By Gertrude Lamare
“The latest deplorable comment from the Deputy CM was uttered in Mawkynrew where he claimed that his party will generously supply lipstick and powder to the people of the constituency.”
Looking at the frequency with which the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr. Prestone Tyngsong, casts distasteful and offensive remarks in public, are we, as citizens of Meghalaya, running the risk of growing numb to buffoonery among politicians? Have we reached a stage where we are simply accepting careless talk from our representatives as essential ingredients of political drama? Is politics now mere entertainment and no longer about a dignified participation in democratic governance?
Ever since he took over as Deputy CM in March 2018, Mr. Prestone Tynsong has been relentlessly and unremorsefully spewing nonsensical and hurtful statements with no evident consequences. He has never personally apologised and his party, the NPP, has always given him free pass for such bad behaviour. The latest deplorable comment from the Deputy CM was uttered in Mawkynrew where he claimed that his party will generously supply lipstick and powder to the people of the constituency. Without spending too much time examining what Mr. Prestone Tynsong could have meant by this, I would just like to point out two things. One, that the Deputy CM is unsurprisingly out of touch with the lives of people in Mawkynrew, and that he tries to cover up his lack of understanding by deploying embarrassingly poor comedy. Two, like most bad comedians, he uses humour tinged with sexism in order to gain mileage. The Honourable gentleman’s reference to lipstick and powder makes absolutely no sense in this context. However, it is meant to trigger laughter, and is nonetheless an exploitation of an age-old patriarchal argument where women’s use of make-up is worthy of sneers, insults, condemnation and criticisms.
Mawkynrew was not the first place which was gifted with Mr. Prestone Tynsong’s make-up statements. In July 2022, the Honourable gentleman made a reference to “lipstick and powder” in a speech he made in Nongmali (a locality under the North Shillong constituency) while campaigning for Mr. Ransom Sutnga, the NPP candidate who himself is freshly emerging from a series of backlash following the spectacular failure of a number of projects under his watch as PWD (Buildings) Executive Engineer. Mr. Tynsong said that instead of choosing “duplicate” candidates who use “lipstick and power” to attract voters in the hope that they go to heaven, the people of Nongmali should vote for the trustworthy Mr. Sutnga, who we the public know very well to have an unmatched public service record. Here, the Deputy CM is obviously aiming cheap jibes at candidates from rival parties. However, he is simultaneously drawing a connection between inauthenticity and the application of lipstick and powder, implying that people who do use such cosmetic products are “duplicate” fakes, who are unreliable and manipulative. Since female persons are the majority of make-up users in the Meghalaya context, is the Honourable gentleman insinuating these things about women in the state or is the mention of powder actually an unconscious reference to the powdered dust of the collapsed Assembly dome that his Honourable NPP candidate was supervising?
The other remark that has angered many is the Deputy CM’s disgraceful misuse of the word “miscarriage” in his speech at Shella in May this year. Mr. Tynsong said that the NPP candidate from the constituency, Mrs. Grace M Kharpuri, had nine months until the 2023 legislative assembly elections, and that it is an important period that needed careful treading so as to avoid a miscarriage. Apart from the fact that this is the most terrible of analogies to be shared on a public platform, the statement reveals that the Honourable Deputy CM does not have any understanding of or sympathy for the complexity and precarity of woman’s reproductive health. In fact, he uses this traumatic and heart-breaking experience among women as a catalyst for easy laughs. Perhaps I should remind Mr. Tynsong that until recently, Meghalaya had held one of the highest Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR) and Infant Mortality Rates (IMR) in the country.
As pointed out earlier, whether Mr. Prestone Tynsong’s jokes qualify as good comedy is debatable; but it appears that it is his entire projected persona that attracts comedic mimicry. There are multiple YouTube videos documenting the ‘funny’ person that he is, and some would agree that he has been the most “memed” politician in the state in recent years. Social media, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, have plenty of material featuring him, including videos of the prolific impressionist from Jowai, Wanchwami Kharsahnoh, who does an excellent Prestone Tynsong. Another crucial component of our Deputy CM’s act is his use of self-deprecatory humour, especially when he plays upon his baldness. “I feel like my hair will grow back when I saw how bad the road is,” the Honourable gentleman said in March 2021 in Sohra. The phenomenon of appearance and disappearance of hair is a metaphor for a variety of things in his book – bad roads, political victory, personal pride, and the like.
Some would argue that that his self-parody is a redeeming factor; by turning his humour on himself, he appears vulnerable and becomes identifiable to the people. Ladies and gentlemen, humour is good, it warms things up, even politics; but sadly, the bad and bizarre jokes of the Deputy CM are not humbling gestures at all. Amidst the noise, it is important to recognise that the joker image associated with Mr. Prestone Tynsong is not accidental but a very cultivated one. He has learned to make jokes and humour intrinsic elements of his political articulations, and through them, draw attention from the Press or the public to himself. His jocular persona is a strategic ploy to evade scrutiny by shipping any disagreeable or problematic statement he utters to the realm of “just jokes.” Let me remind you of the time when he laughingly admitted that politicians (like himself) fool voters every five years and that equally, voters fall for the lies of politicians every five years. This was September 2022 in Mawlai. Such a statement confirms that the Honourable gentleman is not only hiding in plain sight but is wearing his insincerity on his sleeves, whilst looking down on the electorate, the very people who get him to the grand position that he holds.
We in Meghalaya love to laugh, and humour is a significant part of our culture. However, we need to ask ourselves, what is to become to the well-being of our state when the politician is now the joker? In many traditions across the world, the joker is a subversive character who pokes fun and critiques figures of authority. He often provides “the checks and balances” that are needed in a political system through humour. In Meghalaya though, we currently have one of the most powerful men in the state playing the role of the joker, expelling any morsel of subversion from it, and in fact, using it to consolidate his hold on the people. Humour is becoming our Deputy CM’s powerful weapon of distraction which aims to draw our attention to Mr. Prestone, the comedian and away from Mr. Prestone, the politician. Should we, as citizens, continue to sit back and laugh along or do we urgently need to demand more from our representatives – more dignity, wisdom, responsibility and accountability? The time is ripe, friends, we deserve better and our future is too precious to gamble with cheap comedy.