Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following statistics?

29 have been
accused of spouse abuse, 1 convicted of conspiracy, 7 have been
arrested for fraud, 19 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 117
have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses, 3 have
done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 4
have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for
shoplifting, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 84 have been
arrested for drink driving in the last year and these are just the ones
we know about.

Which organisation
is this? It’s the Members of Parliament, the same group that cranks out
many hundreds of new laws each year, designed to keep the rest of us in
line. I rest my case.

I was astounded
when I received this chain email. I immediately thought about our own
parliament, the National Assembly, and what the profile of its members
would be when compared along these lines. How many of them have beaten
their wives until they were hospitalised. How many have been part of
treasonous plots against the state, how many left bankrupted or failed
companies and redundant staff behind them? How may have been indicted
or convicted for assault, fraud, theft, embezzlement, murder, drug
trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking? How many have EFCC
cases against them, or are currently in court facing criminal charges?
I wonder…. Someone, please help us out. It will explain why only one
law has been passed in 3 years and why only budget related bills have
been treated. Could they be there only to wield power and make money
and not to transform our lives for the better by passing just laws as
they are charged to do? I in no way mean to wield a broad brush and
stereotype our parliamentarians. I am sure that there are many sincere,
hardworking, devoted and dedicated public servants and activists
amongst them, but unless they exist in sufficient number, independent
of the ubiquitous puppet masters, how much good can they really do?

I later
investigated the email and discovered that it came from anonymous
origins in 1999 and the target was the US Congress. I also discovered
that the statistics were never verified and yet it caught on like
wildfire and has spread around the world adopted by different
jurisdictions as statistics relating to their own legislators.

The lord of misrule
is an ancient title for the officer appointed in medieval Scotland to
officiate over the Feast of Fools. Later, during the Roman empire is
was the person appointed as ruler of the feast of Saturnalia. These
festivals were occasions where the natural order of society was turned
upside down and inside out.

Masters served
their slaves, and subordinates ruled their superiors with full license
and without fear of reprisal. You can only imagine what took place
during those times. They could very well have been Sodom and Gomorrah
reinvented for some hours or some days. Historically, the person in
charge comes to a bad end when the feast is over. Sometimes sacrificed
for the good of all, at other times forced to suicide.

The parallel that I
can draw is that very often things seem to be done back to front in the
public arena. You could say that we have the habit of putting the cart
before the horse – reversing the accepted order of things. In George
Puttenham’s ‘The arte of English poesie, 1589’ he named such a practice
preposterous. In some cases we call it cruelly uncaring. Why wouldn’t
we bring the horse out first, then bring out the cart and fit it to the
ready-made harness? The world famous Ferrari team does not bring the
four wheels and space them out on the tarmac then struggle to position
the race car within them.

The nationwide
demolition and relocation of illegal structures that cause flooding of
homes, disrupt traffic to the agony of commuters, and blight our
environment is in general welcomed by all and sundry. Yet, time and
time again, the people affected, and the communities they are in ask
why alternative housing, alternative markets, alternative abbatoirs,
alternative trailer parks are not readied first so that there is a
smooth and less painful migration from where they used to be? Whatever
you may say about the people in positions of power, I do not think we
would be quick to label them cruel. So I presume there must be several
good reasons why this phenomenon keeps repeating and replicating itself.

Let us depose the Lord of Misrule presiding over the disorder in our
country. Let us have eligible people in our national assembly. People
who can interpret laws and read budgets. Let us follow the correct
steps and processes in putting the ills of our society to rights.
Conduct impact assessments, put mitigation strategies in place, before
implementing change. We will all be happier for it.