for power, in the unlikely form of a frail Muslim cleric, if you like a country school teacher. The school teacher was the audience. We don’t quite know Amadu Bamba’s feelings as he looked at this show, but we do know what he subsequently did: he said goodbye to the schoolboys and took on Ibra Fall as his core disciple. Perhaps that show suggested future possibilities to the audience/teacher, possibilities of reaching a whole new clientele

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of refugees from the collapsing Wolof states? The defeated Wolof warbands would do best to look to Muslim clerics in the pursuit of what David Robinson (2000) calls paths of accommodation between Muslim societies and the new French colonial power. So clerics would be political intermediaries, would be men of power, while teaching the semi-pagans to be better Muslims. At least in retrospect then Ibra Fall’s submission, arriving with the coloured costume and club, then all the theatrics of his declaration of loyalty now look like well prepared play-acting. Could Amadu Bamba have failed to get the message? Could future disciples, as reports of this performance began to circulate among the disemployed of the Wolof states, fail to see the model implicit in the show? The rapid development of the Mouride brotherhood suggests a negative response, twice. Ibra Fall’s disruption of the little school at Mbacké Baol was effectively the founding moment of the Mouride brotherhood, as the Wolof Old Regime – courtiers, clients, warriors, slaves – turned to a new and necessary deference to a cleric they saw as a saint. In their distress and enthusiasm, they elected Amadu Bamba to saintly status (Cruise O’Brien 1975: 19–56). This was also to prove to have been a critical moment in the extension of a new kind of statehood to the Senegalese hinterland, a colonial state in which secular French power was to be heavily reliant on Muslim intermediation. A page was turning. Ibra Fall’s theatrics before his new master were a recognition of that turning page, in phrase and gesture they were saying that we’ve had enough of war, under your leadership and guidance we can learn to live in peace. Not all of this may have been immediately so understood by the holy man in the audience, but it would become clearer with the steady stream of new disciples from the disemployed personnel of the expiring Wolof states. These new disciples were to declare their loyalty with the same ritual phrase as Ibra Fall, the same theatrical humility (although they did keep their clothes on). The ritual of submission for the new recruits was their first step on their individual paths of accommodation with Sufi Islam and then with the colonial state. Through theatre and ritual that new state was beginning to make sense. There was some hard-headed calculation too on the part of either Sufis or secularists, Muslim clerics or French bureaucrats, that they might do well to work together in putting together a new state structure. The colonial state was new in its territorial extent, new in its core principle of administration (secular bureaucracy), and in order to operate effectively it needed to work with such existing structures of authority as could perform an intermediary role. Money was short, bureaucrats were few, the need for willing intermediaries was acute (Migdal 1998).6 And the secularist French certainly weren’t looking for converts to Christianity, so why not turn to Muslim assistance where it was offered? Nor was this merely a deal between French secularist and Senegalese Muslim elites, the elites on either side needed to be sure that the accommodation had enough popular support to be viable in the long run. Plenty of Muslim people had their

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own reasons to breathe a sigh of relief at France’s successfully imposed peace, after many decades of war in the name of religion, jihad. The Mauritanian cleric Saad Buh was thus appealing to the people in 1909 when he wrote an open letter to the Muslim community (of both Senegal and Mauritania) in opposition to any armed resistance to the new colonial order.7 Jihad could not be justified when the Muslim community was itself divided, without a single recognized leader: and it had always been defeated by the French. The French furthermore believed in freedom of religious expression, they treated Muslims and Muslim institutions with respect. Life had not been so great before the French arrival: the victims of jihad had often been other Muslims, and always included women, children, the weak (Robinson 2000: 169–77) Saad Buh knew what he was talking about: his elder brother, Ma El Ainin, to whom he originally sent that letter, was the most important Mauritanian leader of jihad against the French, Moroccan subsidized and regularly defeated. Saad Buh’s letter of 1906, telling the Muslims of the area what a great many of them already knew, was published by the colonial authorities in 1909. Gallic calculation too is in the background here, French subsidies perhaps. The author paid his own price for the publication of the letter, being mocked by some as le marabout chrétien, but he was learned, eloquent, well born and well connected. He could shrug off these jibes. And while the French dearly wanted him to say what he said in that open letter, he did also, I think, really mean what he said. That same letter was then to be the model for two further open letters the following year, 1910, making a similar argument in favour of Muslim co-operation with the French – one from Al Hajj Malik Sy of the Senegalese Tijaniyya, the other from Amadu Bamba: again with some French prompting, but also meaning what they were saying. Amadu Bamba must have had a few thoughts to keep to himself as he wrote those lines, he was not so long returned from a long period of exile (Gabon, then Mauritania) imposed by the French, but at the end of those years he had returned to witness an enormous increase in the following of his new brotherhood. French calculation of the administrative dividend of endorsement from the most widely respected Muslim leaders, lower cost government, met with African Muslim calculation of a dividend to the faithful in peace and greater prosperity. The trade between the two calculations was above all symbolic: the French government with its great show of respect for Muslim institutions; the Muslim leaders with their protestations of loyalty, developing an argument with its proven popular audience appeal. Beyond the calculation of convergence of interest, however, there was also the theatre of its presentation. The French appetite was above all for applause, Muslim cheers for the idea of France as a Muslim power. That’s what empire was about in this part of the world, more than the economic exploitation of meager resources, more than any long-term project of cultural assimilation. Harking back to Napoleon’s Egyptian venture, then to the conquest

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of the Maghreb territories in the later nineteenth century, France as a Muslim power played above all to the audience back home, imperial glory comforting French national pride (Harrison 1988). African Muslims merely needed to cheer on this show, while perhaps doing some of their own play-acting, and they would be rewarded. This was I think Saad Buh’s perception: it took some courage to be the first eminent local Muslim to lead the applause, you would pick up those sneers, but you would also get away with it if you had enough authority and if there were enough people in the audience with their own good reasons to clap. It all made good enough sense for the model of 1909 to be quickly followed by those other open letters. And this was no mere short-term expedient on the part of those eminent Muslim letterwriters. These were arguments for the future of the state in Senegal, arguments for a state with its built-in theatrical component. A plurality of Sufi allegiances, to different saints or brotherhoods, could operate peacefully together within a secularly given institutional structure (Cruise O’Brien 2003: 40–63). The French secularists had no religious ambitions, they gave plenty of symbolic deference to the different Muslim authorities, they didn’t need to divide in order to rule. That deference in the form of an administrative presence at all important Sufi gatherings, in financial or technical assistance for holy construction, did help to keep down the cost of administration, but it did much more than that. Seen from below, through the believers’ eyes, it began to make some acceptable sense of the state: there were those taxes, there was that coercion, but in the domain of symbolic endorsement the state was delivering its most effective return in the area of imagination. There was also return to the population in general in the protection of a market economy, in the necessary coercion at the heart of the state, these were good reasons to accept the new colonial dispensation, good reasons but cold ones. The new state thus sets out as an alien apparatus, formidable and remote, and it gets closer to its subjects only as it learns to present itself as acceptable theatre. Here the state can begin to be seen in warmer terms, as the guardian of Sufi devotion. It builds the roads to the places of pilgrimage, it provides a framework of order, it does the pilgrimage itself. To the believer it begins to look just a little bit like our state, with a hint of emotional warmth to supplement the calculus of loyalty. And the devotees could not fail to note that the state gave its symbolic endorsement to many different Sufi devotional displays, with its framework within which the differently devout could live peacefully together, a Senegalese way of worshipping, of living. Senegal has been fortunate here, in colonial times and since, in having been the state site for an aggregation of ritually based communities, most but not all of them Sufi Muslim. Nor is this merely a matter of good fortune: the different holy communities interact on terms which have been well understood over time, there is an interaction of understanding. The terms of that interaction are on occasion articulated by leading clerics of the different Sufi segments, but they are also

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articulated by the followers: we are all Muslims, one Book, one Prophet. There is an implication here too, that we accept the state as witness to our distinct forms of worship, our different shrines. We accept the state, at low emotional intensity, while we preserve our devotional differences, at high emotional intensity. The emotions are out there on show when the crowds gather for the great annual Sufi occasions of pilgrimage, to the tomb of Al Hadj Malik Sy in Tivouane, the tomb of Amadu Bamba in Touba. These are also the centres of intermediary power for the Senegalese state, a state conspicuously present at the occasion of the pilgrimage, conspicuously respectful. The French knew that they had much to gain by their attendance at the Sufi show, so do the politicians and administrators of independent Senegal. But there is here also the popular celebration of an institution, a shrine, a Sufi community. The pilgrims too have much to gain, here below, in the affirmation of holy community: the greater their number, the greater their political weight within the state (Villalon 1995). Play-acting on the Threshold of Power For the pious (and the less than pious) pilgrims are also in their way play-acting on the threshold of power. The audience now may not be an individual cleric, as at Mbacké Baol long ago, but the whole state of Senegal. The cast will impress that audience in part by their number, in part by their performance of orderly devotion. The ritual of pilgrimage defines a community, with its powerful sense of belonging together, a solidarity taking on the character of an institution. The rite creates the community, the Sufi order or brotherhood, and the community creates structure, so far with Victor Turner (1977). What is crucial here, however, is that the rite of pilgrimage is working not only to create the Sufi community, as it obviously does, but also that it gives imaginative substance to the Senegalese state. History is on the side of a working relationship here, as we have seen from the case of Saad Buh’s open letter of 1909, mapping out the path of accommodation between the Sufi and the secular state. Those arguments have been fully internalized over time at least in the Mouride heartland, in essence that the French have allowed us to escape from the bad old days of armed anarchy and mayhem.8 The Sufis may not have their shrines to secularism, but they have learned by more than a century’s experience what can be the value of a trade in symbolic recognition with the authorities of state. Whether that state be colonial or independent, the terms of symbolic trading remain substantially the same. The state makes a point of its presence at all large-scale Sufi gatherings, it honours the clerics over the mass media, while the holy men in return express the gratitude of their communities for official patronage and protection, for providing a framework of order. We may not quite be in Clifford Geertz’s Negara, when the show is the whole point of the state (Geertz 1980), but the Sufi show of pilgrimage is the most important point of imaginative articulation between the Senegalese state and society. This is where the state can take on a warm meaning, in much

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of le Sénégal profond: not just a nuisance, an imposition and a restriction, but a guardian of cherished devotional practice, a guardian and also a witness, an audience. The point of the state, in the devotee’s perspective, is that it plays an important part in the Sufi show: more than one part, indeed, it not only builds the roads to the shrine, it brings the radio and television, it provides its own respectful audience of government officials, in or out of uniform. The scale has changed, in matters of performance or indeed of play-acting: but those pilgrimages are also putting on their shows before power, the holy power of the saint in his tomb, also the secular power of the state in attendance. These are annual displays of devotion; they are also in their way political rallies, as Leonardo Villalon (1995: 200–65) rightly remarks, assertions of the power of numbers. And the state takes careful account of those numbers, to be borne in mind in matters of government patronage spending, also in matters of national elections to come. There are many such pilgrimages in Senegal; including the two principal ones at Tivouane and Touba which get many hundreds of thousands of people (probably over a million) on the move. The Sufi pilgrimage is where the state meets society; those at Touba and Tivouane are the Senegalese national events of the year. Thus the Sufi show gives emotional texture to the Senegalese state. And it is surely very important here that the Sufis do not look back with any nostalgia to a pre-colonial past: no golden age of another kind of state, nor for that matter one of anarchy. These Sufis like order: the tariqa in its modern form, the order or brotherhood, develops at much the same time as the colonial state in Senegal. Hierarchy and structure are points in common between the tariqa and the state, colonial or post-colonial. The pre-colonial past is if anything a negative backdrop, the anarchy or arbitrary rule which one is glad to have escaped. The modern state, whether colonial or independent, may often enough be resented but on the whole it is accepted as part of the definition of a civilized way of life. The fundamental importance of that popular acceptance should not need underlining: the secular state, in giving its symbolic deference to the Sufi, is thus investing in its own foundations. The state, in its way, is doing its own play-acting: play-acting before the power of the people. The world of state bureaucracy may also be seen as having its own imaginative dimension, the ritual which helps to define that civilized way of life, the world as it ought to be. Ritual defines community, the community of those who practice the ritual: licenses, road signs, permits, football games, pilgrimages, elections … Sufis too know the value of ritual in defining their own communities, and in defining relations between those communities and the secular state. Sufis cherish their esoteric worlds (Brenner 1985), their secrets, and I have elsewhere floated the idea that the secular state may be the Sufi’s secret love (Cruise O’Brien 2003: 49–63). Such a state after all can provide that framework of order within which their devotional pluralism is best protected. And this secret love, if such it may

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be said to be, does not rule out the occasional public row, as with the theatrical confrontation in Touba in 1973 on the occasion of the Mouride brotherhood’s annual pilgrimage, the Great Magal (Cruise O’Brien 2003: 32–48). The Magal is an expected event, a ritual, everybody more or less knows why they have come, what they have to do, where to go and who to see: many small encounters, prayer both private and public. Ritual seems to prevail. But the Magal does also bring together a huge audience, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, national radio and television, for what can depart from ritual to become a piece of political theatre (Calhoun 1994: 116).9 So in 1973, at the height of a drought which had brought many people close to starvation, the audience was ready to give very close attention to what the head of the brotherhood would have to say. This was an expected speech to the pilgrims, part of the ritual of the occasion: and thanks to the government were a normal part of that speech, year after year… But in 1973 the brotherhood’s leader, the Khalifa-General, delivered what seemed to be an uncompromising speech of denunciation, blaming the government for the peasantry’s predicament, seeming to equate the government with Satan. That piece of political theatre would have played well to most of the audience, and no doubt have been startling enough to the government ministers there in the audience. With the advantage of a little hindsight, however, it becomes clear that neither the government nor the state was the loser here: those sharp words did not close the door on negotiation between Mouride leaders and the state’s representatives. 1973’s language of defiance had also been ambiguous enough to leave room for later retreat, and five years later the same Khalifa-General, Abdou Lahatte Mbacké, was to give ringing endorsement to the governing party on the occasion of the 1978 national elections. Thus the theatre of 1973, successfully working on the emotions of a very large audience, helped to prepare a return to ritual in 1978: the government didn’t lose. This is how Sufis do business with the state while keeping their distance, with a close eye to their own symbolic capital. That is how to keep the state’s patronage funding on flow. And all this symbolic interaction is helping to give the state emotional reality (Cruise O’Brien 2003: 32–48). The Election Ritual … and a Performing Stage National elections have provided some defining moments in this symbolic negotiation, when the ritual of representative democracy meets with the ritual of Sufi authority. The primary purpose of an election – to determine who is to govern may in the long run be less important then the creation of a community of those who have participated in the election ritual, a national community. The election is the only national event in which all adults can participate: here one can begin to imagine one’s own role within the state, thus the more effectively to imagine the state itself. So at least it should be, the election a liminal moment, a rite de passage when power ‘must submit to an authority that is nothing less than that of the total community’ (Turner 1977: 101).

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But to do these good things, to create community and authority, the ritual must be correctly performed. The election ritual, correctly performed, may be part of the imaginative structure of statehood, may create national community. When that ritual is widely seen as having been fraudulently performed, however, when the voters rather than seeing themselves to have been active participants find that they have been no more than an audience to a government show (Brigden 2000: 172),10 then the ritual has failed. Election as theatre in this sense, a display of government power, leaves a question mark over the state. In some African states the government manipulation of elections may amount to such a government show: we’ll decide who can vote, we’ll count the votes, we’ll decide what has been free and fair, we can do all this whatever your opinions or feelings may be. You may riot after the election show, you may protest as you will, but the reality of government power remains. Elections in Senegal since independence (1960) have not been quite theatrical in this sense, ‘not merely theatrical’ one might say, but insofar as the elections were increasingly seen by the voter/audience to have been a government show, so the political problems were beginning to accumulate. The same cast, the same governing party, had put on the election show roughly every five years since 1960; there were some retirements over the years, to be sure, some new faces, some renewal in the troupe, some new lines to fit with changing fashions, national and international. But the curtain came down on that show, every five years, with the same happy ending of another triumph for the governing party in the legislative elections, for that party’s candidate in the presidential. A boring show it had become, and to young town dwellers an irksome one, even an insult. In 1988 those young people registered their view of the show with violent post-election rioting, much destruction of property and a few fatalities. For those young people the national elections were no more than government play-acting. And so back to ritual, which holds the community together but on the important condition, that it be generally seen to have been correctly performed. The national election is a ritual of inversion, the underling is for a moment uppermost, deciding who is to govern, and in consequence accepting the power of those elected. Even more importantly the ritual of election defines the community of those taking part, it holds the nation state together. So goes ritual when it works. The problem facing the government of Senegal after 1988, a problem which to its great credit it directly faced, was that of the protection of the ritual of national elections to parliament and presidency. Not merely for reasons of international respectability, but for pressing domestic reasons, the avoidance of the kind of rioting that can precipitate a military coup (Diop and Paye 1994; Cruise O’Brien, Diop and Diouf 2002), the elections had to be generally recognizable as correctly performed, ‘free and fair.’ Which is where the law came into the resolution of this crisis of ritual, with its rules and procedures to define correct performance, tighter election rules. The demand for those tighter rules, among other things

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for an opposition presence in observing the casting and counting of votes, was articulated most effectively by the principal opposition party, the Senegalese Democratic Party led by Me Abdoulaye Wade, university professor and jurist. The law too is part of political ritual, no negligible matter in the politics of Africa, and in this instance legal ritual helped to save the electoral process in Senegal. A curious kind of electoral process it had been, mediated (in rural areas most effectively) by the advice or instructions given by the country’s religious leaders, in particular by the marabouts of the Sufi orders or brotherhoods. That advice, since independence had (almost) always gone in the same direction, to vote for the governing party, source of protection and patronage. And the government always won, helped along by those religious endorsements. The election in these circumstances was beginning to look like play-acting on the national scale, a hoodwinking of the people. It was looking that way to enough of the Muslim people for the very principle of religious electoral instruction to be sharply challenged. So it was that in Touba in 1988, at the residence of the Mouride brotherhood’s leader, some of the disciples used the anonymity of the night to thrust notes of protest over the wall of Serigne Saliou Mbacké’s house, calling for an end to his electoral instructions (his ndiggel, the word was known across the national territory). Such notes of protest in another place might be familiar enough, a light matter for the authorities, but at the core of the holy city of Touba they were unprecedented, a grave warning for the Khalifa-General. The principle of electoral politics, that the underling be for a moment uppermost, was in collision with the principle of hierarchy which tied the Mouride brotherhood together. Political faction threatened the cohesion of the brotherhood, would sap its strength. The custodians of the shrines, Touba and Tivouane in particular, needed to redefine their intermediary role between the believers and the state if they were to retain their national pre-eminence. The governing Socialist Party had been paying well enough for those regular election endorsements, many disciples had benefited from state patronage, but the electoral wind was shifting in favour of one opposition party, the Senegalese Democratic Party of Abdoulaye Wade. Time for the holy hierarchs to stand back: as those notes over the wall had said in Touba, ‘Enough!’ Saliou Mbacké duly declared an end to his issuing of electoral instructions. You want to vote, make up your own mind, don’t come asking me. The shrine could keep out of the machinery of any one political party, avoid the dirt and grease, if it could get back to its position as a sacred show. That was how the Sufis had prospered from colonial times, keeping their distance from the state, keeping the state’s respect. The Sufi show had of course long been an important part of statehood in Senegal, helping the believers to imagine the state: after the crisis of 1988 the shrines of Touba and Tivouane were to re-emerge as political theatres for the reconciliation of intractable national disputes (Cruise O’Brien 2003: 193–213). Thus the state borrows its ritual from the holy places, from the theatres of devotion, and thus popular imagination of statehood is strengthened. Muslim imagination

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of authority, including Muslim play-acting around the electoral process, can be expected to give vitality to representative democracy and to the state in Senegal. And the Sufi shrines are more respected than ever. Abdoulaye Wade’s victory in the Senegalese presidential elections of 2000, the first opposition victory in a national election since independence, was widely seen as a victory for representative democracy in Africa. Not only had the opposition won, it had won by a clear margin, right across the country. The Senegalese electorate being more than 90 per cent Muslim, that election result was recognized as at least a small question mark against the idea of an incompatibility between Islam and representative democracy. Within Senegal the result was greeted with much popular exuberance, perhaps a little surprise. Sopi (change) had for years been the slogan of the opposition; now change was a political reality, a change of government brought about by popular vote: most unusual in Africa, of course, and an occasion for Senegalese national pride. The voters had seen the proof of their own power, they could situate themselves more securely with reference to that state, they could imagine the state as their own. What was less widely recognized was the extent to which the change of 2000 was a victory also for the country’s Sufi establishment, avoiding damage to their own authority and power. The marabouts at the top of the spiritual hierarchies had taken their distance from the issuance of electoral instructions, they had seen the danger of too close an association with the now defeated Socialist Party. They hadn’t needed opinion polls, they knew very well the changing nature of party political preference in the country, they had got out of the way in time. The redefinition of a political role for the national Sufi leadership in the terminal phase of Socialist Party government, a role of conciliation between the competing political parties over the definition of proper election rules leading up to 2000, conciliation also between national trade unions and the government, using the holy places of Tivouane and Touba to give due solemnity to political arbitration, all this brings us back to the theatrics of power in Senegal. The Sufi shrines are here on the threshold of the faltering power of the state itself, saintly bones are securing the institutions of statehood: the new borrows from the old (Diop 2004). The state is the stronger for being imagined in relation to the power of the other world, an inversion of the spiritual anarchy of Stephen Ellis’ Liberia (Ellis 1999). The weakness of the African state had in various ways been recognized before Robert Jackson’s pioneer text on the quasi-state (Jackson 1993) almost a scholarly consensus on institutional deficiency. But as institutions may originate in play-acting,11 Mbacké Baol in 1887, so institutions may be preserved by the play-acting around state-sponsored negotiations in the state of Senegal leading up to the presidential elections of 2000, politicians and trade unionists in conference: not such a weak state after all. The structural bones of authority are thus given imaginative life, as the state has its place in the people’s imagination. The state is itself an actor, and it has shown that it can dance.

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References Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York and London, Verso). Bloom, Harold (1999). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (London, Fourth Estate). Brenner, Louis (1985). ‘The Esoteric Sciences in West African Islam,’ in B. M. Du Toit and I. Abdallah (eds.), African Healing Strategies (Buffalo, Trado Medic Books). Brigden, Susan (2000). New Words, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485–1603 (London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press). Calhoun, Craig (1994). Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (Berkeley and London, University of California Press). Clapham, Christopher (1991). ‘State, Society and Political Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia,’ in James Manor (1991): 242–66. Cruise O’Brien, Donal B. (1971). The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford, Clarendon Press). — (1972). ‘Modernisation, Order and the Erosion of a Democratic Ideal: American Political Science 1960–1970,’ Journal of Development Studies, 8 (4): 351–78. — (1975). Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). — (1991). ‘The Show of State in a Neocolonial Twilight, Francophone Africa,’ in J. Manor (1991): 145–65. — (2003). Symbolic Confrontations: Muslims Imagining the State in Africa (London, Hurst and Co.). Cruise O’Brien, Donal B., Momar C. Diop and Mamadou Diouf (2002). La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal (Paris, Karthala). Diop, M. C. (ed.) (2004). Gouverner le Sénégal: entre ajustement structurel et développement durable (Paris, Karthala). Diop, M. C. and Paye, Moussa (1994). �������������������������������������� ‘Armée et Pouvoir au Sénégal,’ Dakar, typescript. Ellis, Stephen (1999). The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (London, Hurst and Co.). Esherick, Joseph W. and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (1992). ‘Acting Out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China,’ in E. J. Perry and J. N. Wasserstrom (eds.), Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (Boulder, Westview Press): 28–66. Fujitani, F. (1992). ‘Electronic Pageantry and Japan’s Symbolic Emperor,’ in Journal of Asian Studies, 51 (4): 824–50. Geertz, Clifford N. (1980). The Theater State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton, Princeton University Press).

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Goffman, Erving (1971). The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, Penguin). Harrison, Christopher (1988). France and Islam in West Africa, 1869–1960 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Jackson, Robert (1993). Quasi–States (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Manor, James (1991). Rethinking Third World Politics (London and New York, Longman). Mbembe, Achille (1991). ‘Power and Obscenity in the Postcolonial Period. The Case of Cameroun,’ in J. Manor (1991): 166–82. Migdal, Joel (1998). Strong Societies and Weak States, State/Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Roberts, Allen F. and Mary Nooter Roberts (eds.) (n.d.). A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles, UCLA Museum of Cultural History), explanatory catalogue. Robinson, David (2000). Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania (Athens/Oxford, Ohio University Press/James Currey). Toulabor, Comi (1991). ‘La dérision politique en liberté à Lomé,’ in Politique Africaine, 45: 134–41. Turner, Victor (1977). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Ithaca, Cornell Paperbacks). Villalon, Leonardo (1995). Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Wagner, Rudolph (1991). ‘Political Institutions, Discourse and Imagination in China and Tiananmen,’ in J. Manor (1991): 121–44. Wedeen, Lisa. (1998). ‘Acting as if. Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria,’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40 (3): 503–23.

Notes

1 I follow Weber in his insistence on the importance of status here, of status groups defined by what people imagine them to be. 2 To some readers the word show may suggest a performance without much purchase on the emotions, but here it is an umbrella term, including the emotionally penetrating as well as the superficial. 3 Joseph W. Esherick and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, considering the confrontation with students on Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989, see this in terms of state ritual opposing student theatre. The students found that ritual boring as well as oppressive. There’s a contrast to be made with Africa, where state ritual as a subject is very far from boring.

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4 Ibra Fall (1858–1930) dressed like a warrior (a tyeddo), but his oral historian Moussa Sall denied in interview that he had ever been a warrior (although his grandfather was a tyeddo). He was certainly to become the most important single disciple in the Mouride brotherhood, a master of organization and perhaps also a warrior of make-believe. 5 Amadu Bamba (1850–51 to 1927) was the saintly founder of the Mouride brotherhood (a Sufi order or tariqa, also the most politically powerful religious organization in Senegal). Amadu Bamba is a Senegalese national hero, credited with many miraculous achievements in the face of French persecution. His image, in a white robe with face half concealed, is everywhere to be seen, and his holy poetry often loudly to be heard. See the splendidly illustrated museum catalogue, Roberts and Roberts (n.d.). 6 These were of course also features of colonial rule in general, making it imperative for colonial rulers to turn to such ‘collaborating elites’ as they could find among the peoples being governed. 7 The letter began its life as a counsel to his brother, the jihad leader Ma El Ainin in 1906, when it probably never reached its destination. In 1909 the Governor-General of French West Africa had one thousand copies printed, Arabic original and French translation, then circulated in West Africa and Morocco. Saad Buh (1850–51 to 1917) was a Mauritanian Muslim cleric and scholar, a very important intermediary with the French conquerors and administrators of the SenegalMauritania region, an architect of accommodation with colonial rule. He became enormously fat, obese, and provided an image of religious venality for some French observers: but inside all that blubber was a formidable mind and a brave man. 8 Interviews with a great many Mourides in and around Touba, 1966–7, 1975 and since. Informants did not show particular affection for France or the French, but they often remarked how well their community had fared under colonial government. Even more often they referred to the pre-colonial past with what one might sum up as a shudder. 9 As at Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989 a state funeral assembled huge crowds who could provide an audience for the student theatre of democracy. For Craig Calhoun the statue of a goddess of Democracy was an act of theatre, presenting the student movement as ‘the monumental equivalent of a government.’ My thanks to the Nuffield Foundation, to SOAS and to some staff at Fudan University for making possible discussion of democratic matters in 1996 Shanghai. 10 The historian Susan Brigden quotes Sir/St. Thomas More’s verdict on the power struggles in England at the time of Richard III: ‘King’s games, as it were stage plays … in which poor men were but lookers on.’ 11 To pick out one example, the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin; a handful of intellectuals putting on a performance of an Irish Republic in the General Post Office, disuniting the United Kingdom in the imagination. The execution of those intellectuals, their chosen martyrdom, then prepared Irish public opinion for the reality of an independent Irish state, the Irish Free State of 1922 (retrospectively this might be seen as the very beginning of the twentieth-century dissolution of the British Empire).

2 ‘IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE’ The ‘People’s Court’ and the Iraqi Revolution (1958–1960) Charles Tripp

This chapter will examine the role and significance of the Special Supreme Military Court, established in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the military coup d’état which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy in July 1958. Intended ostensibly to put on trial the ‘enemies of the people and of the revolution,’ it served initially as a public stage for the humiliation and punishment of a number of people associated with the ousted monarchical regime. However, it soon became the site for the trials of people who had participated in the overthrow of the monarchy, but who had then turned against the leader of the Iraqi republic, Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim. As such it became a stage for the denunciation not only of the conspirators and their plans, but also of the man who was accused of inspiring and guiding them, President Gamal Abd al-Nasir of Egypt. The ‘People’s Court,’ as it came to be known, exemplifies much that is associated with the symbolic politics of revolutionary change. In Iraq, as elsewhere, ‘the people’ did not make the revolution. Instead, the old regime was brought down by a small self-selected group of army officers, and ‘the people’ were then told that it had been made in their name. In the early hours of 14 July 1958, after military units had seized the radio station, Iraqis were told to flood onto the streets of the capital to reclaim the country from the imperialists and feudalists. Large numbers responded and began to exact revenge on figures and symbols of the monarchy, threatening a more widespread disorder. They were then told in no uncertain terms to return home and to abide by the military curfew (Batatu 1978: 800–7; de Gaury 1961: 190–201; Caractacus 1959: 117–36). In many respects this epitomized the ambivalent attitude of the new military rulers toward the people of Iraq: as an abstraction, they were at the heart of the revolution, but

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in all their unruly diversity and particularity, they threatened the order which the new regime tried to impose. It became necessary, therefore, for them to be told what the revolution was about and what their role was to be. In this way a story was being devised and the revolution was being discursively constructed after the moment of the seizure of power. However, the Free Officers who carried out the coup d’état of July 1958 agreed only on the need to remove the monarchy and to break the link with Great Britain. Beyond that they had very different visions for the future of Iraq and very different ideas about the true purpose of the revolution. The months following the overthrow of the monarchy, therefore, witnessed an intense and sometimes violent struggle between competing narratives of the Iraqi revolution. The People’s Court thus provides a way of examining these narratives and represents a particular theatrical moment which, for a limited period, encapsulated the dramatic presentation of the story of that revolution for public consumption (Smith 1996: 239). A narrative in this sense is both a representation of power and its embodiment. However, the story also needs to be communicated in ways that engage people’s attention and play upon their feelings. It is in this setting that the ‘theatrical moment’ is born. Artfully stage-managed by those who have seized the initiative, it comprises a spectacle that feeds upon the emotions and fears associated with sudden and violent change. Public excitement, anxiety and enthusiasm can be stimulated and channelled through ceremonies, demonstrations, parades, party congresses, films, media events, public art and the organization of symbolic space, courts, trials and executions. All of these form part of the repertoire used to allow vicarious public participation in the new ordering of power. Nowhere has this been more noticeable in the aftermath of changes of regime than in the staging of trials, bringing before the people their former rulers and those who benefited from the privileges of the old order. The court provides an ideal stage, as both the embodiment of the justice so long denied and a site empowered to decide individuals’ fates. It lends itself to the capture of the ‘theatrical moment,’ dramatizing key elements of the dominant narrative, mobilizing people around certain important symbols and providing a demonstration of power. Presentation and the drama of representation thus become integral to the effectiveness of the message, lending themselves to dramaturgical analysis since drama and dramatic quality are at their heart. By the same token, however, as the Iraqi revolutionaries discovered, such moments are also prone to the laws of dramatic decay. Where the actors lose their performative edge, or the audience becomes bored, or the issues addressed no longer seem so clear cut, the show can lose its dramatic impact and the moment passes. It can also be argued that the theatrical moment may be only one aspect of a continuing struggle between narrative and counter-narrative – a moment in a larger setting of symbolic display and discursive process, ‘a play within a play.’ A demonstration, a ceremony or a courtroom become elements in a larger drama,

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linked to the idea that any state is in part a kind of performance, discursively created, through narratives woven around various selected features. The theatrical moment thus has much to say about the construction of political realities and, in this case specifically about key aspects of the Iraqi revolution. The staging, the repertoire of symbols, the style of representation, the theatricality or orchestrated drama of the occasion tell us about the way in which the dirigeants perceived their audience and about the nature of that audience. It can also tell us something about the nature of the narrative itself: its rhetoric, its logic and development, establishing a ‘grammar’ of narrative power, captured or crystallized in a certain kind of performance. In this respect, it may contain hints about larger aspects of power, working their way through other media in the state and through the process of state performance itself. Framing the People’s Court: Script, Stage and Cast A theatrical moment needs to be managed, scripted, staged and set in a way that heightens its symbolism, enhances its drama and spreads its message as widely as possible. In this respect, the People’s Court lent itself to the dramatic representation of heroes and villains, of vanquished and victor and to the emphasis on crime and punishment. In terms of theatricality, it provided a stage where these roles could be played out and the narrative of the revolution could be enacted. It also provided space for an audience which participated by responding to cues from the presiding authorities, thereby validating the enactment and also giving cues for the much larger, unseen audience following the proceedings on radio and television in the homes, cafés and schools of Iraq (Hare and Blumberg 1988: 18–20, 49–50). The formal script was provided by Law 7 of 7 August 1958 which outlined the authority and procedures of the court and defined the crimes it was competent to try. These fell into two categories. The first was conspiracy: ‘steering the policy of the country in a direction at variance with the national interest by bringing the country close to the danger of war or by making it a theatre of war,’ as well as ‘using the armed forces of the country against sister Arab states or threatening so to use them,’ meddling in their internal affairs or encouraging foreign powers to intervene, ‘financing conspiracies against their governments or publishing calumnies about their leaders.’ The second crime was corruption, defined as suppressing fundamental freedoms, subverting the constitution, issuing laws in the interests of individuals and groups at the expense of the public, rigging elections, obstructing legislation aimed at realizing social justice, squandering government funds and accepting bribes. In addition, the court would also apply the Baghdad Penal Code and the Baghdad Criminal Procedure Law in all cases not covered by the new law (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 8–13). The criminal activity defined in the new law carried sentences of imprisonment with forced labour, whereas in the Baghdad Penal Code a range of crimes carried the death penalty. The sentences

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of the court were final and no appeal would be allowed, but all death sentences needed the approval of the minister of defence (Abd al-Karim Qasim) who could also commute sentences handed down by the court and revoke them (Dann 1969: 46–8). The court was arranged in order to maximize the impact and spectacle of the proceedings. It was held in the horseshoe-shaped hall of the former Chamber of Deputies, the five presiding judges (all military officers) sitting on a raised dais where once the President of the Chamber had sat. To their right, also on a raised platform and thus visible throughout the chamber were the Military Public Prosecutor and his staff. In the well of the court, facing the panel of judges, stood the accused, penned in by a chest-high construction of wooden bars and to the left of this, also facing the panel, was a microphone where the witnesses would stand to testify. Occupying the seats in the horseshoe and in the visitors’ gallery were the five hundred or so members of the public, official visitors and journalists. The presiding judge, Colonel Fadhil Abbas al-Mahdawi stressed the significance of the setting: ‘this is the building which witnessed the disgraceful acts of the men who collaborated with imperialism in former days, who flouted the constitution daily, the place of the corrupt, the enemies of the people’ (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 6). The inference was that the people had now come to claim what was properly theirs. The dais on which the judges sat was flanked by the Iraqi flag and by panels of Qur’anic verses. However, above the heads of the five presiding judges was a larger panel with the words bism al-sha`b (in the Name of the People) in flowing red thuluth script. The religious reference and the whiff of blasphemy in such a formulation was only reinforced by al-Mahdawi who began court sessions by loudly proclaiming ‘Bismillah wa-bism al-sha`b’ (in the Name of God and the People) (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 6–7; Caractacus 1959: 157). Colonel al-Mahdawi was the key figure. He was the President of the Court, but he was also the impresario who ensured its heightened theatricality and the lead actor who dominated the performance. Born in Baghdad in 1915 to a relatively poor family, he graduated from the Iraqi Military Academy in 1939. He had not had a very distinguished military career and had no legal background, but had been chosen by Brigadier Qasim to head the court for a number of reasons. In the first place, his absolute loyalty to the person of Qasim himself was ensured by the fact that he was his cousin. He could therefore be relied upon to steer a course supporting Qasim’s version of events through the coming turbulent months of Iraqi politics when the competing visions of Iraq’s future and thus the nature of the revolution threw into question many of the alliances formed prior to July 1958. He was also an ebullient and extrovert character, a sometime poet with a wide knowledge of Arabic literature and a feel for language – and as it turned out a mastery of invective – which admirably equipped him for his role, earning him the epithet lisan al-sha`b (the People’s Tongue) (Khadduri 1969: 80–1; Yousif 1991: 185; Daniel 1991: 15; Muhakamat Vol. 1: alif ).

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Al-Mahdawi was also the principal exponent of the purposes of the court: ‘The People’s Court was set up to bring the scales of justice to bear on the enemies of God and of the country’ (Muhakamat: Vol. 1: 2). As he explained ‘the revolution wants to impose just punishment in the name of the people on those who violated the rights of the people and interfered with its life … The trials show us the depths of corruption of the men of the old regime, their lack of patriotism, their oppression … ; the extent of collaboration between the monarchy and the imperialists; its links with the traders of war and the spillers of the people’s blood’ (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 3–4). This outlined the initial purpose of the court in marking a sharp break with the ‘bygone black era and the era of the new dawn in which the country now finds itself,’ allowing the people to see that ‘tyranny and oppression had fallen beneath the blows of freedom.’ In doing so, al-Mahdawi was equally keen to stress the debt ‘our struggling people’ owed to ‘its fearless army, led by the Hero Leader, the Great Saviour, the Sole Leader of Iraq, Abd al-Karim Qasim’ (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 1). The court was also intended to be instructive and thus effective in the continuing struggles of the revolution: ‘The court has become a great school for the Iraqi people and for the Arab people, inculcating a sound education, a peaceful formation, both cultured and free, publicizing true and wholesome democratic principles, and cleansing the minds of some of the intellectuals who had been poisoned by reactionary, imperialist culture. At the same time, it has become a popular democratic weapon (al-silah al-sha`bi al-dimuqrati) against the attack on the principles of the revolution which the criminal Abd al-Salam Arif tried to lead in the first weeks of the revolution’ (Muhakamat Vol. 5: ha and ta). These remarks, made in May 1959, and the reference to Abd al-Salam Arif (Qasim’s fellow Free Officer who had since fallen out with Qasim and had been tried and sentenced by the Court in December/January 1959) demonstrate the shift that was taking place in the Court’s purpose. No longer concerned with the displaced ancien régime, but preoccupied instead with the developing intense struggle with Gamal Abd al-Nasir of Egypt and his many sympathizers in Iraq, the court was represented as having a key role to play on the wider stage of Arab politics: ‘This court is a democratic platform. It is a true political guide to our united Iraqi people and for our glorious Arab nation, despite its imperialist, reactionary and dictatorial enemies. We are proud to be the Mecca of honourable, cultural freedom throughout the world’ (Shwadran 1960: 62, footnote 26). Al-Mahdawi was backed up by a number of fellow officers and court officials. Four other military officers sat as judges on the dais with him, but they remained largely mute. More important for the proceedings and the theatricality of the court, was the Military Public Prosecutor, Colonel Majid Muhammad Amin, who had the responsibility for making the case against the accused – and whose teams of examining magistrates were responsible for extracting pre-trial statements from the defendants, as well as priming the witnesses for the prosecution. He threw

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himself into the part with gusto, adopting much the same style as al-Mahdawi himself: denouncing not only the defendants, but also the enemies of the revolution in Iraq and beyond, interrupting, bullying and threatening witnesses and defendants – and playing to the gallery. Colonel Amin was equally aware of the purposeful theatricality of the proceedings, remarking on the first anniversary of the court’s establishment: ‘The trials are still meeting with great response on the part of various groups of the people who suffer boredom when there are no trials. The masses like the remarks and sense of humour in this court’ (Shwadran 1960: 62, footnote 26). Al-Mahdawi and Amin were not simply playing to the audience in the courtroom itself. They were also conscious of the growing audience in the country at large. Initially broadcast on Baghdad Radio, the proceedings were soon being transmitted on television. As a photograph of the time shows, two large television cameras were installed in the courtroom, one focused on the accused in the dock, on the witnesses and on the audience behind them, the other situated in the body of the court and focused on the judges and the public prosecutor (Muhakamat Vol. 2: 378). In 1956–57 Iraq had been the first country in the Arab world to create a national television network, and the novelty and immediacy of the medium undoubtedly added to the excitement and impact of the transmission. There are many reports of the popularity of the proceedings among audiences gathered around television sets in private houses and cafés, rapt in the performance and bursting into applause at key moments (Yousif 1991: 185). However, by the same token, it was also possible for the defendants to play to the wider audience. The officers of the court could to some degree control the audience in the courtroom, but it was obviously much harder to exert a similar degree of control over the unseen audience throughout the country. The fact that the court often allowed the accused to make long speeches in their own defence ran the risk of losing control of the situation, despite numerous interruptions and comments from the bench and from the prosecution. This led to the trial in camera of the first two ‘counter-revolutionary’ cases, where figures prominent in the regime (Abd al-Salam Arif ) or in nationalist history (Rashid Ali al-Gailani) were brought before the court. It also led to the abrupt interruption and four-day suspension of television broadcasts, due to ‘technical difficulties,’ during the trial of the most eloquent of the Arab nationalist officers charged with masterminding the Mosul revolt of March 1959 (Shwadran 1960: 36, 40, 68; Daniel 1991: 15–16). Proceedings of the Court: the People’s School, the People’s Pulpit The atmosphere and conduct of the Court changed noticeably over the months of its existence. In the early trials, al-Mahdawi was restrained, polite and respectful to the defendants, if prone to sarcasm. Audience participation, which became so notorious a feature of the later trials, was largely absent, although cues for

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laughter would be given by al-Mahdawi (Caractacus 1959: 156–8; Dann 1969: 49; Muhakamat Vols 1–4). Within a few months, however, the proceedings took on a very different character. Al-Mahdawi and Amin adopted a markedly hostile attitude to the accused – and to a number of the witnesses who found themselves in the dock as a result of exchanges with the officers of the court. Ridicule and outright abuse became their stock in trade, phrased to provoke maximum applause from the audience which was encouraged to respond not simply by cheering, but also by reciting poetry prepared for the occasion, leading some in the audience to perform a dabkah (dance) to show their approval of the poet and his or her subject matter (Khadduri 1969: 80–1; Shwadran 1960: 62–3). Al-Mahdawi himself recited his own poems, extolling the revolution and the ‘Sole Leader’ Abd al-Karim Qasim and denouncing his enemies. Increasingly, the trials would be preceded as well as interrupted by these performances, giving al-Mahdawi the opportunity to hold forth at length upon issues of the day. Sometimes, this would involve denunciation of Gamal Abd al-Nasir and imperialism. Sometimes, it would lead to long disquisitions on cultural and literary questions which had no bearing on the trial or on immediate political questions. As the trials proceeded these speeches and lectures would take up increasing amounts of time, interspersed with often rather peremptory interrogation of the defendants or examination of witnesses. The changing nature of the trials may partly have been due to a process alluded to by al-Mahdawi himself when he remarked in May 1959: ‘If we returned to the early days of our court, we would discover that our comments were short and somewhat reserved. However, after we felt confident of our people’s support of this court, the support of our nation and of all free peoples throughout the world, we gave the comments, or rather the events in this court a purely popular character – from the people, to the people and by the people’ (Shwadran 1960: 62, footnote 26). In other words, as al-Mahdawi (and behind him Qasim) realized the popularity of the performances and the value of the court as the only public forum for the delivery of the various messages which the government wanted to communicate to Iraq and to the world at large, the aspirations of the court – and of its presiding judge – became larger and its performative aspects more extravagant. However, in addition to this, the nature of the proceedings changed with the changing nature of the cases that came before it. Broadly speaking, four different kinds of case were put before the court. The first grouping of cases – the trials of figures associated with the monarchy – had initially defined the purpose of the court, underlining the moral value of the new order in Iraq and illustrating the evil that had been overthrown. As the Public Prosecutor said in his opening remarks in the first case, that of General Ghazi al-Daghistani (former deputy Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Armed Forces): ‘The fourteenth of July was a dividing line between oppression and justice, between shadows and light, between

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evil and good, between death and life, between slavery and freedom, between subservience and pride’ (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 23). Over one hundred people were indicted under the new law of 7 August, but it was a very mixed list. There were a few prominent politicians of the old regime (three ex-prime ministers and a number of former ministers), some senior army officers (a former chief of staff and his deputy), as well as some notorious former security officers (the former head of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and the former director of the prison for political offenders in Baghdad). However, most of the accused were minor officials, middle-ranking officers and broadcasters (Muhakamat Vols 1–4, 6–12). The most powerful figures of the old regime had all been killed during the first days of the coup d’état: King Faisal and Crown Prince Abd al-Ilah had been gunned down in the courtyard of the royal palace together with much of the royal family in the first hours of the coup; Nuri al-Sa`id, effectively ruler of Iraq from the early 1940s, had been shot in the street as he tried to escape from Baghdad the following day. Consequently, the court was left with a few of their collaborators and a number of subordinate officials – a point repeatedly made in defence of the accused at the first trial when it was argued that officers and officials had to serve whomsoever was in power (Muhakamat Vol. 1: 280–1, 351–5). The court appeared to accept this defence in the case of the broadcasters who were all acquitted – and who made suitably validating statements in praise of the justice of the court (Muhakamat Vol. 3: 790–803; 839–66). More promising for the larger purposes of the court was the trial of a former prime minister, Fadhil al-Jamali. As the Military Public Prosecutor stated at the opening of his trial in September 1958: ‘God has willed it that there remains with us one of the heads which felt the hand of the people on the fourteenth of July – one of the heads who had plotted against the homeland … The People’s Court will allow us to uncover the black episode in the history of imperialism and oppression in our dear Iraq’ (Muhakamat Vol. 3: 949). Al-Jamali had been respected as an Arab nationalist and educationalist since the 1920s and, as prime minister in the early 1950s, he had gained a reputation as a liberal and a reformer. However, he had been minister of foreign affairs in 1947 when the abortive Portsmouth Treaty had been negotiated with Great Britain, as well as Iraqi representative at the United Nations during the period of the Baghdad Pact, personifying the alignment of Iraq with the Western powers in the Cold War (Tripp 2002: 133–6). These were the crimes for which he was now indicted (Muhakamat Vol. 3: 957–8). In general, the trial was respectful. Al-Jamali was allowed to appoint his own defence lawyers, little audience participation was encouraged and al-Jamali made a two-and-a-half-hour speech in his defence. Unlike many of the trials which followed, al-Mahdawi did not interrupt, merely saying at one point: ‘The right of defence is sacred,’ sensing perhaps a certain restiveness in the courtroom

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as al-Jamali held forth (Muhakamat Vol. 3: 1114). His speech – broadcast uninterrupted – was an eloquent defence of al-Jamali’s position and sought to subvert the court itself and the narrative that it was trying to promote. In particular, he drew attention to his status as a civilian brought before the military institution of the court. Citing the poet Abu Tammam – ‘The sword is a more trustworthy form of communication than books; in its cutting edge lies the boundary between seriousness and frivolity’ – he went on to say to his accusers ‘you are men of the sword and I am a man of theories and books,’ challenging the claims that the court was a ‘platform of democracy’ or that it represented the ‘voice of the people’ (Muhakamat Vol. 3: 1085–7, 1112–5). Possibly as a result of witnessing this astute performance, one contemporary observer remarked: ‘If the trials were staged, the producer and stage manager were amateurs’ (Caractacus 1959: 158). Al-Jamali’s spirited defence did not, however, prevent the court from sentencing him to death after the three-day trial, but, like most of the death sentences imposed on former politicians and officials of the monarchy, the sentence was commuted by Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1960 to a term of imprisonment. The final group of former officials and politicians of that era who were found guilty and were sentenced to death were not so fortunate. This group included the only four servants of the old regime to be executed as a result of their trials in the court: the former minister of the interior, Sa`id Qazzaz, the former head of the CID, the former director of the prison for political prisoners in Baghdad and the former governor of Baghdad itself. These men had a very different and far more sinister reputation than that of al-Jamali. They had all been involved in the repression associated with Nuri al-Sa`id’s rule of Iraq and some of them had also been responsible for the violent suppression of the periodic outbursts of civil unrest and trade union activity that had been so marked a feature of Iraq in the 1950s (Batatu 1978: 666–70, 690–3, 749–57). As the Public Prosecutor suggested, these men had too much blood on their hands to be acquitted, they were ‘the pillars of the dictatorial police state of Nuri, Abd al-Ilah and Faisal’ (Muhakamat Vol. 10: 3795). These trials took place at the end of 1958 and the beginning of 1959 and provided ample opportunity for the darker side of the old regime to be exposed. A long procession of witnesses testified to torture and brutality in the prisons of the monarchy or spoke of the violence which the security forces had used against demonstrators and striking workers. These testimonies provoked loud and sympathetic cheers, declamations and poetry recitals from the audience. In turn, they allowed al-Mahdawi to hold forth about the evils of the past and the glories of the present, the liberating role of the army and the heroic stance of Abd al-Karim Qasim (Muhakamat Vol. 10: 3829–30, 3869–71, 3942). However, a significant feature of Qazzaz’ trial was that amongst the charges brought against him was his encouragement of ‘the great feudalists to flout the law and to treat their people as they wished,’ particularly his instigation of ‘the

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great feudal tribal shaikhs in their attacks on the towns of al-Hayy (the tribes of Shaikh Abdallah al-Yasin and of Shaikh Balasim Ali) and of al-Na`miyah (the tribes of Shaikh Muhammad al-Habib and Amir Rubay`ah)’ in order to suppress the civil unrest there (Muhakamat Vol. 10: 3794, 3798). Yet it was noteworthy that not a single one of the ‘great feudal tribal shaikhs’ themselves, even those named, were brought before the court, suggesting that Qasim was more interested in exacting symbolic retribution through these officials than in unleashing a direct assault on key figures of Iraq’s rural social structure. By the time that the last of these trials of the officials of the monarchy were taking place, in March 1959, a larger drama was unfolding across the country – a drama which the court both reflected and helped to heighten. Some indication of this was already apparent in January 1959, when the Public Prosecutor broke off his denunciation of the brutality of the monarchy to assert that imperialism had found ‘another way of attacking us and our dear republic with new instruments which were only yesterday a symbol of the Arab liberation struggle against imperialism,’ claiming ‘we are very surprised by the attacks broadcast by the Voice of the Arabs (the Egyptian broadcasting service) against our democratic republic and against the People’s Court.’ Throwing down the gauntlet to Abd al-Nasir, he declared: ‘We consider any (Arab) national who plots against the Iraqi republic to be a traitor to the free Arab nation who will not escape from the anger of the people nor be able to hide from the face of justice of the People’s Court’ (Muhakamat Vol. 10: 3796–7). Increasingly, the court became a stage for the wider drama of competing claims to leadership of the Arab world. Amin had been referring to two trials held in camera, the alleged role of the Egyptian authorities in these cases and the reaction of the Egyptian media to the sentences handed down. The trials had arisen from two separate alleged conspiracies. The first involved Rashid Ali al-Gailani in December 1958. He was accused of hatching a plot with disgruntled Arab nationalist officers and tribal landlords to bring down the new regime and to end the perceived communist influence behind it. The trial was held in camera and the proceedings were only published some two years later. As they indicate, despite the gravity of the charges, there was little effort to inflame the passions of the Iraqis and al-Gailani put up a very weak defence. In the absence of an audience, none of the parties involved indulged in the rhetorical posturing which was becoming so marked a feature of the public trials. There were in fact two trials: the first, from 9 to 10 December, acquitted al-Gailani, but ordered him into exile for five years. However, his associates were found guilty and sentenced to death. The second trial, from 15 to 17 December, relied heavily on the testimony of these associates and found al-Gailani guilty, sentencing him to death as well (Muhakamat Vol. 5: 1753–1817, 1819–1973). The closed nature of the proceedings was clearly due to a reluctance to use the court as it had been used to indict the ancien régime. This was the first trial of conspirators against the new republican regime and involved a figure who was

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still looked upon by some in Iraq and elsewhere as an Arab nationalist hero. At this stage, there may also have been some reluctance to engage openly in a propaganda war with Gamal Abd al-Nasir. Similar considerations came into play in the trial of Qasim’s erstwhile associate, Colonel Abd al-Salam Arif. The trial opened on 27 December 1958 and was also held in camera. Arif had been demoted by Qasim in September and packed off as ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany in October, but had secretly returned to Iraq in November and had been promptly arrested. The charge was that he had conspired with Arab nationalist and Ba`thist army officers to carry out a coup d’état and that he had tried to assassinate Qasim. On both counts he was charged under the existing Baghdad Penal Code or the Martial Law Ordinance (as had been al-Gailani and his associates) which proscribed death for anyone who tried to overthrow the government by force or who carried arms against any public official (Muhakamat Vol. 5: 1975–82). He was acquitted on the first count and found guilty only on the second. Again, in the closed session al-Mahdawi and all the other participants were restrained in their manner. For his part, Arif made a passionate speech in his defence, claiming absolute loyalty to Qasim and arguing that his championing of Arab unity was at the heart of the revolution since the Iraqis were an Arab people. However, he denied both that he was pressing for immediate union with the United Arab Republic (the main Nasserist demand at the time) and that he was a member of any political party. The court found him guilty of trying to assassinate Qasim and sentenced him to death, but also recalled his role in the revolution and recommended that ‘our genius leader’ Abd al-Karim Qasim should show him mercy (Muhakamat Vol. 5: 2175–90, 2225–7). These two trials signalled a change in the procedure of the court, not simply because they were held in camera, but because they were concerned with conflicts at the heart of the new regime. The events of March 1959 in Mosul meant that these could no longer be disguised and the court was pressed into service. A great rally had been organized in Mosul by the Peace Partisans and the Communist Party as a show of force against Arab nationalists, Nasserists and others. However, it was met by the revolt of troops of the Mosul garrison, led by disgruntled Arab nationalist Free Officers. This in turn was resisted by troops loyal to the government and by civilians, leading to prolonged and bitter fighting between various sections of the population. As Batatu says: ‘The struggle between nationalists and communists had released age-old antagonisms, investing them with an explosive force and carrying them to the point of civil war’ (Batatu 1978: 866–89). For four days the city was convulsed by violence before government troops could reassert control. A number of the ringleaders of the military revolt were killed in the fighting, but large numbers of arrests were made and over the coming months some 75 people, mostly military officers, went on trial before the court. The first trial – of four air force officers – began on 24 March 1959.

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Al-Mahdawi and Amin signalled in their opening speeches that this was going to be a major performance in the theatre of denunciation, not simply of the accused, but of Abd al-Nasir as well. He was now linked to all the evils once attached to the old regime: he was a dictator who hated democracy, a fascist who hated socialism, a servant of imperialism who was a traitor to the Arab nation. He was also denounced as a megalomaniac who wanted to control the Arab world and Iraq in particular (Muhakamat Vol. 12: 4839–42).1 The public image of Abd al-Nasir as the hero of Arab nationalism was stood on its head and he was repeatedly held up to ridicule, allowing al-Mahdawi to become increasingly inventive in his insults, to the amusement of the audience, as he attacked ‘the vile president, the son of Ramses, the windy quack, the tool of the English and the French’ (al-ra’is al-khasis, ibn ramsis, wa-dajal munfis wa-`amil al-inkliz wal-fransis) – a rhyme that pleased him so much he used it more than once during these trials, adding further epithets as they occurred to him (Muhakamat Vol. 12: 4893, 4847). The trial showed, however, that behind the comic effect and the theatricality of the proceedings, there was a life and death struggle for the future of Iraq. At the end of the testimonies of the four accused, al-Mahdawi worked himself into a frenzy of denunciation, insulting the accused and Abd al-Salam Arif who were ‘all working for the greatest ass, the ass of imperialism (himar al-isti`mar), Jamal the murderer, whose hands are stained with the blood of martyrs’ (Muhakamat Vol. 12: 4948–59). All four officers were found guilty, sentenced to death on 28 March and executed two days later by firing squad at the Umm Tbul firing range near Baghdad. Thousands gathered to watch their execution. When the deed was done, the crowd reportedly applauded this display of ruthlessness. Ironically, despite the number of death sentences handed down by the Court to servants of the ancien régime, the executions of these four officers were the first to be carried out since the coup d’état of July 1958 (Dann 1969: 180). From March onwards a succession of trials took place of those accused of complicity in the Mosul revolt. Some were acquitted, but the majority were found guilty and a significant proportion of those – usually the more senior officers – were sentenced to death. Of these, half were in fact executed. As in the first trial, the theatricality of the trials was heightened by the long speeches made by al-Mahdawi, the versifying, the increasingly ingenious and humorous epithets used against the enemies of the revolution, the insults rained down upon the accused and the encouraged audience participation. However, as the weeks wore on and as the first shock of the Mosul events passed, the sight of a succession of uniformed young officers in the dock, arguing for their lives and being humiliated by al-Mahdawi and Amin may have had counter-productive effects. The possibility that this was the case became most evident in the final trial of the series, that of the alleged ringleaders of the Mosul revolt. This trial brought before the court a number of prominent Free Officers

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including the popular Brigadier Nazim al-Tabaqchali and the founder of the Free Officers’ organization itself, Colonel Rifat al-Hajj Sirri. It began on 12 August and lasted for nearly a month. However, it was used by the accused to subvert the entire proceedings. After the almost ritual openings by al-Mahdawi and Amin, denouncing ‘Nasserist imperialism’ and the ‘Fascist Nasserist group,’ working the audience up for the show that was to come, the first witness (who was also one of the accused) retracted all the statements he had made to the examining magistrates, alleging that they had been extracted under torture. The refusal of the witness to play the part allotted to him in the production, left al-Mahdawi bereft of his usual eloquence and he ended simply by shouting: ‘You have made a habit of treachery. Get out!’ (Muhakamat Vol. 18: 6887–91). The third witness, rather than denouncing al-Tabaqchali, spoke of him in glowing terms, as a much loved officer and a keen supporter of the revolution. When it was clear that al-Mahdawi was making no headway, his testimony was brought abruptly to an end (Muhakamat Vol. 18: 6895–6905). When the fourth witness also retracted his testimony, alleging torture not only by the examining magistrates but by the Military Public Prosecutor himself and appealing directly to Abd al-Karim Qasim, al-Mahdawi felt impelled to respond: ‘This matter is known to everyone and I remember that I have told the Leader and he has taken fair measures immediately’ (Muhakamat Vol. 18: 6906–9). However, as far as the credibility of the court was concerned, this only made things worse. Al-Mahdawi’s admission live on television that he knew that torture had been practised as a matter of routine to extract confessions struck a blow against the court and was taken up and exploited by the accused. Perhaps calculating that they had nothing to lose, they denied everything, demanded the right of defence in uncompromising terms and reportedly shouted down the Public Prosecutor in chorus ( Muhakamat Vol. 19: 7486–9, 7508–9, 7529–38, 7612–5, 7637, 7687– 8, 7696–7, 7713–5; Dann 1969: 248–9). When al-Tabaqchali came to make his defence statement, he spoke with authority and without rancour, in sharp contrast to the insults and jokes of al-Mahdawi, stressing his own faithfulness to the principles of the revolution and using the occasion to denounce communism and atheism. He made much of this theme and almost certainly sensed that the tide was turning against the communists in Iraq: Qasim had become alarmed by their growing strength and had already made a number of moves against them (Muhakamat Vol. 18: 7205–13) It was a testimony to his ability to subvert the performance of the court that the television transmission of the proceedings was abruptly suspended at one stage. Qasim himself seemed to acknowledge that the court was in trouble when he made an unprecedented public statement in support of al-Mahdawi and the court in the middle of August 1959 (Dann 1969: 249). Reportedly, the audience no longer responded to al-Mahdawi in the same way, no longer laughed at his jokes. This seemed to suggest that the Court had played itself out as political

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theatre (Khadduri 1969: 81–2). Nevertheless, it still had its retributive and punitive function to fulfil: on 16 September it handed down death sentences to four of the accused, including al-Tabaqchali and Rifat al-Hajj Sirri. On 20 September it was announced that these four, as well as nine other officers found guilty of participation in the Mosul revolt had been executed by firing squad at the Umm Tbul range. The same morning, four of those sentenced to death for their part in repression under the monarchy were hanged in Baghdad prison. These executions were closed to the public, suggesting that Qasim was only too well aware of the change in the public mood and of the crisis which their public degradation might trigger (Dann 1969: 249–50; Smith 1996: 236). This impression was reinforced by the fact that al-Mahdawi and Amin were dispatched that same day on a six-week ‘good will’ mission to the People’s Republic of China (Shwadran 1960: 69). The court went into recess and it looked as if it would be wound up, having served its purpose. However, the dramatic assassination attempt on Abd al-Karim Qasim in October 1959 gave it a new lease of life, if only temporarily. A large number of arrests had been made following an attempt by a group of young Ba`thists to assassinate Qasim as he was being driven through Baghdad. Many of those involved in the incident, including the future leader of Iraq, Saddam Husain, fled the country once they realized that they had failed. Al-Mahdawi and Amin returned from China and the court was reconvened in December. Seventy-seven people were indicted, the great majority of them civilians and nearly one third of them were to be tried in absentia. Due to the numbers of defendants, they were divided into seven groups. The seven trials lasted until February 1960. As in the trials of the Mosul rebels, al-Mahdawi and Amin used them as occasions to denounce Abd al-Nasir, to praise Qasim and the revolution and to ridicule the accused. However, as in the trials of the summer, many of the accused failed to play along with the court, denouncing its procedures and alleging torture by the examining magistrates, subverting the public display of which they were intended to form a part (Muhakamat Vol. 20: 7942–54, 8137–42; Vol. 21: 8442–55; Vol. 22: 8672–85). The trials appeared to be increasingly confusing and chaotic, with much time spent on general declarations, the reading out of endorsements of al-Mahdawi himself from a variety of sources and peripheral enquiries. In some respects, it seemed as if al-Mahdawi had himself lost the plot (Shwadran 1960: 70–1). On 25 February 1960 the sentences were handed down: 17 of the accused (including 11 in absentia) were sentenced to death, most of the remainder were sentenced to terms in prison and a few were acquitted. However, none of the death sentences was carried out. Instead, on 31 March – the date set for the executions – Qasim appeared on Iraqi television to announce that all the executions had been ‘postponed’ and that the guilty should reflect upon this and entrust themselves to God (Dann 1969: 258). Three days before this, Qasim had

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commuted all the death sentences handed down by the court to the surviving politicians and officials of the monarchical regime (Vernier 1963: 153; Dann 1969: 331).2 In practice, the court had now indeed served its purpose. One more case was to come before al-Mahdawi (of two further individuals implicated in the assassination attempt against Qasim) in May 1960, but after their sentencing (to terms of imprisonment), the activities of the court ceased. Thereafter, al-Mahdawi devoted himself to editing the proceedings of the court for publication.3 He was still engaged on this when the Ba`thist-Arab nationalist coup d’état of February 1963 ended his life and that of his cousin Qasim. They were both summarily shot at the Ministry of Defence by Abd al-Salam Arif and his associates, their bullet riddled and battered corpses displayed for some hours on Iraqi television – the very medium that he had so ardently tried to exploit during his term as President of the People’s court. Conclusion The People’s Court represented a distinct ‘theatrical moment’ in Iraqi history and in the narration of that history by those who had helped to make the Iraqi revolution. It was a stage for the dramatic depiction of the evils of the old regime, playing on such themes as corruption, conspiracy, imperialism, disloyalty to the Arab and Iraqi peoples and oppression. Intended to show that a radical break had taken place between the past and the present, it held up the new republic, and particularly its leader Abd al-Karim Qasim, as the embodiment of all the virtues so lacking in the monarchy. It sought to maximize vicarious audience participation in the process of bringing the members of the ancien regime to justice and this aspect of controlled public symbolic involvement through instruction, exhortation and verbal exchanges, became an increasingly important part of the proceedings. It was a way of representing the revolution and of gaining public acceptance of the version of the revolution which Abd al-Karim Qasim and his allies wished to promote. The public nature of the proceedings and the way the court became perhaps the principal focus of public life in Iraq for some months during 1958 and 1959, were clearly enhanced by the use of radio and television to transmit the trials as live broadcasts. This was a key aspect of its theatricality and appears also to have enhanced its effectiveness as a medium for impressing upon the public the changed nature of power in Iraq: the revelations of secret conversations and plans from the era of the monarchy, as well as the sight of notables and senior officials of that era in the dock seemed to confirm the conspiratorial view of the powerless and to show a world turned upside down. However, the more astute of the accused turned this public forum to their advantage, by suggesting both that the conspiracies continued and that some realities remained the same: military officers were still in power, the revolutionary transformation of society had not been as great as had been claimed and the powerful still oppressed and tortured

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the powerless. With the trials of the erstwhile supporters of Qasim during 1959, these charges became more vocal and benefited from the very publicity apparatus which the regime had established to enhance the impact of their own narrative. Where the targets of the prosecution were more ambiguous in their relationship to Qasim and to the revolution, the very public theatre of the court had its disadvantages. This was acknowledged by the holding of trials in camera. It was also registered in the decline in the court’s reputation and possibly popular appeal during the trials of the summer of 1959. Here Qasim began to discover the pitfalls of theatricality: boredom with the proceedings as the novelty wore off and the diminished sense of crisis and anxiety within the country at large were compounded by the changing nature of the court’s cases. Trials of figures from the pre-revolutionary regime gave way to trials of fellow revolutionaries who had fallen out with each other. Although the rhetoric of good versus evil was maintained, the reality before the court – and before the people on television – did not lend itself so easily to such a portrayal as had the parade of military officers, politicians and security police from the days of the monarchy. The power of the ‘theatrical moment’ was waning. As if in acknowledgment of the limitations of such a form of staging, there was another aspect of the struggle for the control of the narrative and the course of the Iraqi revolution which Qasim intentionally did not bring before the court, precisely because of its ambiguity and its possible impact on the public mood. This was the developing contest between Qasim and the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). The latter had been a vigorous supporter of Qasim from the beginning, seeing in him a valuable counter to the Arab nationalist officers and politicians whom the communists had long mistrusted. Often at the forefront of the street politics which marked Iraqi public life during this period, the ICP’s growing strength in popular organizations and the disastrous consequences of its rally in Kirkuk in July 1959, led Qasim to move against it (Tripp 2002: 151–9). In order to do so, he set up another military court – the First Military Court Martial (almahkamat al-`urfiyah al-`askariyah al-`ula), presided over by Brigadier Shams alDin Abdallah. Established in April 1959, its proceedings were closed and it tried those cases unsuitable for the very different instrument of the People’s Court. Thus, it was used increasingly to prosecute members of the ICP on a variety of charges, especially after the violent incidents in Kirkuk in July 1959 (Dann 1969: 181; Yousif 1991: 189). There were clearly limits to what Qasim believed the People’s Court could achieve. It was equally significant that the final activities of the People’s Court should have revolved around the attempt on the life of Qasim himself. By this stage, he had become unambiguously the ruler of Iraq, enjoying greater autocratic power than any of his predecessors under the monarchy. Acclaimed throughout Iraq as the ‘Sole Leader’ (al-za`im al-awhad), he was becoming the centre of a personality cult which went far beyond the rather modest dimensions of the court. Public

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art, demonstrations, marches and festivals were to be the means of communicating his unique role in the political life of Iraq to the people. It was Qasim who now became the centre of the narrative of the revolution and the resources of the state were deployed to drive this message home on a stage as wide as the country itself. The ‘theatrical moment’ represented by the People’s Court was passing. Qasim’s survival of the would-be assassins’ bullets reportedly reinforced his sense of personal destiny and mission. It may also have encouraged him to believe in his own invulnerability which might explain the extraordinary clemency shown by him in pardoning all those found guilty of plotting his death and in releasing the irrepressible plotter, Abd al-Salam Arif, and reinstating him in the army. It is also possible to argue that his belief in his own account of himself and his relationship to the people of Iraq contributed to his death at the hands of Arif in February 1963. So convinced was he that ‘the people’ would forestall any coup attempt against their Sole Leader that he failed to organize effective defence when the Ba`thists and Arab nationalists moved against him. Cornered at the building of the Ministry of Defence and bereft of support, he was forced to surrender and then summarily shot. References Batatu, Hanna (1978). The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Caractacus (pseud) (1959). Revolution in Iraq (London, Victor Gollancz). Daniel, Norman (1991). ‘Contemporary Perceptions of the Revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958,’ in R. A. Fernea and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Iraqi Revolution of 1958: Tthe Old Social Classes Revisited (London, I.B. Tauris & Co.): 1–30. Dann, Uriel (1969). Iraq under Qassem (Boulder, CO, Praeger Publishers). De Gaury, Gerald (1961). Three Kings in Baghdad, 1921–1958 (London, Hutchinson). Hare, Paul and Herbert H. Blumberg (1988). Dramaturgical Analysis of Social Interaction (New York, Praeger). Khadduri, M. (1969). Republican Iraq (London, Oxford University Press). Shwadran, B. (1960). The Power Struggle in Iraq (New York, Council for Middle Eastern Affairs). Smith, Philip (1996). ‘Executing Executions: Aesthetics, Identity and the Problematic Narratives of Capital Punishment Ritual,’ Theory and Society, 25: 235–61. Tripp, Charles (2002). A History of Iraq (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Vaksberg, A. (1990). The Prosecutor and the Prey: Vyshinsky and the 1930s’ Moscow Show Trials (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson).

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Vernier, Bernard (1963). L’Irak d’aujourd’hui (Paris, Librairie Arman Colin). Muhakamat al-mahkamah al-`askariyah al-`ulya al-khassah (Proceedings of the Special Supreme Military Court) (Baghdad, Matba`at al-Hukumah, Wizarat �������� al-Difa`, 1959–62), 22 ������������ Volumes. Yousif, Abdul-Salaam (1991). ‘The Struggle for Cultural Hegemony during the Iraqi Revolution,’ in R. A. Fernea and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Iraqi Revolution of 1958: The Old Social Classes Revisited (London, I.B. Tauris & Co.): 172–96. Notes 1 �������������������������� Abd al-Nasir was labelled nasir al-isti`mar (supporter of imperialism) playing on the meaning of his name and responding to the Egyptian media which had used a similar play on words to denounce Abd al-Karim Qasim, calling him qasim al-`iraq (divider of Iraq). 2 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ On the third anniversary of the revolution – 14 July 1961 – all those (except Arif ) condemned by the Court were given a general amnesty by Qasim. Arif was released from prison on 25 November 1961, taken to see Qasim who entertained him, took him home and reinstated him in the army. 3 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� His distinctive editing style is apparent in that each volume is preceded by a substantial number of pages of articles about him in the Iraqi and foreign press and interviews with him on a range of subjects – as well as speeches he (and Abd al-Karim Qasim) had made over the years, copiously illustrated with photographs of him meeting various foreign delegations.

3 ACCUSING COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES Bureaucracy and Theatre in the Revolutionary People’s Republic of China (1950–1957) Julia C. Strauss

Great political revolutions destroy by sweeping away the old, construct by establishing the self-consciously new, and ironically complete the work of the old regime by immensely strengthening and expanding the capacity of the state. The destruction of the old almost by definition sparks resistance from old ruling elites, significant sectors of society and status quo powers in the international system. Indeed some scholars of revolution posit that the process of revolution cannot be understood in isolation from its interaction with the forces of resistance, reaction, and counterrevolution – ‘there can be no revolution without counterrevolution; both as phenomenon and process, they are inseparable, like truth and falsehood’ (Mayer 2000: 45). Revolution requires the ‘other,’ nonrevolutionary or actively counterrevolutionary, as a foil for self-definition and the revolutionary project, and much of the violence, terror and state building that revolutions encompass can be seen as part of a process of interaction with resistance and counter­revolution, whether real or imagined. Fear of reaction and counterrevolution is a necessary, but hardly sufficient condition for revolutionary regime consolidation. Solidification and consolidation of ‘the new’ also requires the galvanization of significant and often new sectors of society behind the revolution. The creation of positive incentives, the teaching of new ideologies, new symbols and new programmes of action, and the drawing in of new social groups are an equally important part of this process. The early and middle stages of revolutionary regime consolidation – characterized by nascent political institutions, unclear rules of the game, and the sudden involvement of

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large number of political neophytes provide particularly fertile ground for the deployment of theatrical and performative forms of politics. In a revolutionary context, its goals are twofold: to communicate revolutionary values, symbols and forms to an as yet unreconstructed society, and to mobilize positive social support behind the institutions of the nascent revolutionary state. This essay explores the complex interaction between theatrical modes of politics, anti-counterrevolutionary campaigns and state building in the People’s Republic of China in the early and mid-1950s. In their long years of struggle in the countryside, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had become expert practitioners of political campaigns that relied on what Elizabeth Perry (2002) calls ‘emotion work.’ After coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership naturally drew from the repertoire tested and worked through in the base areas of Jiangxi, Yan’an and north China in the 1930s and 1940s. The ethos and forms of guided political participation so typical of the CCP – socialization through the study of set texts, small group study sessions, criticism and self criticism, and mass meetings involving ‘speaking bitterness’ all had important pre-1949 antecedents, and continued to exist after Liberation. What differed after 1949 was the political and institutional environment in which these forms were played out. After the sudden military collapse of the Kuomintang in January 1949, the revolutionary regime had to operate on a much vaster scale. Domestically, it immediately faced the challenge of governing large populations in the cities and countryside of central, south and west China where it had no natural base of operations. Internationally, it faced an implacably hostile United States and the indefinite postponement of final victory over the Nationalists on Taiwan from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. Under the conditions of a civil war won far more rapidly than anyone had ever anticipated, weak party and state infrastructure in much of the country, a large civilian population that had been mostly passive in the pre-1949 revolutionary struggle, the CCP’s own deeply held view that most people were inherently sociable and educable, and a deepening Cold War of which China was a part, clear determination of self from other, friend from foe, and supporter from subversive was not straightforward. It was a highly politically charged matter intimately bound up with the ethos and state building project of New China. Between 1950 and 1957 the revolutionary People’s Republic identified, targeted and dispatched counterrevolutionaries in two major campaigns: the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–53), and sufan (‘Cleaning out of Counterrevolutionaries’) (1955–57, with later ‘upsurges’ in 1958 and 1960). While the reasons for the launching of each of these campaigns involved a particular mix of international and domestic factors, the methods of anticounter­revolutionary campaign implementation followed a clear trajectory over the course of the 1950s. From 1950 to 1957, the categories of ‘others’ deemed to be counterrevolutionaries beyond the pale of acceptably revolutionary society

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inexorably widened, while the campaigns were themselves carried out in increasingly constricted political space, with increasingly narrowed political participation, and increasingly bureaucratized procedures. Theatre and Campaign: The Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, 1950–53 The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–53) stands as the first, most successful and paradigmatic case of the CCP’s reliance on the mass line in the suppression of counterrevolutionaries. It was also the first occasion in which the PRC organized a mass campaign to strike at individual enemies of the state in urban areas, the first to arbitrarily cancel the lenience promised to those who voluntarily came forward, confessed and registered as counterrevolutionaries, the first to whip up mass urban hysteria against pre-selected domestic targets, and, with the land reform campaign (concluded earlier in the north but running concurrently in the central and southern regions of China), among the first to execute large numbers while calling in ‘the masses’ to participate in a state-sanctioned campaign to eradicate internal enemies. For both land reform and the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, a theatrical and participatory show was the form that rendered the mass line of ‘from the people to the people’ a working reality, at least temporarily reconciling the bureaucratic impetus to unitary management/control with the genuine engagement of mass participation. The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries was launched in an environment of war hysteria and China’s involvement in the Korean War in October 1950, but was primarily aimed at domestic audiences for domestic political reasons: to shore up support with party activists dismayed by the lenience and inclusiveness of the regime in its first year in power, winning over wavering ‘middle elements’ with appeals to patriotism, and strengthening the resolve and coercive powers of the lower reaches of the sub-national state bureaucracy. Early guiding documents launching the campaign in the autumn of 1950 stressed the dangers of lurking saboteurs and counterrevolutionaries, the necessity of replacing ‘excessive lenience’ (kuanda wu bian) with ‘combining suppression and lenience’ (zhenya kuanda jiehe), coming down hard on counterrevolutionaries by ‘executing some, imprisoning some, and putting some under house arrest,’ and pointing out that extermination of counterrevolutionaries required a certain degree of ‘shaking and terrorizing’ (zhendong konghuang) (Double Ten Decision 1950; Luo 1950b; Peng 1951: 51). Campaign regulations stipulated a sliding scale of punishment for counterrevolutionaries, ranging from the death sentence, suspended death sentence, undetermined terms of imprisonment, fixed terms of imprisonment and house arrest, but the criteria by which authorities were to match particular counterrevolutionaries with appropriate sentences were characteristically – one might say deliberately – vague. Guiding documents stressed the importance of executing chief criminals, those with blood debts and those the masses particularly hated,

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but beyond this refused to assign quotas. Instead, perhaps in implicit recognition of the significant variation in the different regions of China, the central government ordered each locality to draw up its own plan based on local circumstances, submit the plan to higher levels, and then proceed with implementation after receiving approval (Double Ten Decision, Luo 1950 a, b and c). Not only was the phrase ‘combining suppression and lenience’ ambiguous, but local discretion was further enhanced by the inherent murkiness of the various sub-categories of counterrevolutionary, which included a far-reaching hotchpotch of political and social power holders. Political competitors deemed counter­revolutionary were those who had worked in ‘special affairs’ (tewu) security organizations for the Kuomintang; social competitors included assorted robbers and bandits (guaifei), local bullies and tyrants (e’ba), the leaders of ‘counterrevolutionary sects’ (fandong huimentou), with local hoodlums and gangsters sometimes included for good measure. These two broad sub-types of counterrevolutionaries were not only very different from each other, the ways in which they were classified and ‘handled’ on the ground revealed an ongoing tension within the coalescing Party-state: the impulse from above to maintain control and order through fine degrees of bureaucratic classification and the need to maintain local discretion and flexibility through vaguely worded elastic categories. Regulations went out that specified in fine detail exactly which tewu organization, and at what level in the hierarchy, an individual had to belong before ‘counting’ as a counterrevolutionary. Although not at this point deemed targets for prosecution as counterrevolutionaries, those who had been leaders in branches of the Kuomintang, the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps, or officers in the Nationalist army were also required to register with authorities (SMA, C21/2/179). It was a formal and bureaucratic affair to determine status on the basis of these categories as confirming paper trails normally existed. But ‘counterrevolutionary’ social power holders were much harder to match to particular individuals. Determining who fit into the received categories of bullies, bandits, leaders of counterrevolutionary sects and traitors was a looser and more subjective process, particularly given the lack of guidelines in how to distinguish counterrevolutionary crime from averagely serious crime, actively counterrevolutionary behaviour from suspicious or resistant attitudes, or, once the campaign hit its ‘high tide’ in the spring and summer of 1951, those who were counterrevolutionary from those who were merely ‘backward in political consciousness’ (SMA, C21/1/98). Although the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries did not hesitate to terrorize, imprison and execute enemies of the state (eventually executing between 700,000 and 2,000,000, and imprisoning many times more), the way in which the terror was exercised was very different from that in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Counterrevolutionaries were not simply hauled off in the dead of night, never to be heard from again. On the contrary, counterrevolutionaries and their

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crimes were publicized and punished in a highly public manner, one calculated to simultaneously fulfil three different goals: crushing individuals, striking fear into the hearts of their sympathizers and soliciting the chorus like participation of the masses. Through exhibitions, films, newscasts and the concluding participatory spectacle of dramatic accusation meetings (kongsu hui), the public was invited to vicariously participate in the state’s imposed terror and collectively reaffirm its popular legitimacy. The initial phase of the campaign engaged in ‘educating the masses’ in order to prepare the public to believe the right kinds of things about the seriousness of counterrevolutionary activity and the correctness of the regime’s harshness, while public accusation meetings stirred the masses into participation and identification with state-determined collective goals. Preparatory ‘stirring up the masses’ (fadong qunzhong) was carried out in a variety of ways. Initial propaganda and education was produced by police and party propaganda organizations. Nanjing organized a large public exhibition on the dangers of counterrevolutionary activity in the former National Government complex, and in April 1951 broadcast an accusation session attended by people ‘harmed by tewu counterrevolutionaries.’ Authorities in Nanjing ultimately estimated that 213,000 people (or roughly one fifth of the municipal population) attended over 25,000 propaganda meetings on the campaign (Nanjing Gong’an zhi 1994: 194). Xi’an held exhibitions, and estimated that almost 650,000 (or more than the entire municipal population of 560,000 in 1950) were on the receiving end of ‘education’ (Xin 1989). In Shenyang, the city’s eight municipal and suburban districts held mass meetings, and ‘all cultural centres, large stores, cinemas, guesthouses, tea houses and parks became public meeting sites … for propaganda, for carrying out education … and to expose counterrevolutionary crimes’ (Qi 1990: 218). Items on exhibition included telegraph machines, counterrevolutionary documents, rifles, photos and repentant ex-counterrevolutionaries whose public confessions educated the crowds as to the dangers of counterrevolutionary action and the correctness of the new government in showing them the error of their ways. But mass accusation meetings were the most public and dramatic expression of the government’s solicitation of mass support for its policies, and it was here that the inherent tensions between the revolutionary state’s desire for simultaneous bureaucratic control and popular participation were the strongest. Mass accusation meetings were of two types: either internal (neibu) – processed and held in workplaces in which the CCP had already managed to inject a modicum of direct political control, or ‘in society’ (zai shehui), prepared by the public security authorities and held in venues open to the general public. At this time, the CCP’s direct party presence in workplaces was limited to a relative minority of factories as well as schools and government offices. But its ability and willingness to link the campaign with an emerging benefits regime to denunciation and informing in the workplace set a chilling precedent. In Shanghai, somewhere between 40 and

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45 per cent of the city’s roughly half a million workers in both state and private factories and enterprises actively informed on counterrevolutionaries in the late spring and early summer of 1951. Internal reports from the Shanghai Worker’s Federation proudly reported the enthusiasm of the workers for the campaign, but expressed concerns about ‘a natural tendency towards leftism … wanting to arrest and suppress all backward elements … [including] those with either ideological problems or workstyle problems along with real counterrevolutionaries’ (SMA, C1/1/128). At this stage, it was only a relative minority of 37,425 workers who participated in neibu work unit accusation meetings, and the 128 counterrevolutionaries so ferreted out and handled was but a small percentage of the total of 14,391 counterrevolutionaries sentenced in Shanghai (SMA, B1/2/1339; C1/1/128). Campaigns to target state enemies that were implemented through the work place were a harbinger of the future, but in 1951 they were small scale and restricted in comparison to the public accusation and dispatching of counterrevolutionaries in society at large. Mass accusation rallies open to the public were held in virtually all municipalities and any number of county seats throughout the ‘high tide’ of the campaign in the late spring and summer of 1951. All were highly theatrical events, held in open public space, and no more so than in Beijing. One of the major public accusation sessions in the capital was held at the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan), a site with rich symbolic links to the long-term legitimacy and authority of the Chinese state, as it was here that the late imperial emperors participated in an annual ceremony in which a furrow was symbolically ploughed to ensure a good harvest. One memoir records: On 17 May 1951, five police districts on the outskirts of Beijing held a public accusation meeting to publicly charge five major tyrants. 30,000 enthusiastically attended the meeting … As the criminals entered, mass feeling suddenly erupted with curses and slogans whose sound shattered the earth and sky (zhentian dongdi). Some spit on the criminals. Others burst into violent tears … (people) shouted for their fathers, husbands, wives and sons. Some fainted. Even the Soviet reporter covering the event was seen to dissolve into tears. One 80-year-old woman hobbled forward on her walking stick, confronting the accused: ‘You never thought you’d see today! Hah! I never did either. The old court system belonged to you, but now Chairman Mao will repay us our blood debts (xuezhai)!’ The air was rent with the cries of ’ ‘Resist America and Aid Korea!’ ‘Thanks be to Chairman Mao!’ ‘Long Live the Chinese Communist Party!’ ‘Resolutely suppress counterrevolutionaries!’ Once started, the chanting went on for a long time (Tao 1996).

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Despite its more rural location, the public trial in the county seat of rural Mulan County was strikingly similar, with the mass accusation of five individuals in local government positions who had served in posts that either collaborated with the Japanese or were on the losing side of the civil war with the Kuomintang. The head of the local secret intelligence for the state, the local chief of intelligence for the Kuomintang, the local police chief and the local county magistrate were tried as a group in the yard of the county seat primary school. On 14 August [1951] … at around 7:00 to 8:00 am, group by group the masses began to filter in. There were weathered old people, children closely following their parents … over 150 women with babies in their arms walked for 20 or 30 kilometres to come to the occasion. People came from all corners, filling the schoolyard, packed into the surrounding neighbourhood, and looked out from every nearby window. At 9:00 am, Chair Xie Wanzhun opened the meeting. Fourteen thousand pairs of eyes avidly focused on the rostrum. The chair explained the significance of the meeting, and the chief prosecutor, Zhu Hong, read out the charges … [concluding that] ‘These guys have blood debts piled high, whose evil crimes reach the sky – without the death penalty the people’s hatred will never be settled.’ [Then] the people’s accusations began. Fourteen-year-old Yu Jiangji mounted the stage, and with tears flowing pointed to Sun Shengye: ‘You arrested my father, killed my grandmother, and forced my mother out of her home.’ Zhao Wanjin then got on stage, grinding his teeth, ‘My family had five people in it. You beat my father to death, put me in jail for three years, oppressed my mother to death, starved my two younger sisters to death…’ He was unable to go on for the tears choking his throat. [With this …], weeping copiously, all present accused [the counterrevolutionaries] without rest, with sounds that filled the yard. The people indignantly requested the people’s government to put the people first, and execute Wang Hanwu, Sun Yesheng and the others by firing squad. As the death sentence was being carried out, the yard filled with the endless cries of: ‘Thanks to the Chinese Communist Party!’ ‘Thanks to Chairman Mao!’ ‘Thanks to the People’s Government!’ (Wu 1989) In locales as different as the political centre of the country and the rural northeast frontier, in 1951 the revolutionary state was both willing and able to pull off remarkable pieces of participatory theatre. These public accusation meetings engaged hundreds to thousands of participant-observers in the drama; the public came not only to watch and be entertained, but to participate in the show. Villains

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and righteous sufferers were displayed as stock characters who played their appointed roles, careful chosen victims mounted the stage with direct, emotional appeals to the larger audience, the closing cathartic resolution explicitly linked the proceedings with the public’s call for the coercive authority of the state to be exercised, and the drama concluded with a resoundingly public reassertion of the revolutionary state’s legitimacy. Yet, despite their seeming spontaneity, their undoubted drama, and the real enough emotions they galvanized, the mass accusation sessions of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries were stage-managed events, and the party state served as producer, script writer, choreographer and director who made the event possible. Putting on a good show meant directly engaging the masses while keeping enough control over the proceedings, and this was a delicate balance that was easy to get wrong. Local cadres were repeatedly admonished to ‘do thorough preparation work’ through advance targeting and coaching of special activists and sympathetic masses. In at least one documented case, the soldiers who paraded the accused out before the crowd also discreetly held a garrot around the neck of each prisoner to ensure proper submission when the charges were read (Chow 1960: 110). Guidelines reiterated that accusation meetings were to be held for already arrested counterrevolutionaries, that accusers had to be chosen and coached well in advance of the actual public event, and that cadres should not confuse accusation of counterrevolutionaries (kongsu) with reporting on counterrevolutionaries (jianju). Reports on counterrevolutionaries were to be followed up and processed well in advance of the public accusation meetings, and spontaneous accusations against new, uninvestigated and unprocessed targets were actively discouraged (SMA, C21/1/98; Zhang 1951). Ideally, the show went according to plan. When this occurred (as seemed to be the case for the accusation meetings at the Temple of Heaven and Mulan county), the masses were appropriately stirred up, the counterrevolutionaries were penitent, justice was served and the event concluded with a convincing reaffirmation of public support for the regime. But some evidence hints that the masses, once stirred up, did not necessarily understand that however much their participation was solicited, they were the chorus in a larger show put on by and for the state, and that their appropriate role was to follow and amplify the lead performers at specifically designated moments. The drama did not always follow the carefully prepared script. On some occasions, the climate of emotional denunciation was such that the masses rushed out and directly ‘handled’ suspected counterrevolutionaries themselves through violence and lynching (Perry 2002; SMA, C1/1/128). On others, the script was simply not clear enough to those in the show. Leaders in the factories and enterprises of the Shanghai Workers’ Federation were repeatedly chastised for having failed to adequately prepare for the mass accusation sessions, the targets were frequently unclear, the masses weren’t always sure why a particular

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individual was being accused, and on some occasions, the show was a damp squib. Memoirs on the campaign in Xi’an are not explicit, but hint at significantly worse: a public trial resulted in ‘a great disturbance where tewu elements took advantage of [the CCP’s] weaknesses and mistakes.’ The remedy invariably cited for such failings was increased bureaucratic control over the proceedings and more thorough preparation: vigilance in taking care of things down to the last detail (Zhonggong xianwei guanyu zhenya fangeming huodong de jueding, 28 June 1951: 384). In this still early stage of regime consolidation, public theatre and show – albeit with very real consequences for the accused – was a useful vehicle for concentrating the targeting of state enemies for maximum public effect, spectacle and collective reaffirmation of regime legitimacy. But even this early, there were clear tensions between the solicitation of mass political participation and support from below and the assertion of order and control from above. While the supply of individuals who were both genuinely abhorred by the masses and clearly fit into counterrevolutionary categories lasted, participatory and public political theatre could paper over these tensions. But by the mid-1950s, when ‘the majority of counterrevolutionaries had been basically suppressed,’ renewed campaigns to strike at remaining counterrevolutionaries definitively tilted towards bureaucratic control, fragmentation and routinization of popular input. The Sufan Campaign: Narrowing, Bureaucratizing and Ritualizing the Show, 1955–57 The sufan (‘cleaning out of counterrevolutionaries’) campaign was launched in the summer of 1955 and continued in an on and off fashion until late 1957, with subsequent upsurges in 1958 and 1960. Unlike the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the initial grounds for the launching of this round of counterrevolutionary ‘weeding out’ seem to have been exclusively domestic in orientation, and primarily aimed at the emerging state sector. The progressive expansion of the state resulted in large numbers of insufficiently vetted workers flowing into state work units from 1953 onward, with even larger numbers incorporated into state danwei (work units) literally overnight as urban China’s enterprises, factories, shops and service industries underwent the ‘high tide of socialism’ and full nationalization. For example, overall the number of workers in 12 enterprises within the Shanghai Number One Commerce Bureau doubled between the end of 1953 and the first quarter of 1955. But for some workplaces, the rate of increase was much higher than the overall average: the Shanghai Wood Products Company expanded fourfold with the incorporation of 997 new workers in 1954 (SMA, B123/2/930, 30 April 1955 and 27 April 1955). It was against this domestic background of nationalization and worries about insufficiently vigilant background checks on newly incorporated workers that the central party-state began a new campaign against counterrevolutionaries in July

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1955, this time aimed explicitly at weeding out ‘hidden counterrevolutionaries’ (ancang de fangeming). During the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries most of those deemed counterrevolutionary were discovered and suppressed ‘in society’ and ‘by society’ with substantial, if heavily stage-managed involvement from the public in its final denouement. In contrast, the very vocabulary of the sufan (‘cleaning out hidden counterrevolutionaries’) from the outset suggested something quite different: that wily counterrevolutionaries had already managed to inveigle themselves into otherwise pure workplaces, and that it was the responsibility of those in positions of authority in these workplaces to expose them. As the handling of counterrevolutionaries moved from open, public space to the narrower confines of the factory, depot and shop outlet, responsibility for managing the campaign fell to the CCP leaders and security committees within work units. While its importance was paid lip service, the role of ‘the masses’ in the ‘weeding out’ process was clearly subordinate to the role of unit leadership and designated activists, who carried out small group-led investigations, discussion and eventual struggle sessions against suspected counterrevolutionaries. The tensions between bureaucratic control and political participation already extant in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries sharpened throughout the sufan campaign. But even more importantly, the dynamics of the latter campaign were substantively different. Organizational logics and incentives led to a much intensified process of bureaucratization, while those who actively participated in public accusation became restricted to a minority of highly visible activists. The ongoing bureaucratization of anti-counterrevolutionary action had two main features that inhibited spontaneity and dampened general enthusiasm for participation. Radical expansion of the categories of individuals deemed to be counterrevolutionary initially broadened and diluted the campaign’s focus; development of bureaucratic rules and orderly procedures for handling counterrevolutionary cases restrained the campaign’s sweep and imparted depth to the bureaucracy’s capacity for record keeping and monitoring. In the early months of the campaign, official categories of different types of counterrevolutionary dramatically increased from the solid core (tewu, bullies, bandits and leaders of counterrevolutionary sects) so vigorously prosecuted in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries to include new and much broader categories of ‘counterrevolutionary’: members of counterrevolutionary parties or military organizations, officials in puppet governments, traitors, landlords, rich peasants, capitalists, thieves, swindlers, hoodlums, rank and file followers in counter­revolutionary sects, and family members of counterrevolutionaries. This wholescale expansion of who was to be counted as a counterrevolutionary significantly widened the prospective range of those considered to be suspect political and social power holders, and included large groups (followers in popular religion, families of counterrevolutionaries) that had been deliberately excluded

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from the category of counterrevolutionary in 1951 (SMA, B122/2/1192). This bureaucratic broadening of counterrevolutionary categories was countered by bureaucratic intensification of control, procedures and vertical management in the ‘handling’ of counterrevolutionary cases (fangeming anjian). Both guiding and internal documents harped on the importance of preparatory work, background investigation and assembling materials for cases of suspected counter­revolutionaries prior to conducting struggle sessions.1 Although in practice largely ignored at the outset of the campaign, once the price of lack of bureaucratic procedure became clear (reprimands from on high), recommitment to careful preparation and bureaucratic procedures had the net effect of a) slowing the process considerably and b) narrowly delineating the kinds of counterrevolutionary statuses that were deemed fit for prosecution. By the end of September, the special small group guiding the campaign in the Shanghai First Commerce Bureau was recommending that investigating committees meet no less than four times per case to consider the suspect’s history, social relations and activities before a final meeting to recommend on whether the suspect was suitable for being subjected to a small group struggle session (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1955). Whether prosecuted and formally labelled a counter­revolutionary or not, once an individual entered the records as a counterrevolutionary, suspected counterrevolutionary or bad element, a question mark in the official files remained, and was often revived over the course of subsequent political campaigns. The information gathered in the early days of the sufan campaign might not have been conclusively acted on at the time, but the monitoring and record keeping capacity of the unit bureaucracy seldom if ever purged individual files of old accusations, status categories and questions. Tensions between bureaucratization and political participation characterized both anti-counterrevolutionary campaigns of the 1950s, as did incentives for ‘leftist’ attacks on suspect ‘backward elements’ in neibu work unit implementation. But the degree of leftist excess seems to have been markedly higher in the sufan campaign. And in contrast to the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the locus of the spontaneous political participation in the sufan campaign shifted decisively away from ‘the masses’ and towards a relative minority of specially designated unit ‘activists’ (jiji fenzi), hungry to establish their credentials and win eventual promotion.2 The earliest phase of the sufan campaign in the summer of 1955 stressed the dangers of hidden counterrevolutionary networks and plots, the importance of ‘stirring up’ (fadong) ‘middle and backward elements among the masses,’ for educational and consciousness raising purposes, stipulated lenience for those who came forward and confessed, and harsh treatment for those who remained hidden, with assigned likely target percentages of hidden counterrevolutionaries at ‘around five per cent’ for units carrying out the campaign. It also laid out the organizational framework for the investigation and prosecution of neibu counter-

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revolutionaries and suspected counterrevolutionaries. Each unit was to have a five-member steering committee in charge of overseeing the campaign and setting up small groups responsible for beginning discussion on ideological problems. Small groups were permitted to ‘further pursue ideological and political questioning of suspect individuals,’ but bringing in unit activists to struggle against counterrevolutionary cases was supposed to be suspended until after sufficient evidence was made available to the five-member steering committee to approve the furthering of the individual case. In theory, small groups and activists were strictly proscribed from directly attacking individuals as counterrevolutionaries until this approval was granted from above (Guanyu zhankai douzheng suqing ancangde fangeming fenzi de zhishi: 134–43). In practice, processes this structured were rarely adhered to in the early stages of the campaign, when even the top unit leadership was often confused about the legitimate grounds for determining an individual’s counterrevolutionary status and eventual prosecution. Virtually everyone, from leading cadres to ‘backward elements’ themselves found it difficult to clearly distinguish between those who had ‘garden variety historical questions’ (yiban lishi wenti) and suspected counterrevolutionaries, between those with ‘ideological questions’ (sixiang wenti) and others with more serious ‘political questions’ (zhengzhi wenti), between individuals with ‘complicated social relationships’ (shehui guanxi fuza) and those with ‘individual questions’ (geren wenti), between those who were ‘historical counterrevolutionaries’ (lishi fan geming) and those who were currently actively counterrevolutionary (xianxing fan geming). Given the lack of clear demarcation, and the overall political atmosphere of ‘combating rightist thought,’ ‘boundaries between us and the enemy’ were not clearly established, and ‘many good people were harmed.’ (SMA, B123/2/1036, 6 December 1955 (a)). Those with ‘counterrevolutionary thoughts’ or poor attitudes were often summarily targeted and struggled against as suspected counterrevolutionaries, despite the proscriptions against so doing. (SMA, B123/2/1036, 6 December 1955 (b)). In many places, activists eager to establish their credentials and gain promotions simply ran away with the process, enlarging the numbers of counterrevolutionary targets to be struggled against, taking charge of small group struggle sessions and ‘oversimplifying’ the sessions. Despite the repeated official injunction that ‘over 90 per cent are good people and only around 5 per cent are counterrevolutionaries and bad elements,’ these pressures led units to ‘lining up’ and (re)checking the credentials of virtually all their personnel, ratcheting up the percentages of ‘counterrevolutionaries’ with each successive meeting, and eventually deeming over 14 per cent as targets to be struggled against (SMA, B123/2/1036, 6 December 1955 (a).3 In theory, the sufan campaign relied on the ‘three indispensable treasures’ (sanbao buke queyi) of 1) ‘stirring up the masses’ (fadong qunzhong), 2) preparation of materials and 3) small group struggle sessions. Collectively, these three intertwined

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activities imparted a very different ethos to the sufan campaign than had been the case for the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, and individually each gave rise to its own set of implementation problems, which had the net effect of near total bureaucratization from above (by unit leaders) and concomitant fear and lack of participation from nearly all of the ‘masses’, save a small minority of already designated activists. Politics there was aplenty in the early stages of the sufan campaign, but the drama of collective and public mass participation so characteristic of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries was now replaced with the politics of emerging caste within the much narrower spatial confines of the workplace. The following details are given in the First Commerce Bureau’s preliminary report on the sufan campaign in September 1955 (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1955). At the outset of the campaign, the Shanghai First Commerce Bureau frankly admitted that ‘in July the majority of middle and backward elements didn’t want to bother with [political] study … finding it ‘a pain’ and ‘a bore,’ but by August of 1955, activists were wantonly struggling against middle and backward elements, arguing that ‘anyone unhappy with the unit leaders has a problem,’ and absolutely refusing to allow those designated as ‘middling and backward’ to themselves advance to activist status. Worse, activists often did not prepare in advance, did not discuss struggle sessions with the masses ahead of the event, and often used physical violence. In the Jiuhua Department Store, one comrade witnessed a great commotion in another department as the struggle session began … there were no materials prepared in advance … when the enemy didn’t recognize [his crimes], they began to use their fists, when their fists began to hurt, they used sticks to beat him , when the stick was insufficient, they rapped a knife against a wooden box, shouting slogans all the while. In this way, when the enemy saw that we had no materials and had no idea what was going on, he found a way to sneak out for a rest … once we became exhausted … this gave the masses a very bad impression (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1953). Although proper implementation of the campaign theoretically depended on the mass line and ‘stirring up the masses,’ in many of the First Commerce Bureau’s sub-units such as the Five Metals Company, ‘patient ideological stirring up of the masses proved impossible, as the masses were themselves divided into activist, middling and backward attitudes, with the activists enthusiastic, the middling average and the backward irritatingly asleep’ (emphasis added). ‘Backward elements,’ who along with ‘middling elements’ typically accounted for upwards of 60 per cent of the personnel in an average work unit, worried over the implications of the campaign, did their best to keep their heads down, and were formalistic

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in unavoidable group discussions. They had good reason to worry: they, along with anyone with ‘historical questions,’ ‘complicated social relations’ or even a quietist attitude, were ripe for singling out and attack. As there was a de facto lid on the quotas for further promotion to ‘activist’ status, pro-active participation in small group discussion sessions could buy the average worker little other than unwanted attention. Although the internal reports from the later 1950s that describe the evolution of the sufan campaign do not couch their findings in terms of either drama or theatre, the content of those reports clearly indicates that by mid-1955 political participation had, for the majority, become a matter of ritual and keeping their heads down. The drama of heartfelt accusations and free-flowing tears that were so typical of the 1951 public accusation meetings was simply absent in the neibu sufan of the mid-1950s. If many had not completely understood that they were part of a larger show put on by the state in 1951, by 1955 all were attuned to where the power lay and how to best cope with it given one’s official status. The individual who reluctantly concluded that he ‘had no out – there was no alternative but to say a few words against counterrevolutionary targets’ (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1955 (b)) probably unintentionally spoke for many as he played out what he knew was a state-determined role in the ritual of small group discussion meetings. The process by which the neibu sufan of the mid-1950s was implemented had no analogue to either internal or open public mass accusation meetings of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries. By 1955, the only time that the entirety of the work unit was called together for meetings was to hear formal announcements from the unit leader. The majority of ‘middle and backward elements’ were compelled to attend small group discussion meetings for purposes of education and consciousness raising, but were as a matter of course excluded from the small group struggle meetings where pressure was applied to and confessions extracted from suspected counterrevolutionaries – a process dominated by activists and, at least in the short term, validated by the unit leadership (until it was seen to have got out of hand by superiors). This fragmentation and exclusion led to widespread fears of being the next target, losing one’s job, losing one’s wife and wondering where it would all end. As a result of the frustrating passivity of this majority (and perhaps to protect the middling and backward from further activist depredations), unit leaders eventually ‘regained their [middling and backward elements’] confidence’ by further subdividing ‘backward and middle elements’ into special groups. Unit leaders reiterated the mantra that ‘over 90 per cent were good, only a small minority were counterrevolutionary or bad elements,’ and patiently reassured the worried that distinctions would be made between those who were evil counterrevolutionaries and those who had made mere ideological, historical or political mistakes (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1955 (a)).

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The kinds of excesses described in such detail by the Shanghai First Commerce Bureau must have been common throughout China, as by the end of October 1955 central concern over ‘leftist errors’ involving mistaken struggle sessions was serious enough to prompt a readjustment of the ongoing strategy of ‘distressing, pressing and confessing’ (bi, gong, xin), to a resolution ‘ensuring [that] the movement develop in a healthy way,’ and an eventual full explanation by Luo Ruiqing the following summer to ‘clean out current counterrevolutionaries and rectify current errors.’ Luo reiterated the importance of ‘taking care’ to distinguish between counterrevolutionaries and basically good people who had made mistakes or ‘only had counterrevolutionary thoughts without engaging in counterrevolutionary actions’; with punishment to be reserved for small minority who either refused to confess or continued to engage in counterrevolutionary activities (Luo 1956, 13 July 1956: 305–6). Ultimately, despite the bureaucratic widening of counterrevolutionary categories in the initial ‘lining up of cases’ in mid-1955, only a small percentage of these cases were ever prosecuted as counterrevolutionary. Eventually, 2,756 (of 7,226) individuals in the Shanghai First Commerce Bureau’s 19 sub-units who took part in the sufan campaign produced 4,307 corroborating documents. While 1,191 individuals were reported, the vast majority of these (1,110) were those who came forward to report themselves (SMA, B123/2/1036, 30 September 1955 (a)). After the autumn 1955 adjustment to the campaign, ‘good people’ were (re)defined to include the ideologically backward, those with socially complicated relations and the majority of those with questions in their historical background; small group struggle sessions against those who made mistakes but confessed were strictly proscribed (SMA, B123/2/1011). This removed the bulk of the usual suspects, with only a handful of the wilfully stubborn who refused to confess past mistakes remaining. In late 1955, 118 cases of ‘counterrevolutionary targets’ from the First Commerce Bureau’s group of the first five units to undergo sufan were re-examined. Of the 69 cases concluded at the time the report was written, only three were conclusively proved counterrevolutionaries: the other 66 had ‘regular historical questions’ and/or work style problems (SMA, B123/2/1036, 19 June 1956). Although it took the leftist excesses of the summer of 1955 to make this clear, the basis on which sufan campaign ultimately determined ‘counterrevolutionaries’ subtly differed from the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries. In 1951 a counterrevolutionary was defined on the basis of some combination of active behaviour (or behaviour in such a recent past that it could reasonably be construed as ongoing) and formal organizational status. A scant four years later, a counterrevolutionary was defined through inaction; refraining from coming forward and confessing all to authorities in a now all-encompassing workplace riven with status and organizational hierarchies.

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Regime Consolidation and ‘the Show’ in the Chinese Revolution The two anti-counterrevolutionary campaigns of the 1950s illustrated in microcosm the uses and limitations of theatrical shows in revolutionary regime consolidation. When the CCP presence in most workplaces was still weak to nonexistent and large numbers of losers in the civil war, disturbers of public order and low lifes were still socially visible and plausible threats, a genuinely participatory political theatre was able to stir up mass emotions, rally public support for the regime and generate widespread complicity with the new government’s violence against individual targets. Even in 1951, political theatre required that bureaucratic preparation and control from above be finely tuned with whipping up the mass emotions of the chorus like audience from below. As any theatre director knows, this is a difficult combination to get right all the time; but it does appear that most of the time the show went well, at least in part because the conditions for putting on a good show (a large reservoir of plausible villains and righteous sufferers, large numbers of ‘the public’ that could be drawn to theatrical spectacle, and simple novelty) were then in existence. In 1955, these conditions no longer obtained. The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries had already dispatched most of the obvious villains, and most of urban China either had been (or was in the process of being) locked into workplaces that served as stratified sites of political control, social benefit provision and employment. ‘The masses’ were in theory stirred up to weed out counterrevolutionaries, but the way in which they ‘participated’ was visibly fragmented and kept separate from any meaningful input into the process, which was initially dominated by a minority of activists and subsequently re-subjected to the total control of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Within a period of only four years, participatory theatrical forms had become routinized ritual for majority of the rank and file (and probably for unit leaders as well). This was the case in part because by 1955 there were fewer empty spaces between state and society for theatre politics to fill. Despite the rhetoric of ‘close links to the masses’ and the emotional attachment the CCP continued to hold to in its insistence on mobilizing popular support behind its campaigns, in practice cadres did not particularly prioritize bottom up political communication between leaders and led in work units. A genuine, if controlled, form of performative politics helped to destroy potential opposition and clear the ground for the establishment of revolutionary state institutions in 1951. But by 1955 those institutions and their bolstering rituals of confession, political struggle and routinized accusation were widely understood to be what they in fact were: state-ordered displays of unchallengeable coercion against the vulnerable and dependent, opportunities for upward mobility for a small minority, and a signal for the rank and file to fall into line and recite from the same hymn sheet. Given the ways in which the majority were terrorized by the state and sought to conceal themselves through adhering to new state-determined forms of rituals, these increasingly visible displays of coercion

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and status differentiation produced the opposite of the Maoist state’s rhetoric of stirring individuals into participation in the revolution. The phenomenon of individuals who mouthed platitudes and participated as expected in revolutionary rituals while not necessarily believing in any of them was already visible in 1955. This dissimulating behaviour was in turn linked to the state’s further expansion of categories of ‘counterrevolutionary’ on the next round of witch-hunts, which placed an increasingly high burden of proof on the accused. By the time of the anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 and the second upsurge of the sufan campaign of 1958, the actual behaviour of accused counterrevolutionaries was irrelevant; those who were accused of merely thinking the wrong kinds of things were vulnerable to charges of being counterrevolutionary. The final determination of who was and was not a ‘rightist’ and ‘counterrevolutionary’ was by 1957–58 an almost entirely bureaucratic affair, conducted in entirety behind closed doors and devoid of even activist struggle sessions and the pretence of mass participation. Theatre had its place in the campaigns of early regime consolidation and political ritual had a role to play in more constrained campaigns of the middle years of socialist institutionalization. But despite the regime’s attachment to both the form and spirit of theatrical and participatory modes of politics, by the late 1950s both theatre and ritual collided with what Crane Brinton (1965) calls the ‘republic of virtue.’ The campaigns of revolutionary regime paranoia, the search for pure ideological unity, and the ongoing lack of clear criteria for determining the pure and revolutionary from the black and unreconstructable continued to widen over the course of the next generation.

Acknowledgements The section ‘Theatre and Campaign: The Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, 1950–1953’ is largely drawn from my article ‘Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Regime Consolidation in the People’s Republic of China, 1950–1952,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44 (1), January 2002, pp. 80–105. The permission of Cambridge University Press is gratefully acknowledged. Research for this work was generously supported by the British Academy’s International Exchange with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the SOAS Research Committee.

References Brinton, Crane (1965). Anatomy of Revolution (New York, Vintage). Chow Ching-wen (1960). Ten Years of Storm: The True Story of the Communist

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Regime in China (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston). ‘Double Ten Decision’/ ‘Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu zhenya fangeming huodong de zhishi’ (Decision of the Party and Center on the Suppression of Counterrevolutionary Activities), 10 October 1950. Reprinted in Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian (A Selection of Important Documents since the Founding of the PRC), Vol. 1, (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992). ‘Guanyu zhankai douzheng suqing ancangde fangeming fenzi de zhishi’ (On the Decision to Open Struggle and Clean Out Hidden Counterrevolutionary Elements), 1 July 1955. Cited in ‘Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu chedi siqing ancangde fangeming fenzi de zhishi’ (The Center Decision on Thoroughly Cleaning Out Hidden Counterrevolutionaries), 25 August 1955, in Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 7 (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1994). Luo Ruiqing (1950a). Lun renmin gong’an gongzuo (1949–1959) (On People’s Public Security Work, 1949–1959), edited by Gong’an Bu (Minsitry of Public Security), Luo Ruiqing lun renmin gong’an gongzuo (Luo Ruiqing on People’s Public Security Work) (Beijing, Qunzhong chubanshe, 1994). Luo, Ruiqing (1950b). ‘Zai di’er ci quanguo gong’an huiyushang de baogao’ (Report before the Second National Police Conference), 16 October 1950. Reprinted in Jianguo yilao zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 1, (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992). –– (1950c). ‘Zhongyang gong’an bu guanyu quanguo gong’an huiyi de baogao’ (Report of the central ministry of public security on national public security conference), 26 October 1950, Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 1 (Beijing, Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 1992). –– (13 July 1956). ‘Youfan bisu, youcuo bijiu’ (It is Necessary to Clean Out Counterrevolutionaries and Rectify Errors), cited in Tao Siju (1996). –– (19 September 1956) Luo Ruiqing, ‘Tong fangeming jinxing douzheng de zhuyao jingyan’ (Important experience in carrying out anti counterrevolutionary struggle’), Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 7 (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1994. Mayer, Arno (2000). The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Nanjing Gong’an zhi (Nanjing Public Security Gazeteer) (1994). (Nanjing, Haitian chubanshe). Peng, Zhen (1951). ‘Guanyu zhenya fangeming he chengzhi fangeming tiaoli wenti de baogao’ (On the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries and Report on Questions on the Regulations for the Punishment of Counterrevolutionaries), report given at the Eleventh Conference of the Central Government Committee on 20 February 1951. Reprinted in Jianguo yilao zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 2 (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992).

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Perry, Elizabeth J. (2002). ‘Moving the Masses: Emotion Work in the Chinese Revolution,’ Mobilization, 7 (2): 111–28. Qi, Shoucheng (1990). ‘Tianwang huihui ji Shenyang renmin zhenya geming’ (Heaven’s Vengeance is Slow but Sure: Remembering the Shenyang People’s Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries), Liaoning wenshi ziliao (Collected Literary and Historical Materials on Liaoning), 29. Tao, Siju, ed. (1996). Xin Zhongguo di’yi ren gong’an buzhang – Luo Ruiqing (The First Public Security Minister of New China – Luo Ruiqing) (Beijing, Qunzhong chubanshe). Xin, Buliang (1989). ‘Renmin de nuhou: Xi’an zhenya fandong geming yundong de huigu’ (The People’s Angry Roar: Recollections of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries in Xi’an), Xi’an wenshi ziliao (Collected Literary and Historical Material on Xi’an), 15. Wu Yunfei (1989). ‘Yi yici gong shenhui’ (Remembering a Public Trial), Riwei tongzhi de Mulan (Mulan under Japanese Puppet Rule), Mulan wenshi ziliao (Collected Literary and Historical Material on Mulan), 4. ‘Zhonggong xianwei guanyu zhenya tewu fangeming huodong de jueding’ (Decision of the Xi’an Party Committee on the Suppression of the Activities of tewu Counterrevolutionaries), 28 June 1951. Reprinted in Xi’an wenshi ziliao (Collected Literary and Historical Material on Xi’an), 15. ‘Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu chedi siqing ancangde fangeming fenzi de zhishi’ (The Center Decision on Thoroughly Cleaning Out Hidden Counterrevolutionaries), 25 August 1955, in Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 7 (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1994). ‘Zhonghua remin gongheguo chengzhi fangeming tiaolie’ (PRC Regulations on the Punishment of Counterrevolutionaries), (1950-1951) . Reproduced in Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, Vol. 2 (Beijing, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe). Archival References, Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) B1/2/1339 (1951). ‘Fangeming zuifan chuxing fenlei tongji biao’ (Statistics on the Classification of Punishments for Counterrevolutionary Criminals). B122/1/254 (1955). ‘Shangye sanju canjia sufan yundong renshi tongji biao’ (Third Commerce Bureau Personnel Statistical form Participation in the Sufan Campaign). B122/2/1192 (20 September 1955). Shanghai Third Commerce Bureau, Shipin zhan (grain stations) ‘Cancun wulei fangeming, xinshi zhanzui ji fange­ming shehui jichu diaocha tongjibiao’ (Statistical Form on the Social Basis for the Remaining Five Types of Counterrevolutionaries and Criminal Counterrevolutionaries).

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B123/2/930 (27 April 1955). ‘Zhongguo mucai gongsi shanghai shi gongsi zhenfan qingli qingkuang huibao’ (Report on the Suppression and Cleaning Out of Counterrevolutionaries in the Shanghai Branch of the National Wood Products Company). B123/2/930 (30 April 1955). ‘Guanyu zai shangye yiju guoying shangye qiyezhong jixu jinxing zhenfan qingli gongzuo chubu yijian’ (An Opinion on Continuing the Implementation of Suppression and Cleaning Out of Counterrevolutionaries in the First Commerce Bureau National Businesses and Enterprises). B123/2/1036 (30 September 1955). ‘Ancang fangeming fenzi douzheng de chubu zongjie’ (Preliminary Report on Struggle against Hidden Counterrevolutionaries). B123/2/1036 (6 December 1955(a)). ‘Shanghai shi di’yi shangye ju zhuanmen xiaozu guanyu paidui gongzuo de zongjie (chugao)’ (‘Lining up’ [individuals for checking materials] Work Preliminary Report, Shanghai First Commerce Bureau special small group). B123/2/1036 (6 December 1955 (b)). ‘Yishang ju zhuanmen xiaozu guanyu paidui gongzuo de zongjie’ (The Shanghai First Commerce Bureau Special Small Group on ‘Lining Up’). B123/2/1036 (19 June 1956). ‘Qunian di’yi pi danwei shanhou chuli gongzuo qingkuang ji jidian tihui’ (Several Points on the Work Situation Handling Last Year’s First Group). B123/2/1011 (9 March 1957). ‘Sufan dongyuan baogao tigang’ (Outline Report on Sufan Activism). C21/1/98 (4 May 1951). Zhang Ben, ‘Wuyue siri zai shiyu qingnian jieji zhongguo xin minzhu zhuyi qingniantuan chengli erzhou nian dahui shang de baogao’ (Report to the Shanghai Municipal and Suburban Conference to Commemorate May Fourth Youth and the Two Years’ Establishment of New China’s Youth Corps). Newspaper clipping. C1/1/128 (July or August 1951). ‘Shanghai gongren canjia zhenya fangeming yundong zongjie baogao’ (Summary Report on Shanghai Workers’ Participation in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries). C21/2/179 (10 December 1950). ‘Shanghai shiwei guanyu fandong tewu dangtuan dengji gongzuo zhishi’ (Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Directive on Registration Work for Counterrevolutionary Special Affairs, Party, and Youth Corps).

Notes 1 The importance of preparatory work and assembling materials on counter­revolutionary cases features in virtually every document written during the course of the campaign.

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For examples, see ‘Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu chedi suqing ancangde fangeming fenzi de zhishi’ (25 August 1955); Luo Ruiqing (19 September 1956). 2 The actual percentages of individuals with ‘activist’ status varied from unit to unit, but in most of the enterprises and factories within the remit of the Shanghai First and Third Commerce Bureaus ranged from 15 to 20 per cent. 3 In the Shanghai Third Commerce Bureau, the percentage of those classified as either counterrevolutionary or bad elements was even higher at 18.47 per cent (see B122/1/254).

4

THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE Gandhi’s Trial Read as Theatre Sudipta Kaviraj

The Theatrical Dimension of Politics Theatre, it is generally acknowledged, forms an important part of the life of politics. Acts by politicians are often theatrical in the sense that they use theatricality to enhance the instrumental effectiveness of their acts. But it can be argued that there are some political acts which bear a closer relation with the quality of being theatrical. They do not have a theatrical dimension added to them, after the act, as it were. Theatricality is part of what that act is; in some cases, whether the act can have its full political effect depends on whether it is successful theatre in the first place. The world of politics is constituted by actions which have at least three different dimensions: instrumental calculations of power, discursive acts which persuade people about the rightness or appropriateness of political action, and last, but not least, rhetorical moves. These do not add anything to the instrumental effectiveness of calculations or the rational acceptability of practical arguments, but enhance the symbolic meanings of political action. Ironically, in academic analyses, this aspect is most often neglected. This paper seeks, experimentally, to concentrate exclusively on the analysis of the theatrical side of a defining moment in the exchanges between colonial power and nationalist movement that shaped modern India. Gandhi’s trial in August 1922 was one of the most significant points in this exchange, and also one of the most paradoxical. In this paper, I shall concentrate on the element of rhetoric, i.e. not the statement but the manner in which the statement is made, the elements of drama or theatre in the contest between the colonial state and the most celebrated rebel it faced.1 A reconstruction of Gandhi’s trial would reveal how provisional ‘an historical event’ is, how it is literally ‘created,’ through the deliberate, often opposed, strategies

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of historical actors, the partial fulfilment and frustration of their designs, unintended consequences, and how, as time goes on, it is constituted by a play of the historical with the mythical.2 The Context and the Legal Proceedings Gandhi had launched a non-violent non-co-operation movement with the British Raj in 1921 which created the first mass defiance of British authority. But after an incident in which an irate mob burnt a number of policemen, Gandhi, expressing shock and dismay, declared that the incident had destroyed the moral basis of his non-violent movement, and withdrew the campaign.3 The British authorities, despite internal differences, had not arrested Gandhi when the movement was at its height. A month after the campaign was withdrawn, he was arrested and brought to trial on charges of sedition, based on some articles he had published in his newspaper, Young India. The publisher of the paper, Shankerlal Banker, was also charged with Gandhi. The Government of India prepared for the trial with thoroughness, and used their best legal resources. The trial was held in the sessions court of Ahmedabad, and then in the courts of Justice Broomfield, with Sir J. T. Strangman as the Public Prosecutor. Gandhi surprised his accusers and the court by pleading guilty and asking for the maximum sentence. The court eventually sentenced him to six years in prison, the maximum term for sedition under existing law, though he actually served about two years. Gandhi was arrested several times later, but never tried again. As one of the most significant events in the history of Indian nationalism and of Indian law, the trial has been analysed in political commentary, biographical literature and historical writing. Its purely theatrical aspects, separated out analytically from the political and the juridical, call for an analysis of a special kind. The Symbolism of Trials A trial has an astonishing capacity to condense the relations of the whole political world into a narrow, highly visible field. Trials bring together in contention those who hold and exercise formal power and those who do not, who seek to organize society in order to create an alternative basis of power of their own. Trials are spectacles of power; they bring to representation the material, violent, tangible aspects of political power, but also its ideal, symbolic and representational forms. These are events in which all sides as it were conspire to make an exhibition of themselves, because they are making studied, deliberate statements about themselves and what they stand for. Despite the inevitable element of spectacle, these are not mock battles, but real ones, in which fates of individuals and institutions are sometimes determined with irreversible finality. Various sides to the conflict of the trial come with ideas about what they want this coming event to be. Before the actual unfolding of the event, it is just an empty place designated in time. Unlike common events in politics, which are

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often sudden, unforeseen, produced by inadequately prepared actions of contesting sides, political trials are exceptionally deliberate occurrences. Because they are fixed, anticipated and therefore deliberately planned on both sides, they allow an unusual degree of premeditation to actors who can bring to these well-designed narrativistic strategies. Human acts can be treated as narrativistic in a double sense. Some events are such that stories can be told about them; these are narratable incidents in the lives of concerned individuals and groups. This sets up an external relation between pre-narrative events that make up human lives and the stories that are told about them. Narratives, in this sense, are later facts, dependent upon the structure of events of which they constitute the stories. In some cases it appears necessary to look at the relation between narratives and acts in a different way. Because they know stories are told about lives, human beings give their lives a story-like form, living up to various narrativistic standards. Gandhi lived the most narratable of lives in modern India – the most story-like, susceptible to exaggeration and gossip, to embroidery, to myth-making. His life story is capable, in the exaggerating imagination of ordinary peasantry, of touching the edges of the superhuman, at least as close as one can come to that in our fallen and regrettably disenchanted age.4 The drama is the form that is most appropriate for the depiction, and I would suggest, the enactment of the large political acts like trials of leading dissenters. These usually have a number of recognizably theatrical characteristics – a clearly designated audience, a theatrical space, marked off from the ordinary, insubstantial, unsymbolic space of everyday life. They also generate the intense concentration of expectation, and often the enlargement of gestures that are usually associated with the dramatic form. The Theatrical Structure of the Political Trial Precisely because of the opportunity for pre-meditation and preparation, both sides sought to frame their stance at the trial within a much broader ideological position. In his analysis of political conflicts Gramsci uses the metaphorical distinction between ‘a war of position’ and a ‘war of manoeuvre.’ Something similar could be said about the trial. In the run-up to the trial, the two sides engage in a discursive ‘war of position,’ stating their positions, clarifying their moral bases and outlining the arguments. Gandhi, though on the side with fewer institutional resources, had two great advantages on his side: the nationalist movement was solidly behind him, despite the startled disappointment of some supporters at the sudden retreat after Chauri Chaura. Secondly, his greatest advantage, ideologically, was his single-minded clarity about his principles. The British, it is evident now, were seriously divided between two lines of thinking about what to do with Gandhi; and even individuals on the two sides often vacillated. Even within the trial, we can distinguish between two levels at which the sides contend with each other. The first is a war of ideological positions within

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the trial itself: the manner in which they set out, as clearly as possible, the broad ideas which justify their side of the trial – their fundamental moral principles, ideological justifications, political theory. As the trial is essentially a rationalistic discursive contest, in which two sides fight with each other not by an exchange of real violence but a rationalistic exchange of ideas in an argumentative form, it must bring to focus the two sides’ political theories. The heat of the political movement and mobilization does not always require or provide opportunity for stating a theoretical presentation of political ideals, but the studied calm of the liberal court almost always does. Besides this, and below this level of political exchange, the trials, precisely because they are set out as a contestatory event, i.e. they have a game-like structure of two sides ‘playing’ against each other in strategic counter-moves, also contain ‘a war of manoeuvres.’ Within the stately, ordered proceedings of the trial itself, there are unpredictable strategic situations: these require a sensing of opportunities, a quick grasp of options, decisiveness. In other words, to be played well, trials require not merely the capacity to argue well in the abstract, but also to calculate and respond to moves and counter-moves with suddenness and decision. Gandhi’s Preparation Gandhi prepared himself psychologically for internment or a custodial punishment, with which he was already familiar from South Africa. He also prepared for it by writing about the eventuality of his arrest. Legally, the trial focused on three articles he had written in Young India, which, on official view, fell foul of the law of sedition in British India. These articles set out Gandhi’s political ideas with utter clarity: in particular his two rather odd beliefs that British rule in India completely lacked moral justifiability, and yet, Indians should oppose it through non-co-operation, strictly abjuring any use of violence. Violence, in Gandhi’s thinking, debased the cause of justified rebellion in two ways. The history of revolutions seemed to demonstrate that the cycle of violence, once begun, was impossible to restrain, and consequently, it destroyed what a just defiance would have achieved. More fundamentally, use of violence obliterated the moral difference between the unjust power and its critics, by debasing them morally and turning them into images of those they opposed. Even if this helped destroy an evil oppressive structure, it was bound, in his view, to substitute it with another, since violence required some objects, towards whom it was bound to act oppressively. Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code stated: ‘whoever … attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards His Majesty’s Government established by law in British India, shall be punished.’ In one article, Gandhi made the deliberately provocative remark: ‘No one, perhaps, excels me in harbouring and promoting disaffection towards it. Indeed, I hold it to be the duty of every good man to be disaffected towards the existing Government, if he considers it as non-co-operators consider

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it to be evil’ (Gandhi 1921a). ‘I have no hesitation,’ he declared, ‘in saying that it is sinful for anyone, either as soldier or civilian, to serve this Government, which has proved treacherous to the Musalmans of India, and which has been guilty of the inhumanities in the Punjab … sedition has become the creed of the Congress. Every non-co-operator is pledged to preach disaffection towards the Government established by law … we ask for no quarter; we expect none from the Government’ (Gandhi 1921b). Lord Reading, the Governor General had expressed puzzlement in a speech to the Bengal Chambers of Commerce, in which he said he could not understand why some people engaged in ‘flagrant breaches of the law for purposes of challenging the Government, and in order to compel arrest.’ Gandhi replied: ‘We seek arrest because the so-called freedom is slavery. We are challenging the might of this Government, because we consider its activity to be wholly evil. We want to overthrow the Government. We want to compel its submission to the people’s will. We desire to show that Government exists to serve the people, not the people the Government’ (Gandhi 1921c). But it also invoked another interesting idea, justifying defiance, that ‘there was a higher court than the courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts’ (Gandhi 1921c). The Theatrical Form of the Trial: Contradictions of Liberal Imperialism By the time Gandhi had emerged on the scene, the British colonial state in India had developed some highly distinctive features. Britain entertained the deeply contradictory ambition of running a ‘liberal empire’: i.e. the way the empire was run was meant to demonstrate that it was the imperial order of a liberal state. Naturally, this entangled its theorists, publicists and administrators in positions of considerable awkwardness. Internally, it was a period of expansion of liberal freedoms in Britain; externally, the greatest phase of colonial expansion. It involved them in utterly impossible intellectual contortions, declaring on the one hand the incontrovertible superiority of liberal principles of self-rule, and justifying their denial to Britain’s colonial subjects on the other. The imperial order also had a strongly rationalistic image of itself, and liked to maintain a generous view of its own place in history, with pretensions of complete mastery of the world including the time, the rhythm in which it prosecuted everything. A trial is seen as prearranged, part of an unhurried, rationalistic structuring of time and judgement, which demonstrated both the empire’s principles and its power. Given its ideological image of itself, it could not finish off Gandhi’s challenge stealthily by assassination. It had to bring him to justice. The structure of the rationalist legal regime affords the rebel with two great assets. First, it provides him with the opportunity of a spectacle, which, however tilted in favour of the state, however unequal, gives him a chance to use the implicitly ineradicably dialogic character of the trial. The trial is certainly an opportunity for the state to accuse, but it is also, inextricable from it, one for the rebel to answer back.

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Like a drama enacted in a theatre, political trials have audiences which are often clearly designated, and the ‘meaning’ of the trial as an historical event would be interpreted and read quite differently by the different circles of its viewers. At least three discrete audiences watched Gandhi’s trial, and tried to fit this new event into the narrative of British rule they had already constructed. Its first audience was British – certainly, the administrators and civilians who constituted the colonial regime in India, but behind them stood the larger audience of the British public with its complex internal layering and structure. It was a complexly structured ‘public’ divided by factors of class, access to power, degrees of politicization, interest in the Indian colony. One important part of Gandhi’s rhetorical strategy was his close attention to this public; every single act of Gandhi’s contained an implicit gesture, a reference, an interpretation of itself directed towards this audience. Gandhi was a particularly skilful observer of the structures of feeling and public affect in British culture, and appealed with rare effect to prevailing notions of ‘justice,’ publicity and fair-play in the judicial process. More narrow-minded nationalists often did not understand the historical need for this dimension of Gandhi’s acts, why they had to send an entirely unambiguous message to the British public. They thought, sometimes, that Gandhi’s acknowledgement of their decisive presence seemed an unnecessary deference towards colonial rulers. Besides the British audience, Gandhi’s other predominant audience were the Indian middle-class educated elites, an audience which was equally diverse and multi-layered. At one level, this audience included those who had prospered under colonial rule, particularly the professional classes whose scarce skills were excessively remunerated by the emerging structure of modern professions. Their political caution, and their understandable watchfulness about the possibility that the defeat of the British might insidiously translate into their own dispossession, were reinforced by the caution of the bourgeoisie which gave political support to the Congress. At lower levels of prosperity, this audience also included the voluble, excitable petty bourgeoisie in the Indian cities who had already been mobilized into anti-colonial political action by a variety of pre-Gandhian movements. They shared the advantages of culture and articulateness with the upper classes of colonial society and the feeling of degradation of economic and political powerlessness with the poor. They provided the main supporters of political movements, including Gandhi’s satyagrahas. Making Politics Intelligible to the Peasantry Gandhi’s exceptionalism lay in drawing into politics the masses of the poor, illiterate peasantry by making political acts meaningful to them. He had to accomplish that in a society with a peculiar cultural structure. Most societies function around a core of ‘common sense’ shared across cultural and social hierarchies. The cultural peculiarity of colonial India lay in the fact that introduction of Western

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education forced it gradually to develop two distinct universes of common sense, which interpreted most significant things in the social world in radically different ways. For the Western-educated middle class, often speaking in English while discussing grave and complex matters like politics, the world was a realm of causal and instrumental processes. Politics, in particular, was a field of instrumental acts dealing with modern forms of entirely secularized power. Political life was a domain of calculations, moves and countermoves, of the instrumental use of the resources of order and disorder at one’s command. Peasant groups did not share this entirely secularized, profane and disabused view of political rationality.5 To them, the world appeared as not a realm of causality alone but also of meaningfulness, and since they lived in a world in which significant things are invested with meanings, even causally efficient acts could contain an indelible aura of mystery, of something larger of the world’s inscrutable design expressed through the small and finite acts of ordinary people. In this discourse, the language of power was inextricably linked to the language of saintliness. The peasantry are so convinced of the invincibility of the instrumental power of established regimes, and the ineffectuality of frontal disobedience, that successful defiance seemed to them always like a miracle.6 Since defiance against constituted authority of the state, particularly the awesome power of the British empire, was itself a miracle, it is not surprising that this fundamentally true sense of the ‘miraculous’ was embroidered by stories of Gandhi’s supernatural powers. Gandhi’s exceptionality consisted in doing his political acts in a way that made sense, albeit in very different ways, to both these conflicting ‘rationalities,’ being interpretable to both these ways of approaching the ontology of the political. Gandhi’s Use of the Semiotic Register In every society, social transactions of meaning use various types of communicative systems. Words and discursive practices are, in illiterate societies, only a small part of these techniques. Let us call this entire set of communicative techniques a semiotic register. It is structured like a register, with discrete communicative forms – stretching from non-verbal forms like bodily gestures, the symbolism of dress, the use of food as language, to the verbal level of words, which is subdivided into two elementary strata of the spoken and the written. In the Indian context, it is essential to consider the ambiguity of status of the written word – particularly because of our natural preference towards what we perceive as its qualities of transparency, fixity and clarity. To the illiterate, however, the realm of the written word has just the opposite characteristics – of obscurity, unreliability and falsity because, above everything else, it is through the written word that the moneylenders and the functionaries of the state imposed incomprehensible and unjust demands on them.7 Thus it can be argued that to those without modern education the hierarchy of the semiotic register would appear to be the reverse of what it would be to the educated. Naturally, the educated would rely in their most

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serious transactions on exchanges of the written word. They would not merely prosecute the action in words, as happens predominantly in court proceedings, but the activity of interpretation of that single incident, the more complex and fluid business of framing it in credible narratives, is also primarily done in written words. It is not accidental that, as the struggle between the colonial state and the nationalists grew more intense, the prosecution of politics became increasingly a battle of words, giving increasing advantage to those who could use the written word with great effect.8 Gandhi’s use of rhetoric was exceptional precisely because he did not, unlike other middle class politicians, abandon the rhetorical resources of the other parts of the semiotic register of Indian peasant society. Dress, bodily posture, food and forms of greeting were all laden with meaning, full of rhetorical force. And although Gandhi was a shrewd and prolific user of the discursive in both its written and spoken forms, his success with the larger peasant audience depended I suspect on his use of the other strata of the semiotic register. It is not that the peasantry was an already constituted audience to which he contrived to appeal by these means; rather, through doing politics, doing defiance in the non-discursive language of common peasants, he made the formerly meaningless written exchanges between the Congress and the state, reported in incomprehensible newspapers, meaningful to them, and precisely through these acts, constituted them into an audience. The Theatre of Justice: The Trial Game The trial was an anticipated event. So each side brought a significantly different story to which the trial was to be attached as the final dramatic act. For the British audience, it represented long delayed judicial proceedings, which would bring the irritatingly difficult rebel to a proper trial. To India’s modern elites, it was a contest of will and politico-legal manoeuvring between the nationalist movement and the colonial state; for the peasantry a test of the saintliness or the miraculous power of Gandhi. For both sides, the British state and the nationalists, the trial was not just what it was, an everyday courtroom case, but fated to be metaphorically enhanced. For both sides wanted it to show through it the limits of the possibilities of a political world: Gandhi wanted it to show that transgression of colonial political rules was possible despite the power of the state; the authorities wanted to demonstrate that some significant limits, laid down by the law and upheld by the power of the state, were not to be crossed without severe penalties. It was not the trial of a single man and the decision of a single judge. The entire political world, in its central contradiction of colonial power and political rebellion, was condensed into that single theatre. Gandhi’s trial was, however, more complex than a normal drama, which has a fixed text before it is played. This was more like an historical fact in waiting. Everyone knew that this space in time would be filled by a fact of great historical

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consequence, but what kind of fact it would be was still indeterminate. It was dependent on how the two sides ‘played’ the event. In one respect the political trial has a game-like structure played between two sides, rather than a drama in which the roles of actors are predetermined and fixed. Or to continue with the idea of writing, the manner of acting in a political trial is one in which the drama is written and acted at the same time. Both sides come to a political trial with a ‘script’ for the event, and the actual event is a contest between the two intended scripts. Structure of the Trial: The Advantage of the State A trial is irreducibly an act of power, despite legal efforts at maintaining formal impartiality. Formally, liberal jurisprudence takes a lot of trouble to ensure against explicit prejudice, i.e. to see that cases are not prejudged. But in the colonial context, especially in trials like Gandhi’s, it is impossible to avoid some subtle prejudgements. Only the power of the state can bring somebody to justice. The language of the court proceedings is, therefore, not surprisingly, highly unequal. The accused, in legal terms, is not yet guilty, not even, in ordinary cases, a person against whom there already exists a strong presumption of guilt. He is merely someone against whom a charge has been preferred. In civil cases between individuals who are parties to a conflict, this impartiality can be maintained. But a trial like Gandhi’s immediately altered this even structure of the legal transaction. The language does not give the accused the opportunity that the law in a strict sense does. The entire language of the trial is structured against the accused. The accused must speak to defend himself, which means that he must speak after his accusers. This also condemns him to speak after them in another sense: their preemptive statements structure the possibilities of his speech; he can only respond to what they have said. The prosecution have the ineradicable advantage over him of having the power, the honour, the privilege of having the question, of having the beginning, the advantage, within the trial, of moving the white pieces. The accused, by this ritual of legal dialogue, the subtle insertion of sequence, of the relations of before and after, within the formal equality of the legal exchange of opinions, is reduced to the permanent inferiority of having to answer in a conversation which has been begun by the state. Before Gandhi, there were political leaders or militants who made the judicial proceedings into showcases for their own martyrdom. Terrorists condemned to death often made ringing statements of patriotism in the courts or before they were executed. Not surprisingly, these statements were then turned into the material for nationalist mythology. But despite this, martyrdom signalled, against all attempts at retrospective transformation of its meaning, an undeniable victory of the state. Gandhi did not move into the ‘paradigm,’ to use Victor Turner’s phrase, of this kind of martyrdom. He devised a different rhetorical response peculiar to himself. Colonial authorities clearly wanted some political trials to be spectacles,

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because of the political reputation of the people brought to trial. They understood quite well that politics often works by a fatal process of contagion of rebellious acts, or of fear which makes people, potential rebels, desist from them. Therefore, from the point of view of the authorities, the main purpose in the trial of a notorious political leader was not merely to punish him, but reduce his intangible aura, the first beginnings of a myth surrounding his personality. Trials, if theatrically effective, would not merely bring strictly and scrupulously proportionate legal punishment on an individual for breaking the laws of the colonial state, but would discourage others from taking the same path. Colonial administrators, like other people in power, saw trials as dramas of deterrence. These brought the dissenter, the disobedient subject, to a place of humiliation where he would be shown as powerless, isolated and insignificant. It is not the dismemberment of the body that is attempted, in liberal imperial courts, but the more effective dismemberment of the image. The theatrical task of the state is to reduce him, through the public process of the trial, into a pitiable ordinary man, whose pretensions of enacting the political miracle of successful defiance of imperial power are stripped away. He is seen to be defenceless, demystified; defiance is shown to be impossible. Conversely, Gandhi’s task is to show that he can protect the image of a person who shows the possibility of defiance, and through his example, encourages others to do the same. As the conflict and the violence is symbolic rather than physical, as the cuts and thrusts will be through concepts and arguments, both sides choose their champions with care. From the point of view of the state, the choice of Gandhi as the victim of its legal punishment is crucial, precisely because of the symbolic structure of the political movement. Nothing short of the defeat of the leader is a full defeat of the movement. Only when the leader is silenced and reduced to commonness, frailty and anonymity can the movement be reduced to political embarrassment and concession of at least a temporary defeat. Paradoxically, by acting in this way, the apparatuses of the state often do for oppositional movements what they can themselves achieve only inadequately – they accomplish, by their negative acts, a complete identification of the leader and the movement. Apart from putting the accused in the position of inferiority by forcing him to answer, the structure of law also presumes that the majesty of the state’s power would induce him to plead not guilty, and his rational reaction as the accused individual would be to try to escape punishment. Crucially, a further presumption behind all this is that the punishment is being inflicted by the state on behalf of the society as a whole, of which the accused individual is a part. In ordinary cases in a liberal state, the nation-state accepts and owns the accused as a subject, a citizen in the very process of punishing him. Implicitly, behind the legal forms there exists a liberal idea of the nation as a community that owns up its members. The British state in India sought to use a liberal language containing these subtle presuppositions, enabling Gandhi to show them as untenable in colonial

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conditions. The exact wording of the rule of the penal code put its stress on the government being established by law, emphasizing the colonial government’s urgent need for legitimacy. The state could not explicitly say it was based on the will of the people it governed, but on their interests, the closest possible approximation. But its desire for legitimacy precisely made it possible for Gandhi to use democratic principles against its claims. The legal report, with a typical blandness that deliberately reduced the theatricality of the occasion, said: ‘Sir J. T. Strangman and Rao Bahadur Girdharlal conducted the prosecution, while the accused were undefended.’ The accusation of the state assumes that a rational defendant would defend himself. Even an ardent nationalist like Tilak defended himself against the charge, but Gandhi chose a more startling response. By refusing to defend himself, he refused to make the expected countermove in the game of the trial, and rejected the assumptions of the liberal conception of the state implicit in the juristic construction of the proceedings. His acceptance of the charge, in a sense, made short work of the long legal preparation for the enumeration of seditious acts. This was the first move to interrupt the state’s side of the theatre. The Theatre of Defiance Gandhi single-mindedly and systematically disrupted ‘the script’ the state had created for the trial, throwing a surprise at every single opportunity, making its preparations useless. After the charges were read out, the judge asked Gandhi to plead guilty to the charge or ask to be tried.9 Gandhi pleaded guilty, but in an especially difficult way, utterly different from the ordinary meaning of that judicial gesture. Ordinarily, pleading guilty signifies not merely that the accused admits having committed the acts, but also to the overarching legal interpretation of that act being wrong, and therefore punishable by law. Gandhi splits these two levels contained in the legal gesture of ‘pleading guilty.’ For him, this meant a factual acknowledgement that he had indeed written the articles, but that did not imply that writing those pieces was even remotely in the wrong. On the contrary, he asserted his moral right to write them, and consequently rejected the state’s right to bring him to a ‘trial.’ In his typical style of excruciatingly polite provocation, he not only acknowledged that he wrote the seditious material, but mentioned several others which were possibly more inflammatory. And since he pleaded guilty, he encourages the trial judge to state that the only matter left was of sentencing the accused since they pleaded guilty to the charges. The public prosecutor, Strangman, objected to this threatened abbreviation of juridical procedure, and claimed that the charges were not only to be read out, but also fully explained. In terms of legal theatre, it is of great significance for the prosecuting side to keep its control over the proceedings and stick to its proper sequence. Secondly, if the purpose of the trial was broader than just bringing an individual wrong-doer to punishment, the explanation of the evidence, its full

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dramatic narration, was essential. The Advocate-General pointed out that under the procedure, the court could order the trial to proceed, or convict the accused on their plea; and he urged the court to do the trial in full – which was the occasion to present the state’s discourse in its full form. The state should not merely accuse; it was essential for the ideological framework of liberal imperialism to justify its case and show its accusation to be reasonable. British rule in India was almost a providential expedient. A powerful advanced liberal civilization was slowly creating conditions in which Indians could eventually achieve self-rule. To that end, it had provided a secure framework of rule of law and limited but slowly expanding opportunities of representative government. By undermining the authority of that benign and gentle government, Gandhi’s movement was irresponsibly inviting disorder. The courtroom was an extension, almost a metaphor, for the political public sphere in which significant issues were decided by a form of unrestricted public reason. Since this case was a public contest between the moral claims of the two sides, it was actually imperative for the state side to present its argument to the audience outside the court, which explains the public prosecutor’s anxiety to ensure that the charges were not merely recited but explained. The discursive purpose of the trial was to disarticulate Gandhi’s argument and establish his image as a lawbreaker, as a person who tried but failed to resist the power of the colonial state, which was able, after all, to bring him to trial and send him to prison. The tone of the state, as the representative of the society it protects, must establish its moral superiority and put the moral blame of causing unnecessary and ineffectual disturbance on the nationalist dissenter. This required, both morally and theatrically, that the accused should act as a rational individual and seek to escape punishment. If he did not do that, if he refused to escape punishment, if he refused his right to be tried, this upset the entire dramatic structure of the legal spectacle. Gandhi’s move caused confusion in the theatrical choreography of law. The judge, Bloomfield, strangely, did not accept the prosecutor’s request. ‘I do not agree,’ he said. ‘I have under the law full discretion to convict the accused on their own plea. And in this case, I cannot see what advantage can be gained through the evidence.’ Showing utter lack of perception regarding the theatre of ideas, he argued: ‘The only evidence will be the evidence to show that Mr. Gandhi was responsible for those particular articles. In the face of his plea, it seems to me it would be futile to record any more evidence on that point.’ The judge made a further false move, extending the obligatory civility of the liberal official to offer Gandhi another discursive opening. His behaviour demonstrated the desire of the liberal state to appear civilized and fair, and to show, by almost excessive leniency, that the power of that state was not based on any hint of violence. Strangman took pains to point out that Gandhi had high education and was considered a leader of the people. Although he proclaimed non-violence as his creed, evidently he did not understand the consequences of his actions.

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Undermining established government necessarily led to violence and breakdown of order, and the violent incidents in Chari Chaura simply proved that point. Under these circumstances, he demanded a sentence of some severity. Gandhi’s actions placed emphasis on just the opposite elements in the court: he could not match the state in pomp and pageantry but he could turn his loneliness and vulnerability itself into a sign of immense rhetorical and symbolic force. Theories of drama and acting often stress that the actor must understand the resources of his body, and his face – the most basic instruments of his art. Ugliness or beauty, figure and posture decide what an actor can do particularly well. A good actor must understand the dramatic potentialities of his body. Gandhi appears to have had a deep perception of this point, and in his physical presentation, he accentuated his frailty and voluntary acceptance of a mixture of austerity and poverty. At the same time, his physical demeanour showed great civility and poise. He had himself commented on the deep civility of the bodily comportment of the Indian peasant, his economy and stillness of gestures indicating restraint, the essence of civilization. Through the trial Gandhi remained composed, accentuated the low but firm voice, occasionally smiled to show he was not bowed down by fear.10 In court Gandhi showed all the signs of deliberation, restraint and civility, which induced the judge to extend a gesture of spectacular politeness in return. By the time the trial ended, in that great theatre of publicity, Gandhi had devised an inverted system of signs for himself, counter-pointing almost literally, every single sign used by the state. To the pageantry of the state he opposed his austerity, to its sense of opulence his suggestion of poverty, to its power his vulnerability, to its discourse of dominance his intransigence. He had devised a new, startling symbolic language for himself and his followers. When asked many years later about how he was so sparsely dressed while meeting the King, he could use this signifying chain and comment that ‘his majesty is dressed up enough for the two of us.’ Gandhi’s exchanges with the colonial state, could be, and indeed was, read in two very different ways. The middle-class Indian audience saw in it the subtlety of his lawyer’s mind, and a degree of courage in standing up to the state’s authority. But peasants could easily see in it a contest with evil, and interpret it, in their own way, in the direction of a modern form of saintliness. Saintliness was marked by an improbable extension of subjectivity, subsuming within itself the more inadequate and cowardly subjectivity of others. A defining mark of saintliness was the ability to suffer exemplarily. Suffering was a common human fate, but exemplary suffering was to suffer without cause, and to suffer for and on behalf of others.11 Clearly, Gandhi was bringing the suffering and sacrifice of the prison upon himself, in a sense, without cause; he also showed his extraordinariness by defying the logic of normal behaviour in attempting to maximize rather than shorten his punishment. To act like that was ‘irrational,’ but that precisely, marked him out as someone who was uncommon, extraordinary, and touched by

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the divine insanity of the saint, which transcended the narrow, ordinary rational calculations of more normal individuals, and was accompanied by the ability to bear extraordinary sacrifice. This achieved an immense exaggeration of scale of his actions; they became larger than life-size. Another rhetorical device Gandhi often used during his trial greatly heightened this effect. On several occasions, at times of crisis, he enjoined his supporters to act with utter and imperturbable restraint, to ensure that not a single stone was thrown at a single policeman. This served two rhetorical purposes. First, it heightened the dramatic sense of his representativeness of the whole nation, his acting on their behalf, assuming to himself their suffering and acts of anger. It also created a wonderful stillness in the political world, providing the perfect frame for his acts inside the court. Its effect was exactly like the stage light that follows the ballerina when the rest of the stage and its dancers are plunged in darkness. It was as if the whole stage of India’s confusing, chaotic political universe was plunged into darkness, with a single circle of light illuminating the courtroom, which meant that the faintest whisper of what he said, his smallest possible move, would not be lost to his audiences. They would stand out in this vast stillness of all other actions, with an unusual, extraordinary clarity. The Sentence The actual sentencing was a complex, and from the point of view of the state, ideologically messy affair. For the greatest ideological effect, the sentence ought to be unambiguous, and the sentence an affirmation of the general principles which the system of justice upholds. Although in terms of legal formalism, the trial followed procedures with impeccable punctuality and the two sides treated each other with admirable courtesy, from an ideological point of view, the state’s case was irreparably compromised. The way Gandhi moved, both in devising the general character of his movement of non-violence, with the strong and surprising connection between defiance and non-violence, countering not force with force, but a moral stance against the state’s illegitimacy, put the colonial administrators in great difficulty in making their responses meaningful to the audience they feared the most – the one at home. It seemed to leave them with three options, all less than satisfactory. They could remain passive in the face of Gandhi’s constant provocations and appear weak and irresolute. They could try massive repression, but the numbers were large, and if the use of force got out of control and slid into excess, as it did in Amritsar, they would appear shockingly brutal, creating a fatal dissonance between policing measures of the colonial regime and the rationalist, civilized self-image of colonial ideology. Alternatively, they could mix restraint with harshness – which is what they eventually did – and manage to appear hesitant and brutal, and worst of all, inconsistent.12 On a small scale, these different approaches to Gandhi could be seen in the trial setting itself. The public prosecutor did not treat Gandhi differently from

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any other political agent, did not lose his nerve and refused to fall into traps constantly sprung by Gandhi’s discourse. But soon it became amply clear that Gandhi’s discursive moves had had their effect and had driven a clearly discernible line of distinction between the prosecutor and the judge. This was also part of the structure of the liberal court: it offered individuals an opportunity for decision at every stage and, at a subtler level, enticed the wielders of judicial power – like judges or advocates – to represent themselves as individuals, as people with their own personalities, rather than indistinguishable cogs in a legal machine. The judge asked if Gandhi wished to make a final statement before the sentence, which Gandhi had already prepared. Gandhi proceeded in his opening remarks, before he read out his prepared statement, to make a characteristically exaggerated assumption of responsibility, for the events of Chauri Chaura and Bombay, for acts that others had done, and so enlarging his responsibility, and making himself in a sense their representative by suffering in their place. Retrospectively, Broomfield commented to Watson: ‘I think that was one reason he was pleased with his trial. I let him have his say.’ This was a partial understanding of what actually happened in a discursive sense: he had allowed Gandhi to have his say, but more crucially, shortened the state’s right to make its case. Gandhi’s prepared statement elaborated more fully, but with his usual brevity and sharpness, both his framing principles and the grounds for his specific decision to plead guilty. Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for the non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge, is either to resign your post and thus dissociate yourself from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and in reality I am innocent; or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to public weal’ (Watson 1969: 159). Gandhi showed an acute alertness about the smallest openings in the legal transactions, the legal war of manoeuvre. These were moves which could not be prepared or already rehearsed; they had to be improvised on the spot, seizing the

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courtesy with which the judge conducted the proceedings, and in which Gandhi quickly sensed an opening to discomfit the state’s discourse. He succeeded at least partially, since this introduced a dissonance between the discursive acts of the prosecutor and the judge, and we detect a note of increasing moral defensiveness and ambiguity in the judge’s behaviour. When it came to the sentencing, Broomfield said, ‘what remains, the determination of a just sentence, is perhaps as difficult a proposition as a judge in this country could have to face. The law is no respecter of persons. Nevertheless,’ he continued, more famously, ‘it will be impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely ever to try. It would be impossible to ignore the fact that, in the eyes of millions of your countrymen, you are a great patriot and a leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and even of saintly life’ (Watson 1969: 160–61). An ambiguity creeps into the judge’s language in his constant qualifications, which border on apology and extenuation. It appears almost as if the judge feels guilty to pronounce him guilty. Broomfield continued to say that he had to deal with Gandhi ‘in one character only’; he was sentencing him because of ‘what appears to him to be necessary in the public interest’; it was ‘his duty’ to pass a sentence on him, which evidently he did not find either personally agreeable or morally straightforward. He sentenced him to two years on each count, six years of simple imprisonment in all. But in a final act of discursive confusion, he added, ‘if the course of events in India should make it possible for the Government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I’ (Watson 1969: 161). Gandhi spoke briefly to say: ‘So far as the sentence itself is concerned, I certainly consider that it is as light as any judge would inflict on me, and so far as the whole proceedings are concerned I must say that I could not have expected greater courtesy’ (Watson 1969: 162). Meanings Eventually, the trial had taken on a completely different meaning from the theatre of humiliation or at least reduction it was meant to be. It did remove the popular leader from his natural habitat at the head of the movement, away from the admiration of the multitude in public meetings, into the unnatural loneliness of the court room, and placed him in a position of enormous theatrical inequality – between the pageantry of the colonial court, enhanced by its measured, deliberate, ritualized language of unhurried procedure, and his own forlorn existence in the dock. But Gandhi defeated the theatrical script of this trial by finding a way of exaggerating precisely those qualities which the state wished to emphasize: his dress declaring his affiliation to India’s poor people, his fragile physique stressed vulnerability which only heightened an impression of his courage and spiritual resolution. He undermined the attempt to accuse him and try out his case by the pre-emptive move of pleading guilty, by asking for maximum

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punishment he denied the functionaries of the state even the luxury of showing clemency. Finally, in his short, but highly significant exchanges with the judge, he pushed him onto the defensive on moral grounds. Of the two ‘scripts’ the two sides had brought to the trial, curiously, it was Gandhi’s ‘script’ that left its print on the event, determining its character; and the ‘script’ of the state, despite the considerable advantages of the theatre of law, and the first move, was taken apart, and reduced, in a sense, to incoherence. Gandhi had said in 1937: ‘My writings should be cremated with my body. What I have done will endure, not what I have said or written.’ He wanted people to read the texts of his actions correctly, and his actions often exhibited the deliberate construction of texts. Through the trial of 1922, Gandhi had begun to turn the spectacle of the discursive contest between the colonial state and the nationalist movement against the colonial power. All sides saw in the trial a sort of victory for Gandhi, a strange frustration of the power of the colonial state, and an odd diminution of its prestige. The tone of embarrassment that gradually infuses the speech of the trial judge later spread to the public discourse in Britain, and at least, to a large segment of the British public, the colonial authority had its legitimacy fatally undermined. The educated audience in India, except for communists and the extreme left, saw in the trial at least marks of Gandhi’s great political ingenuity, if not surprising moral force. But the ordinary peasant consciousness happily attributed to him, through gossip, rumour, the simple embroidery of popular tales a miraculous power which even the might of the British Raj could not contain, curb or subdue, and created the myth of his invincibility. Only Lord Reading, with the foresight and sensitivity characteristic of the excessively powerful, wrote to his son in relief that Gandhi ‘had certainly come to his last ditch politically.’ Historically, the trial came to represent something quite different – the beginning of the end of the British empire in India, a strange reversal in which what began as a trial of the rebel ended in something more like a trial of the state. References Amin, Shahid (1984). ‘Gandhi as the Mahatma,’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol. III (Delhi, Oxford University Press). –– (1995). Event, Metaphor, Memory (Berkeley, University of California Press). Brown, Judith (1989). Gandhi: Prisoner of Conscience (New Haven, Yale University Press). Gandhi, M. K. (1921a). ‘Shaking the Mane,’ Young India, 15 June; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XX (Delhi, Publications Division, Government of India). –– (1921b). ‘Tampering with Loyalty,’ Young India, 29 September; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXI (Delhi, Publications Division, Government of India).

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–– (1921c). ‘The Puzzle and Its Solution,’ Young India, 15 December; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXII (Delhi, Publications Division, Government of India). Guha, Ranajit (1983). Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, Oxford University Press). Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak (New Haven, Yale University Press). Watson, Francis (1969). The Trial of Mr Gandhi (London, Macmillan).

Notes 1 There is an excellent account of this event in Watson (1969), which describes the circumstances leading to Gandhi’s trial and its legal proceedings in detail. 2 Several studies of Indian nationalism pay close attention to Gandhi’s politics, see Brown (1989). 3 Amin (1995) is a brilliant analysis of the process of constitution of Chauri Chaura as an historical event. 4 Shahid Amin has shown how such rumours about Gandhi’s powers circulated in a North Indian region. 5 One of the best accounts of this perception of politics is in Amin (1984). A more general, theoretical analysis of the peasant vision of politics and different forms of power can be found in Guha (1983). 6 Although there is no reference to ‘saintliness’ in James Scott’s (1985) analysis of peasant resistance, his account also implicitly refers to this sense of invincibility of established power. That is why the peasantry takes recourse to ‘the weapons of the weak.’ 7 The best account of this inversion of qualities of the written word, and how it spread to the peasant mistrust of the written records of the state is in Guha (1983). 8 Obviously, this point has to be qualified: those who used the written word depended on the support of followers who were less adept in that skill. 9 From Watson’s later research, it appears that the judge, Broomfield, did not anticipate a particularly troublesome case, as the various moves, from the British and Gandhi’s side, were made with impeccable politeness. He wrote in his diary for 18 March 1922: ‘Golf before breakfast. Try Gandhi’ (Watson 1969: 62). 10 The impression of Gandhi’s personality on the Viceroy, Lord Reading is recorded in a private letter: ‘He came … in a white dhoti and cap woven on a spinning wheel, with bare feet and legs, and my first impression on seeing him ushered into my room was that there was nothing to arrest attention in his appearance, and that I should have passed him by in the street without a second look at him. When he talks the impression is different. He is direct, and expresses himself well in excellent English with a fine appreciation of the value of the words he uses. There is no hesitation about him and there is a ring of sincerity in all that he utters…’ (Quoted in Watson 1969: 136–7). Notice the Viceroy’s observation of a series of incongruities – the ordinariness of a well-known

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personality, his seeming inconspicuousness but how that is changed when he spoke. The Viceroy observed his bare feet and legs, the dhoti rather than a more modern dress, his mastery of words, his sense of sincerity. It is a chain of surprises; each item rather unexpected when seen against the previous one. 11 I am indebted to Arindam Chakrabarty for pointing out to me that this probably showed the influence of Christianity on Gandhi’s highly eclectic religious sensibility. It has been reported that whenever he went to prison, he carried a cross and hung it on the wall. 12 For a detailed analysis of the internal discussions of the British government, which shows these alternatives very clearly, see Watson (1969: chapter on ‘Case-Material,’ especially pp. 85 ff).

5 KÉRÉKOU THE CHAMELEON, MASTER OF MYTH Patrick Claffey

‘In sending his son to the market, the king does not ask him to bring back salt but “gànhυnυ,” the power of total domination.’ (Sign at the Palais Royaux in Agbǒmέ, Republic of Benin) ‘The attaining of this sovereign power is by two ways. One by natural force; as when a man maketh his children, to submit themselves, and their children to his government, as being able to destroy them; or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, giving them their lives on that condition. The other, is when men agree amongst themselves, to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others.’ (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan) Perhaps the most difficult problem facing the student of politics in Africa, though certainly not only in Africa, is understanding the basis upon which power is perceived and exercised. Even a short period of exposure will reveal the futility of using facile expressions such as ‘participation’ and ‘democracy.’ These are no doubt growing aspirations amongst sections of the population in parts of Africa but they have to confront the philosophy of real power as it is exercised. Natural force, in Hobbes’ terms, often seems to take precedence over voluntarism and confidence and ultimately, the understanding of power, even when conquered by natural force and submitted to de gré ou de force by the population, remains essentially sacral. The leader incarnates the power of the polity in his/her person; he/she draws upon sources that are not accessible to the common of mortals. In this sense power is exercised to a great degree using a symbolic lexicon and through shows that emphasize its sacral legitimacy. The Republic of Benin, with its history stretching back to the historic kingdom of Danxomέ,1 provides an interesting example. Paralyzed by regional polarization

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and chronic instability in the first years after independence (1960–72), the country was ruled by the miltaro-marxist Parti révolutionnaire du peuple béninois (PRPB), dominated by the intriguing personality of Mathieu Kérékou, for the next 17 years (1972–89). This ended with the Conférence nationale des forces vives de la nation (CNFVN) in 1990, following which Kérékou was defeated in a presidential election to be replaced by Nicéphore Dieudonné Soglo, a former World Bank technocrat, whose fatal weakness may well have been his failure to master the symbolic language of politics. Quite remarkably, Kérékou re-emerged in 1996 to defeat Soglo, repeating his victory in 2001, albeit in more dubious circumstances. Not surprisingly, this has caused commentators and analysts to shake their heads wearily as they note the ‘immobilisme’ of Benin’s political culture (Azonwakin 2002) and ‘le non-renouvellement des élites’ (Daloz 1999) who might be expected to mobilize it. This frustration was expressed on the ground in the 2001 election by the expression ‘ninisme,’ meaning ‘ni Kérékou ni Soglo’ (neither Kérékou nor Soglo). Candidate Lionel Agbo is credited with inventing the term, saying that Kérékou and Soglo have engendered a bipolarization of national politics and a bicephalism which is preventing development of the political culture. But Kérékou was what they got and in the end he served 29 years in office, the final 12 with the benediction of a democratic mandate, however dubious, finally leaving in 2006. Kérékou was not re-elected on the strength of his policies since these were no more than a muddled populism at best. Politics in Benin works largely on another register which I shall examine in this paper. Primordial Entities: Danxomέ, Historical Notes The modern Republic of Benin is an amalgam of several very distinct historical entities. These are part of what Geertz has described as ‘the nationalisms within nationalisms,’ the primordial entities of ‘competing traditions gathered accidentally into concocted political frameworks rather than organically evolving civilisations’ (Geertz 1993: 273),2 of which Danxomέ-Benin is a good example. The north-eastern Borgou department is largely co-extensive with the politically loose, feudal, Bariba kingdom, which lies along the old caravan routes, stretching across the border into present-day Nigeria and other parts of the Sahel to the north. A northern kingdom, it has been influenced by its position on the trade routes and a significant Fulani population. The north-western Atakora department brings together several small, acephalous groups where no single entity has emerged with any strength. However, since the development of modern political activity in Benin the Atakora has aligned itself with the Borgou in a well-documented northern alliance (Staniland 1973), which endures to the present day. The south-east of the country is mainly composed of Yoruba-speaking peoples. They have traditionally looked to the Bariba in the north or to the kingdom of Porto Novo, which has its origins in the seventeenth-century kingdom of Aladà, with a strong influence from Nigeria. These areas have lined up

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consistently behind their own regional candidates in political activity, driving deals of political expediency with the other two entities at various times. The remaining departments of the Mono and the Atlantique and the Plateaux cover much of the small kingdoms of Xwedá, Aladà, and what was eventually to become, from the early part of the seventeenth century, the hegemonic kingdom of Danxomέ. All have, however, retained their distinctive character and presence in the political field. Of all of these polities, the traditional kingdom of Danxomέ3 was, and remains, of central importance in the construction of the modern state. This history, I would argue, is a part of the difficulties the state has in establishing itself as truly modern, democratic and participative. The transatlantic slave trade brought tremendous pressure to bear on the societies of the Guinea coast, and by the early seventeenth century the evidence suggests a scenario of a ‘war of all against all’ in the attempt to satisfy demand. Danxomέ, like Asante, emerged as a response to the growing chaos, having succeeded in defeating the small kingdoms of Xwedá and Aladà (Law 1986). Aladà, the dominant power at the time, was a weak state, lacking the structures and coercive power necessary to control the situation. In the period 1690–1724, Xwedá was in conflict both internally and with Aladà, to which it was subject (Law 1997). In this situation, it is hardly surprising that what emerged was an excessively strong state. Danxomέ abandoned the traditional Ebi system of government which had characterized the earlier polities for a strong monarchy that would impose order (Law 1997: 61).4 In the view of Law, it was a state that eventually presented ‘a consistent picture … characterized by three principal elements: militarism, brutality (especially the practice of human sacrifice), and despotism in government’ (Law 1986: 247). However, the simple fact was that ‘Danxomέ … was eventually able to restore order in the region, because it was organized on radically different principles; its political structure was highly centralized, its kings raising their authority on military conquest rather than dynastic right, and enjoying effectively unlimited autocratic power’ (Law 1997: 65). Intrinsic to this political structure was the Vodύn, the complex politicoreligious system which underpinned its authority. The Fon expression puts it concisely: ‘E nyi Vodύn-tò, lononu Kuyito-tò do te o, Danxomέ-tò ko gba de a’ (If the world of the Vodύn and the world of the ancestors hold together, then Danxomέ will not be broken). It was a system of complete social control, sometimes described as a totalitarisme occulte (Adoukonou 1992: 150–1) completely subject to the monarch and expressed in rites such as the masked cult Egύn, Gεlεdέ and Zàngbèto which were effectively a system of strict policing of even the most intimate spaces in society. At the same time it was a system that remained open in the assimilation of other Vodύn and cults as the necessity arose, and through this process the assimilation of the peoples to whom they belonged. This process of religious assimilation was an essential part of the aggrandizement of the kingdom.

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The nature of the Danxomέ has been the subject of a heated debate. In the simplest terms, this has been between those, particularly the early travellers, and Law who gives them a lot of credence, who see it in the bluntest terms of militarism, brutality and despotism, and those, such as Akinjogbin, who attempted to revise this picture in presenting some of the more positive aspects of the kingdom and its political system. What is clear from all the material is that Danxomέ was a very distinctive polity and that it continues to exercise a real fascination, as well as stimulating passionate debate down to the present day. The name Dahomey was banished following the formation of the Marxist PRPB in 1975, when the country took the name Benin, which ironically was the name of a neighbouring feudal kingdom in present-day Nigeria. Danxomέ, however, refuses to go away and it remains a live issue in Benin politics as well as a symbolic repository that continues to add fuel to the fire of political polemics. An interesting illustration of this is to be found in the bas-reliefs of the Royal Palaces of Agbǒmέ which were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985. The site contains the palaces of the kings, several reconstructed, and it continues to attract a certain number of visitors who, like the early travellers to Danxomέ, seem to be fascinated by the gore: the blood mixed into the walls, the skulls supporting the throne, and the hundreds of victims said to have been buried with the different kings. The Palaces remain a controversial landmark as well as a historical question mark in modern Benin. The bas-reliefs on the external walls are one of the most striking features. These have had several restorations, starting in the 1920s and continuing down to the present. In the Preface to Waterlot’s work, Lévy Bruhl, disdainful of the oral record, notes that it is rare to find in West Africa ‘historical documents of incontestable authenticity, coming from the natives themselves.’ He notes that it was ‘in these documents that the Kings of Danxomέ inscribed the history of their reign… [making them] a unique historical document’ (Waterlot 1926: v). More recently the Beninois historian Nondichao Bachalou affirmed that ‘the bas-reliefs are our only written history. They are history recounted on our walls’ (������������������������������������������������� Piqué & Rainier 1999). ��������������������������������� Piqué and Rainier suggest that ‘these sacred places continue to exercise a powerful influence, exactly as they did for generations, through three centuries of Fon domination in the region. These sites are not just material places and buildings … but the place of a living tradition … a unique visual repertory of Fon history and culture’ (Ibid.). Coudouriotis strongly contests the historicity of the bas-reliefs, pointing out that in the process of restoration, led by a colonial administrator, relying on colonial linguists and historians and their unacknowledged informateurs indigènes, there was an adulteration of the works. However, he also acknowledges that this ‘adulteration should be considered an aspect of their history’ (Coundouriotis 1999: 84–9). What is of interest to us, however, is this author’s acknowledgement that the bas-reliefs are not ‘stable texts.’ It is precisely this that gives them their importance as part of the historical construction of Danxomέ since they

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were and are ‘aides to the transmission of oral history … [which] reinforced the collective memory of the community’ (Ibid.: 88). They may indeed have started out as part of the ‘museumisation’ of Danxomέ (Anderson 1991: Ch. 6); the fact today, however, is that they are being read not solely by members of the Fon ‘community,’ but by anybody who visits the site. They are thus subject to different interpretations and serve to reinforce the collective memory of other communities who may not see in them the record of a glorious past. Insofar as they are part of the Danxomέ narrative, the bas-reliefs witness to the most striking violence, heightened in an art naïf style. These scenes refer to the wars and raids executed against the neighbouring states in the search for slaves for the transatlantic trade. Visiting the site in the mid-1990s with two Beninois students, using my copy of Waterlot for an interpretation, we were particularly interested in the scenes depicting Danxomέan predation on the Nagot, the students’ ethnic group. I was, however, soon interrupted by the guide who asked me not to explain the scenes, not because he contested Waterlot’s interpretation but rather ‘pour ne pas exciter l’esprit des jeunes et raviver les tensions tribales du passé.’ It was a telling testimony to the emotive power of the bas-reliefs and to the place of Danxomέ in political debate in modern Benin. To improvise on Geertz’s term, Danxomέ is a narrative of pride for some but for others one of deep suspicion. History in museums is supposed to be safe, a dead letter, and better left alone. This history clearly still has life in it and it is not surprising that it is regularly resurrected. Improvisations on a Theme Balandier (1983: 299–300) noted that ‘pre-colonial history and its heroes suggest symbols and themes susceptible to liberation emotions.’ This was the case even in colonial times long before liberation was an issue. The choice of Dahomey as the name for the new colony was in itself significant. The early colonial administrator Le Hérissé set it apart in almost biblical terms, noting that it was indeed ‘worthy of holding the first place amongst the tribes, its neighbours, henceforth brought together under the civilizing authority of France’ (Le Hérissé 1911: 1). In the eyes of the colonial power, the vanquished Danxomέ took on something of an almost mythical quality and Agbǒmέ was to be ‘the heart’ of the new colony. The political organization, he noted, was ‘really extraordinary for a black country.’ The kings were not just the brutal despots of the darker Danxomέ narrative, but had also given the country a ‘strongly hierarchical administration, a permanent army and embryonic judicial and customs services’ which under the ‘civilizing’ influence of France might become the cornerstone upon which the colonial edifice could be built. It was hardly surprising, then, that following independence politicians should look to the Danxomέan narrative for inspiration. Making Abomey the fiefdom of his Union progressiste dahoméenne (UPD), Justin Tométin Ahomadégbé

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claimed links with the royal family of Agonglo through his mother. In adding Tométin, son of king Agonglo (r. 1789–97) and brother of Gezò (r. 1818–58), the most powerful king of the dynasty, to his name in order to underline lineage, he ‘would have wished to have the unanimity of the Huégbaja (r. 1645–86) around himself, identifying himself in some way with Huégbaja.’5 Known early in his career as ‘the monster,’6 Ahomadégbé attempted to develop around his personality the myth of the strong man, possessing a sacral acê, ‘strong and powerful, but violent and endowed with magical powers’ (Glélé 1974: 252). His desire for Danxomέan domination of the post-colonial state was all too evident as this brief extract from one of his political speeches illustrates: The urgent task which is imposed upon us … is to reinvent Dahomey … and create the conditions that will oblige Dahomeans to want to change, to really become Dahomeans. And to be Dahomean, as we were saying on May 7, is to love and to passionately love this country; to be Dahomean is to recognise that the Reason of State is above all; to be Dahomean is above all to silence one’s interests in the interests of the Common Good (������������������� Bhêly-Quenum������� 2002). Ahomadégbé’s reasoning was clear enough and owed much to the philosophy of Danxomέ: the need to reinvent Danxomέ, to oblige Dahomeans to really become Danxomέnύ, ‘things of Danxomέ,’ with total submission to the state and a Danxomέan idea of the common good, which meant the expansion of Danxomέ and the power of its ruler. It was in fact cultural and political hegemony. Not surprisingly this met with fierce resistance from people with a very different view of history. If one is to follow Glélé, the demystification and political demise of Ahomadégbé, ‘le thaumaturge,’ were assured by his ignominious scramble across the marshes and the bush of southern Benin, to exile in France and Lomé, following the 1967 coup. This was something, he said, that would never have happened to Huégbaja and the legitimate heirs to Danxomέ ‘who at all times and in all circumstances represented authority and power with dignity’ (Glélé 1974: 252). Ahomadégbé’s acê had run out and his show was over. While he could not claim princely blood, Sourou-Migan Apithy in his name also indicated his attachment to the royal family of Porto-Novo, the traditional enemy of Agbǒmέ. Known simply as Marcellin Apithy when he was listed with Fr. Francis Aupiais as candidate for the Conseil supérieur des colonies in 1946, the later addition of Migan indicated his lineage, again through his mother, from a Migan or Prime Minister of Porto Novo,7 thus assuring himself and his Parti républicain du Dahomey (PRD) of the support of this area in his contest with Ahomadégbé and Maga in the post-independence political struggle. Apithy’s references to the tradition were more than in name, since his power was also built

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on his contacts with the traditional chiefs and through them with the Vodύnun, the priests of the Vodύn who guaranteed him their support and that of their followers, the Vodύnsi (Sulikowski 1993: 382). Hubert Maga could not claim any royal blood or even real attachment to either Agbǒmέ or Porto Novo. His father was from Upper Volta and his mother a Bariba from Parakou, both Muslims converted to Christianity. He had a mission education, which gained him entry into the colonial elite and the emerging political classes. Through his mother, he laid his claim as representative of le Nord, adroitly uniting the loose traditional Bariba kingdom of the Borgou with the acephalous groups of the Atakora around his Rassemblement démocratique dahoméen (RDD). As in Nigeria,8 le Nord is largely a construction born of modern political circumstances. It is in no way homogenous since while there are strongly Islamized groups and the Bariba, the land holders of the Borgou, are in an early stage of Islamization, most groups remain attached to the traditional religion, while eyeing either Islam or Christianity. Maga, apparently favoured by the French (Ronen 1975: 90) was, however, able to rally his forces around the theme of northern resistance to ‘southern domination’ of the new state, thus establishing the persistent leitmotif of Dahomey-Benin politics. This ‘domination’ effectively came to mean Danxomέan domination, since Maga’s constituents made little distinction, identifying anybody coming from south of Save (8°N) as a Danxomέan and therefore to be feared. Here one comes to what I see as the other constant theme of DahomeyBenin politics, that of fear. Ronen has noted that from the beginning of modern political activity support for candidates was given not necessarily because of their ethnicity, ‘but because of fear of domination by another ethnic group should the other ethnic candidate win’ (Ibid.: 107). This has remained a central theme and, indeed, it is one that takes precedence over any questions of policy or technocratic competence. To improvise on the Beninois metaphor, it is fair to say that since its foundation Dahomey-Benin has been a jar standing very precariously in the modern world on the three regional stones that hold it up. The tripartite arrangement led to great instability in the first 12 years after independence, during which time the country had 11 changes of president, with only one lasting into a second year. In this also the country became paradigmatic for the problems of the African state. It is clear that Danxomέ continues to supply a repertoire of symbolism upon which the modern Dahomey-Benin state and its politicians and intellectuals can draw both in the positive and in the negative sense. King Gezò’s metaphor of the holed water jar has indeed been revived and is appropriately set in stone outside the Assemblée nationale and in several other places, as a symbol of solidarity and national unity for the new, post National Conference, democratic Benin.9 On a more negative note the fear of Danxomέan revanchisme remains an issue.

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The Branch Will Not Break in the Arms of the Chameleon Anthropologists, political scientists and politicians alike look back at the kingdom seeking political inspiration and a sound basis for the imagining of the modern state (Glélé 1969; Aguessy 1970; Goudjo 1997). Particularly striking is the case of President Mathieu Kérékou, the erstwhile Marxist revolutionary who has not hesitated to draw upon the symbolism of the kingdom once reviled for the underpinning of his own personal and sacral power, his acê. By 1972 it had become clear that the Republic of Dahomey could not continue as it had started out. While it had been previously known as le quartier latin de l’Afrique, though still with a singular reputation for its mastery of the occult, by this stage Dahomey had become paradigmatic for the problems of the African state. This led to the coup which brought Kérékou to power. He has come to dominate Dahomey-Benin politics for longer than any individual since the legendary Gezò. Kérékou personifies many of the ambiguities of modern Benin and how it relates to its history. A Wama, often disparagingly described as a Somba, from the northern Atakora province, he is the complete outsider and the perfect political chameleon. Kérékou’s power is exercised in an improvised symbolic dialect that may pose problems for the outsider but certainly brings him political success at home. Said to be a Catholic, in the course of his long political life, he has flirted with, borrowed from and improvised on several traditions, religions and ideologies, while apparently owing absolute fealty to none.10 The gods and the spiritual powers emanating from them, regardless of their provenance, have served his kingdom, and in this he finds himself in the tradition of the kings. He came to power at the head of a government dubbed revolutionary, but his ascendancy appears to have owed as much to chance as to anything else in what started out as ‘just another military coup,’ when these were far from rare (Ronen 1984: 11–16). He was never, by all accounts including his own later versions, a Marxist in a particularly doctrinaire sense. The ideological colouring of the regime came only in 1974 as a result of political expediency, and the need to compromise with harder elements in what came to be known as the ‘Albanian faction’ who were tempted by a ‘Marxisme tropical’ (Aplogan 1997), ideologically pur et dur. The regime, however, went through ideologically hard and soft periods until the early 1980s. The period 1974–79 is identified as ‘hard’ with significant changes in the politico-administrative structures in the country, including the change of name, from Dahomey to the People’s Republic of Benin, and flag, as well as profound economic changes with nationalization and collectivization. During this period there was also a religious witch hunt attacking Vodύn as a form of feudalism and generally making life difficult for the churches and religious groups. From 1978, however, there was a distancing of the ‘purs et durs’ from the regime, an opening to the churches, ideological revisionism, a general demobilization of the masses, and more personal freedom. By this time

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Kérékou had established control over the regime and settled for a socialisme à la béninoise. His political persona, like that of Ahomadégbé, though perhaps more subtle, was that of the powerful man possessing considerable acékpikpa or the personal power needed to govern. He was in effect a Hobbesian monarch with the ‘sovereign power, to be judge, or constitute all judges of opinions and doctrines, as a thing necessary to peace, thereby to prevent discord and civil war’ (Hobbes 1996: 118–9). He was a monarch. The discourse of the PRPB regime to the end ranged between a brooding, sullen muteness, laden with implicit threat, and a vacuous but sometimes violent rhetoric. The travel writer Bruce Chatwin recalls listening to a five-hour Castro-like harangue while he was detained during an apparent abortive coup in Cotonou (Chatwin 1984). Kérékou survived the revolutionary period, which many Beninois qualify as ‘infernal’ (Aplogon 1997), through a combination totalitarian military violence, personal acê and an adroit improvised playing of the whole of the Dahomey-Benin symbolic register. Fundamental to this is his chosen symbol, the chameleon. The symbols of the kings and the accompanying motto were an essential symbolic tool of the monarchy, often expressing the desire for gànhúnu or total domination.11 The formidable Gezò, under his symbol the buffalo, declared: ‘The powerful buffalo traverses the country and nothing can stop him.’ His successor, Glεlέ (r. 1858– 89), the lion, sought to ‘sow terror amongst his enemies from the moment he cuts his first teeth,’ while Gbεhanzìn (r. 1889–94), the last of the kings, boasted vainly: ‘I am a shark, I shall not abandon one inch of my kingdom.’ While the early years of the PRPB regime were marked by a rejection of all that represented Dahomey, Kérékou was quick to rehabilitate and instrumentalize elements of the symbolism. First amongst these was the chameleon. This reptile, which represents the Vodύn Lisá,12 had been the symbol of Akábá (r. 1685–1708) and is said to have been recommended to the Kérékou by the traditional king of Aladà. Salman Rushdie observes that ‘the chameleon … does not change colours whimsically, but to protect himself, to survive’ (Rushdie 2005). In adopting the symbol of an earlier Danxomέan king, Kérékou, a northerner, rooted himself, however superficially, in southern mythology. Banégas notes the reptile ‘condenses a whole symbolism of temporal and mystical power made up of wiliness, wisdom and invulnerability’ (Banégas 1998: 463) and this indeed is how Kérékou has managed to project himself, sometimes sullen occasionally threatening, he has the acê required to command respect, and instill fear if necessary. When he declares ‘Nous, Mathieu Kérékou,’ as he quite often does, one knows what he means. Akábá used the motto: ‘Slowly but surely, the chameleon reaches the top of the banyan tree.’ Kérékou adopted the symbol but changed the motto declaring: ‘The branch will not break in the arms of the chameleon.’ This is an interesting use of words. It certainly appears less bellicose than those of Gezò, Glεlέ or Gbεhanzìn. In his use of the symbol and the motto, Kérékou is presented as the guarantor of peace and national cohesion. However, there is also the implicit

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threat that the branch would break should the chameleon fall. This threat of an impending post-Kérékou déluge and chaos has been a major, sometimes almost the only, theme of his political discourse, particularly in election campaigns. In this he has placed his person as the lynchpin of national stability. He is, in his person, the symbol of unity, without which Benin would revert to the state of unbridled anarchy and chaos that followed for five days after the death of a king, and, as he often states, is the case in other African countries. The Repentant Chameleon But there is a second sense here also. This is linked to the chameleon’s ability to change colour to suit the terrain it finds itself in. The post-PRPB Kérékou has changed dramatically. It can be argued that his rehabilitation had already started at the CNFVN in 1990. In a remarkable piece of political theatre, at a crucial point in the conference, he metaphorically donned sackcloth and sat in the political ashes of the defunct regime to ask forgiveness from the nation for the PRPB’s failures and abuses. In what appeared like a scene from a mediaeval play or Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, the anguished monarch turned to the Archbishop of Cotonou, President of the CNFVN, Isidor de Souza, and appealed to his sacerdotal sensibilities, pleading: ‘My lord, you would not hesitate to hear my confession…’ and, in a remarkable admission of guilt, went on, in tears, to declare: ‘We are ashamed of ourselves…’ This was a discomfiting position for a warrior king, but even here he was consistent with Danxomέ. He needed the expiation of the high-priest, but instead of Daxo at Hwawé Gbennu, the priest of the royal cult of Agasύ who dispensed ritual purification to the kings, he called upon the priest of the Christianized Măwυ13 in the person of the Archbishop of Cotonou. This was more than a ritual mea culpa. It was a remarkable demonstration of his ability to call on the whole range of the Beninois symbolic register, to improvise and add to it if necessary, and to use it to his advantage. It was not a request for cheap grace or even a functional political calculation. In terms of the Beninois popular imagination, Kérékou had pleaded suulu in using the word shame, putting himself in the position of the most abject penitent in front of the most righteous judge, not just the Archbishop but the people of Benin. Suulu is a common expression, probably of Hausa origin, used in several languages in this part of West Africa. It is used by both Muslims and Christians to express regret and as a plea for patience or indulgence. In this context, it signifies not just a simple mea culpa but an abject plea for mercy, forgiveness and readmission to society. Since the conference was broadcast on national radio and followed with great interest, Kérékou had gone beyond his immediate audience to the nation and the court of public opinion. At the time, compared with Eyadema’s threatening presence in his private residence in Lomé, Mobutu’s sulking at Gbadolite and Sassou N’Guesso’s haughty ‘J’assume,’14 it was an astounding example of humility

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and not without political risk. But unlike Ahomadégbé, whose undignified fuite had ruined him, Kérékou had stood his ground, incarnating even in this parlous state ‘authority and power with dignity,’ the mark of the kings. It was a totally penitential gesture that redeemed his acê where it might have compromised it, as well securing him immunity from prosecution. Facing a body presided over by the Archbishop of Cotonou was certainly preferable to facing a Revolutionary Tribunal made up of angry junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) (M’Nteba 1993). Culturally as well as theologically it was impossible to refuse forgiveness on these terms. Following his defeat in the presidential election he withdrew to total silence for a ritual traversée du désert to complete his penance. He chose a penitential silence and stuck to it. It was the first step in his remarkable rehabilitation. Opening the Calabash: Vodύn and Democracy There had been a consistent movement in Benin since 1990 seeking the rehabilitation of the culture and history of Danxomέ. In emphasizing its cultural roots, Benin wanted to reconcile itself with its history, while at the same time reaching out to the Danxomέan Diaspora in the Americas, in an attempt to build alliances and forge links which would give it a place in the world on its own merits. It was also interested in promoting a cultural tourism around La route de l’esclave and the Ouidah 92 Festival, celebrations targeting this market. Part of this was an appeal to the Vodύn Diaspora in Brazil, the Caribbean and, to some extent, the United States. Vodύn was rehabilitated as a religion, and given its own national holiday. However what was presented as a cultural event quickly came to be seen as much more. The president at that time, Nicéphore Dieudonné Soglo, had a reputation for technocratic competence. Distant, with more than a touch of royal hauteur and little in terms of public relations skills, he soon came to be perceived as a true son of Agbǒmέ, leading his detractors to compare him with Ahomadégbé and to see his accession to the presidency as a threat of renewed Danxomέan domination. Perhaps even more problematic than Soglo himself was the presence of his wife. Excoriated by his opponents (as well as many of his political allies) and held in little affection by the public, Rosine Vieira-Soglo, a highly qualified jurist, came from Ouidah. This renewal of the historic alliance between the Portuguese families of the old slave port and Abomey was already suspect. In addition to this Mme Vieira-Soglo, whose brother, Désiré Vieira, was the Minister of Defence was said to be behind the attempt to rehabilitate Vodύn, perhaps in an attempt to diminish the influence of the Catholic Church, which had been high since the CNFVN and the transition. The end result was to create the impression of Abomean revanchisme, with the defence forces as well as the forces of the occult firmly under command of the new regime. There is certainly some evidence for this.

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On 29 March 1996 the Constitutional Court published a communiqué denouncing ‘les manœuvres’ and the threats of the defeated outgoing presidential candidate Nicéphore Soglo who, staring defeat in the face, had repeatedly spoken of the ‘imminent threat of civil war that would follow his defeat.’ Some days earlier, the FM station Radio Carrefour had been officially reprimanded by the Haute Autorité de l’Audiovisuel et de la Communication (HAAC) for reports relating to ‘an appeal of regionalist and tribalist character in favour of the candidature of Monsieur Nicéphore Dieudonné Soglo’ (HAAC 2001b). A similar complaint was made against Radio Planète (HAAC 2001a). In one of these broadcasts, I was reliably informed, Amazon war songs from Agbǒmέ were played in what was considered an overt threat of Danxomέan revanchisme, showing that they had lost little of their emotive power. With the memory of Radio Mille Collines in Bujumbura, Rwanda still very much alive, it is not surprising that this caused the HAAC some alarm. At the same time Soglo had also been presenting himself as a guarantor of peace, stability and cohesion, with the additional benefit of the technocratic competence needed to lead Benin to socio-economic modernity. There was talk of a Duvalierisme béninois and Haiti became the paradigm for what Benin did not want to become. So the relationship with the Danxomέan Diaspora is nuanced as the following extract from an interview illustrates: What I know is that some Americans come here to take strength from occult ceremonies … It is horrible … Haitians when they say their sources are here … they are occult things … Vodύn ceremonies etc. … They have themselves bewitched … they make pacts with the demon. That only encourages others … because the finance it and this encourages others to try the demon again, to develop the efforts of the demon in the country … and that creates a kind of fear (Interview, 17 June 2002). Catholic intellectual Raymond Bernard Goudjo says much the same thing: I often ask myself why Haiti doesn’t take off [in the socio-political and economic sense] but it’s because these are our people. There live in the crassest misery, enclosed in their Vodύn … And they come to tell us that we must plunge back in this, as if they were the Messiah … I have noted this vision of things which is too spiritualist which blinds us and prevents us from discovering the social dynamism of the faith which should lead us to action (Interview, 14 July 2002). It is almost impossible to verify the facts behind these suspicions. However, facts, at least in this sense, are not really what this is about. It is more about impressions and the part they play in the popular memory. The churches were amongst the first to react in this debate. While the Catholic

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Church may have had some desire for ‘dialogue’ with ‘respect for the values of African traditional religion,’ albeit with great ‘prudence,’ the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches felt no such inclination. In a debate which finds echoes in Haiti (Hurbon 2001: 203–54), the rehabilitation of Vodύn for all Evangelicals and Pentecostals meant the return of the forces of darkness, and was as such an abomination and anathema (de Surgy 2001: 432–5). The Chameleon is Born Again A 1990 report by Reinhard Bonnke’s Evangelical organization, Christ for all Nations (CfaN) on its first campaign in Benin (West Africa), described as ‘one of the toughest ever’ in what it considered to be a land of darkness, reported Kérékou to be ‘an unbelieving communist’ and the country to be mired in Vodύn. A 1999 report from the same group, however, reports the conversion of the nation, as ‘multitudes storm the Kingdom of God.’ ‘The national attitude has changed’ and, even more significantly, ‘the same President is now a born-again believer’ as he ‘welcomes Reinhard Bonnke.’ Somewhere along the way, the chameleon had been reborn into Charismatic Christianity, thus acquiring a whole new symbolic register, to be added to that which he already possessed. He was part of ‘the exuberance of the religious’ which in Benin is very striking. There is an enormous religious market apparently offering what is craved for: ‘salvation,’ ‘refuge,’ ‘healing,’ ‘deliverance,’ ‘protection,’ ‘solution,’ ‘breakthrough,’ ‘success release,’ ‘prosperity,’ ‘miracles,’ ‘victory’ and even ‘glory.’ Here one encounters what Kä Mana colourfully describes as ‘the respectable,’ ‘the delirious,’ ‘the venerable,’ ‘illusion merchants,’ ‘true seekers of God,’ ‘counterfeiters of the sacred,’ ‘the deep breath of the spirit’ as well as the occasional ‘terrorist of the invisible’ (Kä Mana 2000: 23–4). In a remarkable play on the different symbolic registers referring back to Danxomέ, but also to the CNFVN, as well as appealing to Evangelical sensibilities, the French public relations guru Thierry Saussez had repackaged Kérékou as ‘le caméléon repenti.’ This conversion appears to have been so successful that in the 2001 presidential election an Evangelical group distributed tee-shirts bearing the slogan Avec Kérékou pour gagner le Bénin au Christ.15 The metamorphosis was complete; the chameleon had indeed changed his skin from malevolent demon dabbling in the occult to born-again Christian. He had done his penance, walked the path of conversion, made the ‘breakthrough’ and was ready to seize his ‘moment of destiny.’ Who better to fight the good fight against the resurgent Vodύn? Living in Benin at this time, it was clear to me that a potent mixture of regionalism and symbolism was the ground upon which a large part of the 1996 presidential election was fought. It played an important part in Soglo’s defeat. Although it is almost impossible to prove, there is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that some pastors privately at least, and some not so privately, gave voting instructions to their followers. It appears that quartiers with strong Evangelical

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communities voted for Kérékou. Pastor Sam Igboka of Faith Tabernacle, a Charismatic Church in Akpakpa, a working-class area of Cotonou hard hit by Soglo’s SAP reforms, was quite forthright in stating his Church’s opposition to the incumbent because of his perceived alliance with Vodύn. ‘We prayed him out,’ he said of his defeat in the 1996 election. This was confirmed by another pastor: Our pastor said ‘this fellow is getting it wrong’ and he quoted the saying where Jesus says that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not rise up against it. It was on this basis that the team prayed (Interview, 3 June 2002). The Evangelicals and Pentecostals were not alone in their apprehension. Abbé Pamphile Fanou, a Catholic priest active in the ministry of healing and exorcism, told me in the course of an interview that ‘the devil told an exorcist in France that his seat was in Benin.’ Fanou noted that ‘for a time this was diminishing but with the arrival of President Soglo, who wished to rehabilitate the culture of the country, this was revived and is gaining ground again’ (Interview, 17 June 2002). Whatever the reservations of either the student of religion or the theological correctness of post-Vatican II theologians, the view on the ground is quite different. The idea of Benin as the world centre of Vodύn, defined as evil and Satanic, is a recurring theme in all the Churches, and is, in my view, an indication of the profound fissures in the society itself. Such a society needs the reassurance of the chameleon’s embrace to hold it together. The reservations about the rehabilitation of Vodύn in the political sphere were expressed not just on the popular level. Barthelemy Adoukonou, a Catholic intellectual, who has tried to rehabilitate both Danxomέ and Vodύn as cultural and religious expressions, did not feel that the latter has its place in a modern, democratic and religiously pluralistic Benin. He challenged the thinking underlying Ouidah 92 Festival and the debate surrounding the rehabilitation of the Vodύn (Adoukonou 1993; Sastre 1989). Like many Catholic intellectuals, Adoukonou sees these as an instrumentalization for political purposes. He claims that a certain political elite seeks to ‘revive the Vodύn world in order to make of it what many consider to be an electoral clientele.’ In doing so it ignores the complexity of the whole Vodύn system, which is not in any case appropriate in a modern society which demands rationality, openness and transparency, with priority being given to the human person, the individual. ‘Our [traditional] society knew how to contain anarchy but without avoiding the occult totalitarianism of those who render the Tradition stronger than the individual’ (Adoukonou 1992: 151). For its critics and even many intellectuals who seek to understand it, looking at the Danxomέan Diaspora is all very well, but neither Danxomέ nor the Vodύn represent modernity. The desire is to look at the past, to assume it and then to move on. This was the terrain upon which Kérékou chose to fight the election and he won.

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Figure 1: Election poster. ‘Vote Kérékou: The strength of courage and the weight of experience’ (Photo by C. Mayrargue with permission.)

The Inculturation of the Constitution Perhaps the best illustration of the understanding of political power in Benin as embedded in the traditions of Danxomέ, but at the same time seeking to be free of it, can be found in a speech given by the President of the Constitutional Court, Elisabeth K. Pognon on the day of Kérékou’s inauguration to a second democratic term in April 2001. ����������������������������������������� This was published in the national daily La Nation under the title ‘Le serment: un contrat entre Kérékou, Dieu, les mânes des ancêtres et la nation’ (Pognon 2001). ����������������������������������� Even the order of the words in the headline is significant. Kérékou may not be divine but by placing him first in the triad, supported by Măwυ, the supreme deity rather than a Vodύn and the Kuyito-to or spirits of the ancestors, his rule becomes sacral in nature. In the speech Ms Pognon describes Kérékou’s position as president in what appears to me to be an inculturated discourse. She underlines the importance of the Xo, the given word, which is sacred and creative, stating that ‘the oath of this day … appears as a contract as a spiritual contract between God, the spirits of the ancestors and you.’ This is the fundamental plane upon which the contract is situated and in this sense it is essentially sacral. Bringing the contract onto another plane and into a more democratic era, but still in quasi-religious terms that would be recognized in Danxomέ, the president is described as ‘the incarnation of national unity, the guarantor of territorial integrity, respect of the constitution

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and international agreements,’ in effect the incarnation and guarantor of the Tò, the basic unit of Danxomέan society. He is to be president of the Benin-tò, which has grown out of the Danxomέ-tò, the sacral entity that was Danxomέ.16 She adds: ‘It must also be understood as an historical contract between the Nation and you, and finally a juridical agreement between you and the Beninois people, the only holder of sovereignty. Only in the silence of your conscience will you respond to the accomplishment of your moral duty.’ Some of this could obviously be used for the swearing in of most presidents, anywhere in the world. However, embedding it in the local tradition, she has repeated a version of the triad seen as holding Danxomέ and by extension the gbê, or the world, together: Măwυ, the Kuyito-tò or ancestors, and the ruler. It is certainly significant that in 1996, when Kérékou omitted the references to ‘les mânes des ancêtres,’ he was obliged to return to the Constitutional Court the following day to take the oath a second time. The ancestors were not to be ignored in this way and his legitimacy depended upon it. What is omitted, of course, is Vodύn-tò who are replaced by Măwυ, who in his remoteness from the affairs of men is obviously much easier to deal with. Conclusion Kérékou’s political survival in 1996 and 2001 was remarkable by any standards and is certainly due in great part to his mastery of symbolism and the political show. His metamorphosis from Marxist autocrat, meddling in the occult, to born-again democrat with an image as a national leader has been fascinating to observe. One has to ask, of course, to what extent it is at least as much a rejection of Danxomέ and all its wiles as it is an endorsement of Kérékou. Bierschenk and de Sardan noted that the fundamental reason for Soglo’s defeat in 1996 was his ‘incapacity to build alliances on a national level.’ His political base, they add ‘was progressively reduced to his town of origin (Agbǒmέ) and that of his wife (Xwedá), if not to his immediate family circle’ (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan 1998: 56). Adjovi offers another reason, which certainly was a consideration. He attributes the defeat to popular discontent with ‘managerial philosophy’ and an over-reliance on Soglo’s acknowledged technocratic skills. Kérékou he notes had been ‘touched by grace (the resurrection of the chameleon) and knew how to make the necessary alliances with the old enemies’ (Adjovi 1998: 174). Both of these observations are accurate but incomplete. Both ignore the force of history which mired Soglo and was the obstacle he signally failed to overcome. Kérékou, le roi thaumaturge, had indeed a tremendous capacity to build national alliances, playing one against the other on all the registers, and as such may claim to have united a real Benin-tò, to have achieved the renaissance which Soglo’s party aspired to, and to incarnate le Bénin nouveau albeit with all its difficulties, ambiguities and contradictions.

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Staniland, Martin (1973). ‘The three party system in Dahomey: I, 1946–56,’ Journal of African History, XIV (2): 306–08. Strandsbjerg, Camilla (2000). ‘Kérékou, God and the Ancestors: Religion and the Conception of Political Power in Bénin,’ African Affairs, 99: 395–414. Sulikowski, Ulrike (1993). ‘“Eating the Flesh, Eating the Soul”: Reflections on Politics Sorcery and Vodύn in Contemporary Benin,’ in J. Chrétien et. al. (eds.), L’invention religieuse en Afrique. Histoire et religion en Afrique noire (Paris, Karthala): 3379–92. de Surgy, Albert (2001). Le phénomène pentecôtiste en Afrique noire: le cas béninois (Paris, L’Harmattan). Waterlot, Emmanuel G. (1926). Les bas-reliefs des bâtiments royaux d’Abomey (Dahomey) (Paris, Institut d’Ethnologie). Wiseman, John A. (ed.) (1995). Democracy and Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (London, Routledge).

Notes 1 I use Danxomέ to signify the distinct pre-colonial kingdom with its centre at Agbǒmέ, while Dahomey is used to signify the colonial and immediate post-colonial state until it became La République populaire du Bénin and subsequently La République du Bénin. 2 Geertz refers specifically to the case of Asante within modern Ghana. 3 Literally in the belly of the vodun Dàn, which originally designated the Akábá Palace built in the belly of Dàn. Following this it came to mean the town of Agbǒmέ and all of the kingdom (Segurola and Rassinoux 2000: 122). 4 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� F������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ or a discussion of the Ebi social system of Allada, which Dahomey was to reject. In Ebi: ‘The bond of society was blood relationship, not security or common economic interests’ (Akinjogbin, 1967: 14–17.) 5 Glélé contests the legitimacy of these links to a royal dynasty since the system is patrilineal rather than matrilineal. It would certainly appear that divisions amongst the royal dynasties served to undermine his claims (Glélé 1974: 252). However, following his death in 2002, Ahomladégbé was buried in accordance with the custom of this family (Anonrin 2002). 6 Ahomadégbé was reputed for his supernatural powers. A medical doctor, he had never been in hospital. He was said to be a Bokono (diviner) as well as a bowato (healer). In 1991 he was reported to have participated in the medico-magical treatment of treatment of presidential candidate Nicépore Soglo. In 1961, Albert Tévoédjrè accused Ahomadégbé of fomenting ‘un complot abracadabrantesque’ seeking to eliminate his rival Hubert Maga (Akando 2002.) 7 The Prime Minister and other ministers of the crown were always anato or commoners in both Porto Novo and Agbǒmέ, thus excluding rival princes from effective political power. 8 For an excellent treatment of the emergence of ‘northernism’ as a political construct

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in Nigeria see Paden (1986). There was a similar process in Benin but less pronounced and without the essential element of Islamic identity (Brégand 1998: 127ff). 9 The Conférence nationale des forces vives de la nation in 1990 led to the demise of the Marxists PRPB and installation a democratic regime. This is probably well described by Wiseman’s term, as a democracy ‘at the minimalist end of the spectrum … a rough and ready version’ but one which certainly saw the country out of a very difficult impasse and which survives down to the present, however haltingly (Wiseman 1995: 220). 10 There is still some debate about his religious affiliation. Reputed to be a Catholic, he has also been said to be associated with the Foursquare Full Gospel church. Kérékou’s dealings with the Vodun are vague. However the relationship of his entourage with the Vodunun was widely commented upon. See �������������������������������� Sulinowski (1993), Strandsbjerg (2000) and Banégas (2003). ������������������������������������������������������ Kérékou’s conversion to ‘born-again’ Christianity was first reported by the Evangelical Reinhard Bonnke, and Evangelical pastors are said to be part of his entourage (Avocegamou 2002). 11 This is a specifically Dahomean concept of absolute military power which many Beninois scholars see as being at the heart of the political philosophy of kingdom. It is expressed in the proverb ‘In sending his son to the market, the king does not ask him to bring back salt but the power of domination.’ 12 The male Vodύn of the couple Măwυ and Lisa. 13 The name Măwυ had been adopted by the earliest seventeenth-century missionaries as the name for the Christian God, this despite the fact that it in fact referred to a female divinity. 14 Patrick Quantin points out the failure of the conciliatory aspect of he national Conference in the Republic of Congo. Sassou N’Guesso’s declaration to the floor of the conference in the face of serious accusations, ‘J’assume,’ was interpreted as a sign of arrogance and, according to this source, could be said to imply something like: “I assume responsibility, but I don’t really care and I was within my rights.’ This is lacking in any spirit of penitence. (Quantin pers comm). 15 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� There are several similarities between this case study and Gifford’s observations on Zambia (Gifford ���������������� 1998). 16 The Tò is the socio-political structure upon which the kingdom was built. The Tò of Danxomέ was built upon war and destruction of other Tò, the expression of its gànhυnυ (Adoukonou 1988: 548).

6 ‘BLUE MARCHES’ Public Performance and Political Turnover in Senegal Vincent Foucher

Researching the birth of the separatist movement in Casamance, the southern region of Senegal, I kept an eye on legal politics and happened to witness several political shows, from local meetings to mass rallies, organized by legal parties. Attending these shows became particularly interesting during the campaign for the presidential election of March 2000, the one that was to bring about the first political turnover (alternance) in Senegalese history. During this campaign, the opposition coalition staged huge street marches throughout the country, the socalled marches bleues (blue marches). Initially received with scepticism by many politicians and journalists, these rallies are retrospectively regarded as having played a key role in the eventual alternance. This article aims to provide elements for an interpretation of these (supposedly) new shows, contrasting them with the ‘standard’ shows of Senegalese politics. The point here is not merely to produce a symbology of political shows, old and new, in Senegal but to see how these shows are embedded in meanings that are complex, ambivalent, never unified, and to emphasize that that they address a variety of audiences and must be interpreted against the specific political and social history of Senegal. The Context of the 2000 Elections In 2000, for the fifth time, Abdoulaye Wade, the leader of the Parti démocratique sénégalais (PDS), a lawyer and the leading figure of the Senegalese opposition, stood against President Abdou Diouf, the outgoing candidate of the Parti socialiste (PS). On many accounts, the tide was turning: though the economy was slowly emerging from the crisis of the 1980s, social demands were high; because of internal party tensions, two major PS figures, Djibo Ka and Moustapha

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Niasse, had left to create their own parties; they brought money and electoral expertise to the opposition, which campaigned forcefully for free and fair elections. In this campaign, the opposition parties enjoyed the backing of numerous non-governmental organizations and the independent press, which had grown stronger over the years. But this turning of the tides found the PDS in bad shape: Wade’s party had been badly defeated in the preceding poll, the 1998 local elections; Wade’s toing and froing between government and opposition had blurred his image as an opposition figure. Many of the PDS’s best elements had engaged in what is locally known as transhumances (grazing) and joined the PS; others had formed splinter movements. Also the party was short of funds. In this context the revision of the electoral registers and the registration of the numerous young voters were major issues – and sources of uncertainty for both sides (Diop and Diouf 2002). In retrospect, Amath Dansokho, the leader of a small opposition party then allied to the PDS, explicitly acknowledged the financial constraints which bore on Wade’s coalition: When [Wade] came here, he told us … that money matters were settled … He told the journalists that he had money, and that he had enough of it for the campaign and that each of us, Landing [Savané, leader of a left-wing party allied with Wade], Bathily [leader of another party allied with Wade] and myself, would have a helicopter for the campaign. But on the first day of campaign, there was not even fifty million [CFA Francs]. One day not a penny was left. And from there came this fundamental intuition: the famous marche bleue. With this march we spent nothing, no praisesingers to pay.1 We had only our vehicles. What we had was the music of Youssou Ndour [a Senegalese pop star] and Alpha Blondy [an Ivoirian reggae star]. We toured around Senegal like this, because we had no money (Sud Quotidien, 11 January 2001).2 Officially, thus, marches bleues started as a makeshift – the opposition coalition could not pay for the expected electoral shows – praise-singers, drummers, meetings with chairs, tents and free food. When the marches bleues began, Hawa Ba, a journalist of Sud Quotidien, a paper with a known sympathy for the opposition, described them aptly, but hid little of her skepticism vis-à-vis this novel campaigning method: The marche bleue formula … arouses many questions among observers of the political scene: is candidate Wade physically diminished or does he face a lack of funding to run his campaign? [Wade] himself denies all this, or more exactly he underplays the situation: ‘I have wanted to do what no other candidate can do. I reach out to the people.’ Noticeably upset by such

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a questioning, he goes on: ‘What matters in life, it is to do a lot with a little. I campaign with the means I have. I am not going to steal the people’s money, nor am I going to sell off Senegal.’ And also: ‘I am not ashamed if I do not have money. The main thing is that I do not owe anything to anyone…’ Thus the candidate of the Coalition alternance 2000 (Ca 2000), Dr. Abdoulaye Wade, began yesterday Tuesday 8 February, to implement the agreed campaign strategy … Operation Marche Bleue amounts to a deployment of a caravan of cars in the streets and lanes of some districts of town. The main leaders of the various member parties of the Coalition are in the cars that proceed at an average speed, and they wave to the onlookers and supporters that are found along the way. From time to time, Wade perched on his car engages in his favourite routine: with the airs of a real president, he does the V of victory or he raises his clenched fists to demonstrate his strength and that of his candidature. Brief stops to greet militants or visit a few notables are the only times for verbal exchange; at no point is any allusion to the programme or project of the candidate possible. As far as the means of campaign are concerned, no four-wheel drive vehicles yet, not to mention helicopters; nevertheless, Dr. Wade says he has surprises in store in the logistics department. The ongoing campaign will instruct us (Sud Quotidien, 9 February 2000). But on the next day, following the marche bleue in Médina, Fass and Gueule Tapée, popular districts of Dakar, Hawa Ba changed tones. It was all ‘a real tidal wave,’ as she put it: A wholly blue march. Such was the show given by the caravan of Coalition alternance 2000 (Ca 2000) which went through a large part of the capital city. Flags, robes and banners … all blue marched with a triumphant Dr. Wade through some of the main streets of Dakar. Yesterday Wednesday, 9 February, the candidate of Coalition alternance 2000, Dr. Abdoulaye Wade, put on a real show of strength in the popular boroughs of Médina and Gueule Tapée. This was on the occasion of the second day of the marche bleue … Shouting ‘Sopi’ [Wolof for ‘change’], ‘President,’ ‘Yow ya gnu safé’ [Wolof for ‘you are our taste,’ i.e. ‘we like you’], a human tide unfurled all along the meandering itinerary of the procession, relentlessly writhing through the streets and lanes of Médina and Gueule Tapée. Powerful amplifiers carried on a special truck gave unexpected resonance to the latest invention of Dr. Wade and his allies. Sometimes the four amplifiers of the powerful, 20,000-watt sound-machine played music. On Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, on the market of Gueule Tapée, on Rue 6, on avenue Blaise Diagne, at Soumbédioune … and the crowd grew unceasingly. Young

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men, children, elders and women vied with one another to demonstrate their support for ‘Sopi.’ There were slogans and dancing along with the music. Some militants raised their party membership cards, others carried small placards with a variety of messages: ‘We are no longer a painless [sic] people,’ ‘Wade president to save Senegal,’ etc. Most militants wore blue robes and shirts, the colour of the PDS. A blue colour that blended with the blue flags, marked with the millet ear, the emblem of the party, and the yellow kerchiefs waved by a largely female crowd. Stops on Avenue Blaise Diagne, on Rue 6, at Gueule Tapée, at Soumbédioune. Through the amplifiers, Landing Savané and Dr. Wade delivered short speeches reiterating their ambitions to change Senegal. At Soumbédioune [Dakar’s fishing harbour], Dr. Wade centered his intervention on the importance of fish resources in the development of Senegal and on the ‘destitution’ of the economic agents of the fishing industry, the fishermen. And the caravan moved on again, carried along by the shouts and vivas of the people gathered along the streets or pacing along Wade and his allies. All the while, music beat the rhythm for the shouts and the dance steps (Sud Quotidien, 10 February 2000). Throughout Senegal, for the weeks of the campaign, the marches bleues would unfold in the same way: a mass procession, led by a group of vehicles, would enter the main cities to applause and then roam around town, with a huge sound-machine playing pop music; the procession would be joined by onlookers, marching along – for a hundred yards or for the whole show. Once in a while the procession stopped, and from the platforms of vehicles, brief speeches would be delivered by key politicians – including Wade himself. Right after the first marche bleue took place Hawa Ba, the journalist from Sud Quotidien, had quickly changed her take, for she saw that something was happening during those marches. Indeed, for many observers, what had started officially as a mere expedient for a hard-up coalition turned out to be a key element in Wade’s final victory. The ambition of this article is to discuss the nature and functioning of the performance of these marches bleues. Drawing on personal observations of the marche bleue in Ziguinchor on 12 March 2000, and on newspaper sources, I shall assess and interpret these performances against a series of other performances by the outgoing PS which I also had the opportunity to attend during my fieldwork in Casamance, from 1997 to 2002. Shows of the Party-State: Understanding Public Performances of the Parti Socialiste To understand the marches bleues, it seems appropriate to examine first the ‘classical’ performances, those of the old regime – the PS regime which, under

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one name or another, ruled Senegal from 1960 to 2000. I am focusing here on the shows of the party-state, but until the marches bleues, the shows of the opposition differed little – the amount of money spent was the main difference. Indeed, money is an essential element in these shows, as Dansokho indicates above: the shows are something expensive, with praise-singers to pay. In most public performances the state and party authorities used to produce an expensive and complex show, weaving threads of majesty, munificence and representation. Their shows bore the lasting imprint of the standard paraphernalia of the 1960s party-state, overlapping the attributes of the state with those of the mass-party of the 1950s – party scarves, flags, police escorts, official vehicles and so on. But we shall not elaborate on those unsurprising features, and will instead describe the repertoires which PS shows mobilize, in the classical idiom of the postcolonial state – family celebrations, pre-colonial notability, authenticity. We shall also see that, as time went by, those shows became increasingly an arena for militants, dedicated primarily to internal party politics, with little appeal to the mass of citizens. The Idioms of Family and Kinship Perhaps the most obvious character of politics in Senegal is how embedded in the idiom of family and kinship they are.3 This is reflected in political shows, which tap into the repertoire of family celebrations, and which take full account of the difference between age groups. Thus in 1990s Casamance the PS staged separate performances for the older men (les adultes) and for the youth (les jeunes), an elusive category which includes women as well as unmarried men. While mass rallies would cater for the youth, PS politicians would spend time talking with smaller groups of local elders. On these latter occasions a few dozen people would assemble in a neighbourhood, around local notabilities (the borough chief, the imam, the occasional marabout); all these people would be seated on rented plastic chairs, in the shadow of a tree or a tarpaulin, and politicians, local and national, would chat with the crowd. The meetings for the jeunes would be quite different: mass meetings with several hundred people; a stage sheeted with a tarpaulin for the notabilities to sit, and the crowd gathered around, waiting to be harangued. This dichotomy of shows indicates how politics mobilizes the idiom of kinship: while the youth can stand up under the sun, politicians stage their deference for the elders. Another related feature is that standard political shows borrow a lot from family celebrations. A brief description of a PS meeting observed in one district of Ziguinchor will illustrate this. This meeting takes place in Peyrissac; it is attended by a crowd of about two hundred people. There is a speech by Papa Lo, the president of the PS union of the Saint-Maur market, and many traders are here, to pledge allegiance to Mayor Robert Sagna and President Diouf. But this looks also like a district meeting – women, old and young, regularly burst into

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the middle of the meeting’s circle to dance to Diola and Wolof beats … There is one leader of the Murids [a Muslim brotherhood]. Every once in a while women intervene to adorn the speakers (including the leader of the women’s section of the PS in Peyrissac) whom they like best with necklaces and scarves (fieldwork notes, 24 February 2000). For the kind of show described here, PS or other, typical of Senegalese politics in the 1990s, the reference is popular celebrations, sessions of music, drumming and dancing usually organized by families or other groups on special occasions. Their influence on shows is unmistakable: before the speeches actually begin, drummers and singers (nowadays alternating with a sound-machine) perform, sometimes for several hours; women from the crowd occasionally join and dance. Drawing on family celebrations, PS politicians thus choose to pose as benevolent relatives. These shows require the presence of drummers and praise-singers. In Ziguinchor, the PS has a quasi-official drummer, Ba Sané, a very famous character; with his three powerful drums, Sané takes part in the warm-up of the audience, performs interludes between speeches, and highlights the main points of discourses through brief solos. The presence of the traditional praise-singers of pre-colonial African aristocracies gives a clue about the mobilization of the repertoire of pre-colonial notability by PS politicians, which we will now examine. The Repertoire of Pre-colonial Notability The praise-singers are a feature of the hierarchical societies of West Africa. Historically, they were a caste, each family of praise-singers being theoretically attached to a noble family; they would intervene on public occasions to recite the illustrious genealogies and the praise of their patrons. But with the demise of the aristocracies, those permanent ties of patronage have weakened and, as Panzacchi (1994: 195) puts it, the ‘géwél [Wolof for praise-singer] do not sing the praises only of real géer [Wolof for nobleman]; they will praise anyone who is, or wants to be, or whom they want to make believe is, their social superior.’ Demand has been high in the late colonial and post-colonial political sphere, and real or self-proclaimed praise-singers are used to performing in meetings in praise of the new political elites. Nowadays, up to ten praise-singers may perform during a single political meeting. There is another common feature between politics and Sufi Islam, which owes also to the pre-colonial ethos of notability – the use of a repeater. Mc Laughlin (1997: 564) thus describes maraboutic speeches: Typically, the marabout is seated on a platform and speaks in a low voice, so that the géwél must draw close to be able to hear. After a few phrases the géwél addresses the crowd with the phrase Ne na… ([the Wolof for] ‘he said’), pronounced in a distinctive declamatory style, and proceeds to paraphrase with embellishments what the marabout has just said.

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PS leaders make a rather similar use of repeaters, though they are usually not praise-singers, but lower-rank politicians: while the leader speaks in discreet tones, not engaging in the undignified business of rhetoricking and speaking out loud, some of his followers paraphrase the leader’s sayings; just as géwél do, they actually do a lot more than repeat – they embroider and praise and emphasize; they get applause, shouts and laughter from the audience. In itself, the contrast between the volubility and gesticulation of the repeater and the contained and dignified attitude of the leader is powerful political rhetoric – the one who speaks little is the man with real power. Bazin (2004) insists that the figure of the distant, silent and sometimes even hidden leader is typical of the pre-colonial aristocracies of the Sahelian zone (see also Panzacchi 1994). The Diola, the dominant ethnic group of the region of Ziguinchor itself, though not quite Sahelian, seem to share in a different version of the same tradition: though they can be heard to speak, their priests-kings are under a strong taboo not to be seen engaged in standard human activities (Baum 1999: 76). But contrary to the maraboutic setting, in the context of political meetings, this laudatory paraphrasing often coincides with translating: the leader speaks mostly French, and only occasionally indulges in the local languages – it is the repeaters’ responsibility to convey in various idioms the leader’s message. The ability to speak French, which is by no means generalized in Senegal, has long been a determining element in political careers, and though the prestige of the bureaucrat has suffered from the crisis of the state, French has remained a sign of power. More generally, a ‘European’ hexis – dress and body language – is important. Here, a pre-colonial ethos (the use of repeaters) mixes with an emblem of modernity (the ability to speak French) to form a show of prestige. Performing Munificence As with dancing and praise-singing, shows of the party-state are occasions to demonstrate a key political virtue: munificence. Contrary to the European usage whereby militants who attend a meeting often pay for admission and for the eventual banquet, in Senegal, the politicians themselves finance most of the shows. To Senegalese politicians, meetings are occasions to prove how benevolent and selfless they are towards their people, how well-disposed they are to sharing the spoils of office. Munificence allows the leader to perform as a notable – no one would dare to behave as a notable if one had not given repeated and conspicuous examples of generosity. During meetings, munificence is demonstrated in various ways. The financing of a good show, with plenty of praise-singers and a meal, is taken by the audience as a sign of munificence. The politician who does not organize appropriate meetings risks losing a lot of consideration among the public – ‘dafa nay’ [Wolof for ‘he is petty’]. But there are a number of other amenities. The distribution of tee-shirts and caps adorned with party slogans or the picture of the leader, for

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instance – in Senegal, where occasions to earn cash and buy manufactured goods are rare, the sharing of these apparently minute spoils of militancy is a serious matter, which can occasionally lead to bitter arguments among party supporters. Indeed, this low-cost clientelization has now been adopted by all sorts of other performers on the public scene, like NGOs or religious groups; the distribution of tee-shirts by certain NGOs funded by international donors was a key factor in the success of the campaign for the registration of young voters.4 Female supporters of the PS may receive coupons of cloth bearing the emblems of the party and/or the pictures of party leader(s), from which they have dresses cut – dresses which they wear during party meetings (but also on other occasions). Finally, preparing meetings is a key activity in PS political militancy, and militants who take part in the organization are given some money or goods by the leaders, as I witnessed: A discussion erupts among the young core PS supporters. Apparently, the forty PS billposters have been given collectively a lump sum of CFA Francs 15,000 (approximately £15); they have taken the money to buy meat and share it among themselves. People discuss whether they were right to do so, or whether it might not have been better to share the money (which would have amounted to about CFA Francs 400, i.e. 40 pence) so that every one could deal with their own needs (fieldwork notes, 23 February 2000). This is by no means a side aspect to meetings – asked about why he engaged in PS politics, a rank and file militant replied that ‘when you have nothing, if you follow the PS, you spend a day preparing for the meetings; at the end of the day, they will give you one thousand francs, so you can go sort out your own needs’ (interview with A. Sané, 23 February 2000). In a society where cash and occasions to earn it are a rarity, politicians are employers (and patrons) whom some find worth pleasing. Concluding on this issue of munificence, one should insist that PS shows are not only about immediate personal gains, but also about virtue and morality: many Senegalese think munificence is an important quality for a politician, and leaders who do not perform generosity in a convincing manner come under severe criticism for it is assumed that, once in power, they will evade the obligations of solidarity and redistribution. This situation is reminiscent of that described by Paul Veyne (1995), who insisted that Greco-Roman political munificence, the well-known ‘panem et circenses’ (what Veyne himself calls ‘evergetism’) cannot be reduced to a cynical political strategy aimed at depoliticizing the citizens, but that there was a moral aspect to it. The Ambiguous Room for ‘African Traditions’: Ethno-populism and the Pretence of Modernity Another feature of the shows of the party-state is the abundance of ‘ethnic’ elements: ‘local’ dances are performed to hail the leaders; traditional notabilities make an appearance; men and women dressed in ‘traditional’ gear play a part …

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The role of ‘African tradition’ in the shows of the party-state is nevertheless quite ambiguous, a curious game of distance and proximity. During these shows, ‘local’ people, in what is most specific to them – their ‘customs’ – come to pay allegiance to the state; these ‘authentic’ demonstrations confirm the state in its role as a modernizing, leading force in the transformation of somewhat backward populations. At the same time, politicians want – perhaps increasingly so with democratization – to demonstrate their representativity, to prove that they are familiar with their culture: the politicians are not simply successful and benevolent patrons or dedicated modernizers, they also try to present themselves as true sons of the soil. The ritual initiation of Robert Sagna, PS mayor of Ziguinchor and leading minister, as described by Ferdinand De Jong (2001), provides a wonderful example of these ambiguities. This initiation took place in the village of Thionck-Essyl in 1994. A noted Catholic and former student at the séminaire, Robert Sagna has made his career on a non-separatist defence of Casamançais, and particularly Diola, interests. While the Church had long been hostile to initiation, it has been changing its attitude since the Vatican II Council. In the 1990s, undergoing initiation was no longer the shameful behaviour of primitive pagans, but a sign of respect for one’s culture. But Sagna entered the bush on his own terms: he went into the sacred grove only for a few days in September, while most candidates had been there from July onwards. He approached the sacred grove in his official car, while the three other candidates who went along him came on foot, and spent only one night in the bush. Also, as a grown and powerful man, he could not quite admit the fact that he had not been initiated before, that, in traditional terms, he was the equal of the kids and juniors that entered the sacred grove on the same year as he … De Jong thus describes Sagna’s tactics: When we talked about his initiation, Sagna denied that his entering the sacred grove in Thionck Essyl was his initiation. He said he had been initiated before. Entering the sacred grove in Thionck Essyl was merely a training exercise, he used the word ‘recyclage,’ which is used by men to refer to their second or third entrance into the sacred wood (important for acquiring secret knowledge, especially if they were initiated at an early age) (in De Jong 2001: 147). Though it did not take place during a campaign, Sagna’s performance aptly illustrates a key aspect of the performances of the party-state – their ambiguity, their complex mixing together of patronage, prestige, traditionalism and autochthony, of distance and belonging. The Shows as Tests of the Tendances We have thus far tried to provide elements for a ‘thick description’ of the shows of

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the party-state, as they can be perceived by the Senegalese public. But to interpret PS shows properly, one has to realize that their primary audience is internal, that shows are a key element of internal PS politics. To understand this, one must explore how the PS functioned until 2000. A proper illustration of the working of the PS can be observed from a flash forward in history, to the day of the 2000 poll. Sitting under a mango tree near the polling station, I witnessed the poll with Thierno Mané, a friend and local PS figure; he had been quite busy over the past weeks, canvassing his neighbourhood, visiting houses to mobilize in favour of President Diouf. The local primary school hosted two polling stations, the one that catered for my friend’s neighbourhood having about three hundred registered voters. I realized that my friend knew personally every voter in his neighbourhood, and thought he had a rather good idea as to whom they would vote for. But earlier in the morning of the day of the poll, in Thierno’s absence, local PDS members had turned up together with several dozens of voters, escorting them in order to avoid interference by PS militants. As the day went on, my friend seemed increasingly worried: despite promises, some of ‘his’ voters were not coming; others had turned up and voted, but judging from their behaviour to him, Thierno felt they had not kept their word. As it turned out, he was right and the PS was badly defeated even in ‘his’ polling station, usually considered a PS stronghold. This episode tells a lot about the nature of the pre-2000 PS: the party functioned as a pyramid of political entrepreneurs with a ‘clientele.’ At the bottom of the pyramid, this ‘clientele’ may have seemed inexpensive to maintain. The neighbours who formed part of Thierno’s clientele would not ask for money – a poor man himself, Thierno would actually have little to give, though he occasionally paid for tea and sugar and attended all familial ceremonies around, trying to hand out some money every time. Instead, Thierno’s clients made use of his connections with the local authorities, particularly with the PS town council. In fact, most of the communal administration was staffed with PS supporters, and Thierno enjoyed good relationships with many of them, particularly with those working at the Etat-Civil, a very important section in Senegalese bureaucracy. Thus Thierno recruited his clients thanks to his ‘helpfulness’ – by providing access to the local authorities, simplifying access to identity papers and birth certificates.5 The personalized nature of politics is evident: in the area, Diouf ’s defeat was interpreted by everyone as Thierno’s own; soon after the vote, on the tarmac of the main road, an anoynmous hand wrote with chalk ‘A bas Thierno, à bas Diouf ’ (‘Down with Thierno, down with Diouf ’). PS politics in Thierno’s suburban district thus depended on an unceasing series of interactions and exchanges: if Thierno delivered the goods, people voted for him – i.e. voted Diouf; if Thierno demonstrated his capacity to get people to vote, he was given access to small resources and privileges with which he could maintain his clientele.6 Knowing one’s clients and being able to produce them in shows was thus a key

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to political success: Thierno’s ‘value’ inside the PS was gauged according to the number of people he was able to mobilize when the party needed them most – in shows and at the polls.7 Indeed, pre-2000 PS shows are to be read not only as the fully-controlled performance of the leaders on stage, but as co-productions between the PS leaders and their pyramids of clients, each client performing his own dedication to the party. During PS meetings, supporters – supposed onlookers – would frequently break ranks and perform solos (of speech, dance or praises), in an attempt to demonstrate their exceptional dedication to the party. The organisers of the shows had a hard time controlling these ‘enthusiastic’ meeting-crashers, as is shown in the example below.8 During one meeting, a plump married woman, a local PS militant, stands up. She manages to draw the attention of the audience through a torrential praise of the merits of Robert Sagna, the local PS big man, and President Abdou Diouf. Though the organizers of the show discreetly try to control her, she keeps the floor and pours praises on the PS; the high point of her intervention is when she claims that she is so fond of ‘Robert’ and the PS that she is ‘Madame Robert.’ This last statement provokes an outburst of joyful laughter among the crowd, and the successful performer finally stands down (fieldwork notes, 24 February 2000).9 This example is reminiscent of James Scott (1985) and his analysis of derision as a ‘weapon of the weak’: it seems as if the only way the ‘weak’ can occupy the front-stage is buffoonery. The success of the woman’s performance (the laughter of the audience, including Robert Sagna himself ) could nevertheless give her a legimate access to some retribution on the part of PS big men. Counting the clientele was all the more important as there were in fact several clienteles inside the PS, behind competing political leaders – usually, this competition was more or less organized between two main factions (tendances), themselves divided in a set of equally competitive sub-factions. Meetings were thus much less about unanimity than what could have been expected: they served as gauges for intra-party politics. In fact, the contest of factions was barely hidden from public view – partisans of the various leaders grouped around banners which indicated their belonging to certain ‘sections’ or support groups (mouvements de soutien) whose allegiance every serious political entrepreneur knew. Tensions were no smaller among the various sub-factions, as the case of local meeting of the PS in February 2000 demonstrates: this meeting, hosted by Michel Sambou, a municipal counsellor of Ziguinchor and an aide to Robert Sagna, in Sambou’s own district, was assessed as poorly attended – only about 300 turned up. Most people came to the conclusion that Sambou had not ‘worked’ hard enough, but PS insiders argued that one of Sambou’s internal enemies, Mustapha Diédhiou, another municipal counsellor and Sagna supporter, in charge of supervising the transportation of militants, had consciously

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failed to do his job to attack Sambou’s credibility (Interviews with PS activists, February 2000). The PS depended on a competitive pyramid of clienteles, and the form which collective PS performances took had to do with this dependence. In fact, one of the main functions of PS meetings was to allow for the assessment of the PS brokers of the various echelons: every one looked at what everyone else had contributed (in terms of militants, money, labour, transportation and so on), and this functioned as a kind of stock exchange between the opposed factions.10 Of course, the rallies were not Panoptikons, but on this basis, people formed rough estimates of the various factions and their influence. Indeed, during rallies, political entrepreneurs at all levels knew – or spent some time learning – who was a follower of whom and how many people their competitors, allies or dependents could mobilize. Les Marches Bleues, a Successful Political Performance Wade’s skill and originality as a political communicator have long been noted. In the 1980s already, Wade’s style cut a striking contrast to that of Abdou Diouf – Wade used Wolof as a public language very early on, he appeared wearing typically Senegalese gear, the ‘grand boubou,’ thus contrasting with the style of both Francophile President Senghor with the famously bad Wolof and his successor, President Abdou Diouf, the three-piece-suit-wearing technocrat (Donal Cruise O’Brien, personal communication).11 This difference in political styles is intriguing. It is personal to an extent – Wade is a lawyer with a background in student activism, Diouf is a top-level technocrat who entered the PS late in the day, in an ex post legitimization of his political power, with little apparent taste or flair for political communication with the masses. But the marches bleues went beyond Wade’s flair. What was it that made them so popular, and turned this invention into a success? The Rhetoric of the March in Senegalese Politics Political marches are no novelty in urban Senegal, and already in the early twentieth century, demonstrations were taking place in the main colonial cities. But the era for street rallies was the 1950s, the coming of independence; in 1958, the demonstrators confronted General de Gaulle himself, when he famously came to campaign for Senegal’s adhesion to the Franco-African Community. This was the time when Wade was socialized to politics, and these mythical episodes of liberation struggle may well have been an implicit reference for the marches bleues. In fact, the PDS security is known as the blue caps (calots bleus), a likely reference to the 1950s, when Léopold Sédar Senghor’s green berets (bérêts verts) stood opposed to Lamine Guèye’s red berets (bérêts rouges). Though this reference might have been clear to Wade, it would have made little sense to his young audiences.

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Following independence in 1960 and the progressive establishment of a single party-state, rallies ceased to function as oppositional modes. With the liberalization of the late 1970s, opposition parties, clandestine and legal, tried to take to the streets again. But they would often feel the wrath of the state; in August 1985, Wade and a number of opposition leaders were arrested during a march against Apartheid (Diop and Diouf 1990). In the 1980s, the authorities were thus reluctant to having the opposition parties marching the streets. Progressively, during the 1990s, opposition parties gave up marching as they began participating in ‘national unity’ governments (Villalon 1994). From marches to cabinets, the opposition parties lost credibility among the population, and marching anew in 2000 was a way for the opposition to re-establish its credentials by invoking its glorious years, the years when its leaders would end up in jail and never in ministerial office. Of course, in 2000, the risk was minimal, for the Senegalese state had become accustomed to its increasingly moderate and legalist opposition. During the 1990s, demonstrations were thus left mostly to students and workers protesting against the degradation of their living standards – in fact, those marches became a symbol of the growing frustrations of the Senegalese population vis-à-vis the economic conditions. Marches had always been a mode of mobilization for students – a group which includes both the small but highly mobilized university students of Dakar and Saint-Louis and the masses of secondary school pupils. Structural adjustment bore down hard on students, and the 1980s and 1990s witnessed periodical student marches. But adjustment also allowed for the emergence of powerful trade unions independent from the PS, which were actively engaged in protests… Typical of this evolution was the spectacular political emergence, in the late 1990s, of Mademba Sock, a trade unionist. Sock, an employee of the state-owned Senegalese power company Senelec, and the secretary-general of the independent trade union UNSAS (Union nationale des syndicats autonomes du Sénégal), became a public figure during the strikes and marches led by Senelec’s employees; gaining unexpected popularity as a result of state repression (and a song by Senegalese popstar Youssou Ndour), Sock himself finally decided to run in the presidential elections; he earned few votes in the first round, and rallied behind Wade for the second round. When they set out to organize marches bleues, the leading opposition parties, which had been partly discredited by their occasional collaboration with the regime during the 1990s, thus invoked their early years, as well as they were trying to draw on the marches of the students and trade unionists of the adjustment era. To them, it was a powerful way to prove that they stood with the people. Youth as an Electoral Target In Senegal, high-school and university students have never shied from marching through cities, not infrequently in a rather riotous way. Staging the marches

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bleues, Wade and his men were thus trying to appeal to the youth, using their own mode of protest. Indeed, in Senegalese society as in most African societies, ‘les jeunes’ have become the key electoral target. As Gérard (1993) and Villalon (1994) insist, though hostile to the PS regime, the youth had also long failed to mobilize in elections. In 2000 though, an unprecedented effort had been made by NGOs and the donor community to encourage them to register and to vote.12 A substantial portion of the electorate was new, still to be conquered and mobilized. While the rhetoric of the PS meetings kept drawing on pre-colonial Senegalese culture, the marches bleues were a symbolic pledge to the votes of the youth. The PDS shows reflected this shift in political rhetoric. They moved away from both bureaucratic and African idioms of notability towards practices valued by the youth – demonstration, of course, but also music: the PDS did not recruit praise-singers; instead, they had sound systems playing Senegalese pop music and Ivoirian reggae. Also, the PDS security, a group of several dozen young men, were equipped with uniform blue denim clothes (jacket and trousers) – young onlookers could not fail to notice and admire this, and took it as a promise that all supporters of Wade would soon have access to the yearned for ‘American’ goods. Implicitly, Wade was promising the young citizens not the gifts of a caring father, but access to the new world every one was getting interested in: no longer France, but the USA. One should insist on the replacement, as a figure of success, of the French-speaking civil servant by the migrant returning from the USA, l’Américain. The epithet américain, in modern urban Wolof, denotes débrouillardise, survival skills, initiative – something close to what Paul Richards (1996) describes about Sierra Leone and the valorization of the figure of Rambo, as a symbol of the cunning of the meek against a brutal and unfair order. This evolution has a sociological dimension: while the established ways to enrichment – migration to France and state employment – have become problematic over the past 20 years, migration to new places – Italy, Spain and the USA – is the new and most prized pathway to social success.13 With the set-up of polling stations in the bigger cities of Europe and the USA, the 2000 election campaign granted the Senegalese migrants a role that far exceeded their actual number, and parties were eager to canvass the Senegalese expatriates (Monika Salzbrunn and Linda Beck, personal communications). In fact, according to Monika Salzbrunn, prior to their import in Senegal, the marches bleues were tried out in New York, among the Senegalese migrants in Harlem. Wade seems to have measured the nature of this change, and his security were not the only ones to Americanize their dress. We have mentioned above that Wade, in the 1970s and 1980s, had been a pioneer of the use of the wide robes typical of Senegalese traditional dress (boubous) instead of Western-looking suits, thus putting forth a statement of nationalism and denouncing im-

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plicitly the Francophile bureaucratic and PS elites as rootless compradores. All other Senegalese politicians, including president Diouf himself, had followed along and started to wear robes. But in 2000, Wade moved on again: he left the robes, that now stood for notability, and chose to appear, on the first night of the campaign, in a three-piece suit with braces, setting a trend that led to a temporary shortage of braces on Dakarois markets. This time, the style of dress had nothing to do with the old French ways – to a Senegalese audience used to watching US serials, Wade’s dress was identified as that of Wall Street businessmen. On his own terms, for he could not pose as a rapper or a boxer, Wade was demonstrating his capacity to appropriate the symbols of globalization and America, and was thus making a further pledge of access to the youth. La Menace de la Rue: The Strength of Euphemism Wade’s campaign was not targetting les jeunes only as an electoral force, but also as a barely euphemized threat. Throughout the campaign, Wade played an ambiguous game, explicitly calling les jeunes, as well as the armed forces, to ‘take their responsibilities’ if the PS were to ‘confiscate’ the elections again (Sud Quotidien, 31 December 1999). This threat was not empty, as the Senegalese youth have a tradition of riotous demonstrations; in fact, the youth had already shown a disposition towards violent political contest in 1988, after Wade’s controversial electoral defeat: thousands of young Dakarois had taken to the streets and fought with the security forces; one year later, in April 1989, following tensions with Mauritania, crowds of young Senegalese roamed the streets of Senegal’s main cities, slaughtering Mauritanian residents and pillaging their shops; in 1993 again, the Moustarchidines, a Muslim youth group then supporting the PDS, demonstrated violently. The marches bleues thus functioned as a euphemized rehearsal for what would happen if the PS tried to rig the elections. Grouping thousands of youth in every city of Senegal and getting them to march through town, Wade was giving weight to his threats. Marches bleues mobilized the rhetoric of rebellion and conquest: marching through town, as if they were taking over, Wade and his supporters were striking a contrast with the very static campaigning of the ruling PS and his candidate, Abdou Diouf. This metaphoric conquest by thousands of youth worked as a powerful symbol. Wade’s political calculation was not entirely misguided: if the PS were tempted (and there is little doubt that some PS leaders were) to rig the elections, the euphemized actualization of the threat in the pre-electoral marches bleues made it clear that Wade’s defeat would result in serious civil disorder.14 At the same time, with the peaceful marches bleues, Wade was demonstrating that he could control the marching masses, that he could restrain them from turning into a riotous and looting crowd – to the establishment, he was trying to prove that he was the only alternative to political unrest.

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Citizens against Militants Probably the most important aspect of the marches bleues is that they appealed to citizens at large rather than to party militants. Indeed, for the PDS, this was a sensible thing to do: as an organization, the PDS had had a hard time through the 1990s; as said above, it had been losing militants, including a number of major figures; the PS had managed to enlarge its ‘hegemonic bloc,’ winning over some of its former opponents. But the tide was against the PS too – all parties of militants were dying out in late-1990s Senegal… This evolution relates to deep trends – while state power and resources had been weakened by the impact of forced liberalization, the population was growing quickly, and was increasingly operating outside the control of the state; with decreasing resources, clientelistic networks, even those of the PS, could no longer cater for a substantial enough portion of a growing electoral body. The first signs of this evolution had been seen in town, where growing portions of the urban poor could not be taken into the competing party machines – Dakar had thus been an early backer of the PDS. The multiplication and radicalization of internal party struggles and the proliferation of splinter groups plagued the PS at least as much as the PDS… In fact, while Senghor had created the PS through a progressive incorporation of most parties during the 1950s and 1960s, the 1990s saw the fragmentation of the ruling party. During the 1980s and 1990s, the PS had owed its victories probably less to vote-rigging than to high rates of abstention, and to the fact that the clientelistic networks of the PS still controlled a significant part of the actual electorate. But in 2000 the campaign for proper elections and registration attained unprecedented intensity, and the PS itself was increasingly divided; there were thus more citizens, and fewer PS militants… For the first time in Senegalese political history, electoral victory depended much less on the number of clients/militants of the parties than on the number of citizens those parties could bring to the polls. While the shows of the party-state had become essentially arenas for internal party competition rather than external mobilization and attracted (almost) only militants, the coalition around Wade put on the kind of show that could reach the maximum number of citizens. By now, shows of the party-state were attended mostly by ‘militants’ who came to take part in the confrontation of tendances. Only the most devout and/or dependent militants now agreed to being moved around, from show to show, to make the numbers. In a context where the capacity to maintain an electorally significant percentage of militants had eroded, shows of the party-state were increasingly seen as failures by both citizens and PS leaders. For PS militants alone, they remained important occasions where one’s status inside the party organization could be advanced. In contrast the marches bleues were a show for citizens, not for militants: typically, there was no system for mutual observation and counting – of course, component parties

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of the Coalition often wore signs of their allegiance, but there was no serious measurement of followership. Even fun had changed sides: shows of the party-state, whose rhetoric dated from the 1950s and 1960s, had lost much of their novelty and attraction; they had turned into ritualized and unexciting performances, relying as they did on pre-colonial, familial and bureaucratic idioms, they were not appealing to the young voters who had become the strategic segment for the election – this was all the truer as, in Senegal as in the rest of West Africa, the youth are faced with a serious crisis of integration and maintain equivocal relationships with familial/traditional order (Cruise O’Brien 1996). Shows of the PS were all the less attractive as, in 2000, they were increasingly seen as ‘nay’ (Wolof for ‘petty’): the PS had difficulties to fund their shows, and the quality of the performances declined. Contesting Munificence: The Coming of a New Morality? The success of the marches bleues also owes something to a shift in the moral economy of politics in Senegal. Over the years, the old idioms of kinship and munificence have been, at least in part, displaced by a new discourse – that of the denunciation of the mismanagement of state funds (for a nuanced approach to the ‘moralization of public life,’ see Dahou 2000). The main explanation given by opposition leaders for the marches bleues (the lack of money) is in itself part of the meaning that the opposition tried to convey during these marches: demonstrating that, just like the mass of the Senegalese population, they had little money, that they had to make ends meet and organize the marches bleues as a cheap alternative, the opposition were implicitly denouncing the supposedly lavish shows of the PS. This is indeed confirmed in an interview of Idrissa Seck, then Wade’s cabinet director and campaign manager, in February 2000. Seck was careful to point out both the Islamic and the scientific legitimacy of the marches bleues: Being an assiduous reader of the Holy Scriptures [the Quran], I realized that all the prophets who have engaged in a mission to liberate their people have actually walked … Such is the primary source of inspiration. The next one is modern science currently dominated by the concept of interactivity. We had to make the most of the good health and maturity of Sopi and the leader that embodies it (Wal Fadjri, 22 February 2000).15 But Seck was also very aware of the dangers of expensive shows in his reply to a Wal Fadjri journalist who was asking him about ‘a certain difficulty of [the PDS] to fund its campaign’: Incidentally, I have long said that, in a context of growing poverty in

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Senegal, of total misery, it was indecent to put on a show of wealth – everybody knows that Dr. Wade is not a poor person and among those around him, there are people who can take care of themselves. Recruiting a very expensive external consultant, spending millions on posters, on things that, in the end, do not work (Wal Fadjri, 22 February 2000). But should one interpret this claim as significant of a change in political virtue? Are humility and honesty now favoured over munificence? As seen above, a month before the election, when asked about the poverty of his coalition, Wade declared that ‘What matters in life is to do a lot with a little. I campaign with the means I have. I am not going to steal the people’s money, nor am I going to sell off Senegal’; he added: ‘I am not ashamed if I do not have money. The main thing is that I do not owe anything to anyone.’ More than humility and honesty, it is the capacity to make-do, ‘débrouillardise,’ the ability to be an ‘Américain’ which is vindicated as the new political virtue – of course, this strongly echoes with the daily life of most Senegalese at the time of structural adjustment, struggling in a context where the wealthy state of the pre-adjustment era can no longer help. Seck’s answer points in the same direction: he takes pains to establish that Wade and some of his followers are ‘not poor’ and can ‘take care of themselves.’ So even in the shows of the opposition, politics is still very much about accessing wealth. But it is not the wealth one gains through the benevolence of the state, now quasi-bankrupt. The wealth that Wade and his allies pledge to deliver is the wealth which the skilful and daring ones, the Américains, the businessmen and the migrants can get. Wade himself embodies the ambivalence: he portrays himself as the man who comes ‘from abroad,’ with Wall Street braces, but also the man who makes it through, thanks to his prolonged effort in a difficult contest, displaying both cunning and strength. Conclusion From the fact that the turnover took place after the opposition developed their new performances, one should not necessarily conclude that Wade owes his victory to the marches bleues. But there is little doubt that the marches bleues played a part. As an innovation, the marches bleues had met with the initial scepticism of the Senegalese press, surprised at the coalition’s apparent ‘poverty.’ In fact, the marches bleues were hugely successful, and surely did much to remobilize and publicize the elections, particularly among the youth, who had hitherto been very reluctant to register and vote in elections. But one should not analyse it simply as an element in the change from a parochial culture to a participant culture – in fact, the ethos revealed in these shows is complex: if bad governance comes under severe criticism, it is resourcefulness which is the political virtue of the new era; one now has to be an ‘Américain.’ It is precisely because the organizers of the marches bleues, consciously or not, were

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playing on this ethos that their performance worked out so well. It was a successful ‘meeting,’ in the full sense of the term, between inventive showmen and their audience. But six years have passed since the alternance and the enthusiasm of the marches bleues has not survived the dog-fighting of cabinet and coalition politics; Abdoulaye Wade and Idrissa Seck have parted ways in a highly conflictual way; it seems unlikely anyone will be able to muster such shows in the presidential election due in 2007. The conclusion of this exploration of political shows in Senegal bears on the ambivalent nature of politics: as we have seen, African political spheres are no less ambiguous than European ones; violence and threat are never far behind civil peace. Historians of European politics (Robert 1996) have indeed shown how, from the eighteenth century onwards, through a long and frequently brutal process, the demonstration was progressively transformed by the interaction of politicians, rioters and security forces into a pacified mode of political representation, paving the way for modern democracy. Behind such civic behaviour as peaceful demonstration, violence still looms; in euphemized violence, political institutions can be born.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to Linda Beck, Donal Cruise O’Brien, Tarik Dahou and JeanHervé Jézéquel for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. References Baum, Robert M. (1999). Shrines of the Slave-Trade. Diola Religion and Society in Pre-colonial Senegambia (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Bazin, Jean (2004). ‘Le roi sans visage,’ L’Homme, 170: 11–24. Cruise O’Brien, Donal B. (1996). ‘A Lost Generation? Youth Identity and State Decay in West Africa,’ in R. Werbner and T. Ranger (eds.), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London, Zed Books): 55–74. Dahou, Tarik (2000). ‘Le changement dans la continuité: l’intenable pari du Parti socialiste sénégalais,’ Afrique contemporaine, 194: 14–23. De Jong, Ferdinand (2001). ‘Modern Secrets. The Power of Locality in Casamance, Senegal,’ Unpublished PhD (Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam). Diop, Momar-Coumba and Mamadou Diouf (1990). Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf: Etat et société (Paris, Karthala). –– (2002). ‘Léopold Sédar Senghor, Abdou Diouf, Abdoulaye Wade, et après?,’ in D. B. Cruise O’Brien, M.-C. Diop and M. Diouf (eds.), La construction de

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l’Etat au Sénégal (Paris, Karthala): 101–41. Gérard, Jérôme (1993). ‘Election présidentielle au Sénégal (février 1993): “Sopi” pour la jeunesse urbaine,’ Politique Africaine, 50: 108–15. Havard, Jean-François (2001). ‘Ethos “Bul Faale” et nouvelles figures de la réussite au Sénégal,’ Politique africaine, 82: 63–76. McLaughlin, Fiona (1997). ‘Islam and Popular Music in Senegal: The Emergence of a “New Tradition,”’ Africa, 67: 560–81. Ndiaye, M. (1996 and 1998). L’éthique ceddo et la société d’accaparement ou les conduites culturelles des Sénégalais d’aujourd’hui (2 Volumes) (Dakar, Presses Universitaires de Dakar). Panzacchi, Comelia (1994). ‘The Livelihoods of Traditional Griots in Modern Senegal,’ Africa, 64 (2): 190–210. Richards, Paul (1996). Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford, James Currey). Robert, Vincent (1996). Les chemins de la manifestation, 1848–1914 (Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon). Schatzberg, Michael G. (2001). Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa. Father, Family, Food (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press). Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, Yale University Press). Swigart, Leigh (1994). ‘Cultural Creolisation and Language Use in Post-colonial Africa: The Case of Senegal,’ Africa, 64 (2): 175–89. Veyne, Paul (1995). Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique (Paris, Seuil) Villalon, Leonardo (1994). ‘The Senegalese Elections of 1993,’ African Affairs, 93 (371): 163–94. Notes 1 On praise-singers, see below. 2 This is also the view of Abdoulaye Bathily, another leading opposition politician allied with Wade in 2000: it ‘was necessary to resort to the innovation of the marches bleues’ because ‘the leading figures of the alternance had gotten no foreign assistance.’ See Le Quotidien, 14 December 2003. All translations are mine. 3 As Schatzberg (2001) indicates, metaphors of kinship play a particularly strong part in subsaharan Africa. 4 Research among the tee-shirt printing shops of Dakar would produce fascinating information on the state of Senegalese society. 5 For some time, Thierno has been lobbying the town council to get power lines to his neighbourhood, something which would hugely increase his political stature in the neighbourhood (and consequently within the PS). 6 It is worth insisting that these relationships cannot be properly described as market

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transactions – they belong to the gift/counter-gift genre, and are infused with ideas about morality – Thierno is ‘helfpul,’ and his clients are ‘thankful.’ A number of clients who failed Thierno were indeed ‘ashamed’ and dared not come to him for quite some time. 7 Usually it is not too difficult, and Thierno’s results in the previous elections were excellent (he is very active) and followed the pattern which he had predicted. But in 2000, the stakes were higher, uncertainty had risen; the PDS had developed powerful local sections and the opposition as a whole had put a lot of effort into registering new voters; Thierno himself did not work as hard as he used to, because he had become disillusioned with his own hierarchy, whom he thought had done little for him and his neighbourhood. 8 Real party ‘insiders,’ such as Thierno, do not use such a mode of intervention: they perform as discreet, efficient and dignified string-pullers, not as buffoons. 9 The fun here comes from the sheer ludicrousness of the claims of this old woman ‘of the people’ to be the wife of the powerful mayor of Ziguinchor, and from the sexual sub-text. 10 Of course, the most important apparatus for the measurement of the influence of the tendances remains the internal party elections, but these are rather rare, and they are partly pre-ordained by the number of party membership cards which each tendance is allowed to try and sell. Not infrequently, party membership cards are paid for by the party brokers. 11 Swigart (1994) specifies that Wade was the first politician to speak urban Wolof, a Creole language of French and Wolof. Interestingly, when Swigart interviewed Wade, he rejected staunchly the idea that he spoke urban Wolof, insisted that he did not Creolize French and Wolof, and argued (wrongly) that, in the same speech, he could make some statements in ‘pure’ Wolof and others in ‘pure’ French: while Wade makes use of urban Wolof, he cannot acknowledge it publicly. 12 As mentioned above, with funding from the USAID, NGOs mobilized the youth in a manner not too different from that of the PS: tee-shirts were handed out to all youth who turned up with a valid voting card. 13 A number of authors point to the emergence and/or valorization in Senegal of a new ethos and cultural style, less dependent on French education and formal employment, in the context of structural adjustment. See for instance Ndiaye (1996 and 1998) and his research on the moodu-moodu [the diminutive for Momodou, a standard Senegalese first name, initially a derisive designation for the ruralites coming to Dakar, now refering to the illiterate but successful traders of the Muridiyya], or Havard (2001), on the bul faale ethos. The phrase bul faale, a Dakar Wolof slang phrase meaning ‘don’t pay attention,’ was popularized by the rap music group Positive Black Soul and expresses the rebellious attitude of the Senegalese youth. It subsequently became the catchphrase of an immensely popular (and wealthy) Senegalese wrestler, who has taken the name Tyson, frequently sports a US flag and has established links with the real Mike Tyson. 14 The international community was really worried about the risks of civil strife and put considerable pressure on President Diouf for free and fair elections. 15 I am indebted to Leo Zeilig for this reference.

7 PUTTING ON A SHOW AND ELECTORAL FORTUNES IN TAIWAN’S MULTI-PARTY ELECTIONS Dafydd Fell

Introduction: Theatre Politics and Electoral Fortunes in Taiwan Given the high symbolic content of Taiwanese campaigns, analysing elections in Taiwan through the lens of theatre politics is particularly appropriate. The value of examining Taiwanese politics in theatrical terms, defined by Joseph Esherick and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (1990: 839) as ‘symbolic-laden performances whose efficacy lies largely in their power to move specific audiences,’ is clearly perceived by the island’s election correspondents. Journalistic commentaries on campaigns abound with theatrical terms. Candidates’ skills at putting on a show (zuoxiu) or performing are compared by newspaper columnists, who view this as a key requirement for a successful election candidate (Chen Chao-ju 1997). The word xiu is a transliteration of the English ‘show’ and the usage of the phrase zuoxiu to denote putting on a show appears unique to Taiwan.1 The scope of the term is very broad, and can include candidates’ ability to make speeches, take part in electoral stunts, attend funerals and weddings, make good TV election ads, hold moving election rallies, debate on politics talk shows, and even fight. In contrast to journalistic accounts of politicians’ shows in Taiwan’s elections, political scientists working on Taiwan are less comfortable with these concepts and thus have given little attention to symbolic campaigning. Research on Taiwanese electoral politics has tended to focus on either the clientelistic campaigning, known as the ‘organizational battle’ (zuzhi zhan) (Rigger 1999: 41–54; Wang Chin-shou 1997: 3–62), or the ‘propaganda battle’ (wenxuan zhan). The propaganda research has concentrated on changing political communication techniques and electoral debate over political issues, particularly national identity (Cheng Tzu-long 1995; Fell 2002: 31–60; Lin Tsong-jyi 2002: 123–43; Cheng and Hsu 1996: 137–73).

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This chapter examines the relationship between candidates’ ability to put on a show on the electoral stage and electoral results in Taiwan. Although symbolic performances are one among a myriad of factors influencing voting behaviour and the skill of putting on a show does not guarantee electoral victory, it does give a significant advantage. In fact, media liberalization in conjunction with the decline in effectiveness of clientelistic electioneering and ruling party political rituals have meant that the influence of symbolic campaigning on election results has risen in recent years. It is argued that the electoral success and failure of Taiwan’s parties and candidates has increasingly been tied to their ability to adapt to the demands of a rapidly changing media stage and electoral audience. The content and style of political shows can rapidly become outdated. Therefore, increasingly, those politicians able to design their campaign performances to match audience tastes have tended to win elections, while those that have failed to keep up with performance fads have faded from the political scene. After 40 years of Martial Law, Taiwan held its first full democratic election that had the potential to change the balance of power in 1991. The sweeping away of restrictions on opposition parties and freedom of speech, and the liberalization of Taiwan’s media created a radically new electoral environment, in which politicians would either sink or swim. This was a transformation as great as the one facing actors adjusting from the stage to the big screen or from silent to talking motion pictures. Martial Law-era politicians now faced a highly demanding electoral audience and an ever-changing media stage to perform on. The first democratic elections were an experiment not only in the policies but also the symbolic campaigning that voters would accept. Following this brief introduction, Section Two outlines the limited scope for theatre politics, and dominance of the ruling Kuomintang’s (KMT) political rituals and organizational battle in Taiwan’s Martial Law era (1949–87). Next Sections Three to Five examine how politicians and parties adjusted their performances in the period of democratic transition, the first five years of full multiparty elections, and since the advent of cable news channels. The link between anticipation of audience tastes for political shows and electoral results is outlined in a number of case studies. Finally the conclusion reviews the main findings of the paper and their implications. Theatre Politics and Ruling Party Rituals in Martial-Law Taiwan Taiwan was under Martial Law from 1949 until 1987. Since the Republic of China claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all China, it justified postponing full national elections until it could recover the Chinese Mainland. However, throughout this period regular local elections up to the level of the Provincial Assembly were held. Although opposition parties were not permitted, independent non-KMT candidates were allowed to stand, and competition between the ruling KMT’s rival factions ensured these local elections were intensely fought.

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Moreover, a limited number of seats in the two national parliaments were opened up for direct election after 1969. During Martial Law, the KMT was able to dominate the electoral process and leave little scope for spontaneous theatre politics. Instead, the organizational battle tended to determine electoral outcomes and electoral communication in the media was saturated with ruling party rituals. While the propaganda battle involves open public and media campaigning, the organizational battle is the private face of the campaign. This includes the work of the vote brokers, mobilization of KMT support groups, vote allocation and division of constituencies into responsibility zones. Campaigning restrictions ensured that during the Martial Law era the organizational battle had a far greater impact on electoral success or failure (Tien 1989: 179–81). Election results were often determined months before voting day. Since only the KMT had the financial and organizational resources to co-ordinate election campaigns, getting nominated as a party candidate virtually guaranteed victory. For instance, between 1954 and 1989, an average of 85.86 per cent of KMT Provincial Assembly candidates won election (Chen Ming-tong 1996: 174–93). Both the print and electronic media were dominated by the ruling KMT, making it hard for opposition politicians to gain media exposure or propagate alternative political ideals. Instead, the media was awash with political ritual, defined by Esherick and Wasserstrom (1990: 844) as ‘traditionally prescribed cultural performances that serve as models of and models for what people believe.’ The ruling party’s political rituals were highly rule-governed performances designed to legitimize the KMT’s authority and ideology. The state ceremonies such as National Day and Retrocession Day were broadcast live on television, and presided over solely by KMT politicians.2 Similarly, at election time the focus of the television and radio news was the activities of KMT government officials and its election candidates, invariably playing the role of the competent but benevolent ruler. By contrast, any news items regarding the opposition would invariably show them in a negative light. A master of these ruling party rituals was President Chiang Ching-kuo. During the 1980s he was able to cast aside the sinister image created by his long involvement in the secret services during the height of political persecution (Wang 1999: 320–39). In its place Chiang exploited countless photo opportunities showing him looking relaxed with ordinary people, thus successfully cultivating the image of a down-to-earth man of the people. Numerous restrictions on the content and forms of campaign activities limited the impact of the propaganda battle on election results. Only short campaign periods were permitted, and both large candidate rallies and campaign advertising were banned. Moreover, if candidates touched upon politically taboo subjects such as criticizing the president, advocating independence or communism for Taiwan, they were liable to receive long jail sentences (Tien 1989: 162–94). For instance, in 1968 the journalist Po Yang received a ten-year jail sentence for a

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newspaper cartoon poking fun at President Chiang Kai-shek (Chao and Myers 1998: 5). Despite the limitations on Martial Law campaigns, they were colourful and noisy events, with a festival atmosphere. To make themselves known to floating voters, candidates would place campaign flags reminiscent of ancient Chinese battle banners throughout their constituency. These showed the candidate’s name and sometimes a small slogan or badge. Every street and paddy field was lined with these flags, often creating traffic chaos when they covered up traffic lights. While firecrackers were set off at Chinese New Year to scare off evil spirits, election candidates stood on open campaign vehicles and set off firecrackers to attract attention. Similarly, wealthy candidates competed to see who could provide constituents with the largest scale election banquet. For beggars, election campaigns were far more attractive than traditional Chinese festivals due to the availability of weeks of free meals. In addition, personal contact with voters was seen as effective, thus candidates had to attend endless weddings and funerals, and shake hands at street markets. During the last decade of Martial Law there was a limited loosening of campaign restrictions, and a semi-organized opposition movement began to coalesce around a group of democracy activists. The opposition movement frequently tested the KMT’s limits of toleration in both its issue demands and campaign methods. Dissidents were able to make use of the relative freedom of expression during the short campaign periods, which became known as ‘democratic holidays’ (minzhu jiaqi). The formally dull Central Election Commission-run policy forums were reinvigorated, as dissidents used them as a stage to get their message across and display their speech-making skills. According to the veteran dissident politician Chu Kao-cheng, these policy forums were his most effective campaign method under Martial Law (Interview with Chu, 2001). However, the KMT was still prepared to crack down if the opposition movement grew too strong. When in 1979 the opposition attempted to organize a large-scale human rights march, the KMT rounded up almost the entire opposition leadership and put them on military trial (Kaplan 1981). This was known as the Kaohsiung or Formosa Incident, and the defendants received sentences of between 12 years and life. In a sign that Taiwan’s political climate was changing, ruling party rituals such as these show trials no longer had their desired effects. While the February 28 Incident massacres of 1947 and White Terror of the 1950s and 1960s had cowed Taiwanese into submission, the 1980 show trials seriously backfired with the domestic audience.3 The trials discredited the KMT and actually rejuvenated and strengthened the opposition movement. They not only made the defendants into heroes, but they also created a new generation of opposition stars; these were the defence lawyers and the wives of the imprisoned defendants. Throughout the 1980s, the opposition exploited the sympathy vote by making these politicians the focal point of the election activities.

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Theatre Politics during the Democratic Transition: 1987–91 After almost 40 years Martial Law was finally ended in July 1987, sweeping away many of the pre-existing campaign restrictions. However, though opposition parties were allowed, national elections were still supplementary, with less than a third of seats open for direct election. Opposition politicians still struggled to reach their audience, as the electronic media remained dominated by the KMT. The ruling party stayed reliant on its organizational battle and political rituals to win elections. The newly formed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lacked both the financial clout and organizational strengths to compete with the KMT’s organizational battle. Instead it had to rely on the propaganda battle. The principal stages for opposition politicians to perform were street marches, parliaments, campaign rallies and the realm of stunt politics. While previously only state-sanctioned ritualistic or non-political marches had been permitted, the end of Martial Law saw a surge in the number of marches and demonstrations. This was a critical tool for the DPP in spreading its agenda, and opposition figures needed to be skilled at organizing and performing at such events. During the DPP’s first five years, large demonstrations were held calling for full national elections, direct presidential elections, freedom of speech and application to rejoin the United Nations. The novelty of street demonstrations was revealed in the 1989 Taiwanese rap song titled ‘Song of Madness’ (zhuakuang ge). This described the bewilderment of a country bumpkin visiting Taipei and seeing his first-ever demonstration. In confusion he asks a policeman: ‘Are they preparing to counter attack the Chinese Mainland?’ Although there were some isolated violent incidents in these demonstrations, most DPP politicians were at pains to avoid violence in the streets, as they were aware of voters’ fears of social disorder. The second forum for opposition politicians was the political rallies that became exceedingly common and popular in this period. As political scientist Tien Hung-mao (1989: 183) recalled, ‘it is not unusual to have over twenty thousand people attend, compared to several hundred that show up at rallies for KMT candidates.’ Opposition party politicians had to learn to satisfy the new and demanding audience by attacking the KMT and making radical and controversial political demands. They were also expected to make their passionate speeches in the formally suppressed Taiwanese language, rather than the national language, Mandarin.4 This meant that numerous moderate dissidents such as Kang Ning-hsiang or Mainlanders unable to speak Taiwanese fell from favour among opposition supporters.5 KMT candidates also organized election rallies and banquets during this period, however, these contrasted sharply with those run by the opposition party. These tended to have little policy content and were more like variety shows, being hosted by TV stars and featuring pop stars and scantily dressed singers. Even though the opposition members only accounted for a small proportion

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of parliamentarians, the quality of their speeches and performances made some of them into political stars. Especially renowned were the DPP Legislators Chen Shui-bian, Hsieh Chang-ting and Lin Cheng-chieh, who gained the nickname ‘The Three Musketeers’ (Shen and Wu 1996). The newly liberalized print media recorded these politicians’ campaign and parliamentary speeches in their politics columns. A number of DPP politicians also used violence in parliament to gain publicity and protest against the slow pace of political reforms. Particularly famous incidents were the man known as Taiwan’s Rambo, Chu Kao-cheng’s attacks on the Legislative Yuan speaker, and Huang Chao-hui overturning tables at the President’s banquet in the March 1990 National Assembly (Chao and Myers 1998: 186–7, 277). The KMT regularly used the DPP’s theatrical performances in its propaganda to discredit it as radical and violent (KMT advertisement 1994).6 However, in the late 1980s, the only way for DPP figures to get television exposure was by using violence, and such actions gained politicians cult status among the opposition’s hardcore supporters. In this period politicians from all parties began to use stunt politics to attract voter attention. One especially noteworthy event was when DPP candidate Lu Hsiu-yi promised his rally in November 1989 would feature the head of the World United Formosans for Independence Kuo Pei-hong. Since Kuo was a blacklisted political exile who had been smuggled into Taiwan and was on the run from the police, the rally attracted a huge crowd.7 After Kuo had made his speech and given a press conference, the police were ready to arrest him. However, in unison Kuo and the whole audience put on identical black masks and the lights were turned out, allowing Kuo to escape in the confusion (Cheng 1995: 298). This stunt certainly paid dividends for Lu, who was the highest vote-getter in Taipei County that year. Of course not all the stunts paid off electorally. A prime example was the Labour Party candidate and striptease artist Hsu Hsiao-tan. Hsu produced one of the most talked about newspaper ads of the 1989 campaign, which showed a naked Hsu breaking through a KMT flag and the slogan ‘the breast resists the fist’ (naitou duikang quantou) (Ibid.: 1995: 299). Moreover, Hsu was able to attract large (mostly male) crowds for her campaign performances. However, Hsu failed to win election in 1989, 1992 and 1995. The new style of political campaigning contributed to the high turnover of parliamentarians during this period, as politicians from both parties that lacked the newly required performing skills failed to win re-election and faded from the political scene. Although some Martial Law-era KMT politicians could still win election using the organization battle, they were less competitive, as many lacked the qualities for democratic campaigns. Not surprisingly the proportion of KMT legislative candidates winning election fell from 96.66 per cent in 1980 to only 63.26 per cent in 1992 (Chen Ming-tong 1996: 189). The DPP’s performances of the late 1980s were remarkably successful. Despite its media disadvantage, it was able to set the political agenda and increase its vote share from 22.17 per

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cent in 1986 to 28.26 per cent in 1989 (Hsieh 2002: 37). In multi-member electoral districts the opposition’s star performers were routinely the top votegetters. However, their radical methods meant they faced a bottleneck in growth by the early 1990s as full democratization made direct action and parliamentary violence hard to justify. Theatre Politics in the First Five Years of Full Democratic Elections: 1991–96 The electoral stage changed considerably in the early 1990s, as the pace of democratization increased. The scope of elected offices broadened rapidly, with the first full elections of the National Assembly in 1991, Legislative Yuan in 1992, the Provincial Governor, Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayor in 1994, and the President in 1996.8 Although the first television campaign advertisements were broadcast in 1991, these only had a limited impact on election campaigns in the early 1990s. Instead, many opposition figures continued to employ theatrical methods learnt during the 1980s. These included radical demands, some use of violence, the tragic Taiwanese appeals and a refusal to use Mandarin in election activities. The tragic Taiwanese appeal was common in many DPP campaign ads in the early 1990s, and focused on Taiwan’s historical tragedies such as the February 28 Incident and how Taiwanese suffered during the Martial Law White Terror period.9 In three 1992 DPP TV ads, the wives of opposition politicians told heartrending stories of how their families had suffered political persecution under Martial Law. DPP advertising also appealed to anti-Mainlander sentiment by playing the ethnic card. For instance, another series of 1992 DPP TV ads showed an actor impersonating Mainlander Premier Hau Pei-tsun’s numerous verbal gaffes. One of these reminded voters that Hau had once said: ‘I love Taiwan, I love the Mainland [China] even more.’ In fact it is felt within the DPP that such exclusive symbolic appeals that had long been taboo subjects under Martial Law had been highly effective in increasing support levels during the transition to democracy. As Hau admitted in an interview, ‘Of course (those attacks) were related to ethnicity. So I was the last Mainlander Premier’ (Interview with Hau, 2001). The 1991 National Assembly election was a critical election for the DPP. The party made radical Taiwan independence its central election plank, and tried to convince voters with lengthy academic-style newspaper and TV ads. The DPP suffered a humiliating defeat. Its vote share dropped sharply and some of its most extremist candidates such as Lin Cho-shui were defeated. In fact, in interviews, a number of DPP politicians compared this campaign to the British Labour Party’s disastrous 1983 campaign. The election led the party to try to change its image and adopt new campaign methods. For the KMT, on the other hand, the conclusion was that organizational battle and the prevalence of its political rituals in the KMT-dominated media would still be enough to win elections, with only limited attention to the propaganda battle.

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Three years later, however, the 1994 Taipei Mayoral elections showed that organizational advantage no longer guaranteed victory and that the ability of politicians to adjust their performances was critical on the new electoral stage. The DPP’s candidate, Chen Shui-bian, had been a radical political figure in the 1980s. In 1989 he had released a leaflet with the seditious slogan ‘Long Live Taiwan Independence.’10 However, by 1994 Chen’s campaign team sensed the change in audience tastes, thus were at pains to show his moderation. Chen Shui-bian rejected the old tragic Taiwanese appeals, and instead adopted a youth-orientated style with the slogan ‘Happiness, Hope, Chen Shui-bian’ (kuaile, xiwang, Chen Shui-bian). In contrast to the serious atmosphere of early DPP rallies, Chen’s team used cheerful pop songs at rallies in a bid to appeal beyond traditional opposition supporters to younger and middle-class voters. In fact this new style of campaigning turned out to be remarkably successful among younger voters. In 1993 only 11.1 per cent of the 20–29 age group supported the DPP, making it the age group least likely to vote DPP. However, by 2002 and after less than a decade of youthorientated campaigning 38.8 per cent of the 20–29 age group supported the DPP, making them the age group most likely to vote DPP (Yang 2002: 17). This election also featured the newly formed New Party (NP). Just as student protestors in Beijing had usurped Hu Yaobang’s state funeral in April 1989, the NP attempted to stake claim to the Republic of China’s nationalist rituals (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1990: 840). The party held its own more ‘orthodox’ national ceremonies, such as at the Yang Mingshan Revolutionary Martyrs Shrine. Similarly, its rallies featured national anthem singing, flag waving and condemning both mainstream parties for their lack of patriotism. Such symbolic appeals enabled the NP to attract many disaffected KMT supporters and became a significant electoral force in the mid-1990s. The 1994 Taipei mayoral contest also featured a new stage for politicians to perform on: Taiwan’s first live televised debate. In the event the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian was scathing in his criticism of the incumbent KMT mayor, but also attempted to show his own government competence. The NP’s Chao Shao-kang gave by far the most theatrical performance, opening with the statement ‘Taiwan is going to be destroyed! Destroyed in the Nazi Fascist hands of the DPP!’ In a later exchange Zhao challenged Chen: ‘I shout “long live the Republic of China,” do you dare to shout “long live the Republic of China, long live the Republic of China, long live the Republic of China?”’ Pundits concluded that the winners of the debate had been the NP’s Chao and the DPP’s Chen. In private even KMT leaders agreed that Huang Ta-chou had performed very poorly (Interview with Hsu, 2001). This was not surprising considering that Huang had been a government-appointed mayor and never stood for any elected offices before. In contrast, both Chen and Chao had been star legislators since the late 1980s. The candidates’ debate performances were reflected in the actual election results, in which the DPP’s Chen won, while the NP’s Chao came second.

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During the late 1980s, many Taiwanese viewed limited political violence as tolerable in the light of the unfair political system. However, by the mid-1990s audience tastes had shifted, and violence appeared no longer justifiable. In fact, most opposition politicians had dropped direct action by this point. The price for DPP legislators such as Stella Chen, Huang Chao-hui and Chen San-si who still used direct action was defeat in the December 1995 Legislative Yuan elections. In the words of the Far Eastern Economic Review’s Julian Baum (1995), Stella Chen ‘had exhausted the patience of voters with her violent tactics in parliament.’ Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996 again showed what was required for politicians in terms of putting on a show and adaptability. The election pitted the KMT incumbent Lee Teng-hui against the DPP’s Peng Ming-min and the NP-backed Lin Yang-kang. Both opposition campaigns were badly run and featured candidates unequipped with the necessary performance skills. Peng ignored the DPP party headquarters’ call for more inclusive appeals, reverting to a style similar to that of the late 1980s and 1991, employing themes such as radical Taiwan independence and the tragedy of being Taiwanese. One Peng rally I attended in Kaohsiung in February 1996 had a funeral atmosphere, with a mix of somber music and tragic tales of Taiwanese suffering. Though such appeals may have won votes in the 1980s, they had become ineffective and even counter productive by 1996. Lin’s campaign was also a disaster. Five years later, his vicepresidential running mate Hau Pei-tsun recalled of their TV ads: ‘They were not professional, and they had no money and no preparations’ (Interview with Hau, 2001). This was the first time Peng, Lin and Hau had stood for election, and all had communication problems. Although Peng is a fine orator in Taiwanese, he appeared uncomfortable using Mandarin. Similarly, neither Lin nor Hau were rousing speakers; in addition Hau’s appeal was limited by his inability to speak Taiwanese. Moreover, after living in exile in the United States for 25 years Peng appeared out of touch with Taiwanese audience demands, as the DPP’s Chen Fang-ming explained, ‘He is an intellectual, he never said, “please give me your vote”’ (Interview with Chen, 2001). In contrast, President Lee Teng-hui showed how a politician could adapt. Though he had a similar government background to Lin, he had become a fiery speaker in both Taiwanese and Mandarin, and had actively campaigned for KMT candidates since 1993. In addition, Lee was far more comfortable with showmanship at rallies and in making campaign ads. In fact his election ads were well designed and gave him the image of being not only a statesmen but also approachable. One series of ads showed Lee on the world stage, shaking hands with world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, and making a speech at Cornell University in June 1995 on his groundbreaking US visit.11 While another series showed Lee in an armchair telling how he quit smoking and how he fell in love with his wife. As in 1994, the best performer triumphed, with the incumbent Lee Teng-hui winning with over 54 per cent of the vote.

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Putting on a Show in the Cable TV Era Changes in Taiwan’s media since the mid-1990s again created a new variation in the electoral stage. The most important change has been the huge rise in cable TV and particularly the popularity of their 24-hour news channels. By 1996, 75.9 per cent of households had cable TV and this continued to rise to 85.2 per cent in 2003 (Directorate General of Telecommunications). This meant that the old organizational battle would be less effective, as increasingly TV would dominate campaigns. Parties and politicians have been forced to adjust their political theatre for the TV stage. Firstly, election rallies and speeches have to be designed to suit the tastes of their armchair audience. Secondly, politicians have to learn to debate in the politics talk shows and televised debates. Thirdly, parties and politicians have had to invest more in television campaign advertising. Lastly, the rise in TV campaigning has meant that parties must be represented by photogenic figures; therefore increasingly female and younger politicians have become the public face of parties. By the mid-1990s, the old-style outdoor political rally had lost its novelty, and voters were no longer so attracted by serious political speeches. Politicians that still persisted with this method such as Chu Kao-cheng and Lin Chengchieh failed to be elected in both 1998 and 2001. One of the first political figures to adapt to the new media environment was the DPP’s Propaganda Chief from 1995 to 1997, Chen Wen-chien. She tried to liven up the DPP’s election rallies to give the party a more modern image that could attract younger voters. One of Chen’s assistants even claimed that she was trying to ‘Americanize’ the party’s campaigns (Interview with Yu, 2001). Chen designed rallies that would look good on both TV news and also for the rally audience. The most famous of these were the ‘Spice Girls Campaigning Team’ rallies of 1997 that combined scantily dressed dancers with lively pop music, short political speeches and the chance for the audience to directly address questions to party leaders. Of course, Chen was criticized by some party elders for trivializing politics. However, the election results, particularly in 1997 when the DPP vote share exceeded that of the KMT for the first time, ensured that even after Chen left the DPP the party continued its more youth-orientated rallies. A new phenomenon of theatre politics since the late 1990s has been the rise of massive televised campaign rallies. In the 2000 presidential election, there was a clear contest over which party could hold the largest and most passionate rallies. Although at times the KMT was able to muster larger crowds than the DPP or independent candidate Soong Chu-yu in 2000, on close observation I found that many participants were forced to go by their work units or were being paid to attend. Soong Chu-yu’s rallies in 2000 showed how well he had adapted his election rally performances. Soong is from the Mainlander ethnic community, but he has increased his nation-wide appeal by learning Taiwanese. Though not a great orator, Soong has the charisma to attract and entertain large crowds.

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Soong Chu-yu has responded to the rise in Taiwanese identity by projecting a more inclusive Taiwanese image in his performances.12 For instance, in his 2000 rallies Soong would appeal to all ethnic communities by mixing his Mandarin speeches with slogans in Hakka, Taiwanese and even Aboriginal languages. Once again, the candidates that gave the best theatre politics did the best in this campaign, with the DPP’s Chen winning election with 39 per cent, closely followed by the independent Soong with 36 per cent, while the KMT’s Lien Chan gained the party’s record low of 23 per cent. The 2004 presidential election was even more a battle of rallies than four years earlier. The DPP’s keynote political event was a hand-in-hand human chain linking the far north with the far south of Taiwan that was attended by at least one and a half million people. This event was designed to show Taiwanese of all ethnic groups united in the face of the PRC missile threat, and was self-consciously modelled on a similar event held in the Baltic States’ bid for independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. In contrast, the KMT held simultaneous anti-Chen Shui-bian rallies throughout Taiwan on 13 March under the slogan of ‘Change the President, Save Taiwan’ (huan zongtong, jiu Taiwan), in which up to three million people participated. The focal point involved the KMT presidential candidates and their wives kissing the ground to show the depth of their love for Taiwan. However, since both KMT candidates had more pro-China images, this was not viewed as a convincing performance. The party with the best show had won again in 2004. For although the DPP only won by a narrow margin in 2004, it had gained over 50 per cent of the national vote for the first time and seen a 10 per cent vote gain in almost every county. Another major consequence of the rise of cable TV has been the proliferation of politics talk shows. While in the UK there are only one or two shows such as ‘Question Time’ per week, in Taiwan there are six or seven each night, in which politicians from the major political parties debate the issues of the day. These shows offer politicians free advertising. As DPP legislator Lai Chin-lin explained, ‘They can increase your exposure and make you better known. As when you’re out electioneering you can only meet a minority of constituents. If you can appear on TV, especially if it’s a channel with high viewing rates, many people can see you’ (Interview with Lai, 2001). However, not all politicians are able to cope with the intensity of these shows, as the performance skills required are quite different from the traditional rally speech. There is particular pressure for urbanbased politicians to regularly appear on these shows. Many of the politicians I interviewed appear on at least four such shows a week. The rise in 24-hour cable news has also had an impact on the speeches given by political leaders. While in the past no more than a few sound bites from a speech would be shown on the TV news, since the late 1990s the cable news channels have broadcast speeches live. This has meant that a different speech is needed for each rally, also the speech must be written to appeal to both the

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rally and TV audience. Within the DPP it is felt that initially the DPP’s star politician Chen Shui-bian failed to adjust to this new stage, and this damaged his 1998 mayoral re-election campaign. As the DPP’s Chang Yi-shan explained, ‘Before Chen Shui-bian tended to use mainly Taiwanese in his rally speeches, with much Taiwanese slang, he tried to incite the audience. However, this kind of speech came across very differently to a middle-class audience, and this gave the other side much ammunition to attack Chen Shui-bian’ (Interview with Chang, 2001). Therefore, following Chen’s 1998 defeat, he has used both Mandarin and Taiwanese, stopped making unscripted speeches and created a professional speech-writing team. The final impact of the rise in cable TV channels has been the rise in importance of TV advertising in election campaigns, which in presidential elections has become the largest campaign-spending item. These were of minimal significance when they began in the early 1990s, when parties were allocated free slots on the terrestrial TV channels in proportion to how many candidates they had nominated. In 1991 the KMT was given 149 minutes of advertising time compared to 65 minutes for the DPP (Fell 2003: Table 4). The liberalization of cable channels has meant that Taiwan has adopted a system of election advertising similar to the United States, in which there is a completely free market. The degree of change is apparent from the fact that in 2000 the KMT purchased 16,927 minutes of advertising time compared to the DPP’s 9,310 (Ibid.). Therefore, making good election TV ads has become a prerequisite of a successful campaign. Just as in the United States, Taiwanese newspapers analyse and compare the quality of the previous day’s slots and these are also often the subjects of everyday conversation. The DPP was initially slow to recognize the increased significance of television advertising. Some in the party also saw this as a factor in the party’s loss of the Taipei Mayoral election in 1998. That year the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou performed well in a series of candidate image ads, which showed him jogging, chatting to city residents and making tough anti-corruption speeches. As a DPP campaign manager recalled, ‘In 1998 we didn’t adjust to media developments, we spent too much money on newspaper ads, but ignored two new trends, the TV ads and 24-hour news channels. We had less TV ads than them and ours were of poorer quality’ (Interview with Chang, 2001). By the 2000 presidential election the DPP had improved the quality of its television advertising. This election is viewed as being a battle of TV ads, as the DPP’s Yu Mei-mei commented, ‘The only year that the TV ads were really effective was in 2000’ (Interview with Yu, 2001). The ads showed clearly the contrasting acting abilities and judgement of audience tastes of the main candidates. The KMT spent more on TV ads than all the other four candidates put together, however, their candidate came third with only 23 per cent of the vote. Critical factors were that Lien was clearly uncomfortable about putting on a show and seriously misjudged audience tastes. In fact, a KMT ad even admitted

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Lien’s lack of showmanship with the slogan ‘A person that can talk can’t always get things done. A person that can get things done can’t always talk.’13 While Chen and Song were veteran election campaigners, this was Lien’s first campaign, as he had followed a career of unelected government positions, and it showed.14 Lien clearly suffered from a lack of charisma, and when he did try to use ads to show his strength, the message was just too far from his public image to be convincing. For instance, in 2001 the KMT ran a TV ad that was a blatant copy of a Nike football boots ad, with Lien (in place of Roberto Carlos and Luis Figo) beating an assortment of monsters at football. In the 2000 presidential election, the KMT ad that was a prime example of misjudging audience tastes was known as the ‘Off to War Ad’ (chuzheng pian). Although this ad was a disastrous piece of theatre politics, it actually received more TV play than any other TV ad in 2000. The ad showed a group of youngsters marching and singing ‘I’m off to war. I’m off to war. Because of Abian’s one sentence, I’m off to war.’15 Then the narrator explains that because Chen Shui-bian said ‘Long live Taiwan independence,’ war may break out and 85 per cent of Taiwan’s 18–35 year-olds will go to war. This ad was designed to strike fear into the hearts of Taiwanese, with the message that only the KMT could guarantee Taiwan’s security. Although this kind of terror message may have worked in the past, most analysts felt the ad had backfired. While KMT supporters fearful of war switched to the most pro-China candidate Soong Chu-yu, many others saw the ad as evidence of defeatism and weakness in the face of the PRC’s threats, so they switched to voting for the most pro-self-determination DPP.16 In contrast, both the opposition candidates Soong Chu-yu and Chen Shuibian were far more comfortable acting in TV ads. For instance, many voters were impressed with Song’s ad showing him trying to help flood victims and then contrasting this with Lien’s apparent indifference at the disaster zone. A flood victim is shown saying to Lien: ‘Why don’t you listen to us? All you can do is put on a show.’ The TV ad that received the most praise from the 2000 campaign is known as the ‘Kuantian Ad’ (guantian pian). Narrated by Chen Shui-bian himself, the ad showed clips from Chen Shui-bian’s poor hometown, his relatives and childhood neighbour and teachers, and ended with the slogan ‘Because they are safe, Taiwan is safe.’ Although the ad had no clear policy content, it had three symbolic messages. Firstly, it was designed to counter the KMT’s terror message, to show that Chen would not take Taiwan to war. Secondly, by highlighting Chen’s humble origins, viewers would be likely to contrast this with billionaire candidate, Lien Chan. Thirdly, by noting that the people of his hometown do not have foreign passports or send their money abroad, viewers would be expected to question the patriotism of the other candidates – the large number of Soong’s family with US passports and property had been a much-discussed issue. Even today, when I show this ad to classes on Taiwan’s electoral politics, it still has the emotional power to bring tears to the faces of many Taiwanese students.

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The audience tastes for theatre politics can change swiftly in Taiwan. In the 2001 Legislative Yuan election, the NP paid the price for not adjusting its symbolic performances. The party failed to adapt to the huge reduction of Chinese identity in Taiwan since the mid-1990s.17 It also refused to cater to the very different audiences outside Taipei, which contributed to its failure to expand its seats outside of northern Taiwan. In 2001 I spent a day as an observer at the NP’s campaign headquarters in Kaohsiung, talking to campaign managers and accompanying the NP chairwoman Hsieh Chi-ta on the campaign trail. Although Hsieh was standing for election in Kaohsiung, she was clearly out of her depth in this constituency, unable to speak Taiwanese, and unfamiliar with the city. In the evening, I watched Hsieh planning a traditional Chinese nationalist rally with songs such as ‘China Must Be Strong’ (Zhongguo yiding qiang) and the ‘Victory Song’ (kaixuan ge). However, such songs have little appeal in the Taiwan-orientated southern Taiwan. Moreover, from interviewing the NP’s campaigners, it was clear they showed a deep distaste for the type of performances popular with many southern voters, such as attending funerals and weddings or holding election banquets. As one NP official explained, ‘DPP candidates will help their constituents when they get in trouble with the police, they will threaten the police. There is no way the NP would do this’ (Interview with Chen Ming-jui, 2001). In 2001 the NP’s failure to adjust their campaigning style meant that despite a record level of advertising spending, the NP was not only wiped out in Kaohsiung but in the whole of Taiwan.18 In the light of the violent post-election demonstrations in March and April 2004 numerous obituaries have been written for Taiwan’s democracy. That so much of the population suspect the assassination attempt against Chen Shuibian was faked reflects the widespread cynicism with election stunts. Also of concern has been the first serious election violence for almost a decade. Just as in the 1980s the recent violent performances are aimed at winning votes from extremist voters, however, it should be recalled that once the electorate had tired of such antics the direct action politicians were defeated in 1995. It is possible that history will repeat itself. Conclusion This chapter has examined the relationship between Taiwanese politicians’ theatre politics and their electoral fortunes. Parties and candidates have had to adjust their performances to match the changeable tastes of the electoral audience. Those that have adapted well have given themselves a greater chance of winning elections, while those that failed to adjust, such as the NP, have been punished by voters. Decisions on the form and content of the show have not solely been a top-down process. At times the parties have shown themselves to be remarkably responsive to signals from voters, by adopting radically different shows following one election defeat. Although there has been a considerable turnover of party

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politicians since the end of Martial Law, the fact that the same two parties still dominate Taiwan’s political landscape 17 years later reveals the adaptability of Taiwanese parties. It should also be remembered that the rich theatre politics of Taiwanese campaigns have numerous positive implications for its democracy. Compared to the dull campaigns and widespread voter apathy in many Western countries, Taiwan’s colourful campaigns have contributed to the high levels of political interest, political participation and voting rates, even among the younger generation.19 Taking a leaf from Third-World campaigns would probably do far more to increase voting rates in the West than the recent proposals in the UK for postal, text or online voting. Moreover, such symbolic campaigns offer voters a fun and accessible form of political education. Twenty-four-hour exposure to Taiwanese politicians’ countless performances on talk shows, rallies, debates and campaign advertisements, as well as showmanship in the parliaments have created a highly knowledgeable and sophisticated electorate that is able to locate parties on core issue spectrums.20 References Baum, Julian (1995). ‘All Politics is Local,’ Far Eastern Economic Review, 14 December: 14–15. Chao, Linda and Ramon Myers (1998). The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan (Baltimore, John Hopkins Press). Chen, Chao-ju (1997). ‘Xuanju zaoshi xiurang Taiwan jinru ganjue zhengzhi shidai’ (Election Rally Shows Have Taken Taiwan into the Age of Emotional Politics), Xin xinwen (The Journalist) 545, available at http://www.new7.com. tw/weekly/old/545/article082A.html (accessed 1 February 2006). Chen, Ming-tong (1996). ‘Local Factions and Elections in Taiwan’s Democratization,’ in Hung-mao Tien (ed.), Taiwan’s Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition (Armonk, M.E. Sharpe): 174–93. Cheng, Tun-jen and Hsu, Yung-ming (1996). ‘Issue Structure, the DPP’s Factionalism and Party Realignment,’ in Hung-mao Tien (ed.), Taiwan’s Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition (Armonk, M.E. Sharpe): 137–73. Cheng, Tzu-long (1995). Jingxuan guanggao: lilun celuo yu yanjiu anli (Campaign Advertisements: Theory, Strategy and Research Cases) (Taipei, Chungcheng). Directorate of Telecommunications, Ministry of Transport and Communication (Taiwan) (n.d.). Cable TV Penetration Rate, available at: http://www.dgt. gov.tw/Chinese/About-dgt/Publication/94/images/pic-jpg/13.JPG (accessed 1 February 2006). Esherick, Joseph and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (1990). ‘Acting Out Democracy: Political Theatre in Modern China,’ Journal of Asian Studies, 49 (4): 835–65.

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Fell, Dafydd (2002). ‘Party Platform Change in Taiwan’s 1990s Elections,’ Issues and Studies, 38 (2): 31–60. –– (2003). ‘Political Advertising in Taiwan: 1989–2000,’ available at http://www. nottingham.ac.uk/DafyddFellpaper1.pdf (accessed 1 Februray 2006). Hsieh, John (2002). ‘Change and Continuity in Taiwan’s Electoral Politics,’ in John Hsieh and David Newman (eds.), How Asia Votes (New York, Chatham House Press): 32–49. Kaplan, John (1981). The Court Martial of Kaohsiung Defendants (Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California). KMT advertisement (1994). In Lianhebao (United Daily News), 21 November: 25. Lin, Tsong-jyi (2002). ‘The Evolution of National Identity Issues in Taiwan: An Investigation of the Mass-elite Linkage,’ in Stéphane Corcuff (ed.) Memories of the Future: National Identity Issues and the Search for a New Taiwan (Armonk, M.E. Sharpe): 123–43. Rigger, Shelley (1999). Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (New York, Routledge). Shen, Kuo-ping and Wu, Yan-ling (1996). ‘Minjindang san jianke fendao yangbiao; Guomindang si gongzi jiyun zui wuchang’ (The DPP’s Three Musketeers Go their Separate Ways, the KMT’s Four Princes’ Variable Fortunes), Xin xinwen (The Journalist), 500, available at http://www.new7.com.tw/weekly/ old/500/article088.html (accessed 1 February 2006). Tien, Hung-mao (1989). The Great Transition: Political and Social Change in the Republic of China (Taipei: SMC Publishing). Wang, Chin-shou (1997). ‘Guomindang houxuanren maipiao jiji de jianli lianzuo) (The Making and Operation of a KMT Candidate’s Vote-Buying Machine), Taiwanese Political Science Review, 2: 3–62. Wang, Peter Chen-main (1999). ‘A Bastion Created, a Regime Reformed, an Economy Reengineered, 1949–1970,’ in Murray Rubinstein (ed.), Taiwan: A New History (Armonk, M. E. Sharpe): 320–39. Yang, Chia-jung (2002). ‘Taiwan xuanmin zhengdang rentong chongzu de chubu tansuo: cong Guomintang de bengjie chufa’ (An Exploration of Realignment in Taiwanese Voter Party Identification: Starting From the Collapse of the KMT), paper presented at the Taiwanese Political Science Conference, Chungcheng University, December 2002. Interviews Chang Yi-shan, Taipei, 23 October 2001. Chang worked on Chen Shui-bian’s election campaigns in the 1990s. Chen Fang-ming, Taipei, 2 November 2001. Chen was the DPP’s propaganda chief from 1992–95.

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Chen Ming-jui, Kaohsiung, 7 September 2001. Chen Ming-jui was a grassroots elected politician in the NP based in Kaohsiung. Chu Kao-cheng, Kaohsiung, 8 October 2001. Chu was a founding member of the DPP, but later left to form the Chinese Social Democratic Party. Hau Pei-tsun, Taipei, 7 November 2001. ����������������������������������� Hau was formerly a top ranking general. From 1990–1993 he was the Premier. Hsu Shui-teh, Taipei, October 11, 2001. Hsu was KMT Secretary General from 1993-1996. Lai Chin-lin, Taipei, 25 September 2001. Lai ������������������������������ was a DPP legislator from 1998–2004. Yu Mei-mei, Taipei, 27 September 2001. ���������������������������������� Yu worked in the DPP’s propaganda department in the late 1990s. Notes 1 Chinese speakers I have spoken to from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong had not heard this phrase before and it is not in any standard Chinese dictionaries. In colloquial usage xiu can be used in isolation as the verb to “show off” or “put on a show.” In addition, an adjective to describe a flashy person that loves to show off is aixiu. 2 National Day is on 10 October, and commemorates the outbreak of the rebellion that led to the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. Retrocession Day is on October 25, and commemorates the ending of Japanese rule over Taiwan in 1945. 3 The February 28 Incident refers to a Taiwanese rebellion against KMT rule in 1947 and its violent suppression, in which between ten and twenty thousand Taiwanese were killed. White Terror refers to the subsequent two decades of heavy political persecution, when tens of thousands of political prisoners were arrested. 4 After 50 years as a Japanese colony from 1895–1945, few in Taiwan could speak Mandarin Chinese. Rather than using the most widely spoken dialect in Taiwan, known as Taiwanese, the Republic of China government made Mandarin Chinese the national language. During the Martial Law era the government placed strict limits on the radio and television use of Taiwanese and at school children would be fined for speaking in Taiwanese. 5 The term Mainlander refers to those Han Chinese that came to Taiwan between 1945 and 1950 and their descendants, this group constitutes approximately 14 per cent. Native Taiwanese are those Han Chinese who already lived in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation and their descendents. They make up about 85 per cent of the population. 6 This KMT advertisement attacks the DPP’s record of inciting violence, and showed a picture of a DPP campaign truck in a riot. 7 Kuo was one among hundreds of Taiwanese on a blacklist that the government banned from returning to Taiwan because of their political activities abroad. 8 Direct elections for Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayor had been held during Martial

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Law, but were cancelled after 1967 and 1979 respectively. Until 1990 the president had been elected by the National Assembly, which was largely made up of members elected on Mainland China in 1947. 9 The February Incident refers to a Taiwanese uprising in the February and March 1947 and the subsequent massacre of between ten and twenty thousand Taiwanese by KMT government troops. 10 Open advocacy of Taiwan independence was seditious under Article 100 of the criminal code until 1992. The dissident Huang Hua was arrested three times and imprisoned for almost 24 years under this article. 11 Lee was the first serving Republic of China president to make an official visit to the United States, and this visit was a critical reason for the Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis of 1995-6. 12 Surveys show that respondents self-identifying as Taiwanese rose from 16 per cent in 1989 to 37.9 per cent in 2001. 13 The ad compared Lien’s modesty, hard work and numerous achievements while premier, with Chen’s big showmanship but lack of policy achievements while Taipei Mayor. 14 Although this was only Soong’s second election campaign, he had been a key figure in election planning when he was KMT Secretary General from 1989-1993 and first appeared on a television campaign slot in 1991. 15 Abian is Chen Shui-bian’s nickname. 16 KMT politicians and political scientists in my 2000 and 2001 interviews raised the idea that this ad had lost KMT voters to both opposition candidates. 17 Surveys show that respondents self-identifying as Chinese dropped from 52 per cent in 1989 to 7.9 per cent in 2001. 18 In 2001 the NP spent more on advertising than the combined total of its previous seven campaigns. The party fell from 11 seats in 1998 to only one in 2001, and this was from the small offshore island of Kinmin. 19 For instance, the voting rates for the last two presidential elections have been over 80 per cent. 20 For instance, in 2000 almost 69.7 per cent of voters could place themselves and the two main parties on the four principle issue spectrums. Data supplied by Dr Sheng Hsing-yuan from National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center.

8 Political Theatre in the 2003 Cambodian Elections State, Democracy and Conciliation in Historical Perspective Steve Heder

This chapter tries to make sense – as political theatre – of some events I witnessed during the 2003 national assembly elections in Cambodia, working as a monitor in Kampung Cham province for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.1 I consider whether what I saw is best understood as the continuation of a Southeast Asia tradition of political theatre, as discussed in the works of Clifford Geertz and Oliver Wolters, or provide an example of a much more modern and universal phenomenon, described by other authors writing on Asia, Africa and Latin America, such as Robert H. Taylor, Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Crawford Young and Carolyn Nordstrom. In so doing, I explore the history of the state, democracy and local conciliation in Cambodia. ‘Traditional’ Southeast Asian Politics: Geertz, Wolters and Scott Anthropologist Geertz’s seminal 1980 work, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, put forward the concept of a theatre state as an argument against the caricature of pre-colonial polities in Southeast Asia as miniOriental despotisms. Geertz emphasized the localized, fragile and loose character of Southeast Asian negara (holy political centres), and the extent to which their rule relied less on ‘governance,’ meaning (in the parlance of 1980) domination, and more on ‘pomp’ or theatre, meaning some combination of splendour, display, dignity and presence. He portrayed the drama of pre-colonial Southeast Asian polities as creating them politically, heavily implying that governance by overawing the ruled with beauty was preferable to a relentlessly crude and brutal tyranny. He also suggested that the efficaciousness of this kind of political theatre

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depended heavily on the sincerity of rulers: the drama was not some cunningly instrumental illusion, designed to reinforce the negara’s power to inflict pain and suffering. Cynicism in this regard, Geertz suggested, reflected Western liberal and Marxist misunderstandings of the pre-colonial Southeast Asian negara, ideologically inspired, ahistorical and culturally uniformed criticisms that mistook them for modern despotisms. In these latter, Geertz implied, theatre was more likely to be mummery, exaggerating might, concealing exploitation, inflating authority, and moralizing procedure to make it appear the rules of the game are being followed, when in fact they are not. By contrast, Geertz hypothesized, in the pre-colonial negara, splendour was displayed by highly creative, culturally dynamic rulers who genuinely believed themselves to be the divine exemplaries of cosmic centres on earth, whose power depended as much on the genius of their verbal, monumental and theatrical poetry as on the mechanics of coercion and administration. Even violence was ritualized, made ostentatiously cruel and bloody, but this was in the service of public theatre, which remained the key to power, not the violence itself (Geertz 1980). The implication was that sincerely practicing such theatre generated credibility and legitimacy, while mitigating violence. From this, one could infer that continuation of culturally authentic state theatre was something to be welcomed and encouraged, as preferable to the dreary brutality of modernity. Historian Oliver Wolters laid additional groundwork for understanding the honest practice of political theatre as characteristic of Southeast Asia from proto-historic times to the era of globalization. He maintained that the region’s pre-colonial ‘Hinduized’ polities were sometimes brilliant elaborations or amplifications of the pre-Hindu ones, imagined into existence through a process of self-Hinduization by talented leaders (big men or ‘men of prowess’) who endeavoured to achieve divinity through at times self-abnegatory ascetic performance, genuinely believing that spiritual qualities rather than material props were the key to political success. They were not play-acting, but truly saw themselves as living in the world of gods and heroes set forth in Indian sacred literature, reinterpreting and reorienting local understandings and practices to fit with what they saw as universal truths. The twelfth-century Angkor Voat temple polity appears as an example of such heartfelt, efficacious genius – as displayed by the local Khmer – for ‘Hinduized’ Cambodia. By this thesis, Khmer and other Southeast Asians construe external ideas and ideologies (or ‘news,’ as Wolters calls it) in terms that they make intelligible to themselves based on their previous experiences and beliefs, perceiving and interpreting them in particularly Southeast Asian ways. Whether this news is Hindu, Buddhist, nationalist, Marxist, liberal-democratic or whatever, their truths are believed because they are seen as reflected in local realities. Wolters also maintained that, historically, Southeast Asian men of prowess were not autocrats, but mediators, accessible and able to keep the peace in significant part by organizing exciting court occasions while – in the absence of anything

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more than minimum bureaucracy – engaging in maximum discussion and consultation, even if they sometimes staged ostentatious violence to punish and deter those beyond the awe of theatre and opportunities for reasoning together. He fused Geertz’s notion of the sincerity of theatre-state performances with his own belief that such rulers’ treatment of newly arriving news was not conspiratorial manipulation of foreign ideas for promoting their power interests. Rather, the news genuinely modified their ideas of power, providing standards of universal excellence to which some rulers dared to aspire, hoping to exemplify them, even if the result was not far-reaching change in political institutions, which remained built upon pre-existing cultural foundations (Wolters 1979, 1982). Such views stressing continuity were challenged by James C. Scott in The Moral Economy of the Peasantry (1976), which makes an argument about the colonial delegitimization of traditional power at the local level. Scott – like Geertz and Wolters – stressed the bureaucratic and coercive weakness of pre-colonial polities, contending that local big men were traditionally more negotiators and mediators than village despots, dealing with little people on the basis of considerable reciprocity, at least in economic matters. Lacking the overwhelming power to suppress large numbers of villagers, pre-colonial landlords and notables subscribed to a patron-client morality, which meant that the legitimacy of the better-off local elite required it to employ substantial parts of its wealth to meet the welfare needs of villagers. Scott contrasted his construction of the past with the results of colonial capitalism and state-building in Southeast Asia. He portrayed these as having completely transformed the balance of power between the state and local authorities/landlords, on the one hand, and peasants, on the other, entirely to the detriment of the latter. They were left much more vulnerable to economic exploitation and much more victimized by administrative coercion and outright state violence. From the top to the bottom the rich became richer and the powerful more powerful, while the vast majority lost out in relative terms, even if economies were growing. Colonially established police forces and courts were under the control either of colonialists or local big men, which meant they could ignore peasant pleas and retaliate against peasant protests. Although perhaps still performed with traditional trappings, the big men’s relationship to villagers lost much of its paternalistic content and became exploitative and immoral, according to traditional values. The reality of villagers’ lives often became more difficult, even if they enjoyed greater opportunities of access to markets and even of political participation (Scott 1976). Scott elaborated and moved beyond such ideas after research in post-colonial Malaysia, articulating them his Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985). Here he gave a further warning against reading the past into the present, while providing a whole new concept of political theatre. He suggested that in post-colonial Southeast Asia, with the state much more powerful than in traditional times, popular deference to authority was enhanced. However,

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this was false deference, performed ‘onstage’ – in public, in front of officialdom and in other power-laden situations – and reflecting the social dominance of the administratively powerful and economically well-to-do created by colonialism. Scott was no longer talking about a traditional negara in which theatre substituted for and mitigated force, aesthetically impressing the ruled with architecture, poetry, splendour and bloodcurdling ritual killings. He was talking about an overpowering post-colonial state that enjoyed the semblance of legitimacy because people acted as if they were over-awed by it, whereas in fact, in private at least, they feared, ridiculed, derided and despised it. Thus, Scott’s description of the performative nature of subaltern behaviour indirectly echoes Geertz and Wolters’ notions about the theatricality of Southeast Asian politics, but instead of valorizing it as a relatively benign form of creative elite self-legitimization by reference to external ideologies, it highlights possibilities for passive resistance to power, including local power legitimated neither by traditional morality nor by authentic commitment to cosmic foreign ideas. Another perspective stressing discontinuity was elaborated in anthropologist John Pemberton’s work on Indonesia, which argued that post-colonial political theatrics and ceremonialism were not genuine reproductions of pre-colonial statecraft, but in fact jelled in the colonial period to serve the legitimization needs of Dutch overlords and collaborative native aristocrats. In this view, post-colonial Indonesian authoritarians’ attempts to highlight such ‘traditions’ were a gloss on their unpopular rule, and apparent popular acquiescence to their military dictatorship expressed fear, not a cultural predisposition toward avoidance of conflict (Pemberton 1994). Global Theories: Sincerity, Elections, Façade States, Shadow Networks and Violence Moreover, the Southeast Asian behaviour so described is clearly amenable to explanations that have much wider – even global – applicability. The key question of sincerity of performance – political or otherwise – can be framed within the work of Erving Goffman (1990), which is based primarily on data drawn from Europe and the United States. As he has pointed out, some performers are sincerely – if not insanely – convinced that the impression of reality they stage is real, and fervently hope audiences will believe in or be converted to their reality. Other performers have no belief in their acts and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of the audience. They may be worried about engineering an impression that they are living up to the standards by which their performances are supposed to be judged, in order to enjoy some gain, but they do not care about the moral issue of actually realizing these standards. This leads us to elections in Cold War and post-Cold War Southeast Asia, where – as elsewhere – they may be understood as part of the theatre of power. In this regard, one may note a certain affinity between the Geertz-Wolters notion

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of theatre as mitigating violence and the argument that liberal democracy is the political practice of non-violence, similarly mitigating – without entirely eliminating – the essential bureaucratic and violent practices of states (Rummel 1997). However, for this to work as a legitimizing practice, it would appear to require something like the sincerity Geertz and Wolters invest in negara rule and negara rulers, which can perhaps be translated as a liberal democratic ‘political will.’ Failing that, elections may not legitimize the state. Instead, as Scott would have it, they may make it into the butt of popular jokes, even if the laughing is behind the back of power, and true attitudes are not fully reflected in the way people vote because people fear that not voting for those with power will bring trouble. To be cynical about elections as political theatre may mean accepting Marxist arguments that liberal democracy is a mere mask for – or somehow an instrumental part of – the bureaucratic violence of the ruling class: decorative and deceptive. Or, to remain more in the mainstream of liberalism, it may be to maintain that certain elections and purportedly liberal democracies do not meet the criteria necessary for them to be more than elaborate charades staged by dominant authoritarian elites. Either appears to rule out an understanding of Southeast Asian electoral regimes as ‘traditional.’ That would have local men of prowess acting in characteristically Southeast Asian fashion by trying – having heard the universal news of liberal democracy – to turn themselves into exemplaries of peaceful multiparty contestation, earnestly building brilliantly participatory Angkor Voats of democracy. Much more plausible is Robert H. Taylor’s (1996) account suggesting that Southeast Asian ‘indigenization’ of elections during the Cold War took the modern form of cynical and calculated de-fanging of emergent electorates by rulers who were hardly democrats at heart. Even if some of these elections offered some room for new political and social groups to express themselves and manifest their grievances and demands, dominant elites subverted this to their advantage by combining coercion with opportunities for incorporation into their world of wealth and power to those oppositionists prepared to take the bait, demoralizing the electorate. The attraction is not closeness to a democratic cosmos or chances for self-cultivation of the liberal spirit, but the most mundane of pleasures, privileges and prerogatives. Similarly, according to many analyses of the post-Cold War era, the speciousness of democracy in a wide variety of far-flung, culturally diverse locations is only part of a much larger and equally insincere charade, in which the state itself is largely a façade, and the free market capitalist economies supposedly driving economic development and underpinning liberal political progress are also a myth. By these accounts, imbedded and behind both state and market are well-organized ‘shadow’ networks of political and economic power. Executive state institutions, the law and market regulation are as hollow as democracy, but agents of the state ubiquitously and pervasively penetrate society, enforcing

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their will, extracting huge quantities of resources, ignoring the law, gravely distorting the markets via rent-seeking, oligopoly and outright plunder, leaving governments bankrupt and heavily reliant on foreign aid for budgetary survival. Amidst the rhetoric of liberalization and reform, oligopolistic and oligarchic interests expand enormously as re-ascendant former rulers, nouveau riche warlords and other predatory entrepreneurs combine elements of old state structures with new ones demanded by the international community to build novel façades, but exercise their power to repress and extract through criminal and semi-criminal shadow networks. The situation is one of endless paper reform, formal strengthening and superficial liberalization of political, legal and economic structures, all of which have little immediate impact upon the real practice of power and self-enrichment by reinvented elites (Beissinger and Young 2002). The result in many former colonies in Africa is regimes that lack popularity, legitimacy and institutional reality, but are endowed with states that nevertheless function at various levels amidst the predations of the elite and misery of the masses. They do so, Donal B. Cruise O’Brien suggests, to a significant extent as political theatre for audiences more or less willing to suspend disbelief in their institutional and democratic credentials, with internal audiences willing to accept them as preferable to anarchy, civil war and genocide, and external audiences welcoming and supporting them for these reasons and as partners in profit-making and implementing myriad development and reform schemes. The material bases of such states rest on elite manipulation of their intermediary position between the local masses and the international hordes. Much of the state showmanship is for consumption by foreigners, who pay the bills while enjoying highly comfortable lives, and who tend to be more gullible than the cynical, angry but desperate locals who are more victimized by the charades. Even if the elite indulges in ruthless predation and rarely discharges the nominal functions of government (much less ‘good governance’ and democracy), the largely fictitious state it dominates often appears to flourish – with a proliferation of ministries, offices, departments, representative institutions, programmes, laws, rules, regulations and policies – as long as it puts on an adequate display of functionality. The masses know the reality is bribery, abuse and degradation, and the clever and honest foreigners realize many of the fictions would evaporate if funding were withdrawn. But the elite can often play the chaos card with both, convincing enough of them to go along that it is able to continue to enrich and empower itself at everyone’s expense. The growing apparatuses of statehood are less about real government and more about presentation: that the country enjoys a rightful – and therefore unchallengeable – place in the currently prescribed world of twenty-first-century states, a message aimed at both domestic and international audiences who would question the legitimacy of the ruling elite. The real power structures exist and real political business is conducted behind the theatrical façade, although for the most part the main true power holders – in terms of command of coercive force and control

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of wealth – play parts in the public show more or less commensurate with their actual strength in the system (Cruise O’Brien 1991). The Cambodian State, Tradition and Cambodian Elections If Angkor Voat exemplifies Geertz’s concept of politics by monumental grandeur and Wolters’ notion of genius by localized representation of cosmic truths, by the nineteenth century, the nokor (negara) of Cambodia was in serious trouble, besieged by rival polities and reduced to a small centre ruled by a petty kinglet. His entourage comprised a relatively small number of noblemen, whose capacity to impinge on the lives of the polity’s inhabitants was extremely limited. No real administrative hierarchy existed until after France imposed a protectorate in the middle of the century, a process that proceeded over the next hundred years, with the help of the Cambodian royalty and aristocracy the French protected, of the bureaucracy the French created and of newly established police and armed forces, many of whom were French or Vietnamese (Luco 2002). Like colonialists in several other parts of Southeast Asia, the French in Cambodia greatly increased the grandeur of the monarchy, literally building up palaces from unimpressively ramshackle wooden structures into much more awe-inspiring monuments of power (Jeldres and Daydé-Latham 2002), part of a larger pattern of Franco-aristocratic re-invention of tradition combined with bureaucratic state strengthening, which continued after independence from France in 1953 under King Norodom Sihanouk, who took over the colonial state apparatus for his own purposes (Hughes and Conway 2003). Cambodia thus seems to fit the picture of colonial transformation of Southeast Asia drawn by Scott with regard to the relationship between authority and peasants and by Pemberton with regard to cultural perversion. Moreover, elections in Cambodia from 1947 to 1991, under successive French colonial, Sihanouk-led, military-authoritarian republican, Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese-installed regimes, do not seem to fit comfortably into any analysis that portrays them as theatrical in the normatively positive sense of Geertz and Wolters. They fit much better into Taylor’s account that post-colonial elections were epiphenomenal to the marriage of bureaucratic, armed and/or economic power, an un-awe-inspiring vehicle for reproduction of that power (Heder 2002). In addition, the Communist regimes of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge (1975–78) and crafted by the Vietnamese (1979–91) changed the relationship between state authority and the Cambodian peasantry to the detriment of the latter, confirming Scott’s observation that Marxist-Leninist authoritarianism was like colonialism in this regard, only worse (Scott 1979). Although much less violently penetrative, exploitative and murderous than the Khmer Rouge system of rural collectivization, the Vietnamese-imposed occupation regime, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), was more so than its pre-Communist predecessors. At the village level, the Vietnamese-dominated system appeared similar in some ways to the ‘traditional’ one of the colonial and immediate post-colonial period, but in fact

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entailed a much greater degree of overtly politically interference in everyday life, making its role radically different. It combined intrusive policing functions with propaganda meetings, military and labour conscription and the power to allocate land for family occupation and use. Even if nominally ‘elected,’ village chiefs were selected and maintained in place for their political loyalty to an increasingly unpopular government, becoming state-backed bosses with seemingly indefinite tenure, responsible for circulating and enforcing orders from above, making sure that all was politically well (as defined by their superiors) in their villages. Over time, they built networks of personalized power within the formal structure, often taking advantage of their control over land allocation to favour themselves, relatives, cronies and political associates, reintroducing socio-economic stratification congruent with political power hierarchies (Luco 2002). The disparity between the hollowness of the PRK’s 1981 elections and a penetrative, oppressive domination of the countryside perverted by networks of self-interest was indicative of more fundamental vacuums at the heart of the regime. The PRK was initially institutional window-dressing, behind which lay Vietnamese political control and Vietnamese armed and other security forces, which often operated independently of Cambodian authorities, routinizing such forces’ relative political autonomy. The regime meanwhile increasingly became an ideological fake, constructed on insincere play-acting and theatrics, and a cover for rising personalized networks of Cambodian bureaucratic, military and economic power. These networks and the armed forces under their command eventually replaced departing Vietnamese controllers, enforcers and troops, taking over the army, police and various overt and covert security organs, leaving the state still a smokescreen. Throughout the 1980s, the PRK thus had a cadre corps whose members were trained in Marxism-Leninism, but cared little for or about it. They did not have sufficient enthusiasm for the regime’s formal ideology to consider it worthwhile to behave according to its principles. Those who repeated the right lines pleased the Vietnamese script-writers, who in turn protected them and the population from Pol Pot’s remnant Khmer Rouge insurgency, which, although totally lacking in popular support, was revived with military and diplomatic aid from China, Thailand and the West. The Vietnamese also protected the PRK from the politically more formidable threat increasingly posed by other insurgents backed by the same international coalition, the most important guerrilla group being that led from exile by Sihanouk, the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Co-operative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC). By the late 1980s, however, the regime’s socialism had so seriously dissipated from within that it had become a creeping capitalist authoritarianism, whose officials considered economic, administrative, military and police resources as assets to be exploited for profit. This revealed that the main accomplishment of the Vietnamese and the Cambodians who had worked with them since 1979 was the construction of an apparatus that would thereafter remain the hard core of continuing bureaucratic

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coercion and wealth accumulation in Cambodia (Gottesman 2002), a result that echoes those describing the outcome of Western colonialism in Southeast Asia. Coming out politically on top as a result of this process were two former Pol Pot-era communist local officials who had defected to Viet Nam: Prime Minister Hun Sen, who had gone to Viet Nam in 1977, and the Chairman of the Vietnamese-rebuilt communist party, Chea Sim, who fled in late 1978. Rising to the premiership in 1985, the energetic, youthful and intelligent Hun Sen had become a Vietnamese favourite, in no little part because of his adeptness at talking socialism and internationalism, although he reportedly had long harboured secret misgivings about communism and the Vietnamese presence.2 The shift from bureaucratic socialism to nascent authoritarian crony capitalism was the key to his consolidation of primacy over Chea Sim and other competitors. He presided over the creation of networks of happy officials whose loyalty he and the regime could count on, even after the Vietnamese withdrew in the context of rising international pressure for the ongoing war in Cambodia to be ended and the contest for political power to be settled by an election (Gottesman 2002). As Hun Sen rose, he sidelined those few cadres who genuinely believed in Marxism-Leninism, replacing some of them with men chosen for their ability to perform effectively the tasks assigned to them. The deliberate pragmatism of the Hun Sen group was expressed in a set of policies combining coercion with steps toward privatization of the economy. These had the effect of alienating a population that had never been convinced of the sincerity of the PRK. In a 1989 speech explaining the significance of the decision to change the name of the country from the People’s Republic of Kampuchea to the State of Cambodia (SOC), Hun Sen affirmed that the external appearance of his regime should be understood as merely a costume. He had ‘made a lot of changes to the form, but they do not affect the strategic objectives … Sometimes we wear a red shirt, sometimes we wear a blue shirt, but we ourselves must remain the same. We change our name, but the important thing is that we should take care of the revolutionary gains.’ Two years later, the notion of revolutionary gains was publicly dropped along with any pretence of socialism (Slocomb 2003: 268) opening the way for the consolidation of a post-Cold War system in which what is protected underneath the disguise are the personal power and economic gains of Hun Sen and his favourites (Hughes and Conway 2003). First, however, the now ex-communists had to weather the end of the Cold War in Cambodia, which forced it to give in to international pressures for an election, as required by the 1991 Paris peace agreements. This treaty provided for the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), empowered to ‘control’ and thus politically neutralize existing administrative apparatuses, disarm existing armed forces and organize free and fair elections in which former communist party members would have to compete against a political wing of Pol Pot’s remnants, FUNCINPEC and other political

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opponents. Shortly thereafter, Hun Sen’s and Chea Sim’s party changed its name to the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), reconfirming its abandonment of socialism, but it was clear to those who knew the CPP well that there was no conversion to true belief in liberal democracy. Formal commitment to it was – if anything – even less sincere than earlier professions of loyalty to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Nor was Pol Pot’s Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK) genuinely converted. No sooner had UNTAC arrived than the PDK decided not to disarm and threatened to resist violently if the UN tried to take its guns away or enter its zones. This was because when peace failed to bring about the upsurge in political support for PDK that Pol Pot fantastically expected, he decided he had better keep his army. The result was a trumping of the UN by a structure of violence: although UNTAC had 20,000 troops, they were peace-keepers, not combat forces, and none of their contributing governments was about to see them used against the PDK, which soon re-launched an insurgency against the CPP. Thereafter, the UN decided it needed Hun Sen and Chea Sim to administer the country and maintain security against the Khmer Rouge, pending elections. This meant that instead of neutralizing the CPP, the UN actually arranged for it to be shored up financially to prevent its economic collapse – which UNTAC feared would mean chaos – and encouraged CPP armed forces to launch counter-offensives to keep the Khmer Rouge at bay. So, contrary to the agreements, everybody kept their guns, and the political atmosphere was violent and rife with money politics, which gave advantages to CPP, as the most bureaucratically powerful, aggressive and well-financed competitor. The real crunch for the UN came when FUNCINPEC nevertheless won the elections, and – with the backing of another anti-CPP group – was in a position to form a coalition government of their two parties. However, Hun Sen and Chea Sim refused to cede power, instead demanding a formal 50–50 sharing of power between FUNCINPEC and CPP in the name of national reconciliation and threatening civil war against FUNCINPEC and violence against UNTAC if they were denied. The UN was faced with the choice of either acquiescing or calling Hun Sen and Chea Sim’s bluff. Again deciding for it were the member states that had contributed its troops, none of which were prepared to back UNTAC up by risking casualties in clashes with CPP. Hun Sen and Chea Sim thus got what they wanted: a 50–50 coalition government with FUNCINPEC, but one based on administrative, army and police structures that Hun Sen and Chea Sim continued to control and through which they dominated the government, just as Sihanouk had done in the context of decolonization from France. Sihanouk himself was re-enthroned as King, but via a Constitution that left him as an often pathetic, sometimes absurd figurehead atop a monarchy drained of any real political substance. It was at best a paper-thin veneer of traditional legitimization, a fact later lamented by Sihanouk himself on

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his website (www.norodomsihanouk.info), where he spewed out endless commentaries, often ending with the proviso that he had no power. Hun Sen and Chea Sim adopted the royal title sâmdech, but no one sees them as princely. Much more important is the fact that ever since aid and investment began to flood in following the 1993 vote, much of it has gone into the pockets of Hun Sen and his cronies (Heder 2003). An Involuted Façade State Under and After UNTAC Ironically, although UNTAC’s control efforts failed to neutralize CPP domination of the state, they did succeed in prompting CPP to use formal state apparatuses as protective and deceptive façades for actions that violated the Paris agreements, including political violence and a fire sale of state property. The postelection Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) thus emerged as even more of a cover for real networks of bureaucratic, military and economic power than the PRK, except that now these shadow networks belonged to Hun Sen and Chea Sim, not the Vietnamese. UNTAC’s attempts to prevent CPP from subverting the 1992–93 electoral process were also countered by CPP tactics of false cooperation with the UN, a kind of behavioural charade in which CPP performers became increasingly practiced and adept, after previously honing their skills in dissembling vis-à-vis the Vietnamese in the PRK period. The post-1993 period saw a further involution of the façade, aimed at making FUNCINPEC’s share in formal power as meaningless as possible. Like UNTAC’s controllers, FUNCINPEC ministers and generals found themselves sitting in windswept offices, shuffling meaningless documents, attending vacuous meetings, reading newspapers. The real decisions were made by more or less covert CPP bureaucratic, military and police networks, increasingly dominated by relatively young members of Hun Sen’s personal entourage, who operated out of their homes, ‘secret bases,’ other safe houses, and hotels owned by a rising group of shady businessmen who bankrolled this shadow state. While excluding FUNCINPEC, Hun Sen’s network also marginalized that of Chea Sim, some of whose supporters had attempted a coup in 1994, but were crushed. With this increased control over the state, Hun Sen was also able to oust FUNCINPEC from the coalition in a violent putsch in 1997, during and after which forces loyal to him murdered key FUNCINPEC organizers, fundamentally weakening FUNCINPEC before elections scheduled for 1998. Having expelled FUNCINPEC from the state, he was also able to use its coercive and financial assets to skew the ballot in his favour, thus ensuring his party ‘democratically’ defeated FUNCINPEC and other opposition forces. In testimony at the US Senate during the run-up to the 1998 elections, I contended that the flagrancy with which Hun Sen and other CPP officials paid occasional lip service to human rights and democratic principles, only to violate them at will and with impunity, was part of the very public theatrics of their

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exercise of power over Cambodians. For CPP, saying one thing and doing something else was not a matter of embarrassing self-contradiction, but proof of their power and cleverness at making deviousness a public political art form. The ultimate goal of these theatrics was to convince Cambodians that taking the risks of democratic opposition politics was pointless, indeed foolhardy, by – among other things – getting Cambodians to think that most self-proclaimed democracy promoters among the ‘international community’ were either stupid, naive or secretly pro-CPP (Heder 1998). This analysis seems borne out by the account of one veteran election observer, who characterized the results of the 1998 elections as Potemkin-village democracy, hailed as free and fair enough by those – especially in the European Union and Association of Southeast Asian Nations – determined in advance to make such a judgement in order to ensure good diplomatic relations with and the flow of aid to the government (Bjornlund 2001). The upshot has been precisely as Scott and Taylor have described elsewhere in Southeast Asia: widespread displays of political deference and political demobilization among the poorest and weakest sectors of the electorate, whose public behaviour and even vote-casting belies their real, off-stage political consciousness. Meanwhile, the remnants of the once authoritarian socialist PRK have been ever more completely transformed into a corruption and money-politics machine, a predatory private apparatus. Its hard bureaucratic and security force cores prospered from colluding in the plundering of Cambodia’s dwindling natural resources by foreign carpetbaggers, were deeply implicated in drug-trafficking and money-laundering, and continued to assassinate popular political opponents. In all of this, it seems obvious, elections were a cosmetic cover for an ugly metamorphosis, not the contemporary equivalent or continuation of negara theatrics as conceived by Geertz. The violence that permeates and punctuates elections is not beautifully bloody ritual, but a display of unchecked bureaucratic might. Although a self-proclaimed ‘strongman’ who has occasionally attempted to present himself as a neak mean bun, a person of merit (UNTAC 1993), Hun Sen is not the kind of man of prowess Wolters admired, neither an ascetic engaged in spiritual self-cultivation, nor a creative genius endeavouring sincerely to do what he claims to be doing: localizing the news – the new universal truth – of liberal democracy. The dreary similarity of his regime’s killings to worldwide patterns is all too chillingly apparent. Everywhere, elites harass, intimidate, torture and kill not because they have to, or because they are culturally predisposed to do so, but because they can get away with it and reap enormous immediate benefits from such actions (Sluka 1999). Again, this is part of a much larger and more pervasive pattern of discrepancies between appearances and reality in Cambodia that is extraordinarily similar to that obtaining in Africa, ex-Soviet Central Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. In some ways, Cambodia had a historical head start on other parts of the world in creating this peculiarly modern theatre state, having already developed and almost

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perfected it during PRK and SOC times. But in the decade from 1993 to 2003, the previous versions seem to have been assimilated into the worldwide Borg so aptly recognized in general terms by scholars such as Carolyn Nordstrom (2000: 35–49). Nordstrom’s paradigm stressing the symbiotic interrelationship between façade and shadow in the institutional, political and economic realms is certainly applicable to Hughes’ and Conway’s discussion of contemporary Cambodia. They see loyalty within the Kingdom’s state apparatus as organized through networks that combine personal allegiance with – in various measures – political allegiance, friendships, kinship and patron-client ties, but via relationships now increasingly cemented through protection of rent-seeking activities conducted by officials at all levels and in all state institutions, administrative and armed. These informal resource flows rely in part on skimming funds from international aid, in part on bribes extracted from businesses and the population, and in part on wealth accrued through illegal expropriation of natural resources, most spectacularly timber and land. This predatory extraction and primitive accumulation have become the primary purpose of the state, putting it directly at odds with the overall interests of the poor and of economic development. As they note, few resources are put back into society or genuinely productive entrepreneurship. Some funds are spent on the construction of schools, bridges and roads, often built as ‘gifts’ to the people from prominent officials – above all, Hun Sen – and on buying votes during election campaigns. This purchases electoral support, but only reinforces existing power and socio-economic inequalities. At the same time, these organized networks, especially within the CPP, maintain the cohesion and residual effectiveness of the state apparatus, intertwining the bureaucracy, army forces, police and business. It is through such networks that Hun Sen dominates the CPP, the CPP dominates the state and the armed forces, and the state and the armed forces dominate society and the economy, when necessary through violence (Hughes and Conway 2003). The 2003 Elections: Consolidating Façades and Shadows Amidst Best Practice The reality explains the way in which the 2003 national elections further strengthened Hun Sen’s regime, demonstrating, as one critic commented, that he ‘has finally got the hang of elections, if not of democracy.’ He used this latest ballot masterfully to consolidate power while becoming respectable in the eyes of the international community, with less reliance on spectacular violence and more on other tactics of intimidation and money politics (Bjork 2003). This contributed to a situation where the CPP – with 47.3 per cent of the popular vote – won 73 of the 123 national assembly seats, but still received the endorsement of a marked minority of the electorate. The opposition, FUNCINPEC, and a second party named after its populist leader, Sam Rainsy (SRP), took 26 and 24 seats, respectively. To manage the elections and deal with certain complaints at the lower levels, a National Election Council (NEC) over which the CPP exerted strong indirect

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influence appointed provincial election commissions (PEC), which in turn selected commune election commissions (CEC). This system was designed with assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the European Union (EU), which hoped it would bypass the CPP-dominated police and judiciary, in which the electorate had no faith (EU 2003; UNDP 2003). Thus, legally, PEC and CEC members could not be government officials and had to meet certain non-partisan selection criteria (UNDP 2003). In fact, however, Cambodian election observation organizations estimated that 70 per cent of PEC and CEC members were connected to the CPP (COMFREL 2003: 20), revealing political bias, corruption, favouritism and nepotism in their recruitment (Meisenberger 2003: 15–6). Election Commissions and the History of ‘Conciliation’ in Cambodia UNDP and EU inclusion of conciliation in the electoral complaints system reflected the assertion by some foreign proponents of conciliation that it is the reproduction of a traditional practice – sâmroh-sâmruol – rooted in Cambodian culture, supposedly unaffected by colonialism, communism and post-Cold War global capitalism. For example, in 1997, the anthropologist William Collins characterized sâmroh-sâmruol as a means developed historically within Cambodian society for peaceful resolution of conflicts and disputes developed historically within Cambodian society, defining it as ‘a form of third-party assisted negotiation or mediation.’ In his account, the intermediary was a ‘respected and powerful person’ acceptable to both parties, most often village and commune chiefs, assisted by elders (chas-tum) and lay Buddhist teachers (achar). Collins argued that their mediation made ‘possible a positive strengthening of the relationship between the disputing parties,’ reflecting Cambodian traditional attitudes of wishing to avoid involvement of higher authorities in village affairs and outside interference that might ‘fracture local relationships,’ preferring, he suggests, to ‘preserve on-going village relationships in the context of local custom and tradition’ (Collins 1997: 41–3). However, other researchers present a much less rosy picture of conciliation, based on much more field research. They show that the perversion of the customary system by the powerful became much more serious when it was reconstructed under the PRK after 1979. The pre-1970 system of conciliation was hijacked by the state, replacing informal conciliation by chas-tum and achar with members of the village subdistrict and district administration, acting under the supervision of provincial officials. Although presented as a method for ‘strengthening unity in the community,’ conciliation in fact became a mechanism for extending political control into the villages, a fact admitted by PRK jurists (Peschoux 1991). The terminology of sâmroh-sâmruol was resurrected, but the practice was much more bureaucratic, relying on the participation of security cadre instead of elders. What was called conciliation become the opposite of the traditional ideal, its voluntary

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aspects receding and being replaced by intimidation and coercion. It had a much more political content, backed by much greater force than in the past. Above all, local authorities totally lacked credibility as conciliators in disputes that involved grievances against the state, its policies or their own abuses of power, as anyone who raised complaints of this kind risked retaliation. Since the late 1990s, topdown bureaucratic and military levers have been increasingly combined with the power of money, which mutually enforce and make permanent current social hierarchies, and which decide who wins when disputes occur. Rapidly growing and spectacularly mal-distributed new wealth finances the local branches of the shadow forces that dominate the summit of the post-Vietnamese state, what Luco describes as local ‘power networks that operate in parallel with the official administrative structure and have a strong influence on the mediation process.’ As at the top, in the villages, subdistricts and districts, these networks intertwine political, economic and family interests. Offstage and where they dare, people with grievances remark bitterly on local authorities’ favouritism on behalf of family members, political allies and the wealthy, and this is a major reason why the local administration of today’s Cambodia, like the PRK system from which it is descended, is widely rejected by the population. However, there is a general, rational reluctance on the part of the poor and powerless to confront wealth, weapons and authority. Those with grievances often remain outwardly reserved while assessing the balance of power. As Luco (2002: 11, 98) remarks, ‘when the imbalance of power is too great, the fear of escalating the problem, drawing attention, provoking acts of revenge or losing even more will generally prompt people to say and do nothing.’ The Reality of Elections and Conciliation in Kampung Cham, 2003 I observed how political violence and the conciliation system operated in practice in the context of the election campaign and voting that took place during 2003 in Kampung Cham province in eastern Cambodia. As in the rest of the country, the process was marked by less high-profile violence than in the past, there being only one political murder, that of the daughter of a grassroots SRP activist by a local CPP official after ballot day. However, UN statistics from the province suggest that – as elsewhere – the spread and frequency of low-intensity CPP political warfare against the opposition may have been greater than in past years.3 Those responsible for such political violence in the province enjoyed virtually total impunity. This was consistently so, regardless of what was said by national and provincial authorities, and despite the complaints procedures incorporated in the electoral law and criminal sanctions available through the penal code. The CPP perpetrators were protected by a maze of obstacles that rendered election commissions, police investigations, magistrate inquiries and prosecution efforts meaningless. Blatant CEC and commune police foot-dragging or worse, and a climate of fear deterring both victims and witnesses from openly challenging

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authority and telling truth to power, almost completely precluded accountability. Victims of death threats and other potentially criminal intimidation and harassment were often reluctant to lodge criminal complaints with the commune police, believing that because the latter are politically in league with the perpetrators, doing so would be pointless or only bring further trouble. Such perceptions had a strong basis in reality. Often, commune police simply did not investigate incidents of political intimidation, or conducted only cursory inquiries Victims occasionally by-passed the commune police to lodge criminal complaints directly with the provincial prosecutor’s office, as with a SRP organizer who was threatened with assault by a CPP official early in the election campaign. Although the victim was called once by the prosecutor to give evidence, by the time of the voting, no substantial progress was evident, in part because he refused to pay a bribe to a court official. When challenged in private about the court’s handling of such cases, a provincial judge said he did not want to be lectured about the law, declaring, ‘I know what the law says, but I’m paid well not to implement it, and if I did implement it, my life would be in danger.’ Elsewhere, a CEC assiduously avoided any imposition of sanctions under the election law for the assault on an SRP activist by the brother-in-law of a CPP commune councillor. Although the whole village knew about the incident, the CEC initially claimed that it was blissfully unaware of it, falsely denying it had received an SRP complaint. When these assertions were shown to be untenable, it switched to maintaining it had no responsibility for conducting an investigation into whether there was a political motive to the attack, insisting that it be handled entirely by the police, while advocating that the latter put a complete end to the whole matter through ‘conciliation.’ Similarly, presented with evidence of death threats against FUNCINPEC activists, another CEC said straightforwardly that its primary duty in all cases was to hold conciliation meetings with a view to resolving problems so that they did not become the subject of criminal complaints or go to the higher levels. Meanwhile, a CEC in a different part of Kampung Cham successfully imposed conciliation on the FUNCINPEC couple who were victims of a death threat by their CPP village chief. The CEC convened its conciliation hearing in the home of the village chief, where the original threat had been made, and where the village chief had previously told the couple he had squirreled away an automatic weapon and handcuffs. The hearing never dealt with this issue. Instead, the couple sat intimidated and bewildered, as the CEC produced separate undertakings for both parties to sign, documents referring vaguely to the original ‘event.’ The village chief conceded he had uttered ‘slightly incorrect words,’ promising not to upset the two again; the couple declared they were willing to be reconciled and would not file any complaints at a higher level. In fact, the couple remained scared, angry and dissatisfied with this solution because it allowed the village chief to go unpunished and left them potentially exposed to his retribution, sooner or later. They were also

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wrongly convinced that their undertaking precluded them from lodging a criminal complaint against the village chief, which was clearly the CEC’s intention. This case also illustrated how eager commune police were to place the seal of inaction on CEC conciliations of potentially criminal acts by CPP authorities, further misleading victims about their legal rights and deterring them from exercise thereof. The police rushed to get the couple to thumbprint a confirmatory undertaking to the effect that there was no more ill-feeling between them and the village chief, which the police insisted precluded pursuit of criminal charges. According to the police itself, this was done without any inquiry into the chief ’s reported claim be in illegal possession of an automatic weapon. No inquiry was necessary, the police maintained, because although the couple had told them what the chief had said, they had not filed a formal complaint, and anyway, the police knew if they searched for the weapon, they would not find it. All this left the couple still scared and wishing they could have the village chief criminally prosecuted, but seeing no hope of successfully doing so. While the above stories are overwhelmingly typical of the situation in Kampung Cham during the elections, one atypical case must be described. This was an exception proving the larger rule – that outcomes are decided by prevailing balances of power, which may shift ephemerally under certain circumstances. In this instance, the CEC of Krauch Chhmar in the Kampung Cham district of the same name failed to achieve its desired outcome of conciliation, due to the unique determination and courage of the plaintiffs and witnesses, and an at least temporary reversal of the usual psychological balance of power in a CEC setting. This resulted in the case passing to the PEC, raising the possibility of imposition of a fine on the CPP commune official, who was the accused in this case. The complaint came not from a political party, but from a domestic election observation organization, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL). According to the complaint, eight days before the election, the CPP official – a self-described ‘party boss’ (me pak) – intimidated three COMFREL members, attempting to prevent them from renting video equipment to show its staff a training film on election observation procedures. The incident was witnessed by the two owners of the video shop. All five were prepared to testify at the Krauch Chhmar CEC hearing, and they stoutly resisted all its attempts to achieve conciliation. Their resolve was stiffened by the presence of international UN staff and ranking provincial personnel of Cambodia’s three leading domestic human rights organizations, plus correspondents of the Voice of America and the US Congress-funded Radio Free Asia. Although the CEC was clearly sympathetic to the accused, he was completely unable credibly to deny the allegations against him, and although the CEC was not prepared itself to impose a fine, it had no choice but to agree to forward the case to the PEC for it to be heard by a PEC jury, but there was no time to do this before the election. When the PEC finally met, it rejected the complaint. However, the

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NEC eventually overturned this decision, imposing a fine and disenfranchising the official. Again, the presence in full force of a phalanx of representatives of UN agencies, national and international human rights organizations and NGOs seemed to give it little choice. While the outcome of this drama showed that such momentary and isolated reversals of power relations could be publicly displayed, all the rest of the little plays staged by CECs in Kampung Cham – and, no doubt the rest of rural Cambodia – drove home to Cambodian villagers the very point of how rare and tenuous such reversals are, given the power relations in the countryside. UNDP/EU Applause However, some members of the international audience for the Cambodian elections gave these plays rave reviews, although this audience also contained critics. Chief among those reacting with applause were the EU and UNDP, whose clapping was doggedly self-congratulatory. Assessing the complaints system in the wake of the election, the EU admitted that the existence of a good legal framework was no guarantee anyone would abide by it, and that numerous NEC directives were not fully enforced. Nevertheless, overall, it pronounced the electoral legal system ‘substantially strengthened’ compared to previous years and as having been proved ‘workable’ in practice. As evidence of this, it declared local conciliation mechanisms had been ‘particularly successful,’ and praised CECs for having handled complaints through conciliation, thus easing political tensions and creating a relaxed, peaceful electoral environment. The EU – echoed by UNDP – put forward as its measure of the system’s success that of the 349 complaints coming to the attention of provincial election commissions, 169 had been had been ‘successfully reconciled’ by commune commissions, and only a tiny number of cases ended up being the object of NEC hearings and sanctions. Indeed, EU figures indicated that only two cases of alleged threats and one of assault made it to the NEC (EU 2003: 6–7, 12, 18–20, 57; UNDP 2003). The EU conceded that despite the technical splendour of the administrative and legal framework for the elections, including ‘a wide range of legal documents,’ rural Cambodians still showed little enthusiasm for pursuing legal redress through the complaints system. It recognized this might result from victims being afraid to complain, witnesses to testify and election officials to investigate. However, along with UNDP, it also spoke of Cambodians’ strong preference for traditional conciliatory systems for settling disputes, reflecting their cultural propensities (EU 2003: 17; UNDP 2003: 21). This analysis – forgetting that the complaints system was instituted in the first place because people had no faith in the police and courts – boiled down to an assertion that the system worked because it reaffirmed rural Cambodians’ tradition and culture of avoiding conflict, preferring conciliation, building consensus and

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saving face. In reality, the general refusal of local election commissions, police and courts to investigate – much less sanction – CPP members for illegal acts had actually ‘reinforced the widespread … belief that those with political and economic influence are beyond the reach of the law.’ This contributed further to a situation where biased decisions by CPP authorities were seen as the norm (SRSGHRC 2003: 22), entrenching fears among the electorate of the risks of reprisal for opposition activities, and generating more cynicism about the electoral process (Meisenberger 2003). To critics in the international audience, the complaints system as a whole was ‘formally well-articulated,’ but ‘dysfunctional,’ with no deterrent effect against political violence. This misses the point, because its beautiful articulation was theatre addressed to one audience – largely foreign – whereas its dysfunctionality is not evidence that it was malfunctioning, but was theatre addressed to another audience, primarily rural voters, functioning perfectly well from CPP’s point of view. It served, that is, to strengthen the climate of impunity that allowed for widespread political violence, election law violations and intimidation of voters. It not only institutionally constrained free and fair elections (IRI 2003: 29) but also signalled to Cambodians their impossibility. This prompted FUNCINPEC to abandon all hope of ever defeating CPP democratically and instead to make itself a permanent, fawning, symbolic junior partner in a coalition government dominated overwhelmingly by Hun Sen and dedicated to the gradual destruction of the opposition SRP. In other words, FUNCINPEC has decided to ostentatiously defer to power in order to survive, like many rural voters. This appeared to make Cambodia into what many described as an elected dictatorship, in which multi-party elections were expected to be close to farce (Heder 2005). CECs: What Kind of Theatre? Obviously, I do not see CEC theatre in the normatively positive sense put forward by Geertz and Wolters, nor do I see the political violence that CEC theatre facilitates by ensuring impunity as typically Southeast Asian ritual beautification of the state. Even more obviously, I do not see the ‘conciliation’ staged by CECs as a continuation or resurrection of traditional Cambodian or broader Southeast Asian political culture, nor as reflecting peasant preferences rooted in such a culture. Rather – as Scott suggests – it reflects rational peasant choice, given the balance of power in the contemporary countryside. With local big CPP men bureaucratically and economically stronger than ever before in Cambodian history, villagers have little option but to accept conciliation if they want to avoid further trouble from persons who are not their ‘patrons,’ but their bosses. Their offstage comments and behaviour make it obvious that their acquiescence in conciliation is false deference. Seeing all this as indicative of traditional and cultural preferences – as UNDP the EU and some others in the international community do – is ahistorical in the sense that it is blind to everything that has happened in

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Cambodia since colonial times, and reflects cultural ignorance in the sense that it ignores how culture has been transformed by those events. By applauding the charades of conciliation conducted by CECs as great successes, these elements of the international community reinforce acquiescence and false deference, directly and indirectly buttressing CPP power by taking appearance for reality and seeming to support or be duped by CPP. I of course do not contend that there are no cultural continuities or repetitions, only that further – better informed – anthropological and other research is needed to begin seriously delineating them. This could and should include further efforts to test the limits of the applicability of the insights of Geertz and Wolters to contemporary Cambodia. I would end this brief reference back to the Southeast Asia literature with a reminder of one possibility a continuity thesis raises: that the most characteristically Southeast Asian actors I encountered during the 2003 elections in Kampung Cham were not the CPP godfathers, but the COMFREL activists who challenged them – with a flash of success – in Krauch Chhmar district. Unlike the bosses, who appear to be committed to nothing but their own interests, these activists appear to be sincerely dedicated to achieving the liberal democratic cosmos in the Cambodian countryside. Regardless of how realistic or unrealistic their vision may be, it would be in the great Southeast Asian tradition. References Beissinger, Mark R. and Crawford Young (2002). ‘Introduction: Comparing State Crises across Two Continents,’ and ‘The Effective State in Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Hopeless Chimera or Possible Dream?,’ in Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington, D.C., Woodrow Wilson Center Press). Bjork, Ellen (2003). ‘Cambodian Campaign,’ New York Sun, 6 August. Bjornlund, Eric (2001). ‘Democracy, Inc.,’ The Wilson Quarterly, January. Collins, William A. (1997). ‘Dynamics of Dispute Resolution and Administration of Justice for Cambodian Villagers,’ Phnom Penh, USAID Project Number 442-0111, unpublished manuscript, February. Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL) (2003). ‘Final Statement and Report on the National Assembly Elections (27 July 2003),’ (Phnom Penh, November). Cruise O’Brien, Donal B. (1991). ‘The Show of State in a Neo-Colonial Twilight: Francophone Africa,’ in James Manor (ed.), Rethinking Third World Politics (Burnt Mill, Longman): 145–65. European Union, Election Observation Mission (2003). ‘Final Report: Cambodia, Members of the National Assembly Elections,’ 27 July.

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Geertz, Clifford (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Goffman, Erving (1990). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London, Penguin). Gottesman, Evan (2002). Cambodia: After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of a Nation Building (New Haven, Yale University Press). Heder, Steve (1998). ‘Khmer Rouge Again Slipping Away from Punishment,’ Phnom Penh Post, 3–16 July. –– (2002). ‘Cambodian Elections in Historical Perspective,’ in John Vijghen (ed.), People and the 1998 National Elections in Cambodia: Their Voices, Roles and Impact on Democracy (Phnom Penh, Experts for Community Research): 1–4. –– (2003). ‘Cambodia 1991–1998,’ in Roger Gough, Regime Change: It’s Been Done Before (London, Policy Exchange): 66–75. –– (2005). ‘Cambodia 2004: Death or Beginning of Reform?,’ Southeast Asian Affairs 2005 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies): 113–30�. Hughes, Caroline and Conway, Tim (2003). ‘Understanding Pro-Poor Political Change: The Policy Process, Cambodia’ (Second Draft, August 2003)’ (London, Overseas Development Institute). International Republican Institute (IRI) (2003) ‘Cambodia 2003 National Assembly Elections Final Report,’ 26 September. Jeldres, Julio A. and Béatrix Daydé-Latham (2002). Le Palais du Roi du Cambodge (Phnom Penh, Les Editions du Mekong). Luco, Fabienne (2002). Between a Tiger and a Crocodile: Management of Local Conflicts in Cambodia, An Anthropological Approach to Traditional and New Practices (Phnom Penh, UNESCO). Meisenberger, Tim (2003). ‘Summary of Observations of the US Long Term International Observation Group During the 2003 Cambodian National Assembly Election, September’ (Phnom Penh). Nordstrom, Carolyn (2000). ‘Shadows and Sovereigns,’ Theory, Culture and Society, 17 (4): 35–54. Pemberton, John (1994). On the Subject of ‘Java’ (Ithaca, Cornell University Press). Peschoux, Christophe (1991). Interviews with Kampung Speu provincial court, 12 September, Phnom Penh Supreme Court, 13 September, and Phnom Penh Municipal Court, 14 September. Rummel, R. J. (1997). Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence (New Brunswick, Transaction). Scott, James C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasantry: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, Yale University Press). –– (1979). ‘Revolution in the Revolution: Peasants and Commissars,’ Theory and Society, 7: 97���� –��� 34. –– (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Yale).

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Slocomb, Margaret (2003). The People’s Republic of Kampuchea, 1979–1989: The Revolution After Pol Pot (Chiang Mai, Silkworm). Sluka, Jeffrey A. (1999). ‘Introduction: State Terror and Anthropology,’ in Jeffrey A. Sluka (ed.), Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press):1–45. Taylor, R. H. (1996). ‘Elections and Politics in Southeast Asia’, in R. H. Taylor (ed.), The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia (Washington, Woodrow Wilson Center Press): 12–33. United Nations, Cambodia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Human Rights in Cambodia (SRSGHRC) (2003). ‘The 2003 National Assembly Elections.’ United Nations Development Program, Cambodia (UNDP) (2003). National Assembly Elections in Cambodia, 27 July (Phnom Penh, September). UNTAC, Information/Education Division (1993). ‘Report on Hun Sen’s Visit to Prey Chhor District, Kampung Cham,’ 17 May. Wolters, O. W. (1979). ‘Khmer “Hinduism” in the Seventh Century’, in R. B. Smith and W. Watson, Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History and Historical Geography (New York, Oxford University Press): 427–42. –– (1982). History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Notes 1 Of course, the views expressed here do not represent those of the High Commissioner’s office. 2 Author’s interview with David Whipple, Langley, Virginia, 1 June 2002. Whipple, the CIA’s last station chief in the Khmer Republic, said that Hun Sen had made contact with a network of Cambodian CIA agents in eastern Kampung Cham province around 1973 pr 1974, expressing dissatisfaction with the revolution and a desire to defect to the Republican side, but that the CIA instructed him instead to remain in place and provide information. In 1979, after Hun Sen re-emerged as PRK foreign minister, he re-established covert communication with the CIA, telling it – among other things – that his long-term objective was to get the Vietnamese out of Cambodia and re-establish friendly relations with the United States. 3 In the 1993 elections in Kampung Cham, according to statistics gathered by UNTAC’s Electoral Component, there were 44 incidents of CPP violence or intimidation against opposition political activists, including killings, death threats, assaults, confiscation of voting documents, false arrests, rocket grenade attacks, shootings, threats of job dismissal, obstruction of openings of opposition party offices, and vandalism. During the 2003 elections in the province, according to my research, there were 71 politically motivated incidents between January and August. Although they included only one murder, the others were strikingly similar in nature to those committed in 1993.

9 DALIT PROCESSIONS Street Politics and Democratization in India Nicolas Jaoul

In 1978 the city of Agra (Uttar Pradesh) witnessed serious incidents of confrontation with the police. The rioters were Jatavs, a local caste of Dalits (‘oppressed’), the so-called ‘Untouchables.’ Rioting started after the attack against their annual procession in honour of Dr Ambedkar (1891–1956), the Dalit historical leader whom they consider as their ‘messiah.’ Complaints from hostile residents of the upper-caste neighbourhood where the attacks on the procession took place, led to the administrative decision to change its route in subsequent years in order to avoid disturbances. The Dalits resented this decision as unjust (it was they who had been attacked in the first place) and eventually redirected their anger against administrative buildings and the police. The violence led to nine deaths, many more wounded and hundreds of arrests among the Jatavs. It took the intervention of the central government and the army to bring peace back after almost three weeks of unrest. Along with the right to keep the same procession route, the administrative package to appease the Jatavs included the declaration of Ambedkar’s birthday (14 April) as a state holiday, and the installation of an official Ambedkar statue at a prestigious location in front of the Red Fort. Owen Lynch reported the event by stressing the overall ‘rationality’ of the Jatavs’ indulgence into violence on such an apparently trivial issue. The ‘rationality’ stressed by the author does not seek to explain their riot by such an unplanned ‘victorious’ outcome, but rather points to some felt imperatives that guided their emotional and violent reaction. The Jatavs simply proved their ability to use some shared codes and meanings of urban assertion and power to their advantage. ‘Upper castes felt that Jatavs needed to be taught a lesson and put in place. Jatavs felt dishonoured and in danger of losing their rights, because in such a situation when untouchables back down they accept not merely defeat but also oppression and disenfranchisement’ (Lynch 1981: 1955). By ‘rationality,’ Lynch implies that there was more

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in the Jatavs’ reaction than the irrationality and exuberance typically associated with the lower class in dominant stereotypes. Relying on his knowledge of local society (and Jatavs in particular), Lynch’s insightful comments on the perceived nature and the importance of the stakes involved opens up new possibilities for the understanding of the street-level politics of the oppressed. While studying the local Dalit movement in Kanpur (besides Agra, the other major stronghold of the Ambedkarites in Uttar Pradesh), I came across the same kind of dramatized reactions by Dalit organizations whenever their ritualized public demonstrations in (or symbolic control over) urban space was at stake. Public performance through processions thus seems to be entrenched into urban culture and to be part of strategies of popular assertion. Dealing with the theatricality of the contemporary democratization process in India therefore implies enquiring about the symbolic connotation and popular interpretations of urban space. In the first part of the article, I will address the political invention and popular uses of urban ‘religious’ processions during the colonial period. We need to understand how they became a vehicle for popular expression in the public sphere, and how they became the centrepiece of the emerging popular and vernacular spheres of participation, with some degree of autonomy from the more conventional, institutional (‘habermasian’) public sphere of the English-speaking elite. Once this is established, I will relate how Dalits in Uttar Pradesh cities came to imitate such processions in order to substantiate their claim to form a separate minority and demand a place for themselves in urban society. In the second part of the paper I will rely on my ethnographic observations in the region of Kanpur, where such processions remain, as elsewhere, an important part of popular political expression, but in a context specific to Uttar Pradesh, where the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a Dalit-led Ambedkarite party, has provided the Dalits with a new political clout. In this context where Dalits have gained a better access to the state, it will be interesting to understand the specific role played by this urban culture of street assertion. Colonial Cities, Plebeian Assertions and the Territorialization of Urban Space Public processions in India are neither ‘religious’ nor ‘traditional’ in nature, but ‘invented traditions’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) linked to the vernacularization of the public sphere. At the end of nineteenth century, the first public processions were organized by Tilak, a Maharashtrian leader belonging to the first generation of radical nationalists, who thought of using popular culture symbols from the regional Hindu folklore to mobilize beyond the limited circles of the urban bourgeoisie. In her study on communal politics in the United Provinces during the colonial period (which became Uttar Pradesh after independence), Sandria Freitag (1989: 134) associated this realm of public activities to ‘public arenas,’ based

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on popular participation and popular values of community, in contrast to the bourgeois model of the ‘public sphere,’ accessible only to the westernized elite and based on individualistic principles of citizenship. These ‘public arenas’ in which ‘the use of urban space proved especially important’1 sought to provide ‘legitimacy and recognition to a range of actors and values denied place in the imperial order’ (Ibid.: 6). Although Freitag emphasizes the multi-class character of such mobilizations, a comprehensive study of the political expression of the urban poor in the interwar period has recently emphasized the specific perceptions and uses of ‘religious’ processions by the poor. Police harassment, official stigmatization, economic precariousness and segregation shaped their lives. Even though it was organized and financed by middle classes from either community, participation in the religious processions, indispensable for these Hindu or Muslim communal organizations to display their popular strength, became a reachable mode of public expression for the poor. Gooptu (2001) shows that despite not being autonomous, their agenda and practice were in fact distinct from the organizers. ‘All these various forms of politics of the poor were animated by their urge to defy exclusion and to entrench their presence in the public sphere’ (Ibid.: 422–3). Militant Hindu processions organized at the occasion of north India’s two major Hindu festivals, the Ramlila and Holi, were financed and patronized by upper-caste traders, who built their local fame. But the bulk of participants came from the low castes and petty traders, claiming social dignity as well as, perhaps at a more abstract level, a better place in urban society. The public expression of religious communities reflected different underlying expressions of class, ‘both as theatres of self-representation or affirmation of power of the dominant classes, and as vehicles of contestation from below’ (Ibid: 21). The processions’ vigour relied on plebeian expressions of fervour and strength, but also enclosed attempts by the middle-class organizers to control and reform the lower-class Hindus. For example, the Ramlila processions displayed heterogeneous cultural expressions, with the more conventional floats and paintings displayed by the upper-caste traders reflecting the Hindu reformist propaganda, while contrasting with the performances of the poor that included dances, acrobatics, theatre plays and ‘vulgar’ images of the devil-king Ravana, which the upper-caste reformers of the Arya Samaj disliked and sought to get rid of. Although their expression was partly repressed, the poor could thus try to appropriate the public arenas. Early Public Expression of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh It was mainly the ‘low’ but ‘clean’ shudra castes who, by participating to these events, sought a better place for themselves within urban society as members of the dominant Hindu community. On their part, the ‘Untouchables’ or Dalits, who constituted the more unprivileged and despised strata, soon began asserting

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themselves distinctly. ‘Untouchables’ had migrated to north Indian towns, responding to the demand for the kind of ‘unclean’ tasks they used to perform in their villages. Fleeing rural oppression, they came in large numbers in the late nineteenth century, when urban growth provided opportunities to find employment as leather workers, weavers (especially in Kanpur’s leather and cloth industry), sweepers, scavengers and servants in European households. Some families having established themselves as leather manufacturers or contractors and as labour recruiters, however, rose to a better off or slightly better off condition and were able to send their children to schools. By the 1910s a small intelligentsia of educated Dalits had thus emerged. They questioned untouchability and developed alternative theories of caste. After having been attracted to the Arya Samaj2 fold, educated Dalits realized that this reformist organization of the Hindu elites followed its own class agenda which was not compatible with their concern for emancipation. They instead formed their own movement, emphasizing a distinct identity of Dalits and questioning caste hierarchy. They argued that the ‘Untouchables’ had a distinct religious identity which manifested itself through the syncretistic religious sects founded by medieval ‘Untouchable’ saints (Sant Ravidas, Sant Kabir). They also claimed that the ‘Untouchables’ were in fact the ‘original Hindus’ (Adi Hindus), the autochthonous Indians who, as colonial writings explained, had been conquered by the Aryans. These ideologues of the early Dalit movement thus explained untouchability and caste hierarchy as the outcome of violent Aryan invasions that had destroyed a pre-Aryan civilization based on equality and imposed ‘untouchability’ in order to oppress and exploit the conquered people. In the second part of the 1920s, with the emerging question of communal representation in the institutions of the Raj, they became more politically focussed. In 1928 the Adi Hindu leaders of Uttar Pradesh met the Simon commission to argue for a separate representation of ‘Untouchables,’ even though the Congress had boycotted the commission. The next winter, the Adi Hindu leaders took part in one of the main Hindu religious festivals of North India, the Prayag Kumbha Mela, held every 12 years on the Ganges, near Allahabad. The choice of a religious festival to display their difference publicly calls for analysis. James Lochtefeld, who emphasizes the public uses of this religious occasion, observes that this fair has historically ‘served as a stage on which groups can enact and contest for authority’ (Lochtefeld 2004: 103). ‘As highly public religious affair, the Kumbha Mela is not merely about individual goals; it is a theatre in which differing groups have contested for power.  … Control (or the attempt to control) the Mela’s ritual space reveals and reinforces the power relationships between groups, in multiple and simultaneous dimensions’ (Ibid.: 115). The fair ground thus appears as a contested space where different martial sects (Akharas) of ascetics competed to bathe in the Ganges at the holiest moment, which in the past had even led to bloody battles between

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ascetic warriors. During the colonial period, things had settled down and the sects proceeded to the bathing places in ‘festive processions’ in which they bore ‘weapons, banners, and accoutrements of royal authority’ (Ibid.: 104) that recalled the martial aspect of the Mela, but in a contained and symbolic manner. The author suggests that these grand processions were for the sects the main occasion for ‘symbolically enacting their sovereignty over the Kumbha Mela’ (Ibid.: 109), by displaying ‘their status, patronage and power’ (Ibid.: 111). Such large gatherings could also be ‘an opportunity to gain exposure, patronage and prestige’ (Ibid.: 104) for individual ascetics. In the 1920s, at a time when politicization was on the rise and Hindus started organizing politically as a single homogeneous community, the Mela became a privileged ground for political organizations such as the Hindu Mahasabha, the first Hindu nationalist organization founded in 1915. Other more or less secular outfits used the Mela to hold conference or meeting sessions and gain publicity. The Adi Hindus took part in the Allahabad Kumbha Mela in 1928. They gathered several ‘Untouchable’ devotional (bhakti) sects under their banner and held a procession where ‘Untouchable’ saints were carried on an elephant, an honour that had formerly been reserved to men of honour and orthodox Hindu deities (Jigyasu undated). Being given public prominence and honoured in this manner was provocative, all the more so as the dominant Brahminical norm had excluded ‘Untouchables’ from Hindu rituals and sacred space. Through public exposure, ‘Untouchable’ saints were turned into the symbols of ‘Untouchable’ rebellion and identity. The carving out of a communal identity thus relied on the assertion of a separate religious identity, which in its turn was given public visibility thanks to a controversial appearance at the Mela. It seems that such a daring act could be made possible only by taking advantage of certain political conditions. The Hindu Mahasabha, which had gained some control on the organizing committee of the Mela, had adopted a programme of integration of ‘Untouchables’ within the Hindu community so as to overwhelm the Muslims in terms of numbers and representation. It seems obvious that in their attempt to accommodate the Untouchables the Adi Hindus took advantage of such a need to accommodate the Untouchables. Even though they implicitly relied on this new-found support, their speeches at the Mela provocatively dismissed Hindu reformism as fake and superficial. Instead, their controversial performance expressed their existence as a distinct and assertive community.3 After the Simon Commission, the Indian Dalit movement, which had been fragmented in different regional ‘Adi’ movements, came together with the aim to pressurize the authorities for a minority status. Dr Ambedkar, a highly educated Dalit from Maharashtra, became recognized as the most able and prominent spokesman of the Indian ‘Untouchables.’ At the second Round Table Conference held in London in 1931, he opposed Gandhi’s claim to represent all Hindus, including ‘Untouchables’ (Jaffrelot 2005). Although Gandhi accepted the idea of a

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minority status for ‘established’ religious minorities (Sikhs, Christians, Muslims) he firmly opposed the claim of the Untouchable leaders, whose regional organizations kept sending telegrams of support to Ambedkar (Gupta 1985). The conference was adjourned without an agreement being reached, but in 1932, under the ‘communal award’ the ‘Untouchables’ as well as other minorities became entitled to a separate political representation in the future elected assemblies. Gandhi resisted the move by a hunger strike, which forced Ambedkar to accept a compromise, known as the Poona Pact. It gave Dalits a guarantee of being represented in the assemblies through an increased number of reserved seats, thus compensating for the loss of separate electorate. Gandhi, in order to prove his bonafide, launched a ‘Harijan campaign,’4 which sought to ‘change the heart’ of orthodox Hindus and welcome ‘Untouchables’ in their fold. In 1934 Temple entry marches led by upper-caste Gandhian elites were organized in towns. In Kanpur, ‘Untouchables’ were on this occasion publicly given permission to enter the temples, albeit minor ones, and invited to take a ritual bath in the Ganga. The Congress managed to co-opt part of the Dalit leadership, although the non-coopted leaders remained associated with Ambedkar. However the co-opted leaders remained committed to the ‘Untouchable’ Bhakti religion and to the Dalit identity. Their aim was to struggle for the Dalit cause from within the Congress. In Kanpur they took advantage of the political support of the Gandhian elite and organized the city’s first Ravidas procession, in honour of the ‘Untouchable’ saint in 1936 (Bellwinkel-Schempp 2002). The procession became a regular festival of Dalits, although the Chamars, the main Dalit community, from whom Ravidas also hailed, largely appropriated the occasion. The Ravidas procession in Kanpur became a yearly event causing annoyance in upper-caste neighbourhoods, where it passed provocatively (Molund 1988). Chitra Joshi, in her study of Kanpur’s working-class culture, notes that ‘Kureels (the main local Chamar sub-caste) were urged to light up their houses on Ravidas Jayanti just as was done on Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights)’ (Joshi 2003: 253). Even if more quiet, these manifestations of faith were equally conspicuous, and expressed a feeling of community. Dalits now had their regular festival and processions. The regularity of the events helped the Dalit community to claim its existence publicly through the regular occupation of urban space as well as to take its due place in the local calendar of festivals. Commemorating Ambedkar: From Marginality to Mass Events Ambedkar died on 6 December 1956. Six weeks earlier he had converted to Buddhism during a public ceremony which was followed by the mass conversion of his own caste. At independence, he had been given the responsibility of chairing the Constitution drafting committee. Untouchability was legally abolished and reservation quotas assured the Dalits (scheduled castes) and Tribals (scheduled tribes) of being represented in the assemblies and having access to

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higher education and government jobs. Dalit middle classes gradually emerged thanks to education and public employment. Ambedkar’s supporters consisted mainly of his own maharashtrian caste, plus some regional pockets of influence like in Punjab, Delhi, in western Uttar Pradesh among the Jatavs (a Chamar sub-caste who had converted to Buddhism), as well as in other cities in Uttar Pradesh among other Chamar sub-castes mainly. These staunch followers kept Ambedkar’s memory alive in their strongholds in the manner of commemorations organized each year on his birthday (‘Ambedkar Jayanti’) and death anniversary (‘Mahaparinirvan Divas’). The main purpose of these commemorations was to keep Ambedkar’s radical message alive, especially in these times of Congress hegemony, when Ambedkar was portrayed as a ‘traitor’ and a ‘divisive communal leader’ in the nationalist discourse of the ruling party. Apart from Ambedkar processions, religious processions celebrating Dalit saints (like Ravidas) remained. The authorization for such processions was a test of the different Dalit communities’ local influence and their ability to negotiate their mark in the public space with the local authorities. Being potentially dangerous as they passed through upper caste neighbourhoods, while at the same time disturbing the road traffic and asking for special arrangements from the authorities, it can be stated generally that the latter tended to avoid them if they could afford it. The committees, composed of educated young men seeking a status within their own community, some of them even having political ambitions, thus left no stone unturned to get an honourable deal from the authorities. This lobbying could include meeting established local politicians, whether from the caste, whose reputation as benefactors of their own group was thus tested, or from other politicians seeking their electoral support. Similar efforts were deployed by Ambedkarite activists to have Ambedkar statues officially erected in cities. The first Ambedkar statue was therefore set up in front of the national parliament and the event was replicated in Uttar Pradesh cities in the early 1970s (Jaoul 2006a). In Kanpur the location of the statue at a prestigious and central site in the city as well as its unveiling by a central minister (a Dalit who had been co-opted in the 1930s), were official acts which brought legitimacy and even prestige to the Ambedkarites. Each 14 April, the procession went from one Dalit basti to the next throughout the city, stamping its mark on the main roads in a symbolic ritual of appropriation. Each ward joined the main procession with its floats and ultimately reached the site of the statue.5 In the 1970s the Dalit movement, which had been largely marginalized since independence, was revived by a new generation of educated Dalits, often faced with unemployment. The Dalit Panthers, a Maharashtrian organization named after the American Black Panthers, was formed in 1972 with a revolutionary aim. However, it became more moderate after facing repression during the famous Worli riots in 1974. A ‘Long March’ was organized in 1979 on the

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issue of renaming a Maharashtrian university after Ambedkar (Murugkar 1991). The march was well advertised in the national media and brought the issue of Ambedkar’s national recognition to the attention of the country. Many Dalits who had not known him became aware of his historical role as a nation-builder and of the injustice done to him officially by neglecting his memory. In 1980 the Dalit Panthers established their national office in Delhi, and opened provincial branches. In Uttar Pradesh the Dalit Panthers became specialized in violent protests against rural atrocities and against desecrations of Ambedkar images or statues. However, due to repression, rivalries and lack of political consistency, the organization collapsed and was dissolved in 1989. A more successful initiative came from Dalit government employees whose new national organization, the All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF), declared that it would launch a political party of the ‘Bahujan’ (the plebeian multitude, including the Dalits, the low castes and the minorities) in order to ‘snatch’ the power from the Congress and the upper castes. In 1984 the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) (‘the party of the multitude community’) was formed in New Delhi. In December 1993, the BSP participated to a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh for the first time, and thanks to a tactical alliance with the nationalist Hindu party, it was able to lead three governments between 1995 and 2002. Mayawati, a woman from the Chamar caste and a former primary teacher, took the head of these governments. Her politics focussed on three main aspects. The first was a politics of empowerment of Dalits ‘from above’ (Pai 2002) with the nomination of Dalit officers in places of local authority (district magistrates, superintendent of police). The second was developmental, with selective development schemes targeting villages with a large Dalit population (the Ambedkar village scheme). The third was a symbolic drive of ‘Ambedkarization’ of the territory, meaning the public homage paid through monuments to Ambedkar and other great men and popular heroes of the ‘Bahujans.’ It focussed on the renaming of educational institutions and districts, on the construction of public parks, as well as the erection of their statues in cities and towns. During the tenures of Mayawati, the Ambedkar Jayanti as well as other celebrations of these personalities, were officially organized on a massive scale in the state capital, with massive turnout of Dalit villagers. Street Politics in the BSP Era When I reached Kanpur in 1997, there was a growing divide between the BSP and the local Dalit movement. The former was increasingly trying to check the spontaneity of the grassroots movement (Jaoul 2006b). The latter, led by a local offshoot of the Dalit Panthers, criticized the BSP opportunist alliances with the Hindu nationalist party, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Moreover, the local BSP Members of the Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) had proved unreliable to the local Dalit population in times of conflicts. In this context, the young local

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Dalit Panther leader,6 a former municipal councillor, had gained popularity as the staunch defender of Dalits. Even though he was critical of the BSP, his action on their behalf was facilitated when the BSP came to power, thanks to the newly nominated Dalit District Magistrate, with whom he developed a good contact. With such a facilitated access to the administration, his defence of Dalits became more efficient and his popularity expanded beyond his original base in the labour colonies of north Kanpur. Although he left school at 13, he learned the functioning of the law and of the administration with the Dalit Panthers (whom he joined at the same age). He became well versed in organizing highpitched mobilizations on the streets. The administration thus recognized him as a local leader. The Ambedkar symbol gave him a means to produce an emotional and sensitive Dalit community. His example is quite telling of the possibilities offered to such an emerging grassroots leadership by the informal arena of street politics.7 I will therefore narrate some of the events that took place under his leadership during my fieldwork in Kanpur and show the contemporary relevance of such popular arenas of participation. Two kinds of events are opportunities for Dalits to reaffirm their public presence: regular events of the Ambedkarite calendar, as well as temporary protests, generally on symbolic issues. In June 1997 the Dalit Panthers led a massive demonstration against a rural court situated in the district of Kanpur Dehat (Kanpur rural), who had rejected a complaint by Dalit villagers against the destruction of their Ambedkar statue. The villagers’ complaint had been lodged under the section 295-A of the Indian Penal code, punishing ‘deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.’8 The additional judge who nullified the case argued that Ambedkar ‘not being a religious leader,’ the offence could not be treated as ‘communal.’ During the first protest meeting, the Dalit Buddhist monk from the local Bauddh Vihar (Buddhist shrine), Bhikshu Dipankar, stated that Ambedkar was a ‘religious’ leader, as he had initiated a movement of conversion to Buddhism and written The Buddha and his Dhamma, a book that Dalits treat as ‘holy.’ In order to ridicule the judgement, Dhaniram announced that as the destruction of statues of non-religious leaders had been declared unproblematic, a march with tools and sticks would be organized in order to destroy the 13 statues of nationalist leaders erected in Phulbag Park. During another protest meeting, the speakers emphasized the Brahmin background of the additional judge and likened his decision to a gradual replacement of the constitutional law by the Brahminical laws of Manusmrti.9 The demonstration took place on 17 June and was the scene of several explosions of country-made bombs. A mild confrontation with the police ended with the arrest of 200 demonstrators before they could enter the park and perhaps damage the statues. In Kanpur, the 14 April celebrations of Ambedkar Jayanti have become a

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huge popular fair. It takes place in Nanarao Park, where Ambedkar’s statue was set up in the 1970s. The following description narrates the 1999 edition. Before joining the main function, the Dalit Panthers organized a separate event in Dhaniram Panther’s labour colony. Tractors loaded with villagers reached the Dalit Panther office in the afternoon and joined the Dalit Panther supporters from the city. They together took part in a Buddhist conversion, which was followed by a procession that ran through the labour colonies area of north Kanpur. The Panthers’ procession was quite massive, with an elephant in front, more than 100 tractor trailers loaded with villagers, other vehicles carrying loudspeakers broadcasting slogans and music at a deafening volume, and displaying portraits of Ambedkar and Buddha. Besides, tens of thousands of people on foot (mostly men) shouted slogans, sometimes vociferously and in a highly excited mood. Along the way, the local committees of Dalits had their stalls that distributed water to the participants. The Dalit Panther leader sometimes stopped and paid his tributes to the Ambedkar portrait, which was surrounded by garlands, flower petals and incense. The homage, with joined hands, was done in the manner of religious devotion. Slogans also expressed this deep commitment, the most popular being ‘Jab tak surak chand rahega Baba tera nam rahega!’ (‘Until the sun will shine, Baba,10 your name will remain’). The leader Dhaniram sometimes seemed near to a trance, shouting slogans which were repeated by the crowd, dancing to the drums and distributing 10-rupee notes to the musicians, and using all his might and talent to create a highly dramatized and vibrant atmosphere. The procession reached an already crowded Nanarao Park at sunset. Dhaniram and two of his associates reached the park gates riding on the elephant’s back. Dhaniram was then carried at arms’ length by his supporters throughout the crowd to the main stage where the local leaders and special guests were awaiting their turn to give their speeches. The speeches were interrupted by this theatrical arrival, where Dhaniram played out his conquest of the local Dalit movement. The park was decorated with floats, portraits and painted quotations of Ambedkar and other ideologues of the non-Brahmin movement such as E.V.R. ‘Periyar’ Naicker, Jyotiba Phule and Sahuji Maharaj. Ambedkarite intellectuals exposed their private book collections, local Dalit committees had their tents and some public institutions were also represented by their Dalit staff. Many stalls sold ideological booklets in Hindi, as well as posters, stickers, badges and other gadgets such as key rings decorated with figures of the Dalit movement, although Bollywood ‘heroes’ were not absent! There were also many children’s attractions and candy sellers, which gave the impression of a regular popular fair. However, ideology was very much there, with orators on the main central stage delivering their thoughts on Ambedkar, and poets and singers expressing their faith in him and the movement. Speakers were disseminated all over so that the voice could reach everyone’s ears. The central focus of the celebration consisted in the ritual garlanding of Ambedkar’s statue. People took place in a long queue with their flower

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garlands and walked up to the statue on a kind of wooden pass that climbed to its height. They placed their garland around Babasahab’s neck, which was regularly unloaded, thus creating an astonishingly huge heap of flowers underneath. The BSP and all other political parties are denied access to the fair by the organizing committee. The committee, a socio-cultural organization,11 whose aim by doing so is to avoid the political use of Ambedkar Jayanti by ‘self-seeking politicians.’ However, the size of the 14 April celebration has dramatically increased in the 1990s, thanks to the BSP’s rise to power. The local authorities facilitated the expansion of their organization by co-operating with the organizers. But when the BSP governments lost their power, the upper-caste colleagues who replaced the Dalit officers as the heads of the local authorities tried to bring these collective shows of strength to a lower key. Caught in the Game of Symbolic Assertion I witnessed such an attempt in 1999, when the District and municipal administrations of Kanpur tried to forbid the use of Nanarao Park for the 6 December death anniversary gathering. The Bharatya Bauddh Mahasabha12 accepted the administration’s directive to organize it in Phulbag, and was thereafter criticized by other Dalit organizations. The Dalit Panther leader Dhaniram called this an inacceptable ‘surrender’ and took it as an opportunity to reassess his leadership on the local Dalit movement. He called a council of Dalit organizations which decided that this should be regarded as a vital issue. In a public meeting, Dhaniram dramatically stated that Dalits would oppose the decision with their lives if necessary. While saying this he opened his shirt and showed his chest to indicate that a staunch Ambedkarite (pakka Ambedkarvadi) did not fear the bullets when the honour of Ambedkar was at sake. Several dharnas (protests) were organized and the activists even courted arrest during a forbidden demonstration near the Ambedkar statue, a proof of their determination that eventually led the administration to surrender. In one of those dharnas, Dhaniram Panther dramatically stated: Each time we talk of organizing a programme near Ambedkar’s statue, the administration becomes agitated and wishes to take us far from the Nana Rao Park. They say ‘do it in Phulbag,’ and thereafter that will be: ‘Phulbag is not allowed, do it at Parade ground.’ Thereafter it will be Motijheel, and finally Bhaironghat!13 God knows what the administration really wants. This way they try to avoid our celebrating our programs. That’s why it is so essential to fight on such trivial issues … The authorities refuse that we celebrate our programme in Nana Rao Park but our decision is firm. We will do it at all cost, and no one will change our minds (Speech in Hindi at the Kahcheri gate, Kanpur, 31 October 1999).

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The striking aspect of this statement is that Dhaniram qualifies the issue as both trivial and essential. There is, therefore, an awareness that the politics of symbols becomes an end in itself, as has been noted by Donal Cruise O’Brien (2003). This intrinsic logic of symbolic mobilizations limits the movement’s focus on other issues relevant to Dalits, like poverty and access to education. This emphasis on symbols is being criticized by Dalits and Dalit activists themselves, even by those who are the most involved. The most virulent critic of symbolic politics that I met in Kanpur was a prominent activist of the Dalit Panthers. He criticized his leader’s emphasis on symbols as a tamasha (a popular show that is connoted with vulgarity), an expression used for someone overacting to attract attention to himself. This activist was, despite this criticism, at the forefront of the Dalit Panthers’ high-pitched symbolic mobilizations. He lived near the Buddha Park recently built by the BSP government, and because he felt that the administration was neglecting its maintenance after the BSP lost power, he himself organized a mobilization to obtain its beautification. He also did daily walks to the park to see to it that it was well maintained. When I accompanied him, he became upset with people’s unceremonious behaviour in the park, as if he had become its unofficial watchman… This anecdote reveals the urge to protect symbols in public areas after Mayawati governments came to an end, reflecting a preoccupation with the ‘maintenance’ of what was provided by the BSP in terms of recognition. The symbols of such a contested Dalit assertion would become easy targets for their opponents if not watched carefully by local activists. The ritualized showdowns with the administration on such symbolic issues are taken as vital. Dalit activists therefore seem to be caught in a game that they cannot give up for fear of simply losing it. Dalit Elites and Dalit Militancy: The Politics of the Ravana Mela The strengthening of the Dalit movement, after the first BSP government was formed in Uttar Pradesh, has encouraged Dalit activists to make their presence felt on more occasions. Apart from the anniversary of Ambedkar’s death, two events related to the Buddhist conversion of Ambedkar are now celebrated: Bauddh Diksha (Ambedkar’s Buddhist conversion) in October and the Bauddh Jayanti in May. The Bauddh Diksha event is interesting because of the Dalits’ ambiguous relationship to Hinduism. In Kanpur, the Dalit Panthers celebrate the event as the Ravana Mela. On Dassehra, Hindus burn the effigy of Ravana to celebrate the victory of good over evil. In the Ramayana epics, Ravana is the enemy of Ram. He kidnaps his wife Sita and takes her to his Kingdom of Lanka. Rama attacks Ravana with the help of Hanuman’s army, kills him and brings back Sita. Sita is eventually repudiated because of Rama’s doubts concerning her relationship with Ravana. Ravana’s representations as a devil are popular in Hindu processions. Even though they officially renounce Hinduism, Dalit Ambedkarites celebrating Ambedkar’s conversion as Ravana Mela thus retain this popular figure of the

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hindu mythology in their celebration.14 Dalit ideologues of Uttar Pradesh have re-read the myth of Rama and Ravana in the light of the Dravidian ideologue E.V.R. ‘Periyar’ Naicker’s alternative version of the Ramayana, which is informed by the Aryan invasion theory. Ravana is presented as a virtuous Dravidian king who treated Sita with respect, in opposition to Rama who repudiated her unjustly. The virtue of Rama and the vice of Ravana are simply reversed (Naicker 1959). Buddhist Dalits in Uttar Pradesh have gone beyond this version. They claim against all the evidence that Ravana was a devout Buddhist and thus celebrate the ‘Buddhist King’ Ravana. Even though the explanation of untouchability by the Aryan invasion had been dismissed by Ambedkar as a simplistic racial explanation,15 this racial theory is deep-rooted in the Dalit view of their history and recalled in their local literature. Ambedkar’s conversion is thus fitted into the older ideological framework of the Adi Hindus, whose historical legacy interestingly re-surfaces in this fair as well as in the local Dalit discourse. In 1994, when the BSP was in power for the first time, BSP and Dalit Panther activists organized Ravana Melas, where instead of burning effigies of Ravana, they burnt effigies of Rama. The Hindu God was turned into a symbol of oppression. These local events created communal tensions and were thus prevented by the administration in subsequent years. The only place where the Ravana Mela has remained in Uttar Pradesh is in the Dalit Panther stronghold of Pukhrayan, a town 40 km south of Kanpur. In this locality, Dalits are allowed to celebrate Ravana provided they do not burn the effigy of Rama. The event is organized by the local Dalit Panthers, who face a lot of opposition from the local traders’

Figure 2: Dalit peasants of village Laukaha participating in the Ravana Mela procession, 14 October 1999, Pukhrayan (Uttar Pradesh).

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association and from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a nationalist Hindu organization. The ability to organize the event despite this opposition lies in the support given by Dalit officers. The Ambedkarite Dalit bureaucrats, who are treated as the Dalit community’s ‘big men’ by the activists, are systematically invited as ‘special guests’ in Dalit Panther meetings and events. Their appearance on such occasions affects the local balance of power between castes. Dalits get the signal that they are supported by high officers, while the other castes get the signal that these officers could be made to intervene on behalf of their own in case of caste conflict. In 1999 Dalit activists from several regions of the state were busy organizing a petition to the High Court where they demanded that burning the effigies of Ravana be banned in Uttar Pradesh, as is the case in Tamil Nadu thanks to the pressure of the Dravidian movement. In October 1999 I visited villages along with a Dalit Panther activist who distributed leaflets titled ‘the greatness of Ravana.’ He instigated Dalits to take their day off, rent a tractor and come to the Mela, insisting that this was the surest way for the poor of the district to make themselves seen and heard. On Dassehra Day there were 50 tractors and several thousand participants. A festive procession left in the afternoon from the open-market ground. It went through the town’s main street, took the national highway, and came back to the point of departure at night. In the procession, there was a chariot representing characters of the Ramayana. Ravana was sitting on a throne amongst them. They shouted ‘Jay Jay Lankesh’ (‘victory to Lanka,’ the kingdom of Ravana) with great exuberance, and the crowd following the truck responded with fun. Contests of Devari16 took place during the march, also generating much enthusiasm. All shops were closed and the procession was preceded by an anti-riot police vehicle and constables on foot. On the national highway the traffic was stopped by the police to allow the passage of the procession. Incidentally the police allowed the passage of a special convoy of VIPs. Kallu bhaiya, the local organizer, became enraged. Being a repented bandit, the local police had often harrassed him in the past. Instinctively seizing the opportunity to avenge himself with the help of the crowd, he hit the police jeep loudly with his fist and defied the police with hostile slogans. The marchers became excited and vehemently opposed the decision of give priority to the VIPs. Dhaniram Panther intervened to calm them down and negotiated with the police. The crowd encouraged him with the slogans of ‘Dhaniram sangharsh karo, ham tumhare sath hè’ (‘Dhaniram take up the struggle, we are with you’). Many of the slogans used during this incident expressed an image of conquest: ‘Hamara adhikar larke lenge, larke lenge’ (‘we’ll get our rights by fighting’), ‘Jo ham ko thahraega, mitthi me miljaega’ (‘those who will be obstacles on our way, meet them in the dust’), ‘Ambedkar ke vaste, khali kar do rasta’ (‘In the name of Ambedkar, clear up the road’). The police asked the VIPs to park their cars on the side. Cries of ‘Jay Jay Bheem, Jay Jay Lankesh’ (‘victory to Lanka, victory to Bheem,’ Ravana’s kingdom and

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Ambedkar’s first name) could be heard, celebrating a symbolic victory over the police and the privileged. Once back at the main fair ground, where a stage had been set up, all participants were offered simple and free meals. There were stalls of literature and the usual tea, local sweet, peanuts, posters and postcards vendors. The official guests arrived in their official convoy, with loud siren noises and blue flashes of revolving lights amidst the crowd and the dust, in a theatrical performance of high administration prestige and power. The meeting started with a welcome ceremony during which the special guests were garlanded over and over by the activists, before themselves garlanding the Ambedkar portrait, in a symbolic act aimed to display their commitment to the Dalit cause. Dara Puri, one of the two Dalit police officers present, whom I knew as being a radical Ambedkarite, spoke in a mild manner to the villagers about the need to obey the law in their struggles. With a sense of concern for the maintenance of public peace, he asked the Dalits not to set up Ambedkar statues in order to claim some land, a practice that the landless villagers have often used to claim public parcels of land that should have been distributed to them since the 1976 anti-poverty laws. He explained how the Buddhist philosophy could be a path to mental liberation and popular progress and insisted on the total rejection of Hindu religion. Despite the fact that these officers spoke in a less radical manner, their simple presence cautioned the Dalit Panthers’ radicalism. Dhaniram Panther’s speech was more typical of the Dalit Panthers’ radical

Figure 3: Dalit police officer being welcomed by local Dalit Panther organizer Kallu Bhaiya at the Ravana Mela, 14 October 1999, Pukhrayan (Uttar Pradesh).

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rhetoric (which rarely translates into acts). He said that the movement would remain peaceful, not an armed struggle, but he urged the Dalits to take out weapons whenever the honour of the sisters and mothers of the community was threatened, in an allusion to sexual abuse and rapes of Dalit women. He also praised the Sikhs in Punjab who had taken up arms when their golden temple was attacked by the army. In the following passage, he explained the importance of Ambedkar statues through a metaphor where communal symbols appeared a bit like chess pawns: If we listened to their principles, to destroy an Ambedkar statue is no offence. We approve this opinion. But first why don’t they clean up their 330 million statues of idols from every district. Then we will take back our statues of Babasahab. (Speech in Hindi at the Ravana Mela, 19 October 1999, Pukhrayan) The speeches were long and emphatic and the speakers were more or less able to catch the villagers’ attention. Among them, many were discussing and children playing, sometimes creating a mess. After the crowd was (almost inadvertently) ‘converted’ to Buddhism by a Buddhist monk, the guests left. While the theatre company from Kanpur was getting ready backstage, people from the public climbed on the stage. A man sang his Ambedkarite poem and a woman narrated how she had been harassed by the police after her husband’s death. I had already witnessed such rituals of public appropriation of the stage in BSP meetings after the national leaders had left. The theatre play narrated the history of Dalits since the Aryan invasion until the revolt of Ambedkar. Harmonium and tablas accompanied the scenes. After each scene, the singer emphasized one aspect of the narration while the actors were getting dressed for the next one. In the first scene, characters of dark colour, dressed as primitives and acting shy, witnessed the arrival on their land of fair-skinned people wearing refined silk costumes and Brahminical threads, and speaking arrogantly. The king of the primitive people who gave them hospitality was cheated by them by giving away all his belongings to his guest. In the next scene, the primitives were declared ‘untouchables,’ fed with leftovers and mercilessly harassed, humiliated and beaten up. Later on in the play, a bright Dalit boy (young Ambedkar) tried to study, but the teacher made his life in the school miserable because of his caste. In the last scene, Ambedkar was back from his studies abroad. Dressed in a three-piece suit, wearing large glasses, holding a book in his hand, he calmly walked onto the stage while primitives were mercilessly beaten, in tears. He raised his arm, pointed his finger and became static, thus taking the pose of the Ambedkar statue. He shouted ‘Stop that!’ (in English) with authority and, having silenced the oppressors, he addressed the public directly with a long and vibrant speech. He asked Dalits to oppose their oppressors at all costs and

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warned the latter (the ‘Arvans’) of their coming trial. Except for the younger children who had fallen asleep, the attention of the crowd was almost total and the silence was impressive. Between the two plays, more speeches of local people who climbed on the stage took up the issues of oppression. Some pieces of paper also reached the musicians who read them, generally advertising tea or tobacco stalls in villages. Kallu bhaiya (the local organizer), did a speech where he recalled his uncompromising support to Dalits in cases of conflicts. He warned the perpetrators of such acts that they would face retaliation by Chamar bandits of his acquaintance who were hiding in the ravines. At day break, the Mela was over. Several Dalit officers who took part in the Ravana Mela in subsequent years told me that they disapproved of associating Buddhism with a character of the Ramayana, which was not orthodox Ambedkarism. According to them, Dalits needed to get totally rid of Hindu traditions instead of linking Buddhism to Hindu folklore. Cheddi Lal Sathi, a former RPI politician in Uttar Pradesh, disliked the event which he found ‘vulgar.’ He said that, for their reputation, people like him (he was a lawyer in the High court) and others having responsibilities in the administration could not afford to be exposed in such a way. He mentioned that the police officers who had participated in the event had been scolded by the local intelligence department. However, the others were more positive about their taking part in the event, first because of the conversion to Buddhism, and second because of the need to remain connected with – and keep a degree of control on – the grassroots Dalit movement. Conclusion Thomas B. Hansen, in his study of the Shiv Sena, a regionalist and chauvinistic Hindu organization in Mumbai, characterizes plebeian politics in India as ‘politics of presence’ (Hansen 2004: 21) and ‘politics as permanent performance’ (Ibid.: 19). Hansen acknowledges the difficulty of coming to grips with the expressions of what Foucault called ‘plebness,’ but he also contests a tendency by the subaltern school series to overemphasize the opacity of plebeian public expressions. In a similar vein, this essay has tried to improve our understanding of the politics of the subaltern by going back to the history of Dalit processions. The theatrical processions have been seized historically by the lower class as a mean to contest their marginality. Thus, an elaborate political language of street politics has developed, in which urban space becomes imbued with metaphorical qualities of the more abstract notion of public space. This study has tried to make the point that this understanding remains deep-rooted in people’s mentalities. The unity found in past and present features of assertion of the deprived sections shows the intergenerational transmission of a repertoire. Invented at a time when these popular classes had no access to vote, the processions provided an expression to those deprived of representation. Although such popular arenas of participation

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tend to be depicted as autonomous, disconnected from institutional arenas, and therefore associated with ‘subaltern’ resistance to modernity, the studies on which I have relied and my own ethnographic evidence on the Dalit grassroots movement in the Kanpur region lead to different conclusions. As Gooptu’s study of the colonial cities shows, the poor often contested their exclusion and marginality in the urban order ‘in symbolic ways or through the assertion of some distinctive forms of identity and practice, which were historically derived, or newly constructed, or, usually, an amalgam of both’ (Gooptu 2001: 421). Even though degrees and pockets of autonomy do remain in such events, they nevertheless take place in an overwhelming context of institutionalization and politicization of social life. Therefore these public expressions of the subaltern need to be interpreted in relation to this context, and in view of the popular relation to the institutional realm. Rather than expressing the ‘authenticity’ of popular culture and its resistance to modernization, these theatrical assertions seem meaningful of the transformations of the popular culture in the context of politicization. As we have seen with the contemporary grassroots Dalit movement in the Kanpur region, the politics of public performance has remained a tool in the hands of local grassroots leaders, who use this legacy of street assertion to address the local authorities as being the authentic representatives of the people. The increasing number and importance of the Dalit processions in contemporary Uttar Pradesh can be explained by the new political power and aspirations of this deprived community. The establishment of the BSP as the province’s second largest party, the self-confidence of an empowered Dalit middle class, as well as the progress in education among the poor, can explain this rising political awareness and militancy. The reliance of the Dalit grassroots movement on street politics despite the BSP’s electoral successes, however, points to the discrepancies between democratic results and the prevalent dispossession and relative decline of the poor in the liberalization era. The economic gap between the urban middle class and the poor has become all the more abyssal and conspicuous. Just like in the colonial period when these processions were used by the poor to contest their marginalization, their contemporary use seems to be in reaction to this sense of decline. It is also interesting to note how the class differentiation affects the Dalit community itself and how this is being dealt with by the Dalit movement. The examples in Kanpur have shown that the celebrations of the Dalit festivals provide opportunities for contacts between the Dalit elite and the grassroots leaders, and that the former are formally asked to make public statements of their allegiance to their unprivileged community. The Ambedkarite ideology, with its high insistence on the moral responsibility of the Dalit elite towards those ‘left behind,’ provides resources and symbols to recall their ‘duties’ to the Dalit bureaucrats. In such ritualized events the grassroots leaders publicly acknowledge these elites as the leaders of the community but in counterpart they implicitly present the administrative

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power and resources at their disposal as the collective good of the community. The other interesting aspect of this solidarity is the link it sustains between the subaltern arenas of participation and the institutional public sphere. The ����������� public arenas that have developed at the margins of electoral politics,involving highly placed Dalit bureaucrats as well as poor people, show a particular combination of institutional lobbying accessible to the former and street pressure of the latter through regular processions and occasional protests. By merging the ‘subaltern’ and institutional realms of politics, such combined means have started to affect the nature of the Indian polity in a democratic manner. References Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (1990). ‘The Untouchables. Who Were They and How they Became Untouchables,’ in Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Vol. 7 (Bombay, Governement of Maharashtra): 229–382. Bellwinkel-Schempp, Maren (2002). ‘Kabirpanthis in Kanpur: From Sampradaya to Dalit Ideology,’ in Monika Horstmann (ed.), Images of Kabir (New Delhi, Manohar): 215–232. Cruise O’Brien, Donal B. (2003). Symbolic Confrontations. Muslims Imagining the State in Africa (London, Hurst). Freitag, Sandria B. (1989). Collective Action and Community. Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley, University of California Press). Gooptu, Nandini (1997). ‘The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twentieth Century Uttar Pradesh,’ Modern Asian Studies, 31 (4): 879–918. –– (2001). The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Gupta, S. K. (1985). The Scheduled Castes in Modern Indian Politics. Their Emergence as a Political Power (New Delhi, Munshi Ram Manohar Lal Publishers). Hansen, Thomas B. (2004). ‘The Politics of Permanent Performance. The Production of Authority in the Locality,’ in John Zavos et al. (eds.), Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India (New Delhi, Oxford University Press): 19–36. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (1983). The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Jaffrelot, Christophe (2005). Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (New Delhi, Permanent Black). Jaoul, Nicolas (2006a) (forthcoming). ‘Learning the Use of Symbolic Means. Dalits, Ambedkar Statues, and the State in Uttar Pradesh,’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40 (2).

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–– (2006b) (forthcoming). ‘Dalit Empowerment, ‘Non Political’ Ambedkarites and the BSP: A Division of Political Labour?,’ in Sudha Pai (ed.), UP in the 1990s and Beyond: Issues and Challenges (New Delhi). Jigyasu, C. P. (Undated). Shri 108 Swami Achhutanand Harihar (Lucknow). Joshi, Chitra (2003). Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories (New Delhi, Permanent Black). Lynch, Owen M. (1981). ‘Rioting as Rational Action. An Interpretation of the April 1978 Riots in Agra,’ Economic and Political Weekly, 16 (48): 1951–56. Lochtefeld, James G. (2004) ‘The construction of the Kumbha Mela’, South Asian Popular Culture, 2 (2): 103–125. Lynch, Owen (2002). ‘Ambedkar Jayanti: Dalit reritualization in Agra,’ The Eastern Anthropologist, 55 (2–3): 115– 32. Molund, Stephen (1988). First We Are People... The Koris of Kanpur Between Caste and Class (Stockholm University, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology). Murugkar, Lata (1991). Dalit Panther Movement in Maharashtra: A Sociological Appraisal (Bombay, Popular Prakashan). Naicker, E.V.R. ‘Periyar’ (1959). Ramayana: A True Reading (Madras, Rationalist Publications). Pai, Sudha (2002). Dalit Assertion and The Unfinished Democratic Revolution: The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh (New Delhi, Sage Publications). Notes

1 ‘��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� All procession sponsors wanted to go through the central chauk (market) and down the main street. Use of the main thoroughfare ensured the maximum audience, always an important consideration for the public exercises of religion���������������������� ’��������������������� (Freitag 1989: 134). 2 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The Arya Samaj was the main Hindu reformist organization with an upper-caste base. It advocated the assimilation of Dalits within the Shudra castes after a ceremony of ‘purification’ (huddhi) that was supposed to remove the so-called pollution of the lower castes. The shuddhi movement of purifications became important in the 1910s in the United Provinces and the Punjab for the political sake of outnumbering the Muslims. 3 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� I have no evidence whether the Dalit procession went to the Ganga for bathing or not, despite the fact that it has been established that they rejected such Brahminical rituals of purification with Ganga water. Whether the ‘original Hindus’ did it or not at this particular occasion, their participation at the Mela was a symbolic act of ‘reconquest’ of the holy river banks of Prayag, considered by the orthodox Hindus as a sacred place. Ambiguity cannot be ruled out in the very participation in such a contest for status and power by the different Hindu sects. Even if it had been the case, ‘Sanskritization,’ i.e. adoption of upper caste norms and practises by the lower castes, which was actually promoted by the Hindu reformist organizations as a way to enlarge and homogenize the Hindu community, does not seem to correspond

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to the militant Untouchables’ motivation, which was designed as provocative and contentious. It would be more adequate to note, with Chitra Joshi, that the imitation was more a question of practice than ideology: ��������������������������������������� ‘�������������������������������������� even in rebelling against upper-caste norms, lower-caste organizations appropriated upper-caste rituals and practices��������� ’ (Joshi 2003: 253). 4 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ‘Harijan’ was the new name popularized by Gandhi for ‘Untouchables’. It means ‘people of God’ and has been rejected by the Dalit leaders as condescending and demeaning. It remained the common name of ‘Untouchables’ after independence but has today been replaced by ‘Dalit’, which connotes not only oppression but also militancy and social pride. 5 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� For an analysis of the Ambedkar processions in Agra and a discussion of their floats, see Lynch (2002). 6 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Dhaniram Panther formed his own Dalit Panther organization in Kanpur after refusing the dissolution of the national organization in 1989. 7 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Blom-Hansen, studying the formation of local Shiv Sena leadership in Mumbai, notes ‘���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� that visibility means everything – that a cause may be enunciated, a protest be staged, and an action performed in order to provide a stage whereupon an emerging leader or ambitious man can make himself available as a focus of attention��������������� ’�������������� (Blom-Hansen 2004: 22). 8 Indian Penal code: http://nrcw.nic.in/shared/sublinkimages/59.pdf (see p. 77). 9 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The Manusmrti is a set of Brahminical rules dating from the 2nd century A.D. enunciating the segregation of the low castes. 10 ����������������������������������������������������� Ambedkar’s affectionate title, meaning ‘grandfather.’ 11 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Since the first Ambedkar Jayanti of 1957, all commemorations of Ambedkar taking place in Kanpur have been organized in the name of the Bharatya Bauddh Mahasabha, a Buddhist socio-cultural outfit that had been created by Ambedkar to organize his Buddhist conversion. 12 See note 11. 13 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� These are the locations where mass meetings are held in Kanpur, which the speaker enumerates following a decreasing scale of prestige. The last one, Bhairon Ghat, is however not a place for public meetings but a cremation site on the Ganges. It is a comic allusion to the Untouchables’ association with death and their confinement to the realm of the impure in Hindu beliefs. 14 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Ambedkar inadvertently made this possible by chosing the day of Dassehra for his conversion. Even though Ambedkar explicitly rejected the linkage of Hindu traditions to Buddhism, his choice of converting on Dassehra, which is the culmination of the Hindu festival of Diwali, was deliberate. Ambedkar thus wished the replacement of the Hindu festival. 15 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Ambedkar explained untouchability as the outcome of the Brahminical reaction against the Buddhist empire. Those who refused to surrender were segregated outside the villages and treated as ‘Untouchables’ (Ambedkar 1990). 16 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� A local wrestling game with choreographic qualities, played with long bamboo sticks, and an arbiter chanting to the sound of drums.

10 STATE POWER, POLITICAL THEATRE AND REINVENTION OF THE PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN HONG KONG The March on 1 July 2003 Agnes Shuk-mei Ku

This chapter aims to study the interaction among state power, the pro-democracy movement and political theatre in post-handover Hong Kong. Most generally, the idea of performance bespeaks a distinctive understanding of political action as staged or dramaturgical practices involving an appeal to the audience (Alexander 2003; Turner 1974). Political theatre delineates a form of performance that, in contradistinction to ritual, gives greater play to the creative powers of actors or scriptwriters (Esherick & Wasserstrom 1992), though it may be used either to subvert or to buttress power relationships. It produces a creative moment, yet the effects are contingent upon its interplay with other institutional, political and symbolic forces. Hong Kong presents a very interesting case of changing state-civil society relations that involve different levels of performative politics within and above the local state. From the perspective of theatre politics, the notion of multiple audiences well sensitizes us to the question of multiple political/performative rationalities in Hong Kong in the nexus of local, national and international relations. Historically, ideological cleavages had characterized the relationship between liberal-capitalist Hong Kong (a British colony) and socialist China. Since the 1980s, Hong Kong had entered into a conflict-ridden process of political negotiation and transition toward the handover in 1997. On 1 July 1997, Hong Kong was returned to China, and a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government was set up to mark the beginning of a new regime under the

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‘one country, two systems’ principle. This means that the local government shall be granted political autonomy over its internal matters while being subject to the final jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty. Whilst a domestic issue in principle, the question about Hong Kong’s political autonomy has also come under vigilant international attention. This further strengthens the local anchor for resistance against any possible ‘undue’ interference from Beijing. After the handover, the whole question of legitimacy has become very delicate. Tensions are created between two kinds of political/performative rationality: one that is oriented to the local community and the other to the national state. The SAR government, under the leadership of a chief executive preordained by Beijing, is ensnared in a position wherein it constantly looks toward Beijing for patronage from above while being increasingly challenged by civil society from below over the issues of rights, democracy, autonomy and the rule of law. The conflicts over the national security legislation in 2003 provide a most illuminating example. In the event, the SAR government presented a strong theatre of state power, as most distinctly dramatized in the style of power of the security chief. Presumably, it would make much political sense for the government to present a clear patriotic position on this issue to Beijing, given that the latter might be playing the role as a puppet-master over the former. The government was backed up by the pro-Beijing groups and the conservative elites. However, for the local community at large, the issue of civic freedom versus political control was much at stake while the performance of state power became too provocative and showed much dissonance with local sentiments. The discrepancy bespoke an uneasy tension between the two kinds of political/performative rationality, which reflected a clash of values – authoritarian elitism, statist patriotism, and liberal democracy – enmeshed in the process of democratic development. On 1 July 2003, state-society conflicts finally reached a boiling point when an alleged 500,000 people joined in a march against the SAR government. It marked the largest demonstration since 1989. The rallying appeal by the movement organizer was opposition against the legislation of national security, with a subsidiary theme of democracy, whilst people also brought in other diverse agendas of their own. Although the march was planned some time earlier, partly as a strategic move to press for the agenda of democratic elections in the coming year,1 the sizeable turnout as well as the orderly fashion of the procession achieved an unanticipated effect of political spectacle. The event presented a most powerful theatre of resistance which, through an emergent process of unfolding, became capable of generating new meanings, mobilizing audiences into participants and reshaping politics. In this chapter, taking the event as a case study, we venture to show the contingent interplay among the diverse theatrical and performative moments of power and mobilization by the state and civil society in the process of democratic struggle. We argue that the impetus for the mass mobilization on 1 July 2003 came more immediately, and negatively, from the SAR government’s

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 197 performance of power rather than from the pro-democracy movement itself; yet the event put in place an expansive and participatory theatre of resistance that opened up the space for a reinvention of the movement. The movement, thus revived and empowered, in turn changed the political landscape regarding the relationships among Beijing, the SAR government and the local civil society. Inventing a Tradition of Pro-Democracy Struggle The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, predicated upon a pre-existing network of social activism in the previous decades, emerged in the context of the ‘1997’ issue in the early 1980s. During the 1980s, the movement was only able to appeal to a small group of liberal-minded, middle-class people and was never very successful at mass mobilizations. Still, despite limited appeal, it helped invent a tradition of democratic struggle through a repertoire of aims, tactics, slogans, iconic figures, scripts, roles and ceremonial occasions. In retrospect, all these served to be a source of symbolic capital for the movement to perpetuate itself. Most notably, the rallies at the Ko Shan Theatre2 in 1984 and 1986, organized in response to the government’s reviews on political reform, laid two of the founding events of the movement. In 1989, the thunderous Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing caused more than one million Hong Kong people to take to the street in support of the Chinese pro-democracy movement, which produced remarkable effects in local politics in favour of the democrats. Nevertheless, the effects of the demonstrations on the local pro-democracy movement itself remained quite limited. Moreover, given that the development of political reform had been circumscribed by the Basic Law,3 the democratic agenda would seem to become quite out of the question. Democrats tried to raise the agenda of political reform but their efforts were defeated. Outside the government, the movement appeared to lose steam further in the absence of a ‘threatening other’ under the restrained performance of the Chinese government. It was not until 2003 when another expansive theatre of resistance was produced that the movement came to rejuvenate and reinvent itself with new possibilities. What put into place this spectacular theatre of resistance? As we shall see below, amidst a declining pro-democracy movement, the strongest impetus came instead from what the people perceived as a rather inapt and over-acted performance of state power by the local government. The Theatre of State Power after the Handover After the handover, it was the authoritarian, unskilful and provocative performances of power by the Tung administration in numerous political blunders and fiascos that ironically helped open up the question of democratic reform in the public sphere again. In the first few years after the handover, the Chinese government for the most part managed to present a restrained performance of power and consigned itself to the back stage. It left to the local government to act as the

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agent of political authoritarianism on the front stage who nonetheless performed with much less deftness. It reflected a mode of political/performative rationality that was shaped by the changing political culture and climate. Political power is institutionally defined as much as contingent on the performances of power by the state actors in particular contexts or events. In Hong Kong, in the past, senior officials under the colonial government were adept at performing the institutionalised ‘bureaucratic’ ritual. That is, they withheld from showing their own personalities and instead kept repeating rhetoric in the guise of political neutrality and administrative rationality. The bureaucratic performance might not satisfy much, but neither would it provoke too quickly. Esherick and Wasserstrom (1992), drawing on Turner, point out that careful adherence to a prescribed format will ensure the efficacy of a ritual performance. Under the SAR regime, the Secretary for Security Regina Ip nonetheless departed from the conventional bureaucratic script and made herself a provocative political figure in a strong theatre of state power. On the government’s side, the security chief stood at the forefront to act out the role of a victorious defender of law and order. Her performance of power embodied a mixed set of old and new values in changing times: elitism, bureaucratism, quasi-public accountability and hard-line patriotism. As a member of a small privileged select group of administrative officers under the colonial regime by training, she carried an ethos of a loyal bureaucrat with an elitist flair. Yet, in a changing political climate, government officials and ministers were increasingly required to make themselves answerable to the public. The scenario was further complicated by a political system wherein the chief executive was ultimately accountable to the Chinese government. In the SAR regime, while some of the officials were clinging onto the old cast and others groping towards their role, the security chief, with her strong personality, changed the conventional script into an act of political show. As she herself put it, ‘I think I would like to be remembered as somebody who was not afraid to speak out, even if that might affect my popularity’ (South China Morning Post [SCMP], 17 July 2003). It is apparent that she knowingly presented a performance that could cost her much popularity with the local community. Prior to the national security question, the security chief already showed her assertive style of power, which raised questions about a proper form of performing the democratic norm (Ku 2004). The government continued to perform its power in an increasingly high-handed manner until the controversy over Article 23 of the Basic Law sparked off a new wave of tensions and conflicts over the issue of civil rights in a much more intense way and on a much wider scope, both locally and internationally. The issue of national security has been very sensitive in Hong Kong all along. For Beijing, it is an indisputable matter about nationalism and sovereignty. Yet for the local democrats, depending on the details, the legislation could carry the danger of infringing upon the civil rights of the

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 199 people. The SAR government adopted a wait-and-see attitude in the first few years of Tung Chee-hwa’s leaderhsip. On 24 September 2002, it finally released a consultation document on the question, or what was referred as Article 23 of the Basic Law. During the three-month consultation period, the government launched a series of intensive public relations initiatives persuading the public of the need for such legislation. However, to the pro-rights groups, the consultation launched by the government was just a fake show. The security chief as well as other officials displayed an uncompromising determination to complete the legislative process in July 2003. Its refusal to concede to the strong public demand for publishing a white paper on the details of the proposed law underscored a tinge of resolute authoritarianism that undermined the role of civil society in the political process. The idea of fake show was in fact not a novel claim unique about the SAR regime; previous governments under the colonial regime were also suspected of much political manipulation. Yet, the security chief increasingly cast herself as an unyielding and arrogant bureaucrat who finally turned the consultation into a theatre of anti-consultation. A lack of sincerity was shown in a series of performances, especially with the security chief ’s dismissive remarks about the ordinary citizens. It was the symbolic effect of her words and her styles, in the context of the total verbal and non-verbal performance, which made the impact in the wider public sphere. Most remarkably, immediately following the release of the document, the security chief riled the public in a radio programme by saying that taxi drivers, housewives, McDonald’s workers and students would not understand nor care about the provisions in the national security law. Despite criticisms, she remained unapologetic for her vocal style and refused the public demands for a white bill point blank and with derision. She kept a high public profile of herself in public occasions. She attended a number of students’ forums in several universities where she made provocative speeches and engaged in fierce debates with the students. Her remarks could arouse jeers from the audience. In some occasions, she made ornate references to Chinese history and spoke highly of the Chinese communist revolution. All these self-styled theatrical presentations by the security chief could be evidence of her intended dramaturgical appeal toward Beijing. Such performance, stunning as it might be, nonetheless failed to strike resonance with the local public. For many Hong Kong people, the security chief personified a staunch, arrogant, authoritarian and yet outspoken bureaucrat who became a popular object of political caricature: she had a stiff look and a callous style; her facial expressions could show a tinge of contempt and smugness; her tone was hard, her words were intimidating, and her stance was never accommodating. Apart from the security chief, insensitive remarks from the Justice Secretary Elsie Leung added to the symbolic effect of a strong state.4 As if all these were not enough, supporters from the pro-Beijing groups also joined in the show. For

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instance, legislator Leung Fu-wah made slanderous remarks about the outspoken bishop, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, of the Hong Kong Catholic Church. He ridiculed the latter as a ‘pathological saint’ in strenuously opposing Article 23. All these remarks from the senior government officials and their allies could backfire, as Szeto Wah from the pro-rights camp said in an ironic overtone: ‘We should thank (Secretary for Security) Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and (legislator) Leung Fuwah, because their slanders towards the anti-Article 23 lobby have apparently angered so many people’ (SCMP, 16 December 2002). Street Theatre as Crystallizing Moments of Civil Society After the handover, protests of various kinds were already on the rise ranging from livelihood to political and constitutional issues. The government nonetheless showed itself to be too adamant to respond to public sentiments, which antagonized the people more and more. Prior to the extraordinary mobilizations in the summer of 2003, a resistance movement against the national security legislation was already gathering strength during the three-month consultation period in 2002. It started with some disruptive scenes to parody state power and then developed into an enlarged theatre with a single agenda of opposing the legislation in December 2002. Then on 1 July 2003, the people subverted the official holiday and turned it into a truly expansive and participatory theatre of resistance that made itself a powerful political spectacle. As we shall see below, the resistance did not start as a movement for democracy but a crusade against un-freedom and injustice. Yet when it came to the momentous mobilizations in July 2003, a script of ‘people power’ was evoked which in turn reinvented the pro-democracy cause. Creating Disruptive Scenes During the consultation period, journalists, religious organizations, university students, academics, lawyers, artists, librarians, the democrats, human rights concern groups and other associations in civil society were putting together a common script of civic struggle for freedom vis-à-vis state power. A host of activities were organized, including protests, forums, seminars, workshops, press statements, signature campaigns, performing arts, and local as well as overseas petitions. Among the various sites, public forums organized by the students in the different universities, which made possible a face-to-face encounter with the security chief, provided a best occasion for political drama. On the one side, the security chief sparked jeers from the audience with her provocative persuasion about Chinese history, the Chinese communist revolution, Hilter and so on. She also made patronizing remarks about how the students’ criticisms were too sensational and irrational, and how it might take the students some time before they could see the good she did for the society. On the other side, students either challenged her head-on in debates, or made use of a ceremonial moment

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 201 to parody power with certain props. For example, on 11 November, the students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong successfully upstaged a small rite at the end of the forum. In inviting the security chief to come to the stage for a token of thanks, the students presented to her a flag grafted with the words of ‘Jing zhong bao guo’ (absolute loyalty and devotion to one’s country) as a mockery of her unquestioned loyalty to the state. This was a stroke of creative resistance by the students that caused the security chief much embarrassment on the spot. This kind of tactic nonetheless could not be used often, for it was its unexpectedness that made possible the embarrassing scene. The performance nonetheless remained confined, as small disruptive tactics to embarrass power rather than assert itself at the centre of a theatre. An Enlarging Theatre of Resistance: Crusades against Injustice and Un-freedom On 15 December, local resistance as well as international concern5 was escalating leading to tens of thousands of citizens marching in opposition to the proposed law. For the first time, it crystallized and extended the numerous confined stages of small-scale resistance into a single enlarged theatre in the public. The march against the legislation in December was initiated by the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) as the highlight of a series of campaign before the end of the consultation period on 24 December. The CHRF, which was formed in September 2002, is a broad coalition of more than 40 non-governmental groups including religious, labour, social welfare, gay and feminist organizations as well as legislators from the more radical segments. Two days before the march, political momentum was gathering for the event through hunger strikes, signature campaigns, catchy advertisements in the major press, and direct appeals to their members by such groups as the Professional Teachers’ Union. On the day of the march, the protesters put on stage a somewhat deified crusade under different symbols of sanctity and justice. An hour before the march to the Central Government Offices, a prayer meeting was held in Victoria Park among more than 2,500 Catholics and Christians, all wearing purple ribbons to signify hope. One most prominent symbol was a big wooden cross that was blessed by the Pope in Rome as a charm against evil and to boost the faith of followers. Another eye-catching prop was a 3-meter high paper puppet of Kwan Kung, a Chinese god of war and justice, paraded by a group of cultural workers during the march. The idea was to use it to beat a mock-devil black puppet that had the words ‘Article 23’ inscribed on its forehead. Other props of a not-so-religious nature were also used to convey similar messages such as a mimic guillotine and the sword of Damocles that Justice Secretary Elsie Leung Oi-sie earlier referred to, both being symbols of power that undercut freedom. As legislator Lee Cheuk-yan from the Confederation of Trade Unions and The Frontier said at the end of the march at the Central Government Offices: ‘Justice will triumph over evil, and the government can’t win with this evil law’ (SCMP, 16 December 2002).

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The turnout was more than ten times higher than originally expected making it the biggest demonstration after 1989. The participants came from all walks of life including, most strikingly, elderly citizens leaning on walking sticks, disabled people in wheel-chairs, babies in prams, and children carried on parents’ shoulders or walking on their own. As a legislator observed, ‘there was a determination to go through with it’ (Margaret Ng, SCMP, 18 December 2002). The rally was presented as a moral crusade against injustice, and new meanings also evolved out of it. It evoked a sense of unity and power among the people that touched their hearts; it bespoke a challenge to the myth of political apathy in the hegemonic narrative; it laid claim to the rationality of the people in the peaceful protest that aroused pride: Hong Kong’s famed apathy when it comes to matters political is often overplayed. Beneath its veneer of indifference, the SAR has an active civil society which dares to challenge the authorities … It was a peaceful, sensible affair … representing a broad cross-section of society (SCMP, editorial, 16 December 2002). As we shall see later, this emergent script of people resisting in unity and in peace re-appeared in the mass demonstration on 1 July with much more spectacular effects. Yet at this juncture, the intriguing issue is, just as civil society demonstrated an unusual capacity for organizing mass resistance, the government could securely count on the pro-China forces to mobilize a demonstration of support for the legislation to the same theatrical effect.6 On 17 December, just two days after the anti-legislation march, the pro-government groups formed into the Hong Kong Coalition for National Security Legislation, which included the Democratic Association for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), the Liberal Party, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, the 310,000-member Federation of Trade Unions, as well as more than 300 pro-Beijing groups. Then on 23 December, about 40,000 people rallied to back the national security law proposals in an outpouring of patriotism at Victoria Park. The debate over Article 23 was narrowed down to the single issue of love of one’s country. The key slogan ‘national security – everyone’s responsibility’ was echoed repeatedly throughout the 90-minute gathering. There were roars of approval as celebrities, war veteran and singers made patriotic speeches and broke out into nationalist songs on a video-walled stage covered in festive decorations and sound equipment. The counter-mobilization presented a theatrical moment from within civil society that served to buttress state power while countering the effects of the resistance movement. For a while, this created an ironic setback on the latter. Thus instead of conceding, state authoritarianism reinforced itself. For instance, the security chief kept repeated that the public were being misled, and that religious and political leaders were to blame for creating a ‘herd mentality’ among the

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 203 people (SCMP, 15–16 January 2003). Radio phone-in programmes nonetheless were flooded with sharp criticism of her comments. Then on 28 January 2003, the publication of Compendium of Submissions by the government generated a series of debates and protests against the distortion of public opinion. Despite strong opposing voices, the government was determined to table the proposals to the Legislative Council in February and to finish the legislation in July. The government made some token concessions but left the core issues unchanged. In June, the government made two more concessions ahead of the mass rally scheduled for 1 July, but such efforts made no avail.7 Subverting the Official Commemoration on 1 July The resistance movement could have lost steam with these setbacks and countermobilizations, but on the contrary, it was further emboldened into a 500,000strong protest under the rallying appeal of opposition against Article 23 on 1 July 2003. As it unfolded, the significance of the event nonetheless went beyond the issue of Article 23.8 To begin with, the date of 1 July carries symbolic significance broader than the scope of any specific issues. It commemorates the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, or the birth of the HKSAR. The government makes it a public holiday and officiates an annual handover celebration in the Convention and Exhibition Centre in the presence of top political leaders from Beijing, senior local officials, and socio-economic elites from society. In 2003, people nevertheless subverted the political meaning of the holiday and turned the occasion into a people’s theatre by organizing protests and demonstrations on the day designed to honour the handover. As we shall see below, the mass demonstration on the first of July, as well as the subsequent mobilizations, at once put into place a political theatre encapsulated in a self-reinventing narrative about the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Through theatre, people were enacting a performance of participation in three senses: participation versus institutional power, participation versus apathy, and participation with diverse agendas in civil society. The people were not only performers of a script but agents acting in their own political stories. Performing ‘People Power’: The Stage, the Props and the Theatre The mass demonstration on 1 July was also organized by CHRF. CHRF consists in a loose and decentralized structure of coalition without strong leadership. In the march, it played the role as organizer rather than leader. The absence of clear leadership from a single centre underscored the genuinely participatory character of the theatre of resistance within a pluralistic civil society. Under the broad theme of opposition against Article 23 as well as a subsidiary theme of power to the people, participants wrote their own scripts with varied banners and slogans. No centralized symbol in the form of a statue or monument was erected at a specific location. The demonstration nonetheless created a monumental moment

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of solidarity-in-resistance among the people through the setting, the props, the slogans, and the action. First and foremost, the people shared a common theatre in a spirit of solidarity and empowerment in anticipation of and through the march. As the day of the march drew near, with a government that was insensitive to public opinion, an implicit idea that ‘size is power’ seemed to be circulating in society. Toward the end of June, numerous groups called on the public to join the march through radio phone-in programs, the press, and the internet. An unusual sense of solidarity was in the making, and the projected size of the demonstration seemed to be growing day by day. Even the government and the pro-Beijing groups could sense the immensity of the mobilization, but offensive comments from them further triggered public sentiments. The security chief said that people taking part in the huge 1 July rally would do so ‘as a kind of activity because it’s a holiday.’ The chair of the DAB remarked that even if there were 100,000 or even 200,000 people, the legislation would go ahead. He added that the people were misled and the best solution was to pass the legislation and then prove to the people that they could still enjoy freedom under the law. With such remarks, a sentiment seemed to be shared in the public that if the number exceeded 100,000 or 200,000, the power of the people could no longer be under-estimated. That is, size made power. Among the lawmakers, Lee Cheuk-yan moved a motion calling for all-community participation in the march: ‘The July 1 protest is the ultimate battle between the community and the unrighteous government. You can make a difference. Let’s take to the street and make history’ (SCMP, 26 June 2003). Although the motion was scuttled by 31 votes to 19 under a united front of the Liberal Party, the DAB and independents, outside the legislature, direct appeals to the public came in from all directions. For example, newspaper headlines read some highly emotive and rousing statements such as ‘Hong Kong people come united against Article 23. History will be made tomorrow’ (Apple Daily, 30 June 2003). The demonstration was planned as a march from the Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to the Central Government Offices in Central. In practical terms, the Park is the largest in Hong Kong and is often picked as a site for mass mobilizations and big shows. A distance of a two-hour walk to the Central Government Offices makes it a perfect starting point for a march against the government. Symbolically, the Park bears a distinct mark as a public space of the people. It is a spacious open park with a long history in the community; it is located in the hub of the city that is accessible to many; and it has been frequented by many people for all kinds of activities ranging from leisurely strolls to fiery speeches and debates in forums and rallies. On the day of the demonstration, the heat, the hours of waiting, and the sheer scale all contributed to a collective experience of catharsis in a spirit of endurance as well as power. Probably as a tactic to make the size of the demonstration

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 205 look small on official record, the police announced that they would only count the number of participants appearing at the Victoria Park. The people could have, as usual, joined the march at any spot on the way, but they circumvented the trick of the police by showing solidarity in resistance – all the people kept flowing into the Park from all directions around the start time at 3pm. No one had anticipated such a big turnout. The police imposed a tidal flow control to manage the crowd, on the grounds that the government compound could only accommodate up to 5,000 people at any one time. It was a hot summer day, and the people braved the heat under the scorching sun to vent their anger against the government. Many people had to endure hours waiting in sweltering heat in the Victoria Park while many more kept pouring in. In waiting and in pouring in, the people at once showed their solidarity and power, first through the patient endurance over the spatial confinement and then through the transgression: the police were finally forced to open more thoroughfares for the protest as tens of thousands of people were still waiting to move out of the park late in the afternoon. It took more than 4 hours after the rally’s 3pm kick-off to clear the starting point of all protesters. The streets were immediately turned into a stage when the march was on. The people, dressed mostly in black, captured the public imagination as the most powerful piece of theatre of the people. Blackness, a colour designated by CHRF, symbolized strong feelings of rage and desolation over the poor performance of the government in the past six years. At the same time, it connoted the meanings

Figure 4: The march on 1 July 2003 (Photograph by Civil Human Rights Front with permission.)

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of will, determination and resistance. The people together filled five kilometres of the six-lane highway between Central and Fortress Hill for six hours. The march, as repeatedly shown in the mass media, became the most spectacular icon in and of the event. The people looked upon themselves as agents who collectively made history through the march: This is definitely an historic moment, as it is the first time Hong Kong people have fought for their freedom and rights. It is a day to be proud of (Tsoi Yiucheong of CHRF, SCMP, 2 July 2003). The people of Hong Kong made history on Tuesday by showing they were willing to march for what they believe in and for demanding a future for their children. Many of the marchers took their families, including babies. They wanted to give their children a lesson in civic responsibility as they asserted the values that made Hong Kong what it is (S. Tsang, SCMP, 5 July 2003). Within the wider community, the event evoked a tremendous sense of pride, hope and solidarity about the participation, the self-control as well as the struggle, which was history-making in itself regardless of the political outcome. With this new understanding, the hegemonic narrative of political apathy was being powerfully undermined under the new script of people power. The impact of empowerment, as we shall discuss later, could be seen most markedly in the subsequent mass mobilizations within civil society. Second, as far as the stage props were concerned, the most prominent rallying or unifying symbols appeared to lie in the political leaders who embodied impotence, authoritarianism, and arrogance. Among the protesters, medical professionals, lawyers, religious groups, journalists, artists, academics, teachers, university and secondary school students, workers, women’s groups, homosexual groups, civil servants, political groups and individual citizens held a variety of banners about Article 23, SARS, workers’ livelihood issues, women’s issues, sexual equality and so on. The people, whilst carrying diverse agendas, collectively showed their anger at what they perceived to be an inept government that had presided over a six-year decline of their fortunes since 1997. Puppets and cartoons bearing the images of Tung Chee-hwa and Regina Ip were a common sight; banners carrying calls for the Chief Executive to step down were waved: ‘We’ve had enough. Step down, please’ (The Frontier). In a most eye-catching way, the popular newspaper Apple Daily provided a ready prop for many people with its cover and inside pages posting such words (as well as a big picture of the Chief Executive slapped with a cake on his face): ‘Article 23 doing harm to Hong Kong + 6 years of miserable days = We don’t want Tung Chee-hwa.’ People were shouting slogans such as ‘Oppose Article 23, power to the people,’ ‘Down with

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 207 Tung Chee-hwa,’ ‘Down with Ip Lau Suk-yee,’ ‘We march for freedom, not for fun.’ Along the route, marchers were greeted by passengers in buses and trams holding up the page from Apple Daily. The occasion became a genuinely participatory political theatre able to stir up mass emotions. Collectively, the people demonstrated power through their action, and they parodied the government’s power with their props and slogans. Thus empowered, the demonstration made itself more than a one-off event. At the end of the march, a sense of perseverance of the resistance was conveyed as CHRF called on the people to protest outside the Legislative Council building on 9 July when the government tabled the legislation for second reading (and probably for the third and final reading as well). Channelling the Impact on and through Institutional Politics The mass demonstration created a looming political crisis that instantly held the legitimacy of the government in suspense. However, for days, the government made no official response and appeared to be too impotent to govern. While the demonstration was very successful as an expansive and participatory theatre of people power, its political effects in fact were contingent upon the interplay among the effect of the spectacle, institutional politics and further mobilizations. On 2 July, the pro-democracy legislators swiftly seized the opportunity to table the political agenda of a delay in the legislation on national security as well as a review on democratic development. They issued a joint statement to the Chief Executive, and called for an unscheduled debate in the Legco’s sitting (but were rejected by the Council chair). And they threatened to mobilize people to besiege the Legco building on 9 July when the bill was put to a final vote if their call was not accepted. Despite the escalating tensions, the SAR government as well as the pro-government DAB showed no signs of concession, and the effects of the mass demonstration remained uncertain. The most dramatic turn came when the chair of the Liberal Party (LP), James Tien, braved himself to turn the tide against the government within a short span of three days. All along, LP had been a business-oriented political party with a conservative and pragmatic political orientation. On many previous issues, it came close to the pro-government stance of DAB, although it did not carry the baggage of patriotism as heavily. Nevertheless, as a political party, it could ill afford to turn its back from the people when their message became so unmistakably clear. The voting intention of LP on an adjournment motion was most critical, for without their support the government would not muster enough votes in the Legco to push through the bill.9 On 4 July, after a brief visit to Beijing, Tien pronounced that LP favoured a delay in the legislation. Then swiftly on the next day, the Chief Executive made some major concessions on the bill10 but still rejected calls to delay the Legco vote. However, legislators from all factions were under enormous pressure from the community to defer enactment. Even the DAB chair finally made a public apology about his remarks of the people having been misled,

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and conceded to the idea of a legislative delay. These moves nonetheless proved to be too late to rescue the government from the crisis. On 6 July , in a stunning turnaround, Tien resigned from the Executive Council after his calls to delay the bill. It was under this crisis situation that the government finally decided on 7 July to delay the legislation with an unspecified timetable. The government finally appeared to go along with public opinion, but rather ironically, it had presented a performance of a weak and stubborn government being pushed to concede out of sheer practicality. Tien’s resignation helped to defuse the looming crisis over the demonstration, but it further crippled the government’s authority and undermined public confidence in the Tung team. Re-inventing the Pro-Democracy Movement The final concessions from the government, as mediated through party politics, signified a great victory of the people. The movement organizers and the democrats turned up the opportunity to organize further rallies to demand universal suffrage to elect their chief executive and legislature respectively in 2007 and 2008. In the process, the resistance movement was empowered and re-invented into a people’s movement for democracy. On the evening of 9 July, tens of thousands of people rallied around the Legco building in Central. The event was originally planned as a siege of the building on the day of the second reading of the bill, but it was instead turned into an occasion for a celebration of people power and a longer-term struggle for freedom and democracy. This time, CHRF adopted the idea of ‘power to the people’ as the main appeal. It urged the people to be dressed in white, and provided yellow ribbons for the participants to be tied to their arms. It was not a holiday, and many of them came to join the rally after a long day of work. Regarding the choice of the colour of white, apart from practical considerations about convenience and temperature, it was also intended to convey a sense of idealism, brightness and hope. The occasion was a candle-lit vigil with a solemn mood, while people also waved torches and fluorescent light sticks. As compared to the march on 1 July, the occasion was more ritualistic and ceremonial in form with much less diversity or free play shown in the actions, agendas and slogans among the participants. Its effects were nonetheless theatrical which presented a strong and sustained effort to challenge the political order in the aftermath of the march of protest. The speakers called on the people to fight on despite the government’s concessions. In the rally, the participants shouted ‘Tung Chee-hwa step down! Tung Chee-hwa step down!’ In a declaration, the rally denounced the Article 23 legislation and vowed to block it until the chief executive and the legislature were democratically elected. ‘We have made history. Had we not had the voices of 500,000 people in the 1 July protest, the Article 23 legislation would have probably been tabled for a second reading and passed today,’ the declaration said. ‘Article 23 is only deferred temporarily. We have to carry on with our strong

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 209 dissenting voice against it.’ Legislator Emily Lau from The Frontier further called for Tung’s immediate resignation and the election of the next chief executive via one person, one vote. The issue was no longer simply pinned down on the national security legislation. In this light, this post-victory rally served a strategic function in evidently directing the movement to a higher goal of political democracy in the public stage. Thus in another step to push for more democracy, the organizers called on the people to join a public gathering on 13 July to call for universal suffrage in the election of the chief executive and the legislature. On 13 July, some 10–20,000 people took to the streets in Central in a rally demanding the speedy introduction of full democracy for Hong Kong. This time the event was not organized by CHRF but the newly formed Democratic Development Network that was led by a few veterans who also launched the campaign for direct elections in 1988 more than ten years ago. The crowd gathered in scorching heat in Central for three hours of songs, dramas, and speeches calling for greater democracy. Following the appeal of the organizing group, some participants wore bright orange. As in the previous rallies, the thematic colour was an ad hoc selection rather than carry a well-established symbolic meaning solidly connected to the movement’s history. More intense than white, it signified the meanings of brightness, joy and hope which nonetheless evoked the ideas of victory and struggle in line with the changing mood. In an uplifting spirit, speakers demanded the government to come up with a reform timetable. Some called for Tung Chee-hwa to step down due to his failure to govern effectively, and some called for universal suffrage. In a most conscious attempt to reinvent the prodemocracy movement, the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, chairman of rally organiser, proclaimed that the rally was an attempt to renew the spirit of the rallies held in the Ko Shan Theatre in the 1980s. Nearing the end, the speakers called on the people to register themselves as voters and look to the hope of effecting changes via the upcoming elections for the legislature in September. In brief, the mass demonstration on 1 July presented a spectacular theatre of resistance by the people, which, in performing an emergent script of people power, provided a great symbolic capital for the pro-democracy movement to reinvent itself through subsequent mobilizations. The reinvention drew on a mixed set of elements including an invocation of past moments, invention of new meanings (as represented by the changing colours, the emerging themes, the new spectacle of people power and so on), creation of ceremonial occasions, and a renewed political agenda. Indeed the movement has come a long way from the small-scale campaigns in support of limited elections to the legislature in the 1980s to a more expansive theatre with an agenda of universal suffrage for both the chief executive and the legislature in 2007 today. In one sense, it is a much extended agenda. In another sense, the movement has inherited the agenda of representative democracy in a more or less analogous spirit over the past twenty years. Apparently, the course of democratic struggle in Hong Kong has taken neither a radical nor

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a revolutionary path; it treads instead a path of convoluted development in the interstices between institutional and extra-institutional politics. A Changing Political Landscape The three mass demonstrations in the month of July together put on stage an irresistible performance of people power that not only revived the democratic agenda of elections and rejuvenated civil society. They also re-defined the parameters of institutional politics and changed the political landscape. On the one hand, the demonstrations effectively undermined the legitimacy and credibility of the SAR government, which changed the relationships among the government, Beijing, and the Hong Kong people in very delicate ways. Most conspicuously, two top ministers were brought to their immediate downfall including the Secretary for Security Regina Ip (the other being the Financial Secretary Anthony Leung who was involved in an earlier scandal), whose resignations were announced by the Chief Executive on 16 July. It was the first time that senior officials, under the quasi-ministerial system, resigned from their political office as a result of public pressure. These dramatic outcomes exposed the fragilities of the current undemocratic system, which threw the Tung administration into a deep governing impasse. The Chief Executive himself might have come to his own immediate downfall but for the paramount back-up from the central state.11 Leaders from Beijing performed a series of shows to pledge their all-out support for Tung. These included a high-profile reception by both President Hu Jintao and Vice-President Zeng Qinghong in the Great Hall of People on 19 July, and the moves taken to bolster his position by promising new incentives to boost Hong Kong’s economy and defuse public discontent. Apparently, the central state was striving to counteract the destabilizing effects of the demonstrations by reinstating the hegemonic narrative of stability and prosperity. At that time, it did not look like that the Chief Executive himself would step down with the strong support from Beijing (though he finally did in March 2005, more than one and a half years later). Nor did it look hopeful that Beijing favoured the idea of universal suffrage in 2007. Once again, the local government, the central state, and the Hong Kong people would be in a tug of war over the issue of political reform. On the other hand, civil society was so empowered that new forces made their appearance via varied kinds of political participation. For instance, secondary school students came to organize themselves into a federation; new political stars arose announcing intentions to run in the upcoming Legco elections. In November, the District Board elections saw the emergence of some new political faces from among the pro-democracy camp who even beat down some of the long-serving DAB members.12 The pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory, and this caused DAB chair Tsang Yuk-sing, teary-eyed, to announce his decision to resign from party leadership in some emotive scenes. On 1 January 2004, riding on the success for the pro-democracy cause, CHRF

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Figure 5: The evening rally on 9 July 2003 (Photograph by Civil Human Rights Front with permission.)

organized another demonstration to call for universal suffrage. The event drew tens of thousands of people under the rallying slogans of ‘Power to the people; better livelihood.’ Apart from the issue of universal suffrage, a wide range of concerns were also voiced on social policy issues including elderly welfare, labour and women’s rights, and outsourcing of government services, making the occasion another truly participatory theatre with multiple agendas and voices by the people. From the organizer’s point of view, the year of 2004 was crucial because of the Legco elections in September, which provided an opportune occasion to maximize the effects of the mass demonstrations through institutional politics. People joining the New Year demonstration were not necessarily driven by the same goal, but in participating, they helped move the agenda forward. More specifically, the pro-democracy alliance (including activist groups, legislators and barristers) successfully moved the issue of electoral reform to the centre of the political debate. In January 2004, the Chief Executive promised to set up a taskforce to examine the question in his policy address. The Basic Law envisions the ultimate aim of electing all legislators and the chief executive by universal suffrage, and provides that the methods of electing both can be changed in 2007 ‘in the light of the actual situation.’ Even under the restraints of the political structure, the pro-democracy groups appeared to stand a chance of securing enough seats to initiate a legislative process of political reform through the upcoming Legislative Council elections in November 2004.13 The alliance began

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to launch a campaign urging people to register as voters as a strategy to push for changes from within the legislature, As Father Louis Ha of the Democratic Development Network said, ‘With enough votes in Legco, we can make change happen’ (SCMP, 27 January 2004). However, the issue of universal suffrage touched on the nerve of the central state in Beijing. After more than six years of restrained performance of power, it finally turned to a more confrontational stance to counteract the demand for political reform. In a high profile manner, it moved to undertake a constitutional interpretation of the Basic Law by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Republic of Congress to close off the possibility of universal suffrage in 2007. There then came the propagandistic talks of patriotism in a succession of high-level political shows by the senior officials from Beijing. Would Beijing’s strong presentation of state power strengthen or weaken the impact of the theatre of mass resistance that was once so spectacularly performed by the people? For many Hong Kong people, at stake were not only the issue of democracy but also the question of the rule of the law as well as political autonomy. Yet neither retreating from the pro-democracy cause nor challenging with the Chinese government head-on, the Hong Kong people would seem to be groping towards resilient but non-confrontational resistance. In 2004, tens of thousands of people continued to participate in the second ‘first of July’ mass demonstration under a broad and general appeal of ‘power to the people.’ It was less combative in spirit and carried less burning issues than the previous one, but it embodied far longer-term significance as a sustained movement for local democracy. Through the continued mass demonstrations, the pro-democracy movement has been recounted with new meanings and new political possibilities. In a far broader and more significant sense, not only is there a revival and reinvention of a pro-democracy movement as has been conventionally defined. What is emerging is also an expansive and participatory civil space opened up by the people in and through the collective actions. It is only in seeing the event in this light that we will be able to look more closely at the cross-purposes, the differences, the tensions, and the diverse voices within the movement (Ku 2005). While the causes of extrainstitutional politics require us to confront the limits of institutional politics in the modern state, whether authoritarian or democratic (Apter and Sawa 1984), the dramas of conflicts illuminate a range of possibilities and limitations in the repertoire of narratives, mobilizations and participation in civil society in the process of democratic struggle. References Alexander, Jeffrey (2003). ‘From the Depths of Despair: Performance, CounterPerformance, and ‘September 11th,’” working paper, The Center for Cultural

Reinvention of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 213 Sociology, Yale University. Apter, David E. and Nagayo Sawa(1984). Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press). Esherick, Joseph W. and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (1992). ‘Acting Out Democracy: Political Theatre in Modern China,’ in Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds.) Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (Boulder, Westview Press). Ku, Agnes S. (2004). ‘Negotiating the Space of Civil Autonomy in Hong Kong: Power, Discourses and Dramaturgical Representations,’ The China Quarterly, 179: 647–64. –– (2005). ‘Civil Society’s Dual Impetus: Mobilizations, Representations, and Contestations,’ (unpublished paper). Turner, Victor (1974). From Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, PAJ Publications). Notes 1 The elections for the legislature in 2004 would be of strategic significance, for the Basic Law initially provided that the methods of electing the legislators and the chief executive could be changed in 2007, which means the political system should be reviewed by the newly elected legislature. 2 The Theatre back in those times was a newly built half-open amphitheatre for cultural activities that could seat about 1,000 people. It was a more economical alternative to the City Hall in Central, and was of a size deemed to be more appropriate for the embryonic movement than a very large park. 3 The Basic Law formula maintains an executive-led government with a slowly evolving legislature to be dominated at least until 2007 through a majority of indirectly elected representatives. 4 On 17 October, in a luncheon talk for the senior media members, she said, ‘The knife has always been above your head.’ She was referring to provisions in the Official Secrets Ordinance that prohibits, among other things, the theft of protected information. 5 The international community joining the chorus of the pro-rights groups included the business communities (banks and chambers of commerce), civic associations (journalists’ alliance, teachers’ union, and advocacy groups), legal experts, and state institutions (the consulates from Britain, Australia and Canada, European Parliament, European Union and the US State Department). 6 On 17 December 2002, the leftist newspaper Wen Wei Po declared in an editorial that all pro-China forces must be mobilized to urge the masses to attend a counter-rally to show mainstream opinion was behind the legislation. 7 The amended legislation still contained provisions that afforded the authorities a means of proscribing local organizations affiliated to mainland bodies that had been banned under the laws on the mainland. 8 An anti-state impetus found its way to challenge the legitimacy of the SAR government in several ways. Amongst others, the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

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crisis in March and April of 2003 was a critical intervening factor that added fuel to public discontent against the government. 9 Under the split-voting mechanism, a majority must be achieved in each of constituency categories (the functional, the geographical, and the election committee constituency seats) before a motion can be achieved. This is a mechanism to ensure that the democrats cannot have their motions passed easily. Yet this time, in the face of the mass demonstration, lawmakers from the functional constituency category were mostly inclined to support a legislative delay. 10 The pro-rights groups had been concerned with several issues including the granting of government power to ban local groups whose mainland counterparts are outlawed for threatening national security; the granting of police powers to enter and search properties without court warrants; and the lack of a public-interest defence against the unlawful disclosure of official secrets. The government’s latest amendments involved the deletion of the first two provisions and the insertion of a public-interest defence mechanism, but the pro-rights groups still saw some potential gaps and ambiguities in the hastily proposed amendments. 11 The Chief Executive finally resigned in March 2005. 12 For example, in Wanchai, a group of five candidates aligned into a new group called Civic Act-Up with such news agendas as community health, women, and racial and ethnic minorities. They were all novices in electoral politics but three of the five won the elections. 13 Under Annex I of the Basic Law, any changes in the way the chief executive is selected have to receive two-thirds support of the legislature and the approval of both the chief executive and the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

11 Watching the Watchers The Spectacle of Civil Society in the Philippines Eva-Lotta E. Hedman

Through television cameras and newspapers, the whole world was watching. President Marcos could lie and cheat, but in the end he could not hide (Tom Brokaw, NBC Nightly News).1 Where else in the world, now or ever, have a people demonstrated such a courageous and universal commitment to democratic self-expression? ... Across the Philippines on election day, the lame, the halt, the hungry and even the dying joined the healthy and well-nourished in long queues that entailed waits for up to two or three hours. NAMFREL, the civic volunteer force dedicated to protecting the honesty of the vote, deployed fully half a million sentinels on the front lines against skulduggery, with moral authority as their only weapon and with threats, assaults, even murder as their wages... Such spirit, such a widespread personal stake in the national destiny, ought to be the destiny of all Asia and indeed the world. Put another way, never have so many owed so much to themselves (Asiaweek).2 These contemporary comments in the international media capture something of the drama surrounding the National Movement for Free Election (NAMFREL)’s campaign for ‘free and fair elections’ in the Philippines in 1986. Indeed, while recruited largely through hierarchically structured civic, professional and religious associations, those who joined in this election-watch campaign, as well as its precursors of 1953 and 1969, also responded to a movement discourse that envisioned participation as spontaneous voluntarism and imagined participants as national citizens. This chapter reveals the significance and role of movement

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discourse and spectacle in drawing individual participants into mobilization in the name of civil society.3 Reflective of dominant ideological formations associated with liberal democracy and the Catholic Church, movement discourse and spectacle hailed participants as national citizens with associated rights and responsibilities while also emphasizing a moral Christian duty to guard the sanctity of the ballot. Affixing proper place (that of nation) and role (that of citizen) to participants, these campaigns both symbolized and actualized a ritual passage from personal affiliations and obligations in the private sphere to citizenship in the national community. As a result of their celebrated collective nature and spontaneous spirit, moreover, these campaign performances signalled not merely public acceptance of, but also popular demand for, the institutionalized practices of – ‘free and fair’ – elections. By framing all questions of political representation and participation in terms of elections, their implementation, and their outcome, these campaigns interpellated Filipinos as individual voters and citizens while rendering alternative collective identities – such as those organized by social class and revolutionary struggle – invisible and illegitimate. Beyond proposing pragmatic preventive measures against fraud and violence in these specific elections, each campaign thus also presented a concerted (albeit not always successful) effort to reinforce the moral regulation of national citizenship and, by the same token, the contested hegemony of the dominant bloc in the Philippines. In examining the experiences and (self-) representations of participants in election-watch campaigns in the Philippines, this chapter sheds light on the (re)presentation of citizenship – both to the nation and beyond. Against assumptions of either rational choice or ‘false consciousness,’ the pages below show how the (re)production of ‘national citizens’ through these campaigns turned on the actual experience of participation in mobilization. Moreover, in contrast with largely descriptive accounts of ‘the people’ pouring out from among a multitude of otherwise seemingly self-contained secondary associations during moments of national euphoria, this chapter argues that the very realization of ‘civil society’ itself rested on the performative display of such participation. Interpellation and Recognition In the election-watch campaigns of 1953, 1969 and 1986, movement discourse recruited subjects – ‘volunteers of the nation’ – for these efforts by hailing them, not as indebted or dependent clients, but rather as free and autonomous citizens (Althusser 1994). The attractive power of these campaigns thus hinged on the construction of ‘civic’ identity and subjectivity through processes of interpellation and recognition. Surfacing during moments of acute crisis and threat to the hegemony of the dominant bloc in the Philippines, these campaigns not only summoned voters to participate in national elections but also, significantly, issued warnings against alternative subjectivities and struggles in ways that

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analyses informed by suppositions of strategic calculation fail to capture. Thus, such processes turned neither on social class nor on individual choice as much as on participants’ recognition of both the moral injustices and the moral duties highlighted by movement discourse and spectacle. By celebrating and, in a sense, popularizing constitutional democratic procedure (e.g. ‘free and fair elections’), this movement discourse served to focus attention and action on the discrepancy between the official doctrines of liberal democracy and the actual practices of electoral competition during these three conjunctures. The discourse of liberal democracy thus provided a language with which to understand – and to address – these crises of authority on its own terms, thus obscuring more deep-rooted questions of social inequality in the Philippines and rendering unspeakable alternative responses thereto. In their focus on the counting of equally weighted individual votes, these campaigns for ‘free and fair elections’ thus suspended the deep social inequalities and antagonisms underlying oligarchical democracy in the Philippines in favour of a fetishized electoralism. By holding up the abuses of power by Quirino and Marcos against the moral authority claimed for the people’s representatives under the Constitution, movement discourse drew on actual conditions during these crises while invoking a founding myth of liberal democracy. Moreover, this movement discourse linked individual citizen rights, as celebrated under liberal democracy, to corresponding duties to redress collectively – in civic solidarity – the widespread transgression of such rights during election campaigns. By connecting suffrage rights to civic duties to guard such freedoms, campaign discourse thus locked moral condemnations of unconstitutional political practice to social obligations of national citizenship. Movement representations also pointed beyond legal and institutional realms of citizenship rights and duties toward culturally embedded notions of national belonging and loyalty. That is, against mounting threats to ‘free and fair elections’ during the three critical conjunctures of the early 1950s, the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, movement discourse featured not only a range of pragmatic preventive measures against electoral fraud and violence, but an arena in which scores of volunteers could make displays of patriotic sacrifice and national citizenship in defence of democracy. By anchoring the rights and duties associated with proper political citizenship within the prides and prejudices of the imagined national community, these scripts thus summoned something akin to ‘constitutional patriotism’ as a panacea for the manifest maladies of oligarchical democracy in the Philippines (Habermas 1995: 264). For example, by invoking Jose Rizal, the ‘father of Filipino nationalism’ who was executed by the Spanish colonial regime in 1896, NAMFREL and the Citizens National Electoral Assembly (CNEA) made reference to the ultimate sacrifice demanded of national citizens and thus claimed a certain patriotic heroism for these campaigns. In 1953, at a campaign rally held in the Luneta, the

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main public park of Manila, one NAMFREL leader compared ‘the young Rizal with the newly inducted voters’ registered under NAMFREL’s auspices (Manila Times (MT), 11 November 1953). In 1986, an illustrated pamphlet used by NAMFREL co-ordinators during so-called ‘civic education’ seminars featured the unmistakable image of Rizal before a Spanish firing squad next to the following lines: My right to vote had a price It did not come cheaply It was paid for with the blood of my forefathers The payment was the sufferings, the tortures endured, the deaths Of countless Filipinos before me.4 Movement discourse also focused on the sanctity of elections and the Christian duty to vote. In 1969, for example, CNEA national chair Bishop Gaviola publicly proclaimed that ‘there will be pealing church bells an hour before voting starts on election day to remind citizens of the sanctity of the ballot’ (MT, 6 November 1969). In an appeal for more volunteers to join CNEA, moreover, Gaviola also emphasized ‘that it is the duty of every Christian to commit himself to safeguard the rights of citizens, especially the right of suffrage’ (Philippines Free Press (PFP), 8 November 1969).5 The following special prayer for voters also accompanied this election campaign: O Lord, let the light of your grace inflame our spirit, purify our hearts and guide our minds with wisdom. Make us embrace the ways of peace, truth and justice. Give us the courage to cast aside petty jealousies, foreswear harmful rivalries and disdain inordinate ambition (MT, 11 November 1969). In its avowed ‘effort of bringing Christ to the polls,’6 the NAMFREL campaign of 1986 likewise signalled a conversion of the national ballot from a political instrument into an Opus Dei (Work of God) of sorts and thus departed from common confirmations of the Constitutional provisions separating Church and State. By invoking a Christian duty to safeguard the suffrage, these campaigns thus symbolically circumvented the claims of partisan politics upon voters in favour of unmediated citizens’ obligations to an absolute moral authority. Against Uncivil Society From the NAMFREL campaign of 1953 to the CNEA/OQC (Operation Quick Count) effort in 1969 and the second NAMFREL of 1986, movement discourse not only signalled what should properly belong within the Philippine Republic but also, at least implicitly, what must remain safely kept without. Through ritual

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denunciation or domestication, these campaigns targeted not only the abuses of power and electoral anomalies perpetrated by incumbent presidents, but also, albeit often in more circumspect ways, the spectre of extra-electoral challenges to oligarchical democracy and the hegemony of the dominant bloc in the Philippines. Indeed, these mobilizational efforts in the name of civil society emerged in a peculiar dialectic with alternative movements for election boycott and other forms of extra-electoral collective action by a broad array of Left nationalist forces with links to underground Communist Party cells and armed guerrilla groups. In this regard, the election-monitoring campaigns of 1953, 1969 and 1986 attempted to articulate a – studiously implicit – response to a mobilized left claiming the nation for itself and thus threatening effective political disunion. While CNEA and the two NAMFRELs publicly and repeatedly targeted the abuses of public office and electoral procedures as the real enemies of the Filipino nation, they remained more circumspect in their position vis-à-vis the nationalist left in each case. Far from signalling a lack of concern for the boycott initiatives originating with the nationalist left in the early 1950s, late 1960s and early 1980s, however, the silent treatment accorded such efforts suggested the extent to which they constituted unspeakable challenges to the rule of law and, as such, had to be denied the recognition and legitimacy implied by direct appeal and due process. Whether publicly acknowledged or otherwise recognized, each of the boycott moves to emerge during the three post-war conjunctures reflected both a radical left critique of Philippine electoralism and a popular nationalist challenge to a more distinctly republican – or constitutional – patriotism safeguarded by these election-watch campaigns. In recurring caricatures of the country as a neo-colony and its leaders as puppets (or tuta, lapdog) of the United States, the radical nationalist discourse of such counter-hegemonic movements also took aim at the very claims to national sovereignty embodied in the representative institution of the Philippine state. In the case of the election boycotts of the early 1950s, for example, not only the Partido Komunista ng Pilinas (PKP) but ‘[m]any Huk leaders in the field commands and Recos urged boycott, too’ (Kerkvliet 1977: 237). The Huks – both in their original war-time formation as the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (People’s Resistance Army against the Japanese) and their post-1948 reincarnation as the Hukbong Magpagpalaya ng Bayan (People’s Liberation Army) – had mobilized quite explicitly against the political and social disunion endangering the nation which they claimed to represent. While the armed threat posed by the Huks and the PKP remained concentrated mostly in Central Luzon even at the height of their strength in the late 1940s, the appearance of ‘Huklandia’ in the popular imagination nevertheless signalled a deeper threat to the integrity of the national republic. It was against this challenge that NAMFREL’s promotion of ‘free and fair elections’ thus both reinvoked and reinvigorated claims to representation grounded in liberal democratic notions of citizenship rather than revolutionary class struggle.

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During the 1969 presidential election campaign, the loudest calls for boycott resounded from the very cradle of the radical nationalist mobilization in the 1960s – the University of the Philippines (UP). With its roots in the avowedly nationalist Students’ Cultural Association of UP (SCAUP) and with its campaigns of nationalist demonstrations (many of which marched on the US Embassy) in the mid-to-late 1960s, the Kabataang Makabayan (KM or Nationalist Youth) represented the most organized effort ever launched in the Philippines to mobilize Filipino youths and students under the banner of radical nationalism.7 Initially conceived as the youth arm of the old PKP but eventually emerging as the core of the new Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the Kabataang Makabayan inspired both a wave of student protests especially on Manila campuses and a broader Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN).8 Within the context of such mounting popular mobilization, the summons to election boycott in the late 1960s was framed in the language of an insurgent radical nationalism. Against ‘our countrymen’ the voters, a boycott editorial in the country’s foremost student paper, the Philippine Collegian, juxtaposed the conspicuous alien identity of ‘the hacenderos, the capitalists, [and] the foreign businessmen.’9 It was in this context that CNEA mobilized ‘in order to stimulate and insure a massive citizens’ participation’ in national elections (Republic of the Philippines 1971: 1–2). Finally, in the 1986 presidential contest, a highly mobilized mass movement against the ‘US–Marcos dictatorship’ saw the various front organizations of the National Democratic Front leadership extend an official endorsement of ‘the Party’s stand … that a boycott is the correct response of the people to an election that avails them nothing.’10 As the most critical and persistent opposition to the Martial Law regime, the CPP had organized a New People’s Army which expanded rapidly in the early 1980s, and, after nearly two decades of Struggle for National Democracy (Sison 1967), the Philippine Left could also mobilize an unparalleled mass base to march the streets in militant demonstrations against Marcos, the so-called ‘tuta’ or lapdog of American imperialism in the Philippines. Left-backed initiatives such as the Welgang Bayan (National Strike) campaign and the above-ground coalition BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or New Nationalist Alliance) further signalled the intensity of the radical nationalist claim to the Philippines of the mid-1980s. It was against the backdrop of this growing extra-electoral mass mobilization behind the Left, and a CPP-led boycott of elections, that NAMFREL sought to keep vigilant watch on behalf of ‘the good people’ of the Philippine nation, as suggested in its moniker Bantay ng Bayan (‘Guardian/Watchdog of the Nation’). In the Name of Civil Society Against the backdrop of these recurring – and growing – ‘threats from below’ and the evolution of a dominant bloc in the post-independence Philippines,

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the discourse of election-watch campaigns shifted in idiom and emphasis over time. In particular, these election-watch campaigns borrowed noticeably from military rituals in the early 1950s, technocratic practices in the late 1960s, and what has been referred to as linguistic nationalism in the mid-1980s in their successive appeals to patriotism during elections. In addition, each campaign also represented changing notions of citizen patriots, from the first NAMFREL’s veterans of armed combat, to CNEA/OQC’s men of specialist knowledge, and to the second NAMFREL’s volunteers of the nation in such ways as to suggest a dialectic of sorts with the kinds of counter-hegemonic challenges posed by peasant and communist guerrillas in the early 1950s, student radicals and urban poor folk in the late 1960s, and the broad ‘united front’ of armed guerrilla and above-ground sectoral organizations affiliated with the Communist Party of the Philippines in the mid-1980s. In the NAMFREL campaign of the early 1950s, for example, movement discourse reflected and reproduced both rituals of state and myths of nation in such a way as to suggest a notably militarized notion of patriotism. NAMFREL rallies featured a range of activities reminiscent of military rituals such as, for example, official pledges of allegiance to the flag, formal inductions of organizational coordinators as NAMFREL ‘officers,’ and ceremonious decorations of movement volunteers with NAMFREL ‘badges.’11 Images of a nation of patriotic voters seemed similarly filled with warlike inspirations but typically harked back to revolutionary struggles rather than the more recent – and, for many movement co-ordinators, lived – experience of the Pacific War. For instance, as NAMFREL spokesmen proudly proclaimed, the movement’s first ‘mass rally’ was held on the same day as one of the major battles of the Philippine Revolution against Spain in 1896: ‘NAMFREL chose 26 August for the mass rally because of its significance to the Filipino people, being the anniversary of the Cry of Balintawak’ (MT, 23 August 1951). By contrast, the CNEA-OQC election-watch effort of the late 1960s shifted from this militarized notion of patriotic citizens waging war on behalf of the ballot toward a more privatized patriotism that emphasized technocratic strategies for ‘national problem-solving’ (MT, 23 October 1969). While perhaps especially pronounced in the case of Operation Quick Count with its ‘tabulating teams’ (MT, 2 November 1969) and ‘motorized couriers’ (MT, 3 November 1969) both campaigns tended to fetishize scientific method and specialized technology rather than the epic battles and militarized rituals that characterized NAMFREL some 15 years earlier. In lieu of the guerrilla volunteers and trench warfare associated with NAMFREL’s campaign in 1953, for instance, the CNEA-OQC co-ordinated their ‘special deputies’ for purposes of ‘policing the polls’ (PFP, 8 November 1969). By signalling that cameras supplemented their watchers, these campaigns also secured the vigilant witnessing of patriotic voters within a discourse of science and technology. ‘CNEA members,’ it was declared, ‘will be toting cameras on

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Figure 6: Swearing-in ceremony of NAMFREL national co-ordinators in Manila in preparation for the 1951 senatorial elections (Ateneo de Manila University photo archives.)

Election Day, ready to take pictures of any foul move made by the candidates or their followers’ (PFP, 11 October 1969). The OQC’s celebration of televised election coverage and computerized voter tabulation, moreover, signified a similarly technocratic approach to exercising vigilant citizenship. This campaign thus conceived of an incorporated nation wherein ‘private businessmen and specialists’ managed efforts at ‘stimulating total civic action and personal involvement in a project of vital national importance with multiplier effects’ (MT, 23 October 1969). Perhaps the most concrete manifestation of this privatized and technocratic notion of patriotism, Act for the Country Today, Inc. (ACT), actually materialized as a formal incorporation of such businessmen and specialists. Movement discourse similarly framed invitations to join this privatized, incorporated nation in a distinctly managerial language of responsibility and punctuality, as suggested by the solicitation ‘Do you care enough for this country to join OQC’69 and ACT now? Tomorrow might be just a little too late’ (PFP, 8 November 1969). At the same time, this campaign also signalled an implicit ideological challenge, couched in the discourse of apolitical pragmatism and technological solutions, against the radicalization of campus politics, and thus sought to effect a certain ritual exclusion of students whose politicization posed a peculiarly powerful threat to the social reproduction of a dominant bloc in this young nation. Finally, the summons to patriotism by the much-celebrated NAMFREL of the mid-1980s resonated not so much with either military ritual or technocratic terminology as with what might be referred to as ‘linguistic’ nationalism, namely

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the appropriation of popular nationalism as signified by the unprecedented use of ‘Pilipino.’12 While perhaps anticipated by CNEA campaign calls for a ‘national bayanihan spirit’ (MT, 23 October 1969), NAMFREL’s Tagalog – or, as movement material would have it, ‘Pilipino’ – inflection nevertheless signalled a symbolic shift toward what might be termed a patriotism of persuasion. The NAMFREL slogan ‘Ako, Bantay ng Bayan’ for example, signified a Tagalog subject – ‘Ako’ (‘I’) – whose formation involved some recognition by movement supporters – Ako, Bantay ng Bayan – of their ‘Pilipino’ loyalty to the nation.13 Campaign discourse thus signalled a shift to linguistic nationalism so as to access and to claim a nation (bayan) contested by both the Marcos regime’s rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) and the Communist Party’s front organization Bayan (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan) (New Nationalist Alliance).14 While the appeals issued by the NAMFREL and CNEA shifted somewhat in idiom from 1953 to 1969 to 1986, such invocations consistently celebrated the voluntary submission required by national citizens and the reasoned contract of republican patriotism. As CNEA supporters urged in 1969: Vote because ... you should. You are a citizen. Vote wisely because ... you can. You are a Free Citizen. You have the right to choose and decide freely. And thereby direct the future of this nation. Vote and vote wisely!15 Viewed over time, the pitch of such campaign slogans reflected a shift from the brief injunctions reminiscent of military orders in the early 1950s’ NAMFREL, to the assertive bids to action characteristic of commercial advertising in the late 1960s’ CNEA, and to the prolix bilingual prose suggestive of popular protest poetry in the mid-1980s’ NAMFREL. Compared to the crisp commands sounded by the first NAMFREL – ‘Who does not has no right to criticize. Register and vote’ (MT, 5 October 1951) – CNEA slogans that similarly insisted on the necessity of electoral participation bore the distinctive trademarks of an advertisement campaign: We’re all voting – aren’t you? You cannot for any reason forfeit your constitutional right to vote and still expect good government. Whether you vote or not, someone will be elected. So, vote – and vote as you think right!16 A decade and a half later, moreover, NAMFREL phrased its instructions to vote – now explicitly admonishing rich merchants, farmers, housewives and students to exercise effective citizenship at the polls – in something akin to verse in both ‘Pilipino’ and English:

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Sa araw na iyon, kung ikaw ay isang mangangalakal, iniiwan mo ang iyong negosyo upang ikaw ay makaboto kung isa kang magsasaka, iniiwan o ang iyong bukid upang ikaw ay makaboto kung isa kang maybahay, inihahanda mo nang mas maaga ang inyong pagkain upang ikaw ay makaboto kung isa kang estudyante, ang mga libro’t papel mo’y isinasaisantabi upang ikaw ay makilahok sa mahalagang gawaing ito ng pagka-mamamayan: Ang pagboto (NAMFREL 1985: 2). On that day if you are a rich merchant, leave your business, so that you may vote; if you are a farmer, leave your field, so that you may vote; if you are a housewife, prepare your meals ahead of time, so that you may vote; if you are a student, lay aside your books and papers in order that you may participate in this important act of citizenship: The exercise of the right to vote (NAMFREL 1985a: 2). Spectacular Campaigns, Captivated Citizens Beyond the realm of movement discourse, NAMFREL and CNEA attracted volunteers and viewers through the staging of dramatic performances during the three election campaigns of 1953, 1969 and 1986. In some measure, the NAMFREL and CNEA efforts employed pragmatic techniques that ranged from house-to-house canvassing (for purposes of cleaning up padded voters lists and registering new voters) during the official campaign period, to voter assistance at polling precincts on election day, and parallel vote counts upon the closing of the polls. Beyond such initiatives, however, these campaigns revolved around the ritualized celebrations and visible displays of the sanctity of the ballot. In this vein, the campaigns featured not only special prayers for voters, but also other religious pronunciations suggestive of a peculiar consecration of the ballot by the leadership of the Catholic Church. Whether by means of pealing church bells,

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priestly invocation, prayer vigils, or, perhaps most spectacularly, the NAMFREL Marines brigades of women religious who, in their nuns’ habits led monitoring efforts at so-called election ‘hot spots’ in 1986, these campaigns ritualized the ascension of the national ballot to its proper place within a higher and unified order above the secular fray of electoral anomalies and abuses. The ascension of the ballot to a higher moral universe, the realm of the sacred, implied in these campaigns also served to recall the all-seeing eye of God, whose gaze of course provided the ultimate source of recognition and, thus, could not but suggest a powerful impetus for participation on the part of the faithful. While such symbolically charged rituals as, for example, candle-light vote vigils also served as a useful defence strategy against the high incidence of brownouts occurring in municipal halls around the country during the canvassing of cast votes, these dramatic performances were enacted with a larger audience – and a higher purpose – in mind. That is, beyond focusing attention on electionmonitoring efforts, these campaigns, with their dramatic displays and captivating accounts, helped access an audience for watching the watchers. The spectacle of civil society thus appeared as election-watch campaigns rendered visible these ‘national citizens movements.’ In this regard, the specular means of mass media negotiated both the geographic scope and the returned gaze of the audience, which, in turn, emerged in tandem with the very spectacle of Philippine election-watch campaigns. While each of these campaigns involved similar manifestations of spectacle in newspaper articles and advertisements, radio commercials and promotional pamphlets, their respective (re)presentations and audiences showed marked differences when compared across the three cases. To a significant extent, such variations reflected the changing form and expanding reach of media-relayed movement representations associated with larger developments in mass communications technology and density within and across Philippine national borders. In terms of those watching the watchers, the marked contrast between the first and the second NAMFREL, for example, reflected the spectacular distinctiveness presented by, on the one hand, the predominantly printed media reports on NAMFREL in the early 1950s and, on the other hand, the widespread television coverage of its successor in the mid-1980s. While local and national media remained in relatively limited circulation during each of these elections, the Philippines nevertheless experienced a significant growth in absolute terms in its newspaper-reading and television-watching population in the period from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s. Reflective of the country’s increasingly gridded mass communications infrastructure, Philippine election-watch campaigns saw a commensurate expansion in the media’s dissemination of movement symbolic representations over time. The spectacle of national citizens’ movements thus unfolded from something of an effort at self-definition by an emerging dominant bloc of social forces in the 1950s to

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assertive bids for universal leadership sounded by NAMFREL’s reincarnation in the 1980s. In the early 1950s, for example, the spectacle of the first NAMFREL appeared rather more contained than suggested by its designation as a ‘national citizens movement.’ With US government representatives and newspaper reporters watching approvingly,17 and with its own nationwide network of veterans lined up to face down pro-Quirino politicians’ hired goons at precincts in many parts of the Philippines, the picture of NAMFREL that emerged in contemporary print media typically depicted privileged speeches by official campaign representatives rather than crowded images of spontaneous movement volunteers. In this regard, organizational press releases and co-ordinator quotes not only dominated print media (re)presentations of NAMFREL in the early 1950s, but also spelled a returned gaze which focused most sharply on the narrowly circumscribed circle of appointed campaign leaders and spokesmen enjoying more or less direct contacts with both Philippine reporters and foreign journalists. Manila newspapers, in particular, provided ample coverage of NAMFREL’s campaign in 1953 (Coquia 1955: 307). A resurrected US Army-Philippine Guerrillas tabloid, the Free Philipppines – ‘edited and published by some of the surviving members of the original Free Philippines organization of 1942’ – came out 17 times between mid-September and mid-November 1953.18 Printed in some 100,000 copies and distributed largely through a network of war veterans, each issue ran front-page coverage and detailed articles on NAMFREL (PinedaOfreneo 1986: 47). More generally, some of the largest dailies – especially the Manila Times and its sister publication the Daily Mirror19 – and the main English-language weekly magazine – the Philippines Free Press – featured several stories on NAMFREL during the two separate election campaign periods in the early 1950s. Asked to ‘help the movement achieve its goals,’ the directors of the recently founded Philippine News Service (PNS), all of whom were newspaper publishers, also encouraged widespread media reports on NAMFREL in the 1953 presidential election (Pineda-Ofreneo 1986: 43). In this vein, for example, the PNS ‘hired more than three thousand extra local journalists from among volunteering school teachers, priests, and public-spirited citizens, many of whom had served in the Allied intelligence network of the resistance’ (Lansdale 1972: 118). In addition to this large-scale mobilization of Filipinos for purposes of providing public testimony on the campaign for – and the threat against – free elections in 1953, ‘US newspapers and news magazines sent nearly fifty foreign correspondents to the Philippines’ (Ibid.: 90). Surely, there is enough visible evidence that the world is watching what happens here. American and other foreign correspondents are making it a focal point, gathering in greater numbers than at anytime since liberation (Manila Bulletin, 4 November 1953).

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While less spectacular than the onslaught of foreign journalists flocking to the recently inaugurated Manila Overseas Press Club, finally, the ‘USIS [US Investigation Services] in the Philippines also helped printing the NAMFREL newsletters’ for distribution among campaign organizers and media representatives alike.20 Aside from their quite deliberate and readily apparent efforts to promote NAMFREL with the press, the middle-man public relations position assumed by movement spokesmen also reflected the extent to which these campaigns comprised both instances of ‘self-definition’ on the part of an emergent historic bloc, as well as invitations to those listening in to join in the envisioned national destiny. On the one hand, the most prominent media (re)presentations of NAMFREL in the early 1950s involved either a revived guerrilla newsletter with distribution mainly through war-veteran networks or the English language dailies with limited circulation beyond quite narrow social circles in Manila and a few major provincial cities.21 Suggestive of the roll call typically featured in socalled ‘society’ columns or pages, for instance, the recurrent listings identifying individual NAMFREL national organizers or newly inducted ‘officers’ by name (occasionally accompanied by a picture) both reflected and reproduced a rather restricted vision of ‘who was there’ to influence – and to behold – the future of the Philippines.22 On the other hand, the frequent publication of NAMFREL events providing advance details on the scheduled time, location and speakers signified – at least in theory – something of an open invitation to joining these campaigns. Much as it has been noted in other contexts that ‘[n]ewspaper language “leaned into the future” and in so doing drew men into movement that would confirm that future’ (Anderson 1996: 35), media (re)presentations of NAMFREL in the early 1950s thus served as a summons to nationwide mobilization restricted by the relative social isolation of election watchers and newspaper readers alike. Against the backdrop of the rapid expansion in mass communications and the concomitant rise in multi-media conglomerates in the 1960s, the CNEA and Operation Quick Count in 1969 involved the first comprehensive effort to stimulate a sense of political participation by means of televised pre-election and exit-poll projections in the Philippines. While still something of an exclusive novelty and luxury commodity, television by this time enjoyed a somewhat more widespread distribution in terms of access to and awareness of this medium, especially in urban areas in the Philippines. Even without actually owning a television, many city dwellers could catch at least a glimpse of televised election coverage and also possess some general knowledge of such media (re)presentations from the frequent announcements printed in the papers.23 Beyond the highly publicized television coverage of Operation Quick Count ‘69 and its ‘canvassing, tabulation and reporting of election returns’ on at least four stations in Manila, two in Cebu and one each in the provincial cities of Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro

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and Davao, moreover, these campaigns also received wide media dissemination as a result of the growth in newspaper and magazine circulation.24 Along with displays of scientific method and technological equipment prominent in both print and broadcast (re)presentations of the OQC effort, the portrayal of campaign co-ordinator experts signified not so much an invitation to join a spontaneous movement of citizen amateurs as a public assurance that the nation itself remained expertly safeguarded by professionally trained specialists (e.g., MT, 10 November 1953). Whereas newspaper and magazine articles on the comparatively more labour-intensive CNEA featured announcements of up-coming campaign events as well as reports with occasional footage on mass rallies and parades,25 media depictions of the ‘high-tech’ spectacle of OQC ‘69 and other such related televised projects for monitoring the election-count process received disproportionately greater coverage both in print and broadcast media.26 In this regard, the dominant campaign images transmitted by media in the late 1960s directed attention less to a vigilant citizenry than to technological strategies for supervising the elections on its behalf (e.g. MT, 23 October and 3 November 1969; Taliba, 11 November 1969). The continuous televised election coverage of these CNEA and OQC signalled that the fate of the nation was being – objectively and authoritatively – observed from on high. Meanwhile, however, against the backdrop of a conspicuously indifferent US government and a correspondingly inattentive foreign media, no global gaze fixed upon CNEA and OQC in 1969. In 1986, by contrast, NAMFREL re-emerged in the intense illumination of national and trans-national media alike. Independent and oppositionist newspapers and magazines had emerged in Manila in the wake of the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. in August 1983, and already in the National Assembly elections of May 1984 NAMFREL enjoyed close coverage by such alternative Manila papers and their provincial counterparts (Pineda-Ofreneo 1986:167). For example, the newsweekly Veritas, a publication prominently associated with the Philippine Bishops-Businessmen Conference and first issued in November 1983, provided extensive coverage of NAMFREL’s campaigns during both the 1984 National Assembly and the 1986 presidential elections (Joaquin 1990: 224–7; Bautista 1987: 133–40). In contrast to the media images lingering on the organizational leadership of the first NAMFREL and the technological surveillance of OQC’69, the reincarnated NAMFREL of the mid-1980s appeared more distinctly as the watcher of the people. Whereas newspapers typically featured articles on co-ordinator positions and chapter formations under the generic heading ‘NAMFREL doings’ in the early 1950s, for example, the spectacle of the mid-1980s focused attention less on organizational up-dates than on actual campaign activities before, during and after the elections such as reporting registration anomalies, holding volunteer workshops, identifying critical areas, assisting voters, and

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filing electoral complaints. Compared with the displays of advanced technology and professional expertise that characterized the election-count efforts of the late 1960s, moreover, NAMFREL struck a decisively more folksy and even deliberately amateurish pose in the media in the mid-1980s as suggested by the publication of volunteer letters and depictions of campaign uniforms made from printed flour sacks.27 Unlike its predecessors, NAMFREL was portrayed by the national media as an election-watch campaign which both belonged to and drew its ultimate authority from ‘the people’ rather than either the confined social networks of the early 1950s or the national television panopticon of the late 1960s. For example, alternative press reports on NAMFREL’s one-million signatures petition and high public opinion ratings generated a sense of widespread popular support for the campaigns in the mid-1980s.28 Beyond displays of strong backing in numerical terms, moreover, frequent media references to the plurality of social groups behind NAMFREL further reinforced such visual effects in conjuring up a popular movement of ‘students, media practitioners, professionals, small businessmen, teachers, government employees, and plain housewives’ (Pagadian Times, 21–27 May 1984).29 If the first NAMFREL enjoyed an appreciative audience in both the US government and the (mostly American) foreign press corps while the CNEA-OQC campaigns attracted little to no such attention, the resurrected NAMFREL of the mid-1980s not only successfully courted US government representatives but also basked in the spotlight of the world’s largest media networks. With the US government on the lookout for a preferable alternative to both the ailing dictator and the rising Left in the mid-1980s, the spectacle of NAMFREL appeared – perhaps more convincingly than the openly partisan ‘traditional opposition’ itself (Thompson 1995) – as such a possibility of widespread popular following and non-violent reformist strategy in both the alternative Philippine press and the international media. Enjoying close and favourable coverage in the independent and oppositionist press in Manila, NAMFREL also came to capture the imagination of American Embassy personnel, US congressional delegations, and international observer missions which, as media events in their own right, attracted ever greater – national and trans-national – visibility for the 1986 campaign (Bonner 1987: 415). More importantly, perhaps, the 1986 Philippine presidential election in general, and NAMFREL in particular, began to attract the attention of major American (and other international) television news programmes. As one observer noted: ‘[t]he events in the Philippines marked a milestone in television news. This was the first long-running international crisis in which a network was able to provide round-the-clock, live coverage, even if it was primarily by telephone and raw, unedited film sent via satellite’ (Far Eastern Economic Review 1996: 28). While the election-watch efforts of the early 1950s and the late 1960s had received a

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great deal of attention in the local print media, only the mid-1980s campaign appeared live on broadcast television, as satellite communications technology now made possible the instantaneous mediation of spectacle both within and beyond the Philippines. In 1986 NAMFREL became the first election-watch campaign to appear in virtual movement as it flickered across the television screen. The NAMFREL of 1986 thus mobilized in the spotlight of broadcast television – that most spectacular of mass media which ‘specializes in presenting itself as an unmediated, objective eye on the world’ (Cumings 1992). With the whole world watching, NAMFREL’s mobilization thus prefigured – and in part precipitated – the famous four-day ‘People Power’ revolt in Manila that followed the elections and forced Marcos’ flight from the country and Aquino’s ascendancy to the Philippine presidency in late February 1986. The Spectacle of Civil Society By making the world a witness to the travails of election-watching in the Philippines, the media encouraged not only the diffusion of NAMFREL as collective campaign but also its wider circulation as virtual spectacle. On the one hand, media coverage, as the term might suggest, provided a measure of protection which allowed NAMFREL volunteers to operate in many cases where local circumstances remained highly inhospitable and extra-local mobilizational efforts encountered stubborn resistance. On the other hand, ‘the eyes of the media,’ with apparent candour and objectivity, extended a certain illumination which served both to capture and to reflect NAMFREL images across social and geographic boundaries otherwise largely beyond the scope of this campaign. NAMFREL not only basked in the media limelight during the action-filled polling and canvassing days but also benefited from the ways in which print and broadcast reporting directed wider attention to this election-watch campaign in the first place. In this regard, the so-called ‘alternative’ Philippine press – most prominently Veritas – played a critical role, especially during the early phases of NAMFREL’s mobilizational campaign, as local reprints of articles that first appeared in the (American) foreign press also helped to focus the public eye on NAMFREL. To the extent that ‘seeing is an act that proceeds action,’ the gaze of the media upon NAMFREL thus served, not unlike printed advertisements or motion picture previews, both to concentrate and to magnify anticipations of future spectacular ‘happenings’ well ahead of their eventual occurrence (Virilio 1994: 61). Beyond increasing the scope of NAMFREL’s spectatorship, such media publicity also contributed to the overall mobilizational effort precisely by signalling that this campaign would not pass without notice. As one Filipino photographer who covered NAMFREL in 1986 subsequently recalled: ‘when you press the shutter, you give them the feeling that: ‘Hey, someone is with us.’ I think that was my contribution’ (John Chua, photographer, cited in Mercado 1986: 75). If NAMFREL volunteers could scarcely remain unaware of the media’s gaze due

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to all the high-profile campaign coverage, they essentially became spectators of themselves, with all those watching the watchers as their broader target audience. Through the creation of the spectacle of civil society NAMFREL thus foiled Marcos’ own designs for a successful demonstration of his electoral mandate, first announced, tellingly enough, by the Philippine president live on American network television with the following ‘personal invitation’ to boot: ‘You are all invited to come, and we will invite members of the American Congress to please come and just see what is happening’ (cited in Bonner 1987: 387). Campaign co-ordinators played an instrumental role in focusing local and international media attention on NAMFREL. To this end, NAMFREL supporters wrote press releases, appointed media liaisons, escorted foreign reporters and local journalists, and, more generally, sought to dramatize its campaign through events like candle-light and prayer vigils. Upon closer examination, such efforts reveal two sometimes overlapping but nevertheless analytically distinct aspects of campaign mobilizational strategy in regard to the media. First of all, NAMFREL courted the mass media as a means of deterring electoral fraud and violence. As suggested by the following formal complaint addressed to the Commission on Elections, for example, NAMFREL volunteers often appeared at polling precincts in the company of especially foreign reporters. As one poll watcher recalled: ‘I arrived at the scene with French and Korean journalists and several

Figure 7: NAMFREL campaign poster in preparation for the 1986 snap presidential elections

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other NAMFREL volunteers. We arrived at the same time as several foreign television teams, and we secured the ballot boxes. By that time the goons stopped the harassment and the public was cheering the press and the NAMFREL volunteers’ (de Inchausti, cited in Byington 1988: 27). In this vein, several reports point to NAMFREL organizers’ shrewd estimations of how foreign media coverage might deter at least the most blatant of so-called election ‘irregularities.’ Whereas press and broadcast reports on NAMFREL obviously reflected the media’s own momentum to a great extent, the lengths to which organizers went to fix the public gaze upon this campaign underscores how important they deemed such ‘world-watching’ – whether real or perceived. In one account, for instance, NAMFREL organizers allegedly recruited ‘volunteers from among the country’s Filipino Caucasian mestizos to pose as foreign correspondents on Election Day [under the assumption] that local officials and military officers will be extra wary of committing any poll shenanigans ‘if the Western press is watching’’ (Mindanao Daily Mirror, 6 February 1986).30 In addition to enlisting the media as a deterrent against ‘poll shenanigans,’ campaign co-ordinators also clearly appreciated its significance for purposes of bearing public witness to the electoral fraud and violence that NAMFREL could not prevent. In this regard, the importance NAMFREL placed upon witnessing so-called ‘election failures’ matched the mass media’s own appetite for spectacular news stories, with NAMFREL co-ordinators helping to field local journalists, foreign reporters and other international observers to previously identified socalled election hot spots. As noted by an American Congressman turned election-watch watcher cum television commentator in the Philippines in 1986: ‘in many instances during the elections several foreign observers were induced by NAMFREL into situations to create a picture of widespread voting frauds.’31 In as much as seeing is believing, television coverage of NAMFREL thus captured not only the reality effect associated with still photographs but also the immediacy and flow of motion pictures (Barthes 1978: 31). As a result of advances in satellite communications technology, moreover, television broadcasts – with the apparent ‘transparency and immediacy of cinema verité’ – gained a much wider and more instantaneous circulation for the spectacle of NAMFREL in the mid1980s (Cumings 1992: 81). Whether involved in actual deterrence or what might be referred to as virtual witnessing of electoral fraud and violence, the media significantly strengthened NAMFREL – both as collective campaign and visual spectacle – in the 1986 presidential elections. On the one hand, the media increased NAMFREL’s overall impact on this election by pushing up the total number of successful localized mobilizational efforts. On the other hand, the media also advanced NAMFREL’s cause by making possible the wider circulation of more or less spectacular failures to secure free and free elections. Under the media’s watchful gaze, both successes and failures in terms of combating the forces that conspired against free elections

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in many parts of the Philippines thus combined to reinforce the larger momentum and greater objective of the National Citizens Movement in 1986. In this regard, the harsh repression, ‘intolerable’ voting processes, and questionable electoral outcomes in the bailiwicks of pro-Marcos local bosses such as those examined in the previous chapter complemented the election-watch campaign’s apparent successes in many provincial cities, where Marcos’ political machine was unable to prevent Aquino from winning by large margins. That is, assisted by the presence of international media and foreign observers – many of whom accompanied city-based NAMFREL co-ordinators on provincial sorties to election hot spots – NAMFREL was able to challenge publicly the rampant abuses committed in bailiwicks of pro-Marcos local bosses like Ramon Durano, Armando Gustilo, and Antonio Floirendo. In combination with its impressive performance in guarding the electoral process in provincial cities, NAMFREL’s ability to document some of the most egregious instances of violence and fraud thus advanced the movement’s overall objective of subverting Marcos’ designs for hijacking the elections. While NAMFREL’s moniker ‘watchdog of the nation’ signalled its commitment to guard the ballot, the slogan ‘better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’ aptly captured the movement’s resolve to document election anomalies. Similarly, the oft-repeated, somewhat morbid admonition of NAMFREL organizers that volunteers ‘remain alive to be able to report’ also reflected this emphasis on ‘witnessing’ (Freeman, 12 January 1986). Thus, even as NAMFREL failed to prevent widespread electoral fraud in the fiefdoms of local pro-Marcos warlords, it proved more successful in providing an alternative account of how the election had proceeded in such areas and, with the aid of mass media, in transmitting this account to audiences in provincial cities, the national capital, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the ‘global village.’ As a means of both deterring and publicizing election-related fraud and violence, NAMFREL helped field hundreds of international observers, foreign media representatives and embassy personnel to various ‘hot spots’ around the Philippines (Mindanao Daily Mirror, 30 January 1986). Prominent among such international observers of the 1986 Philippine election was the 20-member United States’ presidential delegation headed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Richard Lugar (e.g. Bonner 1987: 412). In fact, with invitations and instructions from movement organizers, foreign observers accompanied city-based NAMFREL teams into areas like the ‘del Nortes’ of Cebu, Davao and Negros. In this vein, ‘[p]arties of journalists and foreign observers fanned out into the provinces to monitor the election at key ‘troublespots’ identified by NAMFREL’ (Far Eastern Economic Review, 1986: 224). In the case of Cebu, for example, NAMFREL had a group of foreign journalists ‘divided into two teams, one ... distributed to critical areas and the other ... acted as a standby group ready to be called in anytime’ (Freeman, 7 February

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1986). Early on, moreover, NAMFREL announced that members of Senator Lugar delegation would be joining the city-based volunteer team on election day on its excursion to Danao City, the stronghold of notorious pro-Marcos ‘warlord’ Ramon Durano (Freeman, 21 January 1986). At the same time, NAMFREL volunteers escorted teams of international observers to Cadiz, the capital of Negros del Norte province, which Marcos had recently created as a reward for his long-time local ally, Armando Gustilo (Visayan Daily Star, 5 February 1986). Meanwhile, foreign journalists and members of the Lugar team joined NAMFREL volunteers on a sortie to Panabo, the capital of Davao del Norte and the heartland of banana plantation magnate and local Marcos backer Antonio Floirendo (Mindanao Daily Mirror, 8 Februray 1986). As a result of this stampede of foreign dignitaries and journalists to critical areas,32 footage from the Philippine election, including incidents of fraud and violence, as well as NAMFREL’s ballot-box vigils, reached publics far beyond towns like Danao, Cadiz and Panabo, thus providing a critical link of sorts between NAMFREL’s campaign and the Marcos regime’s international audience. In the United States, for example, in the four-week election period some 180 minutes of Philippine news appeared on the three evening network news programs [compared] to an average of fewer than three Philippine stories per year between 1972 and 1981 – the period of martial law (Columbia Journalism Review, 1986: 28). Prominent among such American network programs, ABC’s News Nightline first increased its coverage of the Philippines during this period with two broadcasts in October 1985 while ‘NBC’s Meet the Press and PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour [also] began devoting more attention to that country’ (Larson 1987: 49). As the election approached, furthermore, both the NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight broadcast from the Philippines, with Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, respectively, anchored in Manila on Election Day. For similarly spectacular reporting, ‘CBS had moved its entire election polling team to the Philippines, even building a transmission tower in Mindanao in order to send the results back quickly’ (Bonner 1987: 421). Throughout the Philippines, moreover, local newspapers reported back to their respective readers on this widespread attention accorded the 1986 election-campaign and NAMFREL by foreign, and especially American, media. For example, a Cebu paper ran a story on NAMFREL chairman Concepcion who ‘appeared on Friday (Saturday in Manila) as guest at ABC’s ‘Nightline’ program hosted by Ted Koppel together with Comelec Chairman Victorino Savellano and Alan Weinstein, a member of the US observer group headed by Sen. Richard Lugar’ (Freeman, 10 February 1986). Meanwhile, in Metro Manila – summit of national electoral politics and centre of transnational media attention – NAMFREL organizers and roving television

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crews alike recognized the significance of this global gaze for bearing witness to the 1986 election in heavily squatter-populated areas dominated by urban machine bosses affiliated with Marcos. In the words of a national-level co-ordinator recalling both the difficulties that NAMFREL-Makati faced in protecting the ballot in local squatter areas and the faith that campaign organizers placed in witnessing of a rather more transcendent order: We were also counting on the fact that this election was going to be covered thoroughly by the foreign media. I told the people in Makati: ‘You are a chosen instrument of divine will in this election because the violence that took place in Makati was seen on television all over the world.’ I told them in the Thanksgiving Mass of the Makati chapter that their walkout and march to Guadalupe Nuevo, which was led by Joe Concepcion, was seen on television all over the world and was part of the process of convincing the world that this was a fraudulent election. Nothing that happens is wasted.33 Similarly, in Pasay City, ruled since the mid-1950s by Pablo Cuneta, ‘the aging king of the Pasay fiefdom,’ NAMFREL’s campaign involved not merely the vigilant guarding of ballot boxes but a melodramatic contestation over those watching the watchers as well (e.g. MT, 10 November 1963; Manila Chronicle, 17 April 1988; Manila Chronicle, 9–15 May 1992). As one volunteer recalled: I accompanied the precinct chairman (a woman) who was carrying the ballot box to the Pasay city hall, where there was pandemonium. From the main entrance to the fourth floor, there was a line of people shouting ‘Here’ and grabbing at newly arrived ballot boxes. Sister Jean and Sister Josie helped a chairperson protect her ballot box from the snatching hands of men who pretended to help. We learned the next day that a government television newscast showed ‘nuns snatching ballot boxes,’ which Marcos supposedly later used as ‘evidence’ of nuns and seminarians committing fraud (Sister Angelita Villarin, cited in Byington 1988: 27). In short, evidence that the ‘whole world was watching’ encouraged NAMFREL’s efforts to counter and document electoral fraud and violence, and proved especially salient in areas where the structure of power appeared to present insurmountable obstacles for purposes of mobilizing resources and support for clean-election campaigns. The well-publicized ‘failures’ in these ‘hot spots’ areas, in turn, undermined President Marcos’ claims, supported by the governmentcontrolled official Commission on Elections, that he had won a new mandate in a ‘free and fair’ political contest. Instead, (American) foreign press and broadcast coverage of Election Day, 7 February 1986, in the Philippines typically

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echoed the tone and content of the following excerpt from the New York Times (8 February 1986): The day dawned at crescendo, the complaints of fraud and ballot thievery pouring in as a single tide from the scores of thousand island precincts: ballot boxes allegedly stuffed with Marcos votes even before the polls opened; voting precincts suddenly moved overnight; ‘goon’ intimidators loitering in the path of voters; tally sheets reportedly missing; mercenary voters allegedly commuting across a swatch of precincts to vote early and often. By creating the spectacle of civil society mobilized in defence of liberal democracy, NAMFREL thus engendered its own heroes. That is, hailed as national citizens by the NAMFREL campaign, participants found themselves facing the ‘guns, goons and gold’ commonly associated with Philippine elections and, in the process of such encounters, often displayed a great deal of determination on behalf of ‘free and clean elections.’ Accounts of such encounters testified not only to the threats and dangers facing NAMFREL participants but, perhaps more importantly, to the courage and commitment with which volunteers collectively carried out their civic duties. While actual experiences of (more or less) critical confrontations contributed to politicize campaign participants, publicized reports of anticipated or transpired hazards helped to valorise these citizens movements by projecting inspiring images of NAMFREL volunteers as ‘action heroes’ in dramatizations that conveyed a sense of national sacrifice to the otherwise relatively dull notion of civic duty. As one NAMFREL publication suggested in 1986: ‘The work is not without risk. Two volunteers were killed in 1984 and countless others injured ... But the volunteers carry on, for no price is high enough in the service of their country’ (NAMFREL 1986). In an ingenious way, summons to ‘remain alive to report’ sounded by NAMFREL co-ordinators throughout much of the Philippines in 1986 similarly invoked, if by negation, this ultimate sacrifice while simultaneously celebrating the perhaps less spectacular heroism of volunteer vigilance so central to the success of the movement. More than its predecessors in 1953 and 1969, the NAMFREL of 1986 thus attracted the – sometimes strongly committed – support of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Filipinos who joined in recognition of their civic duties as national citizens. In the course of collective action, these volunteers experienced further interpellation as members of civil society through direct encounters with the threats to free and fair elections under the gaze of television crews, observer missions, and other audiences from far beyond Philippine shores. Whether as national action heroes or stoic witnesses, volunteers enjoyed public lionization, not only in NAMFREL publications in Manila, but on television screens and newspaper pages around the world. When, a few short weeks after the elections, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila to demand Marcos’

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resignation, they could be fully confident that ‘the whole world was watching.’ In no small measure, the success of mobilization in the name of civil society – and of ‘People Power’ – in the Philippines thus turned on a powerful global gaze. Conclusion In 1953, 1969 and 1986, election-watch campaigns in the Philippines symbolized, dramatized and actualized citizenship collectively, voluntarily, and seemingly spontaneously. In these three campaigns, NAMFREL and CNEA celebrated something akin to constitutional patriotism, hailing participants – and voters – as citizens with rights and responsibilities intimately connected with the institutions of liberal democracy, with elections, and with the counting of individual votes. To be a good Filipino was to participate in elections and to protect their central role in Philippine state and society. As argued in the pages above, the symbolic ritualization of national citizenship in these election-watch campaigns located the electoral ballot within the realm of the sacred and, more generally, summoned something akin to ‘civil religion’ as the collective spirit animating the Philippine Republic (Bellah 1967; de Tocqueville 1954 (1): 310). Beyond official, institutional separations of State and Church, this notion of civil religion instead emphasized a strong identification between proper citizenship and Christian duty with the latter reinforcing the former (Bellah 1967). In celebrating the sanctity of the ballot, the three citizens campaigns thus invoked a Christian duty to safeguard the electoral process against the threats to democracy from above and below. The recurring tropes of civic duty and civil religion in the discourse of these three movements worked to render invisible and unspeakable alternative idioms of identification and interpellation during the crises of authority of the early 1950s, late 1960s, and mid-1980s. Against the threats of election boycotts and extra-electoral mobilization of subaltern classes by a revolutionary Left, the movement discourse of NAMFREL and CNEA celebrated the civility and inclusivity of liberal democracy. Against mounting appeals to Filipinos along class and radical nationalist lines, these election-watch campaigns spoke in a language that presumed formal political equality for all voters and national integrity for the Philippines. ‘In the electoral situation, the social hierarchy is momentarily suspended, the social body is reduced to a pure multitude which can be numbered, and here the social antagonism is also suspended’ (Zizek 2002: 79). At the same time, however, the movement discourse of NAMFREL and CNEA also framed appeals for support in terms shaped, however implicitly and unconsciously, by the counter-hegemonic challenges mounted by successive incarnations of the Philippine nationalist Left. Against the backdrop of the Huk guerrilla campaign, for example, the first NAMFREL of the early 1950s displayed military-like organization and ceremony under the command of the Philippine Veterans League. With radical, nationalist student activism sweeping

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the national capital in the late 1960s, moreover, CNEA/OQC in 1969 featured media and computer technology professionally managed by problem-solving knowledge experts. In the context of the unprecedented mobilization – both legal and underground – of widespread mass support for the organized Philippine Left in the mid-1980s, NAMFREL, under the vanguard leadership of the Philippine Bishops-Businessmen Conference, hailed participants as Pilipino citizens and thus, for the first time, contested Ang Bayan – the people, the nation – in the idiom of People Power. Beyond the realm of discourse, moreover, the election-watch campaigns of 1953, 1969 and 1986 attracted participants through the production of dramatic performances in the name of Philippine civil society and the creation of roles for heroic Filipino citizens. Unlike the partisan campaigns of individual politicians, and against the election boycotts and extra-electoral struggles of the revolutionary Left, the election-monitoring efforts of NAMFREL and CNEA provided arenas and activities through which thousands of Filipinos could act as citizens and act out the drama of civil society. With rising numbers of newspaper readers, radio listeners, and television viewers in the Philippines over the years, the expanding audience for such performances greatly enhanced their dramatic import and thus the lived experience of participation. Yet just as there can be no spectacle without spectators, the realization of Philippine national citizens movements hinged on a returned global gaze. In 1969, against the backdrop of declining US confidence in liberal democracy both at home and abroad, the election-watch efforts of CNEA and OQC in the Philippines failed to attract international media coverage and commentary and thus captured neither the gaze of the global hegemon nor the lived experience of national citizenship for millions of ordinary Filipinos. By contrast, the two NAMFRELs in 1953 and 1986 appeared relatively more successful in effecting what they celebrated – national citizens movements – under the intense trans-national stare affixed to them by the US government and international media. Rendered trans-nationally visible, the two NAMFRELs thus emerged as spectacular naturalization ceremonies of the universal principles of liberal democracy at two crucial periods in the Cold War. Surfacing first in the early 1950s when America’s ‘showcase of democracy’ in Asia fell under the threat of ‘World Communism,’ and again in the 1980s during the aggressively anti-communist Reagan Administration, NAMFREL provided a dramatic spectacle of civil society mobilized in support of liberal democracy, with ‘People Power’ in 1986 as its denouement.

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References Althusser, Louis (1994). ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards and Investigation),’ in Slavoj Zizek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London, Verso): 100–40. Anderson, Benedict (1996). ‘Language, Fantasy, Revolution: Java 1900-1950,’ in Daniel S. Lev and Ruth McVey (eds.), Making Indonesia: Essays on Modern Indonesia in Honor of George McT. Kahin (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Southeast Asia Program): 26–40. Bain, David Howard (1986). ‘Letter from Manila: How the Press Helped Dump a Despot,’ Columbia Journalism Review, 25 (1), May/June: 27–36. Barthes, Roland (1978). ‘The Photographic Message,’ in Image-Music-Text (New York, Hill and Wang). Bautista, Felix B. (1987). Cardinal Sin and the Miracle of Asia (Manila, Vera-Reyes). Bellah, Robert N. (1967). ‘Religion and the Legitimation of the American Republic,’ Society, 15 (4): 16–23. Bonner, Raymond (1987). Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York, Times Books). Byington, Kaa (1988). Bantay ng Bayan: Stories from the Namfrel Crusade 198486 (Manila, Bookmark). Coquia, Jorge R. (1955). The Philippine Presidential Election of 1953 (Manila, University Publishing Co.). Cumings, Bruce (1992). War and Television (London, Verso Press). Gonzalez, Andrew B. (1980). Language and Nationalism: The Philippine Experience Thus Far (Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press). Habermas, Jurgen (1995). ‘Citizenship and National Identity,’ in Ronald Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Citizenship (New York, State University of New York Press): 255–83. Joaquin, Nick (1990). Jaime Ongpin the Enigma: A Profile of the Filipino as Manager (Makati, Jaime V. Ongpin Institute for Business and Government). Kerkvliet, Benedict Tria (1977). The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, University of California Press). Lansdale, Edward Geary (1972). In the Midst of Wars (New York, Harper & Row). Larson, James F. (1987). Global Television and Foreign Policy, New York, Foreign Policy Association, Headline Series No. 283 (March–April). Maslog, Crispin C. (1990). Philippine Mass Communication (A Mini History) (Quezon City, New Day Publishers). Mercado, Monina Allarey (ed.) (1986). People Power: An Eyewitness History (Manila: James B. Reuter, SJ, Foundation). NAMFREL (1985). ‘Ang Pasiya: Hatol ng Mamamayan’ (Programang Pambayang Edukasyon (2) Pilipino ed.).

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–– (1985a). ‘The Decision: The Will of the People’ (Civic Education Program (2) English ed.). –– (1986). ‘NAMFREL: A People’s Hope for Peaceful Change,’ pamphlet, author’s files. Pineda-Ofreneo, Rosalinda (1986). The Manipulated Press: A History of Philippine Journalism since 1945 (Metro Manila: Solar Publishing Corp., 2nd ed.). Rafael, Vicente L. (1990). ‘Patronage and Pornography: Ideology and Spectatorship in the Early Marcos Years,’ Comparative Study of Society and History, 32 (2): 282–304. Republic of the Philippines (1971). Report of the Commission on Elections to the President of the Philippines and the Congress on the Manner the Elections were Held on November 11, 1969 (Manila, Bureau of Printing). Rocamora, Joel (1994). Breaking Through: The Struggle within the Communist Party of the Philippines (Manila, Anvil Publishing). Sison, Jose Maria (1967). Struggle for National Democracy (Quezon City: Progressive Publications). Thompson, Mark R. (1995). The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines (New Haven, Yale University Press). Virilio, Paul (1994). The Vision Machine (London, British Film Institute). Zizek, Slavoj (2002). Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates (London: Verso Press). Notes 1 Cited in Bain (1986: 28). 2 ‘Noli Me Tangere,’ Asiaweek, 23 February 1986 (reprinted in Byington 1988: 246–7). 3 This chapter is reprinted from the original with kind permission of the publisher: Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, In the Name of Civil Society: From Free Election Movements to People Power in the Philippines (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), ch. 7. 4 ‘The Ballot: The Voice of the People,’ Civic Education Program, vol. 1, English ed., p. 1. The back cover of this pamphlet identifies this as a ‘publication prepared by the Communication Foundation for Asia (CFA) on request of civic and religious organization and other groups of concerned citizens.’ 5 Such priestly invocations also accompanied the first NAMFREL’s ‘three-day national convention’ at the Manila Hotel (Daily Mirror, 15 August 1953). 6 Admonition to the Catholic clergy from Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, cited in Byington (1988: 249–50). ‘Include in your Sunday sermons an exhortation for your parishioners to actively participate in our common national effort of bringing Christ to the polls by joining NAMFREL and giving it material and moral support.’ 7 See especially its all-‘Pilipino’ official publication, Kalayaan, the title of which harks back to the Philippine Revolution. 8 On the student movement in 1969, see, for example, the 1 January, 8 February, 15

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February and 9 August issues of Philippines Free Press of that year. One survey established that ‘[s]eventy-three per cent of voters in the Greater Manila area are aware of the current student demonstrations, and 46 per cent sympathize with the students.’ See: ‘Demonstrations known to voters,’ Manila Times, 16 October 1969. 9 This editorial also appeared in the Collegian’s special issue in Tagalog as well as the mainstream dailies and weeklies. See, for example, ‘UP paper urges boycott of Tuesday’s elections,’ Manila Bulletin, 6 November 1969. 10 Cited in the CPP publication, Ang Bayan (December 1985), first issued in 1969 and subsequently printed in both English and Tagalog editions (Rocamora 1994: 74). 11 On such NAMFREL rituals as ‘pledges to the flag,’ ‘induction of officers,’ and ‘NAMFREL badges,’ see: Daily Mirror, 15 August 1953; and Free Philippines, 3 November 1953. 12 For a discussion of ‘linguistic nationalism’ and ‘Pilipino,’ see Gonzalez (1980). 13 This also appears in the following excerpt from the ‘Pilipino’ and English editions of one of NAMFREL’s Civic Education Pamphlets: ‘Sa araw ng halalan, ang mga mamamayan ay nagsasama-sama sa isang maaimtim na paninindigan ng katotohanang sila ay mga Pilipino, isang malayang sambayanan.’ ‘On election day, the citizens of this country join together in a solemn assertion of the fact that they are Filipinos, a free people’ (p. 2). 14 For an examination of Pilipino language policies under Marcos, see Gonzalez (1980) and Rafael (1990: 282–304). 15 Advertising Council of the Philippines, paid advertisement, Manila Times, 11 October 1969. 16 Advertising Council of the Philippines, paid advertisement, Manila Times, 11 October 1969. 17 According to one survey of American press sources, for example, ‘[m]ore than 1,400 newspapers editorialized on the election of President Ramon Magsaysay’ (PinedaOfreneo, 1986: 57). 18 According to one of its editorials, Free Philippines reemerged ‘to work for a true Philippine democracy, which is basically a fight for clean elections, to fight for good government and social justice as the best means of combating Communism, and to help arouse the people to an awareness of these crucial struggles and that in the final reckoning it is the people themselves who can win or lose their own fight.’ Free Philippines, 28 September 1953, p. 4. 19 On the importance of the Manila Times for NAMFREL, see Coquia (1955: 307). According to long-time Manila Times columnist Armando Malay, moreover, ‘the Manila Times printed NAMFREL press releases which were then sent to other papers.’ Interview, Armando Malay, Quezon City, 13 August 1992. 20 Interview, Fernanda Balboa, NAMFREL national co-ordinator and president of the League of Women Voters (which received its main financial contributions from the American Legion of Women Voters), Quezon City, 12 August 1992. Such assistance to NAMFREL from the United States Information Services was also confirmed by former ambassador Mutuc. Interview, Mutuc, 18 August 1992, Manila. 21 The so-called ‘vernacular’ press enjoyed increasing postwar circulation of weekly magazines such as the Ramon Roces Publications Liwayway (130,000 copies), Bannawag (45,000 copies), Bisaya (30,000 copies) and Hiligaynon (30,000 copies) already by 1947 (Pineda-Ofreneo 1986: 58). 22 Interviews and old clip books kept by NAMFREL national co-ordinators strengthen

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this notion of a fairly limited ‘self-defining’ circle of individuals as opposed to a ‘mass movement’ with a momentum of its own – larger than the sum of its parts. For example, then President of the Philippine Lawyers Association and NAMFREL national co-ordinator, Atty Arturo Alafriz generously offered to share and to comment upon his clip book from the early 1950s. Interview, Alafriz, Makati, 11 August 1992. 23 See, for example, ‘More radio,TV stations aid OQC,’ Manila Times, 20 October 1969. By 1966, a decade after television was first introduced to the Philippines, for example, more than one million viewers (over half of whom resided in the Manila area) reportedly watched during peak hours. See, for example, Maslog (1990). 24 For example, 17 Manila print dailies had a combined circulation of almost one million copies (60 per cent of which were sold in or near Manila) by 1970. 25 For example, the largest English weekly magazine, the Philippines Free Press, advertised the scheduling at the Luneta of ‘what was expected to be the most massive rally for ‘free, honest and orderly elections’ in the history of the Philippines,’ Philippines Free Press, 1 November 1969, p. 11. The same magazine also reported on a ‘mammoth ... rally and parade ... the beginning of a drive against dirty elections’ in Butuan City, Philippines Free Press, 11 October 1969, p. 38. 26 The Tagalog tabloid Taliba also gave more column space to reports on OQC ’69 than to CNEA. See, for example, ‘Pangkat ng OQC itinatag,’ (‘OQC Units Named’), Taliba, 2 November 1969; ‘4 pang suamib sa OQC,’ (‘Four More Poached by OQC’), Taliba, 3 November 1969; ‘Kasunduan ng OQC, telebisyon,’ (‘Agreement between OQC and Television’), Taliba, 6 November 1969; ‘Handa na ang OQC sa halalan,’ (‘OQC is Ready for the Election’), Taliba, 8 November 1969; and ‘Nombrado ng Comelec ang OQC,’ (‘OQC Apppointed by Comelec’), Taliba, 10 November 1969. 27 See, for example, ‘Letters: I was a Namfrel volunteer,’ Veritas, 3–9 June 1984. See also the daily NAMFREL columns in the Philippine Daily Enquirer in the months leading up to the February 1986 elections. Such flour sacks, of course, originated from the Republican Flour Mills (RFM) which also, under Jose Concepcion Jr.’s leadership, hosted NAMFREL’s National Headquarter. 28 The petition was presented to the Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) by NAMFREL chairman Jose Concepcion, Jr. in late 1985. At that time, the PBBC, the key moving force behind both NAMFREL and Veritas, conducted a public opinion poll in Metro Manila which allegedly showed that 67 per cent of respondents would join NAMFREL if presented with the opportunity. 29 See also Zamboanga Times, 2 February 1984; Catanduanes Tribune, 23 May 1984; Mindanao Daily Mirror, 30 January 1986; The Freeman, 6 February 1986. 30 Interview, Mariano S. Quesada, Quezon City, 17 October 1992. 31 US Representative Jerry Lewis, cited in Mindanao Daily Mirror, 15 February 1986. Emphasis added. 32 The Office of Media Affairs in Manila registered 320 foreign journalists on 23 January, over 500 on 2 February, some 700 on 5 February and 850 on the morning of the election, 7 February 1986 (Bain 1986: 29). Bonner estimated that there ‘were a few thousand journalists, including technicians, in the Philippines for the elections’ (Bonner 1987: 421). 33 Vicente Paterno, NAMFREL chairman for Metro Manila (cited in Mercado 1986: 71–2).

Afterword THE HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL PERFORMANCE Joseph W. Esherick

On the car radio as I drove home from work one day, I listened to the theatre critic of the Chicago Sun-Times present an analysis of President George W. Bush’s ‘State of the Union’ speech before the joint houses of Congress (Weiss 2005). It has apparently become so commonplace to think of political events as public performances that the media now turn to drama critics to interpret the impact of presidential speeches. Such analyses are quite useful, for they call attention to the stage-management of the performance, the choreography of the process, the critical role of supporting actors, the gestures, props and costumes of the performers, and all that goes into making a public event moving and politically effective. We can learn much from such dramatic commentary, which provides useful tools and language for the critical analysis of politics as performance; but the social scientist must also probe the ever-evolving functions of political performance and the place of such performance in the larger political system. The primary function of political performance is to make politics visible. Historically speaking, state rituals provide the earliest models. All pre-modern states made themselves visible in annual rituals, processions, proclamations, coronations, funerals, ceremonies of greeting and investiture, audiences, legal proceedings, religious observances, festivals and military parades. On such occasions, elaborate costumes, headdresses, medals, banners, conveyances and entourages displayed the status of royal, aristocratic, official, religious and military participants and their place in the political and cosmic order. Clearly some states invested more in such rituals than others, as Clifford Geertz (1980: 102) demonstrated with respect to the ‘ritual extravagances of the theatre state’ in Bali. By contrast, the Chinese state projected the awesome power of the Son of Heaven by keeping the emperor largely invisible behind the high walls of the Forbidden City.1 This served to enhance the authority of the high officials who emerged from the favour of an imperial audience – only to ensconce themselves behind

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the walls of their own official yamen and replicate the process in their local jurisdiction (Woodside 1991). Despite the enormous variations in the modes of rule in these pre-modern polities, all found appropriate forms of ritual performances to make the state visible. As the state is made visible, a kind of Heisenberg Principle of political performance sets in. The state is transformed as it is seen, and the more it is seen the more it is transformed. This becomes particularly clear if one considers the transition to a modern politics of broad political participation. Any audience witnessing a political performance has the potential to change it, but as the size and diversity of that audience increases, the potential for change grows as well. The process is well illustrated by several of the studies in this volume. Vincent Foucher describes how the praise-singers of old aristocratic families and Sufi marabouts evolved into the ‘repeaters’ for modern Senegalese politicians. Given the tradition that the man with real power maintains a dignified reserve and speaks little, at political rallies the leader would speak softly, often in French, while a more voluble repeater roused the crowd in the local language with far more extravagant gestures and rhetoric. The public audience requires a dramatic performance and a new style of politics, and the end point of this transformation in Senegal becomes the Blue Marches of the opposition party, where reggae music and American clothing styles give symbolic representation to youthful voices for change. Nicolas Jaoul describes Dalit (‘Untouchable’) processions in India as part of the ‘theatricality of the contemporary democratization process.’ In Taiwan, Dafydd Fell tells us, as elections have become more competitive, dramatic performance has become so central that campaigning is described in a Americanderived neologism, ‘putting on a show’ (zuoxiu). In Hong Kong, according to Agnes Ku, the appointed bureaucrats of the Beijing-selected government were schooled in the colonial bureaucracy and the world of business, which left them quite unused to being questioned in public. When the public began to contest their policies, they proved inept in dealing with this new political challenge, and their authoritarian style provoked massive and dramatic street demonstrations. Political performance by its very nature reaches out to a broad audience. In most pre-modern polities, political rituals are generally confined to a fairly narrow elite within the precincts of palace, temple, or exclusive official compounds. But modern states that purport to rule on behalf of all the people must speak to the mass of citizens. Public performances are the best way to reach illiterates who, as Sudipta Kaviraj reminds us, are not only unable to access the new print media but may be quite suspicious of the written text which, in the form of contracts or government orders, is more likely to threaten than to empower them. Julia Strauss shows how the new communist rulers of China used the political theatre of trials against ‘counter-revolutionaries’ to introduce political neophytes to the power and the program of the People’s Republic. In the political trials of Iraq, we see how the advent of radio and television allowed the state to magnify the

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audience for such performances many fold – and also to script and edit them to serve their particular agenda. New audiences invite new rhetoric. On one level, this may involve different languages. In Taiwan, the end of authoritarian rule by the Mainlanderdominated, Mandarin-speaking Kuomintang made it necessary to address the Taiwanese-speaking majority; thus facility in Taiwanese became a prerequisite for electoral success. Tagalog played a similar role in the Philippines, and local dialects replaced the colonial language in Africa. Verbal facility in the language of the citizenry is not all that is involved, however. There is also the adaptation of older rhetorical tools to new uses. This was one of the functions of the praisesingers and repeaters in Senegal. In Iraq, Charles Tripp shows us how poetry and verse were used to rouse the audience in the show trials of 1958 – a fact which reminds us that one of the appeals of Osama bin Laden is said to be his effective use of Arabic poetic forms. Much of the current literature on political performance describes the distinctive dramatic forms of some particular culture (Geertz’s Negara being perhaps the best example), or the modern rituals of the nation state nicely encapsulated in the notion of ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), or the subversion of those rituals in the political theatre of protest. I have elsewhere discussed the latter process in China, where the student protesters in 1989 usurped the approved rituals of mourning for the deposed General Secretary Hu Yaobang and turned them into a mass protest against the corruption and autocratic rule of the Communist party-state (Esherick and Wasserstom 1992). The essays in this volume add to this literature on the appropriation of local ritual forms for new uses. In Senegal, the familiar cultural tropes of the praise-singers are turned to modern political use. In Hong Kong, students mock the Secretary for Security’s subservience to the Beijing authorities by presenting a flag from the ‘feudal’ past: jingzhong baoguo (‘repaying the state with complete loyalty’). The pre-colonial state of Danxomέ supplied a repertoire of often fearsome symbols for modern Dahomey-Benin politicians to draw upon. All of these cases represent ways in which modern actors appropriate and subvert recognized cultural symbols to serve new political agendas. Nicolas Jaoul’s chapter on the Dalit processions in India provides a rare example of the inversion of established rituals by a stigmatized social group. The Dalit processions and sponsorship of Ambedkar statues in symbolically important urban spaces became important expressions of Dalit identity and community pride. But under the sponsorship of the Dalit Panthers, some celebrations went so far as to invert the Hindu story of Rama’s conquest of the devil-king Ravana, to make Ravana the hero of their myth. For radical members of the Dalit community, the quest for social and political recognition represented in these struggles was so vital that symbolic protests became an end in themselves, eclipsing even the practical considerations of political alliances to gain improved education or living

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conditions. Jaoul’s case serves as a reminder of the importance of symbols in identity politics and the dangers of any narrowly functionalist approach to the politics of performance. As political performances adapt to the demands of modern politics, theatre changes the way in which people make sense of the state. The state represented by colonial bureaucrats or big men speaking through the mouths of repeaters is clearly a different state than that created by the Blue Marches of Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, with their pop and reggae music, denim clothes, and youthful exuberance. The earlier politics had operated through discrete patron-client networks, and small meetings hosted by local party operatives confirmed that mode of rule. The Blue Marches heralded a new kind of politics – more open, more innovative, more cosmopolitan in its symbolic appeal. Similarly in Taiwan, we see the shift from the ‘organizational battle’ of clientelist politics to the broad mobilization of ‘making a show.’ This was a change that began even in the era of one-party Kuomintang rule, as Chiang Ching-kuo prepared for a more democratic politics by appearing among the people in shirt sleeves, promoting his agenda and listening to the views of ordinary citizens. It was a role that his father, the rigid and authoritarian Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, could never have assumed, and it projected a very different image of the state. When a new regime comes to power, it is particularly eager to present its new face to the public, so the first years of a new government are always a prime opportunity for political theatrics. This is the time for the new state to define itself. In the modern age of nationalism, this is likely to entail creating a flag, choosing a national anthem, designing a capital, opening museums, erecting monuments, issuing stamps, writing a constitution, establishing and celebrating national holidays, and through all of these public acts marking the identity of the new state. But it is also, as the papers by Charles Tripp and Julia Strauss remind us, an opportunity to distinguish the new state from the old regime through show trials targeting enemies of the new order. With robed judges on elevated platforms and uniformed officers guarding shackled prisoners, such trials provide an ideal setting to display the power of the new regime and also (if the situation permits) its commitment to justice and even mercy. To appear legitimate, however, these trials must in some respect conform to recognized models of justice and judicial procedure. As the show trials in both Iraq and China show, this form of judicial theatre quickly loses its appeal. Audiences diminish in size and enthusiasm, and show trials are rarely seen after the early years of a new regime. The reason for this is important for our understanding of the power of political theatre. The trial is a drama, and its appeal relies on the maintenance of a degree of uncertainty, anticipation, and dramatic tension. It is not necessary that the outcome be in doubt. In most cases, the audience accepts that the accused are enemies of the state and their crimes are often well attested. But the dramatic confrontation of

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witness and accused, the presentation of hitherto secret evidence, the demeanour of the once powerful accused under cross-examination all make for powerful theatre. The problem is, as the Iraqi case shows most clearly, the small measure of uncertainty in the process may allow the accused to turn the theatre against the state. This is as evident in the current trial of Saddam Hussein as it was in the 1958-59 trials described by Charles Tripp. Turning a political trial to the advantage of the accused is precisely what Gandhi did in India in 1922, and also what happened with the 1979 Kaohsiung trials in Taiwan – which were a critical moment in rallying the opposition and providing leadership (in this case, the lawyers) for the Taiwanese struggle against Kuomintang authoritarian rule. To guard against this danger, the state resorts to ever more tightly controlled and closely orchestrated trials, or even to trials in camera. At this point the trials become only show, increasingly meaningless rituals, which make the audience cynical and the performance ineffective. The lesson is simple: for political theatre to be effective, it has to be in some measure unpredictable. Without the uncertainty, the drama is lost. But states (especially revolutionary states) feel threatened by the unpredictable and are likely to shut down political trials (or keep them secret) once they have served their initial purpose. It is the element of unpredictability, of uncertain outcome, that makes election campaigns the source of such powerful theatre in the modern state. Elections are also, as Donal Cruise O’Brien tells us, powerful rituals of inversion, where the underling is momentarily uppermost, standing in judgment of the powerful. Candidates and their handlers naturally seek to script their campaign performances, surrounding the candidate with carefully chosen supporters to respond on cue to well-rehearsed applause lines. But there is always the possibility for unscripted participation by the crowd. It is in this way that campaign performances can become, in Cruise O’Brien’s terms, ‘weapons of the more restless of the weak.’ It is thus not surprising when Foucher tells us that women are some of the most active participants in Senegalese campaign appearances, dancing and singing the praise of the politician – even acting the buffoon with the hope of some future reward. Elections, of course, provide real drama only if the outcome is contested and to some degree in doubt. In the one-party state they can become boring and ineffectual rituals. The Taiwan and Senegal examples in this volume show how hotly contested elections bring all kinds of creative theatre. By contrast Steve Heder writes of the phoney ‘big man democracy’ of many Third World countries (and specifically Cambodia in his example) where cynicism leads to electoral demobilization. The process is not entirely different in the United States, where, in the last ten years, 97 per cent of the incumbents won their congressional elections (Gary Jacobson, personal communication) – a predictability of outcome that feeds rising voter cynicism and falling political participation. Elections are unlike most other state rituals in that they explicitly look to

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the future. National days, memorial days, and festivals (as well as museums, monuments, and historical sites) all look to the past – reminding citizens of the nation’s glorious history, honoured traditions and noble sacrifices. Even political trials look backward, though in this case back to the corrupt and evil past that the new regime promises to eradicate. Elections are about promises and hope for the future. Dafydd Fell describes how the first candidate of the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the exile politician Peng Mingmin, built his campaign around the history of Taiwanese victimization, creating such a funereal atmosphere that he went down to defeat. The next DPP candidate for President, Chen Shui-bian, was much more sensitive to the forward-looking potential of electoral rhetoric. He constructed a campaign along upbeat and hopeful themes of a new Taiwan and rode to victory. The Blue Marches of Senegal were similarly forward-looking with their evocation of youth and the promise of Americanstyle initiative and consumer culture. Eva-Lotta Hedman warns us against ‘fetishized electoralism’ and it is important to recognize that elections are a necessary but not sufficient condition for democratic government. The professionalization and Americanization of electoral campaigns (often guided by American election consultants), and the increasing reliance on electronic media and paid political advertising can hollow out much of the face-to-face immediacy of the electoral process. Steve Heder paints a particularly depressing picture of the Cambodian elections of 2003 where the audience for the electoral performance was as much international observers as Cambodian citizens. On the one hand, Hun Sen repeatedly violated agreements with the international community, his ability to withstand international pressure becoming part of the show which enhanced his nationalist credentials. On the other hand, he needed to feign just enough of the forms of democracy to keep foreign aid and investment flowing into the country. His ability to control and profit from this flow allowed his party to pass resources on to local party operatives, feeding the patron-client networks that keep his regime in power. The Cambodian case reminds us of the importance of international actors in the political theatre of the contemporary world. One might ask how globalization has affected the performance of state actors, aspirants and critics. The simple answer is that political theatre is most effective when it is creative, and globalization increases the available symbols and tropes that actors can draw upon to generate a creative performance. Movies, the internet, and satellite television make these symbols legible to a broad enough audience (especially broad among the young) that they can be adopted and turned to political advantage. Thus in the Blue Marches of the Parti démocratique sénégalais, the candidate appeared in Wall Street-style braces and his security guard in blue denim jackets and trousers, abandoning both Senegalese robes and French civil-servant garb for the image of l’Américain – powerful symbol of global survival skills with models as diverse as Donald Trump and Rambo. In Benin, we see the competing

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appeals of the Vodùn Diaspora in Brazil and the Caribbean on the one hand, and evangelical Christianity on the other. Taiwan campaign advertisements mimic Nike spots; and during the 1989 demonstrations in China, the powerful image of the Goddess of Democracy in Tiananmen Square was modelled in part on the Statue of Liberty (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1992: 34). No one can doubt the striking role of global modelling in the protest repertoires that sparked the dramatic transitions to democracy of the 1980s and 1990s. The Philippines provided the template of People’s Power in the massive demonstrations that led to Ferdinand Marcos’ ouster in 1986. The Chinese came next in 1989, and the bloody suppression of that movement was an example that the Communists of Eastern Europe refused to follow. As a consequence, mass, unarmed popular protests produced the Velvet Revolution and the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and then the Soviet Union. The model of massive street protests remains vital to this day, as we saw in the Orange Revolution of Ukraine where demonstrators occupying the main square in Kiev in the dead of winter forced the annulment of a corrupt election and the calling of a new election which brought the opposition to power. In all of these cases, it must be noted, a critical factor in the political transition was a decision by the army and security forces to accept the new order – a decision never taken in China. But the power of the political theatre of protest, the media’s ability to magnify the audience for that theatre at home and abroad, and the broad support that the protesters were known to enjoy from the population were absolutely critical to the dynamics of political change. Despite the globalization that comes with modern communications, when it comes to politics, the essays in the volume illustrate the old adage that ‘all politics is local.’ Political performance will continue to express the creative diversity of the world’s cultures – a diversity that neither rational choice theory nor Weberian modernization models are likely to capture. That diversity will no doubt involve an increasing amount of creative cross-cultural borrowing. What symbols will prove powerful, what repertoires will prove adaptable, what bodily practices will prove fashionable is impossible to predict. New actors will constantly emerge to borrow, adapt, subvert, and even invert cultural symbols for new political projects and purpose. It is precisely this unpredictability that gives a performance appeal. All we know is that effective political theatre will always be creative, and always worth studying. References Chang, Michael G. (forthcoming). A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Ethno-Dynastic Hegemony in Qing China, 1680–1785 (Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press).

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Esherick, Joseph W. and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (1992). ‘Acting out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China,’ in Elizabeth J. Perry and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (eds.), Popular Protests and Political Culture in Modern China (Boulder, CO, Westview Press): 28–66. Geertz, Clifford (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.) (1983). The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Weiss, Hedy (2005). ‘Reviewing Bush’s Address from a Theatrical Perspective,’ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4485050 (accessed 3 February 2005). Woodside, Alexander (1991). ‘Emperors and the Chinese Political System,’ in Kenneth Lieberthal, Joyce Kallgren, Roderick MacFarquhar and Frederic Wakeman, Jr. (eds.), Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries (Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe): 5–30. Note 1 An important exception to this invisible mode of Chinese imperial rule was the tours of the Manchu emperors Kangxi and Qianlong. On these, see Michael G. Chang (forthcoming).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Patrick Claffey completed his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2004. He lived in Benin from 1987 to 1999 and did further research there for prolonged periods in 2001 and 2002. His book Looking for a Breakthrough: The Role of Christian Churches in the Socio-political Development of Danxomέ-Benin is due to be published in 2006. Donal B. Cruise O’Brien is emeritus professor of political studies (Africa) at SOAS. He is author of several books on politics and religion in Africa, co-editor of two books, on states and on charisma, as well as author of numerous articles in scholarly journals, in which religion is never very far away. Joseph W. Esherick is professor of history and Hsiu Professor of Chinese studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is author of The Origins of the Boxer Uprising and Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (University of California Press, 1987), co-author of Chinese Archives: An Introductory Guide (University of California Institute of East Asian Studies, 1996), co-editor of Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance and Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World (University of California Press, 1990), and editor of Lost Chance in China (Random House 1974) and Remaking the Chinese City (University of Haiwai‘i Press, 2000). Dafydd Fell is the lecturer in Taiwan studies at the Department of Political Studies and Centre for Financial and Management Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is also the deputy director of the SOAS Taiwan Studies Programme and co-ordinator of the European Association of Taiwan Studies. His first book was Party Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2005), and he has just completed an edited volume examining the impact of the island’s first change in ruling parties in 2000. Vincent Foucher holds a PhD in political studies from SOAS. His research deals with the separatist movement in Casamance (South Senegal) and, more broadly, Senegalese politics. He is a researcher at the Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire, Bordeaux, and the current editor in chief of the journal Politique Africaine.

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Steve Heder has worked professionally on Cambodia since 1973, most recently as an investigator for the United Nations-assisted Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He teaches politics at SOAS. Eva-Lotta E. Hedman is senior research fellow, University of Oxford. She is the author of In the Name of Civil Society: From Free Election Movements to People Power in the Philippines (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006). Nicolas Jaoul is affiliated researcher at the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, EHESS, Paris, and teaches Indian History at the INALCO, Paris. He completed his PhD (EHESS, 2004) on Dalit activism in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. His fieldwork on the politics of the unprivileged in India focuses on the processes by which different ideas of citizenship carried by different political movements become grounded into popular practices and representations. Sudipta Kaviraj teaches Indian politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He taught earlier at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. His main fields of interest are political theory, the study of the Indian state and Indian literature. Agnes Shuk-mei Ku is associate professor of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is also affiliated with the Centre for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. Her research focuses on civil society and the public sphere, Hong Kong culture and politics, citizenship, gender, and disability issues. She is the editor of Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City (Routledge, 2004) and the author of Narratives, Politics and the Public Sphere: Struggles over Political Reform in the Final Transitional Years in Hong Kong (1992-1994) (Ashgate, 1999). Julia C. Strauss is senior lecturer in Chinese politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS. Her research interests include: the evolution of the 20th century Chinese state; the interaction between culture and institutions; comparative public administration, politics in Taiwan, and the implementation of environmental regulation in the PRC. She is the editor of The China Quarterly. Charles Tripp is currently reader in politics with reference to the Middle East, at SOAS. His research interests are in the politics of the Arab states of the Middle East and in Islamic political thought. His most recent publications include A History of Iraq (Cambridge University Press, new edition 2002) and Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

INDEX Action 4, 49, 78; Political action 71, 76, 195; Symbolic action 15, 18 Advertising, advertisements 8, 135, 138–9, 142–4, 146–7 Affect 2, 4, 76 Africa ix, 2, 8–9, 14, 15–30, 91–110, 111–32 Anthropology, anthropologists 2, 98, 151, 154, 164, 170 Audience(s) 3–9, 11, 13, 16–25, 30, 32–3, 36–40, 42–43, 45, 51, 56, 64, 73, 76, 78, 82–4, 87, 100, 111, 116–7, 120–1, 125, 129, 133–4, 136–8, 140–2, 144–6, 154, 156, 168–9, 192, 195–6, 199, 200, 225, 229, 231, 233, 234, 236, 238, 243–9 Balandier, Georges 2, 95 Bates, Robert 1 Benin (Republic of ) 10, 91–110, 245, 248 Blue Marches or marches bleues (Senegal) 9, 10, 111– 5, 117, 119, 121–31, 244, 246, 248 Buddhism 12, 178–9, 181, 185, 188–9, 193 Bureaucracy, bureaucrats 1, 5, 7, 12, 19, 23, 51–3, 57–9, 63–4, 117, 120, 124, 127, 153, 155, 157–65, 186, 190–1, 198–9, 244 Cambodia 9–11, 151–72, 247–8 China (People’s Republic of ) 2, 5–8,

44, 49–69, 139, 143, 158, 195, 244–6, 249 Christianity 10, 13, 19, 89, 97, 100, 103, 108, 110, 178, 201, 216, 218, 237, 249, 251 Citizen participation 4, 13, 220 Citizenship 1, 4, 175, 216–7, 219, 222–4, 237–8 Civil society 195–7, 199–200, 202–3, 206, 210, 212 Colonialism 2, 154, 157, 159, 164 Communist Party (Cambodian) 159; (Chinese) 50–1, 53–5, 57–8, 64, 167, 245; (Iraqi) 41, 46; (of the Philippines) 219–21, 223, 240 Contestation 2, 5, 11, 13, 155, 175, 235 Counterrevolutionaries (China) 7, 50–68; (Campaign to Suppress) 7, 50–2, 58–9, 61–4, 68; (Cleaning Out the Counterrevolutionaries Campaign or sufan) 50, 57–63, 65 Coup d’etat 25, 31–2, 38, 41–2, 45, 47, 96, 98–9, 108, 161 Dalit (or ‘Untouchables’) activists 12, 184, 186; (movement) 12, 174, 176–7, 179–180, 182–4, 189–90; (Panthers) 179–87, 193, 245 (processions) 189–90, 192, 245 Debates 8, 142, 147, 199–200, 203–4 Democracy 11–14, 24, 27, 30, 39,

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42, 91, 101, 110, 129, 136, 139, 146–7, 151, 155–6, 160, 162–3, 195–7, 200, 203, 207, 208–13, 217, 219, 220, 236–8, 247–9 Democratization 119, 139, 173–4, 244 Demonstrations 3–4, 7, 10, 12–13, 32, 34, 47, 122–5, 129, 137, 146, 174, 181, 183, 196–7, 202–4, 207–12 Education 35, 53, 59, 62, 77, 82, 97, 147, 179, 180, 184, 190, 218, 245 Elections 3, 5, 8–9, 13, 244, 247–8; (Benin) 92, 100, 103–5; Cambodia (151, 153–5, 157–63, 165, 167–70; (Hong Kong) 196, 209–211, 213–4; (Philippines) 215–22, 225–6, 228, 231–3, 235–7, 240–2; (Senegal) 23–5, 27, 33, 111, 123–6, 128, 130–1; (Taiwan) 133–5, 137, 139–41, 143–7, 149–50; Election–watch (campaigns) 11, 13, 227, 13, 215, 216, 219, 221, 225, 229–30, 233, 237–8; Campaigning 8, 9, 112, 125, 133–5, 138, 140, 142, 146, 244 Elites 2, 4, 5, 11, 19, 49, 76, 78, 92, 97, 104, 116, 124, 153–6, 162, 174–6, 178, 184, 190, 196, 203, 244; Counter–elites 5 Emotion(s) 2–5, 7, 12–13, 17, 21–4, 32, 50, 56, 64, 95, 145, 207 Faction(s) 7, 26, 98, 121–2, 134, 207; Factionalism 10 Foreign aid 156, 248 Gandhi, M. K. 2, 4, 8, 71–89 Geertz, Clifford 2, 11, 22, 92, 95, 151–5, 157, 162, 169–70, 243, 245 Heisenberg (Principle of Political

Performance) 244–5 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region 11–13, 149, 195–214, 244–5 Imagination 2, 5, 11, 15–16, 18, 21, 26–7, 73, 100, 205, 219, 229; Imagined communities 15 Independence 4, 12, 25, 26–7, 92, 95–7, 122–3, 135, 138–41, 143, 145, 157, 176, 178–9, 220 India (Republic of ) 2, 4, 6, 8, 11–12, 71–89, 173–93, 244–5, 247 Iraq (Republic of ) 2, 6–8, 31–48, 244–7 Islam 19, 27, 97, 110, 116, 127 Justice 6–8, 32–33, 35, 37–38, 40, 45, 56, 72, 75–6, 78–9, 84, 201, 218, 246 Kérékou, Mathieu 10, 91–93, 95, 97–101, 103–110 Korea (Republic of ) 2, 54; Korean War 50–51 Levi–Strauss, Claude 15 Marxism 10, 92, 94, 98, 106, 110, 152, 155, 157–60 Muslims 4–5, 16–22, 26–30, 97, 100, 116, 125, 175, 177–8, 191–2; (Sufi Muslims) 5–6, 17, 19, 21, 27, 29–30, 116, 244 Metaphors 3–4, 73, 78, 97, 100, 125, 188–9 Modernization 17, 190, 249 National Day 5, 135, 149, 248 Nationalism 13, 42, 72, 88, 92, 124, 217, 220–3, 239, 241, 246 Negara (Geertzian) 2, 11, 22, 151–2, 154–55, 157, 162, 245 Neo–patrimonialism 2 Non–Governmental Organizations (NGOs) 1, 11, 112, 118, 124, 131, 168, 201 People’s Court (Iraqi) 6–7, 31–3, 35,

255 37, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45–7 Philippines (Republic of the) 11, 13, 215–42, 245, 249 Play–acting 15–19, 21–3, 25–6, 27, 152, 158 Public space 5, 11–13, 54, 58, 179, 189, 204 “Rational choice” 1–2, 17, 216, 249 Religions 20, 58, 97–8, 101, 103–4, 178, 181, 187, 237 Rule of law 1, 82, 196, 219 Senegal (Republic of ) 2, 5–6, 9–10, 15–30, 111–31, 244–8, 251 Shakespeare, William 16–17 Soviet Union 5, 143, 249 State and society ix, 2, 6, 22, 64, 237 Taiwan (Republic of China) 9, 10, 50, 133–150, 244–49 Television (TV) 3, 6, 9, 13–14, 16, 23–24, 33, 36, 43–6, 133, 135, 137–39, 141–5, 193, 213, 215, 225, 227, 229–32, 234–6, 238,

244, 247–8. Thailand 2, 158 Tiananmen Square 3, 11, 30, 197, 249 Trials 4–8, 244–8 (Iraq) 31–2, 35–42, 44–6; (China) 49–70; (India) 71–89 Turner, Victor 2, 22, 24, 79, 198 United States of America (USA) 50, 101, 124, 131, 141, 144, 154, 161, 167, 219–20, 229, 233–4, 238 Uttar Pradesh (India) 11–13, 173–6, 179–80, 184–7, 189–92 Vote–buying 10 Wade, Abdoulaye 10, 26–27, 111–4, 122–31, 246 Weber, Max 1, 2, 29, 249 Wolters, Oliver 151–5, 157, 162, 169–70 World Bank 1, 92