--BY MADAN LAMSAL

After political forums turned into money pits, parrots suddenly became skillful orators, villains heroes and parliamentarians started calling themselves development activists instead of lawmakers. Thus began the game of coaxing and cajoling. Even those who believed in killing in the past have started coaxing and cajoling after finding it more advantageous.

Such games get popular especially right before and after elections. These are times when there is a competition of sorts in telling lies and telecasting lies. Because lies have become the biggest strength of the politicians! The politicians try to encircle us with their high walls of lies but we must know that the truth is beyond these walls and without meeting the truth we cannot meet freedom!!

Almost all politicians in our country are great liars. The politicians themselves reveal this while talking about each other. And we have to trust them as the Thai saying goes – “The hen sees the snake’s feet and the snake sees the hen’s boobs!” The lies told by the big politicians and their parties have become household products. Their very existence hinges on lies, deception, misdirection, fact-bending, half-truths and even downright lies as seen in the recent elections as well.

We all know how hard the parties tried to confuse the voters with their manifestos, which are nothing but piles and piles of lies. The situation is such that every politician stands on a mountain of lies. In fact, if one doesn’t lie, then one is not a politician!    

Once we accept that the world is an illusion, everything that happens between birth and death automatically becomes an illusion. By this logic, neither the bright days nor the dark nights are absolute truths. The space between Earth and the Sky, all kinds of voids and vacuums are an illusion. This is the essence of the scriptures. Why speak the truth then? Why go against the holy scriptures? That should be why it is the lies that find priority in the politicians’ words as well as actions, and thoughts as well as philosophies. Small lies grow to become big lies.

And big lies are an affair associated with big politicians who dream of becoming statesmen by winning the hearts and minds of the people! Don’t our big politicians make us think along this same line with their art of political lying?    

The devil may be the father of lies but it is the politicians who shaped lying into an art and adapted it to politics. When the politicians tell a lie, gesturing with their hands and quickly moving their eyes, they involve their mind, body and soul in the act of lying. This holds true in every situation – whether they are talking about sending the youths abroad for employment under the ‘free visa, free ticket’ scheme or talking about employing hundreds of thousands of youths within the country or selling the dream of making the country prosperous.

When the politicians tell a lie, they try their best to make it look honest with the help of their facial expressions and movement of eyes. The lies of our politicians have a special pull; unless you are free from this strong pull, you cannot decipher the truth from the lies.      

He who speaks the truth is naïve; he who tells lies is smart and has a faster brain! Because the brain works really fast when one is lying. So, only those who have quick, fast, good brains are quick, fast and good at lying. That’s why the election debates on the television are full of fallacious arguments, distorted facts, misleading claims and fake counter-claims.

In one word – lies! The politicians get angry, hiss and growl at each other and lampoon each other and shower abusive words on each other just to confuse the audience so much that their bullshit lies are taken as something meaningful and real. In the seemingly endless media debates, he who can lie clearly and confidently steals the show!   

Lies are like flowing rivers from which everyone drinks their fair share to quench their thirst. Lies have no beginning, nor do they have an end! You cannot see them, nor can you hear them. They are everywhere though no one can say with any degree of certainty what these lies actually look like. Don’t you find a lot of similarities between lies and most of our present-day politicians?   

For over the past three decades, these politicians have been telling us more or less the same set of lies and we have always believed them. That’s why it’s more or less the same people who have governed us over all these years. Over all these years, our problems have remained more or less the same – unresolved! Everyone knows this truth. But very few speak the truth. And hardly any of these ‘very few’ is a politician! They say when money speaks, the truth keeps silent. When the truth keeps silent, lies and liars are bound to rule the roost.

So, the merry-go-round continues in this insignificant city of lies and fabrication. But isn’t it high time we started deciphering the truth from the lies?