Clean hands

In a country such as this with it's history of violence and war, invasion and insurgency, everyone has been involved, everyone has pinned their colours to one regime or cause or another and as power has changed hands from one to another so the heros of the former regime become the villains of the next. This is nothing new perhaps, but what it means is that no one has clean hands. If you have any ounce of leadership ability that would make you want to be a part of the governing structure of this country then chances are that you have been a leader in some other capacity in the country, against some regime or other, and there are few armchair generals in this part of the world - if you are a leader you have killed people yourself, not simply issued orders or pressed buttons on screens.

My question is then - how do you pull together a governing body for this nation that is not filthy with the blood and corruption of decades of war and turmoil under different regimes and would be rulers? In many ways I am late in asking these questions as they were, I hope, bandied around when the first democratic elections were being planned, but such questions are being raised again as the democratically elected government fails to cut the mustard for a myriad of reasons. It was an attempt to pull together tribal leaders and unify a fractured country, but this was done fast and without the rule of law or judgement. Those elected bought extra zeros on the end of their ballot counts, everyone has dirty hands and sort of tries to hide it but everyone knows it.

It has brought me to thinking about a sort of Truth and Reconciliation Committee such as that in South Africa, or the Gaccaccas in Rwanda that dispensed either grassroots judgements or admission and absolution to the actors in the conflicts, perpetrator face to face with victim. I am not suggesting that something like either of those be transposed here because with the strength of this culture (and I would argue that the culture here is stronger than the religion) it would have to be radically appropriate and deeply cognisant of the culture in which it would need to be effective. Here is shame and honour. Here is a history of violence like any other but specifically vehement against outside rule or invasion. Here are tribes that come first. Here life is hard and death is easy. Here there is no word for forgiveness beyond the word for begging.