In an era where political leadership appears to be slipping into the hands of old or close to old men and women around the globe, it is heartening to know that Emmanuel Macron is around to remind us of the power of youth. He is only forty-six, which is just as well. Our experience has often been one of observing the rise of young politicians around the globe and having them make a difference in politics as also statecraft.
Macron will be saying farewell to the presidency in 2027 and will still be young as a former President. How do people who bow out of office in their forties expect to spend the rest of their lives? Well, some go into seclusion, some form foundations in their names and some write memoirs. The vigorous individual that Macron is, one can expect him to go for either or both of the last two options.
Time was when Americans were electrified by the presence of 40s' men in their national politics. That age now clearly belongs in the past, with a 78-year old Donald Trump and an 81-year old Joe Biden once again fighting it out for the White House come November. Old politicians, unless it is Charles de Gaulle, have not offered dreams or idealism. But look back on John F. Kennedy, who was elected President at the age of forty-two in 1960. His rival Richard Nixon was forty-seven.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were both in their forties when they became President. In 1968, the 42-year old Robert F. Kennedy was shot while seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President. Today it is his son Robert F Kennedy Jr who is a third party candidate for the presidency. He is seventy and certainly stands no chance against Biden and Trump. The old Kennedy magic is not to be spotted in RFK Jr. Because of his age? Because of his controversial views on Covid and the like? Or is it because his clan will not support him but is lined up behind Biden?
In our part of the world, political leaders in their forties have made decisive contributions to history. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was forty-six when he came forth with his Six Points in Lahore; and by the time he was forty-nine, he had clearly risen to being the sole voice of his fellow Bengalis. Tajuddin Ahmad was in his mid-forties when the burden of guiding the nation to liberty through forging the Mujibnagar government fell on him. And there was Syed Nazrul Islam, another leader in the forties, with him.
Bangladesh's history is fundamentally what the young Bangabandhu, Tajuddin and Nazrul Islam made it between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. Their end, through murderous conspiracy, marked the end of purposeful politics aimed at the achievement and consolidation of freedom for Bangladesh's people. In neighbouring India, the rise of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in her late forties was significantly the inauguration of a renaissance for the country. Gandhi's Green Revolution coupled with her campaign to put India on the map of the world's influential nations paid off. Those who came after her simply built on her legacy.
The forties are a good age to be in and not just in politics. It is that point in time when ideas are shaped in people, men and women who through skills and practical experience know how to have their thoughts mesh with the aspirations of their people. The Trudeaus in Canada, both Pierre and Justin, came into office as Prime Minister in their forties and quickly turned into charismatic symbols of leadership for their people. Benazir Bhutto assumed political leadership in Pakistan in her thirties, but it was not until she was in her forties that sagacity became a part of her ideas of governance. She was murdered in her early fifties.
In Britain, Tony Blair was only forty-three when he assumed office as Prime Minister in 1997. There was much promise in him, all of which was squandered by his reluctance to make way for Gordon Brown and of course by his complicity, with George W. Bush, in illegally invading Iraq and destroying what had been a cultured beautiful country. Blair stands out as an example of a politician in his forties taking all the wrong turns in politics. But there was Harold Wilson, who at age forty-eight led the Labour Party to electoral victory in 1964 and went into a reshaping of social and foreign policy. Wilson was steadfast in upholding principles, unlike the wishy washy power-oriented politics of Tony Blair.
Sheikh Hasina was forty-nine when she led the Awami League back to power in 1996 and set about mending Bangladesh's broken history. In 1991, Khaleda Zia was in her forties when she took over as Bangladesh's Prime Minister. Syeda Zohra Tajuddin provided purposeful leadership to the Awami League in her later forties in the early 1980s.
The forties are a beautiful age to be in, especially for politicians. It is a time when their intelligence and charisma serve as the foundations of the leadership they mean to offer people. And yet it might be a time when ambitious politicians will ruin themselves through the flaws in their character or through sheer misfortune. The young Rishi Sunak, who became Britain's Prime Minister at age forty-two in 2022, is today faced with the dire prospect of leading his Conservative Party to a gigantic electoral defeat at the hands of Keir Starmer's Labour.
Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana, the old Gold Coast, to freedom when he was forty-eight. Nine years later he was overthrown in a coup as he arrived in Beijing on an official visit to China. Gamal Abdel Nasser inaugurated a new Egypt when, in his forties and with General Naguib, he led a successful coup against the monarchy of King Farouk. Nasser died a disappointed man in 1970, three years after his country was badly trounced by Israel in the June 1967 war.
When men and women reach the age of forty, they can quite properly regard themselves as mature individuals. Barring a few hiccups in the lives of some, it is true that people are at their best, particularly in politics, when they reach and go beyond forty. There is a spring in their steps. But there are too those inordinately ambitious men who ruin themselves and the lives of others when they ascend to power at that age.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was forty-three when he took over as President of what remained of Pakistan in December 1971. He had a good chance of forcing his nation's army back to the barracks and preventing it from seizing power ever again. He failed to do this necessary job when he deployed the same army in operations against insurgents in Balochistan, only two years after the military's surrender in Bangladesh, and causing the death and disappearance of thousands of young Baloch men.
Bhutto was overthrown at age forty-nine. He was hanged by the army when he was a mere fifty-one.
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