Time to Wag Tails Politicians

Now that the second-term election is only a few months away, people must have some qualifications of a right person in their minds. That’s good. Bhutan was in the middle of an enigma in 2008. There were instances of choosing the wrong person. Or was it because of the limited choice?

I write this because I am reminded of a bad example of how our government can be irresponsible in choosing the right ministers for a ministry. I am lifting an old example from The Journalist newspaper (13/6/10, page 5): the confession made by Health Minister Zanglay Drukpa. He said to the paper, “I came with an open mind since I knew nothing about health.” I laughed at his frankness but at the same time felt ashamed. From then on, I knew there was something artificial in the functioning of our system. There are many "hotch-potch Dashos" like him. It is like the right person for the wrong job. There are scores of others in the present batch of elected members who have joined politics for the love of power and money. Some of them have turned out to be worse than statues, stealthily filling their stomachs, as they don’t speak a word in the National Assembly. Others survive on lip service and fake promises.

Bhutan didn’t know that much of this would happen in the first election. Now people know; there are talks in every small gathering and the like about choosing a leader of good heart—someone responsible, capable, understanding, etc. Politicization is important, therefore. People must by now also know that an individual must not decide the candidate alone; rather, it is the responsibility of people coming together to decide on their representative. Democracy is sometimes described as communities of people coming together, and it imagines many voices pouring into a unified whole. Democracy should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in the ways people think, speak, work, fight, and even make art. No nepotism, no relations, no bribery—nothing but selecting through collective decision would yield a good leader, because it is for the greater goodness and well-being of the whole, not for an individual.

Coming back to the right person for the right job: the subject matter is very important. Every job demands specialization in a specific subject. One cannot be a jack of all trades. An untrained person cannot suddenly declare himself a carpenter. An educationist cannot become a doctor. An accountant takes up their profession because it is professional. But when it comes to a society like ours, everyone wags their tail in front of money (and barks back nonsensically at their own people) and the post, not necessarily thinking about their area of responsibility and the outcome. As a result, our government becomes buoyant and susceptible, where everyone tries to make a bulb with no knowledge of how to light it, but nobody succeeds. Because of this, I think we had so many problems in the Health Ministry. This type of malfunction, which pulls our nation down, should not be repeated, as society depends upon them. And in turn, they depend on society.