Dear Editor,
The taxi driver said to me: “I hope the leaders would put the country first.”
It was a statement that reflected the mood and expectations of various numbers and categories of citizens, albeit in the face of the barrage of self-serving pronouncements from all sides.
It is truly instructive how delusionary the leadership appears to a disillusioned electorate, as the former insists that it knows what is best for the followership.
Out of the morass of speculation however has come the more positive suggestion of a structured process of selection in the extant circumstances, wherein too few personnel have had any experience of managing organisations, alongside those many who have blatantly mismanaged.
So that there is misplaced optimism in hoping that the quantum leap necessary from dysfunctionality to efficiency is possible, through sheer wishful blandishments that can only convince oneself.
The better approach suggested therefore is to examine carefully the issues at stake, analyse and agree stage by stage the methodologies necessary to address them; meanwhile progressively identifying the management qualities that could best effect implementation of the agreed solutions.
This rationalised step-by-step process of identification would hopefully provide fruitful evidence of the type of skills and competencies that can best deliver the results of the evolving strategy – thus minimising, if not totally eliminating, the unworthy contests for individual power – a situation which is bound to be counterproductive, leaving the followership to be more disillusioned than before.
At this juncture no longer can the frailty of the governance system be exposed to risks that conceivably can be greater than hitherto.
The issue of power must be that of reconciliation, one prerequisite of which must be a selfless predisposition to listen to the other view, with the objective of not disappointing the hopes of citizens and particularly the vision of the taxi driver – “to put the country first.”
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
