I Would Hate to Be a President
- Category: Governance
- Date 20-03-2005
- 445 views
I have always admired the post of a President in a nation and wished that God made a miracle to make me one, but recent developments have put to rest my lifelong dream. When I was young, I totally believed that the adults were enjoying their status and everything in their experience was a pleasure. Fast-forward and I grew into an adult; I began to look back at my childhood with nostalgic yearning. The lucky child does not worry about how to face the next day because his every need is provided for, lest he cries till everyone went on their knees to beg him call off the anger.
Then, another phase of my life started with the dawning of adulthood and its accompanying challenges and responsibilities. To me, however, a President was the happiest adult, without worries to cater for personally. He earns a huge salary but receives such care from the citizens, as no baby would ever enjoy. His food is purchased with other people’s money, normally given through taxes. His children’s school and medical fees are paid with your and my taxes. The rent for his residence is not his responsibility but yours and mine.
A Presidential jet and car are purchased with other people’s earnings – even their fuel. A President’s wardrobe is stocked with all types of exotic garments, purchased and maintained with the money other than his own. The pages of a newspaper cannot contain an exhaustive list of the benefits that go with one being a country’s President
These entitlements go beyond the sitting President as a person to their spouse(s) and also are enjoyed into retirement. Who would therefore not wish to be a nation’s President, at least once, even briefly in life. Peering Eye would reject that proffer! A President? No, thank you!
The women of Bongo have made the Presidency such a mockery that only a person with an exceeding degree of madness would still fight to become a President. I mean, all human beings are mad but some are madder than others – the degrees of madness differ.
I never lost interest in that famous office until women executives gathered in Dar es Salaam to vilify the Presidency and liken it to all sorts of infamous things. Imagine, likening a presidential jet to an ambulance! How crazy and unjust!
The women, under the auspices of Feminist Activism Coalition (FemAct), had gathered to launch the “Voters’ Voice” electoral manifesto, and adopted all sorts of inflammatory rhetoric; insulting and disparaging the highest office in the land. Some woman or so carried a placard that read, “How many ambulances would the money used to buy the presidential jet have bought?”(Women demand top positions The Citizen Thursday 24th 2005).
If I may recall correctly, an ambulance is a vehicle, which is used to carry people who are injured, ill or dead. The only sane individual who could possibly travel by an ambulance is its driver. It is not such an honourable vehicle as one would wish to occupy, least of all, a President! There is no relationship at all between the Presidency and the ambulancy, but why was such a comparison made – between a presidential jet and an ambulance? To me, that was a way to bring a considerably important office into serious disrepute, denigrating the person who occupies it and inviting bad luck into it. I would be the last to accept to be a President and subject myself to such evident misfortune.
The tone of the meeting was a real curse on the Presidency. Mary Rusimbi of Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) condemned the government (therefore the President) for the current belief that gender issues “concern women only”. Asseny Muro of TGNP cursed a government (or a President) that does not “create a vibrant economy … equal opportunities for all”. TAMWA’s Ananilea Nkya abhorred government (headed by a President) for sidelining women through negative media coverage.
The quarrelsome women took turns to revile the Presidency, possibly as package for the one who is retiring. Ironically, they boasted of their numbers and voting power, but clearly feared any future similar condemnation as they all dispersed without declaring a woman candidate to such an accursed office. I do hereby call upon all men to abandon the race for Presidency, so we too can have a woman President and harass her as they are doing to one of our kith.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Sunday Citizen