Resign if you must and walk away, but we the people are fed up with threats of resignations and withdrawals of support
ROBERT CLEMENTS
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ANY times I hear leaders threatening to resign, threatening but never going the whole length and ever doing so:
In some parts of our country, and I’m not going to tell you where, I’ve seen a very interesting skirmish of muscle: Two men have a heated argument with each other, when one of them in anger rolls up his sleeves, just one roll mind you.
The other then proceeds to roll up his own sleeve; again just a single roll. The verbal duel then continues but this time, both wait for public to join, not into the fight but to prevent them from rolling their sleeves up anymore!
Soon it’s a war of words between so called fighter and people who are preventing him from rolling up his sleeves. “Let me do it!”
“No, no, no!” the people scream.
“Let me roll it just once more!” shouts the other fellow.
“No, no, no!” his side of the public scream.
Rarely if ever does it blossom into a fight.
Our resignation dramas more or less follow same ritual; very rarely do I see a man hand over his resignation because conscience doesn’t permit him to continue in the same post.
Very rarely do I see leaders resign and walk off.
There’s too much to lose isn’t there?
When V.P Sigh was the Rajiv Gandhi’s finance minister, he threatened to resign almost every day: A story goes that during a cabinet meeting, while bending down a piece of paper accidentally flew out of V.P’s pocket and fell onto the ground. “Oh my god!” cried V.P as he tried to retrieve it.
“What is it?” asked Rajiv.
“My resignation letter!”
“Oh let the cleaning woman sweep it away,” chuckled Rajiv, “I believe you’ve got dozens at home in different coloured papers to match your different shirts!”
An alcoholic husband continually threatened to leave his wife and kids because she always chided him about his drinking, “I’m leaving!” he shouted one day and found his three kids standing next to their mother at the door.
“Please leave dad!”
“Yes dad, please go!”
“Mum tell dad to go, we’ll have a nice time without him!”
The father promptly came back into the house and never talked about leaving again. I’d like to think, he gave up the bottle.
Well, and that’s the message we need to give to all our ‘resigning’ leaders, resign if you must and walk away, but we the people are fed up with threats of resignations and withdrawals of support; your emotional blackmail doesn’t help nation or state or us ordinary folk, and sir, we’re not gonna be there to stop you rolling your sleeves..
Robert Clements is a journalist and widely published newspaper columnist. His column Bob’s Banter is published in over 30 newspapers and magazines
