Bushry Column - Maldives - Chop me into tiny pieces and feed me to the fish :: Dhivehi Observer

Bushry Column
Chop me into tiny pieces and feed me to the fish!

Mohamed Bushry , 16th June 2005 - Bushry Column Archive

It was a typical day. I was going home for my lunch break. While driving around the block, trying to find a parking space for my car, I couldn't find any. So I parked in front of the Atolls Minster Hameed's home. After lunch I walked to my car. I wasn't surprised to find a parking fine stuck on the windscreen of my car. These days it's so hard to find a parking space for your car. Numbers of cars are increasing exponentially, but the number of parking spaces remains limited. The government benefits from this, because the authorities can charge the car-owners for illegal parking.

Now that's another story. What I'm really concerned about is the subject of introducing a "corruption sticker". The apparently incompetent office by the name of Anti-corruption Board should introduce a sticker which they stick on the backsides of corrupt bureaucrats. If the Ward Offices and the Transport Ministry could have so many officials roaming on the streets of Male, trying to find illegally-parked cars, why can't the Anti-corruption Board do the same?

Corruption is widespread in the government ministries and offices. But the best that the Anti-corruption Board could do is to prosecute some lowly Katheeb for taking a home a few Rufiyaa. While the Board is going after a few smaller fish, the bigger predators are roaming the seas, gobbling millions and millions of dollars. We all know the famous FPID corruption scandal, but there are many such cases of fraud which hasn't come to the spotlight. Only a free and fair evaluation of the system could identify the crooks.

Why are the authorities so hooked on sticking this bloody orange-colored sticker on our cars and motorcycles, when they should concentrate more on catching the bloody bureaucratic parasites in the civil service who are drinking our blood?

That day, when I discovered the parking fine on my car, I was hugely upset. Not because I had to pay fifty Rufiyaa, but because the authorities seem to be more interested in petty fines instead of stopping real corruption. I slowly removed the sticker from the windshield of my car, tore it into pieces and threw it on to the road, in front of Minster Hameed's house. I know that the authorities have the power to tear me into pieces for doing that, but I have reached my elastic limit. Those of us who have studied physics would know that stretchable material have elastic limits. When anything is stretched beyond that limit, it breaks. Hence I have broken and I don't give a damn whether I'm chopped into tiny bits and made into fish meal, for expressing my disgust at the way that certain authorities are treating the members of the general public.

Do we have to spend another generation, licking the asses of some of these corrupt crooks, while the country descends into more social disharmony and corruption? The President himself has admitted, a few nights ago, in a speech at his beloved party gathering, that the government hasn't done enough to stop the widespread use of narcotic drugs amongst the youth. If his government couldn't deal with that issue over the last twenty seven years, is the President asking the public to give him another twenty seven years to tackle the issue?

Corruption and drugs are the two main social evils that need to be tackled decisively and firmly. But the authorities these days seem to be more interested in politics and in saving their elected seats, rather than addressing the urgent problems facing this fragile nation of ours. I'm ready to sacrifice myself for this nation. That's why I'm expressing my disgust, while I know that I could be chopped into to tiny pieces and fed to the sharks for writing this "blasphemous" article. @