IMHOTEP: Reply from Machiavelli

I write to acknowledge your recent letter and to thank you for confiding in me your fears concerning the future of your republic.

Yours is a most amazing country, with such an embarrassment of riches co-existing with such immense poverty, material as well as spiritual. I see men without scruples; people whose sole motivation is naked power and the spoils of office; a land of assassinations, kidnapping and conspiratorial intrigue. Nothing is what it seems.

There are also the tribal rivalries, exacerbated by the force of religion and primordial sentiments.

Ever since your tragic civil war in which over a million souls perished, there has persisted a kind of low-intensity warfare, as various groups eye one another with wariness and suspicion.

The British started this game of divide-and-rule, as they cleverly ensured that power would reside with the feudal North rather than the ‘uppity’ and better-educated South. With the arguable exception of Yakubu Gowon, the northern leaders were incapable of imagining a genuine national agenda. Their narrow-mindedness and greed reinforced southern fears, leading to a vicious cycle of suspicion and mutual contempt.

This is all the more reason why a big question mark still hangs over the survival of your corporate statehood.

Your country performs rather abysmally on most indices of development largely due to this failure of the elite to articulate a national vision and purpose, with even elementary things like electricity being way beyond your reach. In the renaissance Italy of my youth, power was in the hands of those who had the will and the intelligence to grab it. And we mobilised the necessary consensus to build islands of prosperity in a sea of chaos.

Every epoch has its defining challenges. In Florence, the Medicis held sway, as did the Sforzas in Milan and the Aragonite dynasty in Naples. In spite of their duplicities, Il Magnifico and his plutocratic descendants had the foresight to bring on board men of ability such as Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Pico, Piero Soderini, Francesco Guicciardini and my incredible self.

We laboured for the glory and prosperity of Florence. We exercised great prudence with regard to the public finances, giving meticulous attention to the execution of public works. I personally oversaw the build up of a people’s militia to replace the unreliable condottieri, mapping out an effective military strategy to keep our enemies at bay.

I served the Florentine state with distinction as Second Chancellor, leading legations to the courts of the kings of France and the Papal States, watching at close quarters the wily Cesare Borgia of the Duchy of Milan so the better to checkmate him.

He was my model for The Prince, combining such leadership, decisiveness and high ability as I had never seen in a statesman. I also learned a great deal from his precipitous fall, when he was outdone by his own hubris and moral blindness.

It goes without saying that leadership matters as does the constitution and the laws.

From what I see, you do not yet have a viable constitution and few among your leaders have genuine qualities that would have raised eyebrows across the Alps. It is evident that your rickety federal structure is programmed to gridlock and venality. Given the prevailing vested interests, your parliament is in no position to undertake any real reforms.

As for your political parties, they appear like asinine jokes told by a jester in a medieval court.

The matter of the illness of your First Chancellor is a mere storm in a teacup.

What you should worry more about, my friend, is the mortal sickness of your country and its government. What surprises me is why anybody thinks Saudi Arabia has the best medical facilities in the world. I would also look askance at the fact that he was last received by a diplomatic subaltern without the protocols befitting a Head of State, demonstrating how low your country is held by the Saudis. Very pathetic indeed.

The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt once described the state as ‘a work of art’. It was my good fortune to have eavesdropped on Leonardo whilst at work on one his great masterpiece, The Battle of Anghiari. As an artist labours with dedication, passion and single-minded focus, so must the statesman labour selflessly for the good and health of the polis.

You will need nothing less than a new coalition of democratic forces who are prepared to do what it takes to bring about a new order of things.

But I am aware of the enormous risks. As I wrote in the Prince: ``... there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.”