More Leadership Stuff - Ariffin B Mohd Amir

MORE LEADERSHIP STUFF

Ariffin B Mohd Amir

Let's talk about something provocative, shall we? Leadership...it has always been part and parcel of humans since humanity started to exist. It's either you are a leader or a follower. Either way, you are all directly or indirectly involved in a certain kind of leadership. The simplest example is family; a complex example is citizenship of a country.

But there will always be a time when the current leadership is deemed not suitable to continue, or seen to have been misused for self-gain, or perceived to have shown incapability to lead. On the other hand, there will always be a time when the current leadership would face parallel leaderships. And one thing is for sure, two leaderships cannot co-exist. One leadership must submit to another for harmonious stability or both leaderships will cause conflicts that may lead to, or go beyond, unimaginable consequences.

So, how do you subvert a parallel leadership? Or how do you dismantle a current leadership so yours can take over? The following are methodologies that I have seen based on my observations and what I have learnt. Take note that the names of the methodologies are not terminologies of any sort…they’re just my way to make this entry as bombastic as possible.

 

Divide and Conquer

I’m sure you all may have heard of this sort. Its basic is simple: you divide the group/clan/club/society/organisation/party/country into small factions and set them all to fight against each other. Once you have done that, you approach the factions one by one and “consume” them. This method is quite popular because it has shown its effectiveness throughout history. A simple visualisation of how it works is this. You get a birthday cake. You don’t expect to eat it as one big whole, do you? You’ll end up killing your throat first, then yourself if you do try. So, you would cut it down to slices and eat the slices one by one. The same concept applies to this.

Leaderships that have a strong united group/society backing it will be really difficult to bring down in one single blow. So, it is best to get them to fight against each other and form factions within the leadership. That way, they will be divided, and their strength is weakened. Once that is done, approach the factions one by one and offer them help, or hurt them, or destroy them. One of the strengths of leadership is unity. If they do not have unity, they are weak.

This method, according to some, is really time-consuming and a bit risky as the current leadership can detect such a tactic being used. However, it has shown its success in history, such as the colonisation of the British of Malaysia. They even said the big change in politics in Malaysia since the last general elections is because such a tactic was used by the opposition where members and supporters of Barisan National were divided by racism, scandal and outside interference.

Collective Campaign

All you have to do is to provoke a lot of people with some issue about the current leadership. When they are provoked enough, ask them to join you and form a faction/ group. After a successful formation of the faction, make your faction larger and larger by getting more and more people to join you. And when you have enough people, topple the current leadership.

This is how collective campaigns work. You basically form a group, make your group larger and larger and when you feel confident that your group is large enough to cause some chaos to the current leadership, topple the current leadership. This type of tactic is usually effective for “democratic” changes in governments. You basically “collect” voters for the next election and topple the current government with majority votes. It is also useful when you “peacefully” push suggestions to the current leadership. But this technique is useless if you want a violent revolution/reformation through riots or civil war, because the current leadership can always use Guillotine and Complete Wipeout via military or police power to destroy the current leadership.

Guillotine

The definition of this is cutting the head off. But in terms of leadership, you basically cut off the “head” of the leadership. In other words, you kill/capture the leader of the leadership. By doing so, there would be two effects: the parallel leadership dies off, or the parallel leadership’s movement is slowed down, giving enough time for you to plan out your next move.

This is a popular tactic used by many leaders from all around the world. Kill the head to kill the body. In terms of leadership, kill the leader to kill the movement/revolution. Doing so will, again, either cause the leadership to die off (because there is no replacement) or slow down the parallel leadership’s movement (because the successor is not as decisive or smart as the recently deceased leader).

It is quite common for some countries where there current leadership uses the intelligence community to assassinate the leader of the movement. Though assassinating may not be effective at times, they would instead just capture the leader. Guillotine too can also mean silencing the leader. All the parallel leadership has to do is go to the leader and threaten him with so and so and he will keep his mouth shut and so stopping the revolution.

Complete Wipeout

The basic meaning of this is you destroy every single person involved in the parallel leadership. This is often used by a government of a country to tackle factions that can separate small states from the country to become independent countries. Governments do this by military power. All they do is approve the generals to go and kill anyone or everyone in the state that wants independence and hence solving the leadership problems. However, by doing so you will directly be responsible for the genocide of your people…

Complete wipe-out too can mean capturing all the people involved in the parallel leadership. This is often used by the police to capture small criminal groups. But when it comes to resolving revolutions, it may be considered ineffective because getting the police to capture up to thousands of people is absurd. Hence, the military is the “simpler” alternative (in other words, killing).

It may be debatable but complete wipe-out may also include declaring war on other countries. You destroy the leaderships of the other countries by destroying their military power.