The Follow-Up

Within a few days, even before these lines appear in print, Parliament will have adjourned, and MP; newly educated in the intricacies of privilege motions and character assasination, will be in the thick of the chase for election tickets, the debate on manifestos, the jousting and sparring over who is leader and who is not. There is health in all this, despite the many banalities of such democratic functioning in underdeveloped conditions, but many are worried by the possibility that the vital follow up to devaluation will be lost in the inevitable euphoria of electioneering in the coming months.

The Politician Has His Say 
The trouble really is that nobody seems to be anxious to invite controversy upon himself, for controversy there will be whatever the detailed follow up suggested. So many of our widely publicised economists are so solidly silent that it looks as if they have reduced themselves to peripheral commentators on official policies—indeed, they seem to be waiting until the politician has had his say. And what does the politician have to say? Precisely nothing. An analysis of the debates in Parliament and outside indicates that devaluation and the followup are hardly present in the mind of the politician, even though he feels ruined, debased and the like. Government spokesmen merely reflect this state of affairs in the academic and political spheres.