By Abdulillah

I have always wondered why in our beloved country we seem to feel that politics is a “be all, end all” profession. We seem to have the belief that the practice of this profession is the highest form of intellectual behavior or vocation.

In the effort to set the record straight (at least as it pertains to my thinking), this profession in the ancient Arabic culture was really not so great. Let me start with the root and etymology of the word “Seeyasa” or Politics in the Arabic language. Well based on my understanding of the Arabic word its root is derived from the root word “Sasa” or basically the profession of taking care of horses.

Now let’s put this word in the context of those times, the knights in armor would come back from battle and they would hand the horses to the stable boys who attended to them and the knights’ needs, such as the cleaning of the knights’ amours, equipment, and the stables. While working, these stable boys would talk amongst themselves extolling the valiancy and heroic bravery of the knights they attend to, whilst they cleaned the stables behind the horses. Please note the knights’ code would never allow them to stoop that low to extoll their conquests or victories amongst themselves, it was considered a lowly behavior and looked down upon amongst them.

Now here is the crux of my issue with how we have seemed to have changed this word to mean the essence of administration and governance, one to be admired and respected. You know I really do not believe the meaning of the word has changed at all, in fact I would say to you all the practice of politics is still the same. Basically it is the use of rhetoric to extoll and praise, and in many cases it revolves around the shoveling of manure, or in more present day language “lip service, male cow manure, etc…”

My quandary, is why we ever moved away from the original meaning, at least as it pertains to its original Arabic root. Did we actually believe that today’s politicians were going to act differently than the stable boys of before? It is very rare in any society where a politician actually rises to the occasion or leads in innovation or change; even by just bringing good issues to the forefront, but in reality that is our modern expectation for this profession. Let me give you some examples.

Have we seen any one of our politicians actually take interest in debating or adopting policies that will take care of our society’s health and safety? You would think that after what happened in Bangladesh recently and the death of so many, they would have taken up some issues related to occupational health and safety issues with the ministries of health and labor. I have yet to hear a peep out of our elected officials, or are they too waiting for a calamity? Let me tell you we have many issues related to health and safety in our construction and industrial industries as well as on our roads, where so many are injured and die needlessly, that by adopting simple already studied prevention methods we can save so many lives and
save our country so much money.

Have you seen them about town visiting their constituencies or our professional or non-governmental societies and universities to ask those in the know what they can do to assist them is getting some of their many good ideas that have already been studied and published to fruition? Listen I do not expect them to all of a sudden become versed in the subject matter, but they should at least be able to grasp the need for some of these innovative ideas and extoll their need when they meet.

I mean we the people have elected them to these offices such that we can have them debate it and then act on the best parts, but no ad-nauseum.
We do not wish to hear them debating who of them is the best to lead what, and their ambitions for higher offices. This at least to me is a waste of time and is basically a stable boy practice.

I would even venture to say to them all if you believe you have been hired by us to lead you would be mistaken. We hired you to do a job as a custodian for us. Yes you have been hired by us the people to take care of cleaning our stables and taking care of our armor and equipment. We know how to fight the battles we just need you to make sure the day to day activities around our house are kept to the standards we expect and to listen to us when we speak to you, or the next time you come up for re-election we will do what we do best and vote you into oblivion. Yes this means firing you, where your fifteen minutes of fame will come to an end. I hope we have made ourselves clear to you all, enough verbosity, time to get to work.

God Bess Jordan and its People and Leaders