The Politicians' Mystique

Citizens who are non-politicians and do not take part in political activities as members of any political party, have also some points of views to offer to the politicians who serve the people on one hand, and on the other fight with admirable ferocity amongst themselves in party interest. Their personalities are so colourful that we hate to love them, at the same love to hate them. The above citizens are also voters, and act as observers of the political scene, and offer their views informally from time to time in the mass media, and during private and social contacts. Some of these groups can be identified by their grouping or profession or the services they offer. What importance the politicians give to such feedbacks?

The general impression is that the politicians generally ignore the non-influential sector which form the majority of the voters. Some of this 'public interest' topics are taken up by the newspapers. But the impression remains that the politicians are a self-centred lot, focusing their monitoring on the activities mostly on the political opponents. They firmly believe in subjective objectivity or objective subjectivity. What it means is the object of this comment.

This is exactly what the two major political parties in the country are doing during the decade of the '90s, to the dismay and frustration of the general masses and the public at large. The public speeches of the politicians are severely limited to the criticism and dissection of the 'unholy' and 'conspiratorial' activities of the opponents; and most of the time these are categorised as anti-national, sub-divided into many types of offending cells. Why such a naive approach to governing the country?

There appears to be two factors at work, egotism, and over-confidence. How the minds of the Bangladeshi politicians work behind the scene need to be analysed by the expert professionals, and the conclusions may be made available in the media for information, and formation of correct public opinion on the politicians and their general image. Image projection is an important part of the ladder of success.

There is a reason for this type of sensitivity in the minds of the outside local observers, who as citizens have the right to comment on public affairs including the styles and standard of politics in the country; but feel neglected and side-tracked, despite the presence of the peoples' representative to the extent of 300 in number.

There is a conflict between quantity and quality. The style and standard of the politicians are not changing. In fact, it is getting worse. Why? The civil society, who provide the playing ground to the politicians, are partly responsible for the state of affairs.

What is tolerated, lingers. It could be bad politics, ideologies, corruption, nepotism, systems loss, toll collection, use of violence, moral degradation, or anything else. There is a check-and-balance mechanism in any field of activity or system. Why our politics is not improving? This low-level observer is to qualified to tackle this question.

Why such questions arise at all? There is nothing more interesting than feedbacks, regardless of the sources. This is not a tirade against the politicians, but an honest query to understand them better. We are familiar (but not wiser) with the feminine mystique, but this politicians' mystique baffle most of us. Politicians, the name is mystery! Thy work is not, regardless of transparency. It is generally held that if one could read a politicians' mind, then s/he is not a superior type of politicians. While this point is conceded, the question still remains: how to un-read the politicians' mind?