Politics & Power Quote by Ahmed Ali

Democracy, Ahmed Ali suggests, can be reduced to a party trick: pick the one “who can govern,” applaud ourselves for choosing, and call the whole thing democratic. The line is built like a trap. It starts with the seductive promise of competence, that fantasy that there exists a singular figure uniquely qualified to run a messy society. Then it snaps shut on the word “we.” Who is “we” in a system that narrows options until only one candidate is thinkable, speakable, or safe?

Ali’s genius is the ellipsis. “And we chose him...” carries the insinuation of a choice performed after the real choice has already been removed. It’s not the dictator’s blunt coercion he’s skewering; it’s the softer, more modern alchemy where consent is manufactured through inevitability. The question at the end is less innocent than it looks. It’s a dare to anyone hiding behind ballots as proof of legitimacy: if the outcome is predetermined by fear, patronage, censorship, or the sheer poverty of alternatives, what exactly did the choosing accomplish?

Context sharpens the barb. Writing in and about the postcolonial world, Ali watched new nations inherit old imperial machinery: centralized power, bureaucratic intimidation, the cult of the “strong” administrator. His work often sits in the tension between ideals announced and realities enforced. Here, democracy isn’t treated as a moral badge but as a living practice that depends on pluralism, friction, and the right to imagine someone else. When a society can only picture one governor, the system has already confessed what it is.