JOHAN STEYN: Engineering consent: Democracy in the digital age
Will the foundations of democracy remain standing?
It was a great idea. At a recent cabinet meeting, the president approved an ingenious plan to influence the outcome of the upcoming election of an adversarial state. We agreed that a number of factors had to fall in place for our plan to work.
First, we had to find a populist leader with great wealth and influence. It would be a bonus if he was a celebrity and a household brand. On our shortlist were a number of people we had a great deal of dirt on. During their visits to our country, we easily engineered opportunities with the oldest trick in the book: sexual temptation. All these little adventures were filmed and stored for a rainy day. ..
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