“With the noxious blooming of our kakistocracy we now need to say our final goodbyes to the deeply outmoded idea that we live in a meritocracy.” Dr. Neal Curtis (University of Auckland, 2019)
“It is kakistocracy, kleptocracy.” That is what it is.
Two ugly words. One ugly reality.
Kakistocracy: government by the worst. Not the brightest, not the most competent. The loudest, the most loyal, the most willing to look away. Offices become rewards, not responsibilities. Experience is replaced by allegiance.
Kleptocracy: rule by thieves. Public money moves like water through cracked pipes. Budgets are announced with pride and looted with precision. Hospitals have no drugs but officials have new convoys. Schools have no teachers but contracts have new signatures.
Together, they feed each other. The worst are given power, and power becomes the business. Accountability is called “politics.” Audits are called “attacks.” And the people are told to be patient while their future is being auctioned.
This is not governance. This is management of decline.
The antidote is not cynicism. It is memory and records and votes and courts and press that do not flinch. It is citizens who refuse to normalize failure as “just how things are.”
Call it what it is. Name it without fear.
Because you cannot fix what you are too polite to describe.
Kakistocracy. Kleptocracy. And it will only end when we stop accepting it.
+2348039289375
bcradle@ymail.com