Lesson from a tax office

One day I went to a Receiver of Revenue office to complain about how ruthlessly I had been taxed. I thought that while the extent to which I had been taxed was legal, that level of taxation was inhumane and unfair.

The tax officer was sympathetic, but he advised that I should have gone to see him before I submitted my income tax return, because then he would have been able to help me legally because “Taxation is government stealing from you [legally] and you have to find ways of stealing from government [legally]”.

In last month’s column I made the point that constitutions can be changed to suit those in power. This means that you can have an unjust law being used to serve the interests of those in power at the expense of the people. It also means that in a court case a clever lawyer can manipulate the law to get someone who is guilty acquitted while an innocent person gets convicted.

This says something to us about the limitations of democratic systems when practised without reference to values or religious beliefs. By itself a secular constitution has no conscience. It can be cleverly manipulated as the tax officer referred to above suggested.

Am I casting aspersions on democratic leaders who have no religious beliefs? I should start by emphasising that a democratic constitution is the very foundation stone of good governance. Most human beings, political leaders included, need to be regulated, and without a democratic constitution, it would be extremely difficult to control those in power.

Furthermore, democratic leaders, with or without religious beliefs, derives authority from the legal system, the electorate and the political party. They can be held accountable for any actions or decisions taken if these are not in the interests of those who put them in power, and can even be removed from power. This is unlike in a dictatorship where the leader derives power from controlling the instruments of power such as the media, the police and the army. Such a leader can be so tyrannical and despotic that he or she cannot be held accountable for anti-people decisions and actions.

However, one can be a democratic leader who abides by all the legal requirements and still work for selfish ends and against the people. To understand this we should refer to what the leadership specialist Ron Boehme has referred to as the two principal types of leadership: the leadership of domination and servant leadership.

According to Boehme, the leadership of domination operates to a great extent by fear, force, manipulation and control. A leader can operate under an ostensibly democratic system and still use fear, force, manipulation and control to stay in power. There comes a time when what matters to such a leader is not the interests of the people, but the preservation of power and position. This is a case where leadership becomes more important than service.

Niccolo Machiavelli is supposed to have advised leaders that if one has to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. That is a typical expression of the leadership of domination. The values of a servant leader are very different.

Boehme says servant leadership operates out of motives of love and is based on pillars of truth, righteousness and justice. For the servant leader service for the people comes before one’s preoccupation with the position of a leader. Because servant leadership is based on truth, the servant leader will do what is right, come what may. The servant leader is guided by conscience and values.

What we learn from this is that in addition to developing a democratic constitution, a country should also develop a set of national values that help leaders to be of better service to the people.

It also means that it is not enough to have a change of government. It is also necessary to have a change in the culture of leadership in order to avoid a situation where a new government popularly elected by the people finds itself perpetuating the evils of the government it has replaced.