The unmanageable minister

HOW else can we describe him? Describe him in any other way he will keep radiating crudity, vulgarity and boorishness wherever he would appear. Refinement and humility are words not to be found in his dictionary.

This particular minister has set a record by talking most foul in public and behaving most repulsively with junior government officials during his tenure in the ministry. Such people, when in power, believe that they have the right to abuse power. The Bangla term “khomota,” meaning power to rule, goes into their head and they translate the term as licentiousness. They harbour the skewed notion that they own the country, the people and all the resources of the state. There is serious lacking of moral discipline in such people and they continue to ignore social and legal bounds of a public representative, until they are stopped.  

He was the most “unstoppable” cabinet member for all these years, and now he has become the most “expendable” one, a folly of his own creation indeed. I wonder how the nation could tolerate his idiocy for so long a time.    

He also suffers from the delusion that he is a highly read person, almost an intellectual (?), very intelligent and a man of ancient wisdom. He thinks everyone else knows very little about almost everything, therefore they should listen to his words and get enlightened. He gets on the dais with great confidence and starts a speech with the air of an orator, a scholar almost, but ends up talking gibberish. His talks or speeches are mostly incoherent, directionless, unfocused, haughty and pompous, “signifying nothing.” This writer had the misfortune of enduring an hour long “no head, no tail” speech by him in a private university some months back. By God, it was all “rubbish.” His lackeys go about telling people that he possesses ten thousand books. I wonder if a man has read ten thousand good books, including novels, short stories, travelogues, essays and poetry how come it does not reflect in his speech?

The democratic system, no matter how good it is in absence of anything better, creates “leaders” like our 'minister for misdemeanor,' who impose their foolhardiness on the nation until they are shown the door most ignominiously at the end. But in politics it appears no one reads history; no one wants to take lessons from history. And that is why they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. They take their position for granted and that is when they start to falter. Men like our unmanageable minister need a thorough orientation before taking up weighty responsibilities as a minister. They need to be told that being a part of a government is not like being a part of a kabadi team.

The writer is Special Supplements Editor, The Daily Star